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Excellent Deadspin post about the undisciplined and occasionally crooked world of NBA scorekeeping. It’s based on the story of a guy named Alex who once kept score for the Grizzlies, and it includes this gem about how Nick Van Exel (who wasn’t known for his passing, let’s say) racked up 23 assists one night:

A little more than a year later, with Nick Van Exel and the Lakers in town, Alex decided to act out. “I was sort of disgruntled,” he says. “I loved the game. I don’t want the numbers to be meaningless, and I felt they were becoming meaningless because of how stats were kept. So I decided, I’m gonna do this totally immature thing and see what happens. It was childish. The Lakers are in town. We’re gonna lose. Fuck it. He’s getting a shitload of assists.” If you were to watch the game today, you’d see some “comically bad assists.” Alex’s fingerprints are all over the box score. He gave Van Exel everything. “Van Exel would pass from the top of the three-point line to someone on the wing who’d hold the ball for five seconds, dribble, then make a move to the basket. Assist, Van Exel.”

26 August 2009 | No comments

Kevin Garnett / What can you say now?

10 December 2008 in basketball | 3 comments

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!”

This guy must be someone.

18 June 2008 in basketball | No comments

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.)

Ideas / NBA Season Ticket, the trash-talk edition

11 June 2008 in basketball, ideas | 2 comments

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.

Kobe Bryant & Kevin Garnett exchange pleasantries

“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?

Warriors / Drama, elevation, a posterization, terrible officiating

17 May 2007 in basketball, san francisco, visual | No comments

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.

Kansas basketball / Post-Julian thoughts

10 April 2007 in basketball, kansas basketball | No comments

Julian Wright is taking the opportunity of a lifetime, and who can blame him? He brought enthusiasm and energy to every game, contributed hugely in many of the big wins in the last couple of years (cf. these dunks during the Florida game and this epic 33-point performance at MU), and showed enough skill and potential to be very highly regarded by NBA scouts. Who wouldn’t seize a chance to be financially secure, and to play in the NBA? The future is rarely certain in these situations, as these guys can attest. Best of luck to you, JuJu.

The KU-sports-related Internet is (predictably) thrashing around with the news, and the emotions range from hurt to happy, fatalistic to optimistic. And who can blame them, really? The last four years have been tough on Kansas basketball, so tough that the mention of certain names — Roy, Micah, Padgett, Galindo, Giddens, CJ, etc — can provoke pangs and spasms of hurt and guilt. I guess Julian gets added to the list now, though personally I think he’s ready and I’m happy for him. Most of the commenters at the end of this story feel otherwise.

Julian’s departure is complicated, of course, by the fact that he pledged to stay following the loss to UCLA. This CBS reporter was really peeved that Julian reconsidered his prospects after the season ended, which seems kinda silly to me. Did it really take Julian’s change of heart to communicate to him that big-time college sports are bittersweet, unpredictable, and perpetually compromised by the twin prospects of major, life-changing injuries and major, life-changing paydays?

Whatever happens, I think that Julian will eventually have a good NBA career. Ryan Greene of kusports.com compares Julian to Shawn Marion, and I see the resemblance as well. That said, he would be way better off with established, veteran-heavy teams like Phoenix (who wouldn’t?) or Chicago, where he’d be able to learn and adjust out of the spotlight. Career-endangering teams like Memphis, Atlanta or (once again) Sacramento will give him too much responsibility too soon, though he may be able to survive that either way. Long term, he’s a Western Conference player who will come off the bench, get his 12 and 8, continue do all the little stuff that makes him great (deflecting passes, setting other guys up, keeping offensive rebounds alive), and be a good team guy to boot.

The bright sides

Looking forward to next November, here are three scenarios that reflect my thinking on the remaining possibilities for early entries and (yikes, not again!) transfers.

Without Wright: Actually may be better. Like Drew Gooden’s early exit, I actually think there’s quite a significant bright side here. Julian’s athletic ability and talent require that he play a major role in the offense, which results in fewer opportunities for the talents of other players — Mario’s drives and shots, Sherron’s shot and drive, Rush’s entire offensive arsenal, Shady’s sweet moves inside 12 feet. When Gooden left, Collison’s McHale-like low-post presence and Hinrich’s Stockton-like ability to make the right decision on every fast break ended up providing a system more stable than the one focused on Gooden’s always athletic, sometimes erratic presence. Without Julian at the 4, Shady starts and gets more time. This means that the line-up gets bulkier without losing that much in the way of speed. They’ll miss Julian’s explosiveness and shot-blocking, but they gain Shady’s sweet touch and better ability to (more dependably) make plays while posting up. If Rush is still around (not likely, so see the bullet point below), I tend to think that this line-up may even be more dangerous than if Wright had stuck around.
Without Wright and Rush: Lots of re-jiggering, lots of uncertainty. Losing Rush is a much bigger deal than losing Wright, obviously. He’s the team’s best on-the-ball defender; he became the go-to scorer during the games in San Jose, and he can stroke it. Unfortunately for him, he’s not the explosive athlete that Julian is, and scouts are not evaluating his draftability in the crystal-ballish terms of upside and potential. His capacity is known, apparently, and therefore it has limits in the eyes of scouts. Does this mean he can’t become, say, a Bruce Bowen type of player? Heck no. In fact, I think he’d fit in really well with the type of team who would draft him in the 20’s or so. And this is probably what will happen, so it all works out for the best, for him. If money and academics (which are a major hassle for him) were not issues, he’s in a great position to thrive next season. He fits into Self’s system really well; he really began to shine at the end of the season; another season would really give him a chance to refine his dribble-drive and his outside shot. But this is not an ideal world, and barring the entry of the entire UNC team or an injury that prevents him from competing in the pre-draft camps, I suspect he’s gone. Good luck to him.
So. How do the Hawks replace Brandon? Who becomes the stopper? Who takes over the offense at the end of games? Who attracts the other team’s defenders whenever he’s on the floor? I’m not really sure about any of this. A couple of things are certain, though: This will be a seasoned, capable team. They’ve been through a lot, beaten Kevin Durant twice, won two Big 12 tournaments, etc. Moreover, they’ll be without a superstar like Brandon and Julian, and this — weirdly — might make them much more like Self’s Illinois teams — gritty, hungry, scrappy and dangerous in the tournament.
Without Wright, Rush, and Collins: !@$#%$#@*&. Almost too painful to consider. How many times did I text the words “Thank God for Sherron” during the Big 12 season? How many times did he single-handedly change the pace and momentum of a game with a vicious drive to the basket? He’s not ready to jump to the League, but rumor has it that he wants to be closer to home. But would he really want to sit out a year, play for a school in a mid-major conference, give up a chance to play in a Final Four, give up a chance to play on national television for 15 – 20 or 20 – 25 games next year? I really hope not. Man, that would hurt.

Basketball / Hibachi!

18 January 2007 in basketball | No comments

I’m planning to write a manifesto regarding celebrations in professional sports — Are they ever appropriate? I think so. But when? Where? How should they be regulated? All good questions. As I was looking for evidence of different styles of celebration, I found myself reading a lot about Washington Wizards guard Gilbert Arenas. In the past, he celebrated made baskets by exclaiming, “Hibachi!” In the Wikipedia entry for “hibachi”, he is quoted as explaning it thusly, “You know, a hibachi grill gets real hot. That’s what my shot’s like, so I’ve been calling it that: Welcome to the hibachi!’”

The NYT noted that he also shouts “Guaranteed, yea-ah!” or “Let’s make it hot-aaah” to punctuate a basket. Add “Quality shots!” to this list, after Kobe claimed that he takes too many bad ones.

All of which prompts me to exclaim: I love this game! Arenas reminds me of weirdo 70’s baseball players, like Bill “Spaceman” Lee (claimed his marijuana use made him impervious to bus fumes while jogging to work at Fenway Park) and Mark Fidrych (talked to himself while on the mound). His voluminous Wikipedia page contains dozens of anecdotes, and links to many more. He has also inspired many excellent entries in Washington Post sports columns and blogs, including a classic: “Gilbert Arenas: I’m Not Quirky,” which includes this scorcher:

When [Arenas] was in Golden State, he once broke into Chris Mills’s house, stole his throwback jersey, then wore it on the team plane to upset him. “That’s not weird. That’s just funny,” Arenas said, laughing to himself.

Hibachi!