Brief for a reason

-I hope everyone's enjoying the playoffs. I watch what I can, but can't say I regret it. Luckily, I had the tv on when Amare hit Duncan with arguably the greatest block in NBA history (no Walton). Let's remember that, at best, the Suns were supposed to squeak into the post-season this year, not win sixty games and make the conference Finals. Seen in that light, the Block is all you could hope for--a fittingly dynamic cap on the upstart season that the gods crafted in their own two hands. The Spurs are headed to the Finals, but not without the Suns putting them on notice that the future is theirs. In their own house, where they're next to unbeatable, with the best power forward ever going up for a statement dunk that should have been effortless. . . Duncan, meet your new arch-rival. Easily the most technically impressive block I've ever seen, clinching a win that, while it means nothing now, will for years to come echo as the day the world really changed. The regular season accomplishments of the Suns may be easy to malign, but last night was a taste of what you can expect from them as this team actually matures together.

-If someone has a quality photo of the Block itself (the flash that bathed the play in light during the telecast was downright otherworldly), let me know. I've looked through most of the official photos and, while I learned that Amare's stills are more exciting than most people highlight reels, that one pivotal moment was nowhere to be found.

-Not that I want to make excuses, or spoil the split second revelation detailed above, but you can't tell me that Joe Johnson wouldn't have made an enormous difference (the difference?) in this series. Quoth the Recluse: "he's the only person on the Suns who actually looks and seems like a real basketball players, not some freak of nature."

-Enough already with the "Spurs can score and run" line, which, as I've said before, I find smug and a tad bit misleading. This story in the new ESPN mag captures yet another disturbing trend: "the Spurs are fun and have style." Sure, as with the offense thing, myself and others may have woefully underestimated this team's humanity. But, just as I'd rather watch the Suns' offense any day of the week, you can't for a second convince me that the Spurs are a cooler, more appealing collection of people than Phoenix.

-The Suns may be on the way out, but I don't think that discounts the fact that they single-handedly brought together the competitive, stylish, and silly parts of the Association for the duration of an entire regular season and playoffs. Considering the way things have been going, that's no small feat. For that alone, at the moment Amare is my favorite of the new breed.

-That and he said that Johnson had "the heart of a champion" in his post-game interview. And he sweats more than anyone but Shaq, and with him it's pure, molten heart leaking out his pores. Not the byproducts of exertion.

-I said this last week and no one responded; now, ESPN themselves have decided I'm right. Larry Brown to Cleveland's front office would be a tremendous mistake. He is the worst executive in modern NBA history not named Layden. He will strip that team bare and remake it in his own, rudimentary image. All someone will have to offer LeBron is the chance to breathe and play with some remotely fun, talented teammates, and that city can kiss its favorite son goodbye once his rookie contract is up.

-Suck on Wade all you want, I'd rather watch Kobe with Shaq.

-I hope that Miami or San Antonio enjoys their parade. I'll be in the lab preparing for FreeDarko's truly momentous draft coverage: our real element, and, along with some appropriately goofy FA decisions, where the real heart of my NBA lays for the next few months.

Up for grabs

This pretty much sums it up. If Wade plays at a superhuman level, he can keep the Heat neck-in-neck with the Pistons' cast of borderline All-Stars; you aren't going to see any of the Detroit troopers step up and try to match Wade's brilliance, because that's just not the way they roll. Doing so would put them over the top in this series, but it's not hard to see that, in some ways, their winning strategy is premised on not having anyone raise up their game, or even take over for long stretches of time.

(The weirdest thing about the Wallaces, Rip, and Chauncey is that you can't really imagine any of them being that much better on a less evenly-distributed team. Brown gets just as much out of them as you can without exposing their flaws. Billups, who has the most star potential, might even be worse in another system.)

Shaq's not going to go much longer without having a major statement game. Even though the Wallaces have historically been two of the best in the Association at covering O'Neal one-on-one, the Diesel will get his once he's healthy. Wade, though, is both more vulnerable and more deadly. He's a young, less-than-gigantic shooting guard with some holes in his game (limited range, not nearly as explosive going right); at the same time, when he's on, Wade's can put up points with blinding speed and facility, while Shaq has to set up in a half-court set. Shaq can be contained by disrupting the rest of the offense, but give Wade the ball anywhere on the floor and there's a good chance he'll score before you know what hit you.

As tremendous as last night's performance was, or so I hear (at the risk of forfeting all of my cred, I had a going-away potluck to attend), you've got to keep in mind the flukishness of a twenty-point quarter. Granted, this season saw Gordon and Arenas make their reps based on single-period outbursts. But it still speaks to the unpredictability of Wade's dominance in this series—twenty points in twelve minutes against the league's most rugged defense can't be counted on every night. And without that sparkling quarter, which both put points on the board and took the Pistons out of their trademark anti-momentum (never get going too much and they can't tear you down), the Pistons might be going home up 2-0.

Even when the whole league was terrified of summertime Shaq, the situation was amplified by his having Kobe backing him up. To beat the Pistons, the Heat are going to have to take Shaq, and whatever he gives them, for granted. They're going to live and die by Wade's ability to make the ultimate team suffer at the hands of an individual virtuoso, something that only Iverson has ever come close to doing since you-know-who retired the second time. If there is a legtimate Jordan 2 theme here, this is it.

NO!!!!

The Mo Cheeks jamboree is kicking the roof through the sky, with Iverson letting it be known at the press conference that he wanted to "kiss Cheeks on the mouth." Philly may be a monstrous place, but they sure do know how to show love.

(Really, do I need to be giving links to this shit? Would you not believe me otherwise?)

Lost in the shuffle, though, has been the possible future path of another once and former Sixer.



No less august a franchise than the Cleveland Cavaliers have asked for permission to speak to Brown about running their front office. Now, I know he's a great teacher of the game, a rebuilding machine, and responsible, through sheer arrogance, for one of the great embarrassment in U.S. Basketball history. But while he may have once been masterminded truly amazing fashion ensembles like



he also presided over one of the most agonizing GM-ing jobs this side of Layden. Seriously, under him the Sixers did not make a single transaction that clearly helped them; acquiring Mutumbo may have allowed them to make the Finals (back when no one was beating Shaq and Kobe), but it practically forced them to resign him for major cash. And the draft under Brown (maybe King had some input, but it's no accident that as soon as Brown left, #2 started turning up second round gems) is nothing short of pathetic.

Brown may have been an effective counterweight to the old NBA, but all he can do is stand in the way of the new thang. We're talking about a guy that refused to play LeBron, Wade, and Amare in the Olympics—three smart, responsible, and breath-taking ballers who were all legit MVP candidates this year. He has his dream team with the Pistons, and the world would be a better place if he were to stay as far away as possible from LeBron's forward progress (if taking that as a pun will make you think about this entry for twenty second longer then sure, I meant it that way).

P.S. Anyone catch Shaq's reality show last night? What little I saw of it proved that , in the same way that calling an athlete "smart" implies "for a jock," watching Shaq and Damon Jones on a Toys 'R' Us shopping spree was entertaining (for two athletes).

NOTE: "smart [for an athlete]" doesn not warrant a NBARS entry, since although white athletes are assumed to be smarter than those belonging to minority, all athletes are assumed to be stupider than, you know, the people who worry about how intelligent athletes are. Mostly it's media folks referring to someone who isn't a total fucking drag to interview: you don't insult my intelligence, I'll go out of my way to acknowledge yours in public. It's all about making each other feel as completely human as possible.

I am a river, I am at ease

What somehow didn't come out of yesterday's strident rant is that I just don't find the Spurs or Pistons all that interesting or compelling. They could put up 150 points and still not hold my interest. The numbers may be there in this postseason, but the inspiration still is not there.

(I know that I am a veritable font of typos, but the Old Country flashback there was intentional.)

(Not to be confused with a Big Country flashback.)

Other thoughts:

-The Spurs are almost flawless. Except for one major error in judgment last night, Duncan always finds the path of least resistance and makes it happen. Really, Tony Parker could not exist as is on any less-disciplined team.

-If you want to start making a list of my favorite players, try looking first at guys whose names sound majestic when intoned by Kevin Harlan. "Stoudemire with the block!" "Tracy McGrady from downtown!" One of the small joys of NBA-watching that I'm only now catching on to. [editor's note: originally this read "when intoned by Jim Gray," which is a funny thought in itself but clearly just the wrong TNT name in my head]

-Duncan may be able to outwit Amare for now, but I honestly believe we're looking at the best power forward ever in embryonic form. If he got a little more consistent on defense and learned to grab a board or two on that end of the floor, he might overnight become the hero of Duncan-haters everywhere—can you imagine Timmy not making an all-NBA first team even once before he retires!?!??!!

-At one point last night, I was so dispirited and broken that I actually enjoyed something Neal Pollack wrote. Granted, it was on the Suns, and was mostly notable for a few choice post-games quotes and the pandering claim (it was on slate.com, no link because they don't need your traffic and frankly, the piece stinks) that the Suns don't just run, they do so with irony and humor. I have returned from that dark place, but that shows you how far I'd fallen by midnight yesterday.

-This draft may suck for teams forced to make selections, but for self-proclaimed pundits it's going to be a field day. I often think of the draft as the ultimate in NBA-geekery, since it's bigger, badder NFL brother certainly is. But there's something so surreal, elegant, and self-contained about that great day in July that I think it's appeal is far broader than the game itself. You've got all matters of politics, economics, and race front and center, international relations, the art-in-itself of scouting that increasingly has less and less to do with actual basketball playing, a cast of characters that would make a magical realist blush, and the goldrush-like insanity of it all. You could make an art house flick called "Draft!" and sell it to the ladies. I swear this!

-That is, after this year's #1 pick this is all true. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Marvin Williams as a player or as a person, and I expect him to be at least as good as Melo. Then you can get down to choosing between the floppy-haired Aussie giant, the goody two-shoes point guard with a dark side, and the token "next T-Mac."

(There are basically two modes of scouting: one where everyone in the draft is going to be a star, and the far more useful, if less titillating, approach in which everyone is probably going to be very good or just okay. The former compares everyone to Garnett, Kobe, T-Mac, and Shaq, the latter more manageable names like Abdur-Rahim, Andre Miller, Brent Barry, and Quentin Richardson. It's also pretty clear that superstars are far less likely to be "types" than borderline stars or outright role players, since "once-in-a-lifetime talent" is by definition singular. You don't want to go looking for a player who fits the template of Kobe or KG, because they'll inevitably come up short and blind you to their true usefulness)

-Brickowski, thank you for your comforting words yesterday. The Suns may have one foot out the door this year, but it looks more and more like they have the stench of prophecy hanging around them.

-On the off chance that Joey Johnson reads this blog, I'm sorry I ever even implicitly questioned your right to sit out. I forgot that you'd basically had your entire face reconstructed.

-I've pretty much stopped reading King Kaufman, but this from a few days ago is as cogent a spin as I've ever seen anyone put on the Big Redhead's surgery of broadcast.

There, I said it

FreeDarko needs to keep it movin', if nothing else so the world can see that we can think up the same shit as
Scoop and Eric Neel days earlier, for far less money, and in a manner far less likely to make you punch through your laptop. But honestly, I'm not sure how excited I am about the playoffs at this point. Don't get me wrong—still enthralled by the Suns, who basically took five of my favorite Association-ites and asked them to play the only style of ball that can hold my interest for a full forty-eight minutes. Nice to see the Wade-mania dampened a little, since we should probably be appreciating him for what he is—a absolute stud of a shooting guard who is still growing into what should be an era-defining talent. And as dastardly as those Spurs are, as long as Ginobili's in a starring role, I can only complain so much.

Quite honestly, though, the Spurs and Pistons bore me. Kill me. They make the NBA disposable; unless they're taking on a team brimming with talent and charisma (e.g. the Suns), they are the large, efficient motor that blots out the sun (no pun intended, since that would make it a mixed metaphor, actually, a blatantly contradictory mixed metaphor). If I'm at home anyway, or out in public with a tv on, sure, I'll pay attention. But no way am I planning my night around these Eastern Conference Finals, like I did for some of the earlier serieses. I respect and appreciate how the Pistons took Wade out of his game, but without him running wild, it's just the Pistons fighting off Shaq and some finely-tuned role players. At this point, I've watched enough of this playoffs that I'm getting impatient. Perverse and backwards as this may be, I think it's in keeping with at least my personal take on FreeDarko's means and ends.

You can skewer me if you want, but I'm the kind of person who will freely admit that I like football best when a running back goes for 200 and 3 touchdowns. Not an evenly-distributed passing attack. Or a defensive trench-war. Don't even try to tell me that watching the Suns' offense going at full-throttle, Wade doing his thing, or Ginobili unchained isn't a markedly different experience than some other thing involving the Pistons or Bruce Bowen. This isn't a matter of cheap thrill, excitement, or shallowness. It's that I watch the game to be astounded and really, I worry that the Spurs and Pistons might exist largely to take that away from me.

One point of order: why do I reserve the right to isolate Ginobili from the rest of the Spurs, while Wade makes watching the Heat worthwhile? The Spurs have an identity that doesn't rely on Manu; he can play a much smaller role without compromising their offense, or affecting their chances of winning. But if Wade isn't soul controller, Miami is in trouble. They can stay close, but it's him, not Shaq, that's going to put them over the top down the stretch.

I'm not trying to convince more responsible fans of anything, but I think that, in the spirit of full disclosure, I should admit all this before I write anything more or go silent until further notice. I love this game and I refuse to keep the somewhat tawdry nature of this love a secret any longer!!!!!!!!!

P.S. Draft lottery tonight! The most crowded, middle-to-bottom-heavy draft in the history of the world, finding the stars more difficult than ever to find, mpre politics bound up in this one than ever before, Euros on the wane and high schooler's likely to be fool's gold again (okay, maybe "fool's silver") (somewhere on ESPN's draft site, there's a brief paragraph about all the former high school stars that never made it to the Association but would have been lottery picks in today's day and age). Last year's draft was deceptively solid, despite the lack of fireworks; this time around, brace yourself for several months of inconclusive hand-wringing and trade rumors. This one really won't pan out until four years later.

Everything That Rises Must Converge

Moreso than any of the other major sports there is a quantum leap in the caliber of play from the regular to the post-season in the NBA. Because the disparity in talent is greater in the NBA, and the stakes so much less, the regular season is so great a slog that it's startling to see a guy like AI bust his ass every single night, so much so that there sometimes appears to be something gravely wrong with him. The other players seem to be mesmerized by him, (no other player in the league has both teams focus so intimately trained on him) not so much by what he is able to do, but by the fact that he's willing to put out the effort to do it. When the playoffs come along, and particularly matchups like the two we have this round the sport really transforms into something beautiful. The talent level converges and both teams are made better by the ability of the opponents. I'm probably one of the few neutral fans out there who's actually rooting for the Spurs, (I just love Ginobili's staccato intractability and have been a huge fan of Duncan's since he dropped 40 to knock out the Lakers a couple years ago) but I prey that Jo Johnson gets back soon and the series goes seven, because when basketball is played on this level it's the most exhilarating of all the team sports. These series are just fantastic, we've got great players ALL IN THEIR PRIME OR PRE-PRIME (with the notable exception of Shaq, who is just barely on the downside) and all four teams work together brilliantly. Seriously, this has to be the best pair of conference semis in recent memory doesn't it. We've got superstars on all four teams, and not even the slightest bit of disfunction. That's amazing. To highlight this I've ranked the 20 remaining starters, and though impressive, it doesn't do justice to the way each team is perfectly constructed.

1. Shaq
2. Duncan
3. Wade
4. Stoudemire
5. Nash
6. Ben Wallace
7. Ginobili
8. Marion
9. Rip
10. Billups
11. Joe Johnson
12. Rasheed Wallace
13. Prince
14. Tony Parker
15. Q. Richardson
16. B. Bowen
17. U. Haslem
18. E. Jones
19. D. Jones
20. N. Mohammed

What a list! The first two are already all-time greats, the only question with them being how high in the top fifteen players of all time to place them. The next two seem destined for similir fates, and the two after that are legit first team types. In fact you have to go down to number 16 to find a player who's not at least a borderline all-star! In today's NBA, with 30 teams, that's unbelievable, it's almost like those 80's series other than the fact that the benches are much weaker.

Interestingly, but not suprisingly, the Heat and Spurs have the last five players on the list, and six of the last seven. (Maybe I'm being a little harsh on Parker, but really, who would I switch him with?) And yet really, those last five fit so well within their team structure you really would be hard pressed to consider them weaknesses. I don't know if this list helps illuminate the strength of these series, but I do think it reflects their team concepts.

Further thoughts:

* Has anybody else been thoroughly confused by and slightly embarrassed for Q? I know the team wants him to spot up and launch 3's, but seriously, didn't he do more at one time? Jim Jackson is a good spot shooter but he occasionally drives to the rim. I didn't watch the Clippers much but I remember him doing more. Watching this super-athlete clang jumpers kind of saddens me.

*Why has Robert Horry had such a mediocre regular season career. Why did he never have even one standout season? I just don't understand this. His career year was 95-96 when he averaged 12 points and 6 boards. How did that happen.

* I don't mean to pick on him, but can anyone remember anybody looking so over his head as Beno Udrih? Every time they pass the ball to him it seems like his eyes get as wide as saucers and he can't wait to swing the ball. Every time he's in the game I just hope he doesn't screw up as I imagine him going home and weeping after coach Popovich yells at him for dribbling yet another ball off his foot out of bounds.

Spurs 1, Suns 0

Nothing really to say about the game, but it would be cowardly of me to not open up a space for Spurs fans to fire away. Steven Hunter gets more goaltends than anyone in the league. The job San Antonio did on Nash at the end was exemplary. Those screwy match-ups, which seemed to change with every possession, somehow ended up taking Marion out of the game instead of hurting both teams. Why is Joey Johnson so defensive about returning to the line-up?

Amare's duelling neck tattoos—"Black Jesus" and "Lord Knows"—are currently sitting atop my NBA ink rankings. Is there any way he realizes how clever the combination of the two is? Why is "Black Jesus" the only nickname taken on only by those who deserve it?

If the Spurs had lost, everyone would be saying "smart team, great coach, they'll find a way to make adjustments for the next game." I'd like to think that the Suns have earned that respect over the playoffs, meaning we should expect them to come back strong, guard Barry, get Marion to work out on the perimeter some, and even things up.

"We're not rushing anything, my primary concern is coming back healthy."

To bitch one more time: I realize that Johnson's left eye looks like a traumatized fruit, and I'm sure it hampers his game. But it's not career-threatening, and he needs to stop pretending he's in long-term danger if he plays too soon. If his Arkansas accent weren't so pricelessly unintelligible, I'd be really annoyed with him at this point.

Believers 1, skeptics 1

Round two is in the books, and we've got as many new questions on our hands as we do answers.

Before I get on to the relevant stuff, I think the Sonics deserve some serious respect. A team built around jump shots and some working stiffs mixing it up in the paint, with a coach and star player purportedly on their way out of the town. Supposedly doomed in the post-season, despite having put together a sparkling year while vultures circled overhead. They lose their third best player early in the first round, and still breeze through a deep veteran team with loads of playoff experience. In round le deux, they have the good fortune to draw the putative favorites to win it all, albeit with an ailing star. The Sonics proceed to play San Antonio tight for six games, nearly forcing a seventh, somehow making due without Radmanovic or the newly-injured Lewis. Seattle has some serious thinking to do, management and personnel alike; is this something they can build, or should they congratulate themselves on getting the most out of a limited formula and move on? Either way, though, they've been the definition of classy, worthy postseason effort.

Now on to the answers: yes, Steve Nash deserved the MVP; yes, the Suns are resourceful enough to play outside of their comfort zone. Nash has been nothing short of phenomenal this past week, coming up with big play after big play in a shoot-out that demanded a torrent of them. With Johnson out, Amare stifled, and, in game six, everyone in foul trouble, Nash took over with his scoring, passing, leadership, and plain old sense of the game. He was like a more accurate Iverson, splitting the defense and pretty much making any fantastic shot he got a good look at. And while the Suns victory is mostly a product of Nash's virtuoso showings, Jackson and Hunter proved that they're more than capable of stepping in without the offense collapsing. Nash may not be a top-five player in this league, but he proved that he's anything but a welcher feeding off of the talented cast around him. This is a man with two very impressive feet he can call his own. The Suns, too, may be far from perfect, but they're not nearly as vulnerable as the doubters thought them to be. Dallas threw plenty at them in that series, from exotic defenses to a boatload of proven veteran scorers; they came through with flying colors, either dominating or convincingly gutting out all of their four wins.

(sidebar: someone needs to strangle Walton for saying that Nash has no athleticism. Once he gets going, he's one of the fastest players in the league.)

(sidebar two: if Nash or Ginobili were black, people would be all over them for "showboating")

(sidebar three: nothing but love for Q, but sometimes I feel like I've never seen him make an outside shot)

But oh the many questions: First off, Nash. He decimated a Dallas team that, while it's supposedly trying to play defense, doesn't exactly have a proven track record of being able to do so. You could even make a similar argument for the recent exploits of Wade, the Association's new golden child. Domination in the post-season is always a good thing, but eating up a feckless Wizards defense hardly counts as music for the ages. Almost the converse is true for Amare: Dallas managed to pick his game apart, but other teams should be seriously considering how much this was a function of the Mavs' roster.

There's also those problems so exhaustively considered that they're practically blank by now: is Duncan healthy? what's Miami without Shaq? is it really Wade's team? have the Pistons found their vaunted playoff groove by stomping out an Indiana team that had no business making it into the second round?

So now it's on for real. All the sentimental favorites and intriguing young teams are gone; now it's down to the the four that, for the entire season, have been head and shoulders above the rest. Detroit trying to stop Wade, with a greatly-diminished, possible irrelevant Shaq suddenly facing an unexpected twist in his on-court rebirth. The Suns and Spurs battling for the future of the basketball. with Phoenix looking tougher than ever and San Antonio's fate squarely in the hands of their reckless, unpredictable foreign backcourt.

I've wondered several times in the FreeDarko war room if this blog isn't built for the regular season, not the playoffs. If this post is any indication, these next fwe weeks should be all about business——little room for our trademark irreverance, but an outright salute to the purity of sport that proves we care about more than personality, speculation, and goofy minutae.

NBARS #14,423,683

You know what time it is. What the clunky acronym stands for. What we do when there's no real NBA news.

By now, I'm sure everyone's heard that Billy Hunter is playing the race card. In his mind, the league's claim of (presumably white) "agents intervening" implies that Hunter and the predominantly black Players' Association can't do it on their own.

Notwithstanding the validity of this argument (there are African-American agents, some of them quite powerful), as King Kaufman points out, this makes three times in as many months that race has come up, quite forcefully and convincingly, in the NBA. Usually, we associate the race card with feverish, desperate rhetoric, a last-resort used to stir passions and cloud the issue when other, more rational tactics have failed. In the NBA, though, it may be that race is legitimately the central concern in all league politics. That's because, as I've said before, this is a black league. African-Americans far and away make the up the majority of the players; black coaches face some discrimination, but nothing compared to the NFL or MLB; in terms of executives and ownership, the NBA is light years ahead when it comes to diversity.

Most importantly, though, it's a sport marketed and consumed as African-American. Whether you love or hate the NBA, chances are these feelings are also bound up with your opinion on black culture, the hip-hop generation, inner city economics and demographics, and a host of other broader concerns that, in baseball or football, are always secondary to THE GAME. If Hunter, O'Neal, and Lebatard can so effectively raise the specter of racism, it's because race always looms large over the NBA. You can probably attribute some of the (generational) urgency to a similar movement in the record biz, but here we're talking about a "takeover" of the league/industry itself, not just making dramatic statements within someone else's power structure.

The only way the race card will stop being persistantly relevant is when the NBA is no longer an institution you could play it against.

UPDATE: Woody Paige just claimed that Hunter is out of line because the NBA is so good and accomodating about race, socio-economic backgrounds, etc. I agree, but I think this is exactly why they have to take the issue of race seriously all the time. He calls this "colorblindness;" I'd say it's opening the door for minorities to get what's rightfully theirs. I don't think it's a stretch to ask that, once an institution admits the importance of diversity, it follows through once it becomes clear that diversity has become its very identity.

"You shall not see me in a position like this again."

That is a direct quote from Kemp at the courthouse this week. Safe to say that it's also true for:



I'm as big an Amare fan as anyone, but he is a mere understudy to the man they now call

Group Participation

In a continued effort to make FreeDarko-lite type posts for the next couple days, I would like to make two points and then engage our readership in some collective prediction-making.

-First, nothing pisses me off more than when "THE AGENTS" get blamed for fostering an increased likelihood of a lockout or work stoppage. The players are greedy, the owners are (less?) greedy. Let's assign some responsibility here.

-Second, Scoop Jackson has been a WHOPPING disappointment for ESPN's Page 2. His "Wilt" piece today is ridiculous.

Now, on to the PREDICTIONS:

Reggie Miller: over-under 15 points?

Wallace Brothers: rows or no rows?

Rasho: PT or no PT?

Indy-Det: does the game end with a standing ovation for Reggie, with 45 seconds left and the Pacers down 18 points...or do we get one last clutch Miller Time performance?

SEA-SAN: who the fuck wins this? i have no idea

Fortson: over-under 5 fouls?

Who's fighting tonight?

Key Arena: Ichiro sighting? I say yes.

Conseco Fieldhouse: Artest sighting?

'Shard: factor or no factor?

non-ReggieMiller player most likely to cry tonight?

X-Factor of the night: Big Dog? Brent Barry? Flip Murray? Fred Jones? Arroyo?

With Apologies to Ch.Billups

(who practically invented the hoops-blog-rap-quote)

"Been around the world, and I-I-I
I been player hated
I don't know why, I don't know why
Why they want me faded..."

For the Kids

This thread is about the fights (link below), but a few quick points:

This Spurs-Sonics game is disgusting. I've never seen so much roleplayerism by the officials and the announcers. Jerome James even got criticized for smiling.

Tayshaun Prince is my early vote for Finals MVP.

Michael Smith's article is t'real: Stephen Jackson is the new Artest.

And just because you didn't ask for it, check out the fights (nice Bone Thugs soundtrack too)

Manu-Gate

The "fights" post has been moved up. Continue discussion in the comments section.

Pacers: Gully central

This West Wing marathon is seriously fucking with my head. . . I'm going on six hours, and suddenly it doesn't seem so important to bother with links (esp. from ESPN—if you don't read it yourself, why are bothering with this?), or get names, dates, centuries right.

Meet your newest entry into the Association thugstakes:



Grant Hill and Artest sit down for a network interview, and Grant says he'd have done the same. When is America going to admit that athletes are more like each other than they are average fans? Grant Hill is closer to, can relate more to, and is more likely to side with, Ron Artest than with you run-of-the-mill, mildly indignant NBA homer. I wonder if the same can be said of politicans and the people they represent; honestly, I think either answer would disgust me on some level.

If this ends up doing something to bring about a more nuanced understanding of the HAHH (check the archives-I'm sick of typing it out), Michael Smith's profile of Stephen Jackson (on the front page of ESPN.com at the moment) should do more than enough to polarize things all over again. Seems that the world's least likely San Antonio Spur (for the record, he got them that ring) still makes repping red a major factor in his fashion decisions, would never be caught dead in blue, did his dirt on the streets, and attributes his loyalty to Artest to his rugged background. Impressive that he's so unapologetic about it all, but dude makes Iverson look like pre-rape Kobe.


I like to think that this post has enough substance to it that I'm not obliged to provide links. Links are the poor blogger's cloak of legitimacy!!!!!!!!!!!

Ace in the hole

Stackhouse worries aloud about a certain imminent event messing up the Mavs' rhythm. But I think we all know what's really on his mind—right on the horizon, the key to the Suns grabbing this series by the throat once and for all.

The blurry photo allows for the suggestion of untold, mysterious powers, an aura of the impending future, and a chance for you to play the guessing game just in case you haven't looked at the Mavs bench lately.

My food, your thoughts

From today's ESPN.com, an all-Wade Daily Dime makes the following somewhat brilliant point:

The wise men always told us the next Michael would not be manufactured, that he would just burst upon the scene without aid from the media's overzealous hype machine.

"Just let it happen," they said calmly as everyone from Harold Miner to Kobe Bryant was anointed as "Next."

As much as I am prone to get swept away by the hype machine (often under the guise of simply tracking the hype), this is worth considering. Not like Jordan didn't come into the league with his fair share of fanfare, but he was pretty much thought of as a dunker (the lazy take on Wade, too). No one's going to convince me that LeBron isn't a once-in-a-lifetime talent, but then again, Magic and Jordan once walked the same earth.

Lightening up

Not to be confused with the bout of Marc Stein-itude that hit me a few weeks ago, these last few days have been straight up Chad Ford.

In the interest of reviving the FreeDarko readership, and saving myself from the clutches of dead-eyed NBA geekdom, let me point us all in a direction of comfort and warmth: Vladimir Radmanovic's new new look. I can't find a photo of this, but this man continues to outdo himself, even when sitting on the bench. Last night he looked like a gangly, Slavic version of young Prince, with a bit of Jerry Rubin thrown in for good measure. First person who finds me an image gets a FreeDarko-sponsered funeral. Trust me: you want this!

UPDATE: Thank you, THC.

Where it hurts

To follow up on what I wrote last night, I'm going to say something even crazier (and Suns-centric) about the playoffs: Joey Johnson's injury might alter the postseason landscape more than Shaq's.

Johnson is at best the fourth option on a team stuffed with scorers. He's tough, a good defender, and the Suns' second-best point guard. But Phoenix supposedly doesn't care about defense, and an indefatigable point guard who just won the MVP should probably be more than enough in that department.

Shaq is the most dominant player of the last decade, the man who can single-handedly make a team into a contendor, a lightning rod for defensive attention who is nevertheless impossible to contain. In an era where the center position has all but ceased to exist, Shaq is an all-timer who compares favorably with Wilt, Russell, Moses, and Kareem. In fact, you could argue that it's only Shaq that warrants paying seven-footers big money based on size alone.

But while Shaq's singularity makes him irreplacable, it also makes him less than indispensable. The bottom line is that no other team fields a player that demands Shaq's attention. The Heat may lost an immeasurable advantage without him on the floor, but it doesn't put them at a disadvantage. Without Shaq, they fill in the center position like anyone else: through patchwork and coaching smarts. In Wade, they've got a white-hot superstar who usually ends up with two or three guys guarding him on every possession (like Iverson before him), so those open shots are still there for Jones and Dooling. And Haslam is a grossly underrated rebounding beast, who along with Mourning and Doleac gives them enough competent size to get through the East. Shaq may have brought the biggest body in the world to the Eastern Conference, but the East has yet to adjust to match him.

Granted, they had some problems toward the end of the year when Shaq was hurting. But they've been flat out excellent in the playoffs, when Shaq has been either missing-in-action or merely present, and you know that this team knows the difference between the regular and second seasons.

The Heat are a well-coached, disciplined team with a decent bench and arguably the best guard in the Association. The Pistons have had problems with the Pacers, who no one thinks are better than a Shaq-less Heat. And the Spurs, despite their hallowed reputation, haven't exactly made short shrift of a Sonics team missing two of their three best players——again, a lesser creation than a Wade-driven Heat. It's only a fully-assembled Suns that would probably run right over them, but even that might be selling this East Coast-team for the new millenium a little short. The Heat are more than capable of playing Van Gundy ball, with or without Shaq; Wade gives them an offensive wild card that can compensate for the inevitable slippage that occurs if you try and slow the Suns for an entire game.

Johnson, though, is more important than we'd ever dreamed. With him out, the Sun can't move the ball, set up Amare and Marion for easy dunks, swing the ball around to find him or Q for the near-open three. The Suns are a system team, one that everyone knows inside and out by this point but still can't stop. That's because of the personnel, who are just too talented to match up with effectively. Take out Johnson, though, and there's a weak link, causing the whole thing to crumble. We all know what they're going to do on any given play, but no one's been able to do anything about it. Now, all of a sudden, they're forced to become a thinking team—which, at this point in the season, seems a little unlikely.

I'm not entirely convinced of this, but it's worth considering. At very least, it's easier to imagine the Heat winning it all at this point than it is the Suns, for the simple fact that the Heat have yet to miss a beat despite Shaq's injury woes.

Your new Bible

Throughout the playoffs, the thinking has been slow down Nash, and you can slow down the Suns. Give credit to Avery Johnson for doing the unthinkable, letting Nash score at will and use his defenders to crowd Amare and take away the three-point threats——the outlandishly productive options that make Nash's playmaking look so easy.

There's also the small matter of Joey Johnson, whose absence means that the Suns lose that invaluable second ball-handler (did anyone else notice how many times Amare ended up with the ball near the top of the key?) and a scorer capable of beating his man (sorry, Jackson and Barbosa). I'm not by any means saying that Johnson got taken out on purpose, but it was a felicitous turn of events for the Mavs. I don't really know enough about basketball to get any more technical, but it would have been more harder to take away ALL the shooters if Johnson were in the game. Chain reaction in the opposite direction; try that strategy with Johnson in, and it would lead right back to the same 'ol Nash/Amare mania.

This is what everyone's been saying about the Suns all season: lack of depth will be their downfall, somehow or other. Well, here it is, in the most extreme way possible. Johnson should be back, so I don't think it will be so easy on Wednesday. And, when a team's so dependant on so few players, you can't discount the importance of little things like Amare and Q being in foul trouble. Even down the stretch, the Suns were one flurry of three's away from winning; un-hobble that offense in the slightest, and this really could have gone either way.

Magic does commentary like he's babysitting the viewer.

Anyone want to claim that Nash is better than LeBron? I mean, look at all those points in a playoff game! Against a team that's decided to hang its hat on defense, no less.

Step right up, Amare-haters. Dude was triple teamed for almost that entire game. That's respect. And I don't think we can really hold it against him that he didn't spend the entire game at the free throw line; even if you're a phenom like Stoudemire, and have been around the Association for a couple of years, the preps to pros jump is going to leave you unprepared for handling a triple-team from three experienced defenders.

When Dallas plays a game like this, you wonder why it doesn't happen all the time. They've got Dirk to put fear into the defense; Finley and Stackhouse ready to make some serious shots; Howard and Daniels doing a little bit of everything and keeping everyone young; Dampier to hold it down in the middle; Terry, who demands some attention even on an off night (lest he comes with a Bibby-esque performance).

Call me a non-stop Suns apologist, but I'd rather do that than make obvious observations about why the Mavs should be good. They're a weird, counterintuitive success story, and seeing them dissected on national tv at least sheds some light on the mystery of what they'd managed to accomplish on better days.

Huh?

Another Sonics win. Without Rashard. This is some March Madness ish, and I don't know how I feel about it.

Despite the Pistons' trouncing of the Lakers last year (incidentally, did anyone notice that the Pistons promptly became a league powerhouse?), you still expect the juggernaut to take a seven game series. Provided, of course, they don't get exposed, which at this point couldn't/shouldn't really happen to the Spurs.

I'm all about the future. Maybe this spices up the second round a little, but at some point it's going to come back to haunt us the audience. The fewer serieses there are going on, the more important it is that they're competitive, and so it is that the conference finals damn well better be competitive.

We all want Heat/Pistons and Spurs/Suns. A Cinderella story would be a minor miracle, but one that would come at the expense of the next two weeks of viewing pleasure.

Then again, this all but obliterates the possibility of Cinderella victories: no eighth or seventh seeds win; a fifth over a fourth isn't a Cinderella win. That leavs only sixth and third, which, given how the teams have broken down the last few years, is still long odds. And then we're in the second round, where numerically, upsets aren't dramatic anymore. They're only as dramatic as they are improbable; when the higher seed's terrible, it would be a tremendous upset. And, according to my theory, that's exactly the kind of thing we should be rooting against.

So pray either for a ridiculously deep conference or a horrendously thin one. That's the only way you can have your upset and your conference finals, too.

Farewell, Father, son, and

Not an altogether apt comparison to make on the night they get swept out of the playoffs, but it works surprisingly well for Jamison, Hughes, and Gilbert.

There are two school of thought when it comes to fandom in a losing cause: watch as a show of faith, or avert your eyes in the interest of dignity. Since I have other shit to do (and yes, it does in part involve watching the absolutely fucking awesome Alien Planet on the Discovery Channel, the rightful heir to the truly life-changing Future is Wild of a few years ago), I went with option the number two. From what I hear, Wade had yet another career game, the Wizards were close for a minute but were felled by the best player on the floor, the Trinity couldn't rise to the occasion, and at least getting swept by the Heat makes the one-sided victory neat, tidy and inevitable. For now, the Wizards remains a work-in-progress, one that, thankfully, knows it needs some serious work before it can contend. That's certainly better than a flawed team thinking they have a chance.

And before the Wade slurp-fest gets out of control in this world of ours, I still think McGrady's better. Kobe, too. I know, I know: what does Kobe do without Shaq? Didn't T-Mac lose with Yao?

It's four games against a team that plays no defense and exerts next to no presence in the paint. At least not on a regular basis--Haywood and Thomas are both players of great moments, special games, heads-up plays. The kind of players a non-stop dynamo like Wade runs right through. He broke their spirits the second he stepped on the court.

I'm saying, let's see what he does against the Pistons (fyi, shit is getting chippy. Reggie says "it's going to be a bloodbath"). Not saying he won't still be fantastic, but I've seen enough of the Wizards to know that, once you force Arenas and Hughes to settle in, that's the softest defense of any real team in the Association. I mean any team with a remotely complete roster and chance at finding their way out of the lottery any time soon.

So long Wizards, it's been a good one. Get started talking to Hughes. Hope Arenas does even more growing up before next season—who knows, maybe he'll be as good as Dwyane Wade some day.

Doing bad things

Fuck what you heard. I love the second round!

The Pistons need to get themselves straight, since there's no reason they should be having such a tough time handling Indiana. The Reggie shot at the end was almost a foregone conclusion. . .when the big picture goes Indiana's way, of course that's going to cap it all off.

The Suns/Mavs game was another Nash/Stoudemire wow-fest. There's some talk now that Wade can't be stopped, is perfectly capable of sweeping the Wizards without Shaq. And while he explodes into the lane like no one else, and gets to the rim more than most big men, he's still a guard. Meaning, he has to take some tough shots, twist and turn, take jumpers. . .shots that can and will go wrong sometimes, no matter how physically gifted Wade is. Amare, on the other hand, is absolutely unguardable. No one gets up as quickly and powerfully as him. Ever. He's Shaq-like in his sheer power, but moves way too fast for anyone to try and drag him down.

It's weird to think that, as magical as LeBron is, he still doesn't have that single, guaranteed offensive move. Wade and Amare both do, and for that reason alone, you've got to think they just might be a little bit ahead of him, development-wise. Maybe it's unreasonable to expect every player in the league to have a bread and butter shot; pretty much everytime LeBron takes it inside off the dribble, his body gives him a high percentage chance of getting points.

Still, would anyone call LeBron "unguardable" quite yet?

All that aside, the Suns proved that they can fight, think on their feet, and still end up running the other team into the ground. You've got to be thinking about a potential Shaq/Amare match-up as one of the great torch passings in recent memories.

Nothing to say on the All-Defensive team, since without Artest and Kirilenko it's pretty much meaningless. But Wade's shredding of Hughes has called into question exactly what lands you on there. Hughes led the league in steals, and him and Arenas proved tremendous at playing defense-unto-offense--lots of gambles, playing off of each other to disrupt passing lanes, basically trying to force a turnover before the other team's even gotten a chance to set up. But it's not lockdown defense, and really, lots of people could rack up steals numbers like Hughes if they cared as little about actually keeping their man in check. You can't measured Hughes's defensive performance relative to who he's guarding; anyone is vulnerable if Hughes is willing to lay it all on the line. And, coversely, any elite player can get take advantage of Huges once he'd committed to trying to force a turnover. It's the same kind of defense the Suns play--it makes your score higher, not the other team's lower.

As remarkable as it would be to see Indiana advance, Miami would eat them alive. Further evidence that this playoffs needs Artest more than life itself: only Ron Ron could slow Wade down. Good and evil square off on every possession. And if you were making an all-tough team, those two would have to be in the starting five.

I wish Dallas seemed at all evil. But they're kind of like the Kings were with Webber--hard to hate, but not all that easy too love, either. Is there anyone out there not from Dallas or Germany whose favorite player is on the Mavs?

It turns so quick

Last round I wrote something incomprehensible about momentum shifts in the playoffs. I don't quite remember it, and am loathe to read it again, but I think the gist was this: two games counts as a trend, unless it's contradicted. Then it goes right to being a self-exhausting fluke.

When it comes to matters of the heart, sometimes all it takes is a single game.

With Joey Johnson in street clothes and the Suns/Mavs series suddenly very, very interesting (as opposed to merely entertaining), we're seeing a shift in interpretational momentum unlike any other this post-season. The Suns aren't just a dominant team missing a key player. Instead, they've become an imperfect, inspired creation trying to mend itself on the fly, through something we can only consider heroism. As mighty as they are, the Suns also have enough personality, heart, and unlikeliness that they can easily assume the role of the dynamic underdog. The fearless, free-thinking floor general; man-child putting the world on notice; do-it-all meteorite; two well-rounded, tough, creative, very likable young guards finding their discipline and their game within what a game plan that could have let to utter chaos; and the coach, a drawling league outsider who went against conventional wisdom and had the last modest, knee-slapping laugh. Versus a team pretty much made of veterans assembled to win a title.

Is Jim Jackson the answer? Not Jim Jackson the malcontent, the journeyman, the NBA's equivalent of that useful piece of furniture that belongs to everyone and no one. This time, Jackson is not a luxury item--a bench player that would be starting anywhere else--but a semi-tarnished figure looking to redeem himself by proving that he can be the key to a late season shake-up that the Suns had to be praying to never see. Jim Jackson, the rebirth. The Suns, a crazy, bounding airplane who need the recovering alcoholic pilot, disgraced and reduced to flying for Jet Blue, to show he's still got it. Yes, I do believe we have a storyline on our hands.

But it's not about the Mavs challenging the formerly unstoppable Suns. Instead, it's the Suns proving their humanity, making us love them for more than their highlight potential. They might not win it all, maybe even not this series. But we won't call them a disappointment if they flop, like the Kings and Mavs (once) were. We'll be able to call it a ride that was its own, "I love this game" kind of thrill. The kind of thing that makes me want to type up on this blog in the first place.

I was hoping it wouldn't come to this, but. . .

. . . after a day of listening to ESPN Radio's take on the LeBron agent switch, I have no choice but to make this the latest installment of NBA Racial Semiotics. That's #1,546,721, in case you're not keeping count yourself.

All morning I heard talk about loyalty, character, and stay true to the people who got you where you are. Your agent is not that guy. Granted, Goodwin seems to have taken a special interest in the welfare of James and his camp, but at the risk of sounding cynical, wouldn't you if you were an agent? Bottom line is that agents are to the sports world what lawyers are to the corporate: they'll always get paid, they're out to get paid, and anyone who thinks otherwise would never make it in their line of work. No one talks about staying loyal to their lawyer, or how he helped broker the deal that got them where they are today. You get the best money can buy, and move up the food chain accordingly. I suppose you can fault LeBron for going unorthodox in his choice of representation, but that's a professional issue, not a personal one.

What people seem to be forgetting is that Goodwin will continue to profit of LeBron until this current set of contracts runs out. So, even if there were a personal component to this move, he's not screwing Goodwin by any stretch of the imagination.

No, what seems to be upsetting people most is that LeBron is bucking the system. Not sticking with the white power structure that secured his financial future. When they say "loyalty," they mean "be thankful that there's a system here to keep you paid, and don't do anything to disrupt it." Goodwin helped him get where he is by providing a middle man between LeBron and his camp and the white world of corporate America; LeBron wants to cut out the middle man (and his cut), and that apparently scares some people. The argument that "his boyz" can't do the job (or that Russell Simmons and Jay-Z, if it's true they're on board, aren't convincing enough businessmen to keep LBJ Incorporated on top) might as well be "and we don't want them to be able to." If LeBron feels he can entrust his inner circle with the fail-safe track he's on, why not?

After all, they're the ones he owes loyalty. The ones that got him where is today. The ones who helped him even get in a position to have Goodwin knocking at his door.

I'm sure Aaron Goodwin is a decent person and a find mover/shaker. But he's a business casualty. Or, more accurately, a choice by someone who has the luxury of not having to go along with business as usual. To let his personal priorities shapes the way he goes about conducting it without up-ending it. Is that so hard to understand, or anything an outsider has the right to turn into a referendum on LeBron's sanity or character?

At the end of the day, it's all about fam. You call in a stranger, or a socio-cultural stranger, only because they can do the job better than your own (or your peers). Don't even try to tell me that we'd all rather not, so to speak, keep it in the family.

When I go to the club, I get John Laroquette

Still saying fuck the second round, because the Spurs and Mavs are winning, the Miami/Wiz series is lifeless, and I can't watch Pistons-Pacers without wishing Ron was here. Stern, you won't let our boy back in for the playoffs?...can you imagine the revenue and the attention...do you think we'd be hearing about Tino Martinez every day on Sportscenter?...and you call yourself an exploitative conniving Jew? A quick anecdote about Artest that is evidently more well-known than I thought it was, but still worth posting:

"One off-season, while still playing for the Chicago Bulls, Ron Artest applied for a job at Circuit City. On the job application he wrote down "NBA player" as his last job and used Bulls president Jerry Krause's name as a reference. And he did it all just so he could get the employee discount on home electronics."

Another non-story

When I first heard about LeBron agent switch, I was like "why should I care?" The only agent sports fans need to know by name is Drew Rosenhaus, and that's only because he'll probably one day have his own Sports Century.

Then, I panicked. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Why mess with the braintrust behind [superlative superlative superlative]? And replace it with a bunch of first-timers?

The truth is, this probably won't have much of an impact on LeBron, the athlete or the man. LeBron's guaranteed a max contract, wherever he wants, till the end of time; his endorsement deals are sent in stone till the end of the decade, and he can have his pick of whatever other deals he wants. Bringing on his hometown boys to get a piece of the pie (even more than they would have already as his entourage) also seems to make it all the more likely he's planning to stay with the Cavs long-term. Basically, you could manage LeBron's career if you were brain dead. It certainly doesn't hurt that the man himself seems to have made about one questionable decision in his entire life, meaning that his staff doesn't have to work against him. Hell, he could probably be his own agent. They say you judge a man by the company he keeps, and there's no reason to assume that he'd have anyone too rash or megalomanical steering his career. Note: Eddie Jackson, his somewhat shady surrogate father figure, is not part of team LeBron.

Scoop Jackson makes the point that this might be about setting up a full-fledged, independent LBJ business. So that once his playing days are over, he and his boys can continue to be players in the basketball, entertainment, whatever, industry. That might be what this is all about, in the end: making sure that those close to him don't just get to reap the financial rewards of his success, but also can get in on a serious, lifelong career opportunity.

Factor in the possibility of Jay-Z's involvement, and this is seeming more and more like a political statement. Black capitalism for the new millenium. Using money to make more money, personal success to position to do the same. Like the world's most noble, inverted pyramid scheme.

That, if anything, is what we should be talking about, not the potential, cataclysmic fallout for one man's career. Don't worry about LeBron--he'll be just fine.

BASKETBALL-RELATED: I've given up on this round, but the next should be outright bestial. Suns/Spurs will decide a lot of things, once and for all. As much as I'd rather see two running teams going at it, a clash of styles is always the most significant kind of match-up. And Heat/Pistons, while not quite the fate-of-the-universe showdown that Phoenix vs. San Antonio will be, will probably be the best, most hard-fought basketball we see all year.

Kill the noise

There's not enough here to warrant an entry in our infamous "NBA Racial Semiotics" series, but I'm getting so sick of hearing about it that I couldn't keep quiet.

Look, I know this second round is going to suck, and we're headed towards the Pistons/Spurs Finals the league has dreaded since day one of the season. But on the real, this Steve Nash-MVP/race riot in the making thing has got to stop now. It may make for juicier discussion than the playoffs as they stand, but here are all the reasons why there's absolutely no weight there:

1. Nash is hardly the great white hope. He's a Canadian who reads Marx, loves soccer, and likes to travel the world. His best friend is a seven-foot tall German musician who just happens to be another non-candidate for "pale face of the league" (for obvious reasons). And while he's a gamer, he's no hustle player (where would he be without his speed?) and never gives the impression that, without basketball, he'd live a totally meaningless life.

2. Shaq is the most beloved athlete in America, who, despite being the biggest, blackest man most of us will ever see, is pretty much beyond race at this point.

3. Shaq has the potential to be the league's automatic MVP without lifting a finger, but his defense is largely accidental, he's hurt a lot, and the advantage he offers a team is largely psychological. I'm not trying to downplay his value, or question the talents of the third or fourth greatest center in the history of the game. But unless he's post 30-15-4 every night with Duncan-like consistency, Shaq's performance simply isn't matching his mythical year-in, year-out value to a team. And last time I checked, that's what we base the MVP on. Otherwise, Jackie Robinson should have been the NL's MVP every year of his career.

4. If the NBA had a race problem, why would Iverson and Garnett both have MVP's in recent years? To quote THC, "it gets no realer."

5. At the risk of pissing off quite a few people, aren't Tim Duncan's two MVP's better evidence of this racial dynamic? He's a "good guy" who plays "fundamental basketball" for a "quality team with character." Versus Nash, a Radiohead-listening free-thinker who dates models, orchestrates a free-wheeling, profligate offense, and gets on swimmingly with a squad of hip-hop-loving twenty somethings. Now where's your (racial) mainstream, ladies and gentlemen?

6. Shaq himself put it best: "Steve's a great guy and has had a great year." This year the Suns ruled the NBA, and Nash was the engine that made them go. He didn't just help his team, he helped the whole damn Association. All Shaq did was prove that last season was an aberration, that he's still here and still a force of nature that can be counted on to anchor a contendor. If anything, he should get Most Improved, except that statistically speaking, this year's not that much better than 2003-2004. Shaq was better with the Lakers, and trading in Wade for Kobe means he should be even more of an offensive force. To say nothing of jumping to a woefully small conference. . .

7. This is a black league, explicitly and implicitly. That's why, if you really wanted to give the MVP to the league's new face, the guy that makes everyone happy, the one figure who says all the right things while keeping his swagger, wows us without defiling the game, and looks to be NBA's single most important player for the next decade or so, there's really only one choice for MVP if you believe the whole thing was somehow rigged.

8. No one can tell me that Nash is a bigger, more rousing underdog than Iverson, who is at this point a problem child in look only. If we want to make this about class and ethics as much as race, Nash is a spoiled, head-in-the-clouds underachiever who suddenly had everything handed to him (in Dallas, too), while Iverson embodies the upwardly-mobile grit, determination, and self-reliance that all Americans like to think they're made of. And Shaq, well, he's just big.

9. If you want to blame someone for Shaq only having one MVP, blame Kobe.

10. We always talk about how much Kobe relied on Shaq; how much was Shaq a creation of Kobe?

And all shattered souls shuddered

Saturday and Sunday were so bad, I can't say I care much about basketball today. I'd go so far as to say that Saturday's stinkers were the worst games that any non-homer ever planned their weekend around. Sunday brought the Wizards back down to earth before their time, and from I heard, I glad I opted for The Simpsons and Vincent D'Onofrio. But, since FreeDarko has yet to let a playoff game pass without some comment, I figured I might as well let my intense displeasure be known, if not actually bless you with any wisdom.

Tonight should be better. Has to be. Can't be worse. Pistons/Pacers should be a BASKETBALL slugfest, but from sheer watchability perspective, it would need Artest (brawl or no brawl) to keep my interest. It did dawn on me this morning, though, that as much as the Pistons publicly support their fans, they probably sympathize more with the Pacers in this whole thing.

Mavs/Suns is looking more and more like the crown jewel of the playoffs, what Mavs/Kings were during the Kobe era. I will refrain from any further anticipation, since we know where that got us on Saturday.

Stephen Jackson has no sceptum. Draw your own conclusion.

Didn't that guy on the Dannon Frusion commerical used to host Rap City? Was his name Joe Cool or something?

Burnt, shot, stabbed, charred, hoisted

1. A highlight from either of tonight's games
2. My mindstate throughout

Did remember this Simmons line halfway through the Dallas/Rockets blood-letting, and it gave me something to believe in:

Has there ever been a one-on-one matchup quite like "Dirk Nowitzki vs. Amare Stoudemire"? Neither guy has any chance of stopping the other, nor will they care. It's going to be like watching the best Rucker Park showdown ever.

Jermaine O'Neal and Sheed have been talking all week about how excited they'd be to meet in the next round. Can he do no wrong?

Sad to see T-Mac go, but at least no one can question his heart or will to win this one. For what it's worth, that series probably made him the best shooting guard in the league. And between him and KG, there's definitely something bad-assed about not being able to get out of the first round; seems like it should have happened to AI.

Perspective: T-Mac is twenty-five and only getting better. I'd still bet on him and Yao getting a ring in the 8-10 years of prime he has left.

Never liked Avery Johnson as a player but it's hard not to get behind him as a coach. He's such a straight shooter it hurts.

Best thing that happened on TNT tonight: at 12:41AM, Barkley revealed "I'm bilingual--I speak profanity and English." I'm assuming he's said it before, but that tells you what kind of a night it was.

Set your clocks now for Suns/Mavs. And in the meantime, umm, go Wizards!!!

Destiny's Child

Blogging etiquette reminds us that if it has been said better than we could say it ourselves, it bears reposting. This is from Wizznutzz after Game 5 of the Wiz-Bulls series, but after Gilbert Arenas' monster game-changing block on Kirk Hinrich, it is applicable eternally:

"Gilbert [Arenas] is Crispin Glover crazy! He is 1st team All-Margot Kidder crazy. When Pat O'Brien calls Gilbert he doesn’t even have to say "I wanna get crazy with you" because the crazy part is just understood. He was a man when he had to be, and a sweet child at the press conference."

While this might beg for a separate post, I am proposing a variation on the hoops/music blah-ness. Your unofficial round 1 playoffs soundtrack. Put Kerr, Walton, and the boys on mute:

Suns/Grizzlies - James Brown: In the Jungle Groove. JB is always standard for high-light reel type stuff.

Wiz/Bulls - The Stooges: Fun House. Self-explanatory

Spurs/Nugs - DJ Shadow: Endtroducing. This series felt cold and somewhat sterile to me, yet it also managed to evolve and maintain intrigue. And there was something slightly geeky to the whole thing as well. Also something very "white" about it.

Sixers/Pistons - Donny Hathaway: These Songs for You Live. This is the soundtrack to Allen Iverson's life. He ain't heavy, he's my brother.

Nets/Heat - Willie Colon/Hector Lavoe: Lo Mato Si No Compra Este. Because this series was alllllllllll South Beach.

Sonics/Kings - Common Sense: Resurrection. FBP's theme music.

Pacers/Celtics - Danzig: Danzig 4. Shit is straight ugly, and everyone has a bad attitude.

Mavs/Rockets - Love: Forever Changes. Just because it's the type of thing you play on a Texas roadtrip. And the title is sort of silly-ly apt.

MVP (this is our year)

In further proof that FreeDarko has put the media on notice, new NBA bias, irrational exuberance, and a lack of respect for conventional basketball wisdom reign.

The leaks are in, and it's Nash. I'm not going to dispute just how indispensable Shaq is, but at some point you've got to give the team guy some. Shaq makes others better by giving them space to work; Nash practically tells them what shot to take, and lands two of his running mates in the All-Star game, his entire starting five in Denver one way or another. Face it, he helped every single Sun find themselves in what turned out to be career years all around. You can make a Shaq-like argument (Shaq-like, I said) for Yao, if you look at T-Mac and Mike James. Nash: unprecedented, or at least totally unique in this season. He's almost too valuable, to the point that it's almost embarrasing for the league, like if I had a personal chef that fed me by hand.

Can't we let that defense thing slide for a year? There is a defensive player award. . . until there's an offensive player award, I'm not going to believe that the MVP isn't secretly all about offensive proficiency. What if someone were of only average defensive ability? Would that disqualify them like some think it should Nash? Or even hurt their case? By this logic, it should.

And, not that this should be a measure of a MVP candidate, but doesn't Dirk's wan postseason showing make us reconsider how important Nash was to his development? Like he'd figured out how to play his regular season on his own, but could have used a little more Nash to get him through the training wheels period of his playoff career?

Conclusion: the NBA is a league of stars. They are all either very different, or almost too much like each other. Why not give out four or five MVP's, either to several players that are almost indistinguishable or a wide variety of games?

Postscript: Iverson probably should have gotten it. He led the league in scoring, became a deadly distributor, stole the ball like a maniac and had more heart than the rest of the league put together. If you're going to think sensibly about it like this, LeBron could have run away with the award if anyone on his team could capitalize on any of the open looks, spacing on floor, etc. he gets for them.

Kwame - You're Fired!

Scoop Jackson wrote a good piece and actually toned down the urbano-jargon. I'm proud of him. I'm also proud that he was able to articulate - rather thoughtfully - the crusade that has been the life of Kwame Brown.

It has been terribly entertaining hasn't it, this saga with this mountain of possible potential. Will he become the latest reclamation project - boy done good, or fall into further oblivion. I'm betting on the former.

I haven't given up on him. I'm looking forward to Kwame putting on a Hawks or Cavs jersey or whomever, (i haven't even seen the salary cap situation this year), and showing that he is as much a product of the dysfunction of Washington over the past years than anything else.

Someone is going to give him a decent size contract, give him a world class shrink and a system where he can flourish. Hey, if they were able to clean up the Troubled Eddie Griffin, KB should be meat and potatoes.

The old, scarred FreeDarko mailbag

I'm not really sure that we even have a mailbag—more a gmail account that some of us occasionally remember to look at. Today in said account, though, I found the following (two day-old) gem from FreeDarko reader Sasha:

Dixon, who just went berzerk for 35pts on 10-13 shooting and 10-10
from the line, specifically mentioned reading the "Amazingly Sucky
Juan Dixon" thread on the Wizards forum at RealGM.com as his
motivation.

Nevermind that no multi-millionaire athlete should look to RealGM for validation; who the hell feels that being called "amazingly sucky" is a challenge they have to answer? There's a reason why trash-talking is an art. . .

Your Opinion is Wrong

First of all, no anti-Spurs bias here. The Ginobili madness must cease. On this blog and beyond. This guy is a product of playoff storylines. There is nothing special about his style of play. Seriously. The guy causes havoc. So does Mark Madsen. So does Danny Fortson and so did Dennis Rodman. People act like we've never seen a player like him before?! George Karl, Marcus Camby, Skip Bayless, and all the smug Doug Collins types would have you think so. I hope he enjoyed the best season of his life in which he averaged 16ppg. In two years everyone will have forgotten about him, and Kevin Millar.

Second, I take back what I said about Glenn Robinson. He was only 2 for 6 last night, but he hit the biggest shot of the series. And no WAY Brent Barry, Bowen, or Parker (much less the 03-04 Hedo Turkoglu) would have made that.

On another note, is there anything more ironic than watching Glenn Robinson guard Carmelo Anthony? It's like the broke ass version of Shaq vs. Amare. Big Dog vs. Little Dog. It is the cinematic moment when the son looks into his father's eyes to see what he will become.

Quick scouting note: NO ONE MOVES WITHOUT THE BASKETBALL WORSE THAN MELO. He is the anti-Rip Hamilton.

And as much as I hate to say it, Carmelo showed me something. He very well could be the next Big Dog/Toine, but he has waaaaay more "upside" than I have been giving him credit for (at least more upside, than, say, Emeka Okafor...yeah I said it).

This Celts-Pacers series is like a pimple on the back of my neck. If I were Puppetmaster Stern, I would make sure to script Reggie Miller coming out of retirement next year to join and Artest-having Pacers team on a mission to crush kill destroy.

Steve Kerr tried to use the example of Kwame Brown vs. Michael Ruffin as an example of why basketball players should go to college before the NBA. Ummm, NO.

Holdup, I'm about to drop the SAT ANALOGY OF THE CENTURY: Ben Wallace is to Defense as Antawn Jamison is to Offense.

Does that even require an explanation???!!??!?!!!

Ain't no thang

Is this Wizards/Bulls series supremely enjoyable or divinely exasperating? I don't even bother paying attention until the fourth, since between the magic of Ben Gordon and the Wizards' limitless capacity for late-game ineptness, the tone isn't set until the last ten minutes or so. I also love the fact that, while the Bulls are wonders of professionalism and certainly seem like the more ethically sound candidate for "team of destiny," the Wizards are so batty, so uncontrollable, that even the basketball gods are powerless to write the script for them. I hesitate to call them the Sox of the NBA, but there's a similar level of incompetent brilliance, brilliant incompetence going on there. Even if the Wizards seem to appeal to an even higher (or lower) authority than the Red Sox.

Wizards take a twenty point lead for granted and eventually blow it by attrition, when their last five possessions could have sewn up the win (don't even mention free throws). Bulls claw back without having to resort to a miracle--they know the game well enough to make "tough plays"—and it looks we're headed into overtime, where the Bulls will doubtlessly overpower a Wizards team by now awash in their usual senselessnee. Then Arenas casually wins the game on a shot anyone (including about three Bulls, of course) could have seen coming.

His immediate reaction, according to B3 (FreeDarko's official NBA League Audio Pass correspondent):

"Game six? Watch it! It's going to be great!"

If you enjoy FreeDarko

It's because we're in a contract year.

I know that many people think NBA players are lazy, greedy, unmotivated ne'er do-wells, who come out of the womb able to play the game at a world-class level. These same people believe that, any time there's any marked improvement in a player's performance, be it for a single game or over the course of a year, it's solely motivated by their looming free agency. As idiotic as this whole Jerome James saga was, at least it gave the media something to ascribe his first-round dominance to BESIDES his contract year.

Then today on ESPN radio, a reporter from Sacramento says their series was "Ray Allen's coming out party. . .for his contract year." I appreciate that he was trying to dig his way out of a semantic hole, having just accidentally called a perennial All-Star unknown. But to say that Allen is playing for a contract is absoolutely insane. Anyone who needs to be informed of Ray Allen's ability has no business spending a dime for a professional sports franchise, and the notion that Allen would think he had something to prove smacks of opportunism. Like no matter how good he's been all these years, he's really been saving it for the home stretch of his contract year. It's an intriguing strategy, especially if you try to apply it to politics (I seem to remember a rumor that Rove was trying to work something like this last year). In sports, though. . . really, how mercenary could NBA players really be? They have so little competitive spirit that they can hold back for years, hurting their team, just to boost their free agency stock with some last minute, blindsiding fireworks?

Larry Hughes: anyone who follows the NBA knew it was just a matter of time.

Whether players go to shit after they sign their deals is another matter altogether; personally, I think guaranteed, lifelong contracts are a cancer unto the league. Definitely guys fall off and never come back; yes, some of them have benefitted from sudden improvements in a contract year. But that doesn't mean that anyone has to cynically suppose that it's the only motivation players have to step their game up, or that there's no such thing as a natural arc of a good career, money or no money. That can be sabotaged by a contract, but the good part would probably happen anyway.

Van Gundy Gate

I really couldn't care less. Coaches bitch and the league feigns outrage. JVG's "inside source" would only be a story if he had some proof of a league-wide conspiracy. And, as the talk shows have been saying all morning, he's crazy if he thinks that the Association would want to risk the playoffs going on without much, much more T-Mac and Yao --if there's one thing Stern would definitely know, it's how to engineer a ratings-friendly conspiracy. Come to think of it, since JVG is an honorary Jew, he's probably in on it too, and this outburst is all part of Stern's master plan.

Here's a picture so no one accuses us of ignoring the story. Pretend he's mouthing the words "Judith Miller."



And don't trip, there's no way he's actually getting thrown out of the league.

Certified

I don't know how much more round one I can take. I'm pretty sure I caught most of the 5/2 action, with a break to catch Jack Bauer do some more dumb shit in the name of honor and freedom. Not even sure I cared that the Rockets fell apart again down the stretch, since it makes me think it was a mistake to have believed in them so much earlier in the series. Dixon redeemed himself, and Hughes clowned Hinrich so hard that I think he might have also clowned himself in the process. Like if he could have gotten away with that shit, it must have been so easy that he had no business doing it.



So that makes the Wizards even with the Bulls and the Mavs one win away from the second round--meaning, the Bulls will embarrass the Wiz in game five, and Houston will come out swinging and force a game seven in decisive fashion. If only I could see a game in either of these two series where it didn't seem like the losing team was not just getting beaten but actually doing something seriously wrong.

The Spurs/Nuggets joint, though, might be the most I've ever enjoyed a game involving San Antonio. Denver played straight gangster: K-Mart fouling out on a totally unncessary half-nelsoning of Duncan, everyone else on the verge of getting t'ed up all night long, that frontline generally refusing to be punked on their home court by a bunch of straight-laced basketball fundamentalists, the guards bumping around and mixing it up, and Melo once and for all proving why he's not Big Dog part 2. Oh yeah, and Nene's real first name is Rodney. Best of all, it was non-stop swagger; no whining, rushing, or desperation. Play physical and nasty like that, effortlessly and gritty, and that's a chemistry that all the Spurs systems in the world can't match. Too bad San Antonio also had the two best players on the floor on their side.

As much as I want this year's Suns nucelus to stay so long they can be a half-minyan at my wedding, lure Joey Johnson to the Nuggets this summer, add water, let it cool a little, and you're looking at a championship contendor.

This did, though, make the Spurs do more than keep the game at arm's length and scoff at the other team's nonsense; put Duncan in the trenches and he'll prove himself, and Manu=the South American Iverson (fuck Skip Bayless, who wants to claim Manu for the white race). That might be it--if the Spurs lose their holier-than-thou attitude and have to rely on Duncan and Manu playing to beat whoever, then suddenly they've got some charisma and, more importantly, humanity.

Thank god some things on this planet make sense: the Nuggets, young team, sensibly trying to retool their roster, working toward the future. Sneak into the playoffs last year, show something but are outmatched. Stumble early this season (sophomore slump), strike gold with Karl, realize their potential, brought down to earth by playing the NBA's finest. Project next year: prove they're still growing. I like my sports chaotic and all, but a little bit of symmetry can sometimes be a very, very good thing. Sorry to anyone in Denver if I'm making light of your pain.

Houston, heed my sanguine plea!!!!

Apologies to the Brown Recluse and THC, who have heard this idea before in a far more idiotic early form.

In the aftermath of the Nets’ anticlimactic sweep, one thing’s clear: a lousy playoff anthem can sink a team. But that doesn’t mean we should go and give up on music paving the road to a championship; the Nets just managed to have come up with a lackluster theme song for what, barring a sonic miracle, would have been a lackluster playoff showing anyway,

The Rockets are this close to (or, were two late-game collapses away from) putting some dark-horse-becoming-giant-darkly-colored-swan-monster fear in the hearts of the West. Clearly, all they need to take that last, largely symbolic baby step towards destiny is the right song. For me, at least, the solution couldn’t be more obvious.

For the last month or so, every time Mike James takes a shot I imagine him exclaiming to himself “I’m Mike James!” It’s not so ridiculous a comparison—both are underdogs that come with more impressive, emphatic shit than you’d expect, given their everguy image and a style that should be a prescription for middling obscurity. In both cases, when it comes off it's probably only because they believe in themselves so much at any given moment (and seem to want us to know it). And, with Mike Jones proving key to Houston rap’s bid for national success, Mike James the anti-face of the supporting cast T-Mac and Yao need to be more than a two-man show, and Houston generally on the rise (okay, that’s a stretch), the stars have aligned and it’s time to make moves!!!!!

Dear Rockets organization, if you’re listening, I propose you commission the good folks at Swishahouse to record yet another “Still Tippin’” remix, on which each emcee plays the part of a different Rockets team member. Nevermind that “Still Tippin’,” equal parts triumphalism and groggy, lean-fuelled menace, should probably be played on a loop at the T-Mac Museum (opened in 2020, under the Yao Ming “Valley Unto the Sky” glass-and-metal installation); the thought of Slim Thug giving voice to JVG’s inner-bulldog, or Paul Wall ennobling Bobby Sura once and for all, would be enough to get the whole United States nation behind them.

Of course, the unquestioned highlight would be “He’s Mike James/I’m Mike Jones.”

FBP: Un-fucking-conscious

I have forgotten how devastating Ray Allen can be more times than you've ever known. I mean I'll pay lip service to his silky jumper and his thinking man's approach to what's probably the Association's most retarded position. But when he puts on a show, it only makes the subtle gravely apparent. Make no doubt about it--when he's flowing, Allen is, in his own button-down way, every bit the assassin that AI, T-Mac, or Arenas is.

To paraphrase Ray Ray: fly on the desk. . . they think they're coming at me fast. . . slow motion to me. . .

(It made sense if you saw the game.)

Maybe this is the secret to the Sonics' success. How could we have been so blind?

First annual FreeDarko coloring contest

Tell us what you think is happening in this photo and win a free wrist watch:



Unrelated Amare quote: "Dunking on people is always a great joy."

Precursor to a Beatdown

Read all about it here. Adelman is calling out the Sonics for flopping and is sending video to the NBA. Surefire sign that the Kings are headed fishing. If history has taught us anything, it is that one of the 21st century's greatest sports cliches is:

-Coach/Player A on Team A complain about unfair treatment, cheating/disrespect for the rules by Team B
-Team B defeats Team A
-Player B from Team B states, "We'll beat them under any circumstances."
-Conclusion: Irony/Justice.

Now, I can't really think of a good example of this besides Tony Dungy ragging on the Pats's D-Backs for holding, but let me assure you, this is a sign of a desperate man.

In other news, I am incredibly happy that this story came to light. Make no mistake about it: Alonzo Mourning is a true jerk, who has somehow managed, with a few gestures, to make the general public see otherwise. The story of how he completely screwed over the team that basically mothered him when he was down and out was one of the most overlooked of the year. Boo to Zo. You are the despicable version of the Karl Malone Laker of last year. Go Heat. And Go Bulls.