There’s an intimacy in this that so resonates with me. I mean, it’s impossible to imagine that I wouldn’t be charmed by the subject matter alone — a President I greatly admire, plus two NBA players. But this moment is especially great, because I love Derrick Rose’s game and I will always appreciate that he OD’d on candy before the 2008 NCAA Final with Kansas. And I admire Joakim Noah’s gritty post play and his serious media game. And I love that there’s genuine emotion in this shot. It has got a little bit of stagey-ness, but it also feels, like I said, intimate, like the photographer took this photo and emailed it to me, and said: “You’d appreciate this.”

Geek alert! I’m talking basketball. It’s March, and the madness of the season has overtaken me. Thus, I won’t be offended if you are about to click back to Twitter, or your RSS reader.

I’ll start by not wasting anyone’s time complaining about this year’s tournament pairings. That path is well-traveled.¹ And well it should be! The pairings are outrageous! Kansas was punished! Kentucky, Duke, and Syracuse — they’ve all got golden tickets to Indianapolis. Right? Right?

For starters, I’m glad I’m not Kentucky

For so many reasons. Let’s look at the round two match-ups. Texas and Wake Forest have been terrible — horrible — over the past couple of months. But, they’re talented, and each could gel for just long enough to beat anyone in the country, including Kentucky. Is this unlikely? Highly. Is it more likely that Cornell will grind their way past Temple, Wisconsin and Kentucky? Perhaps. But indulge me: Texas actually matches up pretty well with Kentucky, size-wise and talent-wise. I think that it’s possible that they could get motivated (ever so briefly) to not be embarrassed by them. Am I picking Texas over Kentucky? Maybe not. Texas coach Rick Barnes is never in danger of out-gameplanning anyone. He’s never been accused of having his team ready to play, and his teams are always threatening to underperform. Let’s not forget this. Still, I wouldn’t want to be a Kentucky fan, not in this tournament, or in any lifetime. Because let me be frank: I don’t think I could face a world without reading, without literacy. I just don’t think I could do it.

Which reminds me, did you hear that Coach K was born in the year of the Ratfaced Bastard?

Eerie, right? Not sure what his astrological sign is, but I’m relatively sure that all the major media figures kiss its ass.

But Duke didn’t get an easy road, either

I know, most people say that Duke has the easiest path: a #4 seed in free-fall after its star blew out his knee (Purdue), and a #2 seed that lost six of its last ten (Villanova). I say: Thank you for noticing, world, but look at the #3 seed: Baylor. This team got punished for playing cupcakes early — Hardin Simmons? Texas Arlington? Southern? Hartford? Coach Scott Drew, c’mon. You asked for your cruddy seed. But then Baylor played a tough conference schedule, didn’t lose a game by more than 7 points, and they absolutely light it up (119 points per 100 possessions — 5th in the country). Enough about Baylor; Duke may not even get there. Louisville will give Duke everything they can handle in round 2; perhaps more. Rick Pitino v Coach K, in the second round? Fans’ brains might explode. Which coach do I hate more? Minds will boggle.

Back to the Wildcats

Kansas State. Are they good enough to reach the Final Four. Yes. Can they beat Syracuse? Quite possibly. How do you beat Syracuse? You punish the zone. And K-State has two guys who can do this — Pullen and Clemente. What about the glass? Two more guys: Wally Judge and Curtis Kelly. They can hold their own underneath. KenPom has K-State ranked 5th in the country in offensive rebounding percentage at 40%. They gather 40% of the rebounds on their offensive glass. That’s huge. And they play great defense. Did I mention I wouldn’t want to be Syracuse? I wouldn’t. Especially because a big guy might be hurt. Or, he might not be. March madness, baybee!

The team that will break my heart: Cornell

Every year I pick a team like this. They’re good. They play under control. They’ve got a system. All the ingredients are there for surprise. Subtext: They played very well against Kansas. Okay, let’s face it, they out-played Kansas for 20–25 minutes in the hallowed hall of Lawrence, and they came up short (barely). Texas A&M, Baylor, Colorado, Kansas State and Memphis also played very well against the Hawks, and lost. Subtext: I also have these teams doing well in the tournament. Caveat! Anyway, every year, I pick a team like this to get out of the first round, and they lay an egg. I’m looking at you, Butler team of 2008. This year’s heartbreaker is especially obvious to avoid because Temple is a good team who could easily ... force the aforementioned egg? To emerge? Anyway, Temple is a great defensive team, though you wouldn’t have been able to see any evidence of that against ... Kansas! Yes, they lost to the Jayhawks at home. By 32 points.

Did I mention that this bracket breakdown was from the point of view who has watched 34 Kansas games, and roughly 20 total other games. Caveat!

¹ I will offer one suggestion: Why not just factor their media desirability into the RPI? Your team’s winning percentage x their opponent’s winning percentage x their opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage x the likelihood that your team will draw a large, rich audience to the Final Four weekend equals their seed. It’s obviously a factor in every year’s bracket. Last year, North Carolina was invited to do the Tennessee Waltz all the way to Detroit. In other words, they had it easy. In other news, the nation loves them some Tar Heels. It’s worth mentioning that advertisers tend to pay more when the Heels are playing. And of course CBS is for-profit enterprise. You get the point. We all do. It’s time to be up-front about it.

Okay, wait. One more thing. I will post something about the absurd lopsidedness of the pairings:

You want to make marginal No. 1 Duke’s road that easy? Seeding the bracket is tough, but come on. The South reeks of a committee that lost the forest for the trees, and Kentucky, Syracuse and Kansas — especially Kansas — will suffer. So much for being the overall No. 1. If we can’t reward Kansas for its excellence with something better than this, then the anti-expansion folks’ main point is officially moot. The regular season doesn’t matter.

More here.

The Nike Air Jordan 3 Black Cat ... This shoe frightened me when it first came out in 1988. It looked like it had arrived from outer space, which made it absolutely the perfect shoe for Jordan to wear when he was just beginning to dominate the NBA. His game was threatening. These shoes were so sleek, so — it must be said — fierce, that a kid knew that he needed to step up his game in order to be worthy of them. I’m currently totally riveted by the extensive Air Jordan documentation and commentary on the web. For instance, here’s a killer 8-minute video profile of Tinker Hatfield, the genius behind the Jordan line. Nobody in the world can cover my main man, Michael Jordan ... Impossible! Impossible! Impossible! Imposs-!

Last night, Lynne told a story about a friend who, upon seeing movie star James Franco in the New York subway, experienced a feeling of ecstatic clarity, of time slowing down. I don’t recall if Mihály Csíkszentmihályi covers celebrity sightings in Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, but this sounds like a state of flow to me. Wikipedia sums up the flow concept as “a mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.”

Bill DeRouchey recently mentioned the ingredients that, for him, trigger a state of flow: “Brian Eno [ed: I’m guessing his music here, rather than, say, seeing him on the subway], Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack, isolation, old rocksteady/ska and (yes) the LOTR trilogy.” There was an ensuing #flowstate discussion on Twitter.

David Halberstam’s book about the late 70’s Portland Trailblazers, The Breaks of the Game, contains a nice description of former Blazer Bill Walton’s pre-game ritual:

[Walton] loved the day of a game, particularly an important game. It was a time which belonged completely to him, a time pure in its purpose. On the day itself, he did not analyze the game, he had done that the night before, thought about the team and the player he was going against in the most clinical way possible. The night before was the analytical time. The day of the game was different, it was an emotional time. He always took a nap on the day of a game, waking up two and a half hours before the game ... This was the time in which he felt the rhythm and tempo of the game, almost like feeling a dance of his own. He played his own music, from the Grateful Dead ... and the music helped, it flowed through him and he thought about the tempo he wanted to set and how he could move. He would sit in his home or his hotel room in those hours and actually see the game and feel the movement of it. Sometimes he did it with such accuracy that a few hours later when he was on the court and the same players made the same moves, it was easy for him because he had already seen it all, had made that move or blocked that shot. He loved that time, he had it all to himself, he was absorbed in his feel for basketball.

An ingredient to Walton’s secret sauce: The Grateful Dead. In the same jam family, I would say, as Bill’s Phillip Glass go-to, Koyaanisqatsi.

All of which of course made me think of my own flowstate triggers. The more I think about it, though, my most reliable trigger is running, but a glass of water and the Baseball Encyclopedia also can do the trick. Music is not as essential to me; sometimes silence is better, sometimes I need some Animal Collective. For Reverend Green is pretty reliable.

The Bilastrator has coined a new term: “Game pressure.” During last weekend’s Kansas-Tennessee game, ESPN analyst Jay Bilas repeatedly said that Kansas players were feeling “game pressure” when they stepped to the free throw line. Game pressure? As opposed to ... practice pressure? As opposed to other kinds of pressure that you’d feel during a big game? Or a nationally-televised game? Game pressure? That’s the best that you’ve got?

Now, I was going to let this go, because I think I know what he means: “Game pressure” sounds like a specific kind of pressure that can’t be replicated outside of a game. Young teams, perhaps, are particularly vulnerable to it because they haven’t been in as many ... games. Anyway, I was going to let it go until Bilas referred to Kansas guard Sherron Collins as “Lawson-esque” (as in North Carolina guard Tywon Lawson) and then predicted that Tyler Hansbrough will again be the national player of the year.

You mean Lawson is “Collins-esque,” right?

Where was Lawson in the Final Four? I’ll tell you: He was getting killed by Collins. If Collins played in the ACC, he’d be getting compared to Chris Paul. (I think he’s more like Vinnie “the Microwave” Johnson). On that note, I hope that Bob Knight is going to break up the ACC-loving commentary cabal at ESPN. From the couple of games I’ve seen, he is made for TV. And he speaks to basketball fans, not just fans of the ACC. He’s not afraid to say unpopular things; not a surprise. He’s also likely to compare current players to non-ACC players (such as his Indiana players from the 70’s), and he’s completely at ease in dissing other talking heads. Is there some way that I can get his commentary on every game? Please?

Aldrich ruled Hansbrough in the Final Four. “But he just works so hard.” Other athletic centers rule him regularly. “He doesn’t take possessions off.” The argument against him being player of the year is so strong; it seems almost silly to carry it out. Photo: Getty Images

I’ve got no real beef with Psycho T, as Hansbrough is known, but he is not the best player in the country. How could he be? Whenever he plays against anyone big and athletic, he gets killed. Yes, he brings it every night; yes, he leaves it all on the court. Dickie V loves it. All the older commentators love it. Who doesn’t love a kid who plays hard every minute he’s on the court? I love it. He’s like Nick Collison. Nick Collison was awesome, but he was not the player of the year, was he? Would anyone argue that he was, other than hopeless Kansas loyalists? He was a good player on a great team. Like Hansbrough, now. Collison’s problem was that he didn’t play for the most visible program in the most over-hyped conference in the country. If Hansbrough played at Texas, he’d get compared to Collison all the time, and he’d be the feel-good choice for the Naismith. If only.

Two things: (1) How awesome would it be to play on KG’s team? [Don’t ask Big Baby that question]. Still, what if KG worked in your office? He could walk the halls, pumping people up, bringing everyone into pre-meeting huddles — one-two-three-UBUNTU! — and he could remind people that it’s about the little things, remind them that things are getting better and that they just need to hold it together a little longer for the title run (or the final design deliverable, in my case). Seriously, how rare is it that an athlete is so insanely gifted and so deeply, outwardly passionate? I’ll tell you what: He would give Terry Tate a run for his money in the office athlete department. [The pain train is comin]. And, (2) Someone needs to create an iPhone app or an audiobook or something that blends the inspirational wisdom of Coach Taylor from Friday Night Lights with KG’s extemporaneous passion. That would be technology that I could use. (Okay, three things.) (3) Whoever made this commercial is a genius. It’s just documentary-ish enough to give you a sense of the entire arc of the season; it really brings out the grind, how long KG spends saying the same stuff again and again; and it ends in just the right way: “What can you say now?” Nothing. You can’t say anything. Actually, you could say one other thing: “Anything is possible!”

I love reading, and I’ve been thinking a lot about how technology is affecting the way that we read now and in the future. I keep thinking about something Sven Birkerts said in a 1998 interview with Harpers: “If you touch all parts of the globe, you can’t do that and then turn around and look at your wife in the same way.” [PDF] Of course, one could be turn around and look at one’s wife in a more informed, more educated way, but that’s not the way he sees it. I share this anxiety: I love reading the New York Times on my phone, but I can’t help but sense that something will be lost if all printed matter moves in this direction.

This is the top shelf on one of our book cases. It’s comforting to have the books sitting there; they’re like a version of myself, sitting on a shelf, disassembled and re-arrangeable.

In August 1995, Harpers Magazine conducted a round table discussion with Wired’s Kevin Kelly, author Sven Birkerts, the Well’s John Perry Barlow, and Mark Slouka. The results were condensed in the magazine [PDF], and the conversation outlines the two ideologies that continue to converse today: Those who believe that the paper incarnation of the book is an irreplaceable arena for the delivery of its content, and those who don’t. Birkerts discusses the former in his 1995 book, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age.

In 2004, the National Endowment for the Arts sent a shot across the bow in a paper called “Reading at Risk,” [PDF]. The researchers surveyed 17,000 people, and they concluded that the future of literary reading is bleak: “Literary reading in America is not only declining rapidly among all groups, but the rate of decline has accelerated, especially among the young.”

Still, the total number of books sold continues to rise, so is the future really that bleak? The NEA thinks so. It released a follow-on to Reading at Risk called “To Read or Not To Read.” This study focuses on young readers, and links the decline in reading to “civic, social and economic” risks.

Last spring, Nicholas Carr discussed Google’s effect on literary reading in the Atlantic, provocatively titled “Is Google Making Us Stupid.” [I discussed this in a blog post at the Cooper Journal called “Dumb is the new smart”]. In it, he interviews a blogger who confesses the following:

“I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

The article also sparked a discussion on brittanica.com, collected in a forum called “Your Brain Online.” It’s got a lot of interesting stuff from folks like Kevin Kelly, Danny Hillis and Clay Shirky, author of Here Comes Everybody, who thinks that the “unprecedented abundance” of the web will function to break the vise-grip of the “literary world” on culture:

It’s not just because of the web—no one reads War and Peace. It’s too long, and not so interesting. This observation is no less sacrilegious for being true. The reading public has increasingly decided that Tolstoy’s sacred work isn’t actually worth the time it takes to read it, but that process started long before the internet became mainstream ... The threat isn’t that people will stop reading War and Peace. That day is long since past. The threat is that people will stop genuflecting to the idea of reading War and Peace.

Ursula Le Guin disputes the notion that people have ever read War and Peace. (Well, maybe.)

Self-satisfaction with the inability to remain conscious when faced with printed matter seems questionable. But I also want to question the assumption—whether gloomy or faintly gloating—that books are on the way out. I think they’re here to stay. It’s just that not all that many people ever did read them. Why should we think everybody ought to now?

The title of her recent Harper’s essay pretty well sums up her position: “Notes on the alleged decline of reading.” It roars through the various aspects of the state of reading and publishing, quickly turning into a ringing indictment of corporate publishers:

The social quality of literature is still visible in the popularity of bestsellers. Publishers get away with making boring, baloney-mill novels into bestsellers via mere P.R. because people need bestsellers. It is not a literary need. It is a social need. We want books everybody is reading (and nobody finishes) so we can talk about them.

On that social note

I was just looking at my beat-up copy of “The Dharma Bums,” and I felt a sort Chris Matthews-esque tingle. I bought it during high school at Rainy Day Books in Fairway, Kansas, and it sparked my fascination with the West Coast, years before I ever traveled here. Would I ever read it again? Probably not. In fact, just now, I could barely read even a couple of pages without feeling like Kerouac was on auto-pilot. But I like the idea that my bookshelf is a kind of externalization of myself, a collection of important influences and expressions. The future of my books appears to be not so different than the present: A combination of talismans, objects of beauty, and points of reference.

On the subject of reference, in (wait for it) a Harper’s essay called ““A Defense of the Book,” William Gass talks about the pleasures of not having the world at your fingertips:

I have rarely paged through one of my dictionaries (a decent household will have a dozen) without my eye lighting, along the way, on words more beautiful than a found fall leaf, on definitions odder than any uncle, on grotesques like gonadotropin-releasing hormone or, barely, above it — what? — gombeen — which turns out to be Irish for usury.

And holy crap, there’s a whole lot more Gass at Tunneling. Articles, links, thoughts. I love the Internet.

The guy on the left, in the black hat; the one who looks like he just stepped out of a Coen Brothers movie. He was on the floor during every game of the NBA Finals. Who the heck is he? Anyway, you gotta give him credit for breaking the mold with regard to Finals attire: The braided-leather-cowboy-hat-and-bandanna-around-the-neck combo was unexpectedly effective at getting him noticed, by everyone in my living room at least. (I hope all you stars in your brand-new Lakers hats were taking notes.)

I’ve got the killer app for the NBA television-viewing experience, something that will melt faces around the world and provide the league with yet another license to print money. (Props to Justin and Zidane who sparked this idea last night as we watched Game 3.)

You could call it: NBA 360, or the Courtside Package, or the Real NBA Courtside 360 Package or whatever, but the concept is simple ... Arrange some microphones around/above the court, and create a pay TV service that allows fans to hear the trash talk that accompanies every game. Even better: You could eliminate the announcers, and go au naturel: Game trash talk soundtrack, nothing more.

“I feel so misunderstood, KG. Sometimes I just wish the fans could know the real Kobe.” [Photo: Stephen Dunn]

David Stern will never go for it, you say? You may be right — today — but Stern is a product manager at heart. His recent crackdowns may seem moral in nature, but they’re really efforts to maintain the integrity of the current NBA brand. Of course, certain brands continually change, and some brands are forced to change. (General Motors can’t continue to be known primarily the makers of Suburbans and Hummers forever, for instance). Sometime soon, I expect that Stern will do what all good PMs do: Evolve his product and brand to respond to the market.

Why a trash-talk channel, then?

Well, my guess is that people harbor fewer and fewer illusions about what’s happening on the court. It obviously ain’t Sunday School, as much as the NBA wants you to believe it is. Also, even the slightest peek at the trash talk is fascinating. The one and only time I sat close to courtside — in Toronto, 2003, end of the season, against the Hornets — I heard Baron Davis and Rafer Alston go at it for a few seconds near the sideline and I was stunned: It was deeply personal, and profoundly entertaining. (It’s also unrepeatable on a family-oriented blog like this).

Curt Schilling sat courtside during Game 2 of the Finals, and he also was strangely compelled by the trash talk:

... About 43 times last night I heard things being said that would have made me swing at someone. These guys talk MAJOR trash on the floor, and the great part is that most of the times I’ve seen it the guy on the receiving end usually doesn’t respond much, if at all, and just plays the game, schooling the guy who feels like he needs to talk to make his game better.

For example:

Last night KG goes to the line, Lamar Odom (who I became a fan of last night) is saying “Hey KG why don’t you help on the ball down here?” Pointing to the paint, and I am guessing he’s referencing the fact that KG wasn’t down in the paint mixing it up. He says it again, loudly, KG doesn’t even acknowledge him, and sinks both. Impressive, total focus.

For the record, I was asking KG the same question from the privacy of my living room.

Anyway, on a philosophical note

For the last 10 or so years, the NBA has been in a sort of conflicted adolescence. Stern makes extreme efforts to manage an outward appearance of normality, but this barely masks the turbulence beneath the surface. He created a dress code, and he enforces strict policies on communication with the media. Meanwhile, everyone associated with the league — fans, players, coaches, etc — knows that this is all window-dressing, and dated window-dressing at that. There is a deeply compelling game within a game going on; why not productize it? There are personalities, feuds, villains, heroes, and so on — why not bring them out, and create a service that people will pay for in the process?

Mark Cuban is not afraid to talk about the blockbuster trade that wasn’t ...

[Donnie Nelson, Avery Johnson and I] went back and forth about whether or not we should trade Devin [Harris]. We knew he was a good point guard, with the potential to be amazing. What we didn’t know was how long that would take. On one hand, we didn’t have enough confidence in him to let him call his own plays, but on the other, he is a one man fast break, his shooting was improving by the minute, he is a good defender and his potential was undeniable. In Jason Kidd, we felt we would get a player that would make it easier for Dirk, Josh, Jet to get open shots. That Avery would no longer have to scream to push the ball, that JK was the best in the business at pushing the ball in the open court. Plus, our rebounding had suffered this year vs last, JKidd is a great rebounder and the presses that had caused us problems, would no longer be a problem.

I buy that. For all of Devin Harris’s virtues, he’s still one of those guys who has very obvious limitations — never going to be a good rebounder, effective at getting in passing lanes but never going to be a great defender, only going to get slower, didn’t seem to be progressing in a basketball smarts sense (i.e., needing to constantly be reminded to push the ball upcourt). I didn’t think it was a bad trade, really, but I love that Cuban goes on to talk through his rationale in what appears to be an open and honest way ...

It wasn’t an easy call. Between AJ, Donnie and I, we would change our minds by the minute. I don’t think there is any doubt that the pressure and closeness of the Western Conference race had something to do with our decision making process. In my mind, this season was becoming analogous to the most agonizing season I had been through, the 04–05 season. We were having the same home vs road record delta, multiple players asking to be traded and even more internal tension about our lack of consistent performance than we had in 04–05.

Speaking of that “internal tension,” Cuban goes on to discuss another elephant in the Mavs’ room ...

I also know what I learned from Nash leaving. As great an offensive coach as Nellie is, Nash wasn’t playing at MVP levels with us. A change of scenery and coaches and system, some payback motivation and he became a very, very deserving 2 time MVP.

Aside from the implied (or inadvertent?) dig at Nellie’s “failure” to get the best out of Nash, this approach makes a lot of sense to me. There are obvious precursors to it, in addition to Nash’s renaissance in Phoenix — Webber to Sacramento (much younger than Kidd, of course), Shaq to Miami (a little younger than Kidd), maybe Barkley to the Suns and Walton to the Celtics (different situations, but similarly positive effects). Anyway, whether any of this is accurate, true, or whatever, I appreciate that Mark Cuban is saying it. He clearly feels accountable to the fans, and he’s leaving it all on the court in a PR sense.

A couple of days ago, I was watching Mario’s three-pointer for like the 150th time, and I decided to do it JFK/Zapruder style. Click. Sherron blows by Derrick Rose. Click. Click. Click. Sherron begins to fall. Click. The ball emerges in Mario’s hands, he takes a big jump-step toward the top of the key, jumps, fades. Derrick Rose leaps. Ball leaves Mario’s hand. Arc-ing, arc-ing. Swish. (Rewind). Swish. (Rewind). Swish. I felt like Kevin Costner in JFK: Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.

An obscured leaping figure

As I stepped through the swish multiple times, I saw something I hadn’t seen before, a sort of puff of smoke on the grassy knoll. There’s a leaping figure behind the backboard, at the very far end of the Kansas bench. Just after Mario’s shot goes through, the players on the bench appear to be in disbelief, but a black clad figure at the end of the bench suddenly springs up, spinning, arms flailing. I think that this was pretty close to my reaction as well.

This is closest I could come to a shot of the bench at that moment Mario’s shot goes through the net. It’s unclear who it is from this photo, but it’s almost certainly the same guy you can see onscreen, jumping and celebrating.

You can kinda see a black blur behind the backboard in this YouTube clip, but it’s much more clearly viewed in high-definition about two feet from your TV screen.

Fast-forward to the post-game celebration, and it becomes clear that the figure is none other than former Kansas backup point guard and current video assistant, Brett Ballard. Awesome. I was always a Ballard fan because he’s a Kansas kid, from Hutchison. [Here’s a nice Kansan profile of Ballard.]

Now he’ll always be the visual record of my own reaction to Mario’s shot.

Surreal. That’s the word that keeps coming to mind. Kansas trailed by nine points with two minutes left, and yet somehow managed to win. Chalmers’s shot. Collins’s steal. Roy Williams — “Benedict Williams” to many Jayhawk fans — wearing a Jayhawk sticker. Is it possible that all of that *really* happened?

Watch the last few minutes of the game again, and you’ll begin to see how many little things went KU’s way. There were big things, of course — Calipari’s lack of faith in his bench, Joey Dorsey’s fouls, CDR’s clankers from the line — but there were also those momentary mistakes that add up: a terrible transition decision by Memphis, questionable judgment when Calipari doesn’t call timeout after a made free throw to ensure that his team fouls, and the simple bad luck of Derrick Rose’s first free throw that hit every part of the rim and then bounced out with 10 seconds left.

Still, Kansas needed a miracle to simply pull even.

Photo: Streeter Lecka

Luke Winn of Sports Illustrated really nails the last few seconds in his Tourney Blog: “The ball took what Collins said seemed ‘like five seconds’ in the air, perfectly rotating, and Brandon Rush, who had positioned himself near the basket in the event of a tip, looked up at the net and ‘saw it splash right in there.’ ... ‘It will probably be,’ said Self, ‘the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history.’”

The bench reacts to Mario’s shot. Photo: Jeff Haynes

The Kansas City Star’s Jason Whitlock commented on the stories behind the story: “That’s how you win it all, exorcise the demons and baptize a new era of greatness. You do it with an unforgettable rally, a stunning three-pointer and with your most famous and infamous coaching alum sitting in the stadium, cheering you on and sporting a Jayhawk sticker.”

Photo: Jed Jacobsohn

The Star’s Joe Posnanski on Memphis’s seemingly insurmountable lead, and Mario’s shot: “When you’re young, you live in the moment. That’s how it’s supposed to be. Chalmers was not feeling the pressure of history when he fired the shot. He never could have made it then. Kansas was trailing by nine points with barely 2 minutes left. Memphis had taken all the intensity and will and ferocity that Kansas had to give, and then the Tigers pulled away. Up nine with about 2 minutes left? Over.”

Sherron & Bill Self. Photo: Streeter Lecka

Collins’s contribution was huge, despite his turnovers. He was in Derrick Rose’s face all night, and his pace and fearlessness created the two biggest moments of the game — the steal with just under a minute left, and the pass to Mario with 5 seconds left. Dana O’Neil’s article on ESPN really captures it well (title: “Without Collins, there is no Chalmers.”). Derrick Rose commented on Sherron’s play during Memphis’s post-game press conference: “He did what he supposed to do as a point guard — control the team, push the ball up the court and make tough plays at the end. He just controlled the game.”

Self was characteristically modest after the game, “The outside public may view people that win a championship differently, but coaches know you don’t get smarter because a hard shot goes in or doesn’t go in. I’m proud of our guys, happy for everybody involved, but I don’t see it that way.”

I’m not sure what it will take for the talking heads to give him some respect, honestly. In ESPN’s pre-game show, the former coaches (Vitale, Digger, and Knight) lavished praise on Memphis coach John Calipari. Vitale threw around all the usual hyperbole (“genius,” “innovator,” as I recall), and even Knight complimented Cal’s inventiveness as a coach. After the game, the mood was funereal around the ESPN desk, as if they themselves had lost the game. Why? There are some compelling conspiracy theories bouncing around the comments on the Lawrence Journal-World site, e.g. “[Supporting] Kansas promotes [KU’s] recruiting and keeps Kansas a Cadillac program. In turn, that steers recruits away from schools where the talking heads have loyalties and relationships with coaches that give them the access they require in the major media markets they need to pump up their Q ratings and market share ratings.” Hmm.

Finally, the NYT’s Pete Thamel posted some engaging commentary on The Quad, the NYT’s college sports blog. He describes the scene in the Memphis locker room afterward:

There are only two locker rooms I’d ever seen where the players were this devastated. One was the U.S.C. locker room after Matt Leinart and the Trojans lost the national title to Texas in the Rose Bowl. I remember Leinart sitting alone on a bench, eating a turkey sandwich and a chocolate chip cookie and drinking a Gatorade. It was kind of surreal that his whole senior year had come down to that.

The other was the Oklahoma locker room after the Sooners lost to Boise State in what many consider the greatest finish to a college football game. That would be the Ian Johnson, Statue of Liberty, hook-and-ladder game. The most bizarre scene from that locker room was Oklahoma Coach Bob Stoops just standing by himself, staring off into the ether. It’s rare to see a head coach alone anywhere, anytime. But Stoops could have been on Pluto, and no one at that second was going to visit.

Finally, today’s Kansas City Star front page. Nice! I had the 1988 version on my bedroom wall for about 10 years, until it basically turned into dust.

If words are windows to the soul, this blog has become a massive vista onto my sports obsessions and, specifically, Kansas basketball. Soon enough it’ll all be over, the fever dream will end, the sun will rise, and I’ll be back to the old stuff. Until then, I want to post one more thing, to commemorate the Jayhawks’ run to San Antonio.

I designed a t-shirt that expressed my feelings with regard to the Heels, which — in a really weird coincidence — echo Ol Roy’s sentiments c. 2003.

For many Kansas fans, Roy’s angry words ring true — truer, even — today. Sure, Roy may have claimed to have “given a shit” at that moment, but he changed his tune a week later. Jayhawk fans probably still couldn’t give a shit, to say the least. Now, we can declare this to the world. [Buy it now now now from Zazzle].

A day that will live in infamy

In case anyone’s wondering what the heck the shirt is all about, let’s take a quick trip down YouTube lane. The year was 2003; the time was 10 minutes after KU’s national final loss to Syracuse; the place was the tunnel outside the Kansas locker room.

It actually gets better with age, doesn’t it?

The “shit” part clearly wasn’t pre-meditated, yet it was perfectly timed, putting a bitter exclamation point on a ringing rebuke. Of course, the most shocking part of it all was that it came from the man who had — to that point — cornered the market in “dadgums” and “doggones:” Ol Roy, the kind country cousin of college basketball. In more ways than one, that interview was the end of an era, and in retrospect, Roy’s aw-shucks-ing and dadgum-ing seems a little silly, but it sure worked well for a while.

Now, well. Times have changed.

Despite being stocked with recruiting riches, Duke is going home early and it’s not too surprising why: streaky offense, untimely turnovers, killed on the boards, nothing in the post, the list goes on. But what’s different about this team? Why isn’t Coach K’s formula working anymore?

“Promise me you’ll never leave.” Photo: Replay photos.

Coach K has always recruited players with radically inverted ratios of talent to likeability — incredibly gifted, fundamentally sound players who always come across as arrogant and entitled. His players are not only good athletes, they’re (generally) clean-cut, team-oriented guys who care more about winning than stats, and usually, come March, they’re mowing teams down with a single-minded drive to the Final Four.

At least part of the problem seems to be that this particular model (coaches and players alike) just isn’t built for, nor is it capable of adapting to, the kinds of competition it sees in the tournament. Davidson doesn’t have a reliable post presence, and they’re still around because (a) they’ve got a guy who can light it up, and (b) they had other guys who leapt into the breach when that guy wasn’t getting it done. With Duke, it’s partially a function of the players just not getting it done, but it also seems like the coaching staff isn’t addressing at least one fairly obvious problem.

Someone needs to tell him the truth

Who is going to tell Coach K that point guard Greg Paulus is killing the team with terrible transition decisions, ill-advised threes and really bad defensive gambles? Not Wojo. After all, he *was* Paulus eight years ago. Not Chris Collins. He was Paulus ten years ago. When you include Quin Snyder, Tommy Amaker, Jeff Capel, and the unattainable model — Bobby Hurley — in the conversation, it becomes clear that Coach K has basically recruited the same guy again and again. Or perhaps he has just always been trying to recruit Bobby Hurley. Unfortunately for Duke, Paulus is no Bobby Hurley. He’s not even close.

Maybe you can be the next one; here’s a DVD called Mike Krzyzewski: Duke Basketball — Developmental Drills for Point Guards.

Fellow Duke haters, our cup runneth over

When Duke is struggling, there’s a disturbance in the Force across college basketball universe, and it ripples through the sporting press. On Sunday, The New York Times — which generally reserves its biased reporting to Democatic politics, the local teams and the Big East — published an fairly obviously gloating analysis of Duke’s loss on Sunday. Most sports journalists would ignore — or even criticize — the posturing of players during post-game press conference, but this article uses post-game trash talk as the platform for game analysis.

When told that the Mountaineers had just beaten a team with eight McDonald’s all-Americans, Alexander seemed startled. He arched his eyebrows and asked in a serious tone, “Who?”

Nearly every Blue Devil who played Saturday was a high school all-American. West Virginia has none. So after embarrassing the Blue Devils on the court by scoring 22 points in a 73–67 victory, Alexander and his underrecruited and underhyped teammates spent much of the postgame interviews in the locker room mocking the Duke mystique.

There are at least two things really wrong with these paragraphs. First of all, Joe Alexander knows who Duke’s All-Americans are. They probably whooped his butt in AAU games and took all the big prizes on the summer camp circuit. (I stand corrected. Apparently, Alexander grew up in Asia). By beating Duke in the tournament, Alexander earned some recognition — good for him — but why spend it on schoolyard taunts? Secondly, West Virginia in no way “embarrassed” Duke. The game was tight, both teams battled. An embarrassment could take many forms, but this game wasn’t one.

For the second consecutive year, the Blue Devils found out that their blue-blood history, recruiting pedigree and ESPN-fueled aura mean little in the N.C.A.A. tournament.

I highly doubt that Duke’s seeming nightly presence on ESPN has done anything to make other teams fear them. If anything, it makes them a bigger target, and it gave everyone in the country a chance to witness their ineptitude against North Carolina twice this year.

A much more sound analysis of the game can be found at The X’s and O’s of coaching, describing the various ways in which Huggy Bear’s offense exploited the propensity of Duke defenders to overcommit.

You probably can’t tell, but I’ve been worrying over my picks for the last couple of days.

My patented approach = tossed out the window

I’ve filled out 20+ brackets in my life, and each year I take basically the same tack: At least one #1 seed goes down relatively early; every Big 12 team represents. This mostly works, but it gets complicated because I also generally want Duke to flame out early (and with the greatest possible degree of humiliation), and I expect the Pac 10 teams to eat shit as well. History has not been kind to this approach.

Did I mention that I usually send Kansas to the Final Four at least as well? So yes, I usually lose whatever pool I’ve entered.

Instead, I predict that history will be made in a couple of ways

Of course, I still have Duke flaming out and Kansas winning, but I’ve twisted a couple of the other valves in my strategy engine:

1. All 4 #1 seeds make the Final Four. In every case, I couldn’t imagine any one of them losing. North Carolina is playing in their home state all the way through. Memphis is good, and they’re mad, and I don’t think they’re going to have to face Texas, so who are they going to lose to? Pittsburgh? Bob Knight thinks so, but I’m not so sure. Kansas is also good, and they’re focused, and I just hope that Bill Self has them ready to go. UCLA is the only team that, to me, seems vulnerable, if only because K-Love’s back may be hurt. Then again, Ben Howland is a wily bastard, and I wouldn’t put it past him to use a very minor injury to start messing with the minds of future opponents, a la Bill Belichick.
2. The Pac 10 performs. I dare you to look into the seasons that each of the teams played. They played good teams, and they performed pretty well. I’ve got USC in the Elite Eight. Crazy? Maybe. But they finished the season pretty strong, even though Wazzu obviously had their number. Which is why I have Wazzu advancing before losing a tight one to UNC.
3. The Big 12 fizzles. K-State is reeling, and I’ve got them losing to USC. Oklahoma looked awful quite a few times this year; I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see St. Joe’s stick it to them. I’ve got Texas losing to Stanford, only because I have a hard time seeing Damion James single-handedly dealing with the Lopez bros. On the other hand, I do have Baylor and A&M winning in the first round, and I’ve got Kansas winning it all. So it’s a minor fizzle.

Remember: You heard it here first. Probably not.

Man, this year is going to be good, not only because the teams are good, but because there are good stories out there. I tell myself that I don’t care about storylines, but at some point, I absorb them. I repeat them. They become part of my conversations. All the extraneous detail from those player mini-profiles being produced by CBS will become cement itself in my memory; like Mateen Cleaves’ from 2000 tournament: his storied high school career in Michigan, his drunken driving, the tough love of father-figure/coach Tom Izzo. Why do I remember this? Why do I care? Who knows?

As Dick Vitale would say: It’s March Madness, baby!

Let’s start at the top

Memphis is the rarely defeated team with killer athletes and a dickhead for a coach; North Carolina has player of the year Tyler Hansborough and the electrifying “Carolina break” (formerly known as the Kansas break), but it’s also got some glaring inconsistencies; UCLA has good balance, a great coach, good defense, and a stone killer in freshman Kevin Love; Kansas has experience, Darnell Jackson, and a recent history of flameouts [cf. Bucknell, Bradley] to overcome.

Mid-major blah blah blah

As usual, there are also a host of mid-major teams with chips on their shoulders. Butler had Florida on the ropes last year; this year, they have to travel to Birmingham as a #7 seed to play South Alabama (a #10 seed); if they win, they earn the right to play another fired-up southeastern team, Tennessee. And Gonzaga (#7) has to travel three time zones to play a team that’s driving three hours within its home state, Davidson (#10). It appears that the tournament committee is no longer amused by fundamentally sound, deeply experienced, singularly focused mid-major teams taking down high seeds in the early rounds. An interesting development.

Mid-major dis disclaimer

By dissing mid-majors, you think I’m playing with fire, but I’m not. Oh, no. I’ve already been burned. Twice. There’s nothing left to burn. I’m a blackened husk. It began in 2006; I wrote a long email about “the myth of mid-majors” to my friends. Then, I traveled to Austin, where I watched the the Jayhawks mail in a first-round game against Bucknell. Unfortunately, someone forgot to tell Bucknell that they were supposed to climb inside the envelope and disappear. To the delight of the entire bar from which I watched, they held off the Jayhawks and advanced. The next year, it was Bradley. I was in a hotel in Albuquerque. Alone. Agonizing.

Kansas & UNC earn a right to stay close to home

Both teams get to stay local, but each gets tested by an interesting foe. UNC doesn’t leave the state until they travel to San Antonio for the Final Four, but they need to beat Tennessee — a team that beat Memphis, a team with a legitimate claim to a #1 seed — before they get to San Antonio. Kansas tours the Midwest, heading to Omaha, then Detroit, but they need to beat Georgetown — a consistent, gritty team that is well-suited to stick it to the inconsistent Jayhawks — before cutting down the regional nets. Seems fair, mostly.

But does this obsessing over geography really matter? I don’t know. On a purely philosophical level, the champion has to win six games, period. Georgia won four games in three days to take the SEC tournament; they’d won a total of four games in two-plus months of conference play. The Fab 5 advanced to the Final Four through Atlanta and Lexington in 1992, Phoenix and Seattle in 1993.

On a historical note

Last year, Kansas got shipped two time zones westward and played what amounted to an away game against UCLA. I was there, surrounded by cologne-wearing, hair-gelled, Steve-Lavin-look-alike douchebags who roared with every impossible fadeaway prayer hit by Arron Afflalo (not misspelled), and every brass-balled pull-up j by Darren Collison. It has taken me some time to admit that UCLA may have been the better team, a fact that wasn’t made any more comforting by Bill Walton’s pod-rhapsody about the beauty of UCLA’s win [mp3]. The tournament committee’s calculus: Kansas wasn’t a clear #1 seed, so they needed to travel across the country to beat UCLA in their back yard in order to prove they belong in the Final Four. Which brings me to this year’s Memphis team.

This year, Memphis gets sent through the fire

Don’t you get the feeling that the tournament committee smells blood with Memphis? The Tigers were ranked #1 for a lot of the year, and they lost just ONE game all year. Except. Except they have the misfortune of playing in a weak conference, and their one loss happened to come at home against a team that got its ass handed to them by Texas. For this, they get sent to Houston for the South regional final, where they may in fact meet up with Texas. (Is there any way that the crowd won’t be heavily pro-Horn?) The tournament committee is clearly saying: Show us what you’ve got, Derrick Rose and Joey Dorsey. Show up what you got, John Calipari! [Here it is again. John Cheney threatens to kill John Calipari. Thank you, YouTube]. Who knows? Maybe it’s a sort of karmic payback for Dorsey referring to himself as Goliath, with Greg Oden as David during last year’s tournament. Dude, if you’re Goliath, then survive this rock-slinging gauntlet.

Rick Barnes can recruit, but can the dude coach?

Two things I noticed about Barnes during the Big 12 final: (1) The guy either can’t consistently set up a decent play off a dead ball, or his players just can’t execute one. I find it hard to believe that DJ Augustin, one of the most talented players I’ve seen in a long time, can’t execute a play. So I’m left with the impression that Barnes is just a bad game-planner. Too many times, his team came out of a timeout with some crap play that resulted in a bad shot or turnover. Augustin can often bail Barnes out by hitting lots of bad shots, but how far can this take them, really? (2) Even worse, Barnes rides his stars, and they suffer against deeper teams. Augustin played all 40 minutes in the Big 12 tournament final and he averaged 39+ for the season. He finished with 20 points, scoring only 2 in the second half and missing all nine shots that he took. AJ Abrams is no help; he can spot up and drain threes, but he’s my size and needs to run off a bunch of screens to get an open shot, and therefore he does little to ease the burden on Augustin.

Ol Roy on the horizon for the Jayhawks

While I love all of this, I’m also focused on the prospects of my team. To paraphrase a once-great Kansan, I could (mostly) give a shit about storylines. As a Kansas fan, I’m primarily worried about Portland State breaking new ground as a #16 seed. Let’s take care of that one. Then I’m worried about UNLV; then Clemson; then Georgetown. Then: Ol Roy?

In the Final Four, there’s the potential for some great, great match-ups, which I’ll detail in another post. Too much needs to happen between now and then.

The Bay Area: Where Baron happens. Photo: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Living in the Bay Area, I’ve watched Baron Davis and Don Nelson breathe life into the corpse of the Golden State Warriors by playing fast, loose, undisciplined, unpredictable basketball. When they’re clicking, the Warriors are invigorating and life-affirming. Nellie doesn’t burden the team with structure — they don’t really run an “offense” or play “defense” in the traditional senses — instead, they rely on the players’ abilities to improvise, pull their opponents out of their own structures, and wear them down with running and gunning.

Playground electicity

When the Warriors are good, they’re like the best playground basketball team you could ever imagine. What makes them all the more exciting is that their roster lacks key traditional dimensions associated with successful teams. They compete without the traditional man-mountain in the low-post to take on Shaq, Yao, Duncan, or Pau; instead, Andris Biedrins, who has very little in the way of a J and doesn’t ever try to play facing the basket, uses his quickness and hops to rebound, follow, and generally surprise opponents with his ability to keep Warrior possessions alive. (Check out where The Wages of Wins ranked Biedrins for the 2006–2007 season) Spoiler: He’s #1 on the team, with 11.7 to Baron’s 9.7.

On the guard front, Baron and Stephen Jackson and Monta Ellis don’t really run an offense as much as they weave through defenses in perpetual one-on-fives, driving to the rim, dishing to teammates. Baron has a (admittedly deserved) reputation as a shoot-first point guard, but he defers to others when they’re hot and his teammates seem to feed off his energy. Monta, more of a two-guard than a point, somehow can’t shoot the three, but he can blow by just about anyone and he’s one of the better finishers in the league right now. 6’9″ Al Harrington is more reliable from behind the arc than he is with his back to the basket; Wages of Wins doesn’t think much of him, but it’s hard to deny the problems that he creates for defenses when he’s in the game. Stephen Jackson — Stack Jack, as Baron calls him — is the glue; when he’s in the game, everyone is better. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to play with him? He’s got everyone’s back.

Darnell can’t do it alone. Photo: Nick Krug, Lawrence Journal-World.

Contrast the Warriors with the other team that I follow, the Kansas Jayhawks. Where the Warriors are dangerous, inscrutable, fierce competitors who save their best for big games, the Jayhawks have been the opposite: soft, predictable, vulnerable when the game is on the line. Where the Warriors have at least three guys who thrive in pressure situations — Baron, Stack Jack, and Harrington — the Jayhawks have eight guys who could start on any team in America, but not one who wants to take over a game.

Last week, I trekked to Oracle with Justin, Mara, and Lynne (Lynne? Blog?), and we watched the Warriors wear down the Celtics and, in the final moments, drive a dagger into their hearts. Three days later, I watched the Jayhawks wilt in the final moments against a very, very fired up Oklahoma State team.

Part of the problem is that Kansas simply doesn’t have reliable offensive weapons; another part is that teams love beating the Hawks, and each Jayhawk opponent is playing its biggest game of the season. College basketball is different in that regard. Message boards don’t rejoice each time the Lakers lose a game, but oh how people love to see teams like Kansas (Google: “kansas” + “choke”), Duke (Google: “duke” + “choke”), and Kentucky (Google: “kentucky” + “choke”) lose. Which is fine. If people didn’t really react this way, the wins wouldn’t be as much fun.

The root of the Hawks’ problem is offensive, though. The Warriors are stocked with guys who can create their own shot, but Kansas has to rely on Mario Chalmers and Sherron Collins (and, to some extent, Russell Robinson) to break down defenses and spring Brandon Rush on the perimeter or Darrell Arthur inside. Like the Warriors, the Hawks don’t run a structured offense with interchangeable parts; they rely on athleticism. This lack of dimension is easily exploited by teams who effectively pressure the Hawks’ guards, and who run big guys out to trap the ball at the three-point line. Add to this mix the fact that Kansas guards cannot seem to defend opposing guards, and there’s no question that they’ve got some big problems to solve before mid-March.

If you’re 35-ish and you’ve followed basketball, you probably recall the virtues of the pre–David Stern NBA, the simpler times when corporate logos were incidental, local heroes more accessible, and the entire sport more truly fan-friendly. Stern always talks about fan-friendliness, but his NBA is a Product and the “friendliness” seems as produced as two-for-one chalupa night. Back in the day, a young Kansas City Kings fan could attend Kings practices at a local high school (for free), and afterward mingle with players like Ernie Grunfeld, Phil Ford, and Otis Birdsong. It goes without saying that most fans would take that over a free chalupa any night.

Red Hot and Rollin recaptures the simplicity and beauty of those times. Edited by Matt Love, it compiles a variety of recollections of the Rip-City-era Portland Trailblazers, and includes a DVD of a truly amazing document of the time — Don Zavin’s Fast Break. Zavin’s film is astounding in many regards. Primarily, it’s a bittersweet meditation on a lost NBA — the League before each player became a corporation unto himself, and before the entire visual experience of watching an NBA became NASCAR-ized with layer upon layer of corporate logos. Moreover, it’s possible that there is no team in the history of the NBA that is as antithetical to Stern’s NBA than the Blazers of 1976–77: a small market team without a marketable superstar, led by a vegetarian, Marxist, long-haired, Abe-Lincoln-beard-wearing center who stuttered when he was nervous.

The form of the film could be called “stoner verite.” With a soundtrack that is basically an extended tabla jam, it’s a documentary in the tradition of, say, Endless Summer with the crucial difference is that it’s unburdened by Endless Summer’s linear narrative and omniscient narration. I won’t give it all away, but it wanders through some amazingly intimate glimpses into the Blazers’ ecstatic run to the NBA title, for instance ...

This is former Blazers star Bill Walton on a classic Falcon racer. After the Blazers won the NBA championship, Walton took a bike trip up the Oregon coast, and scenes from this trip are interspersed throughout the movie. Again, could anyone imagine ANY current NBA star going on a bike trip alone during the off-season? Where are the entourages and Escalades and hotties? It’s also sort of amazing to see an NBA superstar engaging in an activity that non-superstars find enjoyable. Where are the strip clubs and casinos, the handguns and hot tubs? (You can’t really see in this photo, but the bike’s color is Falcon’s tell-tale powder blue. Awesome.)

Yes, this is Dr. Jack Ramsay, and yes, his pants appear to be some kind of psychedelic red-white-and-blue crazy quilt. Look out, Larry Brown.

This is actually the third time in the movie that Bill Walton ended up in a mosh-pit of fans. The fact that this would never, EVER happen today is part of what’s so bittersweet about Fast Break.

Some related stuff: A classic Time feature of Walton as a UCLA senior from 1974 called “Basketball’s Vegetarian Tiger,” a nice review by TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott (a Blazer fan) that includes a quick interview with someone who worked on Fast Break, and of course, you’ve got to see this one: Walton’s epic dunk over Kareem in the Western Conference Finals. [YouTube]

The Warriors playoff ride is over, the Jazz’s ride will come to an end sometime in the next week or so, but Baron’s dunk over Kirilenko will live on FOREVER. Let’s just sit back and appreciate it for a minute. (It’s much better live).

Baron elevates and elevates; he begins his leap before Kirilenko and is still going up as Kirilenko descends. Mind-bending. To his credit, Kirilenko said after the game that it was an awesome dunk and that “at least I got to be on the poster.” Also to Kirilenko’s credit, he didn’t foul Baron; if anything, it was an offensive foul. More on the stupid NBA officiating later.

As impressive as the dunk itself was Baron’s stomach flash after he landed. Not really sure where this came from. The elementary school playground? An And1 mixtape? Wherever it came from, it was a stroke of genius in that particular setting — Friday night, Oakland Coliseum, Western Conference Semi-final blowout. You could practically feel the Bay Area elevate that moment.

Again, haven’t seen this before, outside of a playground game in the Panhandle, but Stephen Jackson appeared to be dusting something off Baron’s shoulders. The remains of the rim? Some magic dust from David Blaine?

Incidentally, the best picture of all was not taken off my TV, but by an AP photographer from the other end of the court. It captures Baron as he descends from the dunk.

I really did believe

Like everyone in the NBA universe has already said, the Warriors were hugely fun to watch this post-season, and it was sad to see them go. It would have been nice to see more scrappy, inspired Matt Barnes moments; more Stephen Jackson daggers; more Baron Davis PERIOD. I’ve always liked Baron, but this post-season he had it all working: his fast-break vision, his high-arcing three-point bombs, his cross-over, his ability to get in the lane and dish out to open shooters. (More of Baron’s finest career moments on YouTube.) It was nice to see Monta get his game back in games 4 and 5, and Biedrins had some really strong moments, by which I mean some ridiculous dunks and a few improbable free throw conversions.

Yes, the Jazz deserved it

At the same time, I admired Utah by the end of the series. Jerry Sloan is an asshole, but he proved in this series that he is an asshole who knows what to do with talented players. The 3-D guard play (Deron Williams, Dee Brown and Derek Fisher) was unexpectedly solid and impressive. Memo and Boozer were SportsCenter fixtures throughout the season, but I was surprised at how easily Memo was taken out of his game by the quicker Warriors. I was similarly amazed at how great Boozer has become. The guy rose to the occasion, took lots of big shots, frequently changed the momentum of the game and was by any measure a badass among badasses. To say those things about a former Duke player requires a lot of pride-swallowing on my part.

In contrast to the uneven, streaky Warriors, every Jazz player was tenacious and gritty while exhibiting a professionalism and character that has been missing from the Western Conference playoffs this year. Why are so many players, especially Warriors, continually trying to draw charges? Play defense. Draw the charge when it comes to you, but don’t try to substitute actual defense with stepping in front of a player as they go to the basket. Stephen Jackson! Dude! You were huge in the Dallas series, but against Utah you took yourself out of the game by trying to take charges and then getting pissed that the refs didn’t call them! You know this: the refs are not going to give you those calls when the only thing you’re doing is trying to draw them. Same goes for Barnes and Harrington.

UPDATE: Henry Abbott of TrueHoop has some thoughts on this very subject:

There are a lot of fouls called on players defending against the drive. What occurs to me more and more is that it’s smart to do the whole “draw the charge” flop onto the butt, and only in part because you might draw the charge. A bigger reason is that if your hands are up, and you’re jumping, and there’s contact, you have NO chance of getting the call, and it’s likely a foul on you.

An interesting point; perhaps it’s all part of an effort to enable slashing and to complicate physical defensive play. On the other hand, superstars seem to get calls even if the defense seems to be legit. Baron obviously drew a lot of charges and hacks, which I think is evidence of a huger problem: THE F%@$$%$ING CONSPIRATORIAL OFFICIATING.

What the f%$#@%$?

It really seems like the referees go into each game with an agenda. Like, the Jazz got every call in game one. Why? Did they want to even things up from the previous series when it seemed like there were some quick whistles on Josh Howard? The lopsidedness of the calls make you wonder things like that. I mean, even Stephen Jackson had some legit beefs that night! Then in Game 5, Baron got pretty much every call. He literally ran over Deron Williams a couple of times, no whistles. When Williams would so much as touch him, whistle. Did the NBA want to prolong the series? Did they want to give Baron the superstar foul exemption?

UPDATE: And don’t even get me started on the role of the NBA front office in all this. If the suspensions of Diaw and Stoudemire end up costing the Suns the series, I’m going to ... protest. Somehow. How can the NBA be so bad at interpreting their own rules? Every sport in the world functions effectively by implementing the spirit of its rules, not the letter. Why go by the letter in this case? Stoudemire and Diaw didn’t escalate anything; they didn’t incite further mayhem; what gives?

In spite of it all, great players make great playoffs. Thanks Warriors, and go Suns.

SI’s Jack McCallum just published an article about the Suns-Spurs series that includes an intriguing peek into the mind of Robert Horry. As every NBA fan knows, Horry’s blood runs cold during the playoffs, evidenced by his penchant for hitting dagger-like three-point bombs and his nickname, “Big Shot Rob.” (NBA.com has a page dedicated to Horry’s big shots, including commentary and video). But what’s he really like?

McCallum’s insight into this comes from the Game 1 collision between Steve Nash and Tony Parker.

An air of civility surrounded Game 1, an atmosphere that grew out of the mutual respect the franchises have for each other. There were Duncan and Suns veteran Kurt Thomas sumo wrestling for position down low, then patting each other on the back during a break in play. There was Nash, unaware that he was soon to suffer a TKO, bending down in concern as Parker lay on the court after their collision, a kinder response than Parker got from teammate Robert Horry, who said, “Get up, that’s not even your blood.”

Funny, that’s exactly what I was thinking when I saw Parker writhing around. One thing is clear: Nash and Horry are both gamers.

[Thx, Henry]