Truth in a Bullet Fedora

I'm Everywhere, except on my site

2008-03-04T19:53:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, we're at the point where it's getting near the time to make decisions about the future of TBF-I just don't have a whole lot of thoughts worth writing that don't fit on SportsHub, FD, or MVN, and the thought of putting the energy back into writing stuff good enough to get on TrueHoop so that I could build up enough of an audience to allow my random thoughts to be seen is a sketchy one. If you're reading this, you probably know me personally. However, it's only takes about five minutes to put up links to the last things I've written, so I'll do that.

New FreeDarko

New SportsHub

It's nice to have a site in your college's colors that people come to to read only your writing, and I love the title "Truth In A Bullet Fedora." It's nice to be able to post anything at anytime and have a self-selected audience. However, it's also really nice to work for a site with thousands of daily hits and another one with a boss with actual media connections, and I have to decide which is easier. This site will probably just become links to stuff with about a paragraph extra, which is what it's been for a while now. I'm still working hard, so hopefully you'll continue to read me here and elsewhere.

Huzzah! More Crap!

2008-02-05T22:17:00.000-08:00

-Most importantly, New FreeDarko up. Enjoy.

-Also, here's a SportsHubLA post I was too lazy to link to when it got published. It's an unremarkable game recap, except that I was able to sneak in a link to a clip from Clone High. I believe that this is the pinnacle of my brief career.

-Quick notes: Kelly Dwyer isn't at Yahoo! anymore? What the fuck? He could not have been doing a better job for them-he was posting constantly, providing great analysis (I think KD watches more basketball than anyone on the planet), and was routinely hilarious, particularly with his "shocking dialogues," which were to NBA junkies what an Apatow script is to pop-culture junkies. Hopefully he's working on a book or something.

-Also, read this post and this post by Shoals, especially regarding his name. My boss is awesome. Oh, and while you're on FreeDarko, check out Ziller's graphs. They're awesome.

-Oh, and here's an MVN post.

New Links and New Lost

2008-02-01T02:01:00.000-08:00

First off, here's a new MVN post, and here's the Laker-centric version of my mid-season awards.

Now, some bonus thoughts about the Lost season premiere!

Past season premiers of Lost have raised more questions then they've answered, but created a sense of awe that made up for it-witness last season's premiere, where we got a shot of a suburban community and then saw that it was Actually on the Island!

However, as the show's writers had chosen to do that with last season's crazy twist finale, perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that this premiere chose to give us some ideas about what was going on instead of blow our minds.

This was the first premiere when we didn't get a Jack "flashback" (again, they did that in last year's finale), although he was, again, the first person we saw in a flashback/flash-forward.

Anyways, we can now put some things together:

-First and most importantly, only 6 people left the island, leaving Hurley and Jack with extreme guilt, which they deal with by going insane; Jack goes old-school self loathing and immerses himself in alcohol and facial hair while Hurley actually goes back to the mental hospital. So far, all three characters have dealt with their feelings of guilt as we'd have expected them to-Jack gets proactive and tries to fix everything himself by flying back and forth over the island and becomes increasingly despondent as he realizes he can't fix the problem, Hurley retreats back into safety and comfort, and Kate changes her appearance and runs away from her guilt. This new revelation also helps to square Jack's flash-forward from last season with his status as a hero; while certain aspects of his character, particularly the ones from his flashback during last season's premiere, would have suggested that his misery was due to his obsessive nature and he was obsessed with returning to the island, where he was king, just like he was obsessed with the idea of returning to his wife, it now looks like Jack is miserable because he's a hero after all and is racked with guilt over abandoning 31 people on the island.

-While Jack is starting to look like a hero again, Sawyer moved back to being a bad guy, leaving Kate behind in order to go with Locke and self-preservation. As one of the main reasons that most of us (well, me, anyways) have come to see Sawyer as the show's true hero is because of his deeply-hidden romantic nature and the fact that he really does love Kate deep down, I was not a big fan of this call-it sets up a Jack-Sawyer-Kate triangle again and keeps the "big four" balanced between the two teams, and may ultimately mean that the show's two main male leads end up balanced between being on and off the island, (although if Sawyer isn't the "he" Kate referred to in the finale last year, who would it be? My dark-horse call would be that she got pregnant with Sawyer's kid, just like Cassie, although for him to be old enough to "wonder where someone is," he'd have to be at least two or three, and even that's a little young to be left home alone, and years seems like too much time to me.) it reflected horribly on Sawyer's character, and Sawyer's slow-burn emergence as a hero on the show is one of the best things about Lost. (Although the move was set up in flashback when Sawyer had to give up the mother of his child in order to bail himself out of debt, I still didn't like it.)

-It looks like we'll find out what the guys on the boat really want next week. I'm excited.

Who likes words?

2008-01-28T04:51:00.000-08:00

It's officially the NBA midseason mark, which meant that I got to make an "awards" column where I could dump all my thoughts about the season so far, which is always a lot of fun. Also, I was able to essentially write one column and put it on two websites, which is always a plus. The Cavs-centric awards column is up here, with the Laker-centric one awaiting clearance from the heavens. Seriously, I really like these posts-you get a FD-esque ode to the greatness of Baron Davis to a statistics-driven vitrolic rant on Kevin Durant. Go. Click the link. Do it. You might even get a post on TV or football if you do.

Yet More Goodness.

2008-01-22T19:50:00.000-08:00

New FreeDarko post for all of you to enjoy. Also, I hope you liked that Fischer piece but would like some feedback on it, so forward it to your friends, hype it up, do something, because I worked really hard on that post and want it to be seen.

The aformentioned uber-post is up

2008-01-21T00:09:00.000-08:00

It's on the Last Page at MVN- here da link. It's long, rambling, and a little crazy, and deals with one of my pet theories/opinions, but I think it could be the best post I've ever done. Then again, I thought that Gatsby piece was good too, and Woody Allen thinks his best movie was Stardust Memories, which sucks. Anyways, read it and say nice things about it.

I'm Back!

2008-01-20T02:54:00.000-08:00

New Post on SportsHub!

Sorry for the absence, folks. I had weird shit going on from all angles. Thanks for sticking around. Anyways, that post is just the tip O' the iceberg-I've found my swagger again and have an MVN post that should be up tomorrow, a FreeDarko post that's in development hell, and a Magnum Opus post that I finished tonight and am trying to find distribution for. All I'll say about it now is:

-It illustrates one of my favorite theses/themes

-It's 3,000 words long

-It mainly deals with boxing and chess

-The conclusion sucks right now, but I'm going to try to fix it

Are you excited? I am. In the meantime, try and figure out if Silversun Pickups stole their bass line from the Breeders. Also, revel in how awesome the Breeders are. This song was worth 5 hours of the 100 greatest songs of the 90s (which could be its own 3,000 word post.) If my idea for a TV show ever comes true, this is totally going to be the theme song.

Also, have a Fiona Apple song. Again, thank you '90s, although this one wasn't on the countdown.

I'm still here

2008-01-08T00:59:00.000-08:00

My SiteMeter says that around 30 of you guys are still here-thanks a ton. Just to explain what's been going on, my Christmas break turned into an illness break-I've been completely out of commission for the last week and a half. New FD draft is in the works, and I've been able to see some Warrior games that I'll have thoughts for soon enough. Again, very sorry for the lack of production and thanks if you've stuck around long enough to read this.

I Am Now a Multimedia Personality

2007-12-19T23:43:00.000-08:00

Hey, I was on my boss at SportsHub LA's internet radio show today. Instead of having me tell you about it, here's the link. Scroll down on the right and you'll find the applet.

I suppose it's my duty to put this up

2007-12-17T05:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a link to the Basketball Jones' podcast prominently featuring The Fedora. I feel offended I was mentioned at no point during the coverage of this story. Guess I haven't made it yet. Oh, and new post is up on FreeDarko. Go check it out. CHRISTMAS BREAK!

Slightly Less Crappy than bullets, but not the quality of a real column!

2007-12-12T18:14:00.000-08:00

Update: Two new posts I actually like up on MVN. There's a happy one and a sad one. Go forth boldly.

Is anyone else perplexed by the fact that LeBron is a truly horrible dresser? It's odd for two reasons; first of all, I assume, like everyone else, that Nike is more or less running LeBron's public life like the mafia ran Tom Cruise's life in The Firm, so I can't figure out why there wasn't a Gulfstream flying from Oregon to Cleveland the first time LeBron came to the sidelines in jeans and a test pattern.

Second, LeBron makes no bones about MJ being his idol, and seems to be on board with Nike's plan of modeling his persona in the Jordan/Tiger mold. Well, a huge part of Jordan's image was of Jordan as consummate businessman and member of high society. We know now that MJ has a serious gambling problem, still rolls with his old enforcer, whips out the cigars and the cards whenever he gets a chance, damn near ran the Wizards into the ground, and isn't doing the best job with the Bobcats so far; he's nowhere near the businessman that Magic Johnson has been into his retirement. Mostly, MJ was a businessman because he let his name on the right things and looked the part. Nike knows this better than anyone, which means LeBron should know it as well. So why does LeBron dress the way he does?

One thing to note is that LeBron's not dressing like a gangster, which set AI's mainstream acceptance back a good 6 or 7 years. He's just dressing like he's intentionally trying to be goofy, which could tie back to his surprisingly wacky turn as the host of the ESPYs, trying to remind us all that he's a big kid at heart beneath the two kids and 90 million dollars and MVP numbers and the absolving of sins. Or it could just be that he was trying to look like Kanye and Maverick Carter told him it looked good. Or it could be the other end of the bet that led to Drew Gooden's ducktail. As we found out far too well recently, Nike really can't keep their biggest clients in check the way we think they can sometimes.

Redemption in Las Vegas

2007-12-06T15:59:00.000-08:00

This summer, the titans of the game, LeBron and Kobe, went to Las Vegas with holes in their hearts and chips on their shoulders, the both of them coming fresh off of utter beatdowns at the hands of better teams. Both of them saw that they still had a ways to go before getting their teams a championship, which LeBron needs to take the next step towards becoming the Next and Kobe needs to redeem the second volume of his story. Both of them saw they had a ways to travel to get the ring, but they would have to go in different directions. LeBron's road led him to look inward, while Kobe had to look outside.

LeBron and the E Street Band's improbable path to the NBA Finals saw LeBron lifting one weight from his shoulders and finding another-in one week, LeBron took the final step in clearing himself of all the "too soft," "doesn't want it bad enough," and "can't make the big shot" labels by slamming the door on the seemingly superior Pistons in games 3 and 4, having his legendary game 5, and then out-thinking the Pistons' reactionary double-coverage with deft passing in game 6 to seal the series. In leading his ragtag bunch to the finals by systematically mixing in his stretches of dominance with deft leadership and team-involvement, LeBron proved himself the consummate team leader, a man capable of putting an entire team on his back and carrying them to an entirely different plane with not just his skills but his knowledge of when to deploy them, a distinction previously reserved for MJ.

Unfortunately, LeBron was stopped cold in his tracks by a San Antonio team hellbent on exposing LeBron's still-incomplete individual game, cutting off his driving lanes, keeping him from getting his teammates involved, and forcing them to beat him by doing something other than going to the basket and leading a trail of bodies in his wake. Their strategy worked; LeBron's mid-range jumper continually fell short, and when he tried to post up Bruce Bowen to keep the defense from loading up on him, his lack of refinement in the post and inability to create easy looks for himself was exposed as well. (Quick aside: KD's got a New Job! Thank God; I was going through withdrawals.) All told, LeBron shot the ball 90 times in 4 games and only made 35% of his shots; in a series decided by 24 points, LeBron knew that while many would say the Cavs were simply overmatched, in reality he knew that the ultimate reason for the loss, or at least the sweep, was that holes remained in his game.

Meanwhile, Kobe Bryant quickly suffered a 5-game loss to the mighty Suns. Kobe played spectacularly in the series, slapping up 33/5/5 on 47% shooting, numbers as good or better than any player in any series during the entire playoffs. Yet Kobe was unable to impose his will on the series the way MJ did back in the day; his greatness failed to carry over to the rest of his team, and only Lamar Odom posted double figures in scoring for a talented offensive team in a high-scoring series. The Suns may even have stifled a chuckle; not only was their strategy to let Kobe get his points and leave his teammates out, they put that strategy in :07 Seconds or Less, which included the Suns' strategy meetings against the Lakers when they met in the playoffs the previous season. Coupled with Kobe's inexplicable fold in Game 7 the previous year, many began to say (okay, this is mostly my theory, but I think a lot of people secretly thought it), that while Kobe had raised his game to a level of individual perfection not seen since Jordan, he did not possess the mysterious and intangible quality that Jordan acquired in the legendary stage of his career-the ability to individually control any and every game, to make his teammates better, and to win big games through sheer savvy and force of will. While Kobe was great as Shaq's partner, and may even have been better than Shaq in the 3rd championship year, as an alpha dog he was no Jordan. Kobe then compounded all the questions about his leadership by getting caught on tape ripping teammate and future franchise center Andrew Bynum, and capped it all off by demanding a trade on May 30th, looking to flee the team he had ultimately built in his image by chasing out Shaq. (I know this is now a disputed point-Kobe was a free agent, and made it clear to the Laker brass that if they retained Shaq, he was not going to sign with the team, forcing them to choose. It's in Phil Jackson's book, and I'm going to trust him on this one.)

Then, as it so often does, Las Vegas changed everything in a hurry. On a team full of franchise guys like Jason Kidd, Chauncey Billups, Dwight Howard, 'Melo and LeBron, Kobe stepped into the alpha dog role with ease. On a team that even LeBron and 'Melo said was Kobe's to command, Kobe checked his ego at the door; the NBA's scoring leader the last two seasons kept his shots in check, finishing 3rd on the team in scoring. He stayed within the offense, almost never forcing a fadeaway, and made sure the hot scorers kept the ball in their hands. He gladly took the toughest assignment on defense every night and gave his man 40 minutes of hell. He even gave pep talks. He was, finally, the undisputed leader of a truly great team.

Meanwhile, LeBron, the memory of all those bricked midrange jumpers still fresh in his mind, came out and unleashed his new jumper on the unsuspecting international community. It was revealed that he'd been more or less living with a shooting coach all summer, and had taken the fade and "string-pull" out of his shot entirely, making him LeBron 2.0. This was not the LeBron we'd come to know and love over four years, disregarding entire chunks of the "right way" playbook and instead simply overpowering everyone with his unprecedented bag of skills. This was the perfect machine of basketball, drilling spot-up jumpers when he didn't feel like just going right through everyone and throwing it down. His 11-11 game shows a game so perfect it's legitimately frightening. After a 35% performance in the Finals, LeBron shot 76% in the FIBAs, along with 62% from beyond the three-point arc. And he led the team in assists. For one shining tournament, LeBron not only could do many things better than anybody had ever dreamed of, but his game was entirely devoid of flaws. Somewhere, Charley Rosen officially gave up.

Then, just like in the real world, the summer was over and reality set in-it's a lot harder to lead a normal team to glory than a team whose worst player is probably better than anyone else in the tournament's best player, and it's a lot harder to hit shots when you don't have Jason Kidd, Kobe, and Carmelo setting you up with perfect looks. While Kobe may never triumphantly lead a team he can truly call his own to the promised land, and LeBron will almost certainly never shoot 76% over an entire season, Kobe and LeBron have been able to carry over some of the lessons from their summer of redemption into the games that count. Kobe's "only" scoring 27 points a game this year, and has yet to enter himself into the MVP discussion, but his team is off to a solid 11-8 start, and youngsters Jordan Farmar and Andrew Bynum are blossoming under Kobe's leadership. What's more, Kobe is starting to show the will to win games by himself; tonight, Kobe put the upstart Nuggets and AI's 41 points away with an MJ-style 4th quarter. Finally, Kobe vetoed an offer that would have put him alongside Chauncey, Rasheed, and the rest of a Pistons squad almost undoubtedly more talented than Kobe's Laker teammates, and in the weaker Eastern Conference to boot, showing, at least to me, that Kobe's committed to sticking with the Lakers and being the kind of leader he was in Vegas.

Meanwhile, LeBron's team is 9-11, and clearly worse at this point than Boston, Orlando, and Detroit, who have their swag back; while the team could afford to go without LeBron for a game or two last year, this year they've become dependent on him, and have looked positively lost during his 4-game injury stint. However, LeBron is getting as close as we've ever seen anyone to individual perfection, putting up an obscene 31/8/8 nightly on 49% shooting, putting up triple-doubles and 40-point games so often they're just not surprising anymore. His jumper is still a weakness, and he's only at 70% from the free throw line, but a new post game and commitment to going all-out every night have allowed him to seize the crown of the league's best right now.

LeBron and Kobe still have a long road ahead of them, but here's hoping that what happened in Vegas for those two will not...you know the rest.

Where to go for Your Advanced Basketball Stats

2007-12-04T21:46:00.000-08:00

First off, here's a link to an epic post I slapped up on SportsHub LA about all the games during USC/UCLA weekend, which even got linked on TrueHoop with a glaring grammatical error right there in the quoted paragraph. Hey, it's not like I'm an English major or anything.

Today's Berri/Bynum/Kobe debacle made me finally get around to putting up a kind of "Beginner's Guide To Advanced Basketball Stats," which I've wanted to do for a while. I'm a bit of a stats junkie: when I read "Moneyball" as a kid, a light kind of went off in my head and I've been a die-hard stats guy ever since; I'm a huge proponent of knowing everything possible about a topic before forming an opinion, and a big reason I don't write about baseball is that guys like Bill James have nearly reduced the game to a science, and I don't think there's more informative/insightful work on baseball than what the guys at Baseball Prospectus are doing, and I don't have anywhere near the resources to keep up with them and tell people anything Prospectus can't. I could say "The Yankees should think about the fact that horrible, horrible things often happen to teams that put a lot of stock into young pitching," and mention the A's and Cubs, but BP could easily break out an analysis of age, usage rates, and everything else and have a definite answer where I could only offer a few anecdotes. Because of the team nature of basketball, it's still more art than science, which is why it's much more fun for me to write about.

That being said, there's been a movement to provide Moneyball-type basketball statistics in the last few years, and of course I've been keeping up. Here are my favorite advanced-stats websites:

1. John Hollinger

Synopsis: ESPN.com's resident basketball statistician and thus probably the best-known one of all, which is fortunate, because he's probably better than anyone else at navigating the uneasy divide between basketball science and basketball art.

Signature Statistic: PER (Player Efficency Rating), a stat that takes all of a player 's points, shooting percentage, rebounds, assists, etc. on a per-minute basis and puts them into one individual statistic.

Uniting Theory: Basketball stats should not be measured by the gross of what they do over a game or a season, because those numbers are skewed by usage, pace, league conditions, and minutes played but what players and teams to on a per-possession basis.

Useful Statistics: True Shooting %(Takes free throws and 3-pointers into account and gives a shooting percentage based on all of those-hugely valuable when comparing guys like Shaq and Steve Nash), "pace" factor (how many possessions a team uses in a given game), usage rate (how many possessions a player uses in a given game), assist ratio (what % of a player's possessions end in assists), rebound ratio (what percentage of rebounds a player pulls down).

Sample John Hollinger Column: A great piece about how the point guards that age well are the ones that shoot well, have good size, and pass well, while the ones that do only one or none of those things will fall off rapidly after 30.

Pretentiousness factor: Low to Moderate. Hollinger believes in his statistics, but knows they don't exist in a vacuum; in his player previews, he includes a more conventional paragraph explaining what about that player may have caused his numbers to fail to describe him, such as that player's defense, how young players can mess up his system, how he'll be playing a different role this year, how a trade may have affected his team, etc. However, if you argue with one of his findings, like that a team's true quality is better calculated by their average scoring margin than their actual wins and losses, prepare to feel his wraith.

2. 82games.com

Synopsis: Essentially a no-frills pile of stats compiled by a small army of "game charters" who watch every game and record things that aren't reflected in a box score.

Signature Statistic: +/-, which was started on 82games.com and subsequently grabbed by the NBA and now exists as the Lenovo Statistic. Their catch-all statistic is the "Roland Rating," which puts +/- along with the player's PER and his defensive counterpart's PER to make an overall rating.

Uniting Theory: Hey, there's a lot of things that happen in an NBA game that aren't in a box score! Let's record them!

Usful Stats: Breakdown of each player's shots into jumpers, "close" shots, and dunks, with how many of each the player takes and their percentage on each, +/- statistics for offense, defense, and rebounding, if their assists led to 3s, jumpers, layups, or dunks, crunch time statistics, data on which players play well together, production by position...the list goes on.

Sample Column: Their columns are an extension of their site; examinations of interesting things. (Last-second shot performance, how teams perform after timeouts, who took the most charges, etc. They've shied away from more ambitious columns like "The value of a Steve Nash" in recent years, although they did just do a nice study on how the pre-season reflects on the actual season.

Pretentiousness Factor: Zero. You can easily spend 20 minutes on 82games.com without seeing a word, and most of their columns are basically "Hey, here's a table! Here's what the table says! I wonder what that means!"

3. The Wages of Wins guys

Synopsis: The first chapter of their book, The Wages of Wins, said that it intended to be basketball's answer to Moneyball. Naturally, I plowed through it. When I finished it, I felt sick to my stomach. That's all I'll say for now.

Uniting Theory: They've run retroactive regression analysis on past games, and have decided that they can then go back and assign "wins" to each player based on his rebounds, assists, and scoring efficiency. Usage means nothing to them: They believe that it a player who goes 2 for 3 is more valuable than a player who goes 18 of 30, since a team ends up shooting on every possession anyways. However, they do not believe that carries over to rebounding, and believe that Jason Kidd's 8 rebounds per game is in no way effected by the fact that his big men are poor rebounders. Based on this, they award each player with a number of "wins," even though the numbers don't carry over-the 5 best players each year amass a cumulative win total of over 82, which clearly shows the rating is fluid, but they stick to it like it is absolute. Their unifying theory is a load of crap. I'm an English major who intends never to take another math class in his life, so I'm out of my league with this stuff, but Hollinger and the guys at 82games have both written up pretty convincing cases against the book, so read those, since those guys know what they're talking about better than I do.

Signature Statistic: "WP48" (Wins Produced per 48 minutes), which I described above.

Useful Statistics: None. Everything is about WP or WP48, which are both essentially useless takes on data everyone already has.

Pretentiousness Factor: Extreme. These guys firmly believe that everything they say is right and everyone in the NBA is stupid for not believing them, and never comment on when things like Ben Wallace being a horrifying bust happens. In their book, they drop gems like "People fail to consider that points scored in the first quarter count just the same as points scored in the 4th quarter" and "If every team played their mascot, people would conclude that the mascot is an integral part of the game." They're even annoying when they're right, saying things like "People say that Adam Morrison is on his way to Rookie of the Year this year. But what has he done well? Basically, he's shot more than anyone else. So what he's good at is throwing the ball towards the basket." Of course, maybe we deserve to be talked down to: not all of us are able to see into the future and know that Nick Fazekas will be better than Al Horford and Greg Oden. I'm being a bit hypocritical in dishing out venom to these guys when my big problem with them is their attitude, but these guys get under my skin. I'm sorry. Go to the first two sites, and hopefully we can keep anyone from trying to reduce the beauty of basketball to some sort of Excel experiment, and not even being right.

LeBron Domination Check, Bullets, Links

2007-11-28T03:51:00.000-08:00

-Before we get into LeBron's ridiculous numbers, look at what he's been doing to win games: The Cavs are 9-6 right now. They have led 1 game after 3 quarters. That is not a misprint. They are 6-6 in games they're losing over three quarters, easily the best winning % in the NBA from that spot, and 2-0 when tied after 3 quarters, like they were when the Cavs beat the Celtics tonight. The reason for this is LeBron. In crunch time, (less than 5 minutes left to play, neither team up by more than 5), LeBron is averaging 76 points per 48 minutes on well over 50% shooting, with 9.6 assists per 48 minutes to boot. Most superstars have clutch stats significantly worse than their normal stats.

-Today's "LeBron is putting up ungodly numbers" stat: When you combine points, rebounds, and assists, LeBron is at 723. #2 is Dwight Howard at 615.

-Heroes watch: Hey, Peter, if you can read minds, how about READING EVIL ADAM'S MIND SO HE STOPS PLAYING YOU LIKE AN IDIOT! Also, is the thing that concerns you most about the upcoming holocaust losing your moderately attractive girlfriend of a few weeks? Christ. Liked Sylar's story. 1 twin down... and every minute you spend in New Orleans trying to get that backpack back is a minute of your life you owe me. By the way, do you guys just tune out when I start talking about TV? I watch too much of it, so I figure I might as well write about it here, but if I'm wasting your time I'll stop. Lemme know.

-New Post on MVN. Go boldly.

-New Post on Free Darko should be up sometime this morning. By the time I wake up to edit this, it'll probably already be up, so just check the site.

-Quitting smoking this week. Wish me luck.

-BEAT UCLA.

Now That's A Great Picture

2007-11-26T16:12:00.000-08:00

New Post is up for SportsHub. Enjoy.

Artsy Movies! Jemele Hill! Nepotism! Patricide! Bullets!

2007-11-20T22:34:00.000-08:00

I've got posts awaiting editing for SportsHub and Free Darko (I have editors now!), so for now you'll have to make do with some bullets:

-I really liked the last episode of Heroes, although I'm disappointed they decided to call it "Cautionary Tales" instead of "Patricide!" What we learned from the last episode(sub-bullets alert!)

-Claire ruining her father's carefully-laid plans by being a whiny teenager and wanting to stay with her boyfriend of three weeks: boo. The moral: women ruin everything.

-Moral #2: Mohinder ruins everything. Also, there has never been a completely successful standoff/prisoner trade in the history of television or movies.

-I'm really glad that HRG isn't dead, since he's one of my two favorite characters on the show(and now that Sylar's stuck with the twins, he's got the #1 spot locked up), but I'm annoyed that he has to be brought back to life. One of Lost's great rules is "when someone's dead, they're really, really dead." With time-travel and now Claire's magic blood, death on Heroes has officially reached Princess Bride-style degrees; kinda dead, mostly dead, and Malcolm McDowell. Also, they could have picked up "Don't add two annoying Hispanic characters who have nothing to do with anything for no reason, because people will hate them with a passion," from Lost. At least they learned to copy the shifting purpose of "The Others."

-Wow, I should have figured out that the hooded guy was Adam sooner. I'm terrible at spotting these sorts of things.

-Parkman's power doesn't suck at all! Hooray!

-HRG warming up to Claire's boyfriend and talking to him about cars: wonderful.

-Do you think Claire's brother has to tell people he's on Heroes? Does he use that as a pick-up line? Does it work?

-Do you think Peter absorbed the Haitian guy's power? Or is his absorbing a power that was blocked by the Haitian guy? I've always wondered if he would absorb his power and use it to block out his power of blocking out powers, then open up a can of blasting on his ass. I think too much about this stuff.

-Great article on College A Capella Groups. Full disclosure: the guy who wrote it has been my friend since 1st grade. Still, it's awesome. And it's pretty mean, so if you love A Capella, go over there and give him crap-friends should go through being torn apart by anonymous people together.

-Straight guys can really like Alicia Keyes, right? I mean, she's really hot. Yeah, I don't like her music at all. I just like looking at her. That's the ticket.

-Am I the only person who really likes Jemele Hill's writing? Judging by the comments on her articles, I might be, and that's a bummer, because I think she's really good; she writes about stuff most writers wouldn't touch with a 30-foot pole, and manages to offer a cogent and well-written viewpoint on it. She's not always right, but I don't believe a writer has to be right about everything to be effective; if they were, they'd be the ones actually making the decisions. I always come away from her pieces entertained and thought-provoked, which is enough for me.

-Watched Requiem For A Dream last night. I don't swear on this blog, so I can't really describe how it made me feel accurately, but that (stuff) was (quite) intense. I was (indeed) shaking by the end of that (mother-enjoying) movie. Most terrifying movie I've ever seen in my life.

-LeBron: 34,7,and 7! 11-22 shooting and 11-12 free throws! Cavs lose! 1-7 from 3; the annual "Hey, LeBron's hitting 40% of his threes this year!" period has officially ended. Come back next November.

-Amare had a 26-13; please return, Amare. Meanwhile, Mike D'Antoni played his starters 35 minutes each and played 8 guys in total. Hey, it's not like his teams have ever run out of gas in the playoffs or anything.

-THE CAPTAIN HATH RETURNED AND THE WARRIORS SHALL SHINE ON. Also, Eddie Curry has resumed sucking, although it's not like the Bulls are dominating without him right now. However, my rookie of the year pick of Joakim Noah over Kevin Durant isn't looking quite as stupid now, is it, world?

-Andray Blatche went ahead and poured in a 26/8/4 on 12-14 shooting. Apparently just being involved in a trade rumor with the Cavaliers will make you better now. I fully expect Mike Bibby to start putting up 35/13 after he comes back.

Various News And Notes at 3:30 in the morning

2007-11-17T03:30:00.000-08:00

-I have my life back; my pledge semester is over and I MADE IT. We started with 24; 13 of us finished. It's a good feeling. Between having actual free time and the television writer's strike, expect a lot more posts; I'm shooting for 3-5 per week between here, MVN, SportsHub, and Free Darko.

-Here's My 1st Post on Free Darko, about how the NBA perceives class. I thought it turned out pretty decent; not quite as strong as I wanted to make my 1st post, but FD posts are really, really hard to write. Also, those commenters are really, really smart. You gotta bring your A game to FD.

-My 1st real post on SportsHub. In a word: yikes. I thought this was one of the best ideas I'd ever had, and emailing it along to Shoals ultimately ended up with me getting my dream job at FD. It ended up getting a reception somewhere in between Jenni Carlson's column and Howard Dean's "yeaaaaaargh!" I got absolutely freaking murdered over there, which really hasn't happened to any extent since my Durant piece, and even then there were a lot of positive comments. Also, Durant did make an amazing game-winner, but he's shooting under 40% with low assist and rebound totals and a 2-7 team, so I'm still not ready to call that a bad column. This was a bad column, for a number of reasons:

-The comparison that made perfect sense in my head was a bit of a stretch; it's always going to be hard for the lines of a fictional aristocrat and a shooting guard to match up, and if you don't want to see it, it's easy to poke holes in.

-I tried waaaaaaaaaaaay too hard to sound sophisticated and literary when I should have just stuck to sports stuff; sometimes I forget that I've only been studying English for a few months, and I'm really not even doing that well in my English classes, when a lot of my colleagues have Masters degrees and have been writing professionally for some time, so when I try to show off as a writer next to those guys, I just look stupid. Good lesson to learn, but I would have preferred to learn it when I wasn't posting my 1st essay on a site I'm really excited to be a part of.

-I'm trying to follow LBJ's example and be a "no-excuses" writer, but Jesus H. Christ, LA fans are tough. I think I got a little used to Cleveland fans, who are generally Midwestern, filled with a sense of doom about their team, and will hence never get all that defensive about their players; my colleague/boss at MVN has named Larry Hughes "Laura", Mike Brown should be happy he's not in effigy somewhere, and even LeBron is far from immune to criticism-the leading poster on the best Cavs message board on the internet's avatar was Dwayne Wade with the Jim O'Brien trophy for several months last year. On the other hand, Lakers fans are coastal and harsh, filled with pride over their storied Lakers, and ridiculously defensive about their own players, especially Kobe. When I get my degree, I'm moving to Wisconsin. End of story.

I still think the article was a bad idea, but I still don't think I got a fair shake; I thought I executed on that post better than I did on my "Price of the Game," which I walked away from thinking I'd really failed to do the idea justice because of my shortcomings as a writer, and I've felt the same way about lots of other posts that have gotten picked up and gotten positive receptions. Okay, I'm just bitching now, but getting absolutely crucified will shake you up, especially when you're suddenly writing along with guys from The LA Times and ESPN, not to mention your idol, and are wondering how the hell you're supposed to be able to do that when you can't even pull a B in Writing 140. All writers are insecure: Malcolm freaking Gladwell, the best non-fiction writer on the planet, came back with a "hey, screw you," post on his blog when one of his New Yorker pieces got slammed by commenters. Bill Simmons, one of the best and most influential sportswriters out there, will shoot back at his detractors in veiled and not-so-veiled ways.

I'm a writer too, and unlike those guys, I don't have a huge guaranteed readership or, for that matter, any salary at all right now; it was a big sign of confirmation for me to get the jobs at SportsHub and Free Darko, so to see my 1st posts there met with ambivalence/outright hatred sent me for a bit of a loop. Add the fact that I'm 18 years old and have been pledging for the last 10 weeks of my life, and just try and fathom how insecure I am right now. I'm officially on Marlboro Reds now. I appreciate all feedback on my writing, positive or negative, and when I started this blog and accepted those jobs, I signed up to accept any and all criticism; I've never deleted a comment, and never intend to. However, I do my best to avoid making personal attacks on the athletes/coaches/executives I write about; occasionally, I break that rule, because I'm still the kid who made one too many wise-ass remarks in English class deep down, but I try to be as ridiculous as possible when I do, and I never, ever, ever make character attacks on amateur athletes. I'm an amateur writer, and while I respect free speech and your right to say what you want, remember that I'm reading all these comments and taking them to heart, and that I am a real person sitting in Leavy Library trying to write stuff that's fun to read for free. Call me a pussy if you want to, but that's how I feel.

-Okay, got a little side-tracked there. Last new post is on MVN, about why LeBron has improved so much this year for reasons we didn't expect. Have a good night, everyone.

Oh HELL YES

2007-11-09T14:13:00.000-08:00

In November 2006, I started writing about basketball by posting on a great little message board called realcavsfans.com. One year later, I've made it. I just officially joined Free Darko. That's right. Free Freaking Darko. My absolute favorite NBA website on the planet. I've been reading it avidly for 2 years, and now I'm actually a part of it. Couple that with the excitement of joining SportsHub LA, and I'm really on a high right now-I feel like I can actually do this with the big boys. Thank all of you so much for allowing me to do this.

I'm now a member of 4 sites, including this beautiful little blog right here, so I'll be spread pretty thin posting-wise. (A reminder; my pledge semester ends Wednesday, which means I get to go back to "work" full-time.) Here's my basic schedule/plan for how I'm going to try and make good contributions to all these sites:

MVN: Cavs recaps, thoughts about the Cavs, Cavs-related things, generally fairly quick-hit, with the occasional essay mixed in there.

SportsHub: Laker/Clipper recaps, with longer posts about the LA basketball scene, including USC hoops (1st game Saturday!)

Free Darko: Long-Form NBA conjecture, generally dealing with FD things like meaning and implication, 3-4 times a month because it's not easy to come up with FD-worthy ideas.

TBF: Everything else, from goofier essays, bullet points, thoughts on TV, and essays that aren't about the Cavs, Lakers, or Clippers but aren't quite thought-provoking enough to be on Free Darko.

My Season of Discontent

2007-11-07T02:06:00.001-08:00

Hey, everyone. It's two in the morning right now, and I can't sleep. My pledge semester ends in a week, and I am officially a miserable shell of a human being. Perhaps that's why the NBA's first week has brought me more misery than happiness so far, but most of the major and not-so-major developments in the NBA so far have made me extremely displeasured. I might come back in a little with the things that are making me happy, but right now the list is essentially Boobie Gibson, nicotine, and Tom Jones' duet with Joss Stone. I probably feel worse about loving that than loving smoking, but I'll be damned if I don't love em' both. Anywhere, here's my list of misery:

1. Kobe's failure to doody or get off the pot

This was supposed to be the year when the Kobe in LA saga would finally come to its conclusion, with Kobe tiring of toiling in relative mediocrity and making a final push to either achieve greatness or finally implode unto himself like a dying star. Instead he's still with the Lakers, and he's playing pretty much the same way he did last year; unassailable greatness without true transcendence, mixing flashes of dominance with stretches of quasi-dominance, switching between singularly driven bursts of revenge basketball and a vague attempt to understand the dynamics of team greatness that remain opaque to Kobe despite all his efforts, with the ring he can call his own haunting him the way Daisy Buchanon haunted Jay Gatsby as he strove to make himself perfect in order to gain access to a place of bliss that his own hubris made it impossible for him to inhabit. Instead of drawing to an awe-inspiring crescendo, his story continues to linger, and I'm tired of waiting.

2. LeBron's failure to become the ultimate weapon

This summer, we saw a vision of the perfect basketball player; LeBron James, he gifted as none before him have ever been, was supposed to have gone home this summer and have brushed up his weaknesses, specifically his outside shooting and free throw shooting, and on top of that, he said he was adding post moves. Oh, and he got laser surgery to give him 20-15 vision. He then proceeded to flash his new pretty form at the FIBAs en route to making 2/3rds of his 3s. This was the season LeBron was to become the ultimate machine of basketball. And even though he's giving a crap and playing great so far this season, he continues to struggle with the weaknesses we all assumed would be cured by time and work; he went 3-11 on long jumpers last night, and 7-15 on free throws. Now I may be forced to cope with the fact that LeBron has a ceiling, which I refuse to do.

3. Boston's big 3 imploding horrifyingly on itself

I love KG. I love Ray Allen. I like Paul Pierce. It's somewhat enjoyable to watch them all play perfectly together, but how much more fun would it have been if they became a horrifying new version of the Knicks, especially since the Knicks have slid into unfunny mediocrity? KG probably would have punched someone out by now, and Doc Rivers would probably start wearing body armor to games. And admit it, we're all rooting for a little Boston failure right now. Of course, this may be lingering resentment over the fact that they were given the East Championship before the season started while my team got written off after WINNING THE THING LAST YEAR. Freaking East Coast Bias.

4. The Suns going establishment on us

At this point, they're really just a skilled pick-and-roll team with a great point guard and quality shooters. They've lost their breakneck pace, regularly scoring less than 100 points. More horrifyingly, the beast that is Amare is still MIA-seeing him fire up 20-foot jumpers is like seeing Che Guevarra take over and then decide it might be time to keep everything the way it is, except for some possible changes in tax law.

5. Gilbert losing his swag

If there's one guy who earned his superstar rep all the way, it's Agent 0. Now that he's fallen, the dogs are all over him like a fallen piece of meat, and it's not pretty to watch.

6. AI2 in hiatus

What happened to the guy that was an MVP candidate after Iverson left last year? Now he's gone back to being tantalizing. I hate tantalizing.

Case Study in Draft Busting: The North Carolina Tarheels

2007-11-06T01:02:00.001-08:00

With Florida's vaunted repeat champion teams entering the NBA this year, being picked at #3, 7, 9, 41, and 52, I got to thinking about the last individual college team with such rosy draft prospects and college success, the Carolina Tarheels of the 2005 NBA draft. Essentially, not one of them has proven themselves to be effective NBA players yet, which would seem like disturbing news to the Hawks, Timberwolves, Bulls, and Blazers. But let's break it down: how is this new crop of Florida boys similar to the 2005 NC team? How are they different? Will they ultimately bust the same way the 'heels did? As usual, I have no idea at the start of the post, so hopefully we'll find something more conclusive than in my point guard week starting post, which yielded disappointing results.

So let's get down to it.

Raymond Felton:

An ultra-quick, pass-first true point guard who had quarterbacked his team to an NCAA championship, Felton could well have been considered the safest pick of the 3,4,5 combo of points in 2005, as he had more of a history of success than Chris Paul and, at 6-1, didn't have his height concerns, and had the athletic talents to save him from the "college body, college game" concerns surrounding Deron Williams. Paul had the best rookie point guard year in recent memory, and is generally considered to already be a member of the elite PG tribunal with Nash and Kidd, while Williams shook off a subpar rookie season and led his team to a Conference Championship birth. Meanwhile, Felton toiled for the lowly Bobcats, averaging a seemingly solid 13 points and 7 assists on with an abysmal 38.4% FG and 3 turnovers per game.

Why has Williams fared so much worse than Paul and Williams, and the average NBA point guard? First of all, Felton is a worse passer than those two, although that's a bit unfair because while Felton is certainly a very good passer, Williams and Paul are spectacular passers, averaging 10+ assists per 48 minutes with stellar turnover numbers.

The real problem with Felton is that he can't score. IT IS NOT THAT HE CAN'T SHOOT. Allow me to explain. Around draft time, teams tend to look at a few things from point guards: Passing ability, Speed, Outside Shooting, Size, Leadership, and Defense. Felton's only weakness in those categories is outside shooting; with a .423% mark on jumpers, he's in the bottom half of NBA guards. However, there are many extremely effective point guards in the NBA who shoot from outside just as badly, if not worse, than Felton. Williams only shoots .468%, and Paul only shoots .433%.

Raymond Felton's unforgivable sin is that he can't finish inside, and he isn't too good at drawing fouls. Felton has blinding speed, which allows him to take a full 1/3rd of his shots from "inside"; that's more than Paul and Williams, who are at 30% and 32%, and draws a comparable amount of fouls. However, while Paul and Williams can finish inside at clips of .544% and .552%, respectably, Felton's "inside" mark is all the way down at .458%. Devin Harris and Tony Parker don't hit effectively from outside either, but their "inside" marks are both well over .600%.

The error made in projecting Felton was that his low FG% was due to poor shooting, which is a forgivable weakness that can be fixed over time, either by improving the shot or building your game around going to the hole. However, when a quick guard can't finish inside, he will have serious, possibly unsolvable problems being effective at the next level. Teams need to be wary of the difference between "bad shooter" and "bad scorer" when drafting players like Felton.

Shaun May and Rashad McCants:

There's probably something in here about Rashad being a dreaded "tweener," a shooter who really isn't shooting guard size,(different from Dwayne Wade, whose athleticism makes him not really a tiny shooting guard but a freaking dynamo who is faster and stronger than any shooting guard he faces), and May being a guy who could dominate the paint in college but doesn't have the body to do so in the pros, but mainly they've both had major knee surgeries. That's not good.

Marvin Williams:

We all know what happened with Marvin Williams; he never quite became a star, averaged 13 points per game last year on 43% shooting, and is probably the 4th-best forward on the Atlanta Hawks. Meanwhile, Deron Williams and Chris Paul, the players picked directly behind him, are on their way to becoming all-stars while the Hawks only now have a player that resembles a point guard.

Really, Marvin went ahead and combined all the ways a prospect can bust; like Felton, he's a poor finisher inside. (.507 eFG% on "inside" shots, which is abysmal for a forward.) Like McCants and May, he really hasn't found an NBA position that works for him; he's not enough of a physical player for the 4, and he lacks the skills to play the 3. Most importantly, Marvin never really developed "be-the-man-ittude"; instead of a player whose gifts were stifled by a college system and busted out in the pros, he was a talented 6th man in college, and seems content to play that role in the pros, despite the fact he's more gifted than 90% of the players he faces. It's honestly tough to predict which guys will bust out; just look at Andre Iguodala. On top of the standard hidden plagues that hinder his teammates, he's a huge Dunleavy head case, making him the biggest disappointment of all on a team full of them.

I Have Another New Job!

2007-11-05T01:21:00.000-08:00

Good News, everyone!

Brian Kamenetsky, formerly of the L.A. Times and ESPN the Magazine, is starting up a website for L.A. sports, Sports Hub LA. He describes it as a "Huffington Post-type project, combining mainstream access with outsider opinion to create a 1-stop site for L.A. Sports." I'm excited about that, and I've never heard of the Huffington Post in my life. One look at their roster and I was completely sold-a slew of LA Times and ESPN journalists, not to mention the immortal Kevin Arnovitz of ClipperBlog. Looking at that, I was convinced they'd made some type of mistake by hiring me, but far be it from me to correct them.

Even though I'm mainly a Bay Area guy, with a random allegiance to the Cleveland Cavaliers, I'm hugely excited about this opportunity; I'm going to get to be an actual member of the media, with access and everything. If you love Los Angeles sports, this site is the place for you to go. I'm still keeping the blog, of course, but I encourage all of you to hop over there as soon as you get a chance. Thank all of you guys so much for giving me the support I needed to get this opportunity-without you, I'm just shouting at the wall.

Playoff Manifesto #3: Damon Jones!

2007-10-31T00:35:00.001-07:00

Can be found here, over at MVN's Cavs site, which I'm a member of and don't write enough for. Enjoy.

Season Manifesto #2: Kobe Bryant!

2007-10-30T23:21:00.000-07:00

Hello. I am Kobe Bryant. I will destroy you.

Our team is having a tough time right now. We have a talented young center, a great young playmaking guard, a quality veteran guard, a former all-star forward, a fantastic hustle forward, and a great glue guy in Luke Walton. However, all of them suck. Not one of them can score while I'm shooting the ball. Could I please get some help? I need a trade, but preferably to a great team that needs a guy to score 30 points per game for them, and wouldn't need to trade any good players in order to get me. Is that so hard? If I had some great players around me, then I'd be happy. Of course, I wouldn't want them to be too good, or I'd chase them out of town. Call up the Mavericks and trade me for Josh Howard and DeSagina Diop. Sure, we'd be worse as a team, but the important thing is that I'd be happy.

What I need is an efficient 20 ppg scorer who doesn't need to dominate the ball all the time to get his points, like that Caron Butler. Oh, right. I had him, and then his points and assists went up playing next to Gilbert Arenas, while I carried out the legacy of my idol by further destroying Kwame Brown's psyche.

Look, I'm a good teammate. I pass a good 4 or 5 times a game. When one of my teammates gets mad about me shooting too much or playing outside the system, I put my arm around them and talk to them like they're 12. I give young players advice on how to play within their limits while I shoot 30 times a game. I pretend to play really good defense for 10 minutes a game. Look at tonight-for 5 minutes near the end of the 1st quarter, I got right up in his grill and SHUT HIM DOWN before handing him off to Luke Walton and letting him score 30 points on 20 shots and 12 free throws. And whenever I sell out one of my teammates, I make sure not to do it to their face.

I'm stuck here in LA for now, and I've decided that the best way for us to grow as a young team is by shooting more. Tonight, I shot 32 times and shot 27 free throws, a full half of our team's shots. I made sure to lead the team in points, rebounds, assists, blocks, and steals. Giving Bynum touches in the low-post or letting Farmar run a pick-and-roll might seem to help them, but ultimately they'll best improve by watching me take on double-teams all night long. That's why I tell Phil to keep Bynum buried in favor of Turiaf and Kwame; not only have those guys learned not to shoot, but by destroying Bynum, I will further prove my genius over Jerry Buss by undermining the team completely. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go practice shooting fadeaways over triple-teams.*

*I did not mean any of what I just said. I love the Lakers, love my coach, and my only goal this year is to win a championship with my current team. Also, I support global warming research. And for you young people, I have nicknamed myself Black Mamba. I can do the Soulja Boy. These things are "swaggerous," as you say. Why don't more people like me?

Season Manifesto #1: Andrei Kirilenko!

2007-10-30T23:00:00.000-07:00

Greetings America,

I am Andrei Kirilenko. I had problem with Jazz management over the off-season. I enjoy to play the power forward. They tell me Carlos Boozer is power forward. In seasons past, I deal with this problem by calling my friend Vladimir and having them break Carlos' feet. Then I play power forward. However, Vladimir is now in the jail. But I will still play the power forward. Tonight, I poison Mehmet Okur's water, and he only play 13 minutes. However, they put Paul Milsap at the power forward then.

The Jazz did not trade me, and I was unable to escape to Russia. I still hate Jerry Sloan, but am forced to play for him. I have come up with solution. I will play very hard, but my allegiance will not be for him.

This season, I will play entirely for the purpose of fantasy basketball. My line tonight was 9 points, 9 rebounds, 8 assists, 1 steal, 5 blocks, 3 turnovers, and a foul. Scoring points would make team win. I am not interested in making team win. I am interested in my value in 8-category roto leagues. If I am wide-open for dunk, I will pass to teammate with jumping shot to get assist. I will not block the ball to my teammates, but back at the other team so that I can get another block. I will stop playing man-to-man defense and begin only attempting to get blocks and steals. I will box out my own teammates for rebounds. I will deliberately miss shots in the paint so that I may rebound them. I will throw passes as hard as I can at opposing players so that they will bounce off of them and I can get the steal. I will bribe scorer so that he give me assists on entry passes.

Jerry Sloan will continue to give me the 40 minutes, or I will use my free pass to sleep with his wife. I will be successful in my quest. Did you see Enemy At The Gates? That tells you all you need to know about Russians. We never surrender. I am like the Jude Law, except in real life there would have been no triangles of loving; my wife would have been down for the threesome.

Pacific Previews

2007-10-30T16:06:00.001-07:00

Golden St. Warriors

Golden State of Mind

Los Angeles Clippers

ClipsNation.com

Los Angeles Lakers

Forum Blue & Gold

With Malice

Phoenix Suns

Bright Side of the Sun

Sacramento Kings

Sactown Royalty

Archives

CelticsBlog NBA Page

Before we get to "work," lets get some bullets in

2007-10-28T21:40:00.000-07:00

-World Series is over! Now I don't feel any pressure to try and write about baseball anymore! Hurrah. Let's kill this baseball season with some final thoughts.

-Papelbon: The new Rivera. He's got essentially one pitch, you can't hit it, and when he's in, the game is over. Over. Whenever the game had less than 6 outs to go, there was no doubt. His personality puts him one up on Rivera: he's got my favorite on-field demeanor of any pitcher; normally, Fox cutting away from the sign and location of the upcoming pitch to do close-ups of the pitcher being pensive drives me insane, but that look in Papelbon's eye as he gets ready to fire is the coolest thing ever. And when he's not on the field, he's a total lunatic. Perfect.

-Dialogue from Marks Tower, room 804, as the game ended:

Friend #1: "Baseball coaches don't do anything."
Friend #2: "They change the entire dynamic of the team! They have to decide what kind of team it is and manage accordingly!"
Friend#1: "They're not like football coaches."
Friend #2: "Football coaches aren't all that important. They have coordinators to call the plays for them."
Me: "Dude, look at the Rams, or the Chargers after they got Norm. Football coaches matter."
Friend #1: "Exactly. When the Rams had Vermeil, they were great. Then they got Martz, and they were all offense. Now they just suck."
Me: "World Series is over."
Friend #1: "Oh."

Yep, enthralling World Series all around. At least the Red Sox have something interesting going for them.

-Movies I rented from the film major down the hall from me #1: Momento. Great movie. Ingenious premise, perfectly executed, great twists and turns, everything done right. 4 stars.

-USC is officially out of the national championship race. Sanchez screwing up means that there's no real reason to start Booty again, because we're not winning this year and might as well give the kid the reps now. Of course, he'll end up starting again anyways because of the bizzare nature of college football.

-Watched the Patriots play for the first time today. Holy Crap. Not much left to say; they really do look like Madden.

-Boykins is available. Worth a flyer, because we could always use more guards, but I think I've mentioned that Boobie is essentially a better version of him in his G-State years, so I'm not killing myself over it. Juwan Howard is available too; at this point in his career, he's a decent scorer who can't guard anybody. Pass.

-Ben Affleck is going to be Hollywood's Al Gore: Rise, backlash, redemption. On the flip side, George W. Bush is Washington's Pauly Shore: Career enabled by who his parents were, always disliked by intellectuals, extreme initial skepticism, brief run of success due to devoted and surprisingly large group of followers, eventual extreme backlash and implosion.

-Well, time to get to "work," by which I mean I'm going to write a column on basketball while I'm putting off doing 3 geology labs.

Southeast Previews

2007-10-27T18:52:00.001-07:00

Washington Wizards

Bullets Forever
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Orlando Magic

Believing in

Magic

Third Quarter

Collapse

Miami Heat

I Want to be a Sports Agent

Crazy from

the Heat

Atlanta Hawks

Impending

Firestorm

Atlanta Hawks

Blog

Charlotte Bobcats

target="_self">Bobcat Bonfire

Archives

target="_self">CelticsBlog NBA Page

Thursday Bullets

2007-10-25T17:28:00.000-07:00

-First off, some news about me: I have 3 weeks left in my pledge semester. It's up in the air if I'll make it or not right now, but either way I'll have my life back and should start posting a lot more.

-I was thrilled that my "Price of The Game" post got picked up by TrueHoop, because it's one of my favorite ideas I've ever had. (Even though writing it made me realize my limitations as a writer right now-I need a lot more experience to really do that piece justice.) However, I guess it wasn't interesting enough; my sitemeter barely ticked up, and there hasn't been one new comment on it yet. I've said it before and I'll say it again: At this stage in my blogging "career," I really need to drum up more interest, and I don't want to have to make bold proclamations in order to do that. I can't break any news stories that people don't know about, so it makes me sad when a deep-thought post like that fails to excite anybody, because it's the type of writing I like to do. This is how Stephen A. Smith was born, everybody.

-I'm THRILLED that my Idol/Occasional mentor Bethlehem Shoals got a book deal; I know really have something to dream for. It's the kind of thing that keeps me posting.

-The Knicks cut Jared Jordan today. Note to the Cavaliers: SIGN HIM RIGHT NOW. We need a playmaker, and he led the NCAA in assists for the last two years. Every team that sleeps on him will pay the price. Plus, his whiteness, small-school-ness, and "balled on the playground at 13 next to much bigger, more athletic guys and dominated the game anyways"-ness has already made him kind of a legend, which is awesome. Please, please sign him.

-I understand that Kevin McHale needs financial flexibility and another draft pick, but could you please not help division rivals by giving them a starting shooting guard for free? I was really looking forward to Dwayne Wade missing the playoffs this year.

-It goes against every bone in my body, but I'm actually rooting for the Yankees to keep A-Rod, sign Johan Santana, and come out with a perfect baseball team next year. Their rotation would be

1. Santana
2. Wang
3. Hughes
4. Chamberlain
5. Petitte

and their lineup would be

1B: Phillps
2B: Cano
SS: Jeter
3B: Rodriguez
C: Posada
LF: Matsui
CF: Damon/Cabrera
RF: Abreu
DH: Giambi

For some reason, I want to see that.

-These Rockies fail to interest me. I'm sorry. Other than the Devil Rays or a team with young starters, it's really hard for a baseball team to ignite my imagination, which is why I find myself interested in teams like the Red Sox and Yankees and hating myself for it.

-I'm excited for the season premiere of Scrubs tonight, as well as the new 30 Rock and Office. NBC Thursdays are STACKED, and I don't even watch "My Name is Earl."

-One more thought about Heroes: How hard does Parkman's power suck? He can read minds, so long as the other person doesn't mind if he does. What's the point?

-Movie I need to see this year: American Gangster. You could update the Scarface formula every year and I'd be happy.

-Has Showtime finally pulled a Red Sox-esque coup over the Yankees? With no Sopranos, look at their starting lineups:

HBO: Entourage (Good, but severely overrated)
Flight Of The Conchords: Probably the funniest half-hour show on television, but the utter lack of through-line keeps it from reaching Office heights.
Tell Me You Love Me: Eck.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: People love this show, but I've never been a huge fan; I'll go for Seinfeld reruns if I want to see it done better, Office if I want to see some misanthropy, or FOTC if I just want to laugh for half an hour.
The Wire: Their ace in the hole. It's one of my TV projects when I get home, but it's only on for another season, and only recently starting picking up steam.

Showtime:

Weeds: Perfectly done dramedy.
Dexter: My favorite hour-long drama right now.
Californication: I went off to school after the first two episodes, and apparently it's fallen off hard, but I loved this show, because Duchovny has perfect comedic timing, gives a great performance, and this is absolutely how I see my future going if I become a writer, albeit my ex-wife would be less hot and I would lack the power to make women sleep with me using only my eyebrows.

Brotherhood, This American Life, The Tudors: I don't watch any of these shows, but they're supposed to be great. My mom loves The Tudors.

With production values rising through the roof on network and even cable shows, and cable getting to push the envelope as far as content and controversial storyline, could HBO be losing some of its mojo? "Mad Men" absolutely looks and feels like an HBO show, as does "Rescue Me." With HBO steadfastly refusing to get into the procedural or overarching Lost-type game, they need a major move, and soon-they're the Cavaliers of TV.

The Price of The Game

2007-10-22T23:35:00.000-07:00

My dorm room is up on the 8th floor, and there's a great stairwell just outside my room where I go to smoke. From the stairwell, I get a perfect view of the downtown LA skyline and the Galen Center, our big, beautiful new basketball arena. In the shadow of the Galen Center are three concrete courts. Anytime from 10 in the morning to around midnight, there's pickup basketball there.

The games range from one or two guys awkwardly hoisting jumpers or playing a game of 21 laced with ennui to full-court 5-on-5 games with backdoor cuts, jumpers off of screens, jump-stops, and slap layups. Getting swept up in the flow of the latter games, I think about just how much time these men have spend working on this game, and how for every kid who gets to play in the big gym across the street, there are so many more who put in so much just to capture, for a moment, the feeling of what it must be like to play in that gym. I think about them, playing for an audience of one man watching from a stairwell on a Tuesday night, and then I think about all of the people who have paid so dearly for the game I enjoy so much.

First, there were men like Red Auerbach and Press Maravich, playing the game in its infancy for dollars a week, throwing up two-hand set shots and breaking their noses night after night, not knowing if anyone was watching, to try and make the game something real, and then continuing that obsession long after their bodies were no longer able, figuring out the right way to play this new game on a team level, trying to find something transcendent in it.

Red tried to achieve transcendence through the team, working tirelessly and bending more than a few rules to craft a system and the perfect team to execute it, eventually creating a dynasty made up of the perfect role players and solidifying his place in the game's history before succumbing to the pressure and the pure work. Every time I see a perfect defensive rotation or outlet pass, I think about Red.

Press originally started out trying to find a team system, but eventually was consumed by attempting to make his own son into the perfect basketball player, putting a ball in his hands before he could walk and giving him a never-ending stream of drills, making him dribble blindfolded, with gloves on, and outside of his car. His efforts created the original combination of flair and substance, the prototypical modern superstar, but the price was steep; Press ended up estranged from his son, his wife drank herself into insanity, and he was fired from his job coaching his only true love. Pete himself was driven into a form of insanity by the pressure of having to carry a team every night and having a game generations ahead of its time, drinking constantly and wishing that aliens would just take him away. Every time I see Kobe Bryant drilling fadeaway after fadeaway, Steve Nash throwing a pass behind his back, or Allen Iverson boldly flying through a double-team with a crossover, I think about Press and Pete.

Wilt Chamberlain had the kind of game nobody had ever seen before, 7-3 with the speed of a track star, with the talent to win games by himself. He was a superstar at a time when the game still didn't know what to do with superstars, a man bigger than the team before the concept had entered anybody's mind. Nobody knew where to fit Wilt's game or flamboyant personality, and he was forced to spend his career as a pariah before finally finding some semblance of meaning with the Lakers, although he was relegated to being the me-first runner-up to Bill Russell, a more manageable talent who found himself in the perfect situation from the start. Whenever I see Shaquille O' Neal's dominant game and gigantic personality being accepted and even praised wherever he goes, I think about Wilt.

Elgin Baylor was the game's first high-flyer, slashing from the perimeter to making unbelievable plays above the rim when nobody spent any time up there at all. All that jumping in his game led to his knee giving out earlier than it should have, and because there were no doctors prepared to deal with the stress of being a skywalker back then, he was forced to sit on the bench and watch while the Lakers won the championship that he never got. Whenever I see Amare Stoudamire dominate on his reconstructed knees, I think about Elgin.

Michael Ray Richardson was another player with a talent that nobody knew what to do with; he was bigger, faster, and stronger than anybody else, and had an unstoppable jump shot to boot. But since nobody knew what to do with him, he ended up not knowing what to do with himself, never committing to bettering his game and eventually succumbing to cocaine addiction. 20 years later, there was Lenny Cooke, who dominated every game he ever played in on the playgrounds of Brooklyn. He allowed himself to believe the whispers of the agents who told him that he was already a star in high school, that he was set for life, and didn't need to work on his game or even study in school anymore, that everything was going to fall into place for him, and now has no college degree and can't get a job in the D-League. Every time I see a player like LeBron James, whose talent and ego have been nurtured and kept in check since he was in middle school and is hence able to tap into the full power of his abilities, I think about Michael Ray and Lenny Cooke.

But most of all, I think about the four kids from Darcy Frey's The Last Shot. They all went to Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island, where basketball is everything. Tchaka Shipp was a smart kid from a moderate-income family, a 6-7 bruiser who had no offensive game to speak of but could rebound, dunk, block shots, and do all the little things on the court. He went to play for P.J. Carlisemo, who gave him a scholarship and promised him a life, but instead only used him as an insignificant cog in his machine, barely putting him on the court and eventually leading him to transfer. Tchaka now makes 9 dollars an hour, giving new meaning to a player who "does the garbage work to help his team." For some, that means getting $4 million to dive for loose balls; for Tchaka, it means throwing away his life so that a millionaire coach can get an inch closer to another banner on the ceiling.

Corey Johnson was a guard blessed with brilliant talent, speed and court vision and everything else, but refused to let basketball take over his life, continuing to date and write in his spare time, and seizing every day as the best of his life. His refusal to commit led to him going to junior college and eventually working a meaningless job.

However, two characters stand out above all the others. The first is Russel Thomas, a scrappy guard with lock-down defensive ability and a killer outside shot, crafted by hours every night alone on the court shooting 3-pointers and one-handed 15-footers while sitting in a chair. He was everything a coach could ever want, a perfect role player if there ever was one, a player whose game was defined by jaw-dropping amounts of work on the court and off of it. To get the necessary 800 for his SATs, he studied incessantly, even during his lunch hour, and sat at the front of every class. But the system ultimately failed Russel, and because he had never so much as been taught Algebra, he never made the 800, was relegated to junior college, and eventually killed himself at 27. Russel ended up paying for the sins of the educational system he was brought up in and the system that made basketball his only way out with his life.

The fourth character is a cocky young freshman guard, head and shoulders above all the competition he faces, already being heralded as the next great New York City point guard. While the other three players are polite and have given themselves to their dream of playing basketball, he is entitled and arrogant, seeing basketball as a way to make the world do its bidding. He is shameless in taking the gifts his talent allows him to have, and his father comes up to the author and demands to be paid for allowing the author to follow his boy around. His name is Stephon Marbury, and there's a reason he is so cold towards the game. Stephon had two older brothers who were supposed to make it out, but ultimately fell short and found themselves trapped on Coney Island. Stephon's family had paid his price, and now he was going to get it back. Other players speak of just wanting to win, how lucky they are to get to play basketball for a living, and how much they enjoy the system they are a part of, and how they are ultimately in its debt, which is exactly what those of us who don't get to play for a living think they should feel. Stephon knows better. He feels no debt to the game. He knows too well just how cruel the game can be, and has responded with a desire to exploit it like it exploited his older brothers, seizing every opportunity to use the game to advance himself and get what he is owed. We often say that players like Stephon are "immature," when in reality they're far more mature than we'd like them to be.

So the next time you see a broadcaster wonder why every player doesn't work as hard as Dwayne Wade, remember Russel Thomas, who gave his life for putting in the type of obsession we feel is necessary for basketball players. And the next time you wonder why more players aren't robots devoted to nothing but basketball, remember Corey Johnson, whose decision that there was more to life than basketball stopped him from achieving glory. And the next time you see Stephon Marbury take a shot he probably shouldn't have or demand a bigger contract, remember that there's a reason that he is the way he is, and it's a reason we can't pretend to understand. Think about those who have paid dearly to make the game you love what it is, and think of those who continue to pay. For every no-look back-door alley-oop you see, think about Red drawing it up when he should have gotten a real job, Press teaching his kid to throw it before the world was ready to see it, Elgin for throwing it down before his body was ready too, Michael Ray for letting it go to his head, and most of all Tsaka, Corey, Russel, and the million other kids on playgrounds like the one outside my balcony who continue to play the game every day in the fleeting hope that they can become a part of the game we love.

Late-Night TV Carnival

2007-10-22T01:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a college freshman, which means that my sleep schedule is screwed beyond all hope of repair: I almost never wake up before noon or go to sleep before 3:30. Today, I woke up at around 3, and now it's 2 in the morning and I still have stuff to do, and my 12:00 class feels like something I'm going to have to wake up for. (My 10:00 lecture is out of the question.) Fortunately, I also have cable in my room, albeit strange cable, (no MTV, no Comedy Central, but I have IFC, ESPNU, and ESPN News), which means that when 1-2 in the morning rolls around, I need me some entertainment. Here's my guide to what's good at late night:

Law and Order: SVU

I'm a huge, huge fan of the original Law and Order, so I was hesitant to pick up SVU, but I'm very glad I did. Basically, the idea for the show was "Hey, you know what would make weekly outrageous, twist-filled murders even more interesting? If all of them involved depraved sexual behavior! Also, let's make everyone better-looking! And let's make the Jewish detective Jewisher and the black detective blacker!" And so it was that Richard Belzer and Ice-T joined us.

I love this show. Basically, its changes from the original were:

1. To add more depraved sex-based crimes, which I appreciate-I don't watch these shows to get a sense of the legal system, just like I don't watch Flavor Of Love for advice on picking up women. I watch them to see something utterly creepy and mind-bending. By the way, I'm pre-law.

2. To put more focus on the characters themselves, namely the lead detectives, Christopher Merloni and that other chick. The original gave us fleeting glances of its characters, but only Sam Waterston was all that interesting, and since his only true passion in life is his cases, going into his mostly non-existent personal life was kind of pointless. Truth be told, these detectives aren't particularly interesting, but Merloni and the woman are good enough actors to hold our interest, and the depth given to the show by seeing them as people with distinct personalities is a good thing. Also, when doesn't having a man and woman who aren't being set up for an obvious romance be partners work? The pioneered this with The Avengers 30 years ago, and it's the driving force behind Bones, my favorite cop show now.

3. To mostly cut out the trial portion of the show, which leaves more time for ridiculous sexual twists, which isn't all that bad. This decision was also influenced by the fact that the ADA on SVU is a blonde woman whose sole talent seems to be squinting, much like the Cavs having Larry Hughes be their point guard because their original point guard is Eric Snow.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars, although I resent networks buying up the infinitely crappier Law and Order: CI and playing it 4 times more than they play SVU.

Futurama/Family Guy/Robot Chicken/Other Stuff on Adult Swim

Futurama: Great Show. Never gets old, even though I've seen all the episodes 5 times. 5 stars.

Family Guy: Has gone the way of Napoleon Dynamite and Dane Cook: The sheer irritation that comes from its idiot fans and its increasing self-awareness has made a great thing intolerable. 3 stars.

Robot Chicken: Family Guy's random streak taken to its natural conclusion. I actually love this show; it's great to see a show that doesn't take swipes at pop culture, but is written by geeks who know geek culture well enough to make jokes for its audience, rather than about it. Because of this, its Star Wars parody was the best I've ever seen. 4 stars.

Japanese Stuff: Thanks to sports, I never got into those serious Japanese shows. Thank god.

Bizarre, badly animated shows: I never got into these, partially because I feel it's just ridiculousness for ridiculousnesses' sake and partly because I don't have enough money for weed. 1 star.

The O'Reilly Factor:
I have no idea why this show is so enthralling. I'm not a conservative by any stretch of the imagination, but I love this show. First of all, on a college campus in California, you do get sick of liberals. (Two weeks ago, some fundamentalist Christians came to protest gay week here. 98% of students were proud of shouting down people who were so intolerant of other people's beliefs. That's ironical. By the way, my spell checker thinks that's a word. And 95% of the media does have a liberal slant, so the conservative viewpoint is actually refreshing. And say what you want about Big Bill, but he does believe in his message, and he's a smart guy. And yes, his off-the-charts arrogance and insecurity is enthralling to watch-what other respected members of the media would respond to a slam by pointing out that more people watch his show than theirs? Amazing.

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

The X-Files

Easily the best show on late-night. TNT bought reruns of this show, and they're brilliant. This show has gotten a reputation for being Lost before Lost, and it did have an overarching plot that dragged on way, way too long and ultimately made the show fade into obscurity, but those episodes were spaced between the procedural episodes, which is what TNT shows and are the most awesome thing ever. Let's do the procedural checklist:

Does the X-files have cool mysteries? Hell yes-the "X" type-stuff never fails to disappoint, from aliens to possessed dolls to government experiments gone wrong to time travel to body-switching to vampires. Are the characters interesting? Absolutely-Fox Mulder is one of my favorite characters in TV history; brilliant, obsessed, flawed, charismatic, everything. And Dana Scully is a perfect foil for him, although the one mystery the show never explains is why Scully continues not to believe. Their relationship, a great repore based on mutual respect, true personality conflicts, and just a little hint of sexual tension.

The acting is flawless; Duchovny has great timing and is proving that he can carry a show on his own over on Showtime, and Gillian Anderson just made The Onion's list of things that deserve second chances; she was great in this role. And the guest stars are a who's-who of people that were about to break out; Jack Black, Giovanni Ribisi, and the dad from Malcolm in the Middle have all been seen at 2 AM.

The writing is great as well, with great banter coming from the story editor, Tim Minear, who partnered on Firefly(the best show ever) with Joss Whedon, TV's Tarrantino, the master of the perfect 1-liner in a situation when you would never expect it. Great writing, great acting, great plots-sounds like just about a perfect show. And yes, I just revealed how much of a dork I am. I don't care. See you in the morning.

Northwest Blog Previews

2007-10-21T21:55:00.001-07:00

Northwest Previews:

Utah Jazz

Daily Basketball

Taking it to the Rack

Basketball John

Seattle Supersonics

Sonics Central

Portland Trail Blazers

TrueHoop

The Inferno

Timberwolves

TWolves Blog

Denver Nuggets

Nugg Doctor

Blog Previews Archives

CelticsBlog NBA Section

Thursday Night Roundup

2007-10-18T22:23:00.000-07:00

Howdy folks,

Sorry the NBA juices haven't really been flowing all that well lately; I've got a lot of stuff going on over here, and my last few hypotheses have been way off, so I'm in a wee bit of a rut. But since I love all of you and feel obligated to get something up, here's a quick set of ramblings on all in the world of Krolik:

-Watched a little of the Sonics-Lakers pre-season in between baseball and 30 Rock/Office: Kobe looks really good, every team could use a Ronny Turiaf, still not impressed with Durant. That's really all I could see from what I saw.

-Damn, Josh Beckett was on tonight. When a pitcher is spotting a 96-mph fastball, evil curveball, and wicked 90 mph change, it's just fun to watch. Now the Indians have to go to Fenway for a big game, which they can't be happy about. Theo should take notes on how most of his best values-Pedroia, Youk, Papelbon, Ellsbury, etc., have come from his own farm system, and how most of his mercenaries are screwing up. Billy Beane once said "Just give me $80 million so I can keep my own guys-the rest doesn't help." Trust Billy. And the "who won the Beckett-Ramirez trade?" question is one of the most interesting around right now-it was clearly the perfect move for the Marlins, and if Beckett keeps pitching like this in big games, the Sox won't look for a do-over either, because you need a guy like that to win a championship.

-Had my MVN fantasy league draft-in a 9-team head-to-head, my blue-chippers are LeBron, AI2, Bosh, and Big Al Jefferson, my mid-rounders are Kirilenko, Deron Williams, and Ginobili, my late-rounders are Bynum, Biedrins, and Raja Bell, and my fliers are Ty Thomas, Shaq, and Belinelli. I like my team-lots of breakout potential up and down the board. In fact, everyone on the team is due for a huge step up this year. That's a good thing, right?

-Show I'm watching religiously right now #1: Heroes. Like everybody else, I'm disappointed with it this season. First of all, my three favorite girls on this show have been killed off quickly; The sexily evil chick with the big eyes from Brick, The hyper-cute waitress who went to go make Epic Movie, and now the shape-shifting girl, who might have been my favorite of all of them. I basically just liked the waitress because she was adorable, but the other two were both the kind of characters that every show needs; multi-layered, mysterious, justifiably evil, intriguing, and good girl-gone-bad sexy. Now they're gone.

-Heroes seemed to have copied all that went wrong with Lost and forgot everything that went right-Lost's greatest strength was the depth of its characters. My favorite piece of Lost magic ever was the slow-burning swaperoo between Jack and Sawyer; at the beginning of the series, Jack was the guy I was rooting for, and every time I saw Sawyer on the screen I wanted to throw up. By season two, Sawyer was my favorite character on television, and Jack was revealed as loathsome, without one big, flashy revelation; it was done with an artful string of mini-revelations.

-Heroes seems committed to having its leads be as one-note as possible; Claire has all the personality of Tim Duncan on qualuudes,(by the way: Claire's big problem is that she "has to act normal." It would be one thing if I couldn't read minds or fly, but all Claire has to do is NOT GET MAIMED. How hard is that? I do it almost every day. Also, the Heroes writers seemed to have learned all they knew about high school from watching Bring It On over and over again, from the strict social hierarchy to the cheerleader rule to the good guys being emo-looking guys, right down to the one from the first season having headphones around his neck all the time for no reason. And that they put the first high school in Odessa, Texas, the actual site of one of the best books and TV shows about how small-town high schools really work, is just a slap in the face. And yes, I hate her new boyfriend.)

-Hiro is good but one-note, Peter went from laughably bad to interesting to pointlessly stuck in Ireland with AMNESIA!, Mohinder is terrible and one-note, Parkman bores me, and Ali Larter manages to play not one but TWO one-note characters. And Nathan's impression of Steve Carell in Little Miss Sunshine is boring too.

-Can't say enough bad things about the wonder twins, who seem to be competing with Nikki and Paulo for the "Hispanic couple everybody hates" award. And I know we should be accepting of people who are different, but I'm not sure I'd shed a tear for putting people who accidentally go on murder sprees in jail.

-The writers have choked big-time on making their two interesting characters interesting-HRG, last year's saving grace, has become boring again, and Sylar seems to be past a Sawyer-type redemption, seeing how he is a ruthless serial killer with no charisma. Look at how consistently good Lost's villains have been: Sawyer, Ben, Juliet, and Locke's dad have all been absolutely brilliant, and Sawyer and Juliet might even be good guys. Ben is always the most interesting part of whatever episode he's in, and the way Locke's dad slimes his way through everything he does is fantastic.

-Other end of the spectrum: The Office, which is now officially the best show on television in a walk. In the show's great first season and legendary second season, all the talk was about Steve Carell and Rainn Wilson, but the secret of the show's success was Jim; his pining for Pam gave the show great dramatic heft, and the scenes with him and Dwight-a master of the subdued next to the emperor of over-the-top; were simply genius.

Now Jim and Pam are together, which would have lesser writers painted into a corner, but the Office writers have stepped up to the challenge and come up huge. Where the third season struggled to find solid through-lines with Jim/Pam drama temporarily out of the question, the fourth season has set up plotlines that will keep us coming back for more.

First of all, I pray that I'm not cynical enough to ever get tired of Jim and Pam being really, really, really happy together. Unlike most "Jesus, when are they going to sleep together already?" plotlines, Jim/Pam managed to stay grounded in reality; for the first two seasons, Pam's relationship with Roy was real enough to keep Jim away; watch "Booze Cruise" again and it looks like poor Jim just has no chance. In the third season, Jim had a great girlfriend, was weary of getting roped in again by Pam, and Pam just wasn't bold enough to put it all on the line for Jim, which is what he would have needed to believe again. When they finally came together, it feels like we've all earned the right for them to be happy forever.

The dramatic void left by Jim and Pam's bliss has been gamely filled, from Michael's struggles with Ryan the evil temp, his relationship with Jan, and life in general-who else loves the scenes where Michael actually makes connections with people, like when he shows his chops as a salesman or becomes the most popular guy at his 2nd job? Meanwhile, Dwight's downward spiral and Jim/Pam's efforts to help him move on have been surprisingly touching-it's a testament to this show that we actually care about Michael and Dwight, because despite all their obvious flaws, their essential good-heartedness has been able to shine through, differentiating them from most "funny because they're evil" comedy characters.

And when Office needs a big laugh, it can always go to Creed (who regularly supplies the best line of the show-his "cults" line in the first episode and "financial fraud" line in this one both made me laugh so loud I woke my roommate up), Kelly, or Toby. And it was good to see Jan get closer to the "smart, capable, beautiful, but still miserable" character of the first three seasons than the "big bucket of crazy" she's been since the end of last season-Jan is layered like everyone else, and doesn't deserve to be cheapened. Andy remains the one character who is evil at heart, so I'm not thrilled to be devoting more time to him. But damn, I love me some Office.

Criss Angel is getting a network show? Great. For all his weirdness, he's pretty damn amazing. But Uri Geller? The guy who was exposed as a fraud bending spoons by Johnny Carson in 1973? He gets his own show?

And yes, Bee Movie is starting to grate on me. But he's Jerry Seinfeld. He can do whatever he wants. He has earned lifetime immunity.

Good night, everyone.

Hate the Patriots by Rooting For Them

2007-10-18T22:21:00.000-07:00

Hey all, a couple of weeks ago I sent an e-mail to one of my favorite blogs, Kissing Suzy Kolber, and actually got it on the site, so I decided to push my luck with another e-mail. It didn't work out, so I've decided to post it here. Remember, it was for KSK, so it's distinctly more evil than what I put up here. Enjoy.

Dear KSK,

I've noticed that you, like most football fans with souls, have grown to hate the New England Patriots. I was pretty ambivalent towards them until this season, but now, thanks to my reaction to believe whatever you guys say and believe the opposite of what Bill Simmons says, I really hate them. Unfortunately, they don't seem to be planning on losing anytime soon. So now, as fans, we must think of a way to stop them. Your bounty on Tom Brady's knee was a good start, but I have a different strategy: Let Tom Brady stay healthy. Let the Patriots put up the best regular season since the '89 49ers. Let Simmons gloat. You know why? Because in the playoffs, when the pressure is on, they will lose.

First of all, I know it will work because it's a perfect reversal of fortune: after all, who did the Patriots beat to win the first Super Bowl of their dynasty? The ultra-stacked St. Louis Rams, who had the best quarterback in the league, the best running back in the league, a man who was at the time regarded as the best coach in the league, and a stacked wide receiver core. They weren't just beating teams, they were DEMOLISHING them. It was a foregone conclusion that they would win the Super Bowl. Remind you of anything?

The second reason I know my strategy would work is that it mimics the plans of all the best movie villains ever. Do good movie villains simply debilitate their enemies and cheaply destroy them when they're down? No. They wait for them to be at full-strength, so when they lose, they'll be completely crushed by knowing they gave it their all but still came up short. It didn't quite work out that way in James Bond, Karate Kid 3, or Sin City, but remember, those were heroes they tried to stop, not soulless football teams. When Tom Brady realizes he's not America's underdog hero anymore after he loses, he'll knock up Jennifer Connelly out of sheer misery.

Finally, think about what Simmons would say when his team chokes despite clearly being more talented. No more excuses, Bill. Your invincible duo sucked big time when it mattered most. Can you imagine the column where he tries to explain this while still clinging to what he believes so firmly? I'm sure you guys can do better than this, but here's my attempt: "I can't even believe what just happened. There's just no way to explain how Brady could have lost a big game to the Colts and Peyton Manning, unless you use something outside of my ridiculous theories about football that have led to me getting soundly defeated by my wife for the last two years. I mean, Manning has better career numbers, and the Patriots defense has some holes, but Peyton's not CLUTCH! There's no way this could have happened in 1983. Of course, I know what happened. The times have changed. We're in an era where touchdown dances and advertisements make having the ability to come up where it counts not matter anymore. Don't read that twice, because it doesn't make any fucking sense. I remember when Larry Bird was playing, he never missed an important shot, ever, because that arena didn't have a jumbotron. Now we have jumbotrons, and frauds like Peyton Manning can win two super bowl rings. Somewhere along that line, we lost our ability to be CLUTCH, and I think I know why; we got a black superstar. Not just black, but very black-hip-hop and everything. I'm not racist, really, but if black people were able to come through in big spots, why hasn't there been a black president yet? Again, I'm really not racist; I just like white athletes better than black ones. I have a solution: Trade Randy Moss for Kevin Robinson. It's so obvious, but 98% of GMs today just don't understand the unfounded crap I say as law week after week. I am way too smart to be a GM. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to pleasure myself to old video of Kevin McHale making up-and-under moves."

Central Division Previews

2007-10-16T19:15:00.000-07:00

Chicago Bulls

Cobra Brigade

Bull Riding

Cleveland Cavaliers

YAYSports!

The POJO Dojo

Cavalier Attitude

Truth in a Bullet Fedora

Detroit Pistons

PistonsNationBlog

Empty The Bench

Need4Sheed

Motoring

Indiana Pacers

Indy Cornrows

Pacers Pulse

Milwaukee Bucks

Bango's Bunch

Archives

CelticsBlog NBA Page

Also see: Southwest Previews | Atlantic Previews

Cool! I'm on FreeDarko! Also, Welcome from FreeDarko!

2007-10-16T00:16:00.000-07:00

First of all, if you read this site but you don't read FreeDarko, I don't understand you, and I can't imagine that many of you are getting there from here. Anyways, I saw that Shoals was planning to write something about my classmate OJ Mayo, so while I was doing the essay portion of a diversity and racial conflict midterm and properly in a racial-thinking mindset, I shot him an email about O.J., and he's actually put it up as a guest post. Shoals is the coolest guy in the history of ever. Here's the link: I hope you enjoy it; it's a little bolder racial-issue wise than what I usually put up here, and I was hoping to hide behind Shoals a bit, as racial attitudes are regularly and skillfully discussed over there, but I'm perfectly willing to deal with the full implications of the post, as well as the pressure of trying to hold my own on my favorite longform NBA site. I think. (Gulp.) And if you're visiting from FreeDarko, I implore you to stick around and check out the scenery; I've got some good stuff on tap for the next few days, and hopefully you'll like it.

My Cavaliers Preview

2007-10-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

Last Year's Record: 50-32
Key Additions: Cedric Simmons, Devin Brown
Key Losses: David Wesley, Sasha Pavlovic(maybe), Anderson Varejao(maybe)

What Significant Moves Were Made Over the off-season?:

For the first few months of the summer, "quiet" would have been an understatement; not only were we unable to make a major move, but we couldn't even re-sign our own starting shooting guard and 6th man. My thoughts on how all this transpired can be found here.But for whatever reason, shortly after that post, we started to make some decent moves, trading David Wesley for Cedric Simmons' upside, which was startling to say the least, because the best Wesley-related news we were hoping to get this season was that he retired.

Then we went out and signed Devin Brown, a reliable guard who can defend and even score a little, for absolutely nothing, giving us a reliable rotation player essentially for free. The strategy with both signing Pavlovic/Varejao and making a move right now is to engage in a war of attrition-from what I can surmise, Ferry is betting that we'll do just fine without Pavs and Andy, forcing them to sign for less money, and instead of trying to force a deal when every team in the league thinks it's going to the playoffs, he's going to wait until a team gets itself in a "fire sale" position at the deadline and swoop in and pluck a star from them; if Pavlovic and Varejao have reasonable 1-year tender offers, they could be major trade chips to accomplish this. All in all, we ended our off-season with more questions than answers, but it's better than going into the season with the wrong answers, like we did in the Hughes/Marshall/Jones summer.

What are this team's greatest strengths?

Our 3-pronged strategy for getting to the finals last year was defense, rebounding, and LeBron. We were a top-5 defensive team in the regular season, and in the playoffs our defense was second to only the Spurs'. As many have mentioned, the curious thing about the Cavs' defensive excellence is that the starting lineup didn't feature any elite defenders by reputation: Even though Hughes made an all-defense team a few years back, that selection was a fluke because of his high steal totals, which he won't replicate in our defensive system, which differs from the Wizards' in that it actually stops opposing teams from getting to the basket. Also, age and injuries have cut Larry's lateral movement so much that he can't defend anywhere near as well as he once could have. Pavlovic was regarded as another European matador on defense, and actually said to Mike Brown "My offense is my defense." LeBron's defense has long been maligned. Drew Gooden is an outright disaster at the defensive end, and "can't guard a chair" was in the scouting reports on Z for many years.

So how did we get so good defensively? First of all, having LeBron means we don't need a true point guard,(although one would help), so we were able to play the "big backcourt" with impunity, giving us great defensive presence. Pavlovic stepped up his defense tremendously, putting his athletic gifts to work, and even shut down Vince Carter in the Nets series. Illgauskas somehow made himself into a master of the paint. LeBron stepped his defensive intensity way, way, up, especially in the playoffs. And Varejao proved himself an invaluable defender because of his quickness, footwork, ability to never give an opposing player a clean look or comfortable dribble, and unrivaled ability to draw charges. Eric Snow played great defense as well, but his offense is so very bad it that it canceled out the benefits of his defense. A lot of the credit for this goes to Mike Brown, a defensive savant whose rotations, defense-first attitude, and ability to close out the 3-point line made him the most valuable assistant coach in the whole league. Oh, wait, he's our head coach.

Rebounding is pretty simple to explain-again, the "big backcourt" allowed us to get a lot of rebounds cheaply, and Gooden, Varejao, and Z are some of the best rebounders in the league. Devin Brown and even Daniel Gibson are great rebounders as well, and hopefully their extra boards will make up for the loss of Varejao, although I really wish we had him back.

Then, of course, there's LeBron, a top-3 player on any night and a top-1 player when properly motivated, capable of winning any game by himself, sometimes literally. There's not a whole lot more to say about him, but he's carried this team for 3 years now, and he's still 22 and getting better.

What are this team's Major Weaknesses?

Offense. Plain and simple. We were at the middle-to-low end of the pack offensively last season, and when you have a player like LeBron James on your team, that's just plain ridiculous. Our outside shooters were largely ineffective and unable to keep the floor spaced for James. We still don't have a consistent 2nd scoring threat for LeBron-Larry Hughes can't get himself to the hoop consistently anymore, forcing him to settle for his shaky jumper way too much. Z and Gooden are both mainly 15-foot catch-and-shoot guys, getting their points in the flow of the offense instead of posting up and creating their own baskets.

Varejao can't create his own offense. Pavlovic has shown flashes of being a capable slasher and outside shooter, but he's still inconsistent, and has games where he can't get anything going regularly. Also, he might be in Europe all year. Boobie is an intriguing question mark, and Shannon is a depressing question mark. Compounding all of our problems is Mike Brown's offensive genius, which can't get LeBron the ball in spots he likes or get our team in the full-court, often leading to a bad fadeaway from LeBron or Larry with 3 seconds left in the shot clock. Having a true point to take the pressure off LeBron could help, but there's no use wishing for what you don't have.

What are this team's goals?

Championship. Now. They got sort of close next year, and that's the only hurdle left. The next year or two could either be the beginning of a powerhouse for years to come or the tail end of an ultimately failed attempt to surround a singular talent with a team that he could carry to the promised land. Other than a championship, I would say that this team's biggest goal is to form a solid Kobe/Shaq, Nash/Amare, Duncan/Ginobili/Parker-type core that will make sure Cleveland stays important for the next few years instead of continuing to go to war with LeBron and the E Street Band, which will help us avoid a Heat-style championship hangover.

What is LeBron going to do this year, after the most disappointing and best season of his career?

Whether LeBron comes out with passion and fury this year is something that remains to be seen-I wouldn't be surprised to see him spend the first month or two of the year trying to get an offensive flow working with his teammates, working on his jumper, and experimenting in the post instead of driving with a vengeance and trying to take over every game. Last year, it too often looked like there was a switch LeBron was turning on and off-he'd sit around, pound the ball, over-pass, and fire 20-foot fadeaways for a quarter, then start weaving through defenders and dunking with authority the next. More than any mechanical sort of adjustment this year, I'd like to see LeBron do away with the switch and have the freaky sort of season we all know he's capable of having. Better free throws, a consistent jumper, and a low-post game are all great, but it will be the intensity with which he goes about the game that will determine how his season goes. I want to see him play every game like it's his last.

Is the third season going to be the charm for Larry Hughes?

The fact is this: Larry Hughes has been horrible the past two years. Forget the injuries for a second; even when healthy, Larry has been completely and utterly ineffective. His shooting percentage has been abysmal, his defense has been slightly above average at best, and he doesn't impact the game with his rebounding or playmaking. For some reason, many NBA writers have decided that the problem with Larry has been one of "fit": Larry is most effective as a slasher, so putting him with a driver like LeBron has forced him to be a catch-and-shoot player, which is all wrong for him. If there are NBA GMs reading this, and that's what you believe, call Danny Ferry right now. Also, I'm thrilled to inform you that you've won $5,000,000 in the Ukrainian lottery; all I need is your credit account number and we'll get you that money.

The real story is that Larry has just been flat-out bad, regardless of his tendencies. If he's such a slasher, why does a quick look at his stats tell us that he goes to the hole much less, draws less fouls, and finish worse inside than Michael Redd, the kind of "shooter" who's supposed to work well with LeBron, despite the fact the exact same number of their shots come off of assists? Watching Cavaliers games, what Larry will do is take the ball at the 3-point line, pump-fake, try to get to the basket, fail, and end up pulling up for a 20-footer that he seldom makes. LeBron never enters into the equation. We'd love a second slasher on this team, and Sasha Pavlovic was successful doing that in the 2nd half of last year, but Larry is not that slasher; age and injuries have sapped his explosiveness to the point where he can't get to the basket or finish when he does get there.

Oh, and as for the "Larry's really just a big point guard!" argument, fueled by the fact that we had a hard time losing games when we started Larry, Sasha, and LeBron in the backcourt, remember that the lineup was mainly effective because of its defensive capabilities, and that it also marked the first time Sasha, our 2nd-best offensive player by the end of the year, saw time in the starting lineup. Larry's preference to look for his own shot and inability to drive by his man make him a horrible offensive point guard.

This year, however, it might be time for everything to change. Larry's last year in Washington let us know he's talented when healthy and motivated, and all the reports from this off-season say that's exactly what he is this year. Not only have there been "Hey, Larry worked his booty off during the off-season and worked on his shot with Mark Price!" stories, but Brian Windhorst reported that Larry has been dunking with authority in training camp and looks like he might actually have his explosiveness back, which would be huge news, and I'm ready to believe in Larry Hughes again, even though his preseason performances (4-11 with 0 free throws in his last game) seem to suggest that he might just go back to being Cleveland Larry again this year.

What Kind of Impact are the 2006 Kids Going to Make On our Abysmal Backcourt?

We all know about Daniel Gibson; after all, it was his 31-point assault from beyond the arc that finished off the Pistons, and he was one of the few bright spots in the Massacre at the Alamo. All through the season, he would come in for a few minutes, hit a few threes, then watch Eric Snow play 30 minutes, not get covered, and force Cavs fans to put pins in their Mike Brown voodoo dolls. He was a spot-up shooter who wouldn't shoot a whole lot, but seemed to be able to make them when he did shoot them. Then, in the playoffs, a whole new Boobie showed up. He kept on drilling 3s, but he also attacked the hole with abandon and started drawing fouls. He's got good size for the PG position, blinding speed and a good crossover, so the optimistic among us seeing him learning to combine his athleticism with his deadly shot to become an offensive force in the very near future.

The super-optimistic among us see him as being our point guard of the future, because he's point-guard sized and actually good, which you can't really say about any of our current point guards. I'm skeptical about this one, mainly because a lot of point guards like to pass, and Boobie really doesn't. He averaged 3.4 assists per 48 minutes in the regular season, and that number went down in the playoffs. To provide context, no other point guard in the league, be they a starter, shoot-first guard, or backup, averaged less than about 6 per 48 minutes, and the good ones are comfortably over 10. Technically, the ability to pass can be taught, but I'm not comfortable projecting that type of jump in any player. The ability to pass is like the ability to work the count in baseball; it seems easy enough to learn, but few players actually do it, and the type of jump needed to make Gibson a true point would be like Rocco Baldelli turning into Barry Bonds. There are exceptions to every rule, and I'm hoping Boobie will be one of them, but he won't come out of the gate looking like John Stockton. In a perfect world, Boobie would turn into a Ben Gordon/Earl Boykins type of scorer off the bench-look at the shooting (eFG% on jump shots), % of shots that were jumpers, assist, and foul drawing numbers from Boobie, Gordon, and Boykins in his breakout year with Golden State:

Gibson: .561/84%/2.5/9.4%
Gordon: .514/85%/5.3/9.7%
Boykins:.442/88%/8.2/10.3

Even though even those guys passed more than Gibson, it's clear they score effectively by shooting from outside well and often and getting themselves to the line a disproportionate amount.

Shannon Brown was not the type of rookie success story that Gibson was; despite the fact he was our first-round draft pick,(ahead of solid point guard Jordan Farmar and the potentially transcendent Sergio Rodriguez), he never cracked the rotation consistently, and played poorly when he did get a chance. His suspect ballhandling relegated him to being a spot-up shooter, which he isn't that good at, and his defense was not up to Mike Brown standards. Shannon is another point guard who isn't a point guard, and while his shot is passable, it certainly isn't a strength. Shannon has a lot of (rhymes with "puptide") because of his wingspan and athleticism, and with some freedom, he could evolve into a great player in the NBA. His 14 free throw attempts in the last preseason game is the most promising thing I've heard all summer. Given an opportunity, Shannon could be a much better player than Devin Brown, Pavlovic, or even Hughes, but more than likely he'll be worse than all three. I'll have my eye on him.

Will a slimmed-down Donyell Marshall and revenge-motivated Damon Jones make the type of impact they were supposed to when they were signed?

No. They're terrible. I'm pretty sure swear TNT asked for Damon's suit measurements at one point during the playoffs.

How will the new guys be?

Wow, there's not a whole lot exciting about Devin Brown. He plays good defense, drives decently, shoots decently, is of average age, and should be a solid rotation player; he could be better than that, or he could be worse. I'd still rather have Sasha back, especially since he's younger and has more (rhymes with "truckslide"), but Brown at the minimum isn't too bad at all. Cedric Simmons is much more interesting: He was the #15 pick one year ago, he's got a freak body with a monster wingspan, is a real-live shot blocker, can dunk with authority, and has nothing resembling an actual offensive game or defensive discipline. There's a good chance he'll spend most of the season buried on the bench; he reminds me of Andris Biedrins in Golden State, who I wished we hadn't drafted for 2 years and then watched him become our most valued young asset overnight, even though he still looks like he's shooting a ball made out of Kryptonite. Hassan Adams is the type of solid young player who makes you say "Wait, nobody wanted him? Really?" and Darius Rice could be a rich man's Donyell Marshall. Hooray.

Projected Record:

55-27. Even with the East being a lot stronger, we could have a motivated LeBron James with a new bag of weapons, a healthy and effective Larry Hughes, an effective offensive strategy, an 82-game season from an athletic young point who can shoot the lights out, a young uber-athletic shooting guard, a solid guard with a chance to prove himself on the big stage, and an athletic young big with mountains of upside. Just a couple of those things coming together would make this team hugely improved, which is why I'm predicting a record jump this year. Have a good season and Go Cavs!

Southwest Blog Previews

2007-10-12T17:05:00.000-07:00

San Antonio Spurs:
Spur of the Moment
Pounding the Rock

New Orleans Hornets:
Hornets 24/7
The New Orleans Hornets Fan

Memphis:
Shades of Blue

Houston:
Hoopsblogging

Dallas:
Showboating

Archives:
CelticsBlog NBA Page

Bonus:
Tom Ziller's Southwest Preview

Case Study in Draft Busting: The North Carolina Tarheels

2007-10-12T02:16:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't love a link dump at 2 in the morning?

2007-10-11T01:46:00.000-07:00

I got an email today from the fine people at HoopsGm.com, which told me that they were fans of my site and asked me politely for a link dump, which of course I have too much journalistic integrity to give them. They're a fantasy basketball site, and browsing around there, it looks like they've really got their poop figured out. Seriously, they've got scatter plots and everything, and it looks like they might be on to some cool stuff over there.

I'm not a big roto basketball guy; I'm getting back into the game in an MVN league for the first time in a few years this year, and I plan to pick LeBron first, get Baron Davis and Stephen Jackson at all costs, and ultimately lose. But if you're a daily reader of this site, not only do you rule, you're probably pretty obsessed with sports, which means you play fantasy. So if you do, hop over to their site, because they have put in a lot of hard work to analyze fake basketball, which makes my time spent analyzing real basketball seem meaningful. Also, did I mention that they took the time to email me and say nice things about my site? That means they're awesome. Go there now, especially if you're still awake right now.

It's never too early to preview the 2008 draft

2007-10-07T17:32:00.001-07:00

I love the NBA draft. It might be my favorite day of the year. On draft night, the game exists entirely in imagination-we get to see Greg Oden as an evolutionary center with Russell's defense, Shaq's domination of the paint, and Wilt's ridiculous athleticism for a big man, Kevin Durant as a 6-10 uber-star who can dominate anywhere from the 3-point line to the low block, Adam Morrison calmly draining contested jumper after contested jumper, JJ Redick grabbing kick-outs from Dwight Howard and filling up the net from long range. On draft night, we don't have to deal with the reality of microfracture surgery, back problems, or Adam Morrison going 3-16. There are no busts on draft night. Because of that spirit, I like to think about the draft as early and often as I can. Here are my thoughts on the big draft prospects so far, with the ones I don't know much about, like Michael Beasley, left out for no real pertinent reason:

O.J. Mayo:

The best-known name in the 2008 class, as well as the one I'll be watching the most closely because he's my classmate at USC. I have had one encounter with O.J. Mayo, on my second night here at about 1:00 in the morning during pre-rush parties, and it went like this:

(The author is inebriated as all hell, and attached to an equally inebriated girl whose build could best be described as Barkley-like. The author and said girl are about to do something that both parties would have regretted immensely, when the author sobers up slightly and decides the best course of action is to make a Larry Brown-esque exit. A few stumbles away, notices that several USC basketball players, including Taj Gibson and O.J., are sitting on a wall, calmly observing the proceedings and hearing praise from various travelers.)

Person in front of me: Hey, O.J., you're going to kick ass this year. You're so much better than Love it's ridiculous, man. (leaves, I step in)

Me(in a charming slur): The real question is whether or not he's better than Rose. And the answer is yes, man. (High-fives O.J.-also note that the author is still capable of providing pertinent draft analysis in any state) Man, I was like, thinking about going to USC, and then like, I saw you were going here, and I was like, now I'm definitely going to USC, because, like O.J.'s here.

Other basketball player, leaning over: Damn, (unprintable and inaccurate racial slur), how loaded is you?

O.J.(cold sober): Where you going, man?

Me: Away from that chick in the blue I just hooked up with. (points to girl)

(The entire basketball team starts cracking up)

O.J.: Have a good night, man.

(The author runs at full-speed towards the nearest frat house)

So me and O.J. are pretty much best friends now, even though I didn't remember to ask him for an interview or reveal my plan to get an apartment with him and Lil' Romeo next year and sell it as a reality show. My friend Marianne, who never watches basketball, has a writing 140 and Black Social Movements class with O.J., who calls her "Mar," and from her I know that O.J. is extremely nice, goes to every one of his classes, including lectures, which is more than you can say about the author, really works hard and wants to learn in every class, and gets tons of autograph requests, which he obliges wearily. That's my inside info on O.J. Now for the pure basketball:

Strengths: Incredibly pure jump shot, amazing handle, good court vision and capable of making great passes, extremely quick first step, amazingly polished shooting ability.

Weaknesses: Tends to be a shoot-first player who falls in love with his jumper from time to time, and hence will have nights when he's off and shoots a low percentage (like in the McDonald's game), has the skills to be a lead guard, but plays more like a shooting guard, and at 6-4 he doesn't have the ideal height to be a shooting guard, nor does he have the shocking athleticism of a Dwayne Wade to deal with it immediately.

Outlook: O.J. almost definitely won't fall out of the top 3 or 4 slots in the draft, but without dominating in college, he could easily slip behind Derrick Rose and Michael Beasley in the draft of their more seductive freak athleticism. Being a good 'SC fan, I don't think taking the college game by storm will be a big problem for O.J. Nobody will have a brighter spotlight on them this season, and nobody will come up bigger.

Movie Comparison: Dreamgirls (Huge early hype about him, beautifully polished, doesn't have the ceiling of a Babel, will at some point encounter an inevitable backlash, but is still a pretty damn good movie.)

Derrick Rose:

Strengths: Holy Christ, is this guy athletic. His YouTube makes me feel happy when I've bombed a mid-term. (Yes, YouTube is a major scouting resource for me. ESPN has showcases, scouts who watch his high school games, statistical breakdowns, and reports from private workouts and interviews-I have YouTube and nicotine. I could make a fancy argument, aided by Malcolm Gladwell, about how a too much information can be just as damaging too little in making major decisions, but basically I'm writing about this because I can. Also, has Chad Ford ever gotten smashed and told a top-3 prospect that he was the man? I think not.) But getting back on point, this guy has the type of hops that just don't seem to make sense-it looks like he's in Like Mike 3 sometimes. (There has already been one sequel to Like Mike. You needed to know that.) And he doesn't just have dunk-contest hops-he finishes with authority, and doesn't need a big running start to get fancy. He can also get to the rim at will, because of his speed and ridiculous crossover. And by the way, he's a full 6-4, with a scary-solid build. Most excitingly, all the reports on him say that he's actually a pure point guard with great court vision and a pass-first mentality, which is extremely rare for a kid athletically gifted enough to score at will at every level he's played at. If he is indeed ready to play the point right away, he's far and away the most athletic pure point guard in the league, maybe ever.

Weaknesses: Where O.J.'s scoring is smooth-flowing and meticulously refined, Rose's offensive game is often a bit clunky-his outside shot is a weakness right now, and often times his shots from the 5-10 foot range are bizarre off-balance things that look like the shots guys playing "21" take when they can't get to the hole instead of a clean-looking pull-up or fadeaway. And while his modesty and shot selection have been points of praise among league executives, because there's no reason at all for the best player on the court his entire life should be extremely self-confident, that could, along with his pass-first mentality, mean that he won't be able to take over a game the way Mayo can.

Outlook: Because of his hops and crossover, the most common comparison for Rose has been a young Steve Francis without all those bad tendencies, which would be pretty cool. His pass-first mentality and size has led to Jason Kidd comparisons, although Kidd couldn't take the air out of a gym the way Rose can. Those are really the only two comparisons draft experts have been able to come up with, which makes sense, because it's not like a 6-3 point guard with a great crossover, dunk-contest hops, a running-back body, great passing ability, and a shaky outside shot was one of the playoffs' biggest stars last year, and it's not like he's the namesake of this website.

Oh, wait. Rose's game reminds me very strongly of Baron's, and given what we just saw what an injury/attitude-free Baron can do to the best team in the league, people should be very excited about Rose, especially since he's even more athletic than Baron, especially at this stage in his career. Like Baron, it may take Rose a while to balance out the demands of being a scorer and a passer, but when he blossoms(no pun intended), he could well be the best player in this deep draft. His team-first mentality and combine-ready gifts will allow him to survive a non-dominant college campaign, because players like him are often shackled by the coaching and surrounding talent in college situations (look at Rajon Rondo), and barring injury, he'll be in the discussion for the first overall pick.

Movie Comparison: Babel (well-known but not a household name, ridiculously high ceiling, some obvious but ultimately insignificant flaws, slightly disappointing box-office run/college season, late Oscar/No.1 pick push upon review)

Kevin Love:

Strengths: A banger down low who can scrap for rebounds and tough baskets, extremely refined post moves, a good stroke with range out to (allegedly) the NBA 3-point line, the best outlet passer since Bill Walton, team player with high basketball IQ. Other than that, his game needs a lot of work.

Weaknesses: Not particularly tall or athletic, goes to UCLA, has a dad who's borderline insane.

Outlook: First of all, let's address the character issues of Love/Mayo. Mayo has been billed as another Iverson-like young punk who cares only about himself and even smokes the demon weed, while Love is the white model citizen who wants the team to succeed first and saves babies. First of all, it should be obvious is nothing like the picture that has been painted of him, although it would probably take a whole other column to reach the extent of my anger about this. Second, the most popular comparison for Love is Bill Walton, because of their position, passing ability, college, and skin color, which is good because Walton is now a beloved personality who teaches us all about Canada during the middle of a game. (Quote from the FIBAs: So while Canada is losing this game right now, we must stop to remember that this is the country that gave us the light bulb.") O.J. has been accused of Marijuana possession one time, and those charges were dropped when it was revealed that it belonged to a friend. This has naturally been blown out of proportion by people who want to paint O.J. as just another punk kid. But without even touching how prevalent casual marijuana use is among people my age (smell my hall sometime), has everyone forgotten that Bill Walton loved weed? He got special permission from John Wooden to blaze after every game, for the love of god. Just thought that was interesting.

Love is this year's "crap, I have no idea how good this guy will be in the pros" guy because of his limited athleticism; he's a top-10 pick on DraftExpress, but he's all the way at 17 on NBAdraft.net, which has Hasheem Thabeet, who may or may not be able to make a layup with both hands, at 12. His rebounding is a question-for every Paul Milsap, there's an Ike Diogu. His scoring is a question. Whether his Unseld act will work in the pros is a question mark.

Ultimately, like most skilled but not crazy-athletic prospects, I think he'd be a great complimentary piece, but will break hearts if he's put as the face of a franchise. Not only would a subpar college season mean that UCLA will be bad, but it'll make him fall to a team that will use his talents well instead of throw him straight to the dogs, so that's what I'm rooting for. And if he could have a bad season, do bad at the combine, and end up with a hooker in his room, subsequently causing him all the way to the Cavs and clean up boards, score garbage buckets and pick-and-pops with LeBron, and toss LeBron outlets in the full-court, I would be a happy man. David Stern, here's your next secret project.

Movie Comparison: Little Miss Sunshine (ceiling limited because of genre/athleticism concerns, about as well-done as can be, unique-seeming, loved by casual fans, backlash will come from the biggest film geeks/draft experts)

Brook Lopez:

Strengths: He's seven feet tall, athletic, and alive, which means he's a top-15 pick automatically.

Weaknesses: He can't score. I'm really only doing this one because I like the movie comparison. Also, I hate Stanford. A lot.

Movie Comparison: The Heartbreak Kid. Everyone knows that movies with Ben Stiller screaming all the time and prominently feature jokes about sunburns, deviated septums, fat people, emasculating sex, and Carlos Mencia are going to suck. But for some reason, studios put their full weight into these movies time after time, only to be shocked when they turn into a fiasco. It's the same way with 7-footers who show athleticism, can't score, and fall out of the top 7 picks-good centers don't fall out of the top 5. It's that simple. So if a center is available at 9 or 12, he's not going to be good. But look at that, Patrick O'Bryant was the #9 pick two years ago, and Hilton Armstrong was a top-15 pick last year. And they've both sucked. Big surprise.

Well, there you have it. I was going to try and make this more comprehensive, but I'm already pushing 2,300 words, it's almost 1:00 in the morning, and I haven't had drunken encounters with most of the other top-10 prospects. Enjoy your Wednesday.

The Cavs and Major League 2: Redux

2007-10-04T22:47:00.000-07:00

Hey all, sorry I haven't gotten a post up recently; I don't want you to think that I'm going into a downward spiral after that last semi-depressed post (I think the Sideways picture made the post seem much sadder than it actually was, but I liked it anyways; at the time of the post, I identified pretty strongly with both someone who was on the cusp of something supposed to be a major positive turning point in his life, only to be scared by the implications of it and retreat to doing what he had been doing before without fear of repercussion, AND the writer who was convinced that his career and life were going nowhere. So I liked it. But I'm not sad. And thank you so much to all of you who commented on the last post; believe it or not, that meant a lot to me, and is the type of thing that keeps me writing.) In fact, I finally got around to actually posting something about USC football today: here's the link.

I'd really like to get a fresh post basketball post up before the week is over, but unfortunately I have a paper due tomorrow and don't have the time; I started doing a post on how I think Boston's troika is going to work out, but ended up hating it after a few paragraphs. So I'm going to recycle a post from my message-board days, which I originally put up during the Cavs' midseason swoon, when LeBron looked officially disinterested and the general public was getting ready to write off the Cavaliers. This is definitely one of my favorite pieces I ever wrote for RCF, (my absolute favorite one is this one, which I definitely wish I had written when I was blogging; that might be my favorite thing I've ever written, and I wish more people could have seen it.) and I feel even better about it now that the Cavs' season ended up mirroring the Major League 2's Indians even more; after losing to the hated White Sox after a miraculous run to the playoffs in Major League, in Major League 2, the Indians bounced back from their difficulties and ended up beating the White Sox and making the World Series at last. (I get predictions right every now and then. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Kevin Durant fans. Also, he's officially a shooting guard to start the season.) Here's the original post, with new thoughts in italics:

As bad sports movies that regularly appear on cable go, it doesn't get much better than Major League 2. In case you don't remember, or haven't seen the movie (not a bad call), the plot goes as follows: In the first Major League, our heroes the Cleveland Indians were fresh off of an incredible pennant run, which they attained on the back of their young phenom pitcher, Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn. They were eliminated in the playoffs, but came back the next year with high hopes, as they hadn't lost anyone important from the previous year. (Except for Wesley Snipes, but he was replaced by Omar Epps.) However, things didn't go as planned for our beloved Indians. Almost all the players went into a funk for one reason or another, and it looked like their success had been a fluke, and that they would never win the World Series that they wanted so badly. You probably know where I'm going with this-if you really need it explained to you, yikes. Let's break it down, player by player-

Rick "Wild Thing" Vaughn, who had carried the team with his blazing fastball and bad-ass persona, came into camp with a new attitude. He held off of throwing his fastball, talking about the need to "conserve his arm" and instead attacked hitters with his new assortment of off-speed stuff, which was mediocre at best. On top of that, his newfound obession with image and making money off the court made his passion for the game leave, and he ended up losing his heat for much of the movie. Obviously, that's LeBron, despite the fact that "Wild Thing" became AV's nickname. Just like Wild Thing, LeBron came up huge at the hugest time last season; after choking early in the series, he came back with beyond a vengeance and destroyed the Pistons in game 5, although he's still spending a healthy amount of time focusing on his image. Additionally, his determination to add a jump shot and post moves to his game reminds me too much of Rick Vaughn's determination to add ineffective off-speed pitches to his arsenal to supplement his unhittable fastball. LeBron, you're completely unstoppable when you drive to the basket. Just go. Last year, his switching from an attack mentality to a passive need to shoot fadeaways nearly made me chew a hole in my own flesh; if he drives even less because of the new facets to his game, I'm going to go crazy. And, for the record, I'm a huge supporter of LeBron working his jump shot and even more excited about the possibility of post moves, but Major League 2 has been Nostradamus-like so far, and this scares me. Okay, I'm not making sense anymore. It's 2:20 in the morning and I've been trying to make progress on an immigration paper for an hour and a half. Cut me some slack.

Willie Mays Hays, played by Omar Epps, had been the fastest/most effective leadoff hitter in the league last season, but came into camp nursing his injuries and foolishly attempting to hit for power instead of just putting the ball on the ground and running. That's Larry, who's nursing his glass ankle and trying to be a 3-point shooter instead of the slasher he's supposed to be. I don't have much else to say about this one; we're all hoping for the best and expecting the worst for Larry this year.

Jake Taylor, the heroic catcher played by Tom Berenger, is a solid clubhouse leader and veteran presence, but his extreme age has deteriorated his skills to the point where he's not kept on the roster, and is instead kept on as an assistant coach so that talented, eager, and inexperienced Rube Baker can come on and be productive, eventually serving as the downtrodden team's spark plug. It's Snow and Boobie. Called it called it called it. You know what it is.

Jack Parkman is the team's most talented player other than Vaughn, but his horrible attitude and desire to get paid causes him to be traded to Chicago, where he continues to produce/be a complete douchebag, until he finally gets bitten in the ass by karma at the end of the movie. There's Carlos Boozer! Now that Boozer effectively destroyed my Warriors on the boards, I hate him even more, and the fact that the whole Drew/Andy for cheap is just as good for Boozer for expensive! argument is becoming more and more untrue makes me crazy. Grr.

Pedro Cerrano(Played by President David Palmer) is the team's cleanup hitter, a man who has boundless power but is also a complete nut, costing the team games because of his need to save a bird, and just generally being a giant vagina because of his newfound commitment to Bhuddism, which nearly cancels out his immense natural talent. Drew Gooden, everybody. Just like Pedro, Drew had his redemption early in the playoffs; Pedro was one of the only ones who stuck around for all three movies, which is appropriate because I'm sure Drew's never going away.

Isuro Tanaka is an import from Japan, and despite his limited English, he comes in, plays hard every day, and gets up in the rest of the team's face in order to inspire them to play hard. Meet Andy. Later in the season, this could also have applied to Pavlovic; in the third movie, Isuro had quit baseball to run a mini-golf place, which is like Andy going to Europe.

Roger Dorn has made the transformation from overpaid, spoiled ballplayer who didn't play defense to the owner of the team, and even though his skills are now nonexistant, he still thinks the world revolves around him, at one point asking, "Do you think April's too early to have a Roger Dorn Night?" Damon Jones. Even more true now than when I wrote it.

I can't find anyone in the movie who resembles Z, or anyone on the Cavs who resembles that cute chick from Dazed and Confused who gets Vaughn to stop being such a pussy and throw heat again, but that's not too bad.

Finally, let's not forget the team's obnoxious, loudmouth fans, who instantly turn on the team when they begin losing, and especially have it in for Rick Vaughn, who they mercilessly ridicule, giving him the idiotic nickname "Vile thing" and eventually making him want to give up pitching. Even when the Indians make the playoffs, the fan says "We'll only blow it anyways," and seems genuinely thrilled by the team's failures up until the last scene of the movie, when the Indians win the World Series after Vaughn refinds his heat and get a clutch strikeout, at which point the fan proclaims "I believed in him all along!" Bill Simmons, everybody!

So why am I posting this? A few reasons.
#1, it's really weird that our team has this many similarities between a bad sports movie about a Cleveland team.

#2, I'm optimistic that LeBron and the team in general will turn it on like the Indians did, and quiet all the doubters and haters. Not being a homer and saying we're doing fantastic, just saying I have faith that this team is going to pull through this; remember last year, when LBJ wasn't an MVP candidate at mid-season, and everyone was ready to end the season early and hand the Pistons the championship. I could say this in any number of threads, but it's not where you start or middle, it's where you finish. We've got problems now, sure, although Boobie looks like he could be a solution to our biggest one(love, love, love his shot), but that's not the same as having problems in the off-season. Maybe it's because my hometown team is the Warriors, who I can't remember ever making the playoffs, and whose "superstar" is crazy Baron Davis, but I'm thrilled to be part of a team that's definitely headed to the playoffs with a player as talented as LeBron. (Not going to get into just exactly how good he is now, this isn't the right time.) Gives you some perspective on just how hard the Warriors came out of nowhere after the Dunleavy/Jackson trade. Also, looking back over this makes me feel like Yoda. Well, thanks for reading. Fresh posts next week.

A Few Thoughts About Nothing In Particular

2007-10-02T18:39:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone. I got linked by TrueHoop again today, but the link was (at my request) to my more "formal" site that I write at for free, MVN, which was new-I appreciate the publicity going to an established site like Cavalier Attitude and passionate writers like Amar and James, but at the same time I'm feeling a wee bit of remorse right now, because if Henry's going to link me there, my little swatch of internet here will slowly but surely fade into obscurity, and I really like it here. I love my USC-colored pallet that is very striking but makes things a little harder to read. I like my picture of Baron's Fedora. I like the name Truth In A Bullet Fedora.

I've been so eager to jump from being a "blogger" to a "writer" that I never really stopped to appreciate just how much I love my little blog. I love being able to write about what I want at any length; unless I reach Simmons status, I can't envision a real sportswriting job that would allow me to pontificate on how Dan Fegan would try to get me laid. I love posting under a pseudonym that is essentially made up of my last name, but still makes me feel mysterious. I love my little sitemeter, and feel a pang of sorrow, because if the link had gone here today, in all likelihood I would have been pushed over 31,000 hits, which is more than the undergraduates at my college, which I would have considered a big moral victory. I like being in charge of my blog, and knowing that people are spending their valuable time to go on an internet detour just to see what I think. I like commenting on my own articles and feeling like I'm descending from Olympus to do it.

Simply put, my voice reigns supreme here, and everywhere else it's just another in the crowd. On MVN today, I got no happy little ballhype message in my inbox that said I'd been linked, no random surge of comments, (not even on MVN-the two posts I've had linked by TrueHoop and not cause a ruckus of any sort were the ones that made fairly safe declarations and applied them to my personal life, although none of the stuff in this post was anywhere near being true. I guess people don't want to comment unless they can express a bold opinion of their own. It's a bummer, because I like writing posts like this and the Ferry's desk piece a million times more than a breakdown of Durant's game.) There was no big jump on my little sitemeter, no nothing-just a vague knowledge that more people had gone to my site than go there normally. It made me sad.

Right now, TBF is at a crossroads; it's done well enough to get me some recognition from writers I absolutely adore (honestly, you should see the emails I send them back-I sound like a 12-year old Justin Timberlake fan) and the occasional visit from John Q. Sports Fan, but not quite well enough to get a substantial daily readership. (If you're reading this, you're one of my 100-200 daily viewers. You Rule.) I was thinking about bringing in one of my friends to put up daily bullets and make this the kind of place that people would put in their bookmarks instead of glance at every 2-3 weeks, and sent him out an email, but now I'm wavering, because I'm just not sure that's where my path is going to lead me. I know in my head that keeping my links going to MVN is probably better in the long run, but in my heart I want to make this place work, even though it has no possibility to produce revenue.

In any case, I'm going to enjoy TBF while it lasts, and expect a post that has no aspirations of any kind of wide recognition sometime in the near future. Good day, few faithful readers.

Dan In Real Life

2007-10-01T16:56:00.001-07:00

So training camp is about to start, and the Cavaliers still haven't re-upped two of their best rotation players, Sasha Pavlovic and Anderson Varejao. The Pavlovic situation is ridiculous; after giving Damon Jones and Donyell Marshall solid money, and Larry Freaking Hughes a max-dollar deal, they don't want to pay decent money for a 24-year old athletic slasher who plays extremely good defense and shoots 40% from 3-point range. Pay him now, Danny.

The Varejao situation is a good deal more complicated; Varejao is a great defender and rebounder, runs the pick-and-roll effectively with LeBron, finds himself on the floor in crunch-time, and should absolutely be starting over Drew Gooden. However, his agent, Dan Fegan, is complicating matters by saying that he should be getting $10 million a year, using his restricted status to essentially play "chicken" with the Cavalier brass. (Some good reactions to the situation can be found at my site, MVN, by my colleagues Amar and James-James' column even features yelling in capital letters. I suggest reading it in a Stephen A. Smith voice.)

Fegan's had himself a big summer-he's Yi Jianlian's agent as well, and as we all know, Yi's holdout was bitter indeed, and nearly caused an international incident. We of the G-State faithful fondly remember Fegan as the guy who orchestrated Mike Dunleavy, Troy Murphy, and Jason Richardson's ridiculous contracts, and made Gilbert Arenas leave town by preying on his insecurity and making him believe that the Warriors had disrespected him by drafting him in the second round and by allowing Earl Boykins to take minutes from him in the best year of Boykins' career, leading him to sign with the Wizards instead of staying with the Warriors an extra year to get a Bird-rules contract. (Wondering why Yi to the Warriors never ended up materializing? There's as good a reason as any-can't imagine the Warriors brass is anxious to deal with Fegan again, ever.)

Here's Dan Fegan's full current client list:

Shandon Anderson (worthless)
Ruben Patterson (shuffled from the Bucks to the Clippers this off-season)
Austin Croshere (playing out the string with the Warriors)
Erick Dampier (An overpaid albatross for Dallas)
Howard Eisley (worthless)
Reggie Evans (just traded)
Dermarr Johnson (worthless)
Shawn Marion (Demanding a trade with a max-dollar deal, and seems to feel overlooked and under-appreciated just like Gilbert did in Golden State-hmm.)
Troy Murphy (traded in a salary dump)
Eduardo Najera (Making 5 millon dollars to do nothing for the Nuggets)
Nene (Making 10 mill a year over the next 5 years for the Nuggets)
Jason Richardson (Traded in a salary dump)
Ricky Sanchez (I don't even know who that is)
Anderson Varejao (See above)
Earl Watson (Making $18 millon over the next 3 years to ride the bench for the Sonics)
Jason Terry (Subject of trade rumors due to his salary)
Stephen Jackson (Traded in a crazy dump)
Yi Jianlian (Almost caused World War 3)

Here's the thing: With the possible exception of Jason Terry, not one team has signed a long-term deal with a Ferry client and ended up happy about it when the deal was up. Not one. I'm uncomfortable giving Dan Fegan strategy advice for the simple reason that he's a lot smarter than I am; in a world where most of the literati went to college for a little and spent most of their time there playing basketball, Fegan is a graduate of Yale Law. I'm a pre-law freshman. He's using strategies that I've never even heard of. That being said, I will say this; You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once. (Do they teach Rounders quotes at Yale Law? I think not.) With Dampier, Dunleavy, Murphy, and Nene, Fegan has skinned the sheep; team's aren't going to give 8 figures to his clients out of sheer respect for their potential anymore. For all Anderson's talent and accomplishments, he hasn't proven himself a $10 million player yet, and the Cavs aren't going to be fooled by Fegan's game.

Of course, all this thinking about the Fegan effect got me to thinking about what it would be like if Dan Fegan was my agent, not just for my writing (I'd probably be demanding $50,000 a year from MVN, approximately $50,000 more than what I'm making independently), but for my everyday life. Without further ado:

(I walk into my college interview with Fegan.)

Admissions lady: Hi, John.

Fegan: Look, my client would be a great fit for your school. He's got a 3.6 GPA and sky-high board scores. You should accept him immediately.

Admissions lady: His numbers are certainly solid, but they're not overwhelming; I'm not sure I can guarantee an admission right now, because we have a lot of applicants with similar, if not better, numbers.

Fegan: Look, Jeaneanne.

Admissions Lady: My name's not...

Fegan: Jeaneanne, we both know there's a lot more to a student than his GPA, essay, extra-curriculars, and looks.

Me: My looks?

Fegan: Those SAT scores show unbelievable potential, and you don't want that potential going anywhere else. Also, John brings great intangibles to the table; he's going to do the little things at your college you won't find anywhere else. They might not show up on the stat sheet, but where else will you find a guy with the kind of hustle to make up to 15 calls on a Friday night to find a party? Also, these advanced numbers show a 5:1 ratio of politely helping drunk girls get home to accidentally hooking up with them. He really likes Kanye West. He's had limited opportunities, but he's come through when he's gotten them. These numbers project to big things for your university in the future.

Admissions lady: What the hell are you talking about?

Fegan: Additionally, the admissions of my previous clients with numbers like these show that John's clearly earned admission into this university. (Hands her list.)

Admissions lady: Didn't the last client of yours we let in post a .3 GPA and stab a guy?

Fegan: That was the past. The past has no relevance here.

Admissions lady: But you just said...

Fegan: The deal is on the table. Take it or leave it.

Admissions lady: Fine. You're in.

Fegan: Good. Now that we've established that he's got a non-transferable spot here, we demand a full scholarship.

Admissions lady: What? No way.

Fegan: Give us the scholarship, or we walk. John's perfectly willing to go to junior college for a year if we can't get a deal done.

Me: I am?

Admissions lady: We'll think about it.

(Three months later, talking with Fegan.)

Me: Hey, I ended up getting the scholarship, but I ended up missing the first three weeks of school because of my holdout, and I got stuck in the dorm they usually reserve for students categorized as "unstable." Also, I think they put pictures of me up in the faculty lounge, and my professors keep putting my papers in the shredder.

Fegan: Fitting in and thriving where you are is okay, but what's really important is that we got more money. Because I get 3% of that money.

(Four Months Later, eating lunch.)

Fegan: Hello, John.

Me: How did you know I'd be eating lunch here?

Fegan: I went to Yale Law.

Me: Okay.

Fegan: How is everything going with you?

Me: Pretty well. I've started to turn it around in class, and I'm actually seeing a really nice girl who I like a lot.

Fegan: That's what I wanted to talk to you about.

Me: You want to talk to me about my girlfriend?

Fegan: Yes, I believe she's undervaluing you. It looks here like you're calling her three times for every time she's calling you. Additionally, you've ended up paying for 90% of all dinners and knick-knacks, and she made you stop smoking, all for a woefully low sexual output.

Me: How long have you been following me for?

Fegan: Additionally, it looks like she's been canceling dinners with you to go to study sessions recently.

Me: She has mid-terms coming up.

Fegan: So now you're behind mid-terms in the rotation? Jesus. John, I'm going to be straight with you, because I'm your friend and have a 3% share in your happiness. You need to opt-out of this relationship. You could do fantastically on the open market. Now, I can't tell you who from, but there is interest in you, and I have several available women who would be ready to be completely obsessed with you.

Me: You mean the one with the hair?

Fegan: John, you've been a second banana for too long. Would you rather be a contributor to a good relationship or be the star of a disastrous one? Trust me on this one.

Me: Okay.

(Some time later. I'm at a party.)

Fegan: Johnny boy!

Me: How did you get in here?

Fegan: I got the guy at the door a guaranteed contract with the Bobcats.

Me: What do you want?

Fegan: I'm here as your agent. I saw you've been calling a girl for the last couple of weeks, and decided I'd help you in your negotiations so that I can get my 3%.

John: What does that even mean?

Fegan: Come over here, miss.

Girl: Hi. Who are you?

Fegan: I'm about to be 3% of your boyfriend. These negotiations between you and my client have dragged on for far too long. It's time we worked something out.

Girl: Well, John's a nice guy. I'd go to dinner with you tomorrow night.

Me: Great!

Fegan: I'm sorry, but that's a low-ball offer. Looking at past dating histories of my clients, the value of a 5-8 vaguely semetic writer with blue eyes has been clearly established as a 3-month binding sexual contract. Those are the terms of the deal; if you don't like it, there are other interested parties.

Me: Dan, there aren't really a lot of...

Girl: I'm not really sure I'm willing to commit to that right now. I'd make out with you tonight, but...

Me: Jesus Christ Dan, take the deal!

Fegan: Sorry, but the terms of the deal are non-negotiable. If you don't like it, John is perfectly willing to date men for the semester.

Me: Dan, this bluffing thing has gone way too far!

Girl: Sorry, I can't do it. Never talk to me again.

Me: What the hell, Dan!

Fegan: Well, you can't win em' all. I'd stay and chat, but I don't care about you. There's a party at the rainbow house in an hour. (Walks over to Joe McKnight.)

Fegan: Joe! Dan Fegan. You're a great player. What are you doing at the bottom of the depth chart? I can tell you right now, there are schools who would be interested in your talents.

Stop Destroying Dreams, Nate McMillan

2007-09-30T15:19:00.001-07:00

It's official: Two of my favorite young players in this league have been destroyed by Nate McMillan. This article made it official that Sergio Rodriguez is out of the point-guard rotation for the Blazers this year, which disappoints me to no end- if I had to make a list of my favorite players in the league, it would look like this:

1. LeBron
2. The Namesake, Stephen Jackson, Monta, Andris, and the rest of Nellie's heroic underdogs
3. Amare/Nash
4. Oden
5. Kobe
6. Sergio

And now Sergio's not even going to play big minutes. The worst part is that this isn't the first time Nate has reduced one of my favorite players to nothingness.

Full disclosure: I love Sebastian Telfair. A lot of that has to do with the fact that "The Last Shot" is one of my top-3 all-time favorite basketball books, and when you learn just how hard it is for kids to make it out of Coney Island, it's impossible not to root for them. I'm going to put a full article up about it one of these days, but for now I'll just say that Sebastian and his cousin, Stephon Marbury, have been through some stuff we can't understand. Additionally, the documentary made about him, Through The Fire, was my favorite basketball movie since Hoop Dreams, working as a sort of companion piece to it; Hoop Dreams was about the brutality of failure, while Through The Fire works as a cautionary tale of what happens when success touches someone who has seen nothing but failure in his life. (It's a kind of full-length version of the brief glimpses we got in The Last Shot of Stephon Marbury as a cocky freshman.)

I am also not immune to the allure of legend of the New York City Point Guard. Thanks to Sonny Vaccaro, high-level basketball has become rigidly mechanical at all levels. LeBron James' game was forged by authority; from the time he was in middle school, he was plucked from his single-parent home in Akron, lived with his coach, played in organized scrimmages and practices that the coach ran at the local community center, learning how to use his left and jump-stop correctly. His summers were spent not in playgrounds, but playing AAU ball and at high-level camps like Five-Star and ABCD. By the time he was a sophomore in high school, he was a part of big-business basketball; he was posing for SLAM Magazine, his high school was hopping on charter jets to play in sold-out tournaments against prep school basketball factories like Oak Hill Academy, the womb of Carmelo, and by the time he was a senior, he was playing in nationally televised games in NBA-quality uniforms with personalized sneakers. In his senior year in high school, he had already begun to be confused or bored by simple pickup games, a reflection of his recognition that basketball without purpose was meaningless. People were surprised at his maturity when he got to the pros, but one has to wonder why; he's been in the business of basketball for as long as he can remember.

All of this makes a player like Telfair, or at least his legend, very refreshing. Telfair's game was forged on the asphalt under the projects; he perfected his crossover not under the guidance of coaches, but against his peers. He did not play against boys who played basketball constantly because they had been indoctrinated that basketball was to be their life, but against men who loved basketball because they knew all too well the realities of life outside of basketball, and latched onto it as a way to escape that life. His workouts were not programs designed to make him perfect, but dribbling around boxes at 6 in the morning and running stairs every day under the guidance of his brother, driven not by the desire to become perfect but the desire to escape what was horrible. Yes, he went to ABCD camp, and famously out dueled LeBron there, but he still went home to the streets of Coney Island, and workouts on the blacktop. In a culture where even Streetball isn't actually streetball, but a sneaker-company brand name publicized on ESPN, Telfair seemed destined to become the bridge between the new rigid system of channeling talent and the playgrounds where the game we know was born as a way to feel sheer joy and accomplishment in places where there was none of either to be had.

And during his first season, it looked like he actually might pull it off. After a rocky start, near the end of the year, he began to flourish with all the skills he'd learned in Coney Island; blinding speed, an inhuman crossover, no-look passes that spanned area codes, and bold forays to the basket. The kid that nobody thought could make it in the world of real basketball was beginning to fulfill his destiny in the first year of the point-guard revolution. The Blazers apparently thought so too, passing on Chris Paul so as not to block Telfair's rise.

Then Nate McMillan came in. He slowed everything down, decided that walking the ball down the court and dumping it to Zach Randolph was the best way to play, made Bassy take off his headband, and generally attempted to take all the Coney Island out of Telfair's game. Telfair struggled mightily that second year, and was traded to the Celtics. (for Brandon Roy-I'm not saying that wasn't a steal, although Roy's calculating game is much less thrilling than the game that dwells inside of Telfair.) On the Celtics, he found another old-school coach who made Telfair dump the ball to Al Jefferson and be done-the game I went to, Telfair was on the bench the entire first half, and whenever he caught it, he stood there like a deer in headlights and made a safe pass, save for one time when he decided to drive, blew by the defense in the blink of an eye, and laid it in, showing us a flash of what still lies dormant in Telfair.

And now Sergio Rodriguez has been banished into obscurity, sitting behind 3 point guards who have proven their mediocrity. There is nothing mediocre about Sergio Rodriguez; there is an argument to be made that he is the best passer this side of Steve Nash, as his % of possessions that end in assists, as well as the % of his team's baskets that come off his passes rival Nash's. More than that, he's simply gorgeous to watch; it's always great to see a player dominate the game with perfect pass after perfect pass, many of the spectacular variety; he's one of the few players that takes it upon himself to create a great shot for a teammate every single time down the floor, and possesses the skill to do so. Watching a summer league game between the Sonics and the Blazers, it was eye-opening to see Kevin Durant (supposed future franchise player), drift in and out of possessions, struggle to get good position, and end up missing a fadeaway, while Rodriguez (supposed non-rotation player) constantly flew into the teeth of the defense, drew them all to him, then found the open man perfectly for a wide-open shot. It was one of the best displays of point-guard play I've ever seen, and all the announcers could talk about was how good Kevin Durant's form looked on that last missed turnaround. Of course, there was also Sergio's breakout quarter in the NBA.

I'm not one to beat a dead horse, and this one's as dead as they come, but today's NBA is so often about one-on-one play. I'm not as livid about this as most sportswriters are, because the athletes have become so good at what they do that complicated offensive schemes have become superfluous; with the new rules and quality of the athletes, just getting LeBron James or Dwayne Wade a little separation off a screen or an isolation will often end in a basket, probably of the spectacular variety. But for every James or Wade, it seems like there are 3 or 4 misguided swingmen who think that a contested fadeaway with 18 seconds left on the shot clock is a good idea, and that just makes me cringe-watching Larry Hughes do this 15 times a game last season almost made me the world's youngest coronary patient. So when a guard like Sergio comes along and replaces one-on-one moves like that with dribble-penetration, backdoor cuts, perfectly run pick-and-rolls, and quality kick-outs, making every shot an open jumper or a spectacular finish, the beauty of the game shines all the way through at a visceral level, just like a kid from Coney Island taking his street-made game to the pros and dropping dimes to factory-made stars on the fast-break allows the beauty of the game to shine through on an emotional level.

Sergio and Telfair are both meant to play in systems that highlight their considerable talents, but they have found themselves in situations where their talents are seen as non-existent, and their weaknesses have been highlighted. It would be one thing if the system worked, but it hasn't: the Blazers and Celtics both enjoyed two of the worst records in the NBA last season. I forgive Mike Brown ignoring LeBron's ability to amaze in a full-court game because his plain-looking brand of basketball got him to the finals, but there is no excuse for putting shackles on talented point guards and ignoring the revolution simply because you believe it to be so. So please, Nate McMillan, let Sergio free. Play pressure defense, run off of loose balls, get Sergio high screens in the half-court, and let him amaze all of us. If you don't want him, trade him to the Warriors, or trade him to the Cavaliers and let him and LeBron do things on the fast break that will make Magic and Worthy look like 50-year old men at the YMCA. I don't care how it happens, but please allow me to see a point guard that elevates the game into the level of collective poetry, instead of acting like the principal from Dead Poets Society and attempting to pass him off as just another mediocre point guard. There is greatness inside of Sergio Rodriguez and Sebastian Telfair, and I hope that I will some day get to see it.

The Off-Season Adventures of the Cleveland Cavaliers: Danny Ferry's Desk

2007-09-27T18:12:00.001-07:00

Danny Ferry(Wearing a shirt that says "We were not in a position to offer Ray Allen or Michael Redd a max-dollar deal" on one side and "We did not have the assets necessary to complete a sign-and-trade for Joe Johnson" on the other side): Crap, I really have to make a move this off-season. Everyone's getting up my ass, and I have to improve this team. I better get on the phone. (Calls Kings GM Geoff Petrie)

Ferry: Hey Geoff, it's Danny.

Petrie: Hi, Danny.

Ferry: So anyways, we'd really like to get Mike Bibby on our team. He can run an offense and shoot from outside, two things our offense has been sorely lacking, and he could really make a difference on our team.

Petrie: Well, he's not untouchable; he's got a huge contract, and he's been getting worse the last few years. What can you offer me?

Ferry: This is hard for me to do, but I'm willing to offer you Drew Gooden.

Petrie: You want to essentially trade a point guard who scored 17 points per game in an off-year for a power forward who averaged 11 points in a career year straight-up?

Ferry: That's right, I am actually prepared to offer you this deal. And Drew's only on the hook for $14 million dollars over the next two years. Financial freedom, thy name is Gooden.

Petrie: I'm not sure. Drew's pretty light-skinned, but with him, Kevin Martin, and Ron Artest, we'd be starting the equivalent of two black players per game. That flies in the face of our organizational policies.

Ferry: Drew plays the piano.

Petrie: Hmm. That is good. Still, I worry about his consistency. For a big man, he shoots a pretty low percentage, he regularly follows up 8-11 games with 3-14 games, and he shot 44% for the entirety of December and February.

Ferry: Well, don't worry about that. We asked him what the problem was then, and he explained that he's from the Bay Area, and he couldn't function well in the colder months.

Petrie: He doesn't like the cold?

Ferry: Sort of. In his words, his Spirit Cougar has to hibernate during the colder months, which makes it tougher for him to hit the basket. That's just common sense. But you guys are in California, so you won't have that problem!

Petrie: That does make sense, although I can't help but worry about how his spirit cougar will interact with Ron Artest's invisible bipolar leprechaun mentor.

Ferry: Look, you guys need interior scoring, defense, and rebounding. Drew provides all of those things.

Petrie: I'm not sure about that. I was looking at game film of Drew,

Ferry: (Expletive)

Petrie: Anyways, Drew can rebound, but he never posts up, and is one of the worst defensive players I've ever seen.

Ferry: Drew's very good at defending people right in front of him, but you can't expect a big man to be able to defend the entire paint all by himself. He's not The Flash, Geoff.

Petrie: You're preaching to the choir here, Danny; as the guy who employs Brad Miller and Spencer Hawes, I couldn't agree with you more. But those guys are white. And not just white. Power white. The only reason Bibby's even available is because he has a posse. And I did just sign Mikki Moore, who led the league in field goal % last year, was the NBDL defensive player of the year, and rebounds at a decent clip. He's also borderline insane, so I just don't know what need we would have for Drew at this point. Sorry. I am sick of Ron Artest's attitude; what can you offer me for him?

Ferry: We're not interested. We already have a shooting guard who slashes to the rim, plays lock-down defense, and can shoot from the outside? Why would we want Ron Artest?

Petrie: Because he actually does do those things.

Ferry: Be that as it may, we don't like bad attitudes on this team. Good day. (Hangs up.)

Mike Brown: Don't worry. Bibby doesn't play defense, and we have no use for him. The Spurs, Suns, and Mavericks all start defensive liabilities at point guard, and look where it's gotten them. Besides, we don't need Bibby to make our offense work. I've got some new plays drawn up for this season, and believe me, we're going to light other teams up. They're not going to know what hit them when I bust out the "reverse motion" offense. Every defense in the league is designed to stop teams from getting to the basket, so they won't know what to do when Larry dishes it to LeBron running away from the basket at full-speed. (Grimaces happily.) Oh, and Anderson Varejao and his agent, Dan Fegan, are here to discuss his contract.

Ferry: Crap. Let them in.

Fegan: Hello, Danny.

Ferry: Burn in hell.

Fegan: Let's discuss Anderson's contract.

Ferry: I'm prepared to offer you an extension worth around 5-6 million dollars per year.

(Varejao instinctively falls out of his chair and crashes to the floor.)

Fegan: Not now, Andy. Look, it's pretty clear that Anderson is a franchise-type player. He's a young, athletic big man with a nose for the ball and a great motor. There are really no weaknesses in his game.

Ferry: He can't pass, shoot, handle the ball, score with his back to the basket, block shots, or guard big forwards.

Fegan: Don't try to swindle me, Danny. He runs the pick-and-roll with LeBron well. This isn't Ferry-world. My previous contracts have clearly established the value of a solid power forward in this league. Troy Murphy is making $10 million a year over the next 4 years, and Nene is making $10 million a year over the next 5 years. Nene is a Brazilian power forward; Anderson is a Brazilian power forward. That's called binding legal precedent.

Ferry: Well, I went to Duke, so I know you're full of crap with that big language. You're dealing with a guy with actual schooling.

Fegan: I went to Yale law.

Ferry: Oh. Well, be that as it may, Drew only makes $7 million dollars a year, and he's our starting power forward. Anderson is our backup power forward. I'm not paying a backup more than a starter. Checkmate.

Fegan: Well, I looked at the statistics,

Ferry: (Long string of expletives)

Fegan: And your team is a full 12 points per game better when Anderson is in for Drew, and he's on the floor in crunch-time of every game. There's really no valid reason why he isn't starting.

Ferry: Are you questioning the intelligence of my head coach?

(Mike Brown starts to exit the room in a huff, but instead of going straight to the door, he curls around the desk, walks over to the opposite wall, and eventually ends up walking into a flower pot before exiting the room.)

(Pause)

Ferry: Look, we just think you're overvaluing your client.

Fegan: Look, Dan-O, no team has ever been unhappy when they've signed one of my players. When was the last time you heard anyone regretting signing Troy Murphy, Erick Dampier, Shaun Marion, Earl Watson, Jason Terry, Stephen Jackson, Yi Jianlian, Jason Richardson, Austin Croshere, Ruben Patterson, Shandon Anderson, Reggie Evans, Dermarr Johnson, or Eduardo Najera to big contracts? None of those players have ever been completely ineffective, ended up getting traded in a contract dump, gotten an inflated ego because of me and demanded a trade, or nearly caused an international incident. I know you'll do the right thing.

Ferry: I don't much care for your fancy Big-10 logic, but it's pretty good. However, I think a team-crippling holdout situation is always better than overpaying a few million dollars. I believe that we have reached a stalemate.

Fegan: Later.

Ferry: I better make a trade. A big trade. (Picks up op-ed column that says the Cavs should trade for Shaun Marion, calls Suns GM Steve Kerr.)

Ferry: Hey, Steve.

Kerr: Hey, Danny.

Ferry: So I was seeing that Shaun Marion is unhappy over there in Phoenix.

Kerr: Yeah, he's being pretty sulky, which can happen after a heart-breaking playoff loss and a whole summer to sulk about it. But he's got a max-dollar deal, he's in the perfect situation, and I think once training camp starts up he'll see that we're serious about getting a championship now, which is something he won't find if he gets traded. I saw the same thing happen with Scottie Pippen back when I played for Chicago, and he had a contract dispute with an ownership that didn't appreciate him, so I think Shaun will come around sooner rather than later.

Ferry: Steve, you and I both know how ridiculous that sounds. Your only option is to trade him, and soon. And I just happen to have the perfect package in place.

Kerr: I'll give you five minutes because I'm a nice guy.

Ferry: Two words: Larry Hughes.

Kerr: What?

Ferry: He'd be perfect for the Suns. He doesn't work in our system because we play a half-court game, which is the only logical way to play when you have the best open-court player since Magic Johnson on your team. But you guys run-and-gun, which is perfect for Larry. He's an ultra-athletic slasher who can see the floor and run the court, and he'd be perfect in the Suns system. Also, you guys have some real problems defensively, and Larry's a stopper. Plus, I know how scared of the luxury tax you guys are, and Larry's only on the hook for $36 million over the next three years! So I'll send the paperwork over to your office, and you guys can start printing out jerseys.

Kerr: Hold on a second, Danny. I actually watch basketball,

Ferry: (5-minute string of unfiltered expletives in multiple languages)

Kerr: So I know that while Larry might have been a slasher earlier in his career, age and injuries have turned him into a jump shooter who looks for his own shot first, can't get to the basket consistently, has trouble finishing when he does, and doesn't have consistent 3-point range. Also, he's overrated defensively, and we have a much better defender in Raja Bell, not to mention that Shaun Marion might be the best defensive player in the league. I see no way that this trade would help us in any conceivable way.

Ferry: I can see how it might look that way at first. But think about it. Shaun can't create his own shot, and plays best when he's getting the ball cutting to the basket or for a spot-up shot, while Larry excels at creating his own shot-he can fire off a contested 20-footer at any time.

Kerr: We have the best point guard in the league, and our offense is based around him creating shots for other people. The only two players on your team I'd be interested in are Varejao, who rebounds, plays defense, and runs the court, but you guys didn't want to trade him when he was in the last year of his rookie deal, and I'm not paying $8 million for him now. But I do like that young Daniel Gibson; he's an athlete who can flat-out shoot, and we could always use a player like that so that Nash doesn't have to play 35 minutes a game 82 times a year.

Ferry: Slow down, Steve. We really like Daniel. He just exploded from relative obscurity to put up the best games of his life in the playoffs, exceeding all possible expectations of him. You never sell an asset when its value is really, really high. I didn't even need to go to business school to learn that. I am, however, willing to part with Drew Gooden.

Kerr: Never call me again.

(Sasha Pavlovic and his agent, Mark Goldstein, enter the room.)

Ferry: Hello, Mark.

Goldstein: Hi, Danny. Let's talk business. Sasha had a great year for you, he's still under the radar, and he's a great young piece for this franchise. We'd like a reasonable extension that would ensure that Sasha will spend his time with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Ferry: Now how did the idea get in your head that we'd want to make any kind of significant effort to keep Sasha?

Goldstein: Well, he's your starting shooting guard, shot 45% from the field, 40% from 3-point range, and 80% from the line, and averaged a solid 14 points per game once he was made a starter. He's also the only player other than LeBron who can consistently get to the basket and finish, and he plays very solid defense.

Ferry: Meh. Sasha's good at making plays, but we already have LeBron to drive to the basket. There's no sense in having two players who can drive to the basket. We want to surround LeBron with shooters.

Goldstein: Sasha shot 40% from 3.

Ferry: Look, you can twist the facts all you want, but Sasha wasn't all that great for the entire first two thirds of the season.

Goldstein: Well, he was on the bench.

Ferry: Mike had his reasons for keeping him on the bench, and I have full faith in him.

Goldstein: Well, be that as it may, I don't see how you can judge my client on what he did before he had a chance to play, and I'm not sure he didn't deserve to get a chance earlier. It's impossible to make an impact from the bench.

Mike Brown(from other room): Not in the Reverse Motion offense!

(pause)

Goldstein: Sasha shot significantly higher percentages than Larry Hughes from the field, the 3-point line, and the free throw line, and played defense that was just as good as, if not better than, Larry's all season. The only thing Larry is better than Sasha at is shooting more, which really isn't all that impressive of a skill. You have no problem giving Larry $12 million a year, but you don't want to give Sasha $5 million?

Ferry: You're undervaluing Larry's contributions to this team. When we switched Larry to point guard, we had one of the best records in basketball.

Goldstein: That was also the first time the team was fully healthy and Sasha had a starting role. Isn't it possible that putting a good player into the starting lineup from the bench had more of an impact than making an ineffective shooting guard into an ineffective point guard?

Ferry: Look, this franchise is tight for cash. We can't just be throwing money around willy-nilly.

Goldstein: Didn't you just build a $25 million practice facility?

Ferry: That's important. We have treadmills that lower into water.

Goldstein: And you bought LeBron James a lion.

Ferry: LeBron likes lions. Look, Sasha doesn't have a lot of options here. He can take the peanuts or not play.

Goldstein: He'll play in Europe.

Ferry: That's ridiculous. Who would ever do something as petulant and selfish as that?

Goldstein: You.

Ferry: Okay. Sasha looks like a vampire. It creeps me out. I'll keep in touch.

(Sasha and Goldstein leave)

Ferry: Jesus, the world's gone mad. I can't get anything done. I couldn't even sign Alan Anderson. What we need is a shooter, a point guard, and a proven veteran, who can lead this team. But he'll need to be unhappy in his current situation; off-court troubles drive value way down. And he'll need to have GM even worse than me to trade him away. (Jumps up from desk, reaches for phone.)

Ferry: Hey, Isiah! It's me, Danny. How's the trial going? Good. Look, I've got a trade for you. How do you guys feel about Larry Hughes? I thought that's what you'd say-I think he'd be a great Knick too. Who do I want back? Well, that's kind of the interesting part. (pause) Do you still have sneakers that fit?

Examining the point guard revolution, part 1: The Value of Luke Ridnour

2007-09-25T15:47:00.000-07:00

I believe that we are in the throes of a point guard revolution. In the summer of 2004, the point guard position had become somewhat of an afterthought. The Dallas Mavericks allowed Steve Nash to walk, and gave his money to Erick Dampier, the clear implication being that it was more important to have someone who could anchor the defense than run the offense, and that Nash's offensive contributions were far from vital. (I realize that Nash's health and age were a factor, but the culture of the time was far more important; would they have even thought about doing this today?) In The Sporting News' season preview, Sam Cassell, a shoot-first, second, and third player, was their top-ranked point guard, and their explanation about him basically said "we're as surprised as you, but where are the point guards?"

Jason Kidd, one of the best pass-first point guards of the last long while (I'm swearing off superlatives for a while), was traded straight-up for shoot-first Stephon Marbury in 2001, and promptly led his team to the NBA finals and almost won the MVP, but was apparently still no Stephon Marbury or Sam Cassell in the eyes of the experts. Then, in the 04-05 season, the rules changed, the Suns happened, Steve Nash won the MVP, and the point guard position was back with a vengeance. But how have teams been handling the revolution? Is it for real? Which type of point guard is the best? These are the questions we'll attempt to answer this week at TBF.

So I was thinking even more about Kevin Durant. Like I said in the earlier posts, I believe that Durant lacks the explosiveness to be a franchise scorer/player like LeBron, Kobe, and Wade, but belive that he could be absolutely deadly if he is used as an off-ball player; if someone was able to get him the ball for open jumpers and get him the ball in the right spots after drawing coverage, his ability to move without the ball, ability to find seams in defenses, and body control could make him a deadly scorer.

Then I realized that unlike Kobe, LeBron, Arenas, and almost every other perimeter superstar in the league, Durant will be paired up with a true point guard from the very beginning, a pass-first guy whose chief skills are the ones described above. Luke Ridnour averaged 8.4 assists per 48 minutes last year; Smush Parker and Larry Hughes, Kobe and LeBron's starting point guards, barely averaged more than that combined.

But has anybody said "Gee, it sure is great that Durant is going to get to play with a distributor like Luke Ridnour right out of the gate, he'll be able to set up Durant with some good looks." No. Around draft time, all we heard about Luke Ridnour was "If the Hawks trade the #11 pick for Luke Ridnour, they should gouge out their own eyes as penance." The Sonics even drafted another distributor, Jeff Green, to supplement Luke.

Luke is supposed to be the exact kind of player who should flourish in the revolution. He was drafted in 2003, the year before the revolution. When he was drafted, Jay Bilas simply said "He couldn't lift the bench press once, and he couldn't guard the chair I'm sitting on." He's not a physical player, and doesn't play a lot of defense. He would always rather pass than shoot. He's not blindingly fast, but is quick enough to get into the lane, thanks to the hand-check rules. He is a tried-and-true point guard, and runs the offense. He can shoot the 3-ball.

So why has he only been marginally effective? Seattle fans are far from unjustified in their indifference towards Luke; Seattle doesn't win a ton of games, and the offense actually plays worse when Luke's on the floor. While point guards as quarterbacks is its own post (coming later in the week), Luke would be Chad Pennington; unexciting, does his job well, but not well enough so that he's considered a permanent solution.

If the Luke-type of point guard is supposed to be the chief benefactors of the renaissance, why are they in low demand? Let's see if we can't find out.

Here are my characteristics of a Luke-type point guard (3 out of the 4 characteristics are enough to get onto the list):

-Pass-first
-Good, if not deadly, shooters
-Poor defense
-able to get into the lane

With that said, here's my list, with their +/- on offense next to them:

-Brevin Knight (-1.4)
-Kirk Hinrich (+3.6)
-Steve Blake (+2.5)
-Jamaal Tinsley (-0.1)
-Shaun Livingston (-0.5; only fulfills 2 of the 4 characteristics, but is such a good passer I couldn't leave him off)
-Jordan Farmar (-2.8)
-Jason Williams (+2.2)
-Mo Williams (+2.9)
-Jason Kidd (+8.5)
-Chris Paul (+8.7)
-Carlos Arroyo (-2.0)
-Steve Nash (+12.5)
-Andre Miller (+5.0)
-Jarret Jack (-1.4)
-Sergio Rodriguez (-2.8)
-Jose Calderon (+3.3)
-T.J. Ford (-2.7)
-Luke Ridnour (-1.2)
-Deron Williams (+3.0)
-Antonio Daniels (+1.3)

So when we separate it, here are the point guards whose offenses play better with them on the floor, in order (The numbers are their TS%s and their assists per 48 minutes):

-Steve Nash (.654/15.8)
-Chris Paul (.537/11.6)
-Jason Kidd (.516/12.1)
-Andre Miller (.520/9.3)
-Kirk Hinrich (.559/8.5)
-Jose Calderon (.588/11.5)
-Deron Williams (.535/12.1)
-Mo Williams (.519/8.1)
-Jason Williams (.540/8.3)
-Steve Blake (.491/9.5)
-Antonio Daniels (.572/7.9)

And here are the players whose offenses play worse when they're in, in descending order:

-Jamaal Tinsley (.465/10.6)
-Shaun Livingston (.503/8.2)
-Luke Ridnour (.509/8.4)
-Brevin Knight (.487/11.2)
-Jarrett Jack (.571/7.5)
-Carlos Arroyo (.501/7.4)
-T.J. Ford (.508/12.7)
-Jordan Farmar (.515/6.0)
-Sergio Rodriguez (.493/12.1)

So what does that mean? Well, less than I'd like it to. The "bad" point guards made 90% of the assists per 48 that their "good" cohorts did and their TS% was 90.7% of the "good" PGs. Here's what I'm coming away with:

-I realize offensive +/- is a deeply flawed stat, but it's the one I think best sums up a point guard's contribution to the offense, as no other stat measure's a point guard's ability to "make his teammates better." That being said, it's clearly far from perfect, and several of these point guards (Deron Williams, T.J. Ford, and Jarret Jack in particular) are ranked lower than they should be.

-Jose Calderon may be the most underrated player in the league.

-I would have been interested to see how these PGs were affected by the "pace" of their team, but only playoff "pace" data is available on ESPN insider. Dang.

-Many of these players suffer greatly because of their inability to finish inside-while most scorers in the NBA shoot from 60-65% on "inside" shots, many of the PGs on the "bad" list are under .500, while the top 7 point guards on the list, with the exception of Paul, are very good finishers inside. While we often boil down a player's scoring ability to consist of how fast they are and how well they can shoot, many of these players are ineffective because they can't finish.

-11 of the players are on the "good" list, while 9 are on the "bad" list, but when you take away the bona fide stars (Paul, Kidd, Nash, Williams) the "good" guys are outnumbered 9 to 7, which suggests that an average Luke-type PG isn't always the best investment.

-Defense is important, but the point of this was to try and figure out what makes a point guard good offensively, as that is the chief role of the PG, especially guys like this. Defense will be discussed later in the week.

-Although these are mainly pass-first players, the ability to score efficiently appears to be just as important as the ability to make assists for contributing to an offense.

-And if you don't think I'm dumb enough to write a hole post about PGs who play like Luke Ridnour, then forget to include Ridnour, making me have to re-do my calculations, you don't know me well enough.

An Interesting Wrinkle in The LeBron-Jordan comparison

2007-09-23T20:33:00.000-07:00

So this week, I decided to re-read David Halberstam's Playing For Keeps, which I couldn't recommend more highly; it's an incredible portrait of Michael Jordan, the best I've read, but more than that it encompasses the Jordan Era in basketball completely; If you read The Rivalry by John Taylor (encompasses the Wilt-Russell era, when the NBA was still a "niche" sport; Wilt scored 100 in a nearly empty arena), The Breaks of the Game by Halberstam (encompasses the NBA's transitional period between the Wilt-Russell era into a new era of Bird/Johnson/ABA integration-led commercialism and popularity), and Playing For Keeps, you'll have a pretty good grasp of the NBA from its beginning to today.

Anyways, one interesting thing that stood out in Halberstam's book was not just that Jordan was the best ever at what he did, but he seemed able to surround himself with people who were the best at what they did to help him on the way.

By the time he reached his prime, Jordan had surrounded himself with the best 2nd banana of all time (Scottie Pippen, whose greatness has been previously discussed here), one of the best rebounding/defense garbage players of all time (Rodman), some of the best 3-point shooters of all time (Paxon and Kerr), and other distinguished role players (Grant, Wennington, B.J. Armstrong, Ron Harper). His coach was the best coach of the modern era, his college coach was Dean Smith, and his assistant coach was one of the best assistant coaches of all time. (Tex Winter, architect of the legendary Triangle Offense.) And his walk-around guy, Charles Oakley, may well be the best walk-around guy of all time.

The effect even carried over to the world outside of basketball. His agent, David Falk, was an absolute genius, and is regarded as a legend among agents for his idea of marketing Jordan as an individual star. (Believe it or not, at the time it was unheard of to design a marketing campaign around someone who played a team sport; when he first unveiled his plan, the executives said "Do you think Michael's a tennis player?") He made ads that still stand out as brilliant works of art, directed by none other than Spike Lee. His shoe was Nike, the king of the sneaker world, and his sneaker is the legendary Air Jordan, the most-demanded sneaker of all time. His trainer, Tim Grover, is still regarded as the best trainer in the world today, and continues to help athletes turn their careers around. Gatorade, the drink he promoted, is still on every sideline. Hell, his biographer is the best nonfiction writer of the last century.

(One debatable aspect of this theory is Michael's GM, Jerry Krause. While most agree that he was something of a savant at finding talent where others wouldn't, and was responsible for the drafting and signing of Scottie Pippen and Toni Kukoc, among other brilliant moves, he was in many ways completely illogical, making nonsensical draft decisions and desperately trying to trade for Keith Van Horn and Michael Olowakandi. Even more, his personality made everyone in the organization bitter, and ultimately led to Phil Jackson and Scottie Pippen leaving tread marks on their way out, causing the dynasty to end in a hurry. I can't make a call on this one.)

Compare this to LeBron. His supposed second banana is one of the most consistently disappointing and ineffective players in the game. His role players consist of an extremely inconsistent power forward, a molasses-slow center with a heart of gold, a point guard who can't play offense, a streaky Serbian wingman, and an energy player who acts like the ball is made of lead.

His coach, Mike Brown, is no Phil Jackson, and that's putting it lightly; often times, Mike seems completely and utterly overwhelmed, buried the Cavs' 2nd and 3rd best scorers on the bench most of the year, and makes time-outs and roster decisions that utterly defy any sort of logic. (Look at Game 5 of the Detroit series, where the Cavs didn't have a time-out at the end of the 1st OT because Brown used it for no reason at all a few possessions earlier.)

Instead of Tex Winter's legendary triangle offense, the Cavaliers run the "random offense," where LeBron gets the ball of an ineffective screen-roll and ends up 25 feet away from the hoop with no options. It is generally considered the worst designed offense in the NBA.

Even off of the court, LeBron has confusing bedfellows. Instead of an agent like David Falk, LeBron allows four of his friends from high school to run his affairs. And while I certainly can't say LeBron's personal trainer is doing a bad job (LeBron, already possibly the greatest physical specimen in sport, added another 10 pounds of muscle this off-season, making him an obscene 260 with no loss of explosiveness whatsoever, if the FIBAs are any indication. ) But he has failed to find a shooting coach able to fix his mechanical issues in his shot (the fade and the failure to hold his finish), although he has worked with a coach this off-season, and he shot the ball wonderfully in the FIBA games. His sports drink is Powerade, not Gatorade. (To his credit, LeBron is with Nike, and they've done a wonderful job with him, although the LeBrons have never reached Air Jordan status. And his ads are wonderful, but they're not Spike and Mike.)

(One quick aside: LeBron does have the good fortune of being covered by one of the best beat writers in the NBA, Brian Windhorst, who regularly provides wonderful insight into LeBron's world; I look forward to his book on LeBron, and hold out hope that it will cover the LeBron/Wade/Carmelo era the way the previous books I mentioned covered their respective eras.)

And while Krause's effectiveness is debatable, the Cleveland management's ineffectiveness is not; they allowed Carlos Boozer to leave, gave a max-dollar deal to Larry Hughes, signed Damon Jones and Donyell Marshall to long-term deals, gave away Ricky Davis and Darius Miles in a necessary purge, drafted Luke Jackson over Andris Biedrins, Al Jefferson Josh Smith, J.R. Smith, and Jameer Nelson, and drafted Shannon Brown over Jordan Farmar and Sergio Rodriguez. This off-season, they have failed to make a move, and risk losing Varejao and Pavlovic.

Of course, what must be said in conclusion is that it is entirely possible that Michael made those around him just as much as they made him. Phil Jackson toiled in the CBA before rising to glory with Jordan. David Falk was a young, up-and-coming agent. Scottie was a little-known prospect from Central Arkansas before hooking up with Michael, and Rodman was a failed experiment in Detroit and San Antonio. Nike was a relatively unknown company with nothing to lose, and Spike Lee was a little-known indie director who the Nike execs had noticed by chance in She's Gotta Have It. Nobody knew who Tim Grover was, and even the concept of a personal fitness program was somewhat new. Also, it took Michael several years to find his supporting cast; he toiled alone for the fist phase of his career.

Whether LeBron will find the supporting cast he needs to achieve history or will make his current supporting cast into legend as Jordan did remains to be seen. But for now, the gap between those around LeBron will require him to surpass Michael Jordan's achievements in order to live up to his legend.

Comparing Kevin Durant

2007-09-20T21:41:00.001-07:00

So last Sunday, I voiced my doubts about Kevin Durant. What was intended to be a fun point-counterpoint article with one of my colleagues on the site I work for (Cavalier Attitude at mvn.com) ended up getting picked up by TrueHoop, linked by FanHouse, (Shoals liked it, which makes me very happy), and ended up on about a million message boards. In a way, it was my "breakout" post, but part of me would really like to break back in. If you've never experienced tons of faceless people calling you an idiot and a hack, let me tell you, it's interesting. On a related note, my nicotine consumption has quadrupled since Sunday.

Hence, it's positivity week here at TBF, and the first thing we're going to attempt to do is find some sort of comparison for Kevin Durant, one of the most unique players to come into the league in the last several years.

Whenever I engage in an exercise like attempting to project Durant, I think about the movie Pi. If you've never seen it, the movie is about a numerologist who charts the stock market obsessively, attempting to find some sort of predictable trend that would allow him to crack its code, only to eventually fail, go insane, and drill a hole in his own head. (In between, there was something about a secret number, a lot of shaking camera, and loud, weird music. I hated it; naturally, it's considered a triumph of independent cinema.)

The NBA is ridiculously difficult to figure out, because each player is, to an extent, a special snowflake. While there are some general trends that pop up, there are always players that fail or succeed for seemingly no reason at all. If we were to try to be an absolute judge of an NBA player's potential and grade prospects on a 12-category 1-100 scale, we'd all end up drilling holes in our own heads. (By the way, this is why I find skill-by-skill breakdowns like Bill Simmons' take on Oden-Durant ridiculous.)

The only way to judge players is to judge them as individuals, attempting to fit them into what we know as well as we can and using our own imaginations to project what they will do as their own unique player. This is what I did with Kevin Durant; I cannot empirically prove that I'm right, but I do stick by my opinions.

So anyways, here are the best comparisons I can come up with for Kevin Durant, in no particular order:

1. Kevin Garnett

Why they're alike: Like KD, KG came into the league at an extremely young age, was a skinny boy with ridiculous length, and possessed the type of "guard skills" that big men just aren't supposed to have. He has many polished moves from the mid-to-high post, a nose for the ball on the boards, and a reliable fadeaway jumper that he falls in love with at times. Also, he possesses the type of intensity that KD supposedly has, although Durant may have one-up on him already between the shoulders, as he seems to be comfortable with being "the man" and taking the last shot.

Why they're not alike: KG is a four, and has been nearly his whole career. He's tall enough and wiry-strong enough to play the position, and has proven himself to be one of the best rebounders in the NBA. He is also enough of a defensive stalwart that the Suns seriously considered trading a younger, more explosive Amare Stoudamire for him for the sole purpose of a defensive upgrade.

Durant is clearly a 3 at this point in his career, and while KG works from the mid-to-high post, never taking 3s, Durant prefers to operate from the perimeter facing up, like a shooting guard, and the 3 is a major weapon is his arsenal. Also, he's a defensive liability. However similar their bodies and movements may appear to be at first blush, KG is at heart a big man, and KD is at heart a perimeter player. Also, Garnett has never been a volume shooter, preferring to score 20 a game, do the little things, and defer, while KD loves to get his shots.

2. Dirk Nowitzki

Why they're alike: Like Durant, Nowitzki is a big man whose primary offensive weapon is a deadly jumper. Like Durant, Nowitzki is neither fast or strong, but is an offensive weapon due to his ability to compliment his jumper with a series of moves to keep defenders off-balance and get to the hole. Like Durant, Nowitzki is an absolute liability defensively.

Why they're different: For being similar in their ends, Dirk and Durant couldn't be more different in their means. Dirk is methodical and deliberate in everything he does, from that slow-back down to that goofy, slow release on his jumper: Durant makes quick moves and has a hair-trigger release. Nowitzki disrupts the flow of defenders by having no flow whatsoever; everything is herky-jerky and bizzare with him, and doesn't look like any other player's movers. Durant emanates polish and smoothness with his moves.

Dirk's game is sharply scripted(witness his meltdown when the Warriors hit him with a new defense, one predicated on knowing exactly what he was going to do), while Durant's is all about improvisation. Despite Dirk's reputation as a 3-point gunner, he made just under 1 per game last year; Durant made more than twice as many per game. Saying Durant and Nowitzki are similar is like saying that Kanye West and Weird Al Yankovic have both become best-selling musicians by using humor in their lyrics; it's technically correct, but at the same time, it's way off.

3. Keith Van Horn

Why They're Alike: Drafted No. 2 behind the two "safest" big men of the last 10 years; 6-10 and skinny. Excellent shooters. Slightly lacking in athleticism. Plays with a smoothness. Poor passers. Able to post-up and score on the block. Tends to fall in love with his jumper. Poor defender.

Why They're Different: Van Horn was always a "soft" player, and all the reports on Durant highlight just how much of a cold-blooded killer he is, someone who will never let himself get in the way of reaching his potential. While I take a lot of those reports with a grain of salt, because it's hard enough to properly assess what a player is doing on the court without trying to be armchair psychologists, Durant does clearly seem to be one-up on Van Horn between the shoulders. Also, as I mentioned, every player is his own snowflake, and subtle differences in their athletic ability and quickness of their moves could make all the difference. Other than that, the amount of similarities between the two of them should be troubling, but I'm definitely not ready to write off Kevin Durant as Keith Van Horn, Mark 2 yet.

4. Toni Kukoc

Why they're alike: Both are best described as 6-10 shooting guards, although Kukoc preferred to distribute where Durant prefers to score. Beautiful outside stroke, smooth athleticism, suspect defense-a lot like Keith Van Horn.

(Interestingly, Jerry Krause loved Van Horn and Kukoc more than any other players during his time with the Bulls-he scouted and signed Kukoc himself, labeled him an "untouchable" when he was coming off the bench, and clearly planned to build his Magnum Opus, the post-Jordan Bulls, around Kukoc. He was also infatuated with Van Horn, and tried to essentially trade Scottie Pippen for him straight up. I'll bet you Jerry Krause loves Kevin Durant.)

Why they're different: Again, Durant may be slightly more athletic, but the main difference is that Toni Kukoc was a giant vagina in Chicago, and Durant seems bred to be a basketball killer.

5. Pistol Pete Maravich

Why They're Alike: Both had games predicated on moves built through hours upon hours of obsessive practice. Both made up for their relative lack of speed with a devastating assortment of those moves, combined with a quick, beautiful shooting stroke. Both have been "the man" on their teams for as long as they can remember, and have always been the 1st offensive option, which makes them unafraid to bomb away. Both looked eternally boyish.

Why they're different: Well, Pete was a 6-4 combo guard, while Durant is a 6-10 small forward. Also, while Pete loved to play flashy (check out his YouTube), Durant seems uninterested in flash for flash's sake. Additionally, Pete's obsessiveness about basketball caused him to eventually physically and mentally crumble and descend into alcoholism and self-hatred, and wished that aliens would take him away from the world he hated. (I know everyone's read articles on Michael Jordan and Larry Bird, but maybe all-consuming obsession isn't always the best thing to wish on our favorite athletes.) Durant doesn't seem unhappy, or have a Press Maravich-like father. (Quick aside-Kevin Love does.)

6. Tracy McGrady (Current Incarnation)

Why They're alike: Both came out of high school ridiculously skinny and weak (McGrady apparently was even worse at the bench press than Durant), both have a hair-trigger jumper that they will fire anywhere, at any time, both will have relatively low shooting percentages (McGrady is a career .439% shooter), but will be the focal point of the offense and able to generate quick bursts of scoring; both have smooth games and good-but-not great athleticism.

Why they're different: Again, Durant is supposed to be a frontcourt player, which is a big difference. And while McGrady has proven himself able to run an offense (6.5 assists per game last year), Durant is primarily a pure scorer at this point in his career.

7. Rashard Lewis

Why They're Alike: When Durant was just starting to blow up at Texas, a few people, including myself, started saying, "wait, if Durant is supposed to be a franchise player with the type of game we've never seen before, isn't he a lot like Rashard Lewis?" He's got power-forward height but will probably never play the four because of a lack of bulk and ability to bump inside, can shoot 3s and score inside well, has good but not freakish athleticism, and is an absolute defensive liability.

The Sonics apparently thought along the same lines, and made it clear that Lewis was no great loss after they drafted Durant. (I'm not saying that they would have paid him max-money without Durant, but they would have tried to keep him. Also, I will forever be mad at the Sonics ownership for not giving us a lineup of Ridnour/Allen/Lewis/Durant/Wilcox. That would have been epic. 163-181 games? 50 3s in a game? What would have happened? Sadly, we'll never know.)

Why They're different: Maybe it's because of the media's ability to warp my brain (remember, I'm a smoker), but the comparison just seems ridiculously invalid. Flipping around the Nowitzki comparison, where they use different means to achieve the same ends, Durant and Lewis use the same means to achieve different ends-think DMX and Busta Rhymes. For all his talent, Lewis seems unmotivated to take over games, is adverse to creating his own shots, and generally scores on catch-and-shoot or catch inside-and-score situations.

Durant, on the other hand, is used to being the man, and Seattle is grooming him to continue that role. He loves to create his own shot, and has created a wide variety of moves to allow him to do so. He will be the focal point on offense, just like he always has been, at least in the beginning, and he will never fly under the radar like Lewis has for so much of his career.

8. Michael Redd

Why they're alike: Both have good jumpers that they're not shy at all about firing off, get to the rim with the threat of their jumpers and smooth attack moves instead of pure explosiveness, both are liabilities defensively and pure scorers instead of shot-creators.

Why they're different: Redd likes to operate off screens, while Durant is going to have the ball in his hands a lot. Also, Redd is a shooting guard. Durant is 6-10. Sorry if I keep repeating this.

9. Larry Bird

Why they're the same: Under-athletic. Jump shooting forward. Focal point of offense. Killer drive and instinct, with ability to take over games. Extremely polished skills. I'm repeating myself a little by now, so I'm keeping it short.

Why they're different: Larry's best offensive skill was arguably his court vision; he was as much a passer and a scorer, and passing is the one part of Durant's offensive game that's underdeveloped. Additionally, Larry may have been slow, but he was strong and tough-as-nails, and was always able to successfully bang inside for tough buckets and boards.

While just how well Durant will do this in the pros is a source of much debate, as he was able to do it in college, but not in summer league, and he could or could not gain 30 pounds of muscle in the next few years, I personally lean slightly towards the school of thought that he will stay a perimeter player at the NBA level.

Also, remember that Larry never made more than 90 3s in a season, while Durant will probably make from 150-200 his first year in the pros. Most importantly, I just don't think we're ever going to see another player quite like the Hick From French Lick-the most unique superstar in the game today, Nowitzki, is the only one that comes close, and even he lacks Bird's ability to run an offense. I'm not comfortable calling Kevin Durant the next Larry Bird because I don't think there's going to be another Larry Bird. Players like Nowitzki and Bird are exceptions to the rules I've learned from following this game, and I can't confidently say that a player will become an exception. And I'm not going to dignify the Adam Morrison comparison with its own heading, but basically he was the evil Larry Bird.

Conclusion:

So there you have it: 1 Legend, 1 Franchise Player with no ring, 1 Hall-of-Fame Second Banana with no ring, 1 Hall-of-fame doomed scoring champion who never got a ring, 1 complimentary player on a championship team, 1 leading scorer who's never made it past the 1st round, 1 great scorer who chose being the man on a bad team over being the 2nd option on a great team, 1 second banana who has never found himself in a winning situation, one bust who found redemption as a bench player, and one mega-bust whose youth gives him a shot at eventual redemption. I encourage you at this point to use those comparisons to form your own opinion on where Durant will fall, as there's a wide range of possibilities up on that board.

Here's what I think will happen: Durant could be doomed to being "the man" on a lottery team for the rest of his life, because I don't think he's a good enough player to carry a franchise to the promised land by himself like the best players in this league can. He could be an amazing 2nd or 3rd option on a quality team, as he would be deadly if defenses left him alone, knocking down open shots and finding seams in unsuspecting defenses, and eventually finding his way inside on a team's 2nd or 3rd best defender and getting a few put-backs and post-up points. I don't think Seattle was wrong to take him, but I do think they'll need to pull off a Pippen-like miracle in order to make a rebuilding project centered around him to work. (If it works out that they get a top 5 pick in next year's draft, that could be very good.)

Kevin Durant is not MJ, LeBron, Wade, Kobe, Tim Duncan, or Larry Bird. But he's not Adam Morrison or Keith Van Horn either; I'll be watching Kevin Durant's career with extreme interest. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go drill a hole in my head.

Not So Fast, Kevin Durant Lovers

2007-09-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

After Greg Oden's tragic season-ending injury, many have come of the opinion that Durant was, in fact, the better pick for now, and have been eager to jump onto the Durant Bandwagon in full force. I, however, am not sold, and I'll tell you why.

I am not here to discredit Kevin Durant's credentials. He was absolutely sublime for Texas all season long, and put up the kind of single-game numbers you just don't see from a college player. As a freshman, he wasn't just the best player in the country, he was clearly the best player in the country. And watching KD, it's easy to see why people predict greatness for him: He has one of the purest shooting strokes I've ever seen, a huge collection of offensive moves from the post and the perimeter, and a beautiful fluidity to everything he does. Oh, and he's 6-10. We really never have seen a player like him before; he's some kind of bizarre mixture of Kevin Garnett, Tracy McGrady, Dirk Nowitzki, and Kobe Bryant, and his uniqueness makes any sort of prediction about him pure speculation.

But here's my speculation: Durant will disappoint.

Durant is primarily an offensive player, so I'll state my qualms about his offensive game first. As I said, Durant has a beautiful jump shot, and is a pure shooter, so he can get squared up from any angle and get his shot off at any time. However, being a great shooter does not make a franchise NBA scorer.

The average NBA possession yields just over half a point-the average "true shooting"% for the league last year was around 55%. (If you don't know what this stuff means, take 10 minutes out of your day and read Hollinger. Trust me, it'll be worth it.) Good jump shooters, like Kobe Bryant, Gilbert Arenas, and Ray Allen, shoot an eFG% of anywhere from 45-49% on jumpers, under the league average for efficiency. Today's game is about going to the rim, where baskets are much easier to come by (good scorers shoot anywhere from 65-70% on "inside" shots), and fouls can be drawn for easy points. The other way to come by efficient scoring is by getting a sharpshooter behind the 3-point line, where the extra value of the shot makes up for its difficulty. (A 40% 3-point shooter is really shooting 60%, which is good.)

Mid-range shots are an inefficient way to score, especially for a player who will never get a good look at one; while the mid-range jumper is sometimes necessary to "keep the defense honest" and consequently free up space to get to the rim, a contested midrange jumper is almost universally an inefficient shot. Durant's 3-point shooting ability would normally be a huge asset to his team, but with how defenses will be keying in on him next year, the shot is just too tough to hit consistently under coverage. (His .236 3-point% in the summer league seemed to reflect this.)

Make no mistake: the key skill for a franchise scorer in this league is the ability to get to the rim and get shots inside. Even superstars who are thought of primarily as jump shooters get to the rim regularly. (Kobe Bryant and Gilbert Arenas were 1st and 2nd in the league in Free Throw Attempts last year.)

Do I think Kevin Durant will consistently be able to get to the rim at the NBA level, and hence become the franchise scorer he's projected to be? No. He doesn't cause mismatches. While that may seem like an odd thing to say about a 6-10 shooting guard, it's true. After the infamous combine, basketball's answer to Vince Young's Wonderlic test, basketball purists quickly came up with a consensus: he's a basketball player, not a track star. If you think these measurements can tell you what kind of player he'll be, you're an idiot. Tony Allen dominated these tests, for the love of god. I won't take cheap shots at that kind of thinking by pointing out that it led to us taking Luke Jackson over Andris Biedrins, Josh Smith (Jay Bilas: "he will be the bust of the draft."), J.R. Smith, Sebastian Telfair, and Jameer Nelson; that would be wrong. Instead, I'll point out how all the best scorers in the NBA are either bigger or faster than anyone trying to guard them, or, in LeBron James' case, both. Great players cause mismatches; Kevin Durant is on the receiving end of one. He's either a slow small forward, molasses-like shooting guard, or weak power forward; Ron Artest could get in his grill all day from the perimeter and comfortably keep him out of the paint, as could Lamar Odom or even Tayshaun Prince. He's not going to overpower anybody.

Going through his YouTube highlights one more time, not only did the amount of jump shots stand out (jumpers on YouTube?), but the finesse of his game. One move that Durant seems to have in his bag is to drive hard one way, then lose his man with a counter-spin the other way and hit the resulting 7-footer. It's a gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous move, but it has disturbing implications; he invented that move because he was getting beaten to the spot on his drives by white guys from Gonzaga, who may or may not have thought that he was a dragon. He did dominate in college, but he did so not through his sheer ability, but with his ability to bend the game so that his abilities would be highlighted. Will that ability be enough at the NBA level? I do not think so. In the Summer League, his forays to the basket were often stopped cold by fellow rookies and D-leaguers; he did start getting to the line near the end of the summer league, but Adam Morrison averaged over 10 free throws per game during his summer league, and while I think the Morrison/Durant comparison has been played out, that does seem pertinent. If Kevin Durant can find a way to get to the league in the NBA, I'm wrong about him. But he seems to willing to settle for his jumper, as well as just not fast enough.

So that's why I don't think that Kevin Durant will shoot higher than 40% this year, which only scratches the surface of why I don't think he'll become a franchise player. When playing the "compare the best players in the NBA" game, typically around MVP time, one of the most important things for me is "how good is he on his worst night?" In other words, when he can't buy a jumper to save his life or find easy lanes to the bucket, how does he help his team to victory? Tim Duncan is the best at this test; he gives you 10 rebounds, great defense, draws a double-team, shares the ball, gets scrappy buckets, and leads his team. LeBron will get 5 or 6 boards, get a steal or two, get some points on fast breaks, draw a double-team, and keep his teammates involved. Dwayne Wade will get to the line 15 times. Tracy McGrady will run the offense.

The absolute worst elite player at this test is Dirk Nowitzki, the player who represents the best-case scenario for Mr. Durant. Like Durant, Dirk is an absolute liability defensively because of his lack of speed and muscle, and like Durant, Dirk's offense rarely gets other players going, because much of it is off a jump shot rather than a coverage-drawing post-up or drive to the hole. Dirk has managed to make himself a good rebounder, which Durant has not proven himself able to do at the NBA level. (He could rebound in college, but not in the summer league, and now he's been put at shooting guard.) Unlike Wade or Arenas, Durant and Dirk aren't fast enough to crash into defenders for free throws or strong enough to try to get an easy look in the post when their shot isn't going; their games are entirely dependent on creating and maintaining a groove, and if they're forced out of that groove, like Dirk was against Golden State, they're giving you nothing. When Durant's shot isn't falling, he's going to have himself a very, very bad night.

And as for the USA scrimmage, which he played fantastically in, remember that that style of play is perfectly styled to Durant's strengths: there is almost no scoring off drives, much more spot-up shooting, a shorter three-point line, and a greater emphasis on fundamental play.

So that's my bold prediction: I still don't think I have Kevin Durant figured out, because he is so unique, but that's my best attempt. Feel free to disagree, but for now I'm ready to let Mr. Durant settle this one on the court.

Let's Not Insult Scottie Pippen

2007-09-13T18:43:00.000-07:00

To a lot of NBA writers and fans, this current Cavs team defied explanation. The team relied more heavily on one player than any other playoff team, and that player seemed to have regressed from the previous year. It was entirely possible that we had the worst starting backcourt in basketball. Fans were making Iraq Study Group-like studies about how we ever signed Larry Hughes. Our center and power forward didn't shoot over 50%. By the playoffs, our 2nd and 3rd scoring options were a second-round rookie named "Boobie" and a shooting guard who had been a benchwarmer for the first three and a half years of his career.

And yet we made the NBA finals. How? One team the media has chosen to compare the Cavs to is the 2001 Philadelphia 76ers, a deeply average team led by a singular effort by Allen Iverson to a brief moment of finals glory before realizing the bonds of their own mediocrity and never challenging for a championship again.

I dislike this comparison. I greatly prefer to think of these Cavs as the new version of the Jordan Bulls. First and foremost, we have the player whose destiny is to become the next coming of Jordan. (Wade emulates Jordan's game, while LeBron emulates his legacy.) Second, while all of the hoopla about both teams was about their offensive weapons, both the Cavs and Bulls relied first and foremost on a suffocating defense and domination of the boards, with a slow-down offense meant to keep the pace of the game in the trenches. Neither team features a top-caliber center. Neither team features a true point guard of any description; The Bulls' starting Ron Harper as their de facto point bears eerie similarities to our making Larry Hughes our de facto point, and their other main option, B.J. Armstrong, bears striking resemblance to Boobie. They relied on Dennis Rodman to supply energy, rebounding, defense, and ridiculous hair; Anderson Varejao and Drew Gooden supply those qualities for us. Both teams struggled mightily with Detroit. And Mike Brown and Phil Jackson both coach basketball.

However, there is one huge difference between the Jordan Bulls and this team. His name is Scottie Pippen. Many Cavalier fans have expressed a desire for the Cavs to go and get LeBron a "Pippen", a 2nd banana who can score 20 a game and take some pressure off of LeBron. But by saying that a Larry Hughes, a Michael Redd, or even a Joe Johnson or Ray Allen is to misunderstand just how instrumental Scottie Pippen was to that team's success. Over the years, Scottie Pippen's legacy has become that he was Michael Jordan's great sidekick, a guy who was a good 2nd option on offense and who did all the little things as MJ did his superhero thing and got his team championships. To call Scottie Pippen simply a "glue guy" and mention him in the same breath as a guy like Josh Howard or Shane Battier is simply insulting.

Scottie Pippen was an extraordinary offensive player; playing with one of the biggest ball-dominating players of all time, he scored 20 points a game, not simply by making cuts or knocking down open shots, but by using his ball-handling and athleticism to drive to the hole and finish resoundingly, scoring with his back to the basket using his height, wingspan, and a huge collection of post moves, and an outside shot to boot. And he could also hit open jump shots and move without the ball for easy scores, but again, to say he simply took advantage of the opportunities given to him by MJ is underestimating his offensive arsenal. And his chief role on offense wasn't even to be a scorer; he was a true point forward, whose court vision, passing (he averaged 6 or 7 assists per year during the Bulls championship years), and understanding of the offense was crucial to working the legendary triangle offense that won Phil and MJ all those championships.

Then, of course, there was his defense. He was the best defensive player on one of the best defensive teams of all time, and probably the best perimeter defender of all time; while the Jordan mystique dictates that he evolved into one of the best defenders around, it was always Scottie who got to shut down the other team's best scorer, as well as rotate over to provide help defense better than just about anybody. He regularly made more steals than anybody in the league today, and made enough blocks to put him on par with most centers.

When Jordan was off playing baseball, Scottie put up MVP numbers and led his team to 55 wins and within one game of the Finals. Simply put, he was no sidekick.

So when we talk about adding a "Pippen," what are we saying? We're asking for someone who plays on-ball defense like Ron Artest and help-side defense like Shawn Marion, as well as an offensive player with the scoring ability of Carmelo Anthony, and the passing ability of the kind of true point guard we so desperately wish we had. There's honestly no comparison for the kind of player Scottie was-the closest I can come is Artest, Tayshaun, or Marion, but he was far more skilled offensively than any of those players, and had point-guard like passing ability to boot.

Jordan and Pippen was an amazing coincidence, the kind of thing that shouldn't be able to happen-putting the greatest player of all time alongside a top-5 player that took absolutely nothing away from the team is extremely rare. The closest thing we've had to a "Pippen" situation since MJ left is when Kobe Bryant was paired up with Shaq in his prime, or Shaq just past his prime was paired up with Wade. So when we hope that Larry Hughes can come along into an effective defender and scorer, or that we can land a low-level star like Michael Redd or Joe Johnson, know that we aren't adding a "Pippen"; we're not doing that unless we add Tim Duncan.

So by all means, let's hope we can find a 20-point per game weapon to put next to LeBron, that Larry Hughes will get healthy and together and become the player we're paying him to be, or that we can find a point guard to run the offense smoothly and unleash LeBron, but don't think that those players can deliver us to six titles. Only one man would be capable of doing all that-This Man.

Just to prove that I can write about whatever I want, I'm writing about music

2007-09-10T23:21:00.000-07:00

I just watched Britney Spears' Performance at the VMAs, and I am extremely disappointed. The performance was as bad as all of the vultures, rubberneckers, and cynical whores that populate the pop-culture literati could have imagined it would be.

Let me get this out of the way: I like Britney Spears. Part of it has to do with her prime directly coinciding with when I was going through puberty. But most of it has to do with an admiration that I've fostered for her post-puberty.

Put it this way: Britney lacks a good singing voice or musical ability, which many put out as a damning criticism of her and all who enjoy her. Britney rose to fame partly because of her looks, but mostly because of her understanding of how to work every ounce of talent she had and her relentless drive to succeed. At 16, she was doing 1,000 sit-ups every day to get the kind of stomach she could put a python around on MTV.

In the music world, we hail talent above all else, and look down on those who self-promote and use their drive to carry their success past the boundaries of talent; in almost every other walk of life, that is reversed. In school, Britney would be the girl who got into Harvard with average SAT scores because she studied relentlessly, was student body president, and headed up every club she could, while "indie sensations" would be the slacker genius who ended up at state college because he "didn't believe in the college system." In the sports world, Britney would be Steve Nash: all those sit-ups are like Nash taking extra jumpers, and Nash's ability to see Amare through three defenders would be like Britney's ability to know just how to execute a chair dance that drive every red-blooded American male insane. Meanwhile, critical darling Ryan Adams would be Vin Baker.

That's why I was so disappointed by Britney at the VMAs: she could have nailed it, and I thought that she was going to. The little bad-girl smile she gave right at the beginning, "It's Britney, Bitch!", zoom-out to a surprisingly fit Britney in a bikini and boots; she was ready to show America just why she got so famous in the first place. Trouble is, she forgot too. Zero energy. No sexy smiles. No working the crowd like the next coming of Madonna. Just lazily sexual choreography that hid her face and reinforced her new image as a depressed whore, as opposed to being the perky, hyper-sexual, yet virginal being that she was when she was on top of the world. Although we increasingly demand our pop musicians to prove their musical talent in order to gain our admiration (which I believe was started by American Idol.), there will always be room for a young Michael Jackson or Madonna: someone who becomes a huge star simply because they have the ability to convince the world that they are a huge star, and the drive to make that dream a reality.

Oh, and if you have any questions about whether to get Kanye West or 50 Cent's album tomorrow, you're an idiot. Kanye is a musical genius who raps about his conflicted relationship with himself and the world around him, often offering key insights into his psyche and, by proxy, our own, while pushing the boundaries of what hip-hop can be and what a recording star can and should be; 50 is a talentless, derivative, morally and intellectually vapid rapper concerned with perpetuating his own image. And of the two, 50 is the one who believes he's a role model.

Also, if you actually like music, go to Wildcat Wire, which is on the blogroll here; it's run by my buddy, who knows music the way I know sports, if not better, and also knows more about movies than any sane human being ought to. And his views on music and movies are always about 180 degrees different from mine, which is fun if you like reading things that are wrong.

I've got myself a new job

2007-09-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

After almost a year writing about sports on the Internet, I've actually gotten myself something resembling an actual writing job. I've signed on to join the Cavalier page, Cavalier Attitude, over at the Most Valuable Network, where I'll be joining Amar and James. Needless to say, I'm extremely excited to be joining a network like MVN. It's a great place to be, partly because of the quality of the analysis, but mostly because I can now call Doug Christie a "co-worker." It's a place where I'll have an actual editor, get to be part of a sportswriting community, and get to pretend that I'm a real writer, with a little picture and even my real name. (John Krolik, by the way, although my email address, johnkrolik@gmail.com, should have made that pretty obvious. Apparently, people were able to find me on facebook through this blog, which was both cool and unsettling.)

Look to find all my Cavs-related pieces over there, although I'm definitely keeping this blog, because it's fun having a space of my own where I can write about whatever I want. Again, I'm extremely excited to start over there, and hope that all of you hop over to http://mvn.com to check out the whole site, but especially what I write. And thanks for reading-according to my little site gizmo, about 3,500 people have stopped by here so far, and considering that 280 people went to my high school, that's a pretty cool feeling. Thanks again and go Cavs!

If the world was to go Nellieball

2007-09-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

As my beloved Warriors continue to shuffle their feet on re-signing Don Nelson, AKA the savior of Oakland basketball, I can't help but wonder what the NBA would be like if more teams embraced Nellie's philosophies.

While we could get technical about what Nellieball is, the basic tenants of Nellieball are just not giving a crap. You put your five best scorers on the floor, and watch what happens. Instead of trying to reduce the game to a series of one-on-one matchups, you just put a unit out there that will cause general havoc. It was this philosophy that led to the Redemption Of Stephen Jackson, The Revelation Of the Ellis-Baron backcourt, The Discovery of Matt Barnes, the Davis-Ellis-Richardson-Jackson-Barnes lineup, and The Upset. Anyways, here is a quick list, from 10 to 1, of 10 teams that should absolutely go Nellieball:

10. Detroit Pistons

1. Chauncey Billups
2. Rodney Stuckey
3. Rip Hamilton
4. Tayshaun Prince
5. Rasheed Wallace

Why: Billups is actually more similar to Baron "the messiah" Davis than any other point guard in the league; Tayshaun's destiny is to become Shawn Marion, from the funny shot to the freakish arms to the bizarre sense of ambivalence; Rasheed running, manning the blocks, and gunning 3s needs to happen. And we all know that Rip Hamilton loves to run and hates defense. The best part of this is that there's a good chance that Flip Saunders could finally snap and but this lineup out in crunch-time of a crucial playoff game.

9. Charlotte Bobcats

1. Brevin Knight
2. Raymond Felton
3. Matt Carroll
4. Walter Herrmann
5. Gerald Wallace

Why: Although the backcourt can't shoot, we do have a true point and a Nellie two; Matt Carroll can shoot; Walter Herrmann is all that is good. But most of all, this needs to be done for Gerald Wallace. Look at Wallace, running the floor. Shutting down centers through sheer force of will. Blocking an Andrew Bynum hook shot and running the whole way down the floor to dunk on Lamar Odom. The world must know the force that is Gerald Wallace, NBA center.

8. Cleveland Cavaliers

1. Daniel Gibson
2. Shannon Brown
3. Sasha Pavlovic
4. LeBron James
5. Anderson Varejao

Why: LeBron was not made to suffer in a slow-down offense. He was born to run. This lineup suffers because of the lack of a true point (Daniel Gibson was born to be a Nellieball two), but it has big men who can run the floor and shooters, and it would be vastly more enjoyable than the Cavaliers we have to watch now.

7. Minnesota Timberwolves

1. Sebastian Telfair
2. Randy Foye
3. Corey Brewer
4. Marko Jaric
5. Al Jefferson

Why: Nellieball will redeem Sebastian Telfair. The kid is fast as they come, loves to pass, and loves to shoot. When he is freed, it shall be a glorious day. I believe very strongly. Randy Foye was born to be a Nellie two-guard. Marko Jaric is destined to be the white Boris Diaw. Corey Brewer and Al Jefferson are actually good at basketball.

6. Memphis Grizzlies

1. Mike Conley, Jr.
2. Kyle Lowry
3. Mike Miller
4. Rudy Gay
5. Stromile Swift

Why: Stromile Swift needs Nellieball. Two point guards at the same time. Mike Miller bombing at will. Rudy Gay running, shooting, dunking. Sounds good.

5. Toronto Raptors:

1. T.J. Ford
2. Jose Calderon
3. Anthony Parker
4. Chris Bosh
5. Andrea Bargnani

Why: While the Ford trade and the hiring of the architect of the Suns gave the public the impression that the Raptors were part of the Nellieball revolution, in reality they are far too conventional. They were 8th out of the 16 playoff teams in "pace" factor, and they rarely ever play Ford and Calderon or Bosh and Bargnani together. This would be one of the best Nellieball lineups in the league: 2 true point guards, 3 dead-eye shooters, and two big men who can run the floor.

4. Chicago Bulls

1. Kirk Hinrich
2. Ben Gordon
3. Chris Duhon
4. Tyrus Thomas
5. Joakim Noah

Why: Okay, so you may think that Luol Deng should be in there. He may be "good", but he's not a Nellieballer. He shoots mid-range jumpers, he can only play one position, he doesn't pass, and he's an extremely stable person. I'll be damned if I let him in my revolution. Ben Gordon and Tyrus Thomas were born to go Nellieball, as was Noah. Hinrich can shoot and run the point, and Duhon can shoot, pass, and play defense. And while the Bulls do play a lot of "small-ball", this should not be confused with Nellieball. Basically, the Bulls need to loosen up. They should get rid of Ben Wallace. They should embrace Ben Gordon and Tyrus Thomas. They should attack at all costs. And they should wear headbands.

3. New York Knicks

1. Stephon Marbury
2. Nate Robinson
3. Steve Francis
4. Jamal Crawford
5. David Lee

Why: That's not one, not two, not three, but FOUR shoot-first point guards on the floor at the same time. David Lee would be responsible for all rebounding and defense. I honestly would just want to see what would happen here. And who better to quarterback this unit than Marbury, who seems to have freed himself from all shackles? After this lineup, the Knicks should absolutely put out Balkman, Jeffries, Lee, Randolph, and Curry out at the same time. Ahh, the Knicks. So many possibilities.

2. The Sonics that could have been

1. Luke Ridnour
2. Ray Allen
3. Rashard Lewis
4. Kevin Durant
5. Chris Wilcox

Why: This is what could have happened if the Sonics management had any balls. 50 threes a game. 3 post-up threats. 4 shooters. A true point guard. A man who could one day evolve into the ultimate Nellieball player, the vastly upgraded version of what makes Stephen Jackson so wonderful. But no, it was time to rebuild. The world was not prepared for this lineup.

1. Portland Trail Blazers

1. Sergio Rodriguez
2. Steve Blake
3. Jarrett Jack
4. Brandon Roy
5. Greg Oden

Why: This would be the ultimate in Nellie ballibility. You have three true point guards, one of whom has the nickname "el chacho", and who averaged 12.2 assists per 48 minutes last year. Then you Steve Blake, who averaged 9.5 assists per 48. God only knows the passing we would see from this backcourt. Oh, and Jarrett Jack averaged 7.5 assists per 48. He's the small forward. Brandon Roy at shooting guard? Effective, but boring. Brandon Roy at Power forward? Now we're talking. And then, of course, there's Oden. He dunks with early-Shaq like authority. He can actually handle the ball. He runs the floor like a two-guard. And he's doiminant enough defensively that you can put him and four point guards in a zone defense and still own the paint. Why do we insist on making him another back-to-basket center? In this lineup, he could become a cross of Amare Stoudamire and Mutombo, as well as the key to the ulitmate expression of basketball freedom. (An alternate would be Rodriguez/Blake/Roy/Webster/Oden, as Martell could be great guarding 4s with his long arms and drilling 3s, but I just love having 3 true points and one combo guard out there.)

LeBron's to-do list

2007-09-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

LeBron's performance in the FIBA tournament has shown us the ceiling of the player who supposedly had no ceiling, and it was pretty amazing to watch. After a season where LeBron's flaws nearly gained more attention than his attributes (particularly on this board), it was amazing to see him play basketball that was utterly beyond reproach.

So what does LeBron need to do in order to play basketball like this during the season? While many on this board, and everywhere else, have made sporadic lists of what LeBron needs to improve at in order to achieve basketball perfection, here is my attempt, in order, of what LeBron needs to do to reach his nearly limitless potential.

[B]1. Free Throws[/B]

That's right, the most important thing that LeBron needs to do is fix his free throw problems. LeBron is going to be in the top-3 for free-throw attempts every year for the next decade or so. His current clip of 70% on his free throws is costing the team a point or two a game, not to mention his own scoring average; he could have been a 30-point scorer again last season if he was able to knock down 85% of his free throws. I'm putting this at the top of the list because it will not only boost his scoring from the line, but will actually encourage him to go to the hole more, which is where he is the most efficient.

Also, it's an easy area for him to improve; LeBron proved at the FIBAs that he can shoot the ball, and unlike all of LeBron's other attempts, where he has to deal with 2 or 3 defenders, free throws are just as easy for LeBron as they are for everyone else, which is something he should take full advantage of. While his free-throw stroke looked better at the FIBAs, he was only 12-18 from the line, which does disturb me. There is no excuse for LeBron not to be an 80% free throw shooter, and it would help his game more than anything else on this list.

[B]2. Post Moves[/B]

A common refrain during the FIBAs was that "LeBron with a jump shot would be completely unstoppable." I'll deal with the absurdity of that statement a little bit later, but a much more accurate statement is that LeBron with a post game would be completely and utterly unstoppable. Quite simply, nobody with LeBron's speed (and it's a short list, especially from end-to-end), is anywhere near his size, and nobody who plays on the perimeter has anything approaching LeBron's strength. Due to LeBron's exceptional speed, it's impossible for a Power Forward or a Center to guard him one-on-one, and no small forward, with the possible exception of Ron Artest, has anywhere approaching the strength to stop him; hence, if LeBron could switch from a face-up to post-up game with confidence, he would be unstoppable. Oh, and if LeBron catches the ball 7 feet from the basket instead of 30 feet from the basket, it's impossible to put 3 or 4 defenders between him and the basket; the physics don't work. Hence, LeBron would only have to face 1 or 2 defenders, which is much easier than 3 or 4.

LeBron has all the ingredients to be a great post scorer; He has ridiculous height and size. (He has reportedly bulked up to 6-8, 260; Ike Diogu, a load in the post, is 6-8, 255.) He can finish with both hands extremely effectively, and has a knack for using the glass and making scoops from tough angles that can't be taught; his conversion rate on "close" shots (shots from inside that aren't dunks), is better than noted "bucket-getters" like David Lee, Amare Stoudamire, Dwight Howard, and Zach Randolph, is nearly as good as Carlos Boozer's, and is better than any perimeter player in the league. If he's that good at making tough 5-footers going 100 miles an hour and being fouled by multiple people, there's no reason why he shouldn't be able to convert shots from the same distance at normal speed on one defender.

LeBron doesn't need to be Kevin McHale down there; players with highly refined "finesse" post games actually tend to be much less efficient scorers than post players who like to mix it up and get as close as they can to the bucket. A simple jump hook, drop-step, and 'Melo spin are all the "moves" LBJ really needs down there; the more important aspect for him is learning how to use his footwork to establish deep post position, seal off his man, and allow him to get close to the hoop without actually going under it. From there, he can score it with ease. In the Finals, LeBron showed a willingness to go into the post, and the way he threw Bruce Bowen around like a rag doll illustrated just how tough to stop he can be down there; improved footwork will have him dropping 40 on guys like Bowen all year long.

[B]3. A Point Guard[/B]

Okay, technically this isn't something LeBron can get over the summer. But having LeBron on a team without a decent point guard is like not letting Hendrix do solos; he'll still be spectacular, but you have no idea what he's capable of. Let me put this simply; LeBron James is completely and utterly unstoppable when he is gets a head of steam going in the full-court. He is too big, too fast, too adept at changing directions, too strong, too good a finisher, too good a passer, just too good. He is the best full-court player since Magic Johnson, and he might even be better. While LeBron sometimes gets tentative or jumper-happy in the half-court, when he attacks before the defense can get set, he is the ultimate weapon.

On Team USA, LeBron was able to make 3-4 spectacular transition plays every game because of Jason Kidd's ability to throw a lead pass. It looked so simple; whenever Kidd touched the ball off of a rebound or turnover, he knew where the lead-outs were and threw it to them as quickly as he could. It looks easy, but almost every guard in the league would have started dribbling it himself or needed to look to see where his men were, by which point the opportunity would be dead. A point guard who looked to pass it to LeBron to start a break instead of take it himself and start a slow-down offense would increase LeBron's production immensely, not to mention create some of the best highlights the league has ever seen. (On the same note, if Kevin Love, the best outlet passer since Walton, and LeBron ever got on the same team, it would be absolutely ridiculous. NBADraft.net has love falling out of the lottery to 16; the Cavs are projected to pick at 24. Lack of athleticism can make a player fall like crazy; David Stern, this is your new conspiracy project.)

Also, while people continually stress that shooters would space the floor and free up LeBron, if the defense is forced to react to a point guard's penetration, they can't load up on LeBron; hence, LeBron faces 1-on-1 coverage and is completely unstoppable. And LeBron doesn't need Kidd or Nash for this, or even Bibby; my dream PGs for LeBron would be Sebastian Telfair (LeBron's buddy, full-court passing wizard, undervalued, Coney Island project; read [I]The Last Shot[/I] before you judge him or his cousin.), Sergio Rodriguez, or Jared Jordan, two guys who always look to pass with flash.

[B]4. A Jump Shot[/B]

That's right; the most talked-about weakness in LeBron's game is only the 4th-most important thing on my list. But before I talk about why that is, I'll go into why it is, in fact, a very good thing that LeBron's jumper seems to have improved. First of all, LeBron plays on the perimeter; hence, he's going to be taking a lot of jump shots. At least 60% of every perimeter player's FG attempts are jumpers, even guys like Wade and Carmelo. And if you're going to be taking jumpers, it's better to make them than it is to miss them. Second, a good jump shot is necessary to open up opportunities to drive; this was made painfully clear in the Spurs series, when the Spurs essentially dared LeBron to beat them with wide-open jumpers and he was unable to do it. Not even LeBron and Wade are able to go to the rim 30 times a game; in order to get to the paint, the threat of a jump shot must be enough to force the defense to respect it.

However, I do have some problems with the thought of LeBron adding a jump shot. First, let's address the notion that a player with incredible driving ability and a great jump shot is "unstoppable." That is a ridiculous notion. Consider this: On Team USA, Mike Miller, one of the game's best shooters, was given an extremely bountiful share of open 3s, from a shorter distance, and only made 33% of them. The best shooters in the world who are relied upon as primary scorers only make 40-45% of their 3-pointers, and even "specialists," who only take wide-open 3s, rarely break the 50% mark. Hence, how can a shot which is difficult enough that nobody can make it over half the time be considered impossible to stop? The shooter will "stop" himself more than half of the time, regardless of defense.

An elite inside scorer, such as LeBron, will score on about 70% of his shots from the inside, even before factoring in free throws; for him to be as dangerous from the three-point line as he is driving to the basket, he would need to hit just over 45% of his threes, which is just about an impossible task for somebody who is as persistently defended as LeBron. And don't even get me started on mid-range jumpers; nobody in the league makes 60% of their mid-range jumpers, and most make well under 50%: an average player will convert about 60% of their shots "inside", and hit 35% of their 3s, which makes both of those shots more efficient than a mid-range jumper any day of the week. Defenses will always be better off making LeBron a "jump shooter" than they will be letting him get to the rim; all an improved jump shot will do is make his backup plan more viable, while free throws, post moves, and a point guard will allow him to improve what should always be his primary mode of attack, his ability to score inside.

And, of course, there's always the danger that an improved jump shot will cause LeBron to "fall in love with his jumper" and settle for it more often than he should; past elite players who have developed solid jumpers have been known to stop driving to the bucket, and LeBron's shot selection has been less than sterling over his career without a jumper he has 100% confidence in. Put it this way: 5 years ago, if I had told you that Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady would both develop extremely good jump shots, you would have imagined that they would both be completely unguardable, right? Instead, they have become worse scorers, and Vince in particular seems to have taken much of the effectiveness out of his game by settling for 3s more often than he should. So I think it's certainly good news that LeBron's jumper seems to be better, but if he could get his free throws down, get post moves, and find a point guard to get him in the open floor, he would be very close to fulfilling his destiny as someone who will change the game forever.

I Honestly Think I Have Magical Powers

2007-08-30T15:49:00.000-07:00

As you probably don't know unless you've slogged through 20 minutes of Vick coverage, 2 hours of college football preview shows (Even though they essentially perform fellatio on my school, I am ridiculously sick of them. We have nine running backs. I get it. That's a lot.), and a half-hour of baseball pennant race coverage every night, team USA basketball is absolutely rolling right now. They are completely destroying their opponents, and playing the best basketball the world has seen since the fateful summer of 1992.

Freed from the shackles of oppressive double-teams, the stars on the teams are free to let their strengths run wild in this tournament; Kobe is shutting down opponents on defense and playing his beautiful offensive slash-and shoot game to perfection; Carmelo is playing a Bernard King-like pure scoring role, getting to the line and using the shorter 3-point line to make his mid-range shot into a deadly long-range shot; Dwight Howard is finding opportunities to catch and throw down inside like early Shaq; Michael Redd and Mike Miller have been letting fly from 3; and Jason Kidd is making the whole thing run smooth as butter, the true point guard past USA teams lacked.

Most impressively, however, my favorite athlete, LeBron James, has been playing almost literally perfect basketball.

Here are the raw numbers: he's averaging the second-highest total on the team, despite having less attempts than 4 or 5 other team members. He's 3 assists away from being tied for the team lead with Jason Kidd and Deron Williams, two top-5 point guards. And that's not even the impressive part. He's shooting 79.7% from the field, 70.0% from 3, and 72.7% from the line. He's taken 59 shots and taken 11 free throws, which means that we should add 5 more "attempts" from the line, bringing the total up to 64. If LeBron had dunked every one of his attempts and was yet to miss a shot in the tournament, he would have 128 points; as it stands now, he has 115. I can't give you a "true shooting"%, because the computer I'm posting from doesn't have a calculator feature.(This ain't exactly the New York Times.)

Aesthetically, LeBron's game has been even more impressive than the numbers would suggest; simply put, his own unparalleled skills have been perfectly highlighted by those around him, allowing him to play the game to perfection. With Redd, 'Melo, Miller, and Kobe spacing the floor, defenses have been unable to stack against him, enabling him to drive the hole with absolute impunity. With Kidd pushing the tempo, he's been able to get into the open floor, where his speed, strength and leaping ability make him the closest thing basketball has ever seen to an unstoppable weapon. With Kobe and 'Melo slashing to the basket, LeBron has even gotten to take his breathtaking passing game off of mothballs, dropping no-look dimes for layups like he was back when we first saw him against Oak Hill academy.

Perhaps most importantly, his jumper actually seems to be coming around; not only has he been making his 3s at a ridiculous clip (Carmelo, Kobe, Mike Miller, and Chauncey Billups have all taken more 3s than James, but none of them have hit as many as he has; Michael Redd has hit 6 more 3s, but he needed 29 more shots to do it), but his form actually seems to be better- he has stopped his maddening practice of jerking back his arms instead of following through, and his balance seems to be vastly improved.

He's even gained 10 more pounds of pure muscle without losing any speed whatsoever, and earlier in the tournament seemed to be working on adding actual post moves to his bag of tricks, which would make it literally impossible for any small forward not named Ron Artest to guard him on the low block. (Although this tournament doesn't seem to be the best place to practice them-the high level of team USA's collective skill has rendered extensive one-on-one maneuvers, such as mid-range jumpers or extended post-ups, moves designed to handle a defender's pressure, moot-this team is able to simply drive and kick at will, discarding the defenders completely.)

And as a quick aside, I realize the competition is weak, but keep in mind that team USA struggled with these teams only recently. More importantly, LeBron's play would be amazing in a Rucker-league game; perfection as he is approaching now exists in a vacuum. Also, open looks and a shorter 3-point line don't explain why LBJ is shooting the ball much better than players who are supposedly much better shooters than him.

There are two explanations for LeBron's domination of this tournament. One involves magic, so I'll save that one for last.

The first is that while LeBron's killer instinct has been a subject of much scrutiny over his relatively short career, he has always delighted in systematically destroying any criticism of him that manages to bubble up to the mainstream. "Overhyped, and unable to be an impact player right away." How about the best rookie season of the past decade, as well as the best season of all time by an 18-year old? "Very promising, but still a work in progress, especially with his jump shot, and not a superstar yet." How about a dramatic jump shot improvement, a step up to MVP candidacy, and leading his team to within 1 game of the playoffs, followed the next year by a 50-win year, 30 ppg, a playoff birth, and 2nd place in MVP voting? "Not clutch." A couple of last-minute heroics against the Wizards seemed to quiet those whispers, as did nearly taking down the Pistons by himself. "Lost his passion, regressed as a player, no killer instinct, and not clutch." Game 5.

After the Spurs series, the criticism became that while he may be the most singularly talented player in the league, his game remained woefully incomplete, and especially lacked a solid jump shot. Normally, LeBron would have to wait a full year for redemption in the finals; instead, he has found a way to expedite his revenge on those who doubt him by shoving a newfound Kobe-like offensive precision squarely up two continents' assholes. For all the talk about Woods, Jordan, Arenas and Wade's need for criticism in order to let loose their inner brooding killer, the man who gleefully does a number as Bobby Brown continues to systematically silence those who dare challenge his greatness.

Then, of course, there's the supernatural reason why LeBron is doing so well right now. Several months ago, after the All-Star break, LeBron went on an absolute tear through the league for no apparent reason, then went back to a state of semi-ennui just as inexplicably. When I looked back at it, I realized that LeBron's tear had bizarrely coincided almost perfectly with my short-lived relationship, and posted about it here. That was weird, but I shrugged it off.

The next time I got any play was May 26. (I remember it because it was the day before graduation-it's not like I keep a journal of this crap.) Anyways, LeBron had been relatively unspectacular up to that point in the playoffs, and the Cavs were down 0-2 to the Pistons. Starting on May 27, the Cavs won 4 games in a row, fueled by late-game heroics by LeBron in games 3, 4, and especially 5, the best game of his career. I didn't post about it at the time because I was wary of jinxing anything, but I thought that it was a fun little coincidence, and I would definitely have mentioned it if I hadn't been so desperately afraid of doing anything to screw up the Cavs at that pivotal point in the season.

After a celibate summer (I went to boarding school, so there wasn't a real possibility of summer-league action), I ended up participating in a random, drunken hookup at a party my 2nd day here. (That was also the night I met O.J. Mayo-I thought it was a fun twist that a star athlete caught a blogger in an embarrassing situation.) Anyways, that was last Thursday, August 23, and after an 11-point showing on August 22, LeBron has been on a legendary tear.

So the logical conclusion here is that the fate of LeBron seems to be tied to my ability to get ass. This is a monumental responsibility, and a challenge I frankly don't know if I'm up to(maybe the fact that I'm 18 and made a Bernard King reference tipped you off, but I'm not the biggest player at USC. But I'll keep trying, because that's the kind of team player I am-if I get lucky on Saturday night, maybe the Bibby trade will get done.

Just know I'm still thinking about you guys

2007-08-24T13:10:00.000-07:00

I've been at college for two full days-as much fun as I've had in 18 years. I'll start posting again on Monday when classes start and I'll have to be on the computer anyways, but this is the first time I've looked at a computer or TV since Tuesday night, apart from the 2nd quarter of the USA game.
Real quickly:

-I have met O.J. Mayo.
-I have seen a football scrimmage.
-again, college rules.

Details on those things and more on Monday-come back then.

We Interrupt This Blog With My Life

2007-08-19T14:47:00.000-07:00

Well, I only started this blog a couple of weeks ago, but I've already become attached to it; it feels great having my own corner of the internet, and seeing that little link on TrueHoop a few weeks back was definitely one of the coolest feelings I've ever had-thank you so much for making that possible for me. Basically, I'm loving this, and am committed to making this blog a great place to read quality sports analysis on a regular basis. (By the way: how does everyone feel about the new name and look of the blog? Leave your comments.)

However, posts may become sparse in the next couple of weeks, because on Tuesday, I'm going to start college. I am both excited and terrified to go to USC and meet a few thousand new people for a number of reasons, but let's get to the important question: what will college mean for the blog?

Until I get "settled in," I'm not going to feel comfortable holing up in my room for a few hours and firing out an essay on Kevin Garnett, because I'll feel like too much of a loser. Hence, there will be a downturn in posts for a little bit.
However, once I do get comfortable, my room pretty much has a fridge, a microwave, a little TV, and my computer. That means I'll be watching a lot of sports and hopefully drumming out a few posts a week.
I'll be at the center of the college sports universe; hence, expect some posts about USC football, SC basketball, and specifically O.J. Mayo.

So that's it for now, and maybe for a little bit; wish me luck in this new chapter of my life, and thanks again for reading!

-Krolik

More Thoughts on Head Cases: What's the difference between Rasheed Wallace and Michael Jordan?

2007-08-14T13:45:00.000-07:00

After posting my original piece on head cases, I was disturbed by just how little difference there seemed to be between in the mental states of many of the NBA's best players and the NBA's biggest liabilities.

After all, many of the legends surrounding none other than Michael Jordan highlight just how well he fit into the description of a "Sprewell"; he played every scrimmage like his life was on the line, he got his first coaches fired, psychologically destroyed Kwame Brown, and he spent much of his time in Chicago in an open vendetta with the team's GM, Jerry Krause. He thirsted to make the game personal, and would take anything resembling a slight against him and turn it into an unforgivable challenge to his abilities, which he would always subsequently avenge. His pathological competitiveness has carried over to his personal life, and he has what many would call a serious addiction to gambling.

And yet for all Michael Jordan's flaws, we hold him up as the perfect example of how an athlete should think and act. Tiger Woods currently holds Jordan's old position as America's most revered athlete. (Quick note: I didn't need "Who's Now?" to figure that out. As a sports blogger, I am officially required to take at least one cheap shot at "Who's Now?" I will now return to the post.) Anyways, by all accounts, Tiger has Jordan's personality; as has been discussed this week, he plays with religious zeal when anyone makes any sort of comment about his possible lack of greatness, and he works ceaselessly out of a pure need to win. And if you don't think Tiger's a little high-strung, read about what happens when a camera goes off during his swing.

Hyper-competitiveness is often what breeds greatness; of today's NBA superstars, I would say that KG, Kobe, Gilbert Arenas, and AI are all nuts; what's more, most fans wish that their best players thought like those guys do.

However, it's that same all-encompassing drive and insecurity that defines many of the NBA's biggest "team cancers": Rasheed Wallace, Latrell Sprewell, Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, et cetera.-their inability to be laid-back about the game leads to trade demands, technical fouls, and off-court incidents.

So what is the difference between the great and the cancers? I would contend that it's not as big as people think. I think that the Kobes of the world and the Artests of the world are wired more or less the same; the difference is that without superstar talent, superstar drive can be destructive.

Nobody driven like the people mentioned in this article is able to cope with the fact that they are anything but great; they work tirelessly to become so, and effectively invest all of themselves into being great.

For guys like Tiger, MJ, and Kobe, that's not a huge problem, since their work pays off, and helps to make them among the best athletes in the world. But what happens to people who don't become the best? Quite simply, they create an alternate reality where they are as great as they demand themselves to be, and it is in that alternate reality that problems occur.

In order to square up what people like Rasheed Wallace need to be true (that they're the best) with what often occurs in real life (losing games), they create excuses, and focus their competitive energy on blaming everyone else; coaches, referees, teammates, the league, anybody. This leads to friction, and makes them a bona fide Sprewell head case. Thank you and good night.

How can a player be overvalued and underrated at the same time?

2007-08-09T14:18:00.000-07:00

This off-season, amid the Garnett trade, Jermaine O'Neal rumors, the summer of Kobe's discontent, and Reggie Miller considering whether or not to step out of the broadcast booth and onto the court, the defending Eastern Conference champions have yet to re-sign their starting shooting guard and their 6th man, are actively shopping their starting power forward, and are essentially holding an open audition for their point guard spot. Since it's the Cavaliers, nobody cares all that much, but the Cavaliers' situation with their power forward platoon is really quite interesting.

First, the facts: Anderson Varejao, the floppy-haired wonder from Brazil, is a restricted free agent this summer. He has not been able to come to terms with the Cavs, as his agent, Dan Fegan, believes that he should be making starter money (About $8 million per year), while the Cavaliers believe that as he currently comes off the bench, he should be making bench player money (around $5 million a year). Meanwhile, the Cavs' starting power forward, Mr. Drew Gooden, is currently being actively shopped, and has been for the last several years. The most recent serious rumor involving Drew had him going to the Kings for Mike Bibby, the established point guard the Cavs have craved for so long.

Unfortunately for the Cavaliers, Anderson Varejao knows that he's worth more than $5 million a year, and the league knows that Drew Gooden isn't the kind of commodity that can land a quality point guard. In the eyes of a GM, Anderson is much more valuable than Drew, despite Danny Ferry's efforts to convince them otherwise. However, in the eyes of a coach, Drew is the more valuable player-he played 56% of the minutes for the Cavaliers last year, while Mr. Varejao only played 49%. Oh, and age isn't a big factor; Drew is only 1 year older than Anderson, which makes this different from a simple "veteran production vs. young potential" question.

However, the truly interesting thing is that even though Drew is treated as the starter in Cleveland, it is a near-indisputable fact that the Cavaliers play better when Varejao is on the floor-Varejao and Drew play almost the same amount of minutes, and generally come in for each other, but the Cavs are 4.5 points better per 100 possessions when Varejao is on the floor than when he is off of it, and a stunning 8.5 points per 100 possessions worse when Gooden is on the floor than they are when he is on the bench.

To recap: the conventional wisdom of NBA brain trust believes that Drew Gooden is a better player than Anderson Varejao now, but Varejao is worth more due to his long-term "potential." In reality, Varejao is a better player than Gooden right now, but will probably not get much better over the course of his career than he is right now, while Drew will continue to produce more than many players considered more valuable assets than he is.

In short, Anderson Varejao is underrated but overvalued, while Drew Gooden is overrated but undervalued. How does that work? Keep reading.

Drew Gooden:

The top 10 of the 2002 NBA draft has to be one of the worst of all time. There were 2 bona fide NBA all-stars (Yao Ming and Amare Stoudamire, at #1 and #9), 4 players who are no longer with their original team (Gooden, Dunleavy, Caron Butler, and Chris Wilcox), and 3 players who are essentially done with NBA basketball (Jay Williams, Nickoloz Tskitishvili, and Dajuan Wagner.)

Drew went #4 in that draft. His first 3 years in the league, he averaged about 12 points and 7 rebounds in 27 mpg, shooting at a 46% clip. That was good enough to get him shipped off to Cleveland, along with Anderson Varejao, for Tony Battie and two 2nd-round draft picks. Meanwhile, in Golden State, the #3 pick in the draft, Mike Dunleavy, averaged 12 points and 5.5 rebounds in 31 mpg, shooting at a 45% clip, over his 2nd and 3rd years in the league. That was good enough to get him a 5-year contract worth $55 million. Nene, the #7 pick in the draft, averaged 10 points and 6 rebounds in 27 mpg, shooting at a 50% clip, over his first three years in the league. He was rewarded with a 6-year contract worth $60 million.

Here's a quick recap of what that looks like:

Drew: 12/7/46%
Dunleavy: 12/5.5/45%
Nene: 10/6/50%

Three forwards, drafted in the same year, putting up extremely similar numbers. Two get monster extensions after their first three years, while the other gets traded for Tony Battie.

Why is Drew Gooden so undervalued? Because the things he does well are skills that NBA teams assume can be easily acquired, and the ones he lacks are ones thought to be innate.

Drew Gooden is a very, very good rebounder; however, NBA teams do not consider it prudent to spend money on rebounders, as they assume that big men become better rebounders as their careers go on, although there is no evidence to support this. Here is a list of the league's best rebounders per 48 minutes, from the top down: Reggie Evans, Dikembe Mutumbo, Tyson Chandler, Jeff Foster, David Lee, Justin Williams, and Marcus Camby. Not a lot of trade value on that list-the only two guys seen as valuable are Lee and Chandler, and Chandler was essentially run out of town last off-season, while the Blazers nixed a trade that would have given the Knicks Darius Miles for David Lee.

Drew Gooden is also a quality midrange shooter, and gets many of his points on 15-foot jumpers from the wings. Again, this is not a skill that excites NBA General Managers, as they assume that a midrange game is something that can be developed.

Additionally, Drew Gooden is an intelligent scorer, and can use pump-fakes, jab-steps and two dribble-drives to get his shots; he also knows where to go on a pick-and-pop in order to get his shots. Again, NBA teams consider this an unexciting skill; what professional basketball player shouldn't be able to execute a "show-and-go?" It's not brain surgery.

Those are the things that Drew does well: Hits midrange jumpers, hustles for rebounds, and knows how to get himself looks on offense. All of those are good things, but NBA GMs believe that they can be easily taught.

The things he does badly, on the other hand, seem to be unsolvable:

He's a mediocre athlete. He can't run the floor or throw it down like Amare.
While he can score in a variety of ways around the basket, he's not strong enough to get deep post position, and thus does not appear to have upside as a back-to-basket scorer.
He doesn't shoot 3s. While GMs believe that "touch" is something that can be taught, "range" is innate-you're born with 3-point range or you're not. Drew doesn't attempt 3s now, so it is assumed that he will never be a 3-point threat.

Those are the reasons that Drew Gooden is undervalued. However-and this is where things get a little tricky-many of those same qualities make him overrated, and allow him to get floor time that he does not deserve.

While Drew's rebounding prowess is underrated on its own, combined with a hefty amount of minutes and Drew's affinity for taking shots, he switches from a "good rebounder" to being a "double-double machine." The double-double is intriguing in that it is essentially a worthless stat(If a player is averaging 10 points and 10 rebounds in 40 minutes a game, is he having a good year?) Yet the list of double-double leaders is populated with the best players in the league-Garnett, Howard, Duncan, Amare. By rebounding well, playing a lot of minutes, and taking a healthy amount of shots, Gooden has earned a reputation as being similar to that elite group of players, when in reality he is nowhere near the caliber of player as the rest of the double-double leaders.

Also, while Drew's midrange game would appear to be a good thing, the midrange shot is actually the most counterproductive shot in the NBA. I would need a separate post to fully describe why I so abhor the midrange game, but basically it's so much easier to score at the rim or draw a foul nowadays than it is to hit a jumper that the 3-point shot is the only efficient way to shoot a jumper. (Refrain from commenting on that for now-I will have that separate essay up sometime soon.)

Additionally, Drew is good at creating shots for himself, but he's a low-percentage shooter, especially for a power forward. Those 14 points he's good for are often coming at the expense of shots by more efficient shooters, such as LeBron James.

Drew gets his numbers out there on the floor, which makes him appear valuable, but as we see when we look at Anderson Varejao, numbers often don't tell the whole story.

Anderson Varejao:

Anderson, referred to affectionately as "Andy" in Cleveland, came over in the trade with Gooden as a 2nd-round pick who had gotten absolutely zero chances to prove himself. With playing time, he quickly became a productive player and fan favorite in Cleveland. As it would happen, while Andy doesn't score or rebound as much as Drew, he is more coveted by NBA GMs, although not for the reasons he is actually more productive than Drew now. In fact, the main reason that general managers want Andy is that he can be productive while still being extremely unskilled.

Andy is 6 foot 11, and an incredible athlete; he can run the floor in the blink of an eye, and has an extremely quick jump. To the naked eye, those are essentially his only skills, but the fact that he is such a blank slate allows NBA brass to imagine about his future in a way they can't imagine Drew's.

Anderson might be the worst shooter in the NBA-his eFG% on jump shots was .200 last season. (.500 is good, .400 is acceptable.) Jump shooting is something that can improve with repetition; NBA GMs imagine him being able to shoot a jumper.
Andy has little to no back-to-basket game; that, too, can ostensibly be taught.
As he showed in the last play in game three of the NBA Finals, he often has no idea what he's doing offensively; of course he can learn how to fit in an offensive set!
He struggles mightily to create his own shot, another thing that NBA teams assume players can learn.
He has a thin frame-get him some burgers and he's a low-post terror.

My god! In a couple of years, Varejao is going to be the Brazilian Amare Stoudamire! All he needs is a few of those David Thorpe workouts, and he'll be dropping 25-15s in no time! In reality, Andy probably won't show up one fall with a deft handle, sweet stroke, and Duncan-like post game on a bulked-up frame, but when scouts see a raw athlete like Varejao, all they can see is the best possible scenario. By refining his game as much as he can, Drew has destroyed our ability to imagine what he could become, and subsequently hurt his value. (In a related note, this is also why it's never a good idea for potential top-10 picks to stay in college another year-NBA teams expect them to improve after they draft them.)

In reality, Andy probably won't get much better than he is now. But wait! That's not such a bad thing! Why? Because Andy's underrated! (I really hope that this is starting to make sense.)

Many of the valuable things that Andy does aren't considered "skills" by the people who decide which basketball players are good and which aren't; as fate would have it, Drew Gooden is extremely bad at many of those subtle things that Andy excels at.

As with Drew, Andy is an excellent rebounder; just like with Drew, this makes him underrated, especially since he doesn't throw up double-doubles like Drew does.

As I mentioned, Drew has a much more refined offensive game than Andy does; however, the Cavs score 3.5 more points per 100 possessions when Varejao is on the floor, and 1.5 points per 100 possessions less when Drew is on the floor. There are several reasons for this.

First and foremost, neither Anderson or Drew is a very good shooter from the field-Anderson's eFG% is .476, and Drew's is .474. The average "true shooting" % of an NBA team is about 55%, so both of them are bad options to be taking shots on offense. Subsequently, a big reason that Anderson is a better offensive player than Drew is that he shoots the ball less-when he's not shooting, someone like LeBron is shooting, which is a better situation for the Cavaliers.

The other thing that makes Anderson a more effective offensive player than Drew is that he gets to the line about twice as much. Andy's lack of a midrange game forces him to crash the rim often, while Drew's reliance on his midrange shot and finesse game means he doesn't get to the line very much. I believe that we undervalue drawing fouls for the same reason we undervalue drawing walks in baseball; we instinctively judge scorers by their ability to score, much as we judge hitters by their ability to hit. (I believe that the days of disrespecting drawing contact are coming to an end-as Barry Bonds alerted us to the power of the walk, Dwayne Wade is fast acclimating us to the power of the free throw.)

Finally, Anderson's defense is extremely underrated. He doesn't block shots, and he is far too skinny to stop many of the league's larger forwards from shoving him around on the low block. In fact, his man-to-man defense isn't all that good-his opponent PER is actually higher than Drew Gooden's.

However, while Drew is an absolutely abysmal help-side defender, Andy is one of the league's best, despite his inability to block shots. Andy is extremely quick and always active on the defensive end, which allows him to contest shots. Additionally, he is one of the league's best at drawing the charge, which is actually more effective than a block(the offense never gets it back after an offensive foul), and very seldom fouls. For all these reasons, the Cavaliers are much, much better with Varejao on the floor than they are with Gooden.

So, in conclusion, the conventional wisdom is correct; Varejao is much more valuable than Gooden. Deep down, while they may attempt to play dumb, the Cavaliers know that; so does the rest of the league. They're right, but for the wrong reasons.

The Three Types of NBA Head Cases

2007-08-07T21:38:00.001-07:00

There really is no particular impetus for this post, but it's one of my favorite theories about the NBA, so I've decided to write it out for you, the reading public. Often times, during the NBA draft or during the season, a player will be referred to as a "head case," or will be described as having "poor intangibles." When he plays badly and finds himself on the bench or trading block, the announcers will say "Nobody doubts his talent, but..." You all know what I'm referring to.

However, when we say a player is a "head case," we could be talking about one of any number of things. In my travels, I have found that NBA head cases fall into three broad categories, which I have named after former Golden State Warriors: The Mike Dunleavy head case, The Erick Dampier head case, and the Latrell Sprewell head case. Without further ado, let's break down the differences:

The Mike Dunleavy Head Case:

In 2002, my beloved Golden State Warriors had the worst record in the NBA. The top 2 choices in the draft would have yielded Yao Ming or Jay Williams, the best point guard and center prospects in years. We got the #3 choice, and Mike Dunleavy, Jr. Mike was supposed to be the jack-of-all trades, a worthy consolation prize. He was athletic, had a silky-smooth stroke, was 6-9, and had fantastic "intangibles." (Translation: he played for a successful college program. Also, he was white.) Of course, in the pros, Mike sucked. He had a few horrible years, but managed to flash enough potential to net himself a $55 million dollar contract in 2005. (In a fair world, when Mike Dunleavy came into Mullin's office to sign that contract, Chris Hansen would have shown up.) After 3 and a half years of watching Mike Dunleavy, I will say that he has talent. He has a beautiful shooting stroke, is surprisingly athletic for a guy his size, moves gracefully, and has great court vision.

But, lest we forget, he sucks at basketball. Why? Because he's afraid. He would lose confidence in his shot and go on prolonged shooting slumps. He would often take himself out of games by refusing to go to the hole, finishing with 3 shots in 35 minutes. To succeed in the NBA, confidence is necessary; the Mike Dunleavys of the world don't have enough.

How to spot a Dunleavy:

Getting the ball and passing it immediately 9 out of 10 times
Only shooting when wide-open, and often missing even then
Following up a 30-point game with a 5-point game
Eyes down, ashamed body language
Missing free throws

Current Dunleavys:

Kwame Brown
Keith Van Horn
Gerald Green
Sebastian Telfair
Michael Olowakandi
Dorell Wright
Darko Milicic
90% of all players from Europe
Joey Harrington (Not technically a basketball player, but he's a Dunleavy all right.)

The Erick Dampier Head Case:

I'm actually grouping two types of head cases here, but they both fall under the same basic umbrella: players who don't give a crap. Erick Dampier, whose parents apparently couldn't decide if they wanted to spell Eric with a C or a K, is a fantastically talented basketball player. He's a legit 7 feet, athletic, a great rebounder, has soft hands, and a decent shooting touch. He was the #10 overall pick when he was drafted. His first seven years in the league, he disappointed, averaging about 7 points and 7 rebounds a game. Then, in the 02-03 season, he averaged 12.3 points and 12 rebounds per game. That was his contract year. After he got a fat contract from the Mavericks (he got Steve Nash's money-nice call, Mark), his averages promptly dropped to about 8 and 8. Erick Dampier doesn't give a crap-he's just looking to get paid.

There is another group of players I put under the Dampier label-the shooting guard/swingman types who care enough to get themselves involved in the game, but seek only to make themselves look good. These guys shoot lots of 3s rather than drive to the hole, score a lot of points with a low percentage, pass the ball rarely, and cannot be bothered to work on defense-the bane of the stuffy white sportswriter's existence. While these players differ stylistically from the Dampier types, they have the same basic problem: they lack the all-consuming desire to win, or "Jordan Gene" which we believe should be inherent in all athletes. (I don't believe this as strongly as most, but that's a whole other essay.)

How to Spot a Dampier:

Low rebound totals
Lack of hustle
Showing up to camp fat
Unwillingness to go to the hole
Too many 3s
Poor defense
General disinterest

Current Dampiers:

Michael Pietrus
Ricky Davis
Darius Miles
Steve Francis
Stephon Marbury
Eddie Curry
Now that I think about it, pretty much everyone on the Knicks not named Renaldo
Boris Diaw
Vince Carter
Stromile Swift

The Latrell Sprewell Head Case:

Ahh, Latrell. We loved Latrell. He went all-out every night. He drove to the hole with reckless abandon. He could D up with the best of them. He could shoot 3s. He was the bright spot of a very poor Warrior team. Of course, he was completely insane, and one day he choked P.J. Carlesimo, leading to him having to leave the team and be suspended from the NBA for a year. The sad fact is this: the drive that makes NBA players great on the court often renders them insane off of it. Although the Sprewell head case will play as well, if not better than, a player with no "character issues", GMs are scared to death of them, because when things go wrong with a Sprewell, they simply can't stay on the team.

How to Spot a Sprewell:

All-consuming desire to win
Maximum defensive effort
Takes an inordinate amount of shots(not out of a desire to pad stats, but out of the belief that he alone has the power to decide the game for his team; head-casery is a subtle science.)
Speaks out against the coach
Demands trades
"Off-court incidents"

Current Sprewells:

Ron Artest
Carmelo Anthony
Allen Iverson
Stephen Jackson
Gilbert Arenas (Left the Warriors because he believed having Earl Boykins play 4th quarters was an insult to his abilities, and because the Warriors picked him with the 31st pick instead of the 16th. Trust me, he's nuts.)
Bonzi Wells
Rasheed Wallace

My Final Thoughts on Head-Cases:
My thoughts differ from most on head-cases. Most would tell you that of these three, the Dunleavy is the least dangerous, the Dampier is the 2nd-worst, and the Sprewell is unbearable. I flip it around-I'd rather have a Sprewell than a Dampier or a Dunleavy, and a Dampier more than a Dunleavy. Call me short-sighted, but I believe in putting the best basketball players on the floor and letting everything else work itself out; for this reason, I do not fear the Sprewells. Dampiers often find passion at some point in their careers, but once a player's confidence is gone, it will probably never come back.

Consider my beloved Warriors. The bane of our existance, Adonal Foyle, is one of the nicest, most intelligent men in the NBA, if not the planet. At the middle of the season, we traded Mike Dunleavy himself for a bona fide Sprewell: Stephen Jackson. What happened? Baron Davis, who had been one of the league's biggest Dampiers, found his passion. We started playing defense. We started pushing the pace. We started drawing fouls and scrapping. And during that Mavericks series, whenever we needed a 3, Stephen Jackson would step up and drill a 3 with a hand in his face. Why? Because Stephen Jackson has WATERMELON BALLS. Dunleavy would have passed 10 times out of 10 in that situation. To be the Mavericks, we needed confidence. We needed someone who had no fear. That someone turned out to be Stephen Jackson. To succeed in the NBA, sometimes you need to be a little crazy.

The Adventures of Mike and Flip

2007-08-06T23:33:00.001-07:00

I've already sort of written this and put it on RCF, but I feel badly about not having a new post up yet(coming tomorrow), so I decided I'd put this up for you guys. Anyways, I was thinking about our needs this offseason and had a revelation:

1. Mike Brown is, as we all know, offensively challenged, and needs an assistant who can put in a better offense.

2. We need to improve our offense while remaining a slow-it-down, half-court team so that we can keep our defense intact, since it wins championships and all those things.

3. Flip Saunders is the best half-court offensive mind in the league.

4. Flip Saunders might not have a job next year, thanks to LeBron pulling 29 straight points out of thin air. If he misses just one more of those impossible shots, Flip probably would still have his job. I'm sure he'll never think about that again.

I was just getting into my daydream of the improbable-but-still cool mix of Mike (defensive master) Brown and Flip (offensive genius) Saunders when I realized that Mike Brown and Flip Saunders would be the most hilarious coaching tandem of all time. If we did end up with the Brown/Saunders tandem coaching us, we would also have to hire a 3rd coach, who would be a guy named Rick or Joe who would have the following qualifications: He watches basketball and is not a complete idiot. Seeing as to how both Flip and Brown are basketball's answer to Rain Man, this position would be crucial for in-game decision-making. Without a common sense coach, here's how I would imagine this marriage going:

(Game 5, NBA Finals. Thanks to Flip's brilliant offensive sets and Mike's defensive rotations, the Cavs are tied 2-2 with the Spurs, and the score lies at 96-96 heading into the final minute. Mike Brown calls 1 of the Cavs' remaining 2 timeouts.)

Mike: Okay, the game is tied. If we win this, we probably win the championship. This is an important time-out. In fact, I better make it a double. (goes over to official, takes last remaining time-out.)

LeBron: That was our last time-out. Now we can't set up a play for the rest of the game.

Mike: (grimaces)

Flip: I notice they've been loading up the strong side on LeBron. (looks up at clock, notices it's crunch-time.) Oh Jesus, I can't fail again. Please god, help me this one time.

Mike: It's okay, I've got some plays in my "motion" offense to deal with that. LeBron, catch the ball 30 feet away from the basket on the strong side, and hold it there. The defense will set up a double-team. When they do that, fire a skip pass to Z, who will be 20 feet away from the basket on the other side. When the defense rotates over to Z, he'll hand it to Eric Snow, who's been hiding behind Z-we'll take them by suprise. From there, he'll pump-fake and have a wide-open 22-footer with a hand in his face. Any questions?

Larry Hughes: I have a better play. When LeBron gets doubled, I'll stand 10 feet away from him at the 3-point line, pump-fake once, and get a contested 20-footer.

Mike: That is a great play.

LeBron: When was the last time you made that shot?

Larry: March 8, 2007.

Danny Ferry(wearing a T-shirt that says "I COULDN'T OFFER MICHAEL REDD OR RAY ALLEN MAX MONEY" on one side and "WE DID NOT HAVE THE ASSETS TO COMPLETE A SIGN-AND-TRADE FOR JOE JOHNSON"): Please, just sit down.

LeBron: Let's keep thinking.

Flip(chewing on own arm): If we use shooters to space the floor, it should give LeBron enough room to operate on a pick-and-roll and get to the hoop.

LeBron: That sounds good. Let's go out there with me, Donyell, Pavlovic, Boobie, and Andy.

Flip(pacing nervously): Wait...that's exactly who they'd EXPECT us to send out in this situation.

Mike: My thoughts exactly. Let's send out Zydrunas, Snow, Hughes, LeBron, and David Wesley. That's some good defense right there. God, I love defense. (Orgasmic Grimace)

Flip: When they get the ball, we should switch to zone. The zone is money. When I inherited the best defensive team in the NBA, I put in a lot of zone defenses. We might have given up more points, but they were the right kind of points-zone points. Also, we should put Marshall in to play defense on Duncan.

Mike: That makes no sense at all. I like it. How did you decide your rotations in Detroit?

Flip: Well, I gave Rasheed 35 minutes a game because he said he'd kill me. Chris Webber was our best scorer, so I didn't play him much. I put in Jason Maxiell a lot-he's only 6-7, but he can defend the paint because he's from Cincinatti. Lindsay Hunter has naked pictures of my wife and Larry Brown, so I give him crunch-time minutes. Chauncey is Mr. Big Shot, so I always play him in the clutch. Carlos Delfino is good, but he has stupid hair. That's why I couldn't take out Tayshaun all series, even though he may or may not have thrown the series. I play McDyess as much as I can, because he's slow. Flip Murray is a solid backup guard, so I don't play him. I'm the only Flip in this town. How dare he take my name? (sighs) My middle name is failure. (goes into fetal position)

Wesley(Coming from broadcast booth): I can defend Tony Parker. He likes to go to his right off a high screen, and I used to shut down Tiny Archibald. Holy christ, I am freaking ancient.

Flip: If I lose this game, my wife is going to make me sleep outside.

Damon Jones: You need shooters? Put Damon Jones in the game? Damon Jones will MAKE IT RAIN! Damon Jones should have won the 3-point contest. Damon Jones might not be in the top 10% in the NBA in 3-pointers made or 3-point percentage, and he might get more open looks than anyone in the league from 3, but that's because Damon Jones is TOO GOOD to make open 3s. But I can't be doin' that anymore. I play with my head. You see me psyche out Chris Webber that one time? He was gettin' ready to shoot a free throw, and Damon Jones put the routine on him, and it was like psychological warfare, like straight-up Hunt For Red October type-shit, and he was all like scared, but he made the free throw 'cause he was lucky, don't nobody make easy free throws when Damon Jones is in the house. Now I'm like a coach. A player-coach. Like Bill Russell up in here, 'cept I'm prettier and funnier. Damon Jones is the man. During halftime, I talked to that one guy from Entourage about gettin' a cameo, like Vince could be walkin' down the street, and I'd just drain a 3 from inside my Escalade, and Turtle would be like "Damn, it's Damon Jones, Player-Coach!", and then I'd go 1-on-1 with Eric, and I'd win, 'cause he's short, and then his girlfriend would be like "Damn, Damon Jones! You is hot!" That last part wouldn't even be in the script, but...(Dwayne Jones picks up Damon Jones, takes him outside of the huddle, and points him towards the water cooler. Damon continues to talk.)

LeBron: Anyways, here's what's going to happen. Andy, you're going to set a pick for me on the strong-side, and then roll hard to the bucket. If they double-trap, you're getting the pass. I NEED YOU TO ROLL HARD! (LeBron puts his finger in Andy's chest for emphasis, leading Andy to instinctively flop over the bench and into the 2nd row of the stands.) Donny, you'll be on the weak side. If I pass it to you, will you hit it?

Donny: Hellllll yes. Donny's always down for a blaze. Normally, I'd wait until the end of the game, or halftime, but I'm down for it during a timeout. Pollard hooked me up with some great stuff.

Drew Gooden: LeBron, more people are named James then are named LeBron. Your last name is more of a first name than your first name. Also, Sasha looks like a vampire.

Mike Brown(Breaks clipboard, puts on red pair of glasses to show anger, grimaces angrily): LISTEN UP! THE GAME IS ON THE LINE! TAKE THE GAME! We need a plan! Now, we can't just go out there, space the floor with shooters, and give the ball to LeBron!

Flip: (weeps softly)

LeBron: Wait, why don't we just do that?

(huddle breaks.)

Michael Vick: A Rumination in 3 Acts

2007-07-27T21:06:00.000-07:00

Act 1: The capture of our imagination

Seven years ago, when I was firmly entrenched in my formative sports years, I was The Sugar Bowl at my grandpa's house; I've never been much of a college football guy. (my dad went to Dartmouth; the local team is the Stanford Cardinal. Do the math. Although the Cardinal were actually good that year. But I digress.) Anyway, pretty much all I knew about college football was that Florida State was going to roll over whoever they were playing, and I vaguely knew that their star player, Peter Warrick, was talented but had encountered some serious off-field trouble.

Then I saw Michael Vick run. There was no semblance of an offensive set, receivers running routes, anything like that. Virginia Tech made no effort to pretend that their team was equal to Florida State; there was just Michael Vick. And this wasn't like Steve or Vince Young, running quarterbacks who bookended Vick. Young and Young ran bootleg or option plays, with their runs being efficient, deadly straight-ahead options that was nearly unstoppable, since on any given play they could get the snap and quickly make a run. Michael Vick wasn't running an option, or anything that looked like an 11-man football play-he was just on the playground. 3 or 4 Florida State defenders would get into the backfield, the play would breakdown, and it would just be Michael Vick, playing sandlot football against the best team in the country. And it worked. They just couldn't stop him.

Of course, Virginia Tech lost that game, but like the Florida/Ohio State basketball championship game seven years later, a great program had the show stolen from them by a singular talent who ignited our imaginations like no athlete ever had before.

First, there was the way he ran. Ever since Mr. Knute Rockne started fooling around with the forward pass, running has become more of a subtle pleasure, best appreciated by those who truly understand the sport, such as a batter who sees a lot of pitches in baseball, a good help-side defender in basketball, or soccer. (Translation-it's boring, and anyone who tells you it's not is just trying to sound smarter than you are.) Much like the difference between a .250 and a .300 hitter in baseball is one hit every two weeks, the difference between LaDanian Tomlinson and Mike Bell is 9/10ths of a yard every carry. Like Mr. Pacino said, it's a game of inches. Those couple of feet cost an owner about $10 million every year, mean the difference between relative anonymity and being almost as "now" as David Beckham, and can win a team football games. It's an impossibility to consistently evade 11 of the best athletes in the world when your only possible destination is forward, and thus the running back as we have come to know him does not traffic in the jaw-dropping-in 95 games 2,050 career carries, LaDanian Tomlinson has only 57 runs of more than 20 yards. To borrow a line often used about Tim Duncan, an NFL running back is not consistently spectacular, but spectacularly consistent. The difference between mediocre and great is one extra cut, one little step, the ability to fall forward instead of backward. This is what we've come to know as football fans, and when we see a running back in the NFL, we know to look for that one extra step.

Well, Michael Vick says that you can take your one extra step and shove it straight up your ass. Michael Vick traffics in the spectacular. While the passing game is by nature improvisational, the running game is by nature a scripted affair-run to the left, go forward as far as you can, and run into defenders 4-5 yards later, moving sideways only when absolutely necessary. When a running back starts to run, the outcome is all but assured. When Michael Vick starts to run, all bets are off. The air goes out of the stadium. The opposing coach's heart begins to pump. The Defensive Coordinator starts to look like a Russian Sargent in Enemy At The Gates, explaining in vain to his superior that he knew what was coming but was utterly powerless to stop it. YouTube can explain better than I just what happens when Number 7 decides to run, but needless to say, it is the antithesis of what we have come to know as the running game in the NFL. In 1/4th of LaDanian's career carries, Vick already has 44 runs of 20+ yards; he can make defenders literally run into each other; his runs that begin in the left side of the field can often end up all the way on the other side, with moves in-between that leave the best athletes in the world completely befuddled. When he runs the ball, Michael Vick is consistently spectacular. He is too impossibly fast, too quick, can change directions at the bat of an eye. He could give a shit about falling forward or stretching for the extra inch-he's thinking about the end zone, the spectacular, the moment that takes the air out of our lungs, and all that stand between him and the paint are nothing more than obstacles.

And of course, Michael isn't even a running back. He's a quarterback, who along with having the athletic ability to completely revolutionize the most important position, had the gift originally required to play it the way Mr. Rockne envisioned. And unlike Vince Young, he doesn't throw the ball like someone who has never quite come to terms with the fact that his primary job is to throw the football. He doesn't even throw like Matt Leinart or Drew Brees, who know where they want to put the ball but wish they had a better way to get it there. Simply put, Michael Vick has a cannon. The ball comes out of his hand on a mission, beautifully spiraling through the air like it has a divine purpose, although it too often falls to earth without having completed it. Ryan Leaf and JaMarcus Russell were drafted No. 2 and No. 1 overall in the draft for having arms like that; Michael possessed one as an ancillary gift.

As a sports fan, we learn to adjust to the subtlety of dominance. Although sports video games continue to delude us as to what makes an athlete great(I believe that Stromile Swift owes at least $6 million dollars to NBA Live), often the case is that greatness is born from the traits we overlook when searching for greatness. In baseball, we look first and foremost for pitchers that throw the hardest, or have the biggest breaking balls, or throw with the best control, or are the tallest, or have the cleanest mechanics; the most dominant pitcher of the last 5 years, Johan Santana, and the great ace before him, Pedro Martinez, greatest strengths were being able to make their change-ups look exactly like their fastballs, and Brad Penny, one of the National League's best pitchers, became an exponentially better pitcher when he stopped throwing so hard. Today's Giants-Marlins game featured Kyle Vanden Hurk, a tall right-hander with perfect mechanics who hit 98 mph with his fastball, and Barry Zito, an easygoing left-hander with the biggest-breaking curveball in the league. In 9 combined innings, they gave up 12 earned runs. Meanwhile, 43-year old Jamie Moyer, who can barely hit 80 with his fastball, gave up 0 earned runs in 7 innings.

The best hitter since Ted Williams, Barry Bonds, is about to become the all-time home run leader, and is the only member of the 500-500 club. He also possesses more than 10 Gold Gloves. Yet his most valuable asset-the trait that allowed him to become indisputably the best player of the last 20 years-is not his speed, hands, bat speed, or strength, but his ability to instantly tell where a pitch will be.

In basketball, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird's great strength was not their size, speed, or shooting ability, but their ability to know exactly where their teammates were at all times. Michael Jordan was never the fastest, biggest, or purest shooter, but he combined his abilities perfectly in order to become the greatest player in the history of the game. Dwayne Wade's greatest strength is not his ability to dunk or shoot, but his ability to draw fouls and hit free throws. Steve Nash is far from the fastest point guard in the league, but he is the league's best point guard due to his ability to thread the needle on pick-and-rolls better than anyone else in the league. Last year's MVP, Dirk Nowitzki, is often the slowest player on the floor, is weaker than most all other men his size, and rarely even shoots his signature 3-point shot. Instead, he dominates with an ugly but effective array of high-post fade-aways from near the top of the key. Wayne Gretzky, who has the build of an accountant and isn't particularly quick to boot, is the greatest player ever in a hugely physical sport because of his ability to see the players on the ice like a neurosurgeon sees a brain.

Roger Federer is the greatest tennis player of all time not because he serves as fast as Andy Roddick, runs as fast as Rafael Nadal, or makes as few errors as James Blake, but has achieved a Jordan-like blend of skills that allows him to dispatch of any player who relies on only one. Muhammad Ali and Floyd Marywether Jr. were both boastful men whose greatest strength in a sport seemingly predicated on beating your opponent to the point where he literally cannot get up was their ability to avoid punishment.

And then, of course, there's football. Shaun Alexander is ten times the back that Tatum Bell is, not because he's faster, but because he has the vision to see blocks before they happen. Jerry Rice was never the fastest or tallest wide receiver, but he moved with an indefinable grace that made him all but impossible to stop. Joe Montana was better than Dan Marino because of his ability, whether it was luck or skill, to make passes at the right time. Peyton Manning is the best player in a league of the best athletes in the world because of, of all things, his eyes.

The subtlety of greatness is a compromise we have long learned to live with as fans; if we want to see true greatness, we must first learn to understand it, which is what we are told every time we see a team with a great left tackle win the Super Bowl, the Spurs or Pistons win the NBA championship, Brandon Webb wins the Cy Young award, or Shaun Alexander wins the NFL MVP. The level of talent is so impossibly high at the highest levels of sport that dominance by sheer talent is impossible; if one wishes to be great among greatness, it must be done with nuance and intelligence over sheer ability. Fans of Bo Jackson will attest to this.

We have become used to compromise when it comes to athletes: The pitchers who throw the hardest are the ones who can't throw strikes. The biggest guys on the basketball court can't shoot. Running quarterbacks like Vince Young throw like a girl.

But we accept that fact only grudgingly, and so we reserve a special place in our hearts for those athletes who capture our imaginations and change the rules by dominating not through subtlety, but through something special and obvious enough that the uninitiated will recognize it for what it is: true greatness. I saw it when I was in 1st grade, and Ken Griffey Jr., ran faster than everyone, hit further than everyone, and could make catches nobody else could dream of making. I see it whenever I pick up one of my two biographies of Sandy Koufax, and read about his fastball that made the hair on the back of your neck stand up, and his curveball that fell like a fallen angel, and the way he could put either pitch on a dime. You can throw out all the stats you want, but Roger Clemens will never capture our imaginations Sandy did. We saw it in Lawrence Taylor, when he moved at a speed nobody his size was supposed to be able to move in pursuit of the blind side of an unsuspecting quarterback. We see it in golf, when the man who redefined what kind of abilities a golfer should have also decided to become the best golfer of all time.

During my formative years, I found three athletes who were able to capture my imagination. The first was Mark Prior. Don't need to say much more on that subject. The second was LeBron James, who you will hear much, much, much more about on this blog. The third was Michael Vick, who I fear I may be losing.

Act 2: Looking at a Plateau, Seeing a Mountain

It's easy to forget this now, but Michael came out of the gate red-hot. He took the bottom-dwelling Falcons to the playoffs immediately, even taking them to the NFC Championship game. His runs quickly became the stuff of legend, especially his game-winning scramble against the Vikings. He threw the ball like it was meant to be thrown, firing 40-yard bullets on a dead run. Simply put, the ball was in his hands, he was doing things that we had never seen before, and his team was winning football games. He was effective in ways we didn't know a quarterback could be.

We all saw that, and we saw more. That's the fatal flaw of players who exist to ignite our imaginations instead of lighting up the stat sheet: they have to attempt to become in real life what our imaginations has made them already. We saw a man capable of interspersing shining bits of brilliance with an utterly mediocre smattering of incomplete slants, and instead of accepting him for what he was and enjoying him in the here and now, imagined him as a quarterback who would someday do those seemingly simple "quarterback things"- making the right read, hitting his targets, moving the ball slowly down the field-and put on top of those skills his ability to electrify, improvise, and make runs and throws that no other quarterback could dream of. We got him in Madden, upped his accuracy in the mini-camps, and broke off 40-yard bombs and 25-yard runs on every play. (In Madden 2005, I had Vick until he retired, and he amassed over 100,000 passing yards and 20,000 rush yards for his career.) One year, The Sporting News' annual player ratings put him at #23 or something, putting in print what we all privately thought: "It's only a matter of time until he's #1 on this list."

And so we had a vision of what we knew Michael Vick to be, what we wanted him to be, what we needed him to be.

Act 3: The Unfortunate Nature of Reality

But the real Michael Vick was never quite able to become the Vick of Nike ads, of Madden, of our imaginations. His passes continued to fall to the earth, the right receiver never came along, and we felt the scorn of unfulfilled promise. First Vick's detractors spoke in whispers; "If your fantasy league values electricity, draft Vick. If it values passing statistics, don't." "If you want to see the next generation of quarterback, look at Donovan McNabb." "Vick does everything but throw right-handed. One scout who saw him throw righty said that his mechanics look more sound from that side. Something to think about."

As Vick's team continued to lose and he continued to complete 50% of his passes, the whispers of his detractors became a full-fledged roar. Michael Vick was, said Jason Whitlock, "The league's most underutilized wide receiver." During Marcus Vick's senior season, there were articles saying how he could one day be a better quarterback than his brother.(Ha!) Madden 2006 even put in a "vision cone" system to stop Vick from being the game's best player. The pundits like Woody Page, those who feed on destroying imagination, labeled Michael Vick as an apparition, a flashy fraud, the Pirates of the Carribean to Brady and Manning's Schindler's List. Michael Vick was for the uninitiated football fans, the ones who couldn't appreciate a good slant pattern, audible, blind-side block, or 6-yard run between the tackles.

The grand joke of Michael Vick is that if you combine rushing attempts with pass attempts and compare his "yards per play" to every other quarterback in the league, he becomes the one thing that nobody on the planet, whether they love him or hate him, thinks he is: average.

The impetus for this piece was, of course, Mr. Vick's legal troubles. But I have to admit that although I am a pre-law student, I could not be less interested in the legal ramifications of what Michael Vick did or did not do with those dogs. For me, as Altamont was the official end of the carefree '60s, the Michael Vick dogfighting trial is the official end of the Michael Vick who captured my imagination when I was watching the Sugar Bowl, for the simple reason that the heroes of our imagination don't get a kick out of torturing animals or own an operation called Bad Newz Kennels. He now exists as a deeply flawed character, both on the field and off, capable of quick but unsustainable flashes of brilliance.

That doesn't mean I've given up on Michael Vick. I still watch his games, waiting for him to do something incredible. I still get giddy on those rare weeks when he completes 70% of his passes and looks like an unprecedented weapon of offensive skill. Many have chosen to get their fill of incandescence from Reggie Bush, a man with the potential to be the first "Sandlot Runner" in the NFL since Barry Sanders. (Interestingly enough, Reggie has been paired with Matt Leinart and Drew Brees, two testaments to the subtlety of dominance.) That's all well and good, but I'm sticking with Vick, simply because the position he plays allows him to break that many more preconceptions about the way the game is supposed to go.

To love Michael Vick(as a player-what he allegedly did to those dogs is despicable, and I in no way defend or condone it), is to watch football with your heart and imagination instead of your mind. Many, namely Bill Simmons, believe that betting on games makes them more fun, and sees the ultimate measure of being a football fan is being able to predict what will happen; to watch Michael Vick is to embrace the unpredictable, and to hope that what will happen is something that you have never seen before, or would have thought possible, but was made to happen by a man with unfathomable talents. That's why I'm still a Michael Vick fan, and that's why I love sports. Thank you and good day.

The Start of Something Big*

2007-07-27T20:33:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone, my name is Krolik. I've been writing about basketball, specifically Cleveland Cavalier basketball, for a while now at realcavsfans.com. I decided to put my work there because I had no idea how easy it was to make a blog. Well, I just made myself one, and now the posts will soon begin rolling. I'm going to be writing a lot about the Cavaliers at the get-go, and seeing how the first people to see this blog will be from RCF, that's going to make sense. However, while I do love the Cavs, I have wide-ranging interests. I love the NBA as a whole, especially the Cavs and Warriors, so expect a lot of posts about that. I'm a huge baseball fan, specifically of the Giants and A's, my hometown teams. I'm a pretty good NFL fan, although about the only player I'll clear my schedule to watch is Michael Vick (yes, there will be a post on that). I'm starting at USC in the fall, which places me smack-dab in the middle of the college sports world, so there will be posts on that. On top of everything, I'm also a TV/Movie expert, and I'm planning to use this blog to talk about those things as well. Basically, I'm an English major who loves to write about things that aren't global warming, the stupidity of people who aren't me, or the idea of my own mortality, which sets me apart from about 99.9% of English majors, and I'm going to use this blog as a place to vent my thoughts about what I really want to write about. Hope you guys all enjoy it, and comment a whole lot-without comments, I'll feel lonely.

-Krolik

*Maybe.