Manu-Gate
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posted by Dr. Lawyer IndianChief @ 5/18/2005 12:08:00 AM
9 comments
5.18.2005
Darko's Mood Is Currently:
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9 Comments:
you can come correct on ginobili whenever you're ready, THC. its okay if you aren't convinced after tonight. there will be more games like this in the coming weeks.
Brick,
Ginobili showed me something last night...his handles are better than I have given him credit for, and his shot range is legit now
However...
Do you remember Peja Stojakovic, Lamar Odom...What about Sam Cassell? These guys were media darlings last year, some of em were all-stars, hell, some of em even went far in the playoffs...Will they EVER have a year as good as last? HELL NO (well, maybe Odom if he switches teams). All I'm saying is these guys come about every year...media obsessions...they get an ESPN Magazine piece or two run and them and NEVER AGAIN PERFORM UP TO THAT ELITE LEVEL. Last year, Cassell's name was mentioned in Kobe/Jordan/Reggie sentences as one of the most clutch players in recent history. Peja was the next Bird. And Odom--similar to Manu--got the "We've never seen a player like him before" treatment. All I'm saying is let me see a guy have TWO great years before we start calling him an innovation, or even anything better than the second best player on a really good team with a franchise player.
It's this same sort of ridiculousness that gets Ryan Bowen a lot of playoff ink as a "defensive stopper" when Dirk simply has a few bad shooting nights.
But make no mistake...
I'M HATIN.
***Correction: run "ON" them
not run "AND" them
No way Darko can still be crying after a standing ovation entering the game and then a put back hook shot.
there's a legit difference between someone becoming a playoff hero and being annointed as the next who knows what. playoff heroism is laregly circumstantial and hard to argue with. . .sure, if dirk has a bad shooting night every time ryan bowen guards him in the 2005 playoffs, why not make a hero for that postseason?
everyone knows what cassell is in the regular season, and happens to have made some big plays in the playoffs. same with horry. and to some degree, miller. they've got postseason reps and regular season reps, and the two are largely separate. because there are so few playoff games and people want to believe, it's hard to question these reputations: make enough clutch shots and you've earned it. the more you make, the more of a rep you get.
no one's ever going to question if you're for real, since in the playoffs, all you can do is look at the evidence. the playoffs are their own world, and can only be assessed relative to themselves. and since there aren't trends to evaluate, you just acknowledge notches in the belt.
i think what pisses you off is seeing manu or odom (or wade, for that matter), having a "coming out party," where they announce to the entire league that the world is theirs. it can happen mid-season, but usually only comes to a head during the playoffs, since that's the only time anyone cares. no one is necessarily saying that for their rest of their careers, manu or wade will be as amazing as they've been for the last few weeks. but they're capable of doing this on a semi-regular basis, their games have come into their own, and there's a good chance they'll develop into full-fledged superstars.
odom . . .anyone who knows a fucking thing about basketball knew, before last year, that odom could do anything and had no business not being an all-star. same with manu. . anyone who has paid attention to him could have seen something like this coming. do i think he's average 20-5-5 next year? not necessarily. but there's no denying that he's ready, provided he's on functional team, to be an all-star contendor for the next seven or eight years.
you can make this same arguemnt for wade, btw. not sure you can have it both ways--crown wade the once and future king based on this last month, write off ginobili as a fluke. granted, wade was better than manu during the regular season, but relatively speaking. . .
i think peja is guilty as charged. i seem to remember he was good at hitting open 3's, but never in the playoffs. . .had a MVP-caliber first half on a system team that asked him to shoot constantly and very little else. . . he has nowhere near the idiosyncratic talent of manu or odom, and people were giving him a regular season rep, not a playoff one like cassell.
sorry this was so fucking long. step to manu and odom, and i'll go on the defensive.
Does Odom need to leave LA to become great again, though? It seems like he's a satellite trying to orbit inside the massive gravitational pull that is the black hole KB8. I'm not sure how many players -can- exist around Kobe now, though, with the way that he's played. I've not seen any indication that he's repentant for his unceremoniously booting Shaq out of LA and trying to carry the team on his own...
Sorry for the digression.
wow, drunkenly commenting after coming home from the game really works out. i can get up the next day and BS has already hammered out a nice dissertation on the greatness of my two favorite lefties in the game.
i'm really interested to see what will happen with lamar. i think the situation with the lakers is probably irredeemable, but maybe a season of losing and all of the recent Wade headlines will get to Kobe and force him to change his ways. last week i said i didn't see how wade could ever be better than kobe, but it's clear he's got certain gifts or intangibles that kobe doesn't possess. their respective careers playing with lamar (no homo) kind of highlight that. maybe kobe will realize that he's better off letting others help, like jordan recognizing that he had to, at least occasionally, drop it off to bill cartwright. has anyone heard any odom rumors? i thought he could've helped the kings, but now that they've decided to keep peja and get rid of webb that can't happen.
it's amazing to me that i can't bring myself to finish a 20 page paper from last semester, but can easily type 15 pages a day on here.
this morning i was thinking about wade's rapid ascent, and realized that the only thing kobe would hate more than losing is seeming irrevlant. i've written before, in much more convoluted terms, that kobe is at a crucial part of his legacy: whether he'll be rememebred as (with iverson) the posterchild for the nba of the 90's; a transitional figure, whose work ethic and grasp of fundamentals proved you could be a bad-ass and still understand the game (not saying he plays like this on a consistent basis, but i don't think anyone would disagree with the assertion that kobe bryant understands basketball very, very well); or, like iverson, a player who only really came into his own when (like iverson) he learned to adjust to the dawning of a new age.
sidebar: it seems like the only way to become jordan (individually, league in general) is for everyone to stop trying to be him. again, the riddle of kobe.
kobe is not stupid, as a person or a basketball player. he could easily play more responsible ball if he wanted to. if he realized that the whole world was laughing at him and the lakers, that he'd become the new stackhouse, i think on a personal and professional level he'd do some serious thinking.
i think we all know that, as soon as kobe shows the slightest inclination to play like he knows, this "wade is the best 2 in the league" crap is done. whether he'll ever do that remains to be seen. and therein lay the intangibles. . . it's not that wade has some that kobe doesn't, it's that kobe's are weighed down all by types of baggage. as with iverson.
oh, and i somehow forgot to say in my earlier comment about the playoffs: as much as i think you have to measure playoff success differently, there is a huge difference between having some great plays or very good showings at key times, and being consistently dominant from beginning to end. there's no way you can absolutely kill it for a month straight like manu and wade have been without it proving something about your status in the league, playoffs or not playoffs. it's not like dropping 30 a night in the playoffs means less than during the regular season.
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