Love in Exile

(WARNING: Women's bare asses below. "NSFW" but absolutely necessary here.)

For a good time, watch Kings/Bobcats on a Wednesday night. That which barely need be spoken: Kevin Martin is insanely underrated, quick on his feet and to the basket more like any other top scorer than "next Reggie Miller." Crazy unorthodox with every shot, and plenty of his movements, to the point where I think he confounds even really good defenders. His mechanics are their own language, like Sacramento were a basement he's been locked in for years, but chosen to continue his education nonetheless. Like a cross between dictionaries in jail, Kasper Hauser, and someone who assimilated our Periodic Table of Style on a micro-level. Plus his whole pre-hood, Fresh Prince-era look makes him all the more displaced, foreign, alien. Where else could he exist but the nether-place that is the Kings? That's a true original, or space beast hiding behind the cloak of "the artist" and our over-dependence on reading cues of appearance.

As predicted, Francisco Garcia is vital and just does it all when given confidence-through-minutes. Those announcers' whole "Nocioni and Gooden are the future" talk is serious back-sliding, though I'll forgive them since they obviously don't know shit about Gooden past where he was drafted. It was nice to see that Wallace, once unsung, can now have opposing teams shook from end-to-end after one or two possessions. And what's really funny is that, rather than stalking the floor as a possibility, the mature Wallace is a real presence, having finally married his non-stop grinder's grind with a quixotic string of applied highlights. No one else in the league makes you feel that splitting defenders for a dunk is as much "effort" as "skills," but that's what Wallace has finally become. He doesn't scrap, or hustle–he exerts. Plus, as much as it pains me to make analogies like this, he's become the Predator, right down to the vaguely shamanistic appearance and sado-masochistic tendencies. This is where country and funky opens out onto an atavistic future, impossible to trace far enough back or locate on the horizon. No shit this is the second Predator movie, which is like a combination of Dead Presidents, The Jerk, and Left Behind. I have watched it twelve times.



The point of this post, however, isn't to remind myself that there is joy in visiting old friends and finding out that, on some level, you kind of don't know each other anymore. It's to remind us all that, while Wallace became more guard-like and fluid over the last few years, it's under Larry Brown of all people that's he found some measure of consistency, or at least a way to remain constantly relevant rather than maraud when the chance presents itself. Brown didn't even want Wallace at first, but now, he's created a more focused GW—even if the numbers are down. You could chart a similar arc for Diaw, who irony of all ironies, has seen his career rescued by Larry. Once thought to be the ultimate SSOL player, Diaw's now shown that he's capable of taking advantage of his myriad point-center skills while holding down the middle with some authority. On paper and in person, he's more productive than with D'Antoni, the coach who invented him.

But let's not forget that this maturation is taking place UNDER LARRY FUCKING BROWN, who despite his tempestuous relationship with Iverson has never exactly been one to suffer dynamism or template-busters. It's almost as if, after the utter fail in New York, and the subsequent hit sustained by his reputation—at best, LB was over, if not permanently open to criticism—he's sublimated his outlook, made it less literal. Brown doesn't preach "The Right Way" as a serious of dictums or proscriptions, but as a way players can tailor their individual games to some of the abiding necessities of playing the game of basketball. Which is to say, he's gone from authority figure to mentor, trusted by players who want to win and want to get better because he uses who they are to run common sense basketball.

This may be premature, and based entirely too much on two players. And yet in Charlotte, Brown has the chance for a new beginning; over-sensitive nut-case that he is, or subject to burning out/mellowing with age as are all men who push themselves and others too hard, it's not implausible that he's had a change of heart. It certainly beats phoning it in, which is certainly impossible for a coach like Larry Brown. You could say he's compromised, but I prefer to see it as a great basketball mind having finally discovered the principle of compromise. Or as the ultimate proponent of coach-centrism coming to terms with a player's league, something that's kept Popovich on top for as long as it's been.

Pair of Twos

Behold, my reaction to Barkley in jail. You should compare and contrast it with Dr. LIC's earlier take on an earlier stage of the situation.

Beyond that, here's some serious DITYT shit:





Hiss on YouTube clips is the new surface noise on samples.

Russell's Barber Can't Use Occam's Razor

So last week, the thing du jour around the basketball blogosphere was Michael Lewis's NYT article, specifically its discussion of how players like Battier, wholly complete and savvy behind-the-scenes type guys who do little things we can't notice, make happiness and winning. It's interesting stuff and more good than bad, but at this point is probably like two months away from falling into evil hands and being subverted into some form of scientific discrimination—maybe a reason to keep Julian Wright off the floor. What interests me at this point are the differences between the explosively subtle. The two top teams in the East both feature point guards who are both far from superstars and absolutely and completely indispensable to everything they do. And they could not be more different in every way possible. While Mo's fundamental soundness have stabilized the Cavaliers to a great degree, the far more interesting case study in my opinion is what Rondo's glorious incompletionism and rejection of fundamentals at the individual level have done for his team.



I'm not even going to try and put a quick label on Rondo. He simply defies them, whether positive or negative. As much as any player in the NBA, Rondo is paradox incarnate. Rather than being a paradigm of quiet contribution and efficiency at all times—the standard "know your role" PG—Rondo is at once an unstoppable for whom there is no possible answer and a gaping wound whose weakness provides a possible attack point. He is the type of young, talented, and developing player who normally thrive on bad teams, but he runs the point for the league's current juggernaut. He the worst shooting guard in the NBA, and yet leads all guards in FG%. He's brimming with athletic skill and his body looks like the product of Jay Bilas being allowed access to the Forge of Hephaestus, and yet he's more beloved by stat heads than scouts. His play is more audacious than any guard in the league, and yet he is the unknown star of the Celtics.

The fantastic of Rondo all traces back to the fact that he has no jump shot. This is hardly news. However, it is important to make some distinctions between having a bad jump shot and Rondo's jump shot. Russell Westbrook and Raymond Felton have bad jump shots. They are given space and it is the goal of every defense to force them into taking a shot, and it is a constant struggle for them to create lanes by trying to keep defenses honest. Rondo has no jump shot. He has eschewed it. It is a false God to him. It is not a part of his decision tree but an unwelcome last resort. Defenses do not try to force him to take a jump shot, for there is no pretense he will actually take one. When Rondo gets the ball in his hands, the clarity of his goal actually leads to a greater set of permutations than it normally would-if we are to stretch the metaphor of the outside shots, than the difference between other point guards' possessions and Rondo's possessions are the difference between a gunfight and swordplay.

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To wish, as most do, for a Rondo with a jumpshot is to wish for a sober Bukowski, a Woody Allen with normal relationships, Obama without the Bush era. Part of what makes him so much better this year, and most of what makes the Celtics tolerable now, is Rondo's embracing of his own destiny and his mandate to all others to get on board. Rondo this year has matured by regressing to his orginal state and taking it to its logical conclusion, rather than attempting to straddle compromise. Whereas last year, he flirted with the idea of playing like a conventional point guard and even started to become passable at it-last year 56% of his shots were jumpers and he shot a very acceptable 42% on them, which is far from terrible. All his shots were wide-open, yes, but that is a better mark than LeBron James has ever posted. This year, however, he has decided to completely reject any semblance of obeying a positional doctrine and has seen his jump shot FG% fall to 33% and, more importantly, has upped his percentage of "inside" shots to 58%, which is a full 10% higher than the next guard and higher than, for example, Pau Gasol and Amare Stoudemire.

At the same time, while Rondo would occasionally sit in the corner and take a passive offensive role last season and allow Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to make the plays, this year he demands that the veterans fall into line and allow him to be the one who creates. And Rondo is perhaps the purest creator in the NBA. I've long maintained that point guards are like writers, whose effectiveness is determined not by their own personal ability to put the ball in the basket but to turn the court into their own dark funhouse and make the opposing team see the game on the point guard's revised and ultimately manipulative terms. Steve Nash's world is one of impossible choices-he is the best-shooting guard in the league, and he forces defenders to attempt to consolidate their force into a stationary Maginot line that he can fit the ball around. Chris Paul's is one of forced annexation-he is everywhere on the court he wants to be, invading spaces (against the Lakers, there was one possession where he got a basket by going to the basket by dribbling in step behind Lamar Odom's turned back) and blowing up rotations into a chaos only he can see angles through. Rondo's game is predicated, more than anything else, on his ability to become a creature of nightmares. While Paul is a wily trickster who flits around defenders and coerces them out of their comfort zones, Rondo uses his athleticism to fool defenders into seeing things as simpler than they really are. For Rondo to succeed without having any sort of personal go-to scoring moves, he must make himself capable of all things.



The most important of Rondo's myriad dichotomies is his relationship to the rebulous concept of completionism. Clearly, Rondo is an incomplete player on an individual level. However, on a team level, he completes his team in a way Battier could only dream of doing for his own. Rondo's lack of individual manuevers means that all of his actions are aimed at either getting to the basket or creating a wide-open shot for somebody else; his lack of completion makes him exist less as a player and rather as a concept of absolute efficiency-that he has no step-back jumper as his Plan B just means the game to him is an infinite number of paths to Plan A. Not only does Rondo thrive on the Celtics, but he could only exist on the Celtics-without options around him, his freedom would be channeled unto himself instead of serving to transform him into a manifestation of Occam's Katana Blade. And it should be noted that the receiving end of Rondo's creation is often a simple 18-foot jumper by Kevin Garnett, who, many years ago would once position himself as the roll man and look to spin and finish in a spectacular and wholly improvised fashion before he became Complete and relegated himself to an upgraded Antonio McDyess.

Mo Williams, who I'm realizing I find far less interesting than Rondo, nonetheless provides the counterpoint to how individual completionism can have team-level benefits. Mo utilizes a sort of hybridization of the short-lived Iversonian school of scoring, which is to block out the court and turn the game into a battle against one defender for the best immediately possible shot opportunity and the new efficiency-dictated model for scoring, which is to find a way to get the ball to the most high-percentage shots on the floor and to value quality possessions over shot creation.

Mo functions well as a finisher of created plays, but with the ball in his hands Mo has a few spots on the floor that he uses a screen to get to and can always get off a decent-percentage shot from. This shows in Mo's stat line-with radically different teammates around him, his PER is exactly the same as it was last year, and his shot breakdown remains nearly identical. Mo doesn't change dynamics of a given play the way Rondo does, but his abilities as an Island Unto Self provide a foundation atop which ball movement and the general Amazing made by LeBron can then be placed with Mo functioning as a safety net.

And so there it is-Mo succeeds with fundamentals, Rondo with spectacularly flawed gifts. To say that a combination of them would be the perfect guard is to miss the point of them entirely.

"Safe to Say, This is What Saturday's Should've Been"-TK

Let no one ever tell you I don't take this shit serious, or write just to hear the sound of my own sweet, sweet voice. The whole dust-up last spring over whether the Lakers were FD or not, that was just frustrating. The debate over what the championship Celtics gave up to win, well, I think their play early this season showed we could all be made happy. But the LeBron debacle this weekend just plain embarrassing. It was sloppy, clueless, and obscured what I actually want to say about a new duality worth watching, one that could be even more central to the league's future than Kobe/Bron. And so, with a hearty shout-out to my new friends at the Real Cavs Fans board, here's a second take that will, when necessary, acknowledge the wreck that preceded it.

Why did I fuck this one up so badly? Because those LeBron threes were, clearly, definitively, LeBron James threes. All the power, fury, excess, and iron-clad assurance that defines James everywhere else on the court, they finally came out in his long range shot. Remember, I played a large part in a book that sought to understand basketball acts in terms of a "Periodic Table of Style," asserting a direct correlation because effectiveness, comfort level, and individuality. I know that James has hit three-pointers in the past, some at key moments. I've also been mightily impressed by the progress his stroke has made this season. But the reason for all the ninth-grade existentialism was that, for the greatest players, there's an idea, or a feeling, that pervades their every act. We call this "style," and it's the symbiotic relationship between how one approaches the game and how one carries out a generic act like "go left." I think superstars can go through several incarnations—most obviously, the various Jordans, but more recently Kobe through the years, or Wade then and now. What makes James both awe-inspiring and at times frustrating is that he seemingly has the ability not to spontaneously expand his capabilities, but pull off shit as if he weren't present in it.

Yes, I will single out his three-point shooting prior to Friday. When James takes two dribbles and then staidly fires away from the top of the key, that's almost a distraction from an epic work in progress. What makes James James? His uncanny combination of size and speed, which has gotten even more inexorable in the open court, off the dribble, or anywhere around the paint; the emergent defense nightmare he's become; his court vision, which insistently delivers the ball to whichever Cav happens to be closest to the basket; a nose for rebounds that comes with just understanding the action better than anyone else. All some combination of peak basketball IQ and/or outlandish physical gifts, traits he's applied more seamlessly, and synthesized with greater ease, as he's matured. This is the education of LeBron, and what I talk about when I imagine the "authentic" James. It's also, to be sure, a process, but one quite different from those that—ahem—mere mortals face. As we quoted in the book, Kobe consider himself to be "chasing perfection," aspiring to an absolute. James isn't so much trying to make perfection his own (he does have a few flaws) as he is transcending it, putting together a game that replaces a (false?) idol with his own frightening visage.



What I saw as "video game" LeBron was his knack for knocking down threes with no personal, stylistic context; why this troubles me is that it's at once in some ways unreal, or glib, and thus—at least according to the way I view the game—proof that he hasn't fully made the shot his own. For most players, we'd say "hasn't assigned a style guide icon to it;" for James, I think we expect nothing less than the invention of a new icon. Friday, he accomplished this. Those were shots that get labeled "video game" because they're impossible, but to me, "video game" signifies impersonal and facile. It refers not to the act, but the tone of it. And, in typical LeBron-ian fashion, what should've been a fundamentally unreal and unlikely way of doing things ends up seeming more fitting than "the real way" of doing things. That's why James is something other than mortal—not because he's already perfect, but because he exists beyond perfection. He's almost its mirror image, functioning always just on the other side of impossible. Does that make him less human than Kobe? No, but it certainly makes Kobe's journey something mere mortals can relate to, a parable of ambition, toil, and vanity that at least vaguely applies to other people.

Without getting all the implied religious analogies even more tangled, Jordan is obviously the idol of today's NBA. In the past, we've discussed Kobe as Jordan-centric classicist, Bron as defining a new paradigm for the future. What if we introduce Durant as the third element, the Air Apparent not in game per se, but in, well, Jordan-ness? Here's the crucial distinction, which might well blow up in my face: Kobe may be mortal, but there's something inhuman about single-minded pursuit of an ideal. It's clinical and, while subject to fits of passion, ultimately rational. There's a tacit assumption that with enough work, he'll match MJ's greatness. The problem is, Jordan's career isn't a template, it's a narrative, a series of organic occurrences that gave rise to the illusion of perfection. Perfection is the limit of what's possible; James inverts this structure, Kobe looks only at the finished product. Duran both steps out of MJ's shadow as a player and, with a honorable nod to Allen Iverson, has more of a flare for drama, more of a sense that his greatness grows out of the moment and is then added to the prototype, than anyone since Jordan. There, I said it.

I'm running out of superlatives for Durant, and I don't want FD to turn into am unreflective parody of itself. But I find it critical that, for a player whose on-court demeanor is unflappable calm masking a yes, MJ-esque need to win, the element of drama is absolutely key. So far, every major event in his career has been a surprise, a shock, a sudden leap: the explosion at UT, sudden maturation late last season, All-Star numbers in run-up to the snub, absolute rule over the Rookie/Challenge game, comeback in HORSE (not important in itself, but helped make ASW his, itself a truly amazing narrative development), and now the freakish production since the break. You could blandly cast this as "Durant keeps getting better," but the reason I dare invoke MJ is that for KD, he's got that emergency gear that kicks in whenever failure or rejection starts to peak out from behind the corners. It's not anathema to him, or a strange unknown creature; it's a demon that haunts him and co-mingles with any ego he builds up from one game to the next. If his demeanor is one of unknowability and ghostliness, the game that pours forth from him is unmistakably human in its emotional thrust. This isn't about proving shit, or scouting out some other plan of existence. It's about a player who has a hair-trigger when it comes to pushing himself, and for whom "pushing yourself" involves lots of pushing and lots of self.

As We Glide Upon Long Isles of the Night

Bethlehem Shoals: Okay, so let's set the stage. I wrote that provocative LBJ post only out of enthusiasm for this Warriors/Thunder game. Ziller announced through a major media conglomerate that this was our new talisman. Ty Keenan missed out on free tickets because he was busy mulling over my offer to chat this. And he, like Dr. LIC, were hungry. We certainly did "Let's do this," and here are the results.

BS: Local League Pass feeds are the last bastion of true regionalism.
Ty Keenan: Oh let me put the game on. I was watching Hitman.
Dr. Lawyer IndianChief: I'm watching this on mute.
BS: They've already said "fun" 6,000 times. SETTING THE STAGE.
Dr. LIC: Okay, turning the volume on.

BS: Fuck it, Anthony Randolph is the new Amir.
TK: That hadn't been decided yet?

Dr. LIC: Damn...Sabonis was NOT a Euro.
BS: Sabonis and Drazen, too.
Dr. LIC: Drazen gets real respect. So far I'm not convinced that Spaniards are real Euros either.
BS: Spanairds are a bad influence on basketball, and I mean that in the best way possible

Dr. LIC: My friend Paul just texted me: "What flag is on S-Jax's headband?" I'm guessing Jolly Roger.
TK: POW/MIA.
Dr. LIC: Oh wait, he was asking about the FD shirt.
BS What if Wade starts a trend with that giant face Band-Aid?
Dr. LIC: He stole that from Penny.

BS: I love that kids in the Bay have no choice but to root for Stephen Jackson.
TK: Why don't any of those kids like Monta? He should have a Dora the Explorer-type cartoon.
BS: The reason why Monta and Randolph should be together forever is that one looks like a bigger version of the other.
TK: The difference is that Monta looks like the happy baby and Randolph looks like the one who had colic.
BS: The other reason Odom likes Randolph is that AR's expressions are even more pained.



Dr. LIC: This whole Thunder coaching situation proved that everyone is wrong about everything. P.J. was hailed as the next Popovich; He couldn't even figure out what KD and Jeff Green's positions were.
BS: I thought he was brought in to sabotage the team. Under the pretense of being "a good coach for young players" which for some reason means yelling, not being imaginative and figuring shit out.
BS: Is Durant so skinny that his bones make a noise when he hits the ground?
TK: I definitely heard a noise.
TK: Monta's getting there.
BS: Monta has more first steps in any path across the court than any player in the league.
BS: Did Marco get tanner while he was injured?
TK: I think a little. It's been really dreary here over that period, too.
BS: I'm implying that he went out of town to tan.
TK: He might have a machine.

BS: There's Thabo!
Dr. LIC: This game is delivering.
BS: I just realized it's 33-26 with lots of time left in the first.
TK: It feels like it's only been five minutes or so
BS: Maggette is the most most Duke-like un-Duke Duke player in the world.
Dr. LIC: True.
TK: Jason Williams might have given Maggette a run for that though
BS: Crawford is like that guy who tries to find the most fucked up people in a bar as an excuse to get trashed

BS: 1) Warriors broadcast shows more replays of opposing team than any other local feed. 2) They once made a Derrick Rose dunk the dunk of the game (I think, TK can confirm this) and 3) They are as obsessed with monitoring Monta's explosiveness comeback as I ever was with Amare.
TK: #2 is definitely true. I think part of those might have to do with the fact that they were bad for so long. And they've had the same announcers for basically the last 10 years and the same color guy for longer. They've always had to make an effort to find something interesting to talk about the game.
BS: I am supposed to mention that I am not live-blogging these nachos
TK: I might want to write about FD college players at some point, because Weaver was totally FD in college but is boring as hell now. Or maybe I'm just not excited by him because he was so cool in college.
BS: (I am chatting with Nate Jones, and trying to explain to A. that I guess I would be cool with her going on a date with Tyson Chandler) I like Weaver. He's what Earl Watson should be.



TK: One thing Monta hasn't really figured out yet is the spin on his crazy finishes.
BS: This game is like floating through heaven: "Oh look, Anthony Morrow's first-born. Now how about an off-the-backboard 'oop, with the announcers intoning that "you knew someone was going to bring it out sometime." Also, Kevin Pelton and I have concluded just now that, if Chandler had gone to the Thunder, they could've fielded the longest line-up ever (Westbrook/Weaver/Durant/Thabo/Chandler).
TK: Green wouldn't be in that lineup?
BS: "Length" wasn't invented until 1992, so no.
> TK: wait, what does 92 have to do with it?
BS: I guarantee you both teams were up for this. I'm fairly certain it's known around the league that playing either of these two team is a rush. Oh, and if Jeff Green gets 20 boards, my foot will cave in. Wait, did the announcer just imply that Krstic sews his own jersey?

BS: What if the Thunder don't really play in Oklahoma City? Like they're on a soundstage in Hollywood that Bennett owns, and the players are all cool staying with the team beacuse it's really Los Angeles life?
TK: I've been exchanging emails with the guy at Run of Play. And he said his dad works next to the practice facility. Mentioned that he gets updates on the cars in the parking lot, but nothing on the players. So it's possible that they stage practices.
BS So anyway, the NBA is going to promote the fuck out of the Thunder starting next year because this team has such star power and is so fun. And none of them leave because it's really LA. Plus all the "fans" are extras, professional ones, waiting in line to audition for Eastbound and Down.

BS: This tableux of over-amped kids is really weird, even grotesque. It's like Rookie/Soph all over again. Maybe Kevin Durant plays his best in front of delirious seven year-olds.
TK: This is sorta like a baseball broadcast. Wait, did the Thunder just let Randolph dunk?
BS: His brand-new reputation precedes him. It's really weird how much he's changed his game recently. It's like a coach actually said something to him in English.
TK: Or Martian, in this case.
BS: Maybe Monta has to translate.



(Half of halftime)

BS A. just asked if she could go on a date with Chris Paul. I said sure. She said "actually, he'd probably make me build a fucking house."
BS Totally subjective: When they show Garnett's championship celebration,wtih some of that sad/surreal/dreamlike Adidas music under him, it kind of makes it make sense to me.
Dr. LIC: Eh
BS: Whatever, advertising rules my mind. Seriously though, it tugs at my KG heartstrings. It even makes that entire Celtics season have some pathos to it. Though maybe that's just because it's not front in front of me pissing me off.
Dr. LIC: That commercial is still wack. KG getting injured tugs at my KG heartstrings.
BS: I'm just a sucker for that music. Need i remind you of a certain KG ad?
Dr. LIC: The stand up comedian!!!
BS: TEARS IN HEAVEN
Dr. LIC: There hasn't been a commercial that important since.
BS: For you/me/us or the NBA as a whole? I'd argue "The LeBrons" was more important.
Dr. LIC: Culturally, but not for us. Man, I still can't believe that one Durant commercial had Buck65 music.

Dr. LIC: These "NBA Cares" commercials have officially reached the point of suspicious.
BS: Elaborate. . .
Dr. LIC: Like, you musta done something wrong to have to brag so much about doing good.
BS: Derek Fisher?
TK: Especially Derek Fisher.
Dr. LIC: With the MLB, it's just accepted that they "care."
TK: Is that true?
BS: Like it's not a matter of action? It's a state?
TK: I'm not sure anyone thinks MLB is morally good anymore. They could probably use their own version of those ads.
BS: I think steroids are an entirely other world of morality. Like the way people don't understand how bills get written in Congress. Wait, that's a bad analogy. Whatever, it's a series of parallel moral concerns.
Dr. LIC Modern problems vs. Old Testament sins. That's steroids vs. NBA issues.
Dr. LIC: (Alvin Gentry is secretly coaching the whole league right now)
BS: Okay, I've got this. MLB=Sharia. Please, neither of you be singing a West Side Story tune right now. Though I've got to admit, it's kind of a hot name for a lady.

Dr. LIC: The Warriors have stockpiled enough players. They have to make a big trade for an A-gamer this off-season, or else they'll be the Jerry West Grizzlies.
TK: Every contract is really long, though.
BS: I think you are greatly underestimating how much the Warriors resemble a guerilla movement. Do they move ahead by forming coalition with center-left parties?
Dr. LIC: South Africa?
BS: Let's just drop this. I went to a talk by an ex-Tamil Tiger the other night and that stuff's been on my mind, but I obviously don't know enough about the actual facts.
Dr. LIC: Kyle Weaver, Carl Landry, Kyle Lowry are all the same person to me.
BS: You cannot fool Jamal Crawford with ballhandling. He may not be a great defender, but that other thing's a point of pride for him.



TK: I almost feel like they're making up the score.
BS: Like, adjusted for their having scored too much? Or inventing it for the sake of having to have something?
TK: No, fabricating
BS: That's how I feel about soccer. Also—another dilletante alert—I read today that in Saudi Arabia all budget and data and prices are just made up
when they need them for major deals, projects, etc.
Dr. LIC: Wow
BS: Westbrook is out Monta-ing Monta.
TK: I just want to say that i'm incredibly proud of being right about Westbrook.
Dr. LIC: Me too.
BS: I liked Bayless better, just to be contrary.

TK: That was the greatest broadcaster question ever: "When you're flying in for an awesome fingerroll, how do you know not to use glass? Tell all the youngsters out there."

Dr. LIC: Okay, hear me out on this... in the NFL, too many quarterbacks were getting hurt. So they changed the rules—wussified them, really—so QBs get more protection. And even though they still get busted up (Brady), it seems to have worked somewhat. I think the NBA should do the same with foul rules inside. You've got Amare, KG, Al Jefferson [and Bynum] dying at crucial junctures. Like, start making fines inside a fineable offense. We get higher scores (Gentry style) and less injured bigs.
BS: You are really broken up over this.
Dr. LIC: Dude, KG. Amare. Al Jeff. This fucking SUCKS. That shouldn't hapen.
BS: The problem is that players like Kenny Thomas still exist. Nick Collison, etc.

BS: "Anthony Randolph possibly hit a chair" has weird echoes of "Luke Ridnour couldn't guard a chair."
TK: I think if you said that out of context people would think he got in a fight with a chair.
BS: Anthony Randolph is "special" in so many senses. And no, i'm not calling him retarded.
BS: Maybe Odom said that quote about Randolph's bright future to finally deflect attention away from his own potential. He wanted them to shut up about how HE could've been the next Magic.
Dr. LIC: Stretch run here.
BS: This game is making me think I don't know anything about basketball. Oh and another very Duke thing about Maggette: never seemed interested in leading the league in scoring from a bad team, even though he possibly could've (which no one else from Duke, save Hill, ever could've).

BS: Wait, is Jackson keeping Durant from going off?
TK: He's still 8/13. I'm not sure why he was out for so much of the third.
BS: That's what I love about Durant, even his quiet games are All-Star-ish. As opposed to guy who struggle to get good numbers on off-nights, and thus are impossible to ignore.
Dr. LIC: Durant is truly the quiet assassin. He really is like when people say "he has no conscience."
TK: This is making me imagine him as the insane person in a gothic novel.
BS: I am sure Kobe would be jealous of that remark. Okay, quick, someone come up with a Manchurian Candidate-inspired nickname for KD. Actually, that would be a dope ad.



BS: Durant is a scoring machine. I never really understood that cliche until seeing him this season.
Dr. LIC He really should be drawing double-teams, though. Maybe that's just Nellie's stupidity.
TK: Is anyone doing it? I could see people not wanting to acknowledge that he's already as good as he is.
BS: Who would you leave open? This team isn't THAT bad.
Dr. LIC: See, that's what I'm saying. The Thunder should be much better. The move to Oklahoma made them think they were an expansion team.
BS: Rebuildng from scratch makes anyone think they're an expansion. It's the great equalizer.
TK: What's their record since P.J. left?
BS: I'd do record since 1/1, since that's when Durant really started going crazy.
Dr. LIC: 12-30 since P.J. left
TK: 9-13 since 1/1, going into tonight.
BS: In the West, no less.

Dr. LIC: Watson is the most Blaxploitation last name ever.
BS: Like Matt Watson? Watson like Sherlock Holmes's sidekick?
Dr. LIC: C.J.
TK: Earl, too.
BS C.J. and Earl Watson are two of the least Blaxploitation players in the league.
TK: James Watson definitely wouldn't like to hear that he has a Blaxploitation name.
Dr. LIC: The name is part "Watts," part "son."
BS: I like to pretend that Azubulke works in finance.
Dr. LIC: Kelenna Azubanky.
BS: Ugh. I'm embarrassed.

BS: "He's never going to go away." That's our next Stephen Jackson shirt right there.
BS Someone should do shirts [huh?] about stat inflation. And see what teams inflate the "right" players, versus those that random players have the biggest games against.
Dr. LIC: The Timberwolves.
BS: You're right, it probably has nothing to do with tempo.
BS: Wow, that was truly Odom-esque of Randolph. Forgetting he'd dribbled.

Samson Is My Leader (RAZED)

Forget it. The post is gone, because I can't stomach the sight of it. Your excellent comments, many of which made the Bron/Durant contrast far better than I did (I was a little distracted), remain. Let them be as a monument to ideas, this hole in the ground, a testament to my folly. At least I now have an account at a Cavs message board.

Through Flesh and Of Soil

After having spent much of the morning trying to convince people that Shaq-to-Cavs would suck, I've given up and decided to seek refugee in the realm of abstractions. Who among us loves not to spend a good twenty minutes in a crowded coffee shop pondering the nature of time in today's NBA?

I'll keep this brief, but think about it: Only a few years ago, time barely existed in the Association. Market value for players was relative, and set each summer. GM's threw out huge deals, rarely considering how they'd hog-tie the team down the road. Max extensions created the illusion of franchise guys, though it was never quite clear who feted whom. Then came the mini-max, which urged teams to win now, and at the same time, opened the door for players to be free of a huge deal sooner rather than later (who knows, we might yet see that side of the coin). 2010 had everyone thinking about cap space two years down the road. And now, with money dearer than ever, suddenly dumping Brad Miller's contract—which expires in 2010—is worth it just for one year of savings.

No one trend brought about this shift. And who knows if it will continue once 2010 passes, or the economy recovers somewhat. Still, there's no mistaking that time is now urgently, anxiously present, part of the fabric of this league, in a way it hasn't been before. Perhaps it's overcompensation, but how blind, weird, and weightless things were before. I think it's a good thing.

Now talk about rumors.

It's Anyone's Pattern

For starters, there's something cosmic about the Chandler-to-OKC trade. The Hornets hadn't quite had it this season, and I hate Byron Scott. Squelching Julian Wright is foolish. And now this, delivering a big man recently considered Olympic-ish material into the mitts of the most FD team since the '06-07 Warriors. If the word "FD" still means anything, or remotely the same thing, in this very different league we live in. So go ahead and type it with me, because I know you've been saying it in your head since yesterday:Kevin&Jeff&Russell&Tyson&Blake. That, my friends, is a monster.

However, as much as I'd (prophetically?) been down on New Orleans, you can't like what this says about the direction the league is headed. I already did a TSB post on it, coming to the conclusion that we're headed toward baseball. Combine that with the Morey/Battier revelations, and this week we're practically staring down the barrel of the future of front offices.

First, you've got the Thunder, a bandwagon you need to be finding if you haven't tracked it down already. All the payroll went to heaven, causing much controversy and embarrassment, or was of the walking corpse variety—save for the rookie contracts belonging to the team's nucleus. And now, even if Chandler improves them greatly, OKC's most likely landing a choice lottery pick. A once-in-a-generation phenom—LeBron is the exception that proves everything, which is why Durant can still be once-in-a-generation—combined with very astute use of high picks, and one big contract stolen off of team's not blessed with such meager payroll. Will this last? No. Does it take a mastermind to pull off? Probably. Does that mean, in the wartorn economic future of the NBA, it's not a viable model? Only if there's a cheaper alternative that promises such a strong chance of competing. Blow the team up before it takes your hand with you, then start all over again. It's not nihilistic, it's living each second like it's your last, and having the balls to believe your front office can repeat the process every five years.



The Hornets now become the consummate underdog, handicapped by forces beyond their control but expected. One superstar, surrounded by passable role players and guided by a coach determined to make up the difference. If that sounds like the 2000-01 Sixers, congraulations. They went to the Finals, and so we can imagine the post-Chandler Hornets making a similarly inspirational push—provided they change coaches in the off-season. That's when you end up with a peculiar merger of "this is a league of stars" with "this is a league of coaches," where these proclamations apply only to the most elite, who in secret compacts join forces to overcome the system's strictures. That's the real lesson of those Sixers—that when you have a single-minded MVP and a stubborn coach with a fully-formed basketball worldview, it's hard to tell exactly who is establishment, which means they must both be out in the cold, tossing flaming bottles at something else.

You're right, I've skimped on baseball comparisons, because I can't always make them. But I do know that, if Morey's research comes to anything, you could find another model in which incomplete or flawed players are brought together to complete each other. Not the flawed or incomplete the FD book so concerns itself with—not towering figures with great, bleeding holes in their sides. Instead, a team of guys who are at once, like Battier, useful and detrimental, but without any hierarchy. Such that no single individual, or his flaws, can overwhelm the balance of the whole. It's often said that D'Antoni's ideal team is comprised of 6'9" guys who can shoot, run, and pass. The Knicks may be one of the few teams that can do this, because as other teams look for efficient and affordable models, free agents will increasingly accumulate in one place willing to pay them an above average salary. Morey, though, could make due with a team of Battiers, provided one had just a little bit more scoring ability in place of a little less rebounding. But not too much. A team of multi-purpose yeoman immune to all yearning and glory, one that might eventually swallow up the likes of Marion and Odom.

Will we ever see this come to pass? That depends on how long the economic crisis lingers in basketball. Certainly, though, if teams suffer a major hit this year and the next, and the summer of 2010 finds the large market teams cashing in (sorry for the mixed, if not oppositional, metaphor), we might see contracts signed that extend a relatively brief window of disaster across the foreseeable. Who knows what will be discovered, or what will pan out? Front office philosophies could find themselves twisted into a grimace that, over time, becomes a sign of worldliness and thought most deep.

Check Into Tomorrow

For serious, I swore I was going to take it easy over All-Star Weekend. Instead, some links:

-Joey and I frantically work through the implications of a shorn AI.
-Ty and Carter pay snide attention to the non-dunk parts of All-Star Saturday.
-Over at TSB, my Then and Now column overviews the weekend. No, "overview" is not a verb, except for here. Read and comment on this one so it stays alive.

Oh, and after much deliberation, we've decided to gently call out TNT for their Sunday intro. No, not because of its forgettably racist overtones, but because it's invocation of "spirit animals" and "style" was just a little too close to home. Probably not as glaring as the the ESPN mag deal, but still, we're left feeling something between flattered and slighted. Plus, they really should've dug a little deeper into the desert ecosystem.

Now, onto brighter places, or at least those that thrive and scamper in the fields of discourse, not envy. Michael Lewis's Battier/NBA Moneyball/how Morey works piece has seriously shaken up the basketball world. At least the kind that reads the Times. Some have been blindsided (ha!) by this sudden and gaping window into Morey's methods. But what's really made an impact is the fact that Battier, formerly thought of as that annoying Duke whose fantasy numbers means you have to draft him, but will automatically forfeit your team's claim to likeability, is portrayed here as a truly advanced stylist and a compelling figure. It was, in many ways, an FD-ization of Battier, albeit as a means toward an end.

Central to this version of Battier is the idea that he's not simply a scrappy guy who likes to defend and do "the little things," a hungry opportunist who imposes himself on the game by taking over the real estate no one else wants. Instead, Battier remains constant as "a weird combination of obvious weaknesses and nearly invisible strengths." What's more, compared to the hustle guy who hits the floor on every play, Battier pursues a far less brute version of the glue guy—who even in Morey's parlance, can be seen as seeking some form of attention as an assertion of style. It's not just that his contributions only really come through in advanced stats; compared to Battier, a lot of other intangibles experts come across as single-minded and, in their lack of ego, almost showy. Battier is on another level, versatile and evasive. He's nothing less than the Right Way version of apositional icons like Lamar Odom and Shawn Marion—a player who, while dependent on context (whether instantaneous or long-term, as in a system) for direction, is valuable precisely because of his ectoplasmic net effect. And in Battier's case, this requires more flexible math than the box score offers, as if Shane himself provided the impetus for a change.



It's no accident that Lewis sees fit to include a healthy dose of Battier's biography, devoted in large part to his identity in the game as a mixed-race youth. Presumably without irony, Lewis explains that Battier followed the ultra-black Chris Webber at Detroit Country Day, but realized he could never be that player. Of course, Webber himself had plenty of identity issues, but on the court, there was no question he was a super-charged, highly-skilled power forward who had "superstar" scrawled all over his corpus. Anyway, the Life of Battier:

And yet here he was shuttling between a black world that treated him as white and a white world that treated him as black. ''Everything I've done since then is because of what I went through with this," he said. "What I did is alienate myself from everybody. I'd eat lunch by myself. I'd study by myself. And I sort of lost myself in the game."Losing himself in the game meant fitting into the game, and fitting into the game meant meshing so well that he became hard to see. In high school he was almost always the best player on the court, but even then he didn't embrace the starring role.

To me, this perfectly sums up why Battier is both so frustratingly hard to pin down, and in some ways, so fittingly the role player of the future. The pure specialist is as much of a dinosaur as the 20ppg scorer who offers little else. Not to conflate race and style too much, but think about Battier: Sure, he appeals to conservative fans and lacks swagger, but he's also long, versatile, and has been known to make pinpoint, aggressive plays. You follow from there. "Meshing so well that he became hard to see" is a statement about style, but it's also a reflection on identity. Battier's neither a black guy playing white, or someone whose white game is arrived at through means often associated with a certain stran of black player (the difference between Battier and Outlaw is. . . ). Granted, most of this is pat, but if Battier is next level when it comes to this "flow of the game" stuff, it might not be by coincidence that he also confounds easy race-based stereotypes on the court. He doesn't transcend oppositions; instead, he hangs out in everyone's margins, impossible to explain and thus posing a riddle to both sides. That shared terrain, that intersection of margins, is vast and unexplored, and it's only natural it would give rise to new kinds of players and a new way of seeing the game.

And yeah, there is an Obama reference earlier on in the story.

Mindless Displeasures

First, read Shoals and Joey on AI’s life-altering haircut. Then, relive the parts of Saturday night’s festivities you forgot to complain about with Ty Keenan and Carter Blanchard.

Shooting Stars

Carter Blanchard: Do you think teams like the Bobcats or Grizzlies are upset that they don’t ever get to do Shooting Stars?
Ty Keenan: Shooting Stars exists to respect tradition. Greg Anthony would be great on the Grizzlies team.

CB: Is it more embarrassing for Dan Majerle or Lisa Leslie to be in the Celebrity Game?
TK: Leslie, because she still plays. Majerle is basically a celebrity now anyway. He could be on Confessions of a Teen Idol.

CB: The Spurs are pretty good. Do they practice this?
TK: It might be like the South Park episode where the good baseball teams do badly on purpose so they don’t have to keep playing.

CB: It’s a shame the Suns lost that after making the first five baskets. Majerle's halfcourt shots are impressive just because he swishes them.
TK: I also like that Leandrinho shot real halfcourt set shots. They are definitely the most FD Shooting Stars team.
CB: Great interview by Cheryl with Detroit. This win is grouped with MVPs, championships, and gold medals.
TK: Will Cheryl shave her rows now that Iverson did his?



Skills competition

TK: Did they pick four scoring point guards on purpose? Harris is probably the closest thing to a pure point guard in this group.
CB: I’m just shocked that Mo was in this and he was bitching about not being in the game. This is as prestigious, if not more so.

CB: Do you think someday kids today will look back on the TNT theme with the same nostalgia we attach to Tesh?
TK: There are too many networks with basketball these days. Plus it's hard to compete with the Pussycat Dolls.

TK: Didn’t Wade have a turnover in this last year? That’s probably when he decided to turn it on.
CB: I actually think Jason Kidd’s performance in this last year was a significant moment.
TK: Devin Harris is really dealing with those demons even though the Nets don’t have great history in this event. But Mark Cuban would still take Kidd's performance.

CB: Reggie needs to stop acting like this event that has historical significance. Although he really is perfect for pretending this matters.
TK: I’m just not sure why he keeps saying everyone is too nonchalant.
CB: What is he expecting them to do, scream?

CB: Rose is not excited that he won. He just sighed like his dad was trying to take prom pictures.

CB: Why does the Rookie Game feature incessant screams?
TK: They give seats to kids with terrible diseases.
CB: People could be getting slaughtered.
TK: Did they yell during the Celebrity Game?
CB: No.



Three-Point Shootout

CB: The three-point competition is more pressure than taking game-winners, according to Reggie.
TK: Kapono will win because this is all he does. I’m not sure he knows this is different from a real game.
CB: Do you think he insists on practicing this during the season? They try to run plays and he says “No, I need to work on my moneyball!”

TK: Kenny just called Roger Mason ashy.

Carter’s internet dies for a while

TK: Cook and Lewis tied! More boring shooting!
TK: With two Florida teams in blue and red jerseys, this is like the recount.
TK: There is nothing more depressing than talking to yourself about the Three-Point Shootout on Valentine’s Day.

TK: Reggie definitely makes all-star scrapbooks. The dunk contest is one page in each, but the three-point competition takes up fifteen.

Dunk contest begins

CB: "To me, it’s gonna be all about his props" is proof positive that Reggie should be fired.
TK: Reggie asks for Carrot Top's autograph at every celebrity game.



TK: Cedric Ceballos being a judge gives us a peek at how the NBA would deal with PEDs.

CB: That first dunk by JR was awesome. Has anyone ever done a double-bounce before on the toss?
TK: No, yet he got pretty bad scores. I fear what’s to come.

TK: What’s with Rudy’s jersey? Is that a LaRue Martin reference?
CB: Are people booing Rudy? That dunk was awesome. How is that just a 42?
TK: Oh, Fernando Martin. I still like it as a LaRue reference. And these judges are xenophobic.

CB: Nate gets way too much credit for being short. He did the same thing as JR with one fewer bounce and not on the first try, but he got better scores.
TK: Kenny says it’s for extension. Apparently the dunk contest is now gymnastics.
CB: I hate short people.

TK: Why is Pau helping Rudy? Sergio Rodriguez must be crying right now.
CB: This dunk is taking way too many tries.
TK: They are arrogant like the Spanish Armada.
CB: Why wouldn’t he do the foot thing?

CB: I know people who did Nate’s boost dunk in middle school.
TK: He's totally pandering. Maybe Dwight will dunk off a ladder to show that he's tall.

CB: Isn’t it against the rules for Dwight to dunk on a non-regulation rim?
TK: That is not 12 feet.
CB: Why are they acting like it isn’t common knowledge that he can dunk 12 feet? And why are they letting him use so many props? I’m so angry.

TK: Nate is wearing green because he’s doing something involving a leprechaun. Oh wait, it’s for kryptonite.
CB: I’m just angry. I can’t enjoy this.
TK: Nate is the guy from Superman IV.



CB: Reggie thinks the free-throw dunk from a 6'11'' guy won’t look good.
TK: Wasn’t that just the Superman dunk last year?

CB: I’m done with Nate Robinson. JR had the best dunk.
TK: Cheryl asked him what his strategy was. That’s easy: “I am short.”

TK: That was identity politics at its worst.

Is the War Over Now?

As Ziller explains, first the news came over email. As Tom succinctly put it, "no haircut could ever be more meaningful. In all of America." If I believed in titles that made sense, I'd go with "The Chop Heard 'Round the World." Nate Jones later posted photographic evidence, seen above. But before we knew exactly what was up, in those first few breathless moments of comprehension, Joey Litman and I tried to make sense of it all.

Bethlehem Shoals: Inside report: AI HAS CUT OFF HIS BRAIDS
Joey Litman: I hope he goes back to the mini-fro he had at Georgetown. There was something youthfully innocent about it, and I think it engendered optimism in me. I am also a nostalgist, though.
BS: I like that angle. Like before him being him was a burden.
JL: Exactly. Back when he was free to just play. To just be. To be a kid. His public persona, for better or worse, is kind of like a prison.
BS: There was always something defensive about the braids. Like "yeah, this is me where I feel safest. Now step the fuck back."

JL: Completely agree. And they may have allowed him to feel like he owned the way he was being portrayed. Even if it wasn't his choice, even if he didn't fully control it, choosing braids gave him at least the illusion of self-determination.
BS: Or more cynically, was like "if you're really going to fear me anyway, I'm going to drop all pretense of playing that game." Which sort of implies that Iverson was once ready to deal.
JL: I don't disagree with that, but I sometimes wonder about whether he was, or if that was just something we assumed as a result of the redemption narrative: out of jail, prodigious talent, father-figure coach who would help him see that potential and walk the righteous path. That imports a sense that he was ready, or willing, but maybe it was just easy to go along with things without any real certainty.
BS: Or, let's put it like this: He was at least somewhat humble, and realized it was a new venue, when he first hit the league. Not redemption per se, but pragmatic. Then when the backlash came, he retreated into an especially dark (yes, keep the pun) and reactionary form of Romanticism.
JL: Kind of like he threw up his hands and said "I tried to play by the rules, I tried to be nice, but fuck it. You don't seem to care, or get it, so i am just gonna do me." And oddly, doing him, rocking the braids, only reinforced what people were saying. It's like a weird Stockholm Syndrome in some way.



BS: But what about now, when everyone's saying he might fetch nothing on the open market, and has clearly receded into history as the league's major influence? Now it's just marketing, right? Was it just marketing for Melo, too?
JL: As you know (i think you know), I think Carmelo is like Common and like A-Rod--Carmelo seems like he's searching for something. I think that his period at Syracuse, when he was the man, and his talent allowed him to rule the game, was illusory. And I think his PR missteps as a pro, and the stigma that he can't win a playoff series, and the fact that his charm and thoughtfulness are often buried underneath the stereotypical trappings of someone in his position--to me, it all points to this directionless-ness. The braids were perhaps a part of cleaving to an archetypal identity that may or may not really be him, but gave him direction.

JL: Oddly, I think he's maybe coming out of it. This season feels different. I think winning at the Olympics helped him. I think doing more than only scoring has helped. He plays and comports himself with more self-possession this year.
BS: It's weird, people say he took a step back from other international competition, when he dominated. But yeah, his more focused, mature season is probably the result of the Olympics, too.
JL: That's kind of my read on it. and "mature" is a good word. I think he has grown up in some ways. Not to say a grown man, or a self-possessed man, can't have braids. But if the braids are part of a uniform, in effect, and not just a personal preference, they can mean something else. And in the league, thanks to AI, in particular, they can connote some lingering "otherness."
BS: Well, I've always thought of Melo as trying to mediate between being the NCAA champ "good son" or alt-Bron "new jack", and the really real heir to Iverson's street cred, since that's what differentiated him from Bron. Now he's proven he's still got street in him. But on some level, as a businessman—the post-Jay hustler archetype that's replaced the Scarface thing as the model of success—he's got to move on and market himself.

BS: In Iverson's case, he kind of preceded all that. For Iverson to, for lack of a better word, assimilate, doesn't have as clear a narrative to it. How does he justify dropping the ultimate symbol of his personal integrity? It really is all about not necessarily changing his image, but becoming less conspicuous. Is that a return to the beginning? Like "just let me play my game, and then sign me based on that."
JL: Like hitting the reset button. It's funny that it's so hard for him to do that. other players--players who weren't as singular, and as culturally significant--have been able to do that. But with Allen, it's like people don't even want him to.
BS: Well, Melo didn't hit reset per se. He moved on. And that's really the bottom line. At this point, can we even imagine what it means for Iverson to evolve, in terms of game, image, or meaning? Or is he at once an important piece of history and such, doomed in the present.

Clutter About Light

BREAKING: First huge trade. I like to think this means Miami gets a center, straightens out their frontcourt for Beasley's sake—though Ziller points out that Brad Miller could've done the same thing for cheaper—and the Raptors now get their run on. It also depends on how much you believe Marion and JO are "done" or, for the purposes of this site, irrelevent. It would be funny if this lead to the real creation of "Suns North", with Marion once again the lynchpin of it all. Would say more, but I'm off to see Joan Rivers.

I have a celebrity birthday to tend to this weekend, on top of Valentine's Day, so I'll be low-key until my Sunday TSB column sums it all up. There might be a live-blog but at some point, but for all intents and purposes you can consider this an All-Star Weekend open thread.

To get you in the mood:

-Read me at The Sporting Blog, where I've been writing a decent amount about this weekend.

-Those zany Jupiters now have their own site, and a 2009 version of their annual All-Star role call.

-Me, among much bigger names, on a virtual ESPN mag panel on the Dunk Contest. My answers were edited, and this was all before J.R. Smith was in, but it's nice to see my name up in lights like that.

Unrelated:

I spent the first part of the week in Portland, including a Powell's experience was overwhelming in every way imaginable. Also, big ups to the Comcast post-game television show. I read this novel once in college about a Nazi doctor who fucked with people's vocal chords to the point where their ability to speak (and thus think and exist) was reduced to something primordial, and with it, he felt like he was getting at human nature itself. That's what "Talkin' Ball" is like when the comedian is on.

The game I took in on Wednesday, which I wrote up here, really illustrated something myself and Ziller have been talking about. Greg Oden had 10 rebounds, almost all of them memorable. Jared Bayless chipped in a career-high 8 assists, and I only recall one or two of them. This brought me back to a conversation Tom and I had, where I pointed out how easily, maybe even unimpressively, LeBron had racked up his assists in his MSG showcase (like that it's not even a Knicks game?). His contention was that very few assists stick with you; I took it further, and now firmly believe that consistent production in either assists or rebounds is almost always ambient in nature, occurring seamlessly within the flow of the game. These plays only stand out if they are either flawed, or risky and thus imperfect in the formal sense, or dramatic, which usually comes with one or both of these other two characteristics.

When Oden's active, his springiness and size are truly awe-inspiring, but they're made all the more evident by how often he bobbles a rebound, or has to go up twice to reel it in. On the other hand, Russell Westbrook—who takes my "blocks like he's dunking" axiom and applies it to rebounding—was a monster on the glass, but almost always lept in out of nowhere, or over multiple Blazers. Obviously this "noteworthiness" is better than the other not only because it works, but because it's intentional, rather than accidental. In Bayless, you have assists showing up in the most "ambient" way possible. Tom pointed out that Chris Paul has plenty of these, two, and that his highlights often result from exploiting opportunities others can't see. This is familiar FD territory, I know, so I'll shut up after this: Contrast that with Nash, whose pre-Shaq assists always stick with you. That's because almost all of them are risks, based on assertiveness rather than patience, and often take unfamiliar paths.

Anyway, happy weekend, and keep us in your thoughts!

Truly Can't Be Killed

I'm looking forward to all-star weekend for so many reasons, one of which is that it is the last time (hopefully) for a while, that we will be Barkley-less.

I felt like we lost a body part when Charles Barkley decided to take a leave of absence from TNT following his recent DUI and the embarrassing fallout that ensued. It's a strange situation given that prior to this incident, Barkley was essentially bulletproof. Bill Simmons has famously proclaimed him one of the few people who can say whatever he wants with absolutely no repercussions. Barkley's old disclaimer, "I am not a role model," also absolved him from a whole host of misdeeds during his playing career. Ironically, it only absolved him insofar that people recognized him as an unmodifiable jerk who wasn't going to change for anybody.












I thought it would be interesting to bring up Barkley in the context of the week we've had with Michael Phelps' marijuana incident and A-Rod's steroid admission, which have had the combined effect on America of finding out that Barack Obama has been having an affair with Sarah Palin. Phelps and A-Rod, even in their douchiness, have become larger than sport, and have come to represent a restoration of order in our flailing country, a reiteration of America's brawn and swiftness. Watching these figures tumble has invoked a significant degree of cognitive dissonance for everybody who believes in heroes. I don't imagine Barkley himself gets any personal joy from the tribulations of Phelps and A-Rod, but he must know that he always has that trump card: "I am not a role model."

Reinterpreting that statement years later--although I'm sure it was the genius product of someone at Wieden & Kennedy--it sounds more like an admission of disgust rather than a warning. Barkley is not and was not a role model because nobody placed him there. Just like nobody has place LeBron or Carmelo or Chris Paul there. At least not to the degree that both the public and sport itself has placed, say, Alex Rodriguez and Michael Phelps.

And that is the ironic beauty of the NBA's second-tier status. All the while that we've bitched about the NBA not getting the love that the NFL, MLB, or olympics receive, we have failed to recognize the hidden benefit. Because there isn't so much of a high climb for our hooping favorites, there isn't as much of a hard fall. One might say, well, basketball players have a surprisingly better track record than these other guys...but look at how easy Kobe Bryant bounced back. Remember how through the whole rape trial he was still getting praised for his Colorado-to-Staples performances. Look at how little anyone in the media ever brings up Ron Artest beating the shit out of some fans. Does anyone even remember Josh Howard admitting to smoking weed? Sure, I was outraged at all the attention it got at the time....but the beauty of these situations is--well, Josh Howard was never gonna be a role model anyway, so who cares if he tokes a little. Michael Phelps, on the other hand, he was supposed to teach my son algebra and reduce the federal deficit.
























(sidenote about this whole 'the NBA is under the radar' point: how brilliant is it that nobody even talks about Tim Donaghy anymore? Bud Selig gets reamed every time some 22-year-old moron puts a needle in his body, and David Stern sits back and laughs).

I do wonder what would happen if one of these days an NBA player got busted for performance enhancing drugs. If it were LeBron, Shaq, Amare, Kobe, or even D-Wade, sure it would be front page news (as much for its significance as for its anomaly--doping in the NBA?!). But it wouldn't wreck the sport. It wouldn't taint permanently any records or championships. People would go on with their lives eventually. [I should note that it's also unclear that steroids would have much of an enhancing effect on basketball players. In most cases it seems like it would slow them down]. The NBA simply isn't idealized to the level of baseball or the olympics.

























In the end I simply bask in the subjugation that the NBA has received over the years. The NBA has really gotten the good and the bad of the media's subtle racism and disrespect toward NBA players: React in faux-outrage when those savages when they do wrong, but never deem it meaningful enough to write one of these Buster Olney "America is over" pieces. I can enjoy this paradox for now, but in the future I would like to see a standardized treatment of all athletes for their personal offenses. The strange and varied reactions to the Barkley situation, and the diversity of opinion surrounding Plaxico Burress, Roger Clemens, Barry Bonds, Pac-Man Jones, and Chris Andersen has inspired me to ask for help a group project. I want to construct a personal offense scale that ranks athlete offenses from worst to least bad, and then we can decide on the appropriate punishment/media treatment for each. My personal list (from worst to least bad) is below:

Rape
Murder
Child abuse/Domestic abuse
Shooting another person
Racism
DUI
Performance Enhancing Drug use
Dogfighting
Drug abuse (not steroids)
Shooting oneself accidentally/Gun charges
Sexual infidelity toward spouse
Being a bad teammate
Complaining about one’s contract
Unsportsmanlike conduct
Cheating on taxes
Making it rain (with adverse consequences)


Also, just for the hell of it--thanks BWE--Kevin James riding a segway wearing a Troy Hudson jersey:

Vain Gray Ovens

Real quick, and maybe better designed for the Twitter: When they first announced HORSE, I was deathly afraid this was going to turn into some racial bullshit. I mean, what gave that away harder than the "no dunks" rule, buried deep in the press release? The reason I objected to everyone's jittery Kevin Love nomination is that, like it or not, trick shots are the result of practice. That's (EDIT:) self-fulfilling gym rat shit, and it's almost unreasonable to expect anyone else in the field to pull off your ace in the hole.

Now, to draw an analogy I absolutely hate myself for, it's classical music from a score. Putting Durant, Mayo and Johnson in there, is—arghhh—improvisational. Instead of all aspiring to a set-piece one dude knows like his own hand, you'll have weird combinations of elements emerging on the spot. Okay, so maybe these three will do some preparation, but not like how the Other Horse would go down, or how they would do for the Dunk Contest (P.S. the "white" HORSE with, say, Love, Miller and Dunleavy would be the white Dunk Contest). Am I falling victim to stereotypes here myself? Maybe. Durant could very well decide he has to win this one. But given the kind of players, and personalities, these three are, you know they're not going to come with anything corny, or a shot that it's clear they've spent their whole life working on. I'm thinking lots of high-bounced, backboard use, and range. Like the Dunk Contest of consummate scorers. Now that's got a solid ring to it.

Keep those contest entries coming!

Sorry for the sloppiness in the beginning that makes it sound like I don't believe in African-American gym rats. I hope you all got my drift.

This one's for you, mdesus!

Shoals is still in Portland, trying to locate Jerome Kersey's old record collection, so he asked me to let y'all know about a couple of his recent posts over at Sporting News. First up is a YouTuber featuring Bill Murray holding court at the United Center, which you should enjoy even if you think (as I do) that "Lost in Translation" is crazy overrated. Next is an analysis of the All-Star H-O-R-S-E game, the mere existence of which seems like evidence of the blogosphere having too much power. You should know that Shoals writes over at SN all the time, so keep an eye on it!

While I'm here, I should let you know that Adam "MCA" Yauch's documentary "Gunnin For that #1 Spot" is now available on . The film was shot back in 2006 at the first annual Boost Mobile Elite 24 Hoops Classic game at the legendary Rucker Park in Harlem and follows eight of the participants, including current NBA rooks Jerryd Bayless, Michael Beasley, Donte Greene, and Kevin Love, as well as Brandon Jennings, Tyreke Evans, Lance Stephenson, and some white guy who plays for Duke.

FreeDarko was generously given some free downloads of the movie, which we'd like to pass on to you, the readers. Here's the deal: write up something about which high school class from years past you'd most like to have seen in this movie and why, and send it to freedarko[at]gmail.com. Like, I would pick the doomed Class of 2000 and talk about how it'd have been like a Bergman movie. Or something. Be creative.

UPDATE: I forgot that Shoals wanted me to express his gratitude to Powell's, BlazersEdge, and everyone in Portland who came out last night. I hear it was a smashing success.

New Print, Same Person

Okay, that sounds a bit too auspicious, like I've gotten that Wall Street Journal column I always wanted.

TONIGHT: Me in Portland. Will brave any and all snow, school delays be damned. Powell's, 7:30, more info at Blazer's Edge.

EVERY SUNDAY: Second Sporting News column, this one a work in progress that caps off the week while looking forward without too obviously rehashing previous posts. Please read and comment on this first go so they believe it's succeeding.

Will get you guys a real post Tuesday. In the meantime, feel free to indulge all your Amare fantasies in the comments section. That sentence begs the question of whether Amare is indeed, in all possible senses, basketball porn.

Go Forth and Forthify

I'm doing my taxes and listening to Eddie Kendricks (this is how it feels), so you'll have to make due with some links to writing elsewhere:

-QUOTEMONGER COMES BACK HARD. Also, now beginning to show up in the mag.

-My contribution to the Chitlins and Gefilte Fish project.

Will try and get something up before I head to Portland for Monday!

-KP absolutely murders it with his Bill James-inspired look back at the decade.

SELF IS THE NEW STATS

Tune in elsewhere for Dr. LIC's Black/Jew essay and a truly epic Shoals Unlimited (BOTH UP NOW!).

I really don't like to go back and do an entire post on something from another post that I failed to clearly explain the first time around. It smacks of self-obsessed perfectionism, which is to say, it can obscure whether or not the material really matters that much. But like most of you, I am mortal, impatient, and occasionally busy, which means that my favorite part of yesterday's post got condensed—maybe compressed—into this impenetrable passage:

The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

To review, the purpose of yesterday's post was to address "D'Antoni inflation," and determine if such a thing were truly statistically possible. Such an investigation would help us all better understand just how to view Kobe's 61-point game; like, if the numbers were completely inflated, then how much of a statement game could it have been? Ziller proved that adjusting for pace alone yielded no conclusive difference, so we delved into the possibility of a qualitative difference. The anecdotal evidence for this is rich, if a little perverse: Namely, players suck after leaving D'Antoni. This feeds into Simmons's claim that D'Antoni screws with the game's collective brain, the LSD of its sporting era, and some never quite recover. To actually "deflate" stats requires some standard by which we filter out "good" plays from "crazy" ones. Simmons suggests no such things, but unlike home runs in baseball, here we are talking about a difference in style—something that clearly manifests itself on the basketball court. One could conceivably draw distinctions, as opposed to estimating, via advance trigonometry, which balls wouldn't have gone the distance if struck by a non-roided up batter.

I was not, however, endorsing this sorting of play-by-play data, because applying the kind of criteria Simmons hints at is both totalitarian and self-defeating. For one, as you can guess, the line between stupid and inspired is preciously thin in the NBA, or at least the NBA as I prefer it to be. When you start to judge plays based on how rational they are, or whether they represent the most efficient form of execution, then you end up fast in Dave Berri territory. That's not to say that D'Antoni teams, or Nelson's Warriors, aren't at the far end of that spectrum. A normative basketball, though, would force you to pass judgemnent on individual basketball acts, regardless of context, overall flow of the game, or symbolic pay-off. Not exactly friendly soil for revelation or transcendence. This also raises the question of whether all basketball contains such imperfections, and thus the goal would be to adjust teams for their relative "stupidity", or punitively hold them all to a single standard.



The latter seems downright evil. You could end up with very, very strong teams punished for not being sufficiently perfect, or not pursuing a single-minded approach to the game. In an even yuckier version of things, the standard is not any particular team that season, but a nameless, faceless archetype, such that the players and teams that have come to define "smart" ball would still have to measure up to an ideal. It goes without saying that truth lies in creation-through-example, not a coach's imagination. The former brings up the question of where exactly you put that mean. Would it be based strictly on that year's numbers? Or is it inserted arbitrarily, a reflection of one's own stylistic preference? In both cases, deflation becomes an essentially political act.

To bring it back to reality, we are on some level talking about the primacy of identity-through-style. Is the game not defined by particular players and teams, the limits of the reasonable charted anew each night? If a man finds himself through "foolishness," well the, who plays the fool? There is only a "wrong way" or "bad plays" if they result from clear misapplication and lead to indisputable wreckage. So what if the Suns screw with people's heads, or there are clear-cut "D'Antoni players?" It's like acid casualties from the sixties. Are we really suggesting that era should've stayed clean, so it would be easier to compare with those that preceded it?

Oh, and only because it can never be said enough: The Suns didn't win any titles, but they have changed the definition of "stupid." Point guards now matter more than centers. Every team plays some small ball now, no one milks the clock. Phoenix itself ran away from the very low rumble of change that they set into motion. Perhaps the right thinking here is that D'Antoni's stats are ahead of their time, and those who emerge from his teams suffering from a permanent time-travel hangover. I've had those, and they suck. Maybe we should be looking at inflating former Suns' numbers so they accomodate a greater amount of "stupidity."

Note: Al Harrington is the Rosetta Stone of this shit.

STATS ARE THE NEW SOCIAL NETWORK

Behold, the new Black/Jew dialogue starts today at We Are Respectable Negroes. Look for myself and Dr. LIC later in the week.

I don't know if the intertwub'ns (catch the slang!) is supposed to make me feel perpetually included, or forever alone. Certainly, blogger and Twitter can go either way, mostly depending on my mood. How you make a straight social network anti-social—not in the "Joey never goes out anymore," but actually encouraging narcissism and absence of any form of interaction—is beyond me. I feel the same way about sports sometimes. So Kobe goes for 61 while I'm busy taking notes on the Blazers. I've watched the highlights. I knew it was happening. I'm writing about it. And yet this morning, I can't help but feel like I'm out in the desert with all the wrong memories. You'd think that the power of modern communication and computing could provide a reasonable facsimilie of first-hand experience. Instead, all of this build-up seem like that much more mockery. I missed it. All the catch up, prying, or immersion in the world can't get me any closer to that basic, visceral event, which provides the spark for all the web-borne reinforcement going on this morning.

But fuck it, dude score 61, it was a modern miracle, and I have something to say about that bare fact. For firsts, I know this will repercuss back onto the way this Bynum-less team is perceived. I trust a lot of these reactions will be stupid, so please refrain from airing them out here. I swear to Hoth, I will delete them. This has also allowed me to deconstruct the myth of the Garden, to which I welcome angry, or empirically sound, objections. Yes, I do equivocate the visitor's record with the all-purpose record, with the latter raising all sorts of questions about how the Knicks feel about the Garden, or maybe real evidence of a franchise style that abides throughout the ages (oft-referenced, rarely proven, truism). Or maybe I just don't understand how uncommon 50-point games are.

In Kobe's case, though, even as it was happening you heard mutterings about D'Antoni inflation. This theory holds that playing for or against Mike D'Antoni leads to a stat explosion. Therefore, any and all numbers achieved in that context deserve disdainful raised eyebrow. It's also been brought up in reference to David Lee's numbers, which because they're distorted cannot gain him entry into the All-Star Game. I'm by no means well-versed in the advanced statistical community, but it seems like we could adjust these numbers to determine just how many "real" points Kobe scored, or how many double-doubles Lee would have elsewhere.



ENTER TOM ZILLER

The so-called Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect is wildly overstated. I can't really delve into the philosophical question of whether the mere existence of D'Antoni magically makes every player's heart swell to the point of scoring explosion (read on for Shoals' opinion), but I can strip pace from the equation, something a hundred amateur statisticians have done since the birth of SSOL.

D'Antoni's Knicks play at an above average pace, giving the players more opportunities to score and rebound and so on. The Knicks average 97 possessions/game, league average is less than 93. So adjust David Lee's 16/12 down 6% to account for the extra team possessions, and he's really a 15/11 guy. Quel horreur. (This is a quick and dirty [emphasis on the dirty] calculation; this assumes no other affects on Lee or the team if the team were to be forced into league average pace suddenly. That assumption at a team/player level makes me anxious, but so does Francisco Garcia. But you don't see me discounting Francisco Garcia's existence.)

As this chart -- the Knicks' per-game scoring figures at real pace and league-average pace -- shows, the Mike D'Antoni Inflation Effect as it pertains specifically to pace is wildly exaggerated.



In a equipace world, Brandon Roy would be the league's #7 scorer instead of his current #11. LaMarcus Aldridge, Rudy Gay, David West and Rodney Stuckey also get love in a land without D'Antonis and Nellies.

ZILLER LEAVES

This assumes, though, that the difference is a purely quantitative one. Bill Simmons's asterisk argument, I take it, is that there's also a qualitative shift, a suspension of all common sense that gives way to numbers that are not merely inflated, but also empty. I wonder, then, if there's some way not just to fix numbers according to pace (or paceless-ness), but to also quantify the amount of irrationality or impetuousness that a team like the Knicks or Warriors brings to the game. It's possible to play fast and smart.

On the other hand, when a D'Antoni or Nelson team is intent on sowing the seeds of mayhem and disrupting all basketball order, the opposing team is either tricked or forced into following suite. They are the proverbial serpent 'round the hoop, and dude, we kind of needed to listen to the serpent to so we could one day build our own zoos. I don't believe that there's no such thing as a bad shot or poor decision against these teams, just that you can get away with things—maybe even have to get into them—if you can't outright shut down these offenses. The challenge, then is to somehow quantify stupidity on both side. Wide-open lay-ups, drives into four defenders, cherry picks, full-court drives, gambling for the steal on every play. . . these are the markers of deviance, and big surprise, the ball I love. Remove them, and pace could truly be universalized. I wonder, though if there's not a slippery slope, or two of them, on either side of an equilibrium forever in question. Where you set it, what represents the mean, is strictly a matter of preference.

ZILLER RETURNS

(We considered also adjusting for the team's own defense, with the idea that D'Antoni teams don't care about defense and can thus reserve all energy for offense, thus inflating their production -- as in, on any other team, the players would produce less because they'd get tired on defense. But this is stupid and a few steps too far. Your top scorers list would just be Celtics and LeBron. BOO.)

ZILLER LEAVES; SHOALS CHOOSES IMAGE