Backdoor Cut

Just before the trade deadline, there was talk of starting a rebuild.  The Hawks were having a middling season, nestled in the bottom half of the Eastern Conference playoff race and playing largely uninspired basketball.  Rumors had longtime franchise cornerstones Jeff Teague and Al Horford on the block.  Moving either or both would have altered the immediate trajectory of the team and the season for the worse, but the thinking was understandable.  It was easy to feel that this current iteration had reached its ceiling.  It was also reasonable to look at the Cavs and Raptors (possibly even the Celtics) and see too-long odds going forward.  Maybe it was time to take a step back and retool.

Or maybe not.  Other than a negligible move that sent Shelvin Mack to Utah and brought Kirk Hinrich back to Atlanta, the Hawks ultimately chose to stand pat.  They stumbled through the end of February, going 2-3 after the deadline, and looked pretty much resigned to a .500-ish end of the season.  Then, quietly, something started happening on a west-coast road trip.  It began with a loss.

For a team that was one of the NBA's surprise darlings just last year, scant mention has been of Atlanta this season.  The focus has, quite understandably, been on the Cavs in the East and the Spurs and Warriors in the West.  As you may have heard, neither of the latter two have lost at home yet this year, and it's an easy narrative to fit the Hawks' loss to Golden State on March 1st into that framework.  But I believe that defeat galvanized the team.  They walked into the impregnable fortress that Oracle Arena has been for the Dubs, traded punches with a juggernaut of literally historical proportions, and juuuust came out on the wrong end of a measly four-point margin in overtime, 109-105.  Granted, Steph Curry was in street clothes nursing an injured ankle, but it was still an affirmation that Atlanta could contend with the best team in the league.  The script has flipped for the Hawks ever since.

They've won eight of their last nine games, including four against playoff teams (Clips, Griz, Rockets and Pacers) and two more against squads that could easily make the postseason (Utah and Detroit, both sitting just out of the 8-seeds in their respective conferences.)  Last night's win over Houston, their 5th in a row, gave them the third best record in the East.

Over that 5-game win streak, Al Horford and Paul Millsap have combined to average 34 points and 16 rebounds per game.  Kyle Korver, who has struggled at times to regain his torrid marksmanship from last year, has shot 53.8% from deep.  Jeff Teague has put up 13 points and 8 assists a night, and backup point guard Dennis Schroder has notched 10 and 4 in just under 17 minutes per game.  Recent acquisition Kris Humphries has made solid contributions off the bench and given the team some interior depth.  And hoo boy, let's talk about Tim Hardaway Jr.  The much-maligned Draft Day maneuver that brought Hardaway to Atlanta is finally paying some dividends, and he's been absolutely blistering in his last two games: 59.05 FG%, 60.7(!!!) 3FG%, 93.75 FT%, and 20.5 PPG.  Good gawd.

As a team over that five-game stretch, the Hawks have outscored opponents 108-93 on average.  They're +10 in turnover margin, and playing the same hellacious defense that's had them ranked second only to the Spurs in Defensive Efficiency for most of the season.  They're still atrocious on the glass, particularly on the offensive end (dead last in the league in ORR with a paltry 19.4), but otherwise they're playing superb all-around basketball and cohering at precisely the right moment.  Which raises an interesting question: what of the Hawks' postseason chances?

Look, just hear me out on this for a second.  Last year was lightning in a bottle.  60 wins, the top seed in the East, four All Star selections, a COY for Bud, and the team's first ever trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.  Then LeBron and the Cavs decimated us in a clean sweep, and everyone remembered that all that sublime team basketball doesn't usually pay off without at least one elite-caliber player to take on the onus come playoff time.  But there was so, so much pressure and scrutiny on that team.  They had the weight of unfair expectations pressing down on them, and they folded.  This year, no one is talking about Atlanta.  The pressure is elsewhere, on the Warriors chasing 73 and the Cavs' myriad chemistry issues both on and off the court.  The Hawks are in a position they're much more accustomed to: flying under the radar.  Barring a massive shakeup in the standings, they'll likely face either the Hornets or Celtics in Round 1, both very winnable series with a home court advantage.  If they can survive a second-round matchup with someone (Miami? Indy?) and get back to the ECF, what then?

Everyone's been saying for months now that the Raptors are the sole legitimate threat to Cleveland in the East, but the way they're playing right now, couldn't Atlanta beat either of those teams?  They're deeper than Toronto, and have none of the dysfunction that's been threatening to implode the Cavs all season.  They've also been through the crucible of a Conference Finals now, a year older and wiser and more battle-tested than they were.  Could they ride hot shooting and lockdown defense through seven games with the Raps?  Could they beat a Cavs team whose internal struggles may overwhelm or at least hamper LeBron's individual brilliance?  You wanna bet Mike Budenholzer can't outcoach the bejesus out of Ty Lue in that series?  We'll get a decent preview of both possible matchups before the end of the season, as the Hawks have two games apiece left against Toronto and Cleveland, one home and one away for each.  If they can show up strong in those four contests, I'll be ready to believe.  For now, Atlanta can continue to play carefree basketball, oblivious to the noise of the league, knowing exactly how dangerous they are and how few people are acknowledging that fact.  Sometimes it's better to be sneaky good; to let the league keep their collective eyes on the titans holding the ball while you make a backdoor cut. 

The Warriors Remake A Beloved Childhood Movie.

About four minutes into the first quarter of last night's biggest game, I looked at Ags and said: "I think Golden State's gonna lose this one."  Given the season so far, I was aware of how impetuous and incredibly stupid that sounded, but just hear me out.  The Warriors were on the second night of a road back-to-back, fresh off a game that should never have required a Harrison Barnes buzzer beater to win it.  On Saturday night they had Philadelphia, running joke of the NBA for the past few seasons, smoked by 24 points midway through the 3rd quarter.  The starters were sitting down, waiting as they've done so often this season to watch the bench mop up a fourth quarter composed entirely of garbage time.  Then the Sixers started doing stuff. 

And while they were doing that stuff, Golden State couldn't buy a bucket, couldn't play much defense either, and coughed up a genuinely perplexing array of turnovers.  Philly went on the kind of scoring spree no one is supposed to have against the Dubs, first winnowing the deficit back under twenty, then down to ten.  At some point during this insane run of David sling-shotting pebbles at Goliath and connecting on most of them, Steve Kerr realized they couldn't just ride it out.  Back on the floor went the starters, having to uncoil their muscles and psyches from the relaxation of watching a blowout from the bench and extend themselves again.  (Draymond Green admitted in a post-game interview that he felt responsible for chasing a triple double at the expense of the team.  This was a commendably honest attempt to shoulder the onus for the Warriors' second-half problems, but let's be real: the whole team had a messy hand in that skid.)  

Somehow Philly managed to tie the game up at 105-105 with 22 seconds to play.  Then, for the first time in a completely listless quarter-and-a-half of basketball, Golden State remembered who they are and what they do for one crucial, final posession.  Steph Curry dribbled to the right side of the arc and whipped a pass to inside to Draymond Green just below the free throw line while Harrison Barnes stood in the right corner.  Sixers forward Jerami Grant left Barnes to help on Green, I mean ... just collapsed to the inside and left a dude shooting nearly 40% from deep this season very, very wide open.  Green immediately pinged it to Barnes before Philly could even start to recover.  He canned the trey and walked off for a 108-105 victory.  It was a beautiful play; precisely the sort of whirring, pick-your-poison ball movement that makes the Warriors so dangerous.  It absolutely should not have been necessary, except the Warriors looked and played like tired, fallible humans for once, so it was. 

Anyway, that's why I stupidly thought last night would be a loss for Golden State.  They'd been forced to lurch out of their accustomed easy confidence and push themselves to a win against a vastly inferior team they thought they'd already beaten.  They had looked despondent for most of Saturday's second half, and they were now traveling directly into the maw of Madison Square Garden, no days off, no recovery.  The Garden atmosphere was, predictably, that of a denser and infinitely louder Wagnerian opera for the biggest game of the season. (Barring a playoff appearance that is still very much a possibility.) 

The first quarter looked like my intuition might be worth something.  The Warriors once again couldn't hit shots, played poor defense, and turned the ball over too much.  Steph had a sub-pedestrian game overall, going 5-17 from the field for just 13 points with 4 dimes and 4 boards.  Fortunately for Golden State, Draymond tossed up a 20-10-10, Klay Thompson poured in 34 points, and Shaun Livingston kicked in 11 off the bench.  Conversely for the Kincks, Aaron Afflalo, Langston Galloway, and Derrick Williams pretty much shot their own team out of the game, combining for an abysmal 9-37 from the floor. 

The Warriors were up six at the half, opened the 3rd quarter with a blitzkrieg, and ended up winning 116-95.  Even with that cruddy opening frame and Curry playing fairly atrocious basketball by his standards, they made sort, brutal work of the Knicks once they shook that tired doofishness out of their collective game.

Look, I figured they were due is all.  Golden State won't lose very many games this season, but last night seemed like it had a decent chance to be one of those anomalies.  I swear, at the time, it really did.  I doubted them, but I've learned my lesson.  Right now, I am Buttercup having just tumbled down that hill in the Princess Bride, and the Warriors are Wesley.  This without the True Love overtones, of course.  My heart already belongs to another.  (Go Hawks.)  But still, I know how she felt.  "I will never doubt again." 

Notes On A Half Decade Of Found Objects and Strange Treasure.

I didn't realize it until I got home late last night, but Hardwood Paroxysm turned 5 years old yesterday.  Basketball, and particularly its NBA iteration, produces the highest across-the-board quality writing of any sport (this is technically a subjective opinion but also true), and f I were to list all the excellent basketball blogs available for your perusal on the internet, we'd be here a very, very long time.  That said, if you asked just about any hoops head to make such a list, I'd bet you all the money Antoine Walker no longer has that HP would be among the first sites mentioned.  So why am I about to dedicate a large swath of celebratory text to this anniversary, you ask?  What exactly is Hardwood Paroxysm?

In a literal sense, it's a basketball blog that was created five years and a day ago by Matt Moore and which has been home to a large number of extremely talented writers over that period, but HP's ethos has never been overly concerned with "literal."  Here you find a rare and unique confluence of detailed analysis and abstract thought.  There is wry humor if you want it, and heavy questions about life, and poetry, and nonsensical yet utterly engaging ramblings.  Here, statistics can have a quiet drink with alchemy, and the conversation will inevitably find its way to reasons why Kyle Lowry is criminally underrated.  Constructs are erected and torn down.  These people are not afraid of oblique angles.  They embrace them, in fact. 

Basketball, of course, is the nominal reason HP exists, but that seems reductive.  In the artisan hands of the writers, this game that we love so dearly becomes a prism, a means of refracting and reflecting our world and ourselves in new and interesting ways.  When I click on my bookmark to get here, I get excited in a way that I really don't about any other space on the internet.  OK, whaddaya have for me today?  I might learn about which Grizzlies lineups grab the most and least defensive rebounds, or how an undrafted backup point guard had a killer game at Summer League.  I might read about how watching a team got someone through a tough breakup.  I might stumble onto a rumination on Jarrett Jack's Twitter attacks of Ray Allen and Dwight Howard and how they remind someone of Andy Warhol's early work.  (This post hasn't actually been written, but it probably could be, and that's the beauty of the whole thing.) 

HP works in part because the people involved are scientists in that they want to figure out how and why things in basketball and life function the way they do; there is a true spirit of inquiry.  But far more importantly, it works because they aren't just colleagues, they're friends, with each other and with us, after a fashion.  They teach us, everyday, more about hoops, but in intensely personal ways.  We trade quips and observations with them on Daily Dime Live.  We come to know them through their work because it's never just about the game.  It's about us, and them, and shared adventures.  It's about joy and love and how we communicate those things to each other. 

HP has been a perpetual source of wonder and happiness for me since its inception.  It has been a sanctuary and a beacon, and just downright ineffably special.  And so I want to thank Matt Moore for this creation he birthed and the inspiration and beauty it's given us.  I want to thank everyone who has written on the site for their wit, opinions, and heart.  And I want to wish Jared and Amin the best of luck in continuing the work.  (Spoiler alert: they're going to do a phenomenal job.) 

Happy 5th birthday, Hardwood Paroxysm.   Many happy returns. 

Taking My Mind Off Of Other Sports: Ten Teams To Enjoy This NBA Season.

I'll write the Chipper piece later.  Let me get some distance, chronological, emotional and otherwise, from Friday night's sad and ugly final punctuation mark on his career.  I'm depressed about the loss, pissed about that infield fly call, and embarrassed as hell by the fans.  Or rather, the portion of the fans who briefly lost their collective minds at Turner Field and started behaving like a bunch of depraved assholes.  We take a lot of guff, Atlanta fans do, for supposedly not being as passionate about our teams as other cities.  If that was a display of "passion", well f*** it, then.  I'd rather deal with a lifetime of insults from the neanderthals in Philly, New York, and Boston than be associated with the kind of hive-mind psychosis that leads to throwing batteries at players or games being literally called on account of riot.  (Cleveland Indians, 1974.  Look it up.)  I spent the entirety of that 20-minute bottle-chucking lapse of sanity standing in the stadium concourse with my best friend; both of us Atlanta sports diehards since birth.  In between long stretches of appalled silence, the one thing we kept repeating by way of conversation was some variant of: "I can't effing believe this is happening.  Atlanta fans never do this kind of stuff.  What the holy hell is going on?"  We were as outraged by that (egregious, awful, horrible) travesty of a call as anybody, but sweet jeebus, people, there is a line between normal anger and outright stupidity, and a chunk of the crowd crossed over the damn thing like it didn't exist or they didn't care or both.  Southern hospitality, my ass.

Sadly, that was only the start of of one long, slumping weekend for Georgia sports teams.  The Yellow Jackets put up a fight but were ultimately outplayed in all phases by a feisty Clemson squad in a loss that cost Tech's D-Coordinator Al Groh his job.  The Dawgs ... I don't want to talk about what happened in Columbia.  That wasn't a football game, it was a slow parade of visceral humiliation.  Or, to put it less poetically and far more accurately: Carolina kicked Georgia's asses up and down the field for four quarters.  End of story.

Two things salvaged the weekend: A phenomenal show by Grace Potter at The Tabernacle Saturday night (seriously, go see her live if you get a chance!!!), and the Falcons playing a sloppy first three quarters but ultimately pulling it together for a win over Washington to remain undefeated. 

Oh, and one other thing.  That bright burst of light flashing across the sky like a beacon of hope or the Bat Signal or some other damned explosion of heart and grace and purpose.  That's right, folks: Basketball!!!  Preseason is underway, and things tip off in earnest the day before Halloween.  For an outstanding season preview from the reigning HEAVY-WEIGHT CHAMMPPPEEEN OF THE WOOOOOOOORLLDDDDDD!!!! of basketball writers, skip on over to Grantland and soak up Zach Lowe's breakdown of all 30 teams.  I was contemplating a full-on NBA 2012-2013 preview, but frankly, Lowe dropped the mic and walked off stage with that piece (as if we expected anything less) and there's just no need for an inferior reproduction from me.  Instead, here's a list (in no particualr order) of the 10 teams I'm most excited about watching this year:

1. Miami.  For reasons that should be obvious.  A. Watching LeBron is always worthwhile.  B.  Will Wade stay on the court this season, or is his career going to be truncated by injuries?  C.  How will they function now that they've scaled Championship Mountain?  Can they maintain the drive towards sustained excellence of MJ's Bulls and Kobe's Lakers, or will the satisfaction of what they've achieved dull the gut-check propulsion necessary to repeat not one, not two, not three, not four...?
We'll see.

2.  OKC.  Did you spend a decent portion of the off-season wondering how the NBA Finals would have turned out if Eric Maynor had been healthy?   Me too.  Are you intrigued to see what kind of impact new draftee Percy Jones III has on an already exciting team?  Me too.  Are you ready to watch Russ to explosive, enigmatic Russ things?  To see if the Durantula continues to develop his game while assaulting another scoring title?  Me too!!!  Do you wonder if The Beard might, maybe, be less than the awesome force we all think he is?  Me too.  Gosh, we have a lot in common. 

3.  The Lakers.  Yeah, yeah, I hate them, you hate them, we all hate them.  And yes, I wrote a whole piece about how their acquisition of Dwight Howard made me much, much less inclined to watch them.  You know what?  Screw it.  They're running out four future Hall of Famers, including arguably the most devastating offensive backcourt of the past 15 years.  There frontcourt is downright terrifying.  Not even Mike Brown can screw this up.  As long as Father Time doesn't wrap his icy fingers around Nash's back or Kobe's knees, their floor is an almost certain trip the Western Conference Finals, with a ceiling that extends all the way to hoisting the Larry O'Brien Trophy.   

4.  Indiana.  The Pacers put the fear of God into Miami in last year's playoffs before LeBron went into full transcendental virtuoso mode, and they smartly retained the core responsible for that.  There's just something charming about this Indy squad.  They're a fun group of guys with complimentary styles of play and, when the key cogs are all in high gear simultaneously, capable of giving any team in the league a good battle. 

5.  My very own Atlanta Hawks.  If you think that's a shameless homer pick, hang on a second.  I'll put Horford and Smoove up against any starting frontcourt in the land, Devin Harris may be the best backup PG in the NBA (which is always a nice luxury) and, alternately, pairing him (at the two) with Jeff Teague will play havoc on opposing defenses.  We have a truckload of perimeter snipers (I see you, Lou Williams and Kyle Korver), Zaza, Anthony Tolliver (great acquisition), and everybody's favorite bench big Ivan Johnson should be sound rotation contributers.  Oh, and we're going to use this small, speedy assortment of cats to run like hell.  We're Nuggets East at this point.  Title contenders?  Not a chance, but I'm calling this team early (continuing the Denver analogy) for League Pass Darlings of the season.

6.  The Clippers.  Blake Griffin has moved from Must Watch Highlight-Making Slamma Jamma to OK, what else ya got? in near record time.  He can catch oops all day, but his shooting stroke and defense need serious refinement, and it's unclear whether he's willing to put the work in to become a more complete player.  (And he's on the short list for guys whose wallets get dinged the hardest by the NBA's new flopping policy.)  Which direction he chooses will have an immeasurable impact on L.A. not just because he's the ostensible franchise cornerstone, but because it will have a direct effect on how compelled CP3 might feel to stick around.  Also: Grant Hill!  I like Grant Hill. 

7.  The (hang on, I still have to get used to typing this ...) Brooklyn Nets.  The new Jay-Z designed uniforms, the dawning of an era, the potential clash of the Russian mob with the long-established Italian and Irish crime syndicates in New York ... uh ... Brook Lopez, I guess?  OK, there's not a lot of tangible reasons to watch this team, but it's a new team, the first professional sports franchise in Brooklyn since forever, and they have the potential, depending on how the Knicks' season unfolds, to usurp a decent enough portion of the Madison Square Garden crowd's affections to start a legitimate rivalry.  Let's all enjoy the ride. 

8.  Denver.  Even though I hope the Hawks usurp their League Pass Must-Watch crown, how can you not love this team?  Manimal and JaVale fo'eva!!!  'Nuff said.

9.  The Timberwolves.  Obviously, this mostly applies once Rubio returns, but there are a bevy of fine reasons why you should be tuning in from jump.  Kevin Love being Kevin Love.  AK-47 and Derrick Williams.  Free from the Darko Curse!!!  (Oh, Boston, I'm so sorry.)  And the biggest and best incentive of all: the potential redemption of Brandon Roy.  We all remember Roy going off in epic fashion against Dallas in the playoffs two seasons ago, and how we were so glad he could muster one more stellar effort before staggering of into the sunset on his ravaged knees.  If he can mount any sort of comeback, and especially if Rubio can come back at something close to 100% by February, this becomes the most lovable team in basketball.  Here's hoping that happens.

10.  New Orleans.  Fear the brow.  Fear The Brow.  FEAR THE BROW!!!!!!  Ahem, sorry.  But, you know, fear the brow. 

Dwight Howard, The Lakers, and Radiohead.

There's been a bit of a gap between posts here at Arena Apothecary.  I should be resuming business as usual with something enjoyable and inspirational about the Olympics.  I should be writing about Gabby Douglas or Usain Bolt or Andy Murray.  I should be showering the page with an account of watching on adjacent TVs yesterday while the women's water polo and soccer teams played sublime gold medal games for the USA.  But ... that's not going to happen.  Instead, I need to talk about Dwight Howard and the trade that gifted the Lakers with an ungodly windfall yesterday.  I won't waste time excoriating the Magic for muddling their way to an infuriatingly lopsided deal; plenty of other people will take care of that, and it's so glaringly obvious that it hardly bears stating, much less repeating.*  No, what I want to address is how this makes me feel about the Lakers' 2012-13 season.  And to do that, I need to talk about Radiohead.  I know, I know, but it will all make sense in a few paragraphs, just hang on a moment.

I don't like Radiohead.  I've said as much a million times, and it's always greeted with the same combination of perplexity and disgust from fellow musicians and music fans.  How is it, they wonder, that one of the most daring, intelligent, and groundbreaking groups of the past 20 years has earned the unadulterated scorn of someone who loves music this much?  It's not an easy question to answer.  Certainly, there is much to admire in the band's oeuvre.  Jonny Greenwood is a sonic architect and compositional genius nonpareil.  His brother Colin is a wonderful bassist, and Ed O'Brien is a pretty good guitar player.  Phil Selway, like Ringo Starr before him, goes largely unappreciated for his restrained genius and perfect craftsmanship behind the drums.  When I listen to the band, I digest all of these elements with a great deal of interest, taking in the extraordinary subtlety and detail of their musical interplay.  It's complex, fascinating stuff that I appreciate academically but from which I glean almost no actual enjoyment.  (And this is coming from a guy who digs serialism, abstract soundscapes, and free jazz.)  The sad thing is that, based on what I just wrote, I should adore Radiohead.  But I really, really don't.  And what wrecks the whole thing for me is Thom Yorke.

You can call him anything you want; genius, visionary, whatever.  To me, he's a grating, self-absorbed, pretentious megalomaniac whose considerable talents I would probably appreciate if he weren't such a monumental dick about the whole business.  That falsetto-singing, eyes-closed-swaying doofus is not some shamanic icon making transcendent art.  He's just annoying as f***.  Again, this is just my opinion, but Thom Yorke ruins Radiohead.

Which is why I'm going to hate this Lakers team, even more than I usually hate the Lakers.** 

After I got over the initial cringe-shock of the Steve Nash signing, I was actually incredibly excited to watch them.  There was the fascinating question of how Nash and Kobe Bryant would function as a backcourt.  There was the prospect of that pairing collectively saving enough of what each has left in the tank to make a last sustained run, possibly leading to a title or two.  The upshot of that, of course, would be renewed intrigue and debate over Kobe's place in the pantheon and (finally!!!) well-deserved rings for Nash, which should make you exuberant regardless of what uniform he's wearing when it happens.  And if your brain wasn't reverberant with giddiness at the thought of Nash and Pao Gasol wreaking absolute havoc on opposing defenses, then you just plain don't like basketball.  On the whole, there was a lot of joy to be mined here.

Then the Lakers went out and brokered a deal that divested them of a talented-headcase big man in Andrew Bynum for a much more talented headcase who happens to fit their needs perfectly.  That they miraculously retained Gasol in the bargain means that their starting five next season will include, barring something catastrophic happening, four future Hall Of Famers.  On paper, this is automatically the most fascinating and exciting team of 2012; just an absolute joy to watch.

The problem, of course, is that Dwight Howard just spent the last year and change doing his best Thom Yorke impersonation.  He has been, without a hint of shame or remorse, the most insufferably petulant and clueless sham of a human being in sports.  The unblinking ego and delusion were staggering.  The comparison was inevitably made, but Howard's actions were so far removed from The Decision that conflating the two makes zero sense.  When LeBron took his talents to South Beach, it was poorly executed, but at least it was honest.  This, on the other hand, was a deliberate series of head-fake shenanigans designed to, what?  Get Dwight out of Orlando while somehow blaming the whole thing on Otis Smith and Stan Van Gundy?  Maintain his heretofore unblemished image as a likeable guy in a bad situation?  Quick, look over there!  Pay no attention to the duplicitous idiot behind the curtain!  Good lord what a dope.

And now he's playing on the most loaded team in the western conference; a team perfectly calibrated to his strengths in a city that won't care a jot about his innate douchery because, you know, it's L.A. and they're used to embracing that sort of person.  The situation rankles in the rich-getting-richer way that these things do, but Mitch Kupchak played this one smart and you'd want your GM to do the same.  That the Lakers are the beneficiaries of a nearly exact case of historical repetition doesn't matter.  That Howard should benefit in any way from his behavior is downright abhorrent. 

The Lakers are going to play a lot of great basketball next season.  Steve Nash has just been handed an entire Christmas tree's worth of new toys, and he's going to use that team like Miles Davis used the Seven Steps to Heaven quintet.  Kobe will have an easier time on both ends of the floor, able to take  offensive possessions off while Nash does his thing and relax on defense knowing he has the Frontline of Doom backing him up.  Even Ron Artest, a pale shadow of himself, is going to get ample opportunities to use his one remaining viable NBA skill: standing wide open in the corner and knocking down threes.  Even if their bench is paper thin, they're one fluky Oklahoma City injury away from a legitimate shot at cracking 70 wins.  And Dwight Howard will be there, enjoying the ride, tossing up 23-15's, basking in the L.A. sunshine in the day and the Staples Center limelight at night.  It's enough to make a grown man weep with disgust.

Don't hate the game.  Hate the player.   


*As a Hawks fan, I was ecstatic when Danny Ferry waltzed into Atlanta and immediately performed the jaw-dropping voodoo of jettisoning Joe Johnson's contract.  We were glad to see him go for many reasons: he was openly derisive of fans and media, he had a penchant for way too much iso-ball, and there was no way we were getting out of the second round of the playoffs with him as our best player.  But you know what?  All the griping and invective leveled at him over that contract was horribly misplaced.  Say you're a car mechanic.  You excel at your job, but you're not quite qualified to work on Maybachs or act as a NASCAR crew chief.  Inexplicably, someone offers you $5,000,000 a year to keep servicing Fords and Hondas like you've always done.  You're not turning that down just because you're not actually actually worth the money.  Atlanta was dumb enough to give him the offer, and he took it.  You can't fault a man for that.  In the same way, no matter how unfair the Dwight-Lakers trade seems, you can't really be upset that they took the deal when it was offered.  The way I see it, this is Karma smacking David Stern in the mouth for "basketball reasons."


**I use "hate" loosely, obviously.  Non-L.A.-dwelling hoops fans hate the Lakers the same way baseball fans who don't live in New York hate the Yankees.  We resent their dominance and abhor their obnoxious fans, but generally we can objectively appreciate their performance on the field/court.

Why The Knicks Really Let Jeremy Lin Walk.

Oh, Jimmy Dolan.  He can't, he won't, and he don't stop.  The Knicks' owner just spent the last 24 hours getting killed by everyone.  Fans, media, bloggers, pundits, children, small animals, non-sentient life forms, and even one very angry rock in Central Park can be heard on the matter.  Dolan and his organization let Jeremy Lin walk, for nothing, to sign with the Houston Rockets. 

This is the latest blunder in a long and storied saga of failure for the embattled Knicks owner.  Sure, he landed STAT and 'Melo, but the Knicks' playoff record since those supposedly momentous acquisitions is an abysmal 1-8.  However, you can't blame Dolan for cancelling Season Two of Linsanity: NYC.  It's not his fault.  Arena Apothecary has obtained the exclusive scoop on why New York allowed Lin to go ply his trade in the Texas desert instead of Madison Square Garden.  As you might imagine, it's a tawdry and sordid tale, but I swear it's all true.  Our story begins as these things so often do, with a phone call in the dead of night ...

Houston, Texas.  July 11, 2012.  3:43 AM

Daryl Morey hadn't been sleeping well of late, so the ringing didn't jolt him out of a deep and restful slumber or anything close to it.  He didn't even glance away from his computer screen, plastered with a myriad of windows filled with players' stats, salaries, and other various arcana.  He just lifted the receiver out of its cradle; didn't even glance at the caller ID. 

"Yeah?"

"Code Word: Avalon," said a voice Morey recognized.  It was digitally altered to prevent actual identification of the speaker, but he'd heard it a lot over the past week or so and, being the shrewd man he was, Daryl had a pretty fair idea of who was on the other end of the line.  Or at least who the voice represented. 

"Understood."  Morey put the phone down, wondered if he should proceed immediately, and decided against it.  In the morning, he'd set things in motion.  He was a man who understood patience and consideration; for whom the biding of time was as easy and natural as breath.  Things had not gone according to plan of late, and he wasn't sure how much "Avalon" would help, but it would be a step in the right direction. 

He was going to get back something he'd lost.

New York, New York.  July 15, 1:07 PM

The point guard's phone chirped at him from his pocket, the opening to the second movement of Stravinsky's "Right Of Spring" signifying a new text message.  The sender was not a contact he recognized, and the number had 13 digits.  Puzzled, he thumbed the screen:

HELLO JEREMY.  HOW ARE YOU?

He stared, wondering if this was an elaborate joke of some kind. 

WHO IS THIS?  He replied. 

YOU DO NOT NEED TO KNOW.  THEY SIGNED JASON KIDD, JEREMY.  THEY TRADED FOR RAYMOND FELTON.  THEY DO NOT APPRECIATE YOU.  THEY DO NOT WANT YOU.

WHO IS THIS?  IDENTIFY YOURSELF OR I'M CALLING THE COPS AND HAVING THEM TRACE THIS NUMBER.

THEY ARE NOT GOING TO MATCH THE OFFER SHEET, JEREMY. 

WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THAT?  THIS ISN'T FUNNY!!!!

YOU DROPPED 38 ON THE LAKERS.  YOU SAVED THE SEASON.  AND THEY ARE SIGNING OTHER POINT GUARDS.  THEY WILL NOT MATCH THE OFFER SHEET. 

OF COURSE THEY WILL.  I WANT TO STAY IN NEW YORK, AND THEY WANT ME HERE.  THEY'LL SIGN ME.  NOW PLEASE, WHOEVER THIS IS, KNOCK IT OFF.

THEY ARE NOT GOING TO SIGN YOU.  WOULD YOU ENJOY PLAYING IN HOUSTON AGAIN, JEREMY?  WE CAN ARRANGE FOR YOU TO BE ELSEWHERE IF YOU WOULD PREFER.

NO, I CAN PLAY IN HOUSTON.  THAT WOULD BE OKAY, I GUESS.  BUT HOW DO YOU KNOW ALL THIS? 

WE KNOW.  HOUSTON WILL WELCOME YOU, JEREMY.  THEY ARE SORRY ABOUT LETTING YOU GO IN TE FIRST PLACE.  THEY WILL FIND YOU PICK'N'ROLL PARTNERS AND LET YOU RUN THE OFFENSE.

IT WOULD BE NICE NOT DEALING WITH CARMELO NEEDING THE BALL ALL THE TIME, I GUESS ...

EXACTLY, JEREMY.  YOU WILL LIKE HOUSTON THIS TIME.  WE PROMISE YOU WILL NOT BE SLEEPING ON ANYONE'S COUCH THERE.  PACK YOUR BAGS. 

ONLY IF THE KNICKS DON'T MATCH.

THEY WILL NOT.  ENJOY YOUR TIME LEFT IN NEW YORK.  WE WISH YOU SAFE TRAVELS.   DO NOT TELL ANYONE ABOUT THIS. 

He slipped the phone back into his pocket in a daze.  He wasn't sure how they could possibly know what his team would do, but he was sure they were right.  Maybe Houston would be better this time, after all.  Maybe he could simply play good basketball without being the center of all this lunacy again.  Maybe. 

Brooklyn, New York.  July 16, 2012.  9:35 PM

James Dolan stepped off the elevator feeling somewhat curious but mostly terrified.  The two large men in somber dark suits who flanked him hadn't said anything since they forced him into that ostentatiously appointed limo.  He had no idea where he was.  They'd taken off the blindfold in the lobby of what appeared to be a shabby, nondescript hotel.  Peeling wallpaper and one forlorn, dying plant in a flea market-quality vase had met his eyes upon its removal, and things had not improved in the last two minutes.  That was how long the ancient, decrepit elevator had taken to climb six harrowing floors, creaking and lurching the entire way like The Little Engine That Could with a pack-a-day habit and a bum wheel.  As disoriented and scared as he was, Dolan was at least grateful to be back on what he hoped was solid, not-rotted-through ground.  A little way down the hall, one of the men escorting him stopped by a room whose number had been scratched off the door and executed an incredibly elaborate knock that, now Dolan thought about it, sounded an awful lot like the drum intro to Led Zeppelin's "Rock'N'Roll."  (He didn't know that it was actually the snare drum part to a scherzo by Dmitri Shostakovich.)  The door swung open, and the men in suits gestured for him to enter.

The sight that greeted him was as far removed from the dismal aesthetics of the hallway as humanly imaginable.  Two figures were silhouetted by elaborate yet tasteful back-lighting.  One man was sitting in what appeared to be an actual gilded throne.  The other stood to the right and slightly behind the seated figure.  Both were smoking what smelled like very expensive cigars, and the wall behind them was adorned with what might well be an authentic Degas.  The man on the throne dangled a finger in a glass of what was most likely very expensive alcohol. 

Opulence, Dolan thought.  He has it.  

The smaller man, the standing one, spoke first.  "Mr. Dolan.  You are not going to match Jeremy Lin's offer sheet.  You will let him go."

Dolan lunged forward.  "Are you kidding me?!?!?!?  The guy is a certified marketing goldmine!!!  On top of that, he might not be a terrible player either!!!  We -- accchhhh!"

That was when the men in suits restrained him rather forcefully.

"Mr. Dolan," said the man.  "My employer here would like his team to have a most glorious new beginning.  In Brooklyn.  We would be assisted in that objective if you allowed Jeremy Lin to leave.  You will let Mr. Lin go.  This will appear insane, but you have made so many crazy moves in your tenure already that people will not look too hard at this one.  They will say that you are weak and stupid, as you have been before.  Your fans hate when anyone famous and important leaves your city.  You are going let your most important sensation in two decades go to Houston, which will be particularly insulting because it is perhaps the third-best city in Texas.  There will be outrage and agony in the streets, and many Knicks fans will disavow your team to come root for my employer's much cooler and less heartbreaking team.  This will come to pass."

  
"And what, exactly, makes you think I'll do that?"   

"If you do not, we will pay every musician within 300 miles a hundred thousand dollars per year NOT to play with you ever again.  JD and the Straight Shot will cease to exist."

"That's insane!  No one has that kind of money!!!"

"We do, Mr. Dolan.  We.  Do.  Your music is an abomination anyway.  Joe Turner and Bobby Blue Bland roll over several times in their graves when you open your mouth.  We will be doing the world a favor." 

"So I'm supposed to let Lin go, take a beating in the media, and in exchange you won't actively crush my dreams of musical glory?"

"No more than you crush them by being on stage."

Dolan paused.  The man's proposal was ludicrous.  Surely they were bluffing!  At the same time, he couldn't just let his awesome blues band die.  When else could he where those sweet blazer-and-jeans outfits on stage?  When else could he ease the pain in his soul with song?   

"OK, I'll do it.  It's not like I care anyway.  It's just a stupid basketball team."

"A wise choice, Mr. Dolan.  We will be in contact soon about acquiring Madison Square Garden as our venue in 2018.  Good night."

The two imposing men in suits led him out of the room and back down the hallway.  As they neared the elevators, the doors opened and a familiar figure stepped out.  Dolan's jaw dropped to the floor.

"David?  What's going on David?  What the hell is happening?"

The man walked by without a thought or a glance.  At that moment, James Dolan's blood pressure hit critical mass.

"YOU DID THIS!!!  YOU MADE ME GIVE HIM UP!!!  IT WAS YOU!!!  WHY?!??!!?  IT'S BETTER FOR THE LEAGUE WHEN WE'RE GOOD!!!  WHY?!?!!?"

In a calm, soft voice the bespectacled man replied.  He was barely audible in the dingy hall, but his word cut through Dolan like a knife.   

"No sleep til Brooklyn, Jim.  They are the future.  And your band sucks."

New York, New York.  July 17, 2012.  4:00 PM

Sources at ESPN announce that the Knicks will not match Jeremy Lin's offer sheet.  Feelings of outrage and betrayal surge through the populace.  Pandemonium in the streets. 

Somewhere, the man who sat on the gilded throne and said nothing while his underling cajoled one of the most powerful owners in sports is smiling.  Jeremy Lin is gone.  The Knicks are no longer a viable threat, at least not from a publicity and marketing vantage point.  Gotham is his.  

Guessing Game: Kobe and the Definition of Legacy

Apologies for the protracted absence.  We've had family in town this past week and between work, the holiday, and tour-guiding them all over Atlanta's sundry attractions, I haven't had any time at all to sit down and write.  Since baseball is All-Star Breaking for the next few days and the NFL will be a hail of mini-camps and contract disputes until August, let's talk hoops.  The NBA has gone sideways with trades and signings over the past two weeks as the league's terrain undergoes a heavy re-landscaping.  The Hawks suddenly have cap space again, the Heat have Ray Allen, the Nets acquired Joe Johnson's contract and safely re-upped Deron Williams, the Pacers retained Roy Hibbert, the Knicks snatched J-Kidd, Houston's plans fell apart entirely, and the Timberwolves took a flyer on Brandon Roy.  Oh yeah, and the Lakers signed Steve Freaking Nash.

Before we go any further, I would like to offer my sincere condolences to Suns fans everywhere.  If this trend persists, Phoenix is going to wind up with almost as many basketball abandonment issues as Seattle.  The Matrix, Joe Johnson, STAT (whose departure looks great for the Suns in retrospect), and now Nash.  Sure, Robert Sarver is a doofus whose continual refusal to do spend what is necessary to build a winning organization has precipitated most of those moves, but the best guys always seem to leave the desert for other, more verdant (both metaphorically and literally) destinations.  Nash's departure, by far, is the worst blow to morale the Suns could have suffered, and though I suspect no one begrudges him leaving to pursue a ring in the seemingly infinite twilight of his career, his choice of L.A. has to rankle.  So, Phoenix, I'm sorry.

Now we come to the matter of exactly how this is going to work.  Over at Grantland, Sebastian Pruiti did his usual stellar job of assessing the on-court tactical ramifications, and Hardwood Paroxysm's Steve McPherson delved into whether or not Kobe is emotionally capable of ceding enough possessions to Nash to make their backcourt pairing functional.  The most intriguing question though, at least to me, is which voices in his head Kobe is and will be listening to.  Whose version of events would he prefer to be remembered in fifty years?  How is he defining the single word that has seemingly dominated every action of his career thus far?

What does "legacy" mean to Kobe Bean Bryant? 

I honestly think Steve Nash couldn't care less about the L word.  He's smart enough to know that he is a. arguably the greatest pure shooter in NBA history b. inarguably the best offensive point guard of his generation c. a future Hall of Famer and d. chasing a ring but absolutely content with that resume otherwise.  He's great but not All-Time Top 10 great.  And he's OK with that.  Kobe, obviously, is another story.  But we've had a hand in creating that narrative as well. 

Outside of those who bleed purple and gold, we as NBA fans have generally put Kobe in a hell of a tough spot over the years.  The same bloodthirsty, pathological competitiveness we praised in Jordan became the linchpin of all criticism and invective leveled at Bryant.  Kobe's a ball hog.  Kobe's an a-hole.  Kobe drove Shaq out of town.  Kobe only cares about winning if he can be the hero of the hour.  We buried him even as he came as close as anyone ever has to replicating Jordan's two-way transcendence on a basketball court.*  A guy who could score from anywhere on the floor in the teeth of any defense; a hoops savant who became a devastating passer when he opted to relinquish the ball; a vicious perimeter defender; an implacable demon with ice water in his veins and pale ghosts behind the eyes; Kobe The Destroyer was lord of all he surveyed.    

*Note: until LeBron's career is further along, anyway.     

And yet ... we never wanted to give him credit.  Even at the apex of his otherworldly powers, we tended to focus on the flaws.  I can't think of an athlete who has had their nits picked more than Kobe.  (Yes, even LeBron.)  And the thing about our collectively scrutinizing gaze is that it has irrevocably shaped his motivations and attitudes over the years.  Despite what he would have us believe, Kobe cares a great deal about what we think because in a way, we are the curators of his legacy.

After all, we're the ones who will tell our children and grandchildren what it was like to watch him play, but also who he was as a person, at least in the public eye.  That perception will resonate long after he plays his last game and his likeness is enshrined in Springfield.  And so what legacy Kobe leaves behind ultimately becomes a guessing game.  What, in the end, do we want of him?  The sixth ring is obviously a requirement to vault him into must-be-discussed-with-MJ-even-though-that's-patently-absurd status, but what aesthetic path to its attainment will we most appreciate?

Scenario 1: Kobe willingly subverts his game and allows Nash the keys to the offense.  His scoring totals and usage rate will decline, but Nash's artistry brings substantially increased output from Gasol and Bynum via pick'n'roll and pick'n'pop situations.  Meanwhile, Kobe winds up with a preposterous amount of open looks as defenses try to account for a point guard as surgically talented and nonstop as Nash having so many weapons at his disposal.  Also, Nash needs his considerable allotment of nightly rest.  Miraculously, Mike Brown is smart enough to stagger the rotations properly, Kobe can get his ball domination fix while the ancient PG is on the pine, and his notoriously petulant nature is still marginally appeased.  With Nash at the helm and Kobe as his most devastating option, the Lakers destroy the Western Conference because you simply can't stop that quantity and variety of offensive firepower, then defeat Miami in the Finals when the Heat can't handle L.A.'s interior size.  

Probable legacy ramifications upshot: Everyone who has eviscerated Kobe over the years for being a ball-stopping egomaniac gets a little misty as they discuss this final, wonderful capstone to his career.  "He finally figured it out," they'll gush.  "Kobe learned to share, to be not just a great basketball player but a consummate teammate!"  Everyone loves a redemption story, and in many people's eyes, this would be the ultimate NBA iteration of such.  Conversely, everyone who perpetuated the "he can't win without Shaq" and then, after he did, the "he only won his first three because he had Shaq" argument will shout that he only got his last ring because Nash showed up to run things and put an aging demigod over the top one last time.     

Scenario 2: Kobe plays nice for the first six weeks of the season, then reverts to form.  Nash, because he's wired the way he is, plays along, knocking down shots from all over the perimeter or finding Bynum and Gasol for easy looks down low.  Nash winds up enjoying the decreased workload's lesser physical toll and flourishes as one of the most dangerous and versatile second options of all time.  Meanwhile, Kobe continues to kill people in iso's, but is much more comfortable because he can give it to Nash for stretches if the trapping becomes to heavy and persistent.  Also, opponents now live in mortal terror of doubling The Mamba with the most dangerous shooter ever roaming the arc.  Nash essentially becomes a much better version of Robert Horry in the playoffs, while Kobe remains the archetypal alpha dog and closer, drops 38 in the clinching game, and takes Finals MVP along with his sixth title. 

Probable legacy ramifications upshot: Those who have always found Kobe's brand of me-first annihilation somewhere between distasteful and VIOLATING THE SANCTITY OF THE GAME says that despite six rings and a litany of individual career achievements, Kobe was a mean, selfish S.O.B. who didn't or couldn't "play the game the right way."  Meanwhile, those who drink the Mamba Kool-Aid declare that while Nash was a wonderful addition to the team, Kobe was the reason they won the title because he's clutch and a proven winner and everything else you hear from that crowd.

(Note: if the Lakers get bounced in the second round again, it will be Kobe's fault in many people's minds.  Either he was selfish and didn't relinquish enough touches to let Nash achieve maximum efficacy, or he was too old to sustain his dominance and couldn't cowboy up anymore, and gave the rock to Nash too much.  Both viewpoints are somewhat idiotic, but we are illogical creatures and that's how we operate sometimes.)

Ultimately, whatever percentage-based alchemy of hero ball and and letting Nash be Nash Kobe settles on for the coming year will dictate which of the above reactions is most prevalent among the fans and scribes who determine the fates and gradations of NBA history.  Kobe knows this, and he's probably sitting somewhere right now wondering what his best course of action is; not just to get that sixth ring, but to do so in the most beneficial fashion for his legacy.

To be fair to Kobe, he only has to deal with this because Jordan came first.  MJ had the luxury of not worrying about any future historical context, because he was creating that context on the fly.  (Pun intended.)  There was nothing in the past for him to be compared to.  As someone said shortly before he was drafted, Jordan was Dr. J, only with a jump shot.  And killer perimeter defense.  And even more killer will and instinct.  Like Doc, Jordan had a prominent showmanship element to his game, but it was calibrated to destroy and demoralize, not amaze and entertain.  The point is, Jordan wasn't the least bit concerned with history and his place therein.  He was a gunslinger, rolling into town to call out the best and fastest any adversary had to offer.  Then, the flash of steel in sunlight, the report echoing in the dusty street, a dead man on the ground.  And Jordan on his horse, riding on to the next town, the next challenge.  And so on.  Jordan made history by destroying everything in his path.  Kobe knows he must destroy everything in his path in order to make history.  It's a subtle difference, but I believe it explains much of why Kobe is the way he is.        

A hundred years hence, some NBA historian will dig up Kobe's numbers.  Five (or six?) rings, insane point totals, finals MVPs, PER or whatever replaces it in the metrics crowd, win shares, etc.  The numbers won't matter.  We all know Kobe is a badass; we don't need stats to back up the obvious.  What will matter is how we remember him.  This next season will begin (and possibly entail) the final chapter of Kobe Bryant's career.  His legacy is up to him, but it's also up to us.  The question is what do we want from Kobe, but it's also what does he think we want?  Alpha winner/killer?  Integrated, unselfish cog in the machine?  Whatever the outcome, how he elects to play this season won't just be the last word on his legacy, it will be a referendum on ours as well.  Who is Kobe Bryant, basketball player?  Who are we, basketball fans?  And precisely how are those things connected?  I don't know yet, and neither do you.  Neither, maybe, does Kobe. 

But because this is sports and we love prognostications, go ahead.  Take your best guess.  

All Praise Danny Ferry: Newly-Minted Atlanta Deity

Remember last week, when I wrote a post cautioning against getting overly optimistic following Danny Ferry's hire?

Well, I feel that perhaps my exact sentiments were poorly expressed therein, and I'd like to take another stab at it.

*Ahem*



DANNY FERRY IS THE GREATEST GENERAL MANAGER IN THE HISTORY OF PROFESSIONAL SPORTS!!!!!

Yes, I'm sure that was what I meant.  Thanks for letting me clarify that.  Carry on.

Curtailing The Danny Ferry Optimism Barrage

In the past 48 hours, I've heard the word "optimism" (or its adjective and adverb variations) roughly 7,354 times.  "We're filled with optimism!"  "This is a reason to be very optimistic about the future!"  And so on.   It has been a litany of happily banal peppiness.  Optimism is a pleasant and frankly a necessary emotion to have at times; unfounded optimism doubly so.  But only a fool grins blithely in the face of impending disaster.  Or, if nothing quite that dire, at least in the face of something that should decidedly not foster anything akin to hopefulness. 

Which is why I am beyond perplexed by the optimism offensive currently being waged by Atlanta's sports talk radio on Danny Ferry's behalf.  The news broke yesterday that the Hawks have signed the former Spurs executive and Cavs GM to a six-year contract, over which time he will serve as GM and President of Basketball Operations of a franchise in desperate need of a concrete identity.  We're happy about this why?

For starters, people seem to be treating this as a definitive upgrade over Rick Sund.  Certainly, more harm than good has been done to the organization's personnel and fiscal situation on Sund's watch, but it's a thornier question  as to exactly how much control he was allowed to exercise in the decision-making process that led to those problems.  When you are issued directives that range from somewhat counterintuitive to downright insane by your team's ownership, you can bite your tongue and execute them or you can lose your gainful employment.  Given the constraints and strictures he was working under, I think Sund has done a decent job.  Presuming that the new GM will somehow rectify, or at least not repeat Sund's (possibly-not-his-fault) "errors" is doing Sund a disservice and giving Ferry unearned credit.

Next stop on the Myth-Debunking Train: I've heard an awful lot of people saying "look what Danny Ferry did in Cleveland!  Multiple trips to the finals!  He'll be great!"  What he "did" in Cleveland is eloquently laid out at Hoopinion by Bret LaGree, but to summarize: he walked into a situation with LeBron F****** James, Andy Varejao, and Big Z, and couldn't muster enough supporting pieces on the roster to get the Cavs a ring.  Which, you know, led to The Decision and all the subsequent occurrences that eventually got LeBron a ring in Miami.  We all know Dan Gilbert is a pathetic, egomaniacal jackass with a penchant for whining about things in comic sans font, and it's entirely possible that he gave just as many ill-fated marching orders to Ferry in Cleveland as Sund was issued in the ATL, but ... BUT.  Danny Ferry had the greatest player of his generation and two very nice buttresses to that talent in place when he arrived, and failed to assemble a team with the depth and versatility necessary to win a championship around them.  Epic fail, Danny.

And finally, can we stop the giddiness resultant from having a former member of the Spurs organization involved with the Hawks simply because we have a member of the Spurs organization?  The key word there is "organization."  That means the entirety of people involved in making a team functional, from ownership to ball boys and interns.  The ethos and attitudes that govern franchises come from the top down.  Assuming that Danny Ferry's long association with a winning entity will ameliorate the Hawks' problems proceeds from the false premise that his arrival will automatically correct Atlanta's collective organizational thinking on every rung of the ladder.*  

Consider the Spurs' NFL equivalent: the New England Patriots.  No franchise in football has been run with more consistent excellence over the past 12 years; yet nearly every disciple of "Belichick U" has fallen on his ass the moment he left, because other teams do not have ownership as smartly hands-off and organizational philosophies as universally bought-into as the Pats.  Just because Danny Ferry comes from a team where excellence is the province every single employee does not mean he can wave a magic wand and turn the Hawks into Spurs East.

*For those who will counter this argument by pointing out how well GM Sam Presti, another Spurs alum, has done in Oklahoma City, let me remind you of a few things.  A. Drafting Kevin Durant only after Portland disastrously took Greg Oden 1st can make anyone look good in hindsight.  And B. Presti has been able to build around Durant with Westbrook, Harden, and co. largely because everyone except KD is either still on rookie contracts or wasn't that expensive to sign.  The real test will be how he handles things when it's time for people to get paid.   

One last thought on the on-court talent.  Atlanta's current situation does not involve anyone close to the caliber of the finest players of Ferry's previous tenures.  As good as Smoove, Horford, and Teague are, they are a class or three below LeBron and the Duncan/Parker/Ginobili trio that Ferry had the benefit of working with in the past.  Because of Joe Johnson's contract and Atlanta's lack of well-positioned draft picks, he's probably not going to be able to acquire top-tier talent anytime soon.  Also, the Hawks just re-upped Larry Drew, whose coaching efforts have been passable at best.  The combination of being severely limited in roster and cap flexibility and a coach who has thus far proved unable to maximize the current roster's efficacy does not bode well for improving the Hawks' fortunes.

None of this is to say that Danny Ferry will necessarily do a bad job in his new role.  Given the constraints of his situation, I certainly would not consider the next few years mirroring the last few (choppy regular seasons culminating in first- or second-round playoff exits) to be a failure.  I merely wanted to point out that all this unbridled optimism is way off the mark, that Ferry's history has not been stellar when viewed within the proper context, and that it matters little who sits behind the Hawks' GM desk as long as the ASG insists on forcing poor decisions and Joe Johnson's contract is on the books.  Be hopeful.  Be optimistic.  But be reasonable about it.  Miles to go before we sleep, people.  Miles to go. 

Letter To A Friend

Dear Jordan,

How's it going, buddy?  I know we haven't talked in a while, but I wanted to check in and make sure you hadn't gone entirely catatonic after last night.  Ever since we met, we've been bound inextricably by two shared loves: music and basketball.  We've gone through things, you and I.  Members of three (four if you count senior recitals) bands together.  Geeking out over things like phase cancellation and built-from-scratch synth patches.   Having generally ridiculous nights.  We once crammed a four-piece band WITH GEAR into a single, regular-sized cab to make a radio appearance on time.  We've played the dingiest, crappiest dives imaginable and some pretty great venues as well.   We've sweated out half our body weight in that claustrophobic, non-air-conditioned practice space that smelt like a combination of day-old Subway, garbage, and PBR.  We've made wonderful records, even when we had to re-track most of one because the initial engineer was a complete moron.  And we've talked hoops.  A lot.  You are the only other obsessive basketball fan I know, which is why we spent so much time discussing, arguing, and joking about the NBA.  I mean, I'm a Hawks fan and you're a Cavs fan, so the alternative to all that constant discourse would probably have been to just break down in tears, right?   

Anyway, I saw your facebook status last night and the vitriol and sarcasm were practically seeping through the screen: "Hooray Lebron. You and your super team won, with the help of Stern and the refs. Just like you were supposed to."  I knew you were probably headed towards the darkness.  You know, like the night after your breakup when it was you, me, Hannah, and a super-sized bottle of Jack Daniels.  (To your credit, I've never seen anyone play bass that well after getting blackout trashed and falling down the stairs.)  So please don't be too mad when I say this: LeBron has a ring now, and he deserves it.  It was time, and there's a lot of silver lining here if you want to see it.       

Ever since the finals matchup was set, we knew someone was getting kicked in the teeth.  Either Cleveland or Seattle was going to wind up feeling collectively more embittered, depressed, and outraged than they already did, which seems quasi-impossible but is true nonetheless.   Unfortunately, Cleveland drew the short straw, for which you have my deepest sympathies.  But HOLY CRAP DID YOU WATCH THOSE GAMES?!?!?!  You realize what we're looking at, right?  We have seen the future, and if the gods are kind, it is going to be every bit as beautiful and intense as Celtics/Lakers in the '80s.  The Thunder and Heat are poised to dominate the NBA for the next decade, clashing time and time again for the championship and creating the sort of long-form narrative drama that makes basketball so damned fun.  Sure, our teams will probably be languishing in mediocrity while those guys hog all the glory, but I am always in favor of profoundly gorgeous basketball being played.  Always.  And we are about to watch boatloads of precisely that for a long time to come.

(Also, you have Kyrie Irving, so chin up, right?)

I know that you, like many Clevelanders, will always despise LeBron.  The Decision was an incorrigible and vomit-inducing bit of lunacy, and I completely understand that there's simply no room for forgiveness and atonement when you've been sucker-punched in the crassest manner imaginable on national television.  Not for a city whose sports history has been as nightmarish as Cleveland's.  LeBron left Ohio to fester as an unmitigated sports wasteland, to which Colt McCoy added the coup de grace of more-or-less sucking as an NFL QB while the Indians were and are themselves.  Again.   So LBJ has earned your everlasting scorn, the native son and last hope jilting you at the altar.  Fair enough.  But as a basketball fan, what are you gonna do in a situation like this?

LeBron played at a patently ridiculous level all playoffs.  He stomped on the gas midway through the Pacers series and never looked back, with game 6 in Boston and last night's virtuoso 26-11-13-1-steal-2-block masterpiece serving as indelible capstones to a breathtaking season.  It is your inalienable right (and maybe even your mandate) as a Cavs fan to hate him for eternity with the wrathful passion of a thousand firey suns, but you can't possibly belittle or demean the brilliance he has exhibited over the last two months.  And it wasn't just him.  The Heat, collectively, learned how to operate perfectly within their insular context, alloting LeBron the bulk of the heavy lifting while simultaneously asserting themselves at crucial junctures.

When Kevin Durant came out of halftime and buried that 26-foot bomb, it looked like we had the makings of a comeback for all of about 2 minutes before Miami slammed the door again with brutal finality.  Which is what they've been doing since April to anyone in their path.  It was so much more than D-Wade recalibrating his game to accomadate his injuries and LeBron's dominance, or Chris Bosh quietly dismantling Oklahoma City in the paint.  I mean, everyone expected Shane Battier to give the Thunder fits with his hyperintelligent brand of old-dude-gritty defense.  Randomly turning into Ray Allen from behind the arc?  Not so much.  (61% 3FG for the finals, Shane?  F**KIN' SERIOUSLY?!?!?!)  What about Mario Chalmers exploding for 25 in game 4?  Or Norris Cole demonstrating a phenomenal amount of poise for a rookie on the game's grandest stage?  And you know who really clinched the title for Miami last night?  Mike Freaking Miller.  The guy was literally hobbling around for the entirety of the playoffs, and his one useful NBA skill was nowhere in evidence.  Dude left the clip for his sniper rifle at home ... until last night when he went 7-8 from deep en route to 23 completely unexpected points.  Like the Mavs last year, like most NBA champions in fact, the Heat repeatedly got serious help when they needed it from the unlikeliest of quarters.   Also, Juwan Howard has a ring now, which kind of makes me happy.

And let's not forget that OKC beat themselves to a degree, too.  James Harden evaporated so badly my grandpa wouldn't have feared the beard in a game of one-on-one.  Russ Westbrook was exactly what we expected: a mercurial alchemy of unadulterated genius and head-scratching flaws.  Trouble was, the flaws were unfortunately on prominent display at too many of the wrong times.  Scott Brooks either didn't recognize that Nick Collison needed much more burn this series (and Kendrick Perkins needed much less) or he was simply too reluctant to tamper with the rotations that had gotten the Thunder this far.  And Kevin Durant, for all his offensive wizardry, is simply not physically strong enough, mentally eff-you enough, and defensively skilled enough to handle LeBron on both ends of the floor for extended stretches of time.  Not yet.  But he'll get there.  His ceiling is still miles away, and watching him reach it while going toe-to-toe with LeBron James for the next ten years is going to be a phenomenal experience.

I know you're hurt and angry and more than a little depressed that you had to watch the guy who sold out your city win a title, but try to look on the bright side.  We get to watch a league full of young, transcendent talent blossom for the foreseeable future, bookended by two incredibly entertaining teams who couldn't have set up a better collection of story arcs and interchangeable hero/villain personae (depending on where you stand.)  As basketball fans, what more can we really ask?

Take care, and I'll try to visit Boston sometime soon.

Your pal,
Trav.

Chosen.

"So that's everything, huh?  No weapons, no friends, no hope.  Take all that away and what's left?"

"Me." 

-- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, "Becoming: Part 2."

One of the most appealing facets of basketball is its inherent lack of artifice.  Basketball is elemental; it's a primal thing.  Wood court.  Metal rims.  Glass backboards.  Twine nets.  Rubber ball.  Ten guys essentially wearing clothes that anyone might wear to the gym, albeit with matching colors and logos and higher thread counts.  There are no illusions and no concealment on a basketball court.  The game and its participants are laid bare. 

Perhaps no person on earth would be more qualified to give a symposium on that aspect of the game than LeBron James.  The cumulative effect of everything from his disappearing act in that last game in Cleveland to The Decision to The Laser Show Fog Machine Pep Rally Thingy to last year's NBA Finals to Haslem-Bouncepass-Gate has been an accrued level of pressure unlike anything we've seen an athlete experience before.  Every iota of his being gets dissected and analyzed and turned into a referendum on Global Iconography or What Greatness Means or whatever.  At this point, people would probably label his dental hygiene "unclutch" if he forgot to floss one morning.  The thing about pressure is, you put an element under enough of it for enough years and apply the requisite heat, and eventually you get a diamond.  Which, aside from its monetary value, is a beautiful, purified bit of rock hard enough to cut through damn near anything on earth.  Last night, LeBron James was the world's most expensive and spectacular engagement ring.

The situation was all too familiar.  An elimination game in the Boston Garden, high stakes, backs-against-wall, win or go home.  He's been there ... and failed.  He's been there ... and let Dwyane Wade carry the moment.  And now, he's been there and done that, submitting his latest superhuman (meta-human?  supra-human?) entry in a playoff resume that, despite lacking the all-important rings, is still resplendent with several nights of sheer brilliance.      

We talk about athletes going into "video game mode" whenever they appear particularly unstoppable during a given game.  While he certainly played as such, LeBron also turned that concept on its head, appearing literally as if he were controlling his body from some distant remove, munching chips on a couch as he guided a catatonia-eyed avatar through an impossibly flawless game.      

It wasn't just the numbers either, though certainly they alone are enough to dizzy the mind: 45-15-5.  That's Wilt territory, if you're scoring at home.  Much has been made of the efficiency with which he scored those points, but LeBron had an economy of being last night that I don't believe we have ever witnessed before.  Jordan played with a contained fury and a calculated destructiveness.  Kobe has his trademark bulldog-lipped menace and god help anyone, even his own teammates, in his way.  This was an entirely different thing.  To all appearances, LeBron didn't have any teammates last night.  There were also no opposing players, refs, coaches, crowd, TV cameras, or even a building.  Heck, there might not have been a court.  He was alone without being lonesome, separate without seeing there was anything to be separated from.  LeBron's world last night had borders so tightly-defined that they ended where his fingertips touched the ball.  For all the acknowledgement he gave anything else, his feet may as well have been traversing negative space in a howling void.

LeBron wasn't a blank slate; then we would at least have been looking at the slate with the knowledge that something might be drawn on it at some point.  He didn't have a thousand yard stare, because that would imply that he was in a state where distances have meaning and can be measured.  It wasn't a zen calm, and he wasn't dialed in.  If anything, he was tuned as out as possible.  Forget radio silence, he was simply gone.

We can't know for certain, obviously, but if I could hazard a guess, I'd say that LBJ, out of sheer desperation and need, discovered within himself a completely new way to play basketball.  Faced with the possibility of once again crumbling in the same arena where so many of his past catastrophes have played out, and the full, brutal knowledge of what the fallout from such an occurrence would be like, LeBron James elected to shut down.  He retreated from the weight of the moment by becoming weightless, sliding down an infinite spiral further and further into himself until he struck the middle of emotional and cognitive nowhere, which was his essence as a basketball player.  Away from the glare and clangor of being Chosen, detached from even the most rudimentary of interactions, he was precisely and only himself in all his myriad gifts and instincts, devoid of any context save that which he allowed.  Which was not this game, but The Game of Basketball, actual and pure.  It's been said and written innumerable times that LeBron can sometimes seem as if he's playing a different game than everyone else.  Last night was the first time he transcended "seeming" into the realm of truth.

The question of LeBron replicating such a performance is easily answerable.  Yes, he'll have more games like this one in his career.  No, Game 7 on Saturday night probably won't be one of them.  But if LeBron has figured out some sort of meditation/alchemy/transubstantiation mental trigger by which he becomes a 100% hoops-by-volume distillation of basketball, if he can duplicate that Nowhere Man dream state with even semi-reasonable frequency ... watch out.  LeBron James is the best basketball player in the world, but last night he became something more, different, and rare.  When you strip away everything else and you're left with only him, that's when you see greatness.  After the hammering and thrashing he's received in the court of public opinion, last night LeBron proved that we are all still, and always, witnesses.   

Five Reasons To Root For A Thunder/Celtics NBA Finals

If your team is still alive in the NBA playoffs, then a) bully for you and b) you're exempted from figuring out precisely which potential Finals match-up is most aesthetically appealing to you.  You want whatever opponent will be most advantageous for your team to face, and while that choice may be debatable from a tactical standpoint, that sentiment governs your wishlist for the last series of the season.  For the rest of us, I suspect what pairing we desire depends on exactly what type of NBA fans we are.  (Note: I am not endorsing or deriding any one of the first three philosophical outlooks presented here.)  In no particular hierarchical order:

Thunder/Heat.  If you love star power and welcome the potential for explosive lunacy running rampant, this is your series.  This is also they way to go for those who hope to witness the young, humble, "built-the-right basketball way-through-the-draft-and-smart-trades" kids from OKC smoke those egomaniacs from South Beach.

Spurs/Heat.  If you enjoy LeBron and D-Wade (and maybe if he's healthy Chirs Bosh) doing their thing in transition, hucking oops and rocking rims, you want this to go down.  San Antonio is still a formidable defensive team, but they're not the lockdown kings of Spurs iterations past.  The Heat would put on a show in the open floor.  Conversely, if the Spurs could knock off Miami via Tony Parker righting his personal ship and by unleashing a deep bench (who really need to start playing better if they want to even make the Finals), there will be a deal of jubilation from those who can't wait to point of how a sound team concept and superior coaching can trump supernova-bright stardom.

Spurs/Celtics: For the nostalgia set.  Veteran squads, last hurrahs, and the two best coaches left in the playoffs.  This would be the ultimate slow-to-a-crawl, defense-first showdown.  And the NBA Marketing Team's worst nightmare incarnate.

Undoubtedly, any of those matchups would provide plenty of compelling basketball, and a few additional story lines to those mentioned above would emerge as they do over a finals series.  But the most compelling possibility by far, in my humble opinion, is Thunder/Celtics.

This would be my preference for a number of reasons which I will now enumerate in depth. 

1. Perk.  When the C's traded Kendrick Perkins at the deadline two seasons ago, they could not possibly have foreseen Jeff Green's heart troubles or how badly they would miss his scowly interior presence, but suffice it to say the Thunder got the better of this trade by an Oklahoma farm-country mile.  The chance to go up against his old cronies, with the potential to wind up with more titles than at least three future Hall-of-Famers, might propel him to even more incredible heights than his 15-point, 9-rebound WCF Game 4.

2.  The Great PG Battle.  Rajon Rondo and Russell Westbrook are undeniably two of the best young point guards in the league, albeit in entirely different ways.  More than that, though, they are eerily reminiscent of one another in temperament.  In many respects, Westbrook is almost a reverberation of Rondo's past, an echo from four seasons ago being sonically re-imaged into the now, but slightly distorted from its original waveform.  Think about how we describe the Thunder's dynamo PG: Good kid, interesting skill set, but somewhat problematic.  Petulant, erratic, and unpredictable.  Inexplicably lapses into deep funks, but can also carry the team.  Not the best player on the floor, but the linchpin off of which everything else is keyed.  A study in contradictions, given to sullen fits and non-replicable displays of genius.  Isn't that essentially a carbon copy of our perceptions of Rondo a few years back?  This matchup would be utterly fascinating; watching Rondo stare down his own ghost would be a delight, and if that ghost can evolve along similar lines and up the ante, so much the better for the rest of us.  

3.  If the Thunder can advance past San Antonio, much will be made of the torch-passing, old-to-young theme.  If they can beat the Spurs and Celtics, they will have knocked off the winners of every Finals since 1998 save the '04 Pistons and '06 Heat ... in a single postseason run.  It's difficult to envision a more declarative way of announcing the league's New Undisputed Alpha Dogs.  They have to actually pull it off first, but still. 

4.  You want to watch Paul Pierce give Kevin Durant firsthand basketball lessons of slickest, super-craftiest variety, right?  Of course you do.  It'll be like Crash Davis and Nuke LaLoosh, only with the desire to hoist the Larry O'brien Trophy coming between them instead of a Poetry and English Composition professor.  "This is how you draw contact, Kevin.  Jot this down ..."

5.  The oldest franchise in the league against the youngest, and I don't mean the median age of their respective rosters.  I am literally talking about The Celtics, the winningest and most storied team in professional basketball history, playing opposite a team that essentially manifested overnight in a fly-over state because some wealthy people decided they didn't give a damn about the city of Seattle.  (You know, where Ray Allen used to play.)  Oklahoma City is still, collectively, a new-born, wide-eyed, punch-drunk basketball entity, from the ownership  to the players to Scott Brooks to the fans to the folks who work concessions at an arena the likes of which they probably never thought they'd see in their town.  Stepping into the NBA Finals for the first time against Boston, where they've bled hoops for generations compared to OKC's few seasons, will make for an interesting contrast. 

No matter what, we should soak up the basketball we have left before it goes away until November, but if the sports gods are feeling benevolent, I hope they grant this humble request: Thunder/Celtics Finals, seven games (pretty please), and all the drama and pyrotechnics we can stand.  It's not too much to ask, right?  Now, let us pray.

Why I Can't Root For The Thunder With A Clean Conscience Anymore.

There was a brief moment Saturday night, just as the halftime buzzer sounded, when the air went out of the room.  Russell Westbrook skidded along the Staples Center floor, legs in unnatural akimbo, and collapsed.  "If Russ is seriously injured," I thought, "the Thunder's title aspirations are shot."  This was a somewhat objective assessment of the situation.  Since the Hawks got bounced, I don't have a horse in this playoffs race anymore.

Except I kind of do.  My reaction to Westbrook lying on the court included no small amount of actual trepidation, because I really, really like the Thunder.

As fascinating as the other remaining teams' narratives are, I'm more or less done with everyone else from an attachment point of view.  The Lakers and Clippers are finished.  The Celtics and Spurs are playing phenomenal basketball, but they've already enjoyed considerable success with their respective nuclei.  I would certainly love to watch that combination in the finals, but I'm not sentimental enough to desperately long for one last hurrah from any of them.  The Pacers and Sixers are fascinating and enjoyable to watch, but they have time, assuming the prime assets of both squads elect to stay in the coming years, to develop and cohere before real expectations are thrust upon their shoulders.  Miami is a science experiment whose results will have interesting ramifications for how we view future teams and how front offices construct their rosters, but they're too far down the path of mechanical assemblage/dysfunction to engender any real affection.

Which leaves OKC and their infectiously loveable brand of hoops.  We've spent the past few years waiting for this team to blossom into the legitimate contenders they've now become.  We've watched them accumulate the necessary and appropriate players to fill the gaps around the heavy ammunition.  We've witnessed the Durant/Westbrook tandem, so widely rumored to be a divided and unworkable pairing, evolve into a thing of power, grace, and balance.  And of course, we have seen James Harden transmute himself into an unequivocal force of nature, accepting his "bench" role with not only a commitment to the team mentality, but an incomparable relish and flare.

This is an easy team to cheer for; an easy team to adore.  The have an identifiable group personality and an engagingly individualized cast of characters.  Outside of the Hawks, they are my favorite NBA team by a considerable margin.  But lately, I've been questioning that tertiary rooting interest.  A triptych of thoughtful and affecting articles has appeared online recently that have raised a fair amount of doubt in me as to the ethical "rightness" of rooting for OKC.  In chronological order:      

May 3: A heartbreaking, first-person account detailing the demise of professional basketball in Seattle appears on Deadspin.  Jeremy Repanich recounts the manner in which Clay Bennett hijacked the Sonics franchise and took them to OKC.  It's a narrative that will wrench your guts out if you allow it to do so, even as Repanich acknowledges that Bennett, despite his initially duplicitous sentiments, ultimately did a lot of good for the franchise.  

May 11: Brian Phillips posts a lovely open letter to Seattle on Grantland about the convoluted nature of being an Oklahoma City Thunder fan.  He acknowledges the guilt of enjoying a team that was wantonly pilfered from another city.  He also pens the case for his and every other Oklahoman's absolution under the fairly irrefutable "Holy crap our fly-over city has a real pro sports franchise and they're actually good!!!" defense.

May 12th: Beckley Mason responds to Phillips' post on Hoopspeak.  This is at once a still-raw, jangling nerve reflex to the sad events of the Soncis' departure and a flat rejection of Phillips' apologia.  Essentially: "I appreciate the sentiment, but eff you, Oklahoma.  When your team is snatched away for the greener pastures of a bigger market, you'll know how this feels, but don't presume to shower us with pointless, hollow empathy in the interim."

Bereavement, it seems, cannot be easily put aside. The question as NBA fans is what, if anything, we owe to the bereaved?

The Thunder have been the darlings of the NBA for quite some time now.  We love the team and how brilliantly Sam Presti has built them.  We've all just been waiting for their ascendancy, and that appears to have arrived.  As basketball fans, the whole narrative is so enticing, so filled with wonderful characters and sweeping pictures.  And it doesn't hurt that they play with fervor and dynamism and the exuberance of youth, either.  Problem is: we tend to forget that this storybook we're enjoying was printed on paper made from a rare and lovely tree with deep roots that was chainsawed down without a thought or care by one greedy-ass and duplicitous lumberjack.  

The tenets of "liberated fandom" not withstanding, enjoying the Thunder guilt-free seems at least a little shady.  (I should note that I am a fantastic hypocrite, since both the Braves and Hawks resided elsewhere before becoming Atlanta teams.  In my defense, this happened about 15 years before I was born, so I grew up with "my" teams without realizing until later that they hadn't always been there.)  Shouldn't we feel some remorse about this?  Shouldn't we abstain from buying in when the price was the destruction of the franchise that gave us The Glove and Shawn Kemp and The X-Man and some of the coolest jerseys ever?  There's a reason that Zombie Sonics picture at the top of this post exists, though it's unclear who's more walking dead, the new team or the city they abandoned. 

Those in Oklahoma should probably try not to be too smug about The Thunder if they're in the company of Seattle folks, but they can and should root for their team.  That's what fans do, after all.  As for me, I'm trying pretty hard to temper my enthusiasm for OKC.  I'll enjoy the aesthetics of their play on the court, but I'm striving to do so with an appropriately somber attitude.  The Soncis were from their mother's womb untimely ripped.  I'm not sure if it was Howard Shultz or Clay Bennet in the role of Lady Macbeth, but it seems safe to say neither of them ever felt guilty enough to wash their hands repeatedly while hysterically mumbling "out, out, damned spot."  Shame on them for that.  Either way, Seattle ended up as Banquo's ghost. From now on, whenever I watch the Thunder, I'll also hold a candlelight vigil for them.