Fields of Garnish

Check out "Lamar Modem," my first foray—along with some help from my FanHouse comrades—into NBA video art. "Stop, Or LeBron Will Shoot" was going to be next, but after last night, who knows? Really though, I did say at the time, and forever, that Rondo was taking too little money.

Speaking of me writing else, this column on the Suns and the nature of revolution will appeal to readers here.

Pile of Dominoes

I really should have kept updating this site yesterday, but who am I kidding. This story blew up like trees filled with burning birds, and the news you needed was stuffed down your face by media outlets that could care less about sports. It was beautiful, and yes, maybe a little self-congratulatory for someone like me—sports actually mattered.

What's more, this whole thing has become rather self-evident. I don't know what happens next, but the meaning of this action couldn't be more explicit. There aren't many questions left to ask, or wrinkles to explore. This is the part where, with the Suns (and to some extent, the Spurs) ready to speak and act, we sit back and let them do so. We fall away and hopefully, the world becomes a better place

One thing that's been nagging me. Two, actually. Firstly, I never meant to belittle Steve Nash or his opposition to the Iraq War -- which, at the time he opposed it, didn't even exist. But while Nash's gesture was refreshing, it said more about sports, or its generally conservative (all senses) bent, than the actual arena of activism. His was one voice among many and after all, he is a longhair from a socialist country. This is different. As we've said several times, the stakes are much, much higher for Nash here -- or, to put it another way here, never will his voice, or the Suns voices, matter more than in this situation. Given Nash's popularity, the extent to which he's taken seriously, and the playoff run the team is on, this sports team really is one of more robust advocates this cause could enlist. I always assumed that Nash hated the bill, and yet I recognized what a firestorm he'd step into by speaking out. It was ground zero, the front lines, and any other military analogy you feel like employing. What made this so risky was exactly the extent to which, indeed, Suns activism would more than tokenism.



Then there's the whole bizarre institutional cover aspect of it. The Suns may or may not have said something previously, but it was only once Sarver brought it to the team and made his announcement that everyone really opened up. And really, it's genius. No one is fucking with an owner (Mark Cuban excluded). They are very often rich, powerful, and white beyond the wildest dreams of many who would criticize them. Players taking a stand? They're uppity, dumb athletes who should concentrate on sports, and spoiled millionaires. Owners are lords of this earth. The mere mortals who stand several rungs below them on the tax bracket just can't go around dismissing their opinions, since they have money and money is power. That was immature, I know, but it's unquestionable that Sarver not only made it okay for the Suns to mobilize (beyond his suggestions), but also for Billy Hunter to insert the Players Association into the conversation. Unions in sports should stick to contracts ... unless an owner, traditionally their adversaries, allow them to deflect attention back toward the right, or more charitably, the universal.

Still, it's pretty amazing that Billy Hunter's saying stuff like this: “It’s phenomenal. This makes it clear to me that it’s a new era. It’s a new time. Athletes can tend to be apolitical and isolated from the issues that impact the general public. But now here come the Suns. I would have expected nothing less from Steve Nash who has been out front on a number of issues over the years. I also want to recognize Amare. I know how strident Amare can be and I’m really impressed to see him channel his intensity. It shows a tremendous growth and maturity on his part. And I have to applaud Bob Sarver because he is really taking a risk by putting himself out there. I commend them. I just think it’s super.” That came from Dave Zirin's piece on the breaking story; a statement followed that, more formally, made it clear where Hunter's allegiances lie. The statement, which you can read here, was direct and focused on this issue. Speaking to Zirin, though, Hunter gushed.

You simply cannot ignore a phrase like "a new era." The new era may be players, and indeed an entire organization, turning political when their voices matter most. This is not a celebrity endorsement, or even players getting out the vote during last year's election. However breathlessly it's come together, we're now seeing an extremely strategic use of authority and power to make sports viable as a political entity. I also think we have to acknowledge that the league signed off on this, which goes all the way up to Stern. Who knows if any other players will weigh in, or how much the Suns will now be associated with this protest. These are exciting times, and I have no idea what's next—just that, whether or not we see another moment like this anytime soon, there's now a plan to action in place.

And oh yeah, fuck Phil Jackson, even if he is just trying to out-coach Gentry already. Also, would love to see some Suns fans try and boycott/boo their team, and then Phoenix go on and win this series.

Bad Reporting

Okay, I misread that Twitter exchange because I wanted the world to be a better place. As Luis points out, Dudley asks "What would it mean to the city of PHX if we were able to beat the Spurs in this year playoffs?", King answers that it would unite the city in the wake of the immigration controversy, Hill and Nash concur. So basically, nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sports will make everyone set aside their differences. Typical bullshit.

So I don't know what to make of this exchange:

@irakoto: Phoenix players @the_real_nash @RealGranthill33 @loyaloneforlife @JaredDudley619 speaking out agst #immigration bill. Proud to be a fan

@loyaloneforlife: @lrakoto The Phoenix Suns are very socially conscious group of men. @Amareisreal,@RealGranthill33,@jrich23,@JaredDudley619,Nash, everyone!

Maybe I'm missing something, again, but saying you're aware of the city's strife ... does that make you socially conscious? Someone prove me wrong. Again.

The Fray Won't Wait

Well, they did it. Or as Eric joked, we did it. Last night, long after the East coast had gone to bed, the following tweet-string came across the official Steve Nash account:

RT @RealGranthill33: RT @loyaloneforlife: @JaredDudley619 unite the city in light of what is going with the government immigration issues.

And the hashtag, present only on Hill's tweet: #sportsuniteeveryone.

First, the play-by-play. Can't decide if this is more chain of evidence, Tinkers-Evers-Chance, or espionage plot. Jared Dudley tweets it first, but now it's gone from his account. Then comes Amar'e's manager (or something like that), then Hill, and finally Nash. Nash is, of course, the big fish—if you recall, Eric Freeman and myself spent a while trying to figure out if that expectation was reasonable or even founded. The pressure never came, but he did say something. Then again, with thousands in the streets, it was no longer a principled outsider piping up in a vacuum. That hashtag suggests a desire to both keep it cool while expressing solidarity with the protesters.
Twitter activism—what does it mean? Makes you long for the days of text message relationships.

I would also like to call your attention to my slightly fantastical suggest, over the weekend, the Stern would be the one to voice disapproval. MLB's players have that vested interest, the D-Backs owner to go up against, and too strong a case for the league itself to ignore. Maybe "sports issues" are totally fragmented, mattering only on a sport-by-sport basis. But this brings together several interests of recent Stern: Latinos, "vulnerable" conservatives, and maybe even his own politics. It was crazy, so I was told by someone who knows this stuff better than I, but at the time, it made a certain amount of sense to me. Stern is the master of the withering aside and the veiled threat. This would have been his stage, where the difference between his shadowy business interests and vaguely uplifting initiatives might start to dissolve.



So, up to the minute, where do we stand? Judging from the Twit-chives, Dudley has apparently dropped out—that's in keeping with my sense that's it's always danger for unestablished black players to get a rep as too political. Travis King, Amar'e's dude, fits with the "hey, doesn't this seem like something Stoudemire would be moved to speak on." Remembering, of course, that he's shown a marked interest in not standing still and shutting up—one that's only deepened with age. Grant Hill is bright, worldly, and sensible. That hashtag has his fingerprints all over it, as coverage for a grown man's obvious outrage at what's happening. But again, only with the marches does this position become tenable, as in "they started the fire." And Nash, well, he's piggy-backing.

I hope someone does some follow-ups on this. Here, I'll say that again, AZ folks: I HOPE SOMEONE DOES SOME FOLLOW-UPS HERE. I don't really know what I'm looking for here. Some clarity? An indication that these athletes are in on this issue between RT-ing? Of course, this was the easy part, and the crowds in the streets were analogous to the crowds in the stands. They buoyed athlete solidarity, and however briefly, defused the "going against the people" concerns. Still, though, I would like to see them say more. Nash has stepped up. Hill is unimpeachable. Amar'e can leverage his return, if he really wants. Are these more likely options than a snide series of utterances from Stern? No idea, but I like to think this just got a lot more interesting.

This might comfort or further inflame you: Bill Russell, longform as ever. Also, Thunder farewell post with theological underpinnings, and much Jazz.

You Can See Your Own Reflection

You heard it everywhere but here first: new FDPDOC podcast went up yesterday. One of these, I'll make a triumphant return to those parts. Be reading my Playoff Talking Points. And below, check out these images sent to me for purposes of sharing (via bobarke/champions)

We All Have Questions

This is a very important question that I think warranted discussion. However, first some news: FreeDarko's Undisputed Guide to Pro Basketball History now has a cover! Also, please be reading my Playoff Talking Points. Now, me and Eric Freeman look into Steve Nash and the sin of omission, or projection, or that which cannot be named.

Bethlehem Shoals: In the interest of full disclosure and total, awkward honesty, this email exchange is an attempt to recreate a phone conversation from the afternoon of Thursday, April 22, 2010. I telephoned Eric Freeman, outraged that Steve Nash—generally seen as one of the more politically active, or at least aware, Phoenix Suns—wasn't speaking out against the anti-brown person malarky being considered by the state of Arizona. Actually, I was outraged that no one was crying for him to speak out. Remember when LeBron James not taking a stand against Darfur made national news? Now, a player with a reputation for activism had nothing to say about a serious issue in his own state.

Eric Freeman: Maybe Nash just isn't as big or controversial an activist as we thought. If you look at his charitable contributions, they all involve your standard fare: green initiatives (the charity so uncontroversial that both NBC and the NBA devote an entire week to it), children's funds (which is essentially apolitical now), etc. Those are all worthwhile causes, of course, but not on the same level as a birtherist bill in his state of employment. I think he gets this attention as an activist simply because he looks like one: floppy hair, white, wears vaguely trendy clothing. He's easier to sell as a politically involved player because it requires less convincing on the part of the league -- they can trot him out there without much explanation. He's a useful presence for the causes the league wants to promote.

BS: Okay, after remembering the web research I did yesterday, I have to agree. Although he was against the war before it was considered okay, which has to count for something. I'm tempted to say that Amar'e, with his ongoing work in Sierra Leone, might be doing more—though then we get into the difference between service, activism, and how much either one is ever strictly "political". This still hasn't answered my question, though: If Nash has this identity projected onto him, and it contributes to his popularity (or at least his image), why doesn't it come into play here? It's almost like he gets the benefit of being viewed this way without being held accountable. Whereas when LeBron James and Kobe go to China, they're expected to become political. Nash gets a pass here . . . because he already is?



For the record, Steve Nash spoke out against Darfur in the spring of 2007; Ira Newble's petition was around the same time. Kobe and LeBron lent their names to the cause in spring 2008, then were mum during the Olympics. Not to editorialize, but Nash is the most popular athlete in Arizona. If ever there were a time when his voice really mattered like no other, and thus would really be taking a stand, this is it. But again, is that what athletes are obliged to do?

EF: The difference here, I think, is that speaking out would be a direct response to many of his fans. Granted, I'm sure a large number of Mavs fans were pro-war in 2003, but that's a broader argument not specific to the state in which he played. This issue is about Arizona, and he's the most popular basketball figure in the state. It'd be a break not just with a popular political position, but the legislature of the state he represents around the rest of the country.

BS: So athletes are expected to use their influence for good . . . except when it hits too close to home and could potentially alienate some of their fans? I'm not sure how that's so different from my argument that we shouldn't expect LeBron to be responsible for a chain of international affairs that leads from Oregon to Darfur. Not because he's incapable of it, but because at some point, there are limits to responsibility. Except here, the limit would be. . . when it really involves a serious confrontation with the people who look up to you? It's almost like Steve Nash has done enough to be given this pass (which to some degree, makes sense to me), but other athletes who don't do anything can have expectations thrown at them willy-nilly.

EF: But how often are athletes asked to take controversial stands? Even in the case of LeBron and Darfur, there wasn't significant uproar about his decision not to take a stand -- it's not as if liberal activists would turn down his involvement in any number of less controversial issues. It's almost as if the public wants action, but not necessarily anything that could undermine their status as basketball players. It sounds great to have another Muhammad Ali, but what if political circumstances hadn't allowed him to return to boxing? Is that a tradeoff we're willing to risk?

BS: It was too a big story. I think the first one—his refusal to sign Ira Newble's petition—may have been bigger than the Olympics silence. To be fair, the latter was a gag order imposed by Colangelo, so that would have required a higher order of un-American defiance. But that first time around, it was in the Wall Street Journal and stuff. Brought up the whole "no better than Jordan" conversation. He eventually did end up addressing it, along with Kobe and several others, and there was no fallout. Not during the Olympics, or in China afterward, but again, maybe those fall under the "asking too much" rubric. LeBron is really obligated to defy the Chinese government while he's on a publicity tour there?

Maybe it's a question of good politics, in the most cynical sense. There's idealism, and then there's realism. We should always assume that athletes are hampered by some degree of realism. The question is, in Nash's case, can we push that so far that he's totally let off the hook? You're right, he would be directly challenging his fans. Not just staking out a position in some vague geo-political system of affairs. That would be like LeBron protesting Darfur during the Olympics—it would go right up against what American told him to do. He would be defining America for himself. That's what Nash would be doing in this case.

Except, and maybe this is key, dude's Canadian. Oooops!

Got to Get Off This Never-Ending Combine

Merry Christmas to you, and to all a brave tale! On this day of expanded NBA programming, Rough Justice of the smart-n-snazzy blog There Are No Fours comes to you with a heaping philosophical question and fodder for your viewing guide. Be well!

" All languages offer the possibility of distinguishing between what is true and what we hold to be true. The supposition of a common objective world is built into the pragmatics of every single linguistic usage. And the dialogue roles of every speech situation enforce a symmetry in participant perspectives.
- Jürgen Habermas, Postmetaphysical Thinking

Who is the most athletic player in the NBA? Picks would differ, but if you polled a group of people up on the league, you would get stars like LeBron, Dwight Howard and Dwayne Wade (Kobe probably also makes this list for a few years yet) but also players like Tyrus Thomas and Nate Robinson. The question that never seems to get asked subsequently, though, is what precisely constitutes "athletic" in this context. Literally, the term is pleasantly tautological, meaning simply pertaining to an athlete. For our purposes here, it seems reasonable to define it as "possessing physical characteristics beneficial in the game of basketball".

It's pretty easy to figure out the yardstick we're all mentally using to figure out the "athletic" list. Put together some combination of vertical leap, top speed and lateral quickness with bonus points for strength and height and you'll have a pretty good approximation of "athletic". But that's leaving out a lot of the physical tools that are beneficial to a basketball player. Take, instance, David Foster Wallace talking about the issue¹:

Successfully returning a hard-served tennis ball requires what's sometimes called "the kinesthetic sense," meaning the ability to control the body...through complex and very quick systems of tasks. English has a whole cloud of terms for various parts of this ability: feel, touch, form, proprioception, coordination, hand-eye coordination, kinesthesia, grace, control, reflexes, and so on.

Hand-eye coordination is certainly vital to basketball. Without it, you'll have terrible handle, and even if you're a big who doesn't really need to dribble, you have to be able to handle the pass into the post. Body control is vital to taking contact without losing control on a drive. Fast reflexes obviously matter. The list goes on. So why do we limit the discussion of athleticism to jumping and running? It's pretty simple: A) We focus on the obvious. B) We pay attention to the impressive.

1: Yes, obviously he was talking about tennis, and I've yet to see Roger Federer run the fast break. Everything he's saying, however, is directly transferable to basketball.

Sit anyone down and show him/her a few minutes of a game, and he/she'll be able to point out which players can really jump. The guy that dunked, the guy that blocked a shot. It's evident and impressive when someone makes a play up in the air. Similarly, we can all tell when someone turns on the jets to get ahead on the break for an easy basket. It's right there to see, it's effective, so it gets noticed. A lot of the elements of this physiological cloud are subtler. Who has the best body control in the NBA? Nobody knows. You can tell if someone is on one extreme or the other if you watch them a lot, but no one could begin to rank everyone in the league. Who has the best hand-eye coordination? These aren't the things that are or even necessarily could get tested at combines, but they are things that partially determine how effective someone is on the court. If an individual athlete's cocktail of traits is low in several, he probably is going to wash out to the D League or Europe pretty quickly no matter what kind of ups he has.



"Athletic", then, has more to do with explosive than athletic. No one is touting (for example) Steve Nash's athleticism; all the talk is of his court vision, shooting skill and general savvy. I'm not trying to downplay his basketball IQ or court vision², but watch this video and tell me he's not a physical specimen. The reason is narrative. We don't think of players as a spreadsheet of skills, we think of them as a story. Steve Nash is a creator who sees the court like no one else and capitalizes on that. His hand-eye coordination gets explained as passing and shooting ability. His speed and agility is part of how he reads defenses and goes where they can't stop him, and his body control isn't really part of the story, even though I suspect his stellar proprioception plays a surprisingly large role in his effectiveness.

All of the physical tools that make him great are subtle, so we don't think of him as a stellar athlete, even though he is. Similarly, I think a lot of what determines an undersized player's success, unless he chooses to specialize in outside shooting, is body control, coordination and touch. AI's dominance was predicated on his aggression, but a willingness to take it into the paint against men twice his size and explosive quickness are no guarantee of greatness. Yes, he was lightning fast, but he could also take and adjust to hard contact and still finish. The way he could absorb a blow and still get the ball in the hoop played into and reinforced the narrative of uncompromising dedication, but had as much to do with his inner ear and broader athleticism as it did his steely resolve.

2: Part of the trouble here, of course, is that the subtle skills bleed into the mental realm. How fast I can run has everything to do with the fast twitch muscles I have, but the ability to thread the needle with a pass depends on (optical) vision, hand-eye coordination, the inclination to try and past experience. There's no way to disentangle them and isolate the merely/solely physical.

Another funny bifurcation exists within the treatment of players who are on the far right of the bell curve of obvious physiological traits. When is the last time you heard LeBron or Dwight Howard referred to as "athletic"? It doesn't happen. When a player is jaw-droppingly gifted in the obvious ways and dominant on the court, he is termed a "freak". This may be because his non-evident physical gifts are commensurately ridiculous (Dwayne Wade, I suspect), because they're at least acceptable and his strength/size makes him unstoppable (young Shaq, Dwight Howard) or both (this, I think, is what is so unfair about LBJ's abilities); regardless, he gets otherized by this categorization.

It would be easy to dismiss this as hyperbole in the mode of current sports coverage, but there's more to it than that. It is partly a result of the mythologizing of greatness, that a player is so gifted he is more than human. You see it in Jordan as messianic figure and its aftershocks of James as the Chosen One, but it's more decentralized. Howard as Superman. Wade as Flash. Half Man/Half Amazing³, even. This otherization cuts deeper, however. They are freaks not merely because they are so obviously amazing, but because theirs is a problematic greatness. Labeling them as a freak moves them outside the discourse of normality and allows us to consider them uniquely and not reconcile them with any other player. They become an exception to the norms of physique, and so therefore not subject to them. They're certainly athletic, but they aren't "athletic" because the second we move them to "freak", considerations of athleticism that aren't about them don't include them. We shove them onto another plane rather than reconcile them to ours so that we don't have to account for them in our evaluations of everyone else.

Instead of undermining the simplicity of our categorization and forcing us to account for why explosiveness translates into effectiveness for some but not others, they reinforce our categories by not having to fit inside them.

3: I would love to see someone give this nickname the exegesis it deserves. Given the trajectory and conventional packaging of Carter's career, its ironic accuracy is stunning.

So players, or at least players after their first year or two, tend to get labeled as "athletic" only if they're disappointing. The Tyrus Thomases ⁴ of the world tantalize you when they leap out of the building to block a shot or thunderously dunk, but they can't seem to put it together. The question hanging around such a player's neck is, if he can make that play, if he can make everyone else on the court look like they're standing still, why can't he dominate? Why can't he consistently take over a game? He stays "athletic" because we can't fit him into another narrative slot.⁵ He's not successful enough as a role player to be cast as a rebounder or a scoring swingman or even a lockdown defender. If a player succeeds in one of those roles, his athleticism becomes a trait, not a defining characteristic.

Ironically, it's often the lack of the subtler forms of athleticism that hampers this growth and stalls a career at "athletic". If he doesn't have the subtler skills to round out his game and instead is a leaper who makes one amazing play per game but can't consistently produce. The clumsy moments when a play doesn't come together for him aren't an abberation, a lapse of unharnessed motion, but rather as telling of the borders of his kinesthetic ability as the dunk. Because of the transcendent moments he'll stick around for a while, but because he doesn't have similarly high-level subtle athleticism, he is merely "athletic". The label, despite its surface connotations, is more indicative of a negative absence than a positive presence.

4: I realize Thomas is young and may yet live up to his promise. He is at least partially here a stand-in here for the type.

5: This is why you won't see Josh Smith or Gerald Wallace essentialized as "athletic" anymore. Josh Smith has settled down and now is a dangerous wing scorer, while Wallace's rebounding explosion has moved him into "freak" territory. Their gifts haven't changed, but because they're more effective this season our profiling of them shifts.

We do ourselves a disservice when we fall into the trap of the obvious. Conventional wisdom is dangerous not just when it's wrong, but also (and more often) when it's incomplete. An unnecessarily narrow understanding of athleticism informs a wan view of the NBA as a whole. If we focus only on explosions, we undervalue the rest of the spectrum of ability. Quiet excellence is every bit as interesting and important as loud excellence, it just doesn't give itself up as quickly. A debate like "most athletic player" has as its core an assumption that athleticism is both quantifiable and linear; neither is remotely true. A fractured view of athleticism that acknowledges the impossibility of full knowledge may at first blush seen irritating or gnostic, but is in fact the only responsible approach.

Bucking Mines

Timely as ever, I'd like to weigh in on the Steve Nash contract extension, which is now centuries old news in internet time...

There are many theories on what exactly "ruined" the Suns that have so defined this millenium of pro basketball. I choose to blame D'Antoni's (fixable) failure to get tough on the team's rebounding woes, bad luck with the timing of Amare's injuries, the firing of D'Antoni, the replacement of D'Antoni with Terry Porter, the ill-timed acquisition of Shaquille O'Neal, and in general, Steve Kerr. I don't really buy into theories about Sarver's cheapness, trading all those draft picks, or not holding on to Joe Johnson/Q-Rich/Marcus Banks...etc.



















The Suns were always a team poised to win RIGHT NOW. There was no use for building toward the future with late first round picks. They never had a distinctly "old" team until the Hill/Nash/Shaq triumverate, and with Nash and Amare alone, they ALWAYS have a fighting chance.

And now they still do.

Despite Kerr's idiocy, Amare and Nash (miraculously) are still there. Nash might be on steroids for all I know (BLOGGER ALERT), but he isn't going to be demonstrably worse this year. And Amare might be better (?). May I present to you the possibility that this Nash extension gives the Suns one last glimmer of hope?

--Nash signing an extension says one of two things: (1) I believe I can win a championship with this franchise, or (2) This franchise gave me a new life and two MVP trophies. I owe it to them to re-sign, and PS, I'm satisfied. Either way, a happy Nash is good for at least 15 and 8.

--A summer and a half worth of ridiculous trade rumors may in fact inspire Amare Stoudemire to play tougher than he already does? I don't know. This might be a reach.

--A strong supporting cast of IF guys. IF J-Rich can knock down the open jumpers, IF Robin Lopez proves to be a serviceable back-up, IF Leandro Barbosa can regain form....the Suns have depth

--A host of players that can potentially solve the rebounding quandary (again, IF Robin Lopez is worth a damn...)

--Teams will no longer GET UP to play them. The Suns no longer boast that fear-inducing NBA championship squad on paper that causes TNT/ESPN/ABC to over-book them and teams to treat matches with them like Gladitorial arena battles. The Suns, for the first time in the Nash era, may actually be able to sneak up on teams...

Am I blindly grasping to hold on to an era that no longer exists? Potentially. But I am soberly not ready to admit that the Suns are over, merely because of what the Shaq trade appeared to signal (rebuilding). Nash's re-signing initially gave me feelings of emptiness, the thoughts of him and Amare roaming around in blank space, carrying the guilt of two 19th century Russian lit protagonist partners in crime. But then I reoriented: It signaled a last gasp of hope.

I am curious to see what the Suns do with desperation, which could be the last motivational tool they have.
























ADDENDUM:

The original version of this post (embarrassingly) included references to both Matt Barnes (the news of whose signing I totally missed) and Ben Wallace (inexcusable for falling off my radar). All I can say is that my NBA game has not been air tight this summer, and I'm getting back on track.

Also, I suppose I *should* reference the only things the Suns have actively done this season besides signing Nash: Grant Hill, Channing Frye, and Earl Clark. Truth is, these guys don't add much, except for providing even more of a blank canvas for Nash and Amare to operate on. Grant Hill keeps shit stable in the locker room. Channing Frye's young-journeyman tag should provide him with some inspiration to get back to rookie year form and to improve on his rebounding, and Earl Clark does absolutely nothing for me (I actually think getting a PG who could spell Nash (Jrue, Ty Lawson) would have been a better pick here).

The important thing is that, for the first time in a while, Phoenix is keeping shit simple. Contrast this with 2009 playoff alums Dallas, Utah, or even, say, Portland, who at this point have generated too high of expectations and are spinning squads of 'too many people who need to be kept happy.' Steve and the Suns made a mutual gesture of good faith, and this bump of positivity coupled with a sense of "nothing to lose" gives them some optimism for 09-10.

Nothing Ages You So Fast As Refusing To Mature

Quickly: I truly and seriously am coming to hate the MVP award. Next year, I'll just find the player who best embodies the most positive cliches and fucking say he should win. Why bother with shit like how well they actually played during the season when you have data like "rebounding is about desire. Kobe wants it more, so he's a better rebounder than LeBron" at your fingertips? Kobe is becoming the NBA's answer to Juno for me-I really like him, but his supporters are so overwhelmingly fawning, pretentious, and obnoxious that I have begun to loathe his very concept. Also, I have become convinced that Jason Collins is the NBA's answer to Pi: he is an elaborate inside joke on the public by NBA literati, an experiment to see if people will believe something truly horrendous has value they are unable to see if they say it enough. (Shoals: You can cut that out if you want. It just felt really good to write.)

















So anyways, the best player who has no way been tarnished by MVP talk this season, other than to call his hopes for the award hubris, has been Amare Stoudemire, who is very quietly putting together one of the best scoring seasons in a long, long time.

STATISTICAL INTERLUDE:

Amare's rocking 25 a night on 65% "True Shooting" which is FG% with free throws and threes in there too, basically making it better. The only other players, as far as I can tell, to post a higher TS% than Amare and score over 20 points a game are Kevin McHale and Charles Barkley. And that's it. Ever. Even a little bit scarier: The one thing "True Shooting" doesn't account for is "And-1" baskets, and Amare leads the league with 94 And-1 buckets.

RETURNING TO THE REGULARLY SCHEDULED PONTIFICATION:

So Amare's got 25/9/1.5 with some baggage in regards to the defensive end, on the previously mentioned historically nuts shooting percentage. Dirk won the thing on 24/9/3.5 on 60% true shooting and a whole hell of a lot of baggage on the defensive end, while KG's candidacy is far more legit than Amare's with 19.5/9.5/3.5 on 58%, as is DH with 21.2/14.4/1.5 on 62%.; While KG is quite beastly on the defensive end, and DH more than holds his own, Amare being at 13th in the race reeks of bullshit.



























(From the "Shit that's funny in retrospect" file: One Oscar-Nominated film in 1995 contained multiple instances of the phrase "Jew Motherfucker." It was not the one made by Mel Gibson, which won best picture.)

In reality, what Amare has gone and done is hit the glass ceiling of not being the guy who makes it happen on his team. So long as Nash wears the orange and purple and produces prodigiously, Amare will never receive his proper due, as his play is seen, to a degree, as a function of what Nash makes. Shawn Marion chafed under this to the point where he had to be moved, leaving his legacy as a perfect cog behind for a future as a flawed but uninhibited paradigm.















Nash and Amare now lie as the prime example of symbiosis in this league; both are the absolute best at what they do in terms of running a pick-and-roll, with Nash's unreal outside shot, ball-handling, and passing on the one end and Amare's explosion, ability to finish, ability to draw contact and hit free throws, and newly acquired deadly mid-range J on the other. As such, their success is inexorable from each other's talents: Both were very good before they found each other, but have now ascended based on the ability of the other.

Amare is a victim of the NBA's version of the Peter Principle- he's producing like a superstar, but is seen as a role player because his success is aided by the system he plays in rather than the system requiring him to sacrifice in order to aid those around him. To be given his proper due as a superstar, he must attempt to take on additional responsibilities until he inevitably hits an Iguodala-like wall or Curry/Kemp level all-out collapse.

















There's definitely some Peter Principle-type shit happening with the Suns, the most rigidly hierarchical team in the league-Nash has the ball in his hands, Shaq creates space, Raja makes open threes, Hill picks up slack throughout the facility, and Amare fills the existing space with aplomb.

The Suns make sense to us because they follow the rigid structure of our everyday life, while the Warriors operate on a constantly shifting paradigm in which Ellis, Davis, S-Jax, or even Harrington or Azubuike is capable of centering the offense around him based on the circumstances of the situation. And the Nuggets operate on a completely arbitrary system, with the strong but opaque notion of attack driving the team to an urgency that none of them really understand but are eager to execute.














Everybody says that the definition of a superstar is somebody who makes marginal players better. However, Amare is a superstar-level talent who is clearly made far better by the system that employs him, and him and Nash thrive because they make life easier for each other instead of one relying inordinately on the other to make life easy for him-Amare doesn't only look for wide-open dunks when he's around Nash, and Nash doesn't throw the ball into Amare and wait at the three-point line for open jump shots-instead, they both work in harmony with each other to produce the perfect high pick-and-roll.

Right now the NBA Peter Principle seems to dictate that anybody who is associated with the words "Most Valuable" has a god-given responsibility to shoulder a gigantic burden, while role players' respective strengths should be nurtured to the best ability of the team.

It's wouldn't seem to be all that radical of an idea, getting guys who make life easier for your superstars, but it seems to be one completely lost on NBA teams, who instead seem to be hell-bent on milking their superstars for all they're worth.




















Two major trades related to this principle occurred this season-the Shaq trade originally caused no small level of distress here and made me wish that the Suns had just traded Amare to the Hawks and officially given up on the dream, but by getting a guy who can create space for a guy who excels with space given to him by Nash, they unleashed the beast within Amare and have found something radical and new in the context of the half-court offense.

The 76ers made the de facto swap of Kyle Korver, a lights-out shooter, for Thaddeus Young, a slasher on a team full of them. On the surface, this wouldn't make a whole lot of sense, but taking the burden off of 'Dres Miller and Iguodala has transformed the 6ers into a shifting and furious full-speed attack.

Of course, this logic would seem to suggest that the Kidd trade would have worked instead of completing the downward spiral of the Dynasty That Would Be. Well, Dirk actually is a lot better with Kidd on the team, and if you saw them against the Warriors it's clear that the Kidd-fueled Maverick attack is pretty fucking scary, although the Warriors can't guard anybody at all right now. If I ever dared to question Don Nelson, I would be worried that his Bataan death-march rotation and suicide-style of play has worn the Warriors down for their playoff push, but I am confident this is all part of Nellie's master plan. Also, Harris is a guy who creates a good deal more for himself and others than people realize-Kidd's actually been more of a catch-and-shoot guy for the Mavs than Harris was. And Harris is pretty clearly an upgrade over Kidd defensively at this point in their respective careers. (The moral of the story: when you trade a 24-year old making the rookie scale for a 35-year old guard making max money and throw in DeSagnia Diop, expiring contracts, and draft picks, you should probably be absolutely positive that the player you're getting is better than the player you gave up.)























(I'm pretty sure I found this picture on this site. Occasionally, we must make sure that some things are never forgotten.)

If you follow the Cavs, it's shocking how different the offense looks with Delonte West playing with LeBron, as he pushes the ball to get LeBron transition opportunities and can tilt the defense with the ball in his hands to keep things from stacking up on LeBron, often leading to a resounding LBJ dunk off a simple dribble-handoff. And this was the third string point guard on the Sonics. Team USA showed that LeBron can be a fairly deadly shooter when he's allowed to set his feet and get a look at the target, but he takes a higher portion of his threes off the dribble than anyone else in the league. However, the conventional wisdom seems to be that LeBron should be surrounded by spot-up shooters who he can do all the work for.


























MAKING IT EXPLICIT-There seems to be a notion that the relationship between elite slashers/post-up players and spot-up shooters is symbiotic, as shooters supposedly keep the defense from "bunching up" and provide space for the stars in which to work. I find this to be mostly a load of crap-from watching guys like Kobe, CP3, LeBron, and Duncan, I can tell you that spot-up shooters get open looks via those guys about 95% more than those guys get open lanes via their shooters. For a case study, the Cavs have made the de facto swap of Eric Snow (possibly the worst outside shooting backcourt player in the league) for TITS GIBSON (arguably the best three-point shooter in the league this year other than Nash, who is a complete freak), and the upgrade gives LeBron perhaps a quarter-step more space than before-Snow and Boobie get left alone just the same, but Boobie can actually make the defense pay when the defense leaves him alone.

On a common sense level, I'd set a 40% three-point shooter up with a wide-open look and give him all the time he could possibly need before I'd leave LeBron or Duncan's man without help, because they're going to score in that situation like 90% of the time. The relationship between stars and spot-up shooters is, at best, a 90-10 proposition in terms of benefit.















Howard is one of the best guys in however long at getting and converting alley-oops and quick catch-and-dunks, to the point where he's scoring 20 points a game without an especially nice post game or any outside shot to speak of, but his status as a superstar has the Magic convinced that he should stick himself in the post and be surrounded with shooters instead of finding a more suitable option at point than Jameer Nelson to get him the looks he enjoys.

This is why I'm glad my boy O.J. Mayo had a fairly innocuous freshman year instead of a Durant/Beasley like star turn-as a role player, O.J.'s deadly shot and first step will be complimented by whichever team lands him, while Durant, and soon Beasley, were thrown straight into the fire of being the guy whose responsibility it is to nurture the rest of his team.



















The MVP race reflects the NBA's strict sense of hierarchy-one man is the superstar of his team, and all the rest are there to benefit from him, driven by a sense that every NBA team has one ideal play, with their superstar as the sole catalyst, that they run 110 times a game. However, in Amare Stoudemire, a superstar who keeps the trappings and benefits of a role player, we see the argument for a more collective effort, in which roles are symbiotic, each player helping all others, including the supposed superstars. And that's why a glimmer of hope still lies in the Suns.

That's Geneva For Me

Some external links:

-Possible 4/1-ish TSN column on conference imbalance restitution
-Forthcoming Deadspin joint on drugs, awesome and sports

I probably have some shit to say about Suns/Nuggets, not in the least because I've totally left the Warriors bandwagon for the Nuggets (sorry, that's where the crazy is). But I missed the first half of last night, and there's tonight to contend with, so we'll see.

Worth noting that, while the second-half Suns were more unfettered and exhilarating than anything since GSW 2007, and Shaq does fit in, Nash just isn't as fluid with the Big Tomatillo out there. Whatever, Amare is amazing and should get a ring. I think Krolik has some Amare/Nash thoughts coming, so expect this site to soon thunder with Suns content like it was 2005.

BONUS: Excerpt from a Pitchfork interview with the Black Keys, which only proves that BASKETBALL IS NOT BANDS I CAN'T FUCKING STAND:

Pitchfork: On a totally different note, let's talk about sports, which I know you're into. What do you think about [Detroit Piston] Rasheed Wallace?

PC: Sucks. Prick. Awful, awful man. Giant fucking crybaby and a miserable human being.

Pitchfork: [Former Cleveland Cavalier traded to the Chicago Bulls] Larry Hughes?

PC: Unfortunately, overrated.

Pitchfork: Overpaid.

PC: Overpaid.

Pitchfork: And you're just happy that the Cavs finally--

PC: Happy for the Cavs getting Ben Wallace and Delonte West. Maybe I'll start watching the Cavs again. I just, you know, the Cavs have a history of losing or trading away star players before they actually become stars. Like [retired former Cleveland Indian] Albert Belle, or some Rookie All-Star who takes acid and loses his mind. Who was the pitcher, I think he was on the Astros [Pirates --Ed.], but he took acid? He pitched a perfect game [No-hitter --Ed.] on acid.

Sorry for including so much of it, but it had a certain snowball effect of total lameness. More like a barf avalanche.