4.30.2006

Pulls me right back



Very little left in the tank after Kobe's sweeping orchestration of the strong and weak forces earlier today, but there's a diary entry that needs to get wrote up in here.

Someone really, really needs to call me on this one: multiple times, I've seen Arenas stumble out the gate, for an entire half even, and then rip the house apart for a crucial quarter or two. Granted, it's sometimes all in vain, as with game #1 of the Cavs series. But look back on what I said barely one hour ago: "I can't stand to see Arenas suffer."

Uh, isn't that part of his appeal? That he bounces back against impossible odds more often than not, and that even his blunders leave you wondering exactly what they meant? I guess I'm only showing here that I do have such a strong affinity for the perennially under-respected Arenas that I don't want to see him razed by Team LeBron. The point of Gilbert, though, is that he'll go down dying before he lets the inevitable happen. If LeBron is a walking foregone conclusion whose shown he can indeed falter, Arenas is, and always will be, the unlikeliest of all the elite, even over the course of a single game. Having something invested in him is an uneasy, hair-raising pact tinged with a certain anxiety; being Gilbert, though, is probably the complete and total opposite of this.

And that, my friends, is why I'm barely a real sports fan. Call me unseen caretaker, call me patron, but don't forget that I had to be convinced to come on board in the first place.

NEVER EVER EVER EVER



Totally fucking speechless. This is your MVP, and a legit heir to Jordan's throne. And this is the rare day when you can watch two potential candidates for GOAT play back-to-back.

Kobe Bryant is no longer a bandwagon—he's an axiom. Dwyane Wade? Pleeze. Dude might not even be able to get past a glorified All-American team with Shaq.

Incidentally, do they only have that camera angle at Staples?

We Dropped the Tag On Him


"RED BULL." Thanks Tirico. This is how a Euro is supposed to play. We bring fists and muscles. And some things to keep in mind:

After watching the Kevin Martin layup clip for the millionth time, I noticed something that brought a smile to my face eternally. After Kev-Mart makes the layup, all of his teammates mob him and come over to give dap...EXCEPT FOR ARTEST...who feels somehow compelled to grab the basketball and run to the other end of the court...and is then shown rejoicing with a Maloof shortly after.

And Smush Parker is the best in-game dunker in the L.


4.29.2006

The Tee



A quest that was altogether worth it. Watch the video and hear Lendale speak on it and his uncle Bernie, who apparently would've held the key to improving his draft standing.

Go forth and prosper



You know what it is: FreeDarko just officially got handed our new favorite pro football gawd. DLIC called me the minute it went down, I was so delirious that I interrupted him even more than usual, and we now come to you, dear readers, to help us find a photo of this week's FD fashion holy grail.

The pain of the octopus



Sad to say that i couldn't really get in the right state of mind for last night's games. First of all, having Lakers/Suns and Wizards/Cavs unloading on each other back-to-back sort of made me take the two for granted. Secondly, no matter what she says, there's no way my girl likes it when I show up in town and then promptly quarantine myself from 7-12:30. But the really fuck in my socks came in the form of two totally unholy forms of discovery, which I will detail below:

1. The sad football news out of Houston. I don't really mess with "real football;" to me, one of the four great perks of moving to H-Town was going to be witnessing Reggie Bush on a weekly televised basis. I know that I could rack up 1,000 yards in the Denver system, that Carr, Andre, Moulds, and Davis are a pretty darn adequate cadre of skill players, and that real men need defense, and that, like Kubiak said, they're never going to be able to outgun the Colts. And while I want to believe that Bush will change football forever, these ultimate weapons don't always translate into the pros. But I don't want to be the city missing out on this on the big stage. Incidentally, I saw some scouting schmoe's site refer to Gayle Sayers as "Black Magic," which might be the best nickname ever.

I wonder, though, why it is that football itself is having so much trouble with this pick. Isn't it the NBA that's supposed to be concerned only with meaningless highlights and superluous talent? Don't winning and losing dictate interest, not flash? Maybe it would get a lot of these holier-than-thou NFL fans to quit bitching if you accused them of sounding like NBA'ers.



And not to harp on the fumes raised by my McSweeney's joint this week, but how come "physical playoff basketball" is the very stuff of manhood, but the Brawl is thuggery incarnate? Watching "classy guys" in the Lakers and Suns bare their teeth time and time again, I had no clue what made some moments "competitive" and others "uncalled for." This goes hand-in-hand with another question raised by last night: what to think of LeBron dropping forty in the playoffs? Are they the playoffs, which means the points count double? Or are the refs still favoring offense like they supposedly did throughout the season? Seems like yet another case where too much contrast between the two phases lends itself to incoherence.

Suns like weak, floundering; Lakers have found something, but it may not be there in round 2. The Wizards/Cavs game was similiar—somewhere between the first two, reminding us that storylines must cool before they rise up with certainty.

2. The other cause of death: apparently, two people who live in my girlfriend's complex have complained to the landlord that I've been seen in "in my underwear in the common area." Apparently, old running shorts on laundry night is a little too risque for them—like they don't live two minutes from the heart of the state's mightiest gay district!!! And if they're really so worried about the moral fiber of their block, they might want to take notice of the dude in the next building's courtyard who'll serve anyone (Houston's eternally feeble patterns of gentrification) or the multiple registered sex offenders on the block (ask your gov't). Fuck this town.

Actually, this Texans thing is perfect. A city that in the end is run by bland, rational, business-minded concerns that trump the will to style. And Bush drops to a team that needs him just as desperately but is savvy enough to realize it. Culture, bitch.



Leinart to Arizona is beyond perfect. . . why does he look so down?

PS: Not they need anyone to link to them, but Deadspin weekenders MJD and MDS are doing some amazing things with the tricky project of internet draft coverage as we speak. Salute!

4.28.2006

A New Hope Emerges



It's now buried on ESPN.com's NBA page, but yesterday afternoon B.J. Armstrong, who I previously knew primarily as the baby-faced point guard during the first Bulls dynasty, conducted a chat in which he proved himself to be the leading candidate to succeed Bill Walton as the game's most bombastic and brilliantly incoherent commentator. It's clear that he studied at the feet of Phil Jackson, and not because he claims P-Jax should have won Coach of the Year and gives Kobe not only this season's MVP, but also Top 5 all-time status. It's Armstrong's faux zen koans like, "Every team has the same exact problems." (on the difference between the Nuggets and the Pistons) and "He's wise and lazy. He understands there's nothing to do and something to do." (on Jackson himself) that reveal the depth of "the Zenmaster's" influence. By the end of the transcript, I wasn't sure whether he was a genius or totally full of shit. I'm leaning toward the latter, but read it and decide for yourself!



Also, if you haven't peeped it yet, make sure you read Shoals' latest McSweeney's post and today's companion piece. Essential reading for the start of your weekend.

4.27.2006

Better paint and marrow



Hoistin' up the mantle on McSweeney's today. This began as some tangential thoughts on the playoffs and nature's way, but then I realized just how badly someone needed to stick up for the usefulness of the regular season and the unity of the two. The condemnation of games #1-82 is one of the shallowest, most commonly parroted cliches in all of sports, and those who wear these beaks simply cannot be let out of our sight. I'm interested in knowing, though, if I ended up sounding like the godless streetball apologist that some have accused me of being.

At the request of DLIC and the Recluse, though, here are two totally independent points I was working on before I was ambushed by common sense. Be glad that you are being spared but their respective gists.

ARTICLE I: THEY KNOW NOT WHAT OWNS THEM

To every sport approved of by the hearth of moral victory, there is a season. Most classically, baseball is summer; once the slightest snap comes into the air, something is at stake, the player sharpen up, and voila—summer’s wistful demise, as leisure is at last called to bloody arms. The footballs have a similar drift to them; celebrating the crunch and severity that is coldness’s Shermanian march, it culminates in the freezer-scorched utopia of breath-watching and brute will. March Madness is synonymous with Spring Break, and those dastardly Olympics make sense only as abstract odes to the spirit of their respective seasons. A sport in harmony with the climatic rhythm of the universe has a far easier time convincing people to incorporate them into their lives. I will refrain from falling too far into history, but lessons ranging from astrology to the Muppets attest to this most basic of supra-social mechanisms. The NBA regular season, however, fit its will to the most dreaded of purely human constructions: the academic year. Jumping off just after schedules are set, dissipating into far more exalted mists as teacher and pupil alike scurry to fill in the remaining blanks, it is practically set up to have its arrival overshadowed and its resolution buried in singed nerves. The best possible case makes it into a pleasant social ritual selectively deployed in these periods of flurried activity, setting it up to sag once the nights get lonely.



ARTICLE II: ACROSS THE SCALDED PLAINS

The appeal of the playoffs cannot be separate from their timing; their annual odyssey closely parallels the progression of the summer, right down to the prolonged misery it represents. Summer, as distinct from the imagined snapshot mentality of “summertime,” is the slow, barbarous descent into ungodly heat and whimpering decay. Man spends the beginning anticipating the plunge, teetering back and forth between half-full spring and half-empty early summer (the early rounds of the playoffs). One day, he wakes up and finds himself confronted by the fact that life is suddenly harsh and restrictive (playoffs down to the contenders). That last third, August in all its anxious dread, he that realizes he’s been marched into an eerie, inescapable desert that threatens to show him nothing before or since. The Finals are this and nothing more: a merciless death march that one suddenly realize he's been on all along, no matter how shimmery it initially seemed, and whose last days represent the pinnacle of suffering.



Somewhere along the line, I decided that the NBA lends itself more legitimately to year-round fandom, if only because it's so sorely lacking in outrageous peaks and valleys. But I'm not quite comfortable asserting that my favorite sport rules because it's off-season; it comes dangerously close to insisting that mediocrity and/or stylized tedium is the Association's essence.

Speaking of which, shouldn't the NFL and NBA swap drafts?

At what point does Mel Kiper, Jr. become scouting writ large? Does it make any sense for him to assess whose stock is rising or falling, or report on what the general feeling around the league is about a prospect?

Lest anyone accuse us of Cowherdin' it up, one Revgen first posted the photo of The Jacket on a Clublakers.com forum, followed shortly thereafter by Lakers Dynasty 2000. Had we thought that we were the only ones who had been alerted to its presence, we probably would've done a better job of carving out the right paths. Or maybe we just owe a certain Disney intern a big, fat, peersome apology.

Linking here has nothing to do with blood ties, everything to do with the second part of the mix posted therein. And you shouldn't just be listening to this because dude put his home and belongings at risk so I could see Wednesday finish up as it happened.

My small fortune



Stop me whenever this sounds familiar. Imagine an offense-based team that favored an uptempo game and relied very little on low post honesty, was led by a masterful, pass-first guard, and fielded an unconventional line-up. They storm through the regular season, with some overheated observers daring to suggest that they've redefined the game of basketball. Their playoff chances are thought to be sorely underwhelming, as they are lacking in some of that elements necessary to complete, fundamentally sound competition. But they end up making a statement that for the ages, even if its ultimate purpose remains unfulfilled.

Now suppose they did the same thing again, with even gaudier numbers. Would you have to respect them in the playoffs on the strength of last year's showing? Regardless of who else was in the running this post-season? Would this be cause to once and for all upend conventional wisdom on the subject? Might we accidentally annoint them a dynasty?



A lot of questions must swirl in all of our minds as the Lakers/Suns highlights reach their third or fourth cycle. Oddly enough, this is the first time that it's really seemed appropriate to ask if Phoenix is vulnerable, if not overrated. I've heard a few nods in that direction, mostly in the form of "Kobe's capable of anything," but most people seem wary of making the same initial miscalculation twice. I also think that this phrasing brings out what, up until tonight, it's sounded a little indulgent to suggest: that the Lakers might be really fucking good. Kobe's off quarter on Sunday points toward one man's mishaps; for the Lakers to effectively neutralize Phoenix's main angle of attack and altogether dismantle several of their key player, well, that's called consummate beatdown. Nash got his, but it was he, not Kobe that came off as the savant scoring in a bubble with little or no effect on the team effort. We're back to the days of "let Nash try and beat you alone," something that I'd gone so far as to suggest that these Suns could use to their advantage.

But what really makes me well up deep beneath my skin is that, at long last, this season has the cult team it's so sorely needed. This is the realization of the dream so many of us saw flash across the skies when Kobe, Odom-as-Pippen, and Kwame first came together last summer. This is the follow-up to the Clip Show and last year's Suns, hallowed be their names. Until the Hawks finish above .400, or Amare stops his frightening slide towards Rear Window-dom on the bench, this Lakers are about as FD as one team can get. Phil is an obvious drawback, and I suppose some of you are still hung up on Kobe-hating. But my, how Vujacic has grown, fearless when he drives and proudly sporting the most electro haircut in the Association! And young Luke, who as a white role player can actually ball a little, has that weird thing with his father not being allowed to acknowledge his existence regularly on national broadcasts, and, has at least some identifiable personal style.

Sidenote: If anyone knows any scouts, can someone please tell them in advance of the draft to not go for would-be stars outside of the lottery? For the most part, those prospects are boom-or-bust scenarios, and likely ill-adapated for life off the bench and/or on the functional periperhy of the team. Someone like Walton, though, who I said all along should've gone late first, is perfect to come in and fill gaps. Same for Josh Howard. All these guys do is play basketball, and they don't really give a fuck how. It's like drafting "an athlete" in the NFL, just with the vagary a matter of convenience and not mystery.

Most of all, this team is full of weirdos and is a ball to watch. And that's without Turiaf even getting on the floor!!!

Everyone's talking about Odom/Marion. Can you even begin to imagine Grant/Turiaf? The earth wouldn't shift for days!

4.25.2006

Breathe with him



In an email issued earlier today, I typed ruefully that all I wanted out of the tonight's game was Gilbert's nominal redemption. So overpowering did LeBron appear this past weekend—and so ceaselessly inept have the Wizards been at non-transition defense—that I figured only an appearance by the Arenas we all know and love could salvage his image's stake in this series. As the public by now knows, I was instead treated to Gilbert at his gutsiest, the rebirth of the off-kilter warrior who emerged from the wreckage of last season's battle with the Bulls. During the season he may often coast on whimsy and blessing alone, but this game called us to remembrance: dude is not just a gunner, and not some stat-padding, single-minded knave plundering a weak conference. Ladies and gentlemen, this is a franchise guard who can stare down Lebron and emerge victorious—not in a shoot-out, but in a trial-by-fire recital of chutzpah.

Victory gained, but at what cost? As my Saturday ravings indicated with force immaculate, I have an immense degree of personal investment in this LeBron-as-absolute picture of the Association, perhaps as much as I've sunk into the proud ship Arenas over the years. And this game was, to put it bluntly, the worst I've ever seen him play. Or at least the least mature he's looked since the mature Bron came into focus. That preposterous block aside, he looked worse than nervous or stumbling; the man who might be the game's greatest yet came off as hoarsely cocky (late game turnovers off of no-looks, par?), lazy (rejected by the rim on a dunk?), and lacking in any of the programmatic genius of his emergence in Game 1. As far as high-concept basketball art is concerned, he might've just Reggie Bush'ed the title back to Kobe, whose cloak of silence was already a close second. He knew not himself, nor others, nor, in the least Bron move of all, what was at stake.



Of course I'm overreacting, just as I did when I assumed that his post-season career from here on out would take the form of Game 1. But while the big picture of the series might well disprove me, this has implications for the Bron of history and lore. Arenas's Game 1 blank doesn't contradict who he is, even if he had to come up major tonight to prove that he's equal parts question mark and exclamation point. The thing with LeBron is that, unlike Arenas, he's not allowed the excuse of being flawed, given to problematic impulses, or, god forbid, capable of anything less than the most universally-acclaimed solution to any given basketball problem at hand. Perhaps there will come a day when the game's great minds actually expect James to surprise them with his genius, but for now he's nothing less than the walking golden rectangle. The question is whether fans, media, and other players will admit that tonight's LeBron exists, however temporarily, within that archetype, posit it as a full-fledged alter ego with backlash in its heart, or prefer to chalk the whole thing up to Jared Jeffries's defensive prowess.

Me, I think this makes him all the more convincing; that even he can't quite handle the full scope of his powers makes his future that much more terrifying and, in a Kobe-like way, something that really belongs to him. Even if, like Bryant, it's a way he'll basically have to find himself, and only when it actually counts.

He Shot That!





(HE SHOT THAT).


36-footer at the apex of a 18-0 run. Just subsequent to Shoals rightfully remarking that "This game blows." Not even remotely possible when Lebron and Gilbert are on the same floor. With all the turnovers, I was beginning to wonder if it was possible for the NBA Playoffs to do us the same disservice as what we were bitching about the NCAA doing, which is giving us drama by default, parity due to two teams equally matched for mediocrity. But instead Caron and the boys started to get it going to show us that THIS IS A GAME OF OFFENSIVE RUNS. There exists no mediocrity, as mediocrity is only manifest in the poor defense of Flip Murray and Antawn Jamison, which simply leads to GiLBJames highlights, which negates any mediocrity. FULL CIRCLE.

Jared Jeffries misses too many layups.
Drew Gooden cannot be stopped.

From a distance

For once, I will forgive someone commenting anonymously. We're probably not the only people throwing this up hastily this morning, but suffice to say that this official all-caps moment in NBA sideshow history deserves its own country, and the man who pointed us toward this should be paddled out into the middle of a lake and fed pastry.



GOD IS WATCHING US!!!!!

4.23.2006

The creature is in the details



I'll be honest: I'd assumed, as had most of the land, that Game 1 of this round's marquee series would be a star-driven barrage: Nash conjuring up another effortless offensive tone poem, Kobe making everyone uncomfortable by, um, forcing his will on the game by drilling, penetrating, and splitting his way to an ultimately futile 40 or 50 (worst possible NBA figure to catch a rape charge). Two of the three front-runners for the Mo-Pod, each in their own way spinning individual brilliance into the foundation for post-season legitimacy. Instead, I got clear-cut proof that either this is the most endlessly tricky match-up of Round 1, or Suns/Lakers is at heart a coaching chess match.

I had a long list of quizzical observations on the game ready to go, but then KAREEM'S JACKET descended from beyond this earth and ground them all to a pulp. Suffice to say that, if this had indeed been a player's game—which we'd all assumed it would be—it would've been more fluid, less jagged, and much less of cerebral puzzle for the viewer. We all know that the Nash can manufacture points at will, and Kobe insist upon about as many per night as he sees fit to. I would also like to take this chance to point out how telling it is that the Suns are never accused of being soft, as the Kings and Mavs before them so often were; they aren't even judged as a team effort, or a collective spirit, since it's so clearly Nash juggling mostly interchangable pieces to achieve the desired result. Granted, Marion and Diaw are among the most valuable players we have in this league, but it's Nash's pinball table and they're just living in it.

Fast forward to what just was: D'Antoni/Jackson, plain and simple. That Lakers team had found its organic, Kobe-centric logic by the end of the regular season, and that's no doubt a joint effort of Bryant's maturity and Jackson's passive aggressive management skills. This one, though, was so game-planned to death that it seemed ripped from the pages of Larry Brown's wine-stained family haggadah ("Let the Right Way Go!"). Targeting the Suns's weaknesses, deciding who and what could be allied to run amuck, obsessively situating Kwame and Odom while making sure that Smush flexed like the "X Factor" Jackson apparently identified him as to the media. Even Kobe's quiet, quiet performance seemed part of a master strategy; I would not put it past Phil's genius and Kobe's demonic—no, not "devilish"—opera of self to get together and purposefully freeze him, and victory, out of game one to throw the planet off keel and leave a roaring void of doubt in the mind of Phoenix. Proof that this was so far out of the hands of the players: Odom and Kwame, who probably have some of the worst touch in the Association right around the basket, were repeatedly put in that position that's neither shooting nor laying it in (where, significantly, Zach Randolph and Eddy Curry thrive). It was at times painful to watch, but Phil seemed to think it important to prove that they could.



When it became clear that Phil had some wise thoughts on how to disrupt Nash's all-mighty puppet show, D'Antoni stepped in and not only met him head-on. In the process of doing that which was necessary, he made it clear just how much the Suns themselves are a coaching masterstroke. We all know about the Diaw switch, and the stockpiling of edgy, new era three-point specialists. But the juggling of line-ups, the utility belt with which Nash descends upon the offensive end, has been an elaborate system of red herrings, jabs, parrys, feints, end-arounds, and all other sorts of heady language that could apply just as easily to super-aggressive coaching or high IQ basketball playing. Even Nash sometimes seemed putty in D'Antoni's hands; against the Spurs, getting him to committ to scoring proved to be a way of gumming up the system. But with brilliant coaching shuffling the cards to dictate where and when Nash would be compelled to flip the switch, it ended being a predictable way of destablizing the system of mismatches and pre-determined causes that Phil had opted to stake his victory on.

I am still not entirely sure if this was as exciting to watch as this prose would make it sound, but I can safely say that I've never before interested in seeing how coaching would override letting players play. And while I don't think we have to worry that D'Antonio or Jackson are threats to Brown or Jerry Sloan's seats on the Supreme Council, it did make a case for how hard it is to have an MVP-type season without an equally resourceful coach putting in serious work, even if it's only blatantly obvious on these most exceptional of occasions. I'd still like to see Kobe make this into a battle of performance, rather than execution. If only because I'd like to see Nash show that he, and these Suns, can sweat, grunt, and make dramatic, micro-adjustments of effort that would align them with last season's team—and make me believe that they two are a team of players.

4.22.2006

The once and future



I'm not gonna lie, that was hard to watch. I generally abstain from any kind of rooting or partisan fandom that does not serve the interest of complete and total NBA awesomeness, i.e. it is virtually impossible for me to ever want to see LeBron "fail." This also explains why I would rather see a shoot-out than stomach a cripplingly defended star. But for the last two years, when Playoff Seasons comes 'round I instantly transform into a Wizards fan. It's not even in a rah-rah, chest-thump thing—it pains me personally to watch one of my favorite public figures made the fool, especially when he's so perennially slept-on (priceless Hubie: "Jamison is kind of unknown, since Arenas gets all the publicity.") The only comfort I'm getting here is remembering what a madhouse the series with the Bulls was, right down to Arenas completely tanking in the first game. I seem to remember writing at the time that "this is the most complex playoff coming out party for an athlete i've ever seen." If there's one thing we've learned about Arenas, it's that none of the usual strategic or psychological cliches apply, and the coffin is far from shut.

LeBron, though, is immanence itself, thoroughly unswayable by anything the world might throw at him. Yes, I know the Wizards are biologically incapable of playing defense, and James may not always opt to dominate the way he did in the first half. Unlike Wade and Amare, though—the other two most chronically unstoppable athletes in the game—he doesn't rely on a set repertoire of moves. When Kobe or AI are on, it's the same sort mesmerizing, out-of-thin-air creativity. But with those two, it's a matter of finding their rhythm, often through trial and error, and they often look like it's taking a superhuman effort to pull it off. LeBron, though, has no limits, speaks like a man inventing his own perfectly eloquent language on the spot, and quite frankly appears to be toying with the parameters of the game. The hoops should be higher, the court bigger, the teammates purposefully incompetent. . . basically, dude should be illegal. The two-dimensional Amare flat-out undermines the idea of the complete game; LeBron is more basketball than basketball itself.

(I hate to make this joke again, but for those who weren't knowing the first time around):



If used correctly, he could be more valuable to a team than Shaq his prime. And before you call me out on that, think about this: MJ was, no question. Heed what the crazy guy said at halftime: "by the time it's all over, they'll be mentioning him in the same breath with Jordan." Anyone not willing to at least reasonably consider this, already, is a pain in the ass.

Laughing sidenote: centuries from now, who wins a game of pay-per-view one-on-one: Arenas's adopted brother or the Katrina evacue Kobe's taken under his wing?

Hit cruise control



Christ of all christs, for some reason I thought the action didn't start full-swangin' until tomorrow. . . but while I may worry over sports with the eye of jeweler, the joy I get from watching the Assocation is definitely of the sloppy, kid-crushing-frog variety. I also want to suggest here, and do so for all to hear, that it's by no means totally necessary to watch every single fucking play-off game, especially when there's really no suitable question hanging in the balance. I got kind of sick of saying this about the regular season (it was gratifying yesterday to see that Joey has a similar take on things), but there's just not that urgency floating about the NBA these days. Seeing as this has been a campaign all about potential fulfilled—nice to see happen, ups the resonance of it all, give you a sense of dreams coming true rather than dreaming getting dreamt on the spot—I would be shocked if the playoffs didn't turn out to be more of the same. That's why, for the first round, I'm only absoutely focused on catching all of Wizards/Cavs and Suns/Lakers, since those are the only two series in which the end result won't just come down to which of two teams is the greater self-actualizer. Where it's not just what happens that's unpredictable, but how it'll all go down. Clips/Nuggets earns an honorary mention, if only because Melo might continue to dignify himself beyond our measured expectations.

Let me try and translate that for anyone looking to start a fight: we know that the strong teams will roll. We know that the individual stars will shine bright as they can, but will ultimately have a hard time single-handedly knocking off the TEAMS. That's the story of this season, and the lack of intersection, intermingling, or interchangability of these two basketball concepts, both coasting at a zenith in their respective quarters, is why this I've been so nonplussed by it all.

One other thing that begs commenting: Simmons's latest death-trap. I think I already said all I have to say on the subject in the comments section of the above-mentioned Straight Bangin' post, but to summarize, dude needs to admit who he is, grow up, and leave the vanguard to the truly vainglorious. He'd still have edge, and he wouldn't end up clowning himself so semi-regularly. To use an analogy he might understand: after Green, R.E.M. had no choice but to admit they were now an arena rock band; that doesn't mean that they couldn't do their part to remake that role into something worthwhile, too. The whole situation makes me feel kind of sorry for him, but also pisses me off in that he's denying us (and himself) a perfectly great journalistic voice.

Nod to Simmons: watching some Classic yesterday, I have to concede that, as Melo improves, the Bernard King comparison is looking less and less outlandish.

Check on us regularly, we'll try to keep it moving and new shit up here whenever something comment-worthy goes down.

NBA PLAYOFFS 2006: "PROVE ME WRONG!"

4.21.2006

Freesnarko pt. 287564: The Life Coaches

Like we always do about this time:



With the playoffs ever so near, Bethlehem Shoals, Brown Recluse Esq., and yours truly have taken it upon ourselves to soundtrack each series for you, providing an appropriate backdrop tailor-suited to the intricacies of each 15-on-15 best of seven matchup. Hours upon hours of archival research were performed in order to select the ideal accompaniments for each showdown. We hope you find these appropriate, and feel free to give your suggestions below.


EASTERN CONFERENCE

Pistons/Bucks:
The Band w/ Allen Toussaint - King Harvest (live)

Solid, ethical, perhaps a touch of austerity, but never without that snap of vitality. That's the impossible-to-sink, impossible-to-love, impossible-to-vanquish life force of these two teams, as they bring just a touch of swagger to the faceless grind, and tight-lipped desperation, of the Rust Belt. No Toussaint would be like this series without Sheed or Mo Williams.

Heat/Bulls: Prodigy – Keep it Thoro

The beat is Miami, looming larger than life, capable of swallowing whole its counterpart. Perhaps too well-crafted and too clean. Mundane for brief periods with spontaneous awe-inducement. The counterpart, obviously, is Prodigy: The Bulls. No-nonsense and capable of an unparalleled stupidity, used to his/its advantage. Durable, not very well-tested, but capable. Knowing.

Nets/Pacers: Neil Young - F*!#in' Up

Both the Nets' late season surge and the Pacers' solid .500 season amidst turmoil were about as expected as the grizzled Canadian rocker releasing a totally vital album in 1990, on the eve of grunge. The riffs evoke Indiana's hard-nosed approach, while the whiny voice is all Vince. This song and this series are about redemption. Maybe Vince will trade in the headband for a bandana for just one game.

Cavs/Wizards: John Coltrane w/ Eric Dolphy - Chasin' the Trane (live)

You heard it at FreeDarko first: BASKETBALL IS NOT JAZZ. But if you think for a second that this isn't going to stir in me feelings left untended since I first heard this (age 14, for the record), I hate you, reader. Pure, destructive, explosive ecstatsy, with a definite eye toward ultimate spiritual fulfillment. For Gilbert and LeBron, too. Sidenote: VAREJAO IS ELVIN JONES.


WESTERN CONFERENCE

Suns/Lakers: Giorgio Moroder - Lost Angeles

When not torching Italian League nets in the '70s and '80s (and also serving as a young Kobe's hoops idol), Mike D'Antoni was getting live in the clubs to shit like this. Moroder's future sound is the perfect match for the uptempo Suns offense, and there's enough quirkiness for a series that involves a Marx-reading Canadian, a Zen-practicing hippie coach, TWO Frenchmen, an Italian-reared American superstar, and a guy named Smush. And if "Lost Angeles" doesn't sum up Kobe's career to this point, I don't know what does.

Mavs/Grizzlies: Dan Penn - Nobody's Fool

Country meets country, as two hard-headed, nonsenseless squads collide in a battle trimmed with respect. Sustaining the respect of others, respect for thy neighbor, and most of all, too much self-respect to ever whine about it. And at the center of it all, Dirk vs. Pao, an Aryan/Mediterrainian showdown that, like Angie Harmon versus Kathy Bates, should teach us some hard truths about who most closely clutchs EuroBall's roots between his thumbs.

Spurs/Kings: Serge Gainsbourg – En Melody

The musical manifestation of the French (Tony Parker) confronting the hardness of it all (Mike Bibby). The chaos you hear in the background is a certain R. Artest, ready to open the MIND of Shareef Abdur Rahim and take him on a magical tour through playoff intrigue and desire. The pace of this series will be quick, its peaks notable, its end, ultimately uncertain.


Clippers/Nuggets: Nirvana – Serve the Servants

Less climactic than we all want (and hope it to be) but nonetheless a classic in its own right. A depressing rejoice, both a lamentation of prior futility and future promise (but to where?). Ghosts linger. A grand opening to an event of both pain and laughing at pain, while denying pain ever existed. Cassell has a touch of Albini to him, righting the ship, finessing the early work of championship-caliber teams, and turning already established stallions into contenders.

4.20.2006

The Almost Chosen One


In the spirit of Passover, I make my McSweeney’s debut today, telling the story of Tamir Goodman, aka the Jewish Jordan. The 6’3” Hassidic guard exploded into our collective basketball consciousness and then immediately imploded, and it was all kind of my fault.

I’d considered axing the part about my brief but intense infatuation with Sam Jacobson, given its relative lack of relevance to the rest of the story, but I think it speaks to the Jewish fandom experience. Some of my non-Jewish friends couldn’t fathom that I went from total adulation to complete disregard for the man the moment I heard he was not a member of the tribe. Conversely, I couldn’t understand how they could be remotely bewildered by my emotional about-face. It seems completely ingrained in me that as a Jew, I must root for other Jews regardless of their ability or team affiliation. I have never and will never question this directive, and do not seem unique in my adherence to it either.


This phenomenon appears to be only universally true in the sports world. After all, Jews don’t go to a movie because Spielberg made it, or blindly vote for Bloomberg in New York, or (for the most part) unequivocally support Israel’s policy moves, but I can guarantee that if Shawn Green hits .245 all season, he’ll still get plenty of all star votes from Jews with ballots.

4.18.2006

Science and The Bible



Credit where credit’s due: Simmons couldn’t have been more right when he declared that this years MVP candidates form the deepest pool in league history. Of his top five frontrunners – Nash, Wade, Dirk, Bron, and Kobe –, each marshals a claim that is utterly rare and singular. And yet despite (or perhaps because of) this fact, all share a legitimacy that is alarmingly uniform, prompting every Page2 pundit this side of Jericho to anoint their various victors with absolute certainty. Depending on who you listen to, the MVP is either definitely Nash, definitely Wade, definitely Lebron or definitely Kobe. But while the pool of legitimate contenders may indeed be deep, the pool of legitimate arguments is far less so, and as is often the case with the thorniest multiple-choice puzzles, a process of elimination may be the shortest road to grace. With this we present, in descending order of obviousness, the three worst arguments for this year’s Most Valuable Player award:

(1) The Al Gore
“He won it last time, he should win it this time”
Player: Nash
Pundit: Chris Broussard (see also: Marc Stein, Tim Legler)

For the last three months, Nash has enjoyed the top slot on the majority of MVP lists. 52 wins, brand new roster, no Amare – the talking points are well-rehearsed. Yet strip away this pomp and pageantry and the conventional wisdom of virtually every pro-Nash partisan ultimately boils down to following inferential foxtrot:

He deserved/won it last season
He is playing even better this season
Ergo, he deserves/should win it this season



However elegant, this nifty little syllogism obscures one exceedingly simple flaw - so simple, in fact, we’re stunned to be the first to directly call it out. Simply put, this year’s MVP race IS NOT THE SAME AS last year’s MVP race. Last year, the only other contender was Shaq. This year, its half the league. The fact that Nash’s 04-05 season was the better than Shaq’s 04-05 season doesn’t necessarily imply that Nash’s 05-06 season – however much improved – is better than Lebron, or Wade, or Kobe’s 05-06 season. In short: Not all seasons are created equal.

(Note: what this defeats is not an argument for giving it to Nash, but the argument against NOT giving it to Nash, i.e. “how can Nash not get the MVP - he’s playing better than when he won it last year?”. But to the extant that every positive pro-Nash argument seems to rely on this negative one, we may safely conclude that as goes The Gore, so to goes the candidate.)

mcphee_joe~_nationtim_101b

(2)The Bob Graham
“Great Stats + Viable Team = Winner”
Player: Dwyane Wade
Pundit: John Hollinger

Though recent events may have slowed his momentum, Wade has held his place alongside Nash at the very front of the MVP field. Back in mid-March, no less an authority than John Hollinger anointed him the hands-down MVP with the following, seemingly bullet-proof line of reasoning: Wade is the only candidate putting up prolific numbers (27-7-6) on a contending team. Of course, Bron’s Cavs have since called into question the second postulate, while Wade’s slump from a 1st to 4th PER rating has all but undermined the first. One could argue that this alone renders the Hollinger approach suspect - if his conclusions are so precarious, so must be his method. But there is also a broader point to be made about the incoherence of statistical comparison itself. Wade may average more assists than his rival 2 guards, and may use his possessions more efficiently, but how much of this is a function of his superior teammates as opposed to his own divine right and providence? As mighty an offensive powerhouse as Zydrunas Ilgauskas may be, he is hardly the second-option that Shaq is. Is it merely a coincidence that Shaq’s team has finished in the top 10 in total assists for 12 of his previous 13 seasons?; or that when he left the Magic in 1996, they fell from 2nd to 23rd in that category? This isn’t to say that Wade’s passing is necessarily less impressive than Lebron or Kobe’s – just that it is incomparable. Put simply, not all statistics are created equal.

jacksons5

(3) The Howard Dean
“The Greater the Contributions, the Greater the Man”
Player: Kobe Bryant
Pundit: Bill Simmons

With our choices narrowed to three, Simmons presents us with a logic that comes nearest of any to coherence. Eschewing historicism and fetishism alike, he relies on this simple formula: if we replaced candidate X with a decent player at their position for the entire 05-06 season, what would be the effect on the candidate's team? For example, Simons substitutes Mike Miller for Lebron, and predicts that the Cavs would have won 27 games instead of 50. Similarly, he substitutes Jamal Crawford with Kobe, and predicts that Lakers would have won 18 games instead of 45. Simmons doesn’t propose a substitution for Dirk, but lets assume that had he been replaced by, say, Zach Randolph, the Mavs would have won no more than 42 games this season. With this formula, Simmons believes he can measure – and thus, rank – the quantitative impact that each MVP candidate has had on their respective teams.

Dallas with Dirk = 61 wins
Dallas with Randolph = 42wins
Dirk’s Value = +19 wins

Cleveland with Lebron = 50 wins
Cleveland with Miller = 27 wins
Lebron’s Value = +23 wins

Lakers with Kobe = 45 wins
Lakers with Jamal Crawford = 18 wins
Kobe’s Value = +27 wins

According to Simmons, Kobe’s +27 wins makes him the #1 pick for MVP. Lebron is the #2 pick with +23 wins, while Dirk is #3 with +19 wins. Yet to reach this conclusion, Simmons must assume that all “wins” are completely alike. This clearly isn't the case: a win against Detroit is qualitatively different than a win against Charlotte. Similarly, it is easier to improve from 20 wins to 40 wins than it is to improve from 40 to 60: the first improvement entails beating teams like Houston and Philly; the second improvement entails beating teams like Denver and Phoenix. Ceteris paribus, the closer a team gets to 82-0, the more difficult each additional win becomes.

When evaluating the impact of MVP candidates on their teams, the question must not only be “how many wins do they add?”, but also “what kind?”. In an effort to make Simmons’ model more sensitive to the qualitative differences between wins, I’ve compared the 05-06 Mavs, Cavs and Lakers with those teams that best approximate their (predicted) MVP-less records: Utah, Toronto, and Portland. For each pair of teams (i.e. Dallas/Utah), I’ve categorized their regular season wins according to the quality of the opponent. Thus, of the 19 wins separating Dallas and Utah, exactly how many are against “Top Teams”, how many are against “Average Teams”, and how many are against “Poor Teams”. In this way, we can identity the qualitative distribution of the total wins each player adds to their teams.

MVP TABLE 2

In the table above, we see how the quantity of wins added by each candidate varies in terms of the quality of opponent. Of the +19 wins Dirk adds to the Mavs, the majority (10) are against Top Teams. In contrast, the majority of Lebron’s +23 wins are against Average teams, while the majority of Kobe’s +27 wins are against Average/Poor teams. The question of “whose wins are more valuable?” will have a different answer depending on how we value each type. If the values are something like (Top = 2)(Average = 1.5)(Poor = 1), Kobe’s +27 will still make him the #1 pick, followed by Lebron at #2 and Dirk at #3. If the values are more like (Top = 5) (Average = 3)(Poor = 1), then the order will be reversed: Dirk #1, Lebron #2, Kobe #3. In short, once we recognize that not all wins are created equal, Simmons model looses its objective determinacy, and the MVP race is once again up for grabs.

0407judas1_wideweb__470x336,0

Although Simmons’ model gives no clear-cut answers, personally, I believe that Dirk’s +19 and Lebron’s +23 wins are ultimately more meaningful than Kobe’s +27. (I also think that the latter figure is exaggerated: would a similarly-coached Laker team of Crawford Odom and Parker really win 3 fewer games than this year’s Blazers? would they win 9 fewer games than Mike Miller’s Cavs?). So for me, the choice comes down to Dirk and Bron. On the basis of last month's performances, it isn't even close - Lebron wins hands-down. But insofar the award considers the entire season, I think the choice of Dirk is fairly clear. No one else has played more consistently fearsome, more consistently champion-like, or more consistently Dirk than Dirk. Even when his teammates have struggled with injury, he has continued to bring home wins, going 13-7 without Howard, 19-7 without Stackhouse, and 20-1 without Daniels. And if expert opinion has ignored his candidacy, this is only because its arguments – not the man himself – are lacking. So act quick and spread the word: Dirk is this year’s MVP.

4.12.2006

When citizenry got settled again



If you’ve been with us long enough to remember this, then what I put forth on McSweeney's today should come as little surprise. But instead of merely flicking twigs at 2003 Royalty, I’ve opted to state an anti-Wade case that sparkles with rigor while leveling even more serious accusations against him. More importantly, my beef with him has gone from a matter of taste to a truly conscientious fear for the sturdiness of the roof towering over FreeDarko headquarters.

Central to this exhausting project, which ended up being as much about the Class of ’03 as Wade’s particular contribution to the liturgy, was the dog-earred-to-death “next Jordan” era, when designating a worthy heir was nearly as important as enjoying the Creator’s later reign. So indelible a mark did Jordan leave on this league that, until the recent dawn of faith, he continued to stand as a despotic prototype for the look, presence, style, and credentials of NBA stardom. Iverson came closest to an epochal shift, but he met with such resistance from so many quarters that, in the end, he was filed away as “special, but not Jordan material.” Whether this was because he defied the Jordan Norms or refused to assert himself hoodlessly depends perhaps on which foot you put forth first.



When trying to get my thoughts in order about Bosh (or, in all truth, trying to make him fit my argument), it dawned on me that Garnett has cast a similarly long shadow over a certain segment of Association forecastdom. Hardly exercising the quasi-religious hold of the MONMJ, but also yards apart from the tactical maneuvering of the MONJO, MONDN, and MONGA, this belief that the league was bound to see another Garnett provided refuge from the post-Jordan doldrums. If Jordan represented an impossible archetype—as well as an impossible standard against which to judge subsequent high-test guards—perhaps the answer lay in the front court, where the Wolves' star offered up a vision of the future that was nothing less than prophetic in its scorn for existing systems. Whether this impulse manifested itself in the balls-out boosterism of other, often overrated, KG-esque figurines, or the radical overstatement of the usefulness of Garnett as a scouting template, the supposition that he would recur was at least as laughable as the league’s refusal to recognize Iverson’s import.

We have dishonored the feet of Odom, Kirilenko, and D-Miles, gravely miscasting them perhaps at the expense of their true selves. . . and we have likewise reluctantly waited on Chandler, Villanueva, Blatche, and others to prove that lightning can and will strike multiple tones. As if to underscore the comedy of the situation, lately none other than Dwight Howard has suggested that he needs to start cultivating a diversified game befitting that of his idol, Garnett.

Rising star Dwight Howard aspires to be like Minnesota power forward Kevin Garnett, who is provided the freedom to post up or roam the perimeter as a means of getting open shots. Meanwhile, the Magic would prefer Howard to be more like San Antonio's Tim Duncan, a back-to-the-basket force who pounds foes down low and occasionally drops in the midrange jump shot.

"They really want me to be a power player, which is cool, but I know I don't want to just bang with somebody and fight the whole game," said Howard, whose Magic (29-44) host the Milwaukee Bucks (37-36) tonight at 7. "You don't get to do a lot down there (in the low post). Right now, I'm not one of those big guys like Shaq (O'Neal) who can just hold somebody off. Right now, I'd say I don't have the education to know how to maneuver my body around down there."




Perhaps all of this is disgustingly arbitary. Certainly, Duncan in his own way has liberated the seven-footer, as has Nowitzki. And the pick of Bosh over Amare or Howard as his generation’s most forward-thinking pivot man is largely symbolic; it follows primarily from his ’03 status, and has a ton to do with his having shown us where the bright path leads. Howard remains a work in progress, and Amare, alas, may yet go down in history as either one of the NBA’s most decisive forces or cruelest wastes. Only with Bosh have we seen a young player nurtured under the sign of El Ticketo devote a clear excess of kinetic spirit and nimble technique to life in the post, heaving with the possibility of following KG (more so than Howard, certainly) but adapting himself instead to the role he was meant to play. His game may not induce the shock of LeBron or Melo’s, but in his decision to resolve the post-Garnett era, it is no less of a benchmark in this long-term shift in priorities and call of possibilities. And while I may castigate Wade for defiling the memory of those that came before, Bosh's willingness to acknowledge the elusiveness of Garnett's example is perhaps the fondest, most lasting tribute one could pay.

Put A Straw Under Baby

Regular readers will recall that we did our fair share of biting back at that beloved American institution known as March Madness. Frankly, I was in favor of piling-on even more, but I would like to think that we were screaming with our silence during that utterly unwatchable Final Four. In case I haven’t made it clear in the past, I have no problem with college ball per se. I love watching the early rounds of the tournament and cheering for outrageous upsets just as much as the next guy, but it frustrates me to no end when people feel the need to demean my dear Association in order to justify their preference of an obviously inferior brand of basketball. Chief among these myths is that college kids play harder than the pros. For proof of the immense effort exerted nightly in the L, one needs to look no further than last night’s Laker game, where “stoned-slacker” extraordinaire Lamar Odom hit the hardwood for a loose ball before going between Dunny’s legs to Kobe for a 360. And I defy anyone who watched UConn, a team supposedly stocked with talent, struggle against Albany, Kentucky, and Washington before succumbing to mighty George Mason, to tell me how much harder college kids play.

Unfortunately, however, there are some players in the league blessed with enough raw talent to excel without consistently giving the proverbial 100%. These players, despite being the exception and not the rule, provide obvious fodder for all Association haters. The two players in this mold that most readily spring to mind are Ray Allen and Vince Carter. Both are famous detractors of that pest known as the Rash, and I don’t see how this can be a coincidence. It seems that Bowen’s mere existence is an affront to Ray and Vince, and I imagine that their ability to get by on sheer talent is offensive to the forever-hustling Bowen.

(Apologies, Rick. Photo credit to John Loomis and the Fader Blog)

Recently, the Allen-Bowen feud reached a new level when Bowen kicked Allen after the two were tangled on the floor. We discussed this in great detail at the time, but in the days following that post it came to light that Allen personally called the NBA’s VP of basketball operations, Stu Jackson, to complain.

"When we landed in Memphis I called Stu and asked him if he saw the game. He
said he watched it that night, and he didn't think much of it. He said I'm going
to watch it again. I told him I was just sitting there and he kicked me in the
back and something more should have been done than him getting a technical foul.
Then he started watching it, and he thought I was on his ankle."

Obviously, you would never catch Melo placing such a call, but frankly, it offends me that NBA players have nothing better to do with their nights than call the league office to complain, ESPECIALLY after a game that they won. They should be hitting the clubs, recording albums or updating their MySpace page. Petty bitching should be left to people like me.

Walter Ray responded in the ultimate way by hitting a go-ahead 3 in the final seconds to get his team a W. Point taken. If, for some reason, that still wasn't enough for him he could have spoken to Stu Jackson through the media as Shaq recently did. Calling the league office is just a bitch move, and it's indicative of many of my problems with him as a player. Like, why does it take a Bowen kick to get him to play with passion? Why does Seattle go 52-30 during his contract year and 33-44 once he gets paid? (And before you come at me with any argument about Seattle being a different team this year recall that their main free agent losses were Antonio Daniels and Jerome “Big Snacks” James, and then look at what Gilbert has done in Hughes' absence). As much as I hate being the one to say this, if we're really serious about silencing all these erroneous anti-NBA stereotypes, I think we need to call out the guys who help perpetuate them every bit as much as we (deservedly) call out the Bowen's of the world for their cheap and boring brand of ball.

4.10.2006

No lost art is artless



I don’t think there’s any question that the Wade/Bron meta-duel was one of the most astounding displays of basketball acceleration this side of Atlantis. In perhaps the greatest measure of regular season eventfulness, my watching of ranks up there with Christmas 2003, when I eagerly witnessed James and T-Mac gun the fuck out the ball in an OT floor show. For anyone keeping track of things, those type of tingles obviously edge out the “post-season can touch sludge and make tinsel” variety, since you get that “playoff-type atmosphere” and stars willing to take all sorts of chances in the eternal defense of basketball magical innards.

Over the weeks since, though, something altogether more bountiful has begun to dawn over me as a result of this stupefying occurrence. I am not sure if any of our readers are regularly kept under wraps by large quantities of medication. But if any of you are familiar with the experience of forgetting to get yourself fixed up, you know the feeling of which I speak, that interminably vague yet sweepingly definite sense that something is amiss in the realm of the senses. I said on McSweeney’s a few weeks back that this season’s bout of scoring has been akin to the Steroids Era, perhaps the awful end of time that some coaches yowled about when first the rule changes came down.



It’s not, though, simply the accumulation of points that makes me lurch out loud, but how they’re gotten. And after that fateful contest, in which truly gaudy numbers and breathtaking creativity were forced into a holy union for all the world to see, there’s no denying it: this new NBA of skill and competence is directly responsible for the outlandish individual offense. With so so many defensive specialists, and so many freakish dissectors of positional order, prowling the Association, it’s never been a tougher place for a name-in-lights go-to-guy to get off an easy basket. If scoring is up, it’s because we’re seeing more and more plays like those that wrote the script of 4/1/06; it’s not just that LeBron and Wade are unstoppable, facile killing machines (Amare, anyone?), but that they are capable of rising to heights above impossible.

The above might seem frightfully obvious to anyone who hasn’t spent the last six months mourning the loss of ’04-’05, but there is an even prouder message I have taken from my end-sum evaluation of this season, one that resulted from the viewing of another game that happened around the same time. Seeing Melo’s oddly misproportioned Nuggets knock off the Kobe and Odom show did, as usual, remind why the league needs Kobe (and Kobe needs the league). The real revelation, though, was coming to terms with the fact that everything I said about Melo’s game in November is now completely and totally obsolete. At this point, Anthony is not only a thing of pure beauty to watch—he’s the Association’s Most Improved Player, a borderline MVP candidate, and every bit as much of a franchise cornerstone as Wade or James.

I don’t want this to turn into a lively discovery of the 2003’s draft’s retaliatory promise, since you can trust you’ll be hearing more on that from me in a few days. On the subject of basketball finest competitor of remotely Latin American extraction, though, this season has found him rounding into shape and becoming nearly twice the player that, coming out of Syracuse, we’d thought he’d be. The hallmarks of Anthony’s NCAA run were his maturity and composure—admirable traits, but hardly the stuff iconic performers are made of. And while one of the least forgivable lines in my aforementioned post called Melo “the spare parts left over from the Frankenstein experiment that gave rise to Garnett, Odom, and Kirilenko,” it’s safe to say that his “quietly excellent at everything” was a powerful counterpoint to this era-defining “fits and starts of dramatic behavior in anything you can imagine” archetype. You all know what happened once he hit the Association—ROY aside, dude never appeared to have the balance that defined his glory at the previous level, and what he did achieve felt for all the world like the sound of a very finite natural talent bumping up against his own glass ceiling.



There was noise as he headed into camp this fall that Melo was in the best shape of his life; DLIC laughed, and while there was a visible difference, it was more cosmetic than anything else. And while most of his first half was typically blotchy, that baseline fitness set the stage for him to improve—physically, mentally, and spiritually—so that by the All-Star break, Anthony had become an altogether different player. The clunky, chunky kid of yore was now a stallion, unafraid to put it on the floor, charge the basket for the facial, throw up circus shots, and be the kind of legit inside/double-inside/outside/double-outside threat that, with his size, attitude, and newfound agility, defined “scoring machine” before it was pejorative and dehumanizing.

Most Improved? Without a doubt. Of course I want to see Gerald Wallace, who went from propulsive enigma to occasional dominator, take home the hardware (sidenote: every single year of my life, I have the MIP on my fantasy team). But Anthony went from borderline All-Star to elite, game-changing titan. What’s more, it’s not like his development was a simple matter of truth coming to fruition. Like the player Wallace has become, the final destination of Melo’s evolution could hardly have been predicted. For a flawed, apparently limited, malcontent to burst through the heavens and clutch the basketball sublime is, to my mind, a more dramatic reversal of fortune than raw potential’s finding its form.



I would never dream of giving Melo the MVP, but that’s only because he’s had but one half of sustained adventure. Let’s not think for a second, though, that he’s any less crucial to the Nuggets than Nash to the Suns, Bron to the Cavs, Kobe to the Lakers, Billups to the Pistons, Wade to the Heat, etc. There’s a tendency in basketball commentary to downplay the importance of the lead scorer, especially when, as with Anthony, he doesn’t also pitch in with 3x2 mortar. Kobe has practically forced the issue this season; Anthony, though, has a far less sexy case; he’s a constant threat to put the ball in the basket, no more and no less, and he does so without playing a Rip-esque brand of team ball. Yet try and imagine the Nuggets, essentially a motley bunch of energy guys, finishers, and dizzy combo guards, without Anthony’s brash reliability. Last time I checked, you can’t win without putting points up on the board, and having a weapon who can smartly and unobtrusively get you those without inflicting chaos or jeopardizing the game’s flow is a perfectly good place to start a roster. In a way, it’s more logical square one than a player who, by virtue of his own singularity, throws the usual blueprint into disarray and makes the entire project of personal assemblage into an experiment. Melo may never be a one-man wrecking machine, but don't pretend for a second like it's been easy for the Cavs or Heat to figure out how to work around their young stars' prismatic omnipotence.

Hell, according to sources who get NYC radio, Melo himself is now all about opening up that debate. And while he'll lose, he's earned the right to go down swinging.