The Second Arrangement: Recent Episodes
Kelly Dwyer
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This is not Shelby, this is Mimi, on our ride home. Click on the podcast to hear Shelby. Also I do not have a neck tattoo but an unruly, arugula-styled spool of hair.
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Here is how to find the book.
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Thanks for listening!
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More NBA teams, graded. The podcast signs off after I provide a lengthy “goodbye.”
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Some NBA teams, graded. Then the podcast cuts off abruptly.
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Thank you for listening, man.
The Second Arrangement is a reader-supported publication, luckily it doesn’t cost much to support me:
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Talking NBA playoffs. Free for everyone to listen to, consider subscribing!
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In between games I read Rolling Stone’s list of the worst musical career moves and recorded a podcast about it.
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Podcasting over the playoffs, the Tornado Drive, and Kenny.
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Hey howdy haven’t talked in a while. What’s the closest you’ve Kramer’d a car?
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Pat Riley is a little too much, sometimes.
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You good?
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Look at this amazing painting.
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(Never Too Much podcast: Blow Pop flavors, ranked.)
Thank the Nets and Sixers for not being precious.
Buncha babies before the trade deadline, afraid to hand the the other one a division title, a Finals berth, a championship.
Isn’t that what they have games for? Isn’t that why we do trades? Babies!
Morey and Sean Marks got past it, finally. James Harden to Philly. Seth Curry and the suddenly-available Ben Simmons to Brooklyn plus the Nets get a pair of first-round picks (2022 and 2027) and Andre Drummond. Philly gets Paul Millsap.
Win-win, but the Nets won.
Ben Simmons would have an awfully good time shutting Harden down in a playoff game. Kyrie Irving would grin at earning fouls four, five and six against the 76ers’ leading scorer, Joel Embiid, who wants to dunk Kevin Durant right out of the playoffs because deep in his heart Embiid knows Durant is the only one who truly understands social media, and this bothers Joel.
Beef isn’t complicated, but stews tend to blend. You don’t think you like tomatoes or mush carrots or disappearing potatoes or translucent onions but give it a minute and a loaf of bread and you’re in love again. Brooklyn and Philadelphia have only begun to lend depth to the rivalry.
Don’t call Morey a genius, or Marks anything close. They got together and did what they were supposed to do, which is get us back to basketball.
WHO THE CHAMPS GOT
Serge Ibaka may not cover the space between the ground and the rim as well as he used to but every bit helps. Donte DiVincenzo’s slot in the rotation is the price to pay for needing to win now. Ibaka is not the perfect Brook Lopez replacement but that’s not the point, the point was grabbing what was available at the store with a coupon that was about to become paper.
It’s a noble bid. If Ibaka can’t play, you wonder about his ability to linger in Mike Budenholzer’s rotation a little too long. Also Grayson Allen’s impending increase in minutes is going to try and ruin the playoffs for us.
Adding Daniel Theis (whom Boston snared) would have been nice, but Milwaukee has yet to add its first German player.
PISTONS GET
Marvin Bagley III. Rolling one lottery flyer (Josh Jackson) over for another is perfect.
I don’t look to make Bagley a martyr but Vivek Ranadivé’s Kings are an oral history waiting to happen. Bagley’s stroke is good, he scores and rebounds and doesn’t turn it over. He’s going to do well on a really good team someday.
For now he’s on the Pistons, which tells you that the GMs on the really good teams are content to let this nearly-23 year-old bounce around a few more years. It takes time to sweat out all the Kings Poison.
RAPTORS GET
Thaddeus Young. Bloody b**s.
Pairing a first-rounder with Goran Dragic just to duck under the luxury tax feels like a lot, but there are a lot of books to settle in the rumble of a recent championship season. Toronto already has enough No. 20-ish picks already, it’s time for someone born in 1988 to move a few bodies around.
Seven straight wins and Thad Young. Bloody, b**s.
NETS GET
A championship if they don’t blow it.
The Nets won and won and won. I don’t care if BKN was 13-3 with Harden/Durant/Kyrie, that was 13 hamstring pulls ago.
James Harden will be awesome in Philly but at the moment he was surly and superfluous and throbbing in half his quadrants. Brooklyn dealt him for need and saved themselves from paying James Harden $54 million a year.
Ben Simmons covers all angles, Kevin Durant is the greatest thing I’ve ever seen, Kyrie Irving was always going to outlast NYC’s mandates.
Seth Curry only has to shoot, not make plays. The Nets retained Patty Mills. Also:
Brooklyn will receive Philadelphia's unprotected 2022 first-round pick, with the right to defer it to 2023, as well as a top-8-protected 2027 first-round pick. That pick would remain top-8 protected in 2028, and will turn into two second-round picks -- and $2 million in cash -- if it doesn't convey in either season, sources said.
Ben Simmons has so much time. By April this trade deadline will feel like it took place in 2017.
Now, go whup Philadelphia’s ass in the playoffs.
KINGS GET
Donte DiVincenzo in a Kings uniform might be a blur, done in April, doesn’t matter, the Kings are running for No. 8.
The seed! Not the eighth pick.
With rookie Davion Mitchell bumping butts with De’Aaron Fox, Donte shares minutes and intermittent playmaking responsibility with new addition and All-Around Talented Dude Domantas Sabonis. Not enough to explain whiffing on 2018’s Bagley selection, but at least Donte’s shooting marks roll back to 0-0 on a brand new team.
Sacto also acquired Trey Lyles and Josh Jackson but, again, you thought these individuals were already on the Sacramento Kings.
MAVERICKS GET
Dāvis Bertāns and Spencer Dinwiddie. Once more I assure you these two were not Dallas Mavericks members until Thursday.
The 28-year old Dinwiddie is owed $36.85 million over the next two seasons, he gets to the line half as much as he did in the campaign before his ACL tear, whatever, he’s perfect for the Mavs.
It’s a lot of money not have to play Frank Ntilikina or the mercurial Trey Burke, but good insurance for 2022-23 as Jalen Brunson hits free agency. Dinwiddie in a full training camp trafficking dumb ideas with Jason Kidd could be a lot of fun.
Paying the 29-year old Bertāns $16 million next year and $17 million in 2023-24 is less desirable, even if he will provide Doncic with a few playoff bangers. If Bertāns works 62 games in 2023-24 his 2024-25 contract ($16 million) becomes fully guaranteed, so it’s not like they’re going to be playing this guy in Year Two.
SPURS GET
A first-round pick from the ascendant Raptors, currently slated for No. 20, in exchange for Thaddeus Young.
The Spurs will also receive Boston’s first-round pick, top-four protected, slated for No. 18. Boston sends Josh Richardson (9.7 points in 24.7 minutes with Boston, 39.7 from deep) and the 22-year old Romeo Langford (not so much) to Texas. Boston and Toronto wanted out of the tax, the Spurs will pay Richardson over $12.1 million next year, Langford over $5.6 million.
For this, San Antonio does not pay for Derrick White’s prime (at three years, nearly $54 million).
Goran Dragic was a Spur, briefly, he will be bought out. San Antonio also gave up on Drew Eubanks, Drewbanks, who was waived by Toronto.
I hate San Antonio for never playing Thaddeus Young and then for not sending him to the Bulls for the rights to let the 7-2 Tom Dore have his way with the jamoke who threw bricks at the Wiener’s Circle:
SIXERS GET
James Harden but at age 32.
There weren’t any better offers out there. Simmons and Rivers and Embiid would never align. Bradley Beal wasn’t available and you wouldn’t want that contract anyway. Damian Lillard wasn’t budging from his extension in Portland and neither he nor Beal were ever MVPs. Harden and Embiid is an impossible pick and roll for opponents to do anything with, even while the pair figures out footwork.
The playoffs are in a few months, by spring a healthier James Harden could begin to approximate his MVP-level brilliance. Maybe then those celebrating as if the Sixers just traded for Harden-the-MVP-candidate will gloat in our face, earn the call, make the free throw.
All aggressive, Philly-like. Beginning to understand this deal for Philadelphia.
It’s the Moses Malone trade, but flipped, like they already had MVP Moses before acquiring an aging Julius Erving to put them over the top.
So the Sixers biffed Ben Simmons, it’s not like that guy didn’t totally suck. Embiid and Harden in a possessions contest with a clock will be tough s**t to overcome four times in seven.
Losing Drummond hurts, but Doc Rivers absolutely is the coach who would run Paul Millsap important minutes at reserve center in the year 2022. Daryl Morey suits his personnel.
James Harden will play for over $47.3 million next season and then he will sign a four-year, $223 million extension. He gives Joel Embiid his best shot at a championship and Daryl Morey believes his front office can keep this going with Embiid and Harden combining to earn $100 million a season.
With roster spots yet to fill, and Thybulle and Tyrese Maxey’s contracts to extend. With Tobias Harris owed $77 million over two more seasons, listen, I’m going to enjoy watching all this money switch hands to the side of the table that does the most.
Now, go whup Brooklyn’s ass in the playoffs.
WIZARDS GET
What don’t the Wizards get.
Montrezl Harrell, Dāvis Bertāns, Dinwiddie, out.
Kristaps Porzingis in. I don’t know when KP will play next but I do know he didn’t begin conceptualizing his role on an empty stomach:
Porzingis averages 19 and 7.7 rebounds in 30 minutes but his knee sucks. Maybe the Wizards are trying to get Bradley Beal to opt out.
Washington saved some money this season (trading starter Aaron Holiday to Phoenix for nothing) but Porzingis is owed $33.8 million next season and $36 million in 2023-24.
The Wizards also picked up 33-year old Ish Smith, who is not as good anymore and owed over $4.7 million next year.
This is Ish’s second time with the Wizards. He has been on a dozen different NBA teams and that is a record, tied with Tony Massenburg, Chucky Brown, Jim Jackson, and Joe Smith, who are all newsletters written by Kelly Dwyer.
Additionally, I hope Ish Smith breaks the record, because he is my height.
Charlotte also gets rumbly, 20-year old center Vernon Carey. Performed 23 games in two NBA seasons (but it feels like you sat through every one of them).
INDIANA GETS
Spry, bespectacled center/forward Jalen Smith. This guy is fun.
The Suns drafted Smith when he was 20 and understandably ignored his rookie year during a title bid. What’s less coherent is the move to decline Smith’s 2022-23 option not long after that rookie season ended. I understand the Suns often do this,
but this was nuts.
Also, Indiana, you gave up Torrey Craig.
Smith rebounds and crushes around the rim and blocks shots and doesn’t foul a lot. Doesn’t hit threes but tries them and makes three-quarters of his free throws, this is what we call a “burgeoning stroke.”
In four starts with Phoenix this season Smith contributed 17.2 points and 9.5 rebound-averages, blocked four shots, two assists, three turnovers, Indiana, sign him up.
CLIPPERS GET
Rodney Hood. Once a trade deadline, someone has to get Rodney Hood.
It’s all good in the nope not going to.
SUNS GET
Depth: Aaron Holiday is nice, a good fourth guard on a team that doesn’t need one, and Torrey Craig is Torrey Craig. More, good, players.
GM James Jones biffed the Jalen Smith situation but it’s so, so tough to argue with a roster like this.
CELTICS GET
Out of the luxury tax, but also somehow into Derrick White. And didn’t do anything stupid like trade a Celtic-for-life.
White is great, he doesn’t crush from deep but he’ll throw himself around for you and keep it tidy defensively. This is a massive pickup for Boston.
The team also dumped Celtic-for-never Dennis Schröder in exchange for Daniel Theis, a burly addition to a top-three defense that suddenly doesn’t have to worry about covering for Romeo Langford or, less occasionally, Josh Richardson. Theis is under contract for two more years after 2021-22, nearly $18 million total.
Boston also dealt Enes Freedom because he kept showing up on all the TV shows Brad Stevens likes.
HORNETS GET
Montrezl Harrell.
Yes. Winners of the trade deadline.
Bill Russell wasn’t helping this team play defense, might as well shoot for video game stats.
VIDEO GAME SLANDER
I apologize for my cheap crack about De’Aaron Fox in the last episode, I’m sure there is plenty to learn from video games.
To aid in my quest I’ve subscribed to a channel that plays NBA video games from 30 years ago alongside era-appropriate RnB and hip-hop.
BULLS THOUGHTS
They are in the podcast.
I do have other thoughts. Retire Dennis Rodman’s number.
Jae Crowder has been in the NBA for almost a decade, 713 contests, still has fewer career rebounds than Rodman’s 199 games as a Bull.
Of the 420 NBA draft picks dating back to 2015, only two of them (Sabonis, KAT) have more rebounds than “Dennis Rodman as a Chicago Bull.”
Top-five jersey in history, let alone sales. Retire it.
REDUCTIVE POETRY REGARDING LAKERS, KNICKS
When LeBron runs your show:
James had a hand in Los Angeles' roster construction in the offseason, consulting with Rob Pelinka, Lakers vice president of basketball operations and general manager, on everything from the Westbrook trade with the Washington Wizards to free-agent signings, sources told ESPN.
When sidling up with Thibodeau:
“From my understanding, Thibs didn’t want [Cam Reddish] and they did it anyway,’’ said an NBA source who has been in contact with Knicks brass.
It is derision, mockery, you will sow:
BEST PASSIVE/AGGRESSIVE BITS FROM THE ALL-STAR DRAFT
This is exactly when Kevin Durant realized he was going to be making a statement:
Kevin Durant dryly noting Joel Embiid as “the leading scorer in the league, right now.”
I enjoyed LeBron James calling Giannis Antetokounmpo the try-“hardest-playing player in All-Star history.” My paraphrase.
As an NBA blogger from ten years ago, I took offense to LeBron referring to DeMar DeRozan and only DeMar DeRozan as one of his “favorite players in the NBA.”
On the off chance that you do not know how the draft turned out, here it is, watch it in full without spoilers.
The full rosters.
ROCKET 88
What’s better than this song?
If you enjoyed this, consider paying very little money for a lot of NBA basketball:
Thank you for reading, and listening!
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Gregg Popovich took over the San Antonio Spurs at about this point in the season in 1996, replacing Bob Hill as head coach. The firing was a surprise, many expected Hill ousted after San Antonio’s unappealing playoff exit the spring before, stringing him along for 18 extra (David Robinson-less) games the next season felt a little off.
The Spurs lost a lot, drafted Tim Duncan, and 25 years on Popovich is 21 wins away from supplanting Don Nelson (who first dragged Popovich onto an NBA bench) as the NBA’s all-time leader in head coaching wins.
Because of the relationship, and a natural unease with self-analysis, Pop’s been succinct.
Of course, Duncan came awfully close to leaving the Spurs in 2000 as a free agent, after only three seasons with Popovich.
Like, what if?
Too often the re-telling of Tim Duncan’s trip to Orlando includes actual magic, landing Duncan on the same team as Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, but the Magic only had two max salary slots.
With Tim in Orlando, McGrady wasn’t taking Duncan’s salary position in San Antonio, not after the greeting Benny the Bull gave T-Mac in Chicago:
The Bulls rolled out the red-velvet carpet. They met McGrady at the airport with a three-piece band, the Luvabulls, mascot Benny the Bull and fans chanting, ‘T-Mac!’ They showed him personalized recruiting videos made by Oprah and Jesse Jackson.
They imposed on the Cubs to let McGrady and a trailing media horde visit both dugouts before Saturday’s White Sox-Cubs game, throw out the first ball to Sammy Sosa and lead an adoring throng in ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game.’
With Duncan (and probably Antonio Daniels) out of the picture, the Spurs have space to work with. Does the team punt it, and hope to lure Chris Webber (then working uneasily with Jason Williams and the stuck-at-eighth-seed Kings) as a free agent in 2001? Does it overpay for Austin Croshere, blow the Bucks out of the water for Tim Thomas, or push in on the Brian Grant sweepstakes?
San Antonio still signs Derek Anderson to a his two-year, big value, deal. The Spurs drafted Manu Ginobili in 1999 and knew what they had. Wherever Tony Parker was about to land in the 2001 draft, the Spurs were going to deal a slot or two ahead and snap him up. Shake the bedsheet all you want, they’re in the Spurs’ timeline.
But no Duncan replacements. The problem is that everyone — Grant, free agent Eddie Jones — wanted to be in Miami, to play along Alonzo Mourning. Florida really had itself a year in 2000.
You couldn’t outbid the Heat, only hope to pluck something in a sign-and-trade. San Antonio could slide into the three-team deal moving Brian Grant to Miami, offering the Blazers a sign-and-trade for Antonio Daniels plus Steve Kerr and Terry Porter, returning Greg Anthony and Portland’s pick in the upcoming draft (Zach Randolph). Later, the Heat and Hornets use the Spurs’ space to alleviate luxury tax troubles ahead of the Eddie Jones sign-and-trade.
San Antonio would re-sign and deal Samaki Walker to the Hornets (already fielding Elden Campbell and P.J. Brown) in exchange for rookie center Jamaal Magliore and (shock horror) Derrick Coleman, a Charlotte cap millstone who gives San Antonio points and rebounds next to David Robinson until the duo’s giant contracts (nearly $20 million combined) expire in 2003.
Grant Hill was on crutches when Tim Duncan chose Orlando, the timeline doesn’t stray and Tim has to do the best he can with centers John Amaechi and Andrew DeClercq. With Mike Miller, Troy Hudson, that whole crew. It isn’t much, and unfortunately for Magic fans, Duncan agreed to the same three-year opt-out with ORL that he actually agreed to in 2000 with San Antonio.
The Duncan-less Spurs haven’t signed any cap-cloggers in his absence. Only four rookie deals (Z-Bo, Mags ahead of his All-Star year, Manu, Parker) alongside the usual finds (Bruce Bowen, 2000 camp signee Raja Bell, Stephen Jackson) and holdover Duncan buddy Malik Rose. Room for Tim’s return in 2003, plus another max slot.
Draft Tim Duncan. After that, stay alive.
ANTONIO MCDYESS STAYS IN PHOENIX
Rookies only had three-year contracts back then. By the end of Year Two a stud could make his future free agent ambitions known, it’s why Kevin Garnett signed a $121 million deal before his 121st NBA start, it’s why the Denver Nuggets were convinced they couldn’t afford to re-sign McDyess, the No. 2 pick in the 1995 NBA draft.
Denver panicked and dealt McDyess to Phoenix before his third season. The Suns not only had McDyess for a playoff campaign in 1998, but also his Bird Rights ahead of an offseason that would see yer Suns replete with free agent cash.
During that offseason, though, McDyess panicked. Nobody expected him to turn down Phoenix’s eventual max offer, but while the Suns were courting Antonio’s future teammates the Nuggies swooped in and glommed a verbal ‘yes’ from the unrestricted free agent.
“I didn’t want to sign there,” said McDyess, a forward. “I sort of had an in-between mind at that point.”
Problem was, he had given a verbal commitment to the Nuggets, and they had flown him in on the eve of training camp to sign the contract.
“When I got to Denver, I just felt like that wasn’t the place for me,” he said. “So I called Jason Kidd (his teammate in Phoenix the previous season) and told him, ‘I don’t know if I want to sign here, man.’ He said, ‘Just stay right there and don’t do nothing you don't want to do. I will be there soon.’”
Kidd, along with Suns teammates George McCloud and Rex Chapman, chartered a plane and flew through a blizzard into Denver that night.
McCloud and Chapman weren’t even Suns yet, only free agents under Bird rights. McCloud was about to sign for the minimum to accommodate free agents, just as Chapman did in Phoenix the two previous seasons ($574,500 total).
Chapman would sign six-year, $22.1 deal with Phoenix eventually, but like McDyess his contract couldn’t become official until the new Suns were acquired. The Nuggets, flush with free hockey tickets, disrupted the plan.
“I was at a (Colorado Avalanche) hockey game (in the owner’s suite) and I wasn’t going to sign until they got there,” McDyess said.
But McDyess said Dan Issel, Denver’s coach and general manager at the time, knew Kidd’s rescue party was on the way, and instructed security and ticket sellers at McNichols Arena to keep Kidd and company out of the building.
“I mean, it was a blizzard outside, and they wouldn't let those guys inside the arena. They kept them out in the snow,” McDyess said. “It was crazy times.”
McDyess, true to his character, honored his verbal commitment to the Nuggets and played four more seasons with them. But he’s always regretted the decision he made on that snowy night.
Let’s melt some snow.
Tom Gugliotta was Phoenix’s consolation prize, instead he heads to Denver as a free agent. McDyess remains in Phoenix, on a verbal guarantee, while the Suns use cap space to lure Vlade Divac. Keeping the team’s 1999 first-round pick, as the Suns don’t need to sign-and-trade for Luc Longley anymore.
Too timid to take on Metta World Peace, the Suns draft James Posey and build the two-way banger of Scott Skiles’ dreams. Prior to the draft the Suns also dealt the rights’ to Dallas’ pick (No. 9, originally Shawn Marion) to Chicago in exchange for Brent Barry. Jerry Krause is smitten with Marion but Chicago uses its selection on Corey Maggette.
(No, I haven’t already written a Krause-in-’99 fan-fiction called ‘Chin de Siècle.’)
Denver loses McDyess but signs Gugliotta to a cheaper rate. The Nuggets had to clear cap room for McDyess’ return but in this scenario gets to keep capable center Dean Garrett and forever Sixth Man candidate Bobby Jackson, along with its own pick in the 1999 draft, which Denver uses on Richard Hamilton. Denver also owns Milwaukee’s first-round pick from the (say it with me) Elliot Perry trade. At No. 18, Dan Issel selects “Ron Artest.”
Nick Van Exel, Googs, Metta, Tony Battie, Rip Hamilton, Bobby Jackson, Danny Fortson, Eric Williams and Raef LaFrentz are, I assure you, “not bad.”
McDyess stays healthy in Phoenix, never becomes a Knick, never visits the Pistons, never leaves Arizona. He’s in the Ring of Honor, people love him there. He won three playoff games in 12 years, but let me tell you, the guy can’t walk down the streets of Tucson without mobs accumulating.
SIXERS MAKE ALLEN IVERSON A PISTON
Except that this was a very real deal. In its most well-known incarnation:
Eddie Jones, Glen Rice, Jerome Williams and Dale Ellis were Philly-bound;Iverson and Geiger headed to Detroit; Jerry Stackhouse, Christian Laettnerand Travis Knight routed to Charlotte; and Anthony Mason, Toni Kukoc andTodd Fuller dispatched to the LA Lakers.
As [Sixers owner Pat] Croce himself told ESPN The Magazine’s Tom Friend: “It came close, brother, it came close.”
So close that Croce, siding with coach Larry Brown, rang Iverson with the word:
“I did not want to trade Allen Iverson, but I could no longer defend him because he was breaking Larry’s rules,” said Croce, who personally called Iverson to inform him of the would-be trade. “Allen just told me he didn’t want to go. He wanted to be a professional.”
To complete the trade, however, the Sixers needed cooperation from Geiger, whose six-year, $47 million contract contains a clause that says awards him a 15 percent pay raise -- another $3.3 million on a contract that expires after the 2002-03 season -- if he’s traded. Under the NBA's complicated salary cap rules, the trade wouldn’t work unless Geiger waived the so-called “trade-kicker.”
“I looked at Detroit and didn’t think Allen and I would’ve been better off there,” Geiger said. “So the decision was easy.”
Even after Geiger squashed it, the Sixers pushed to deal AI.
Had the 7-foot, barbed-wire tattoo pioneer waived his no-trade clause, free agent Eddie Jones would become a Sixer via signed-and-traded max deal. The immediate punishment would come in Miami, where Pat Riley would kick in door after door after not only missing out on Jones but 2001 All-Star Anthony Mason. For once, Miami is on the inside looking out.
A Sixer team featuring the aging Glen Rice, emerging Theo Ratliff and Jones at home in a lead role would have made the playoffs under Brown, but not spectacularly. Ratliff went down for the season midway through the real 2000-01 and the Sixers were able to pair him with Kukoc in exchange for Dikembe Mutombo, a deal that doesn’t exist in our timeline. Larry Brown already traded for Tyrone Hill, he’s out of ideas.
Could be worse. Could be Detroit.
Geiger and his barbed-wire tattoo were out, they never stayed healthy, luckily the Pistons acquired center insurance in the form of Ben Wallace via the Grant Hill sign-and-trade earlier in the summer. George Irvine’s real-life 2000-01 Pistons led the NBA in pace (94.7, which woulda ranked 32nd last season) and were top-eight in defense but without the presence of the Philadelphia team Iverson was just jettisoned, publicly, from.
The only thing lifting this Detroit squad into the playoffs is a superhuman, MVP-effort from the pissed off but also sad, actual 2000-01 MVP. Luckily, Allen Iverson is emotional.
Rick Carlisle and Cliff Robinson hit the next season, in 2002 Detroit still uses its full MLE on Chauncey Billups, Joe Dumars assures Iverson it can work, and he’s right.
Iverson and Ben and Billups make the next five consecutive Finals before Bulls GM John Paxson signs Iverson and his two championship rings to a bloated free agent deal in 2006.
Back in 2000: Anthony Mason is perfect for the Laker triangle but Mase might not agree with as much while at its point, and may not last the season under Phil Jackson.
This is the year Miami loses Alonzo Mourning to the start of his kidney woes, the Heat stay competitive with Jamal Mashburn, Brian Grant and P.J. Brown but badly misses the sort of playmaking Mase (an All-Star in 2001) provided. Jackson’s Lakers should trade Mason to Pat Riley’s Heat for Brown, whom Jackson coveted while coaching the Bulls, but nah, Brown goes to the Sixers for Aaron McKie.
Jackson probably trades Anthony Mason to Orlando for Pat Garrity and Los Angeles makes the 2001 Finals where the Lakers meet Toronto, briefly.
The Hornets would still end up in New Orleans but Baron Davis and Jerry Stackhouse eventually got a podcast out of it. Mostly about Laettner.
WEBBER STAYS IN D.C.
Sacramento swingman Mitch Richmond was on the trade block throughout 1997-98. Kings being the Kings, he was fine with that:
“I’m just happy when I hear the rumors.”
Now that’s what I call, a Sacramento King.
Several teams wanted a shot at Richmond, Sacto GM Geoff Petrie dragged it out.
“When I step up to the microphone to say I traded Mitch Richmond, I want to have something to say.”
Even with this qualifier in place, it was a surprise Richmond stayed on his Kings to the trade deadline, let alone past it.
And it was a surprise Webber was on the block at all, C-Webb had his hiccups in D.C. but few thought Wizards GM Wes Unseld would actually trade his franchise player. Yet, two months after Webber turned 25, Washington astonished the NBA in dealing Webber to Sacramento for Richmond (about to turn 33) and Otis Thorpe (always 36).
The trade took place in the middle of the playoffs, the night Sinatra died, the night of the ‘Seinfeld’ finale, we didn’t need any content, nobody asked for any trades. Had Unseld and Petrie waited a bit, big moves could still take place on draft night, just ahead of the 1998 NBA lockout.
When, in our what-if, the Wizards get Eddie Jones. Webber stays.
The Lakers get Otis Thorpe, Kings draft pick Jason Williams, and Mitch Richmond.
The Kings get Juwan Howard, Elden Campbell, Nick Van Exel, Ben Wallace.
Sacramento is not the beneficiary of an all-time lopsided sports deal anymore. No Vlade. Corliss Williamson comes back for the minimum, same as Jon Barry, and this is the year 1996 draft pick Predrag Stojakovic appears.
At the next trade deadline Petrie spins Campbell to Utah for Shandon Anderson, Howard Eisley and the better of Utah’s two first-round picks (Andrei Kirilenko). Corliss eventually turns into Doug Christie, Tariq Abdul-Wahad becomes Hersey Hawkins, the team is very good, not great, yet sources an expectation: Sacramento hasn’t missed the playoffs this century.
The Lakers’ lockout year featured out of shape Shaq and fitful Kobe, angry at each other over shot attempts and literal labor battles. It was so bad the team hired Dennis Rodman and Kurt Rambis in the same month, cosmic chasms an aging Mitch Richmond and wild Jason Williams could not fix. Otis Thorpe is suspended five separate times for laughing on the bench.
Richmond is nearly washed but the Hornets still need a shooting guard and at the ‘99 deadline deal Derrick Coleman and a first-round draft pick to the Lakers for Richmond and Thorpe. The pick vaults six spots in the lottery and the newly-hired Phil Jackson agrees with Jerry West: Los Angeles should draft Lamar Odom.
For the next decade the Odom-Kobe-J-Will-Shaq-led Los Angeles Lakers win the only titles Washington doesn’t.
The Wizards balk at losing Ben Wallace but Webber and Terry Davis Sr. are more than enough to subsist on up front, though the group falters during the lockout season Unseld cribs point guard Andre Miller out of the lottery to pair with Eddie Jones. Unseld deals Rod Strickland to Portland for Isaiah Rider.
Annoyed with their practice habits, Charlotte GM Michael Jordan sends Ricky Davis and Brad Miller to Washington in exchange for Jahidi White and Calbert Cheaney. The Wizards win three championships and cannabis has been decriminalized on a federal level since 2006.
KRAUSE DUMPS SCOTTIE PIPPEN FOR SHAWN KEMP
With Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen’s relationship at a low point, we can pretend MJ would have been indifferent over losing the teammate he knew best.
Jordan understood he paired expertly with Pippen’s array of skills. Pippen was younger and similar enough to take over the more dominant aspects of Jordan’s pre-retirement package (crazy rebounds, assists, blocks and steals, on-ball defense) and let MJ, now in his mid-30s, concentrate on maintaining that 30-point average.
If Jerry Krause adds another talent, no matter how Dunk-a-licious, there is no guarantee that Jordan returns as a free agent in 1996. Jordan spent mornings lifting weights with Pippen and Ron Harper, he wanted people his age he could relate to, he may have found that with the Knicks. We’ll have to prevent this.
Pippen wasn’t sent to Seattle ahead of the 1994 NBA draft because the SuperSonics couldn’t guarantee the return of Eddie Jones with the No. 10 pick. However, Jerry Krause had a thing for Jalen Rose’s dad when Jimmy Walker was a top pick out of Providence, and an even bigger thing for lengthy, lefty point guards. Rose, whom Krause traded for in 2002, was available at No. 10.
So what you would get, sports fans, was Pippen and Gary Payton out in Seattle with George Karl, inspiring future blog and book content, winning 66 games a year and going out in the second round. Eddie Jones in El Lay, and Michael Jordan returning to a Bulls team featuring Toni Kukoc, Shawn Kemp, and Jalen Rose in braces. The Dobermans!
Ron Harper still signs as a free agent in the 1994 offseason, and with Kemp there is no need for Dennis Rodman in this timeline: Chicago deals Will Perdue for a draft pick and uses the savings to re-sign Scott Williams.
I know you expect something splashier than “Scott Williams,” but you should trust the fan-fic author of ‘Fully Krausened: The Time-Traveler’s Guide to a Minimum Eight-Peat’ to capably work inside Jerry Krause’s head.
MINNESOTA NEVER TRADES RAY ALLEN FOR STEPHON MARBURY
In 1996 the Bucks drafted Stephon Marbury, who put on Milwaukee’s cap and immediately wept tears of joy.
Marbury melts Milwaukee’s hearts, GM Mike Dunleavy calls off the trade. The Timberwolves aren’t upset, team president Kevin McHale was crying when Dunleavy called him, McHale telling Mike that he couldn’t be the guy to take the Bucks cap off Marbury’s head. The interview really shook these guys up.
With Minnesota’s blessing, the deal is off.
Steph starts in Milwaukee alongside Anthony Peeler, whom Dunleavy rescued from his buddies at the Lakers (trying to clear cap space for Shaq) for a pair of second-round picks. The Bucks make the playoffs in 1997 but, fearful of impending contract extensions for Marbury and Vin Baker, deal Baker before 1997-98 to the Pistons, returning Theo Ratliff and Aaron McKie.
(Vancouver offered Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Bryant Reeves and what turned into an unprotected first-round pick in 2003 for Baker and Lee Mayberry but Dunleavy insisted on McKie, who can defend and shoot at off guard while at the same time minding the temperament of a fire-first backcourt mate.)
The Bucks falter before George Karl elbows in to rescue the franchise in 1999, ahead of Marbury’s contract extension. Marbury and Karl get along famously, Steph outranks the rest of his generation in the post-MJ sponsorship battles, AND1 is a top-two shoe company by 2003, the Bucks rule the East, routinely.
Gary Payton joins the team in 2004 in the search for a ring. Glenn Robinson’s career is salvaged by Marbury’s touch in the pick and roll, somewhere in Greece a child dribbles a basketball along with the broadcast of an internationally televised Big Dog performance and decides he wants to be a Buck for life.
Your favorite Marbury-in-Milwaukee memory was when Steph embarrassed Sacramento’s Jon Barry during overtime of the Bucks’ lone win in the 2001 Finals. Nearly 200,000 people watched that series.
Allen and Garnett would get on like treble and bass, they wouldn’t have to like each other to succeed fabulously. And unlike Marbury it wouldn’t offend Allen that Garnett snuck ahead of max contract ceilings.
Ray is the guy that negotiated his own max deal in 1999, in the first week there were “max deals,” cutting out an agent and saving himself over $2.36 million:
“I don’t need somebody skimming millions off the top,” said Allen, who chose instead to pay a team of lawyers, including celebrity lawyer Johnnie Cochran, a business manager and an accountant at an hourly rate of up to $500.
“When agents see what I’m doing, they’ll say, ‘Well, he’s a flagship for something that we do not necessarily agree with. It’s going to take away our livelihood,’” Allen said. “And I think it’s something important for this league and for the players, when we’re smart enough to take care of our own money.”
Allen negotiated directly with team owner Herb Kohl, the senior senator from Wisconsin, because the NBA’s new labor accord sets limits on what players can earn based on years of service.
At the time, George Karl said Allen “has shown a lot of people that you may not need agents”
Jeremiah DeBerry, Allen’s lawyer, said agents are necessary only for “middle of the road guys.”
“For the rookies and for the high profile guys who are going to get the maximum, certainly this is the way to go,” DeBerry said. “It just makes sense.”
(When it came time to negotiate his next max contract with the SuperSonics, Allen employed Lon Babby as his agent.)
Allen would slide right in with Minnesota, who in real life were about to trade shooting guard Isaiah Rider for two blips and a bleep (Bill Curley, tweener guard James Robinson, a first-rounder McHale turned into Paul Grant) just to get Rider off the team. Terry Porter returns and starts capably at point guard through the end of the century, when McHale takes the same bet on Chauncey Billups (after four teams in two seasons) the Wolves took in our timeline.
It’s a Big Three, and it wins a title in 2004 over the Indiana Pacers.
The series shown on four-hour tape-delay on ABC (though in real time on Spike TV) after Kevin Garnett says “cheat-ass motherfuckers” on live air during ABC’s broadcast of the Wolves’ deciding Game 5 win over the Lakers in the Western finals.
To replenish lost revenue, the league contracts the New Orleans Hornets.
McHale jokes about his refusal to “change horses midstream” during the trophy presentation, to thunderous applause. George W. Bush wins re-election with 323 electoral college votes.
BETCHA GOT A CHICK ON THE SIDE
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Whingeing over “points of emphasis” in the NBA’s first weeks is an annual tradition. One year the emphasis was on upsetting Rasheed Wallace and it went wonderfully. Lots of points.
The NBA cracks down on baited contact this year, they swear. You can’t feint into a cushion at the free throw line, can’t beguile your way toward a whistle. Lunging, out.
If James Harden shot only nine free throws in the first week of any other season we’d just assume it was for a trade demand, something we’re used to. We’re not used to players actually trying and not getting away with it.
James Harden, to his credit, really doesn’t want any attention over this right now, if you wouldn’t mind.
The problem is Steve Nash, first to the podium. His super-fine offense can’t get going until his MVP gets rad, so he’s going to lay in:
“No big deal,” says Harden, because it ain’t.
If James Harden fails against the Hornets in October it’s because October. James Harden will be washed, one day, and that day won’t be in October.
Here’s how our hero looked early Sunday evening:
I mean, yeah: Cody Martin balls. NBA sometimes happens.
You build to a shift. The 2004-05’s crackdown on hand-checking wasn’t opinion fodder straight off the bat, not with the Spurs and Pistons appearing in that season’s Finals. Bush was in office, people were cynical. The NBA tried to stop hand-checking before, 1994, nothing happened.
The 2004-05 season started with two teams — Phoenix, Seattle — scoring at obscene marks. The answer wasn’t pace, Seattle was the league’s fourth-slowest team, but the flexibility to express:
“The new rules have given players more freedom of movement. The fact that there are no illegal defenses has increased ball movement and increased man movement that make it hard to defend. And more coaches are relinquishing control.”
This is Dwane Casey, then a Seattle associate head coach, speaking to Howard Beck at the New York Times.
“You look at Phoenix, the coaches give up control of the offensive set. That's no disrespect to the coaches, but a lot of plays you just can't really design a defense for. That makes for more points. I think players today are better offense players. Shooting has improved. Ball-handling has improved.”
Pacer coach Rick Carlisle wanted to shout out the loosened zone defense restrictions from three years before, so, shout out to loosened zone defense restrictions from three years befooooorrrrrre:
“I think since the major rule changes of three and a half, four years ago, style-wise, we’ve become a better ball movement league. We’ve become a higher basketball I.Q. league.”
The league’s reigning Finals MVP was not impressed:
“I don’t understand,” Pistons guard Chauncey Billups said then. “I think you should reward hard work, not try to make it softer.”
Whatever Chauncey.
Anyway, Charlotte is it:
B*LLY SPORTS OPINION
Weren’t they the company that saved money and didn’t send MLB announcers to the road games the network was charged with (and charged for) covering?
Yeah, f**k those guys.
It’s getting worse. Several NBA radio announcers stay home at the behest of those who pay them, calling games off television feeds. Soon enough television crews won’t stray from the home city.
When announcers aren’t actually at the game, coverage suffers. The program turns into a talk radio show, nobody wins but the latest round of investors who saw televised sports and thought they could squeeze slightly more money out of it than the last pain in our ass.
And Mark Cuban sees the nickel and dime operation for what it is — real cheap, uninspired stuff — and I wish other NBA owners cared about their fans as much.
The same owners that won’t spring to pay for a hotel room for the lone radio announcer.
HALFTIME
Pre-Nash Amar’e Stoudemire giving it to the team that passed on him twice (Nene, Nikoloz Tskitishvili).
This was a month into Mike D’Antoni’s term as interim head coach and the contest was never in doubt.
Stoudemire finished with 28 points and eight rebounds and Nikoloz only played five minutes and missed all three shots but Denver got out to a big lead early and never looked back because say it with me “Voshon Lenard scored 32 points to lead all scorers.”
OH, NO
You want to know why I cover basketball?
Every year a new batch of players enters the NBA. Every year the previous season’s new batch grows a little. The constant repletion engages me, the NBA keeping its ground game groovy, its gunk gobbled up yearly via tectonic plates.
Also I get to quibble over dumb s**t with Chris Mannix:
For those of us present as friends traded blows over rights to the Hornets selection in NBA Jam, this doesn’t scan.
The LJ-and-Zo Charlotte Hornets were absolutely must-see TV and were often scheduled nationally as such, like the time they were slotted as NBC’s Game of the Week in March 1995, before Jordan’s comeback bumped them to regional action.
Qualifying Chris’ claim for the League Pass era does him fewer favors, but happy Hornet teams are rare. The five-year history of Hornets Mk. II doesn’t bring a lot of heat. And the Charlotte Bobcats, such as they were, aren’t.
What does make the cut, however, is one of the top-five teams in the history of NBA League Pass: Baron Davis’ 2000-01 Charlotte Hornets.
Davis could not be kept out of the fray by year No. 2, his first as a starter. “I was gonna dunk on everyone,” he told Forgotten Seasons in August. “My second year is the year I was catching bodies.” Blindfolded or not.
League Pass denizens loved tuning in to watch the Hornets give the champion Lakers a push on a Friday night, or lose in Toronto on a Sunday afternoon while everyone else (Chris) watched the NFL conference championships. Your Hornets made TBS and TNT a few times, always against the Knicks, but it was on Channel 754 that we saw Charlotte score seven unanswered points in the final two minutes to overcome Allen Iverson’s 47 and beat the Finals-forward 76ers.
Philadelphia split the season series with Charlotte and was damn lucky not to meet the Hornets in the postseason.
Not with Hornet forward (and ex-and-future 76er) Derrick Coleman looming.
“He was like an X-factor for us,” Davis said in summer, with words that would not look great in print, “because people would not expect him to show up.”
Milwaukee beat the Hornets in the second round in 2001 but it took seven games, by then everyone on Charlotte’s roster was wearing a headband, it was very 2001. I think this is the month all of us decided to go with a shag haircut.
These Hornets made it past the opening round by upsetting the Miami Heat, Charlotte working with enough motivation to sweep a 15-game series, let alone a five-game quickie.
Miami didn’t shake hands with Charlotte before the series started, but it wasn’t like the sides were unfamiliar.
Eddie Jones and Anthony Mason (after much pining for Pat Riley) were dealt from Charlotte to Miami in training camp, earning the ire of David Wesley and other Hornet vets. Ex-Heat trade returnees P.J. Brown and Jamal Mashburn wanted to destroy their replacements and Hornet sixth man Eddie Robinson wanted to show off for whoever was picking up the tab that night in Miami.
Charlotte head coach Paul Silas had sterner motives up against Riley, whom Silas blamed for lousing the waters in Silas’ decades-long search for a head-coaching gig.
After the Hornets swept Miami (Davis: “punked them, from all angles”), Silas earned a victory lap:
“It was no contest,” Riley said on TV. “It’s a feeling of being outplayed, outcoached, out-everythinged.”
Outcoached? That admission sparked a grin from the 57-year-old Silas, whose relationship with Riley has been strained since 1991-92, when he worked for Riley as a New York Knicks assistant.
Silas felt that Riley didn’t give him enough responsibility that season and viewed him as lazy. Until Charlotte hired him late in the 1998-99 season, Silas hadn't held an NBA head coaching job for 16 years, and he believes that Riley disparaged his work ethic around the league.
“That always came out anonymously, but I know who started it,” says Silas. “I’m still so offended by that. I tried to erase that stigma for a lot of years.”
(Riley denies that he ever ripped Silas. “That’s absolutely untrue,” he says. “I have too much respect for the man.”)
For the record, the two didn’t shake hands after the series.
Must-see:
TOUGH GUY OVER COFFEE
I don’t drink coffee every day because in 2000-01 (while staying up all night BtB’ing for NBAtalk) I developed Huron-sized ulcers and was told to stop. Had a 21st birthday coming up, had to save that jejunum.
I still drink coffee occasionally, not much, less often than occasional partiers do with the professional night spent B/W powdery white. I drink coffee black because I enjoy the taste of coffee, I preferred the taste of mocha yogurt and coffee ice cream to all other options as a kid, it’s the bean that works for me and it is fun to make fun of people that put a bunch of s**t in coffee when your veins do so wonderfully on just the base.
I’ve never had one of those tall ones, the squat ones, the pumps-full-of-oat-and-cedar spearmint white chocolate “coffees.” I have never enjoyed a mocha, not in my loca, never a latte, not even in my sadder days.
Because I am the stupid one.
Chocolate is delicious. So is dairy and so are dairy-ish products. “Pumps” of gooey, sugary goodness melting inside your steamy caffeine machine? Yes.
Yes and yes. They are right. I am wrong.
If people want to shove an éclair inside the coffee instead of paying for it separately, celebrate them. Especially those who figured out ways (again, oats) to emulate the taste of German chocolate cake in a coffee order without also ordering a horse’s bale’s worth of calories. You f*g champions.
You’re the ones that have done it right, not me, the guy whose tastiest taste of “coffee” flirts with a few freeze-dried crystals and the hottest water this hotel’s bathroom faucet could come up with.
Fancy coffee drinkers see the world differently, in brighter colors, and not just because of all that sugar. They are awake, and I am not.
DANCING FOR MONEY
This song has been in my head since Megan Koester’s Sunday email hit, you should subscribe to get her Sunday email.
I know that James Harden got a ton of free throws during his trade demand year I just didn’t want to use a footnote.
It is time for BtB:
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(Never Too Much podcast: Brooklyn and the best of Kyrie, Pau Gasol retires, Kelly brags about being flown to Orlando.)
If you’re a Sixers fan, fine. Continue gnawing on your elbow.
The rest of us? I think we’re supposed to leave Ben Simmons and those Sixers alone until they actually do something.
Each side dropped its hand last month, thinking it would be enough to pull the pot and end the evening. Simmons’ reps, Rich Paul and co., are intent on playing by their own rules and for this, they rule. As Kyle Neubeck of Philly Voice opine-de-re-layed:
Fair or unfair to Paul — and there’s an argument he draws more heat than any non-player in the league right now — there are people at the team and league level who see this as the continuation of a pattern with his clients, characterized by one league source as throwing stuff at the wall and hoping something sticks. The expectation is that there will be another attention-seeking headline generated in the days to come as they assess their options of what to do next.
I’d guess they’re probably going to keep doing what they’re supposed to do.
Neubeck reported late Tuesday that Paul and co. sought to recoup the fines the Sixers docked Simmons, $360,000 and counting after an exhibition loss to the Raptors on Monday that I sincerely hope you did not watch.
The Sixers’ front office is full of corporate cologne and cufflinks plus what’s left of Daryl Morey after he out-foxed zero hounds. Rooting against Ben, in this instance, isn’t an option. Especially when the payout — finally, a balanced lineup around Joel Embiid — aligns with our interest in seeing a player push these puddles around.
The Sixers’ front office is so full of men used to getting what they want that Morey will absolutely follow through on orders to burn the crops ahead of retreat. Nobody asked for the bunker Morey dug, and Simmons’ side has a duty as legal reps to fight for the money at stake in spite of long odds of recuperation.
Everyone earned a Ben Simmons opinion during his indifferent single season at LSU, Simmons was either the hero that saw the forest for the trees or the straw that broke the layman’s back. Uncommon inspire conversations you think you have to shout through.
Simmons is worth shouting over, and the NBA hasn’t had a holdout in ages. It is normal to gargle over someone this unprecedented, doing something we haven’t seen since 1994.
Maximum extensions are a two-way street, they provide the most money possible to a player and they fasten the most cash possible to a top-flight asset, making it resoundingly easier for GMs to demand ready-to-play-tonight talent in return.
Sam Presti was the first to roll with it, he couldn’t be happier that Paul George made a single-team request, and look what the Clippers had to pay to find George a new place to live. David Griffin, rather beleaguered, still nailed the Anthony Davis deal. These things can work for you if you don’t take them personally, or try to act like the smartest crank among 30.
Daryl Morey and the Sixers failed one and two and, now look, three. He and his bosses had to act like they’re different, which they are not. They couldn’t just trade Ben Simmons for Some B**t at Guard and give the generational center more room in the paint and his head coach a proper training camp.
Morey’s ostensible hope is cynical. Penalize Simmons until he breaks, corrupt a common team into relenting sometime past mid-December, bank on the NBA news cycle to help us forget September and October (and probably November) ever happened. Still not a wow.
Many things wow me, the layman. Basketball trades do not, because they’re sports.
Make a basketball trade, get back to sports.
1994
Jimmy Butler relented, so did James Harden. Ken Norman showed up to the Omni every night and put on his warmup jacket and sat at the end of Lenny Wilkens’ bench. Eric Bledsoe didn’t want to be there but he tried to show up to work the next day, because he wanted to be paid.
Free agents have sat out, the Cavs took a while to sign restricted free agent Tristan Thompson in 2015, the team pulled the same junk with Anderson Varejao and Sasha Pavlovic in Cleveland’s 2007-08 Eastern Conference title defense. Bison Dele was ready to pass on an entire season rather than sign with the team (the Clippers) glomming onto his Bird Rights, eventually making $27,164 (plus title share) with the 1996-97 Chicago Bulls.
Players have retired for religious reasons. Some guys walk away citing burnout and/or the trading of Paul Silas. Some players set the record for most three-pointers ever made, retire, and then spend the next few years annoying us with comeback rumors.
Nobody’s given money back, not in a move I can find, in a bid for a trade. Losing a paycheck is a bridge too far, any trade demand with a GM who isn’t a weirdo can land a dealing partner plenty. Trade demands don’t usually get this far because nobody’s ever bowled with Daryl Morey before.
Rookies used to hold out, all the time, Jim Jackson waited until there was a month left in his rookie season to sign his first contract, and if you’d seen the 1992-93 Dallas Mavericks, you’d understand why.
Hold-outs haven’t existed 1994, a year before the NBA and its players’ union agreed on rookie scale contracts, deals which could be added to a capped-out payroll.
Prior to the 1995 draft, teams with a lottery pick to sign had to consider their capability of keeping an unhappy camper on the farm (Danny Ferry fled to Italy rather than play with the Clippers), and trim payroll ahead of an expected, probably record-breaking, rookie contract. Veteran cuts led directly to rookie hires, not a great scene.
The 1994 rookie class took full advantage, setting the bar at $100 million and holding out until they didn’t get it.
Agent Ron Grinker says that if [a draft pick] gets $100 million, “it’s going to cost other guys, those who will be renounced to make room. I believe that you should pay players who prove themselves. What we’re talking about now is paying one player four times more than what a franchise was worth 10 years ago.
“Why pay a rookie $100 million? Is that team going to be in the playoffs next season? Why not pay him in three years, when he proves what he can do?
Top overall pick Glenn Robinson’s agent got the ball stopping:
“I was asked about it, and I said that seemed to be the way the market is going,” [Charles] Tucker said. “I would say any No. 1 pick in any sport would have a chance to do it. Situations change every day.
“People tend to react to the singular impact of $100 million. A player can sign for four or five years for any number and no one says anything.
In backtracking, Tucker reduced everyone’s yearly take:
“Say ‘$100 million,’ and everyone jumps. They don’t look at the terms. For a contract to be worth that much, it would have to be over a long number of years.”
The No. 2 pick, Jason Kidd, signed a nine-year, $54 million deal a month ahead of training camp. Third selection Grant Hill inked an eight-year, $45 million contract at the start of camp, as did No. 4 pick Donyell Marshall with his $45 million deal.
No. 6er Sharone Wright got six years and $18 million from the 76ers early, though No. 7 pick Lamond Murray had to hold out two weeks to get five-years and $13.5 million out of the L.A. Clippers. Eric Montross, 11-years, $20 million. The Sacramento Kings, as you’d guess, had the No. 8 pick, selecting Brian Grant, who held out a month before signing to be a Sacramento King for 13 years.
Grant threatened to play in Greece before signing a $29.33 million, 13-season, deal with the Kings. The thirteenth year of the contract was conditional, Brian had to play seven seasons to earn it.
Kings officials said Grant was expected to be in uniform for the final preseason game Sunday night against the Golden State Warriors.
“It will take Brian a little time to get adjusted to the level of competition in the NBA,” coach Garry St. Jean said. “His running and jumping abilities along with his strong skills on both sides of the ball indicate that he will be a strong player in this league for many years to come.”
Thirteen years, even. And of course the Kings gave him an opt-out clause after three seasons.
Grant helped Sacramento to its first playoff berth in a decade in 1996, missed most of the next year with injury, and left for Portland (and a seven-year, $63 million deal) in 1997. He asked for an opt-out clause from the Blazers after a three years, which Brian used to negotiate a sign-and-traded, seven-year, $86 million deal with the Miami Heat.
Robinson held out the second-longest right until the edge of the 1994-95 season, inking a ten-year, $68 million deal with Milwaukee:
“Both sides won,” said the team’s owner, Herb Kohl, a United States Senator from Wisconsin who is up for re-election Tuesday.
“Glenn Robinson has now got a pro career under way in a city that he wanted to play in with a very nice 10-year contract fully guaranteed. And for the Milwaukee Bucks, it’s wonderful to sign the No. 1 pick.”
Asked how the deal was reached after months of gridlock, Kohl said: “The season starts tomorrow. Glenn Robinson’s a basketball player. He wants to play basketball.”
The team was quiet ahead of Robinson’s absorption, signing Johnny Newman to a minimum deal (Newman later sign a three-year extension with a 400-percent yearly salary increase, huh) alongside a two-year, minimum contract to Marty Conlon (Conlon later sign a two-year extension at a thousand-percent increase, huh). Even after shedding salary, the Bucks couldn’t convince Robinson to come to camp.
When Big Dog suited up, only Juwan Howard remained unsigned. The No. 5 pick sat out seven Washington Bullets games before Chris Webber tried to create a superteam:
After much acrimony between his representative and the Bullets, Howard, the fifth pick in June’s draft, signed an 11-year deal worth $36.6 million.
Webber, acquired from the Golden State Warriors for forward Tom Gugliotta and first-round draft choices in 1996, 1998 and 2000, signed a one-year deal worth $2.08 million. Under the terms of their respective deals, both players could possibly leave Washington, Webber after one season and Howard after two, but fans didn't seem very concerned about the future.
Nah.
“We’ve never had anything this big in the 30 years I’ve owned the team,” said Bullets owner Abe Pollin, who in one day guaranteed millions to the two players.
Abe Pollin’s team won a championship 16 years before this statement, and this is back when 16 years only felt like 16 years.
“[…] Webber went public with his desire to play in Washington -- on the condition that he play with Howard.
“[Webber] and Juwan spoke, and, despite his situation, Juwan really liked the area,” Strickland said. “Juwan was a part of the appeal.”
Though Howard’s representatives downplayed Webber’s role in Howard agreement, Juwan submitted to a $1.3 million salary slot, lower than Lamond’s, for his rookie season. “A sticking point in negotiations” in exchange for an opt-out after two seasons, which sounds ridiculous until you realize that the Bullets only had to be negotiated down from three seasons.
Howard opted-out, of course, and eventually signed a seven-year, $105 million deal with the Bullets, making him the NBA’s second (SHAQ) $100-million signee.
BANG!
First four Pie albums. I’m telling you.
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Here is our first-ever footnote, which is by now fun to read out of context:
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(Never Too Much podcast: what it was like to be a big ol’ fan of Norm MacDonald in 1996, why Tuesday was the only good day Twitter ever had, click ‘Listen in podcast app’ to subscribe.)
You got the feeling that Norm MacDonald’s favorite space on camera were the times he got to impersonate David Letterman on ‘Saturday Night Live,’ the show he wasn’t great at, performed live from the workplace MacDonald wasn’t liked at.
Norm was not interested in what Monkey Boy was up to but he clearly liked the idea of telling his version of the Dave Letterman story one tortured non sequitur at a time, on Lorne Michaels’ dime.
MacDonald got to play his ‘Weekend Update’ a little cooler and tougher and rougher than Norm really was. His SNL affectation wasn’t nearly as sincere as the moments when he tried to imbue his “Dave” with all the moral clarity MacDonald could muster, at a time when bein’ Dave was hardly as much fun as it used to be.
Norm pounced on that unease, celebrated it, re-made a hero out of it. The popular giveaway — Norm’s Letterman bumping three guests and firing his blazer at the desk while the band rushes Dave off — ended the sketch. The real impetus, MacDonald’s deep appreciation of Letterman’s ardent lack of appreciation, also wasn’t cleverly disguised.
MacDonald was familiar to Letterman and Leno’s shows by the time he joined SNL’s cast in 1994, he’d already told the joke about winning a stick in the Olympics, he’d already worn his best jacket and thanked the audience and ‘SNL’ was never his goal.
At all times it felt as if Norm MacDonald was the only person on television who didn’t want David Letterman’s job, something Letterman picked up on. Norm MacDonald was never in any danger of taking anyone off the air but Norm MacDonald, which Dave also picked up on.
Stand-up comedy was inescapable in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
It was cheap programming for three different prominent cable channels — A&E, VH1, and the fledgling Comedy Channel/Ha! networks — the type of disposable content you could skip through with prejudice.
Your viewing options were set at the top of the hour unless you stuck with channels featuring four-minute music videos or five-minute stand-up comedy sets. Discerning hoppers could note from the outset who to flip from (FireHouse), and who to stick with:
These are the suits you learn everything from, all the contextual clues that help you navigate that pre-pubescent minefield, pretending to know how tough dating was because Wendy Liebman said so, pretending to understand what “orgasm” meant because the rest of Rita Rudner’s special was so funny.
Norm wasn’t anti-comedy, he wrote jokes and told them and encouraged laughter because he thought his thoughts were funny. He surveyed the scene and discovered there was still silly stuff to bring up, observations to cultivate. Norm never tried to break anything.
It is true that he did not suffer pretense gladly, a chip which did not serve him well at SNL, an institution staffed with writers and actors who can’t wait to raise a little spirit and put on a swell show. MacDonald wasn’t dangerous, he wore leather jackets and smoked cigarettes and lost too much money gambling but uncles do that. Grandmothers in front of slot machines do this.
Still authentic enough for MacDonald to sniff out the desperation at the program, the overwhelming eagerness to please the host and the writers and the dress rehearsal audience and Lorne and anyone else who might be paying attention in L.A. plus whoever’s at the afterparty, probably Bijou Phillips.
Norm MacDonald didn’t care about pleasing anyone, stand-up already taught him he could earn affection simply by acting himself, but funnier. By straightening the ribbon and delivering a joke. Not wearing a literal monkey suit.
The ‘Weekend Update’ gig is an instant introduction, it’s the only thing on the show that escapes ambivalence because you’re not, and he’s Chevy Chase, or maybe you’re a shitheel like Colin Jost. They’re using their own names, you’re going to form an opinion.
MacDonald didn’t owe his renown to this exposure. He earned the attention because Norm MacDonald was the only one in the building who wasn’t trying to be our friend. He was the human at the party that the cat walks up to.
A stance like this doesn’t have to include brusque, punch-down humor; avenues MacDonald certainly, carelessly, stomped. He didn’t worry about anything else but being funny.
It’s why he was the best part of SNL. It was probably why he was the best two-drink minimum someone ever bought.
It’s why he was the finest talk show guest, it’s why every time a clip of his podcast came across your feed you’d click on it and wonder why Norm always sounded like he was reading jokes off a script. There was no secret to anything, he was just funnier than everyone else. Like you’re supposed to be, if that’s your job.
Or, if the ponies don’t always trot so hot.
We benefited from his progeria, it’s what makes his way-too-early passing a little more sensible than it should be. Norm’s been on the TV acting like a pensioner since he was in his 40s.
So he won’t live until the age that suited him best, anybody who pens a memoir when they’re living with disease is probably happy with what they’ve left. Which, as your feed reminded you on Tuesday, was plenty.
A lot of comedy will try to identify with Norm MacDonald this week. Try to remember what Norm did best.
PLACE OUT THERE
This song is hilarious but also emotional, like right now is.
Yo, help me do independent hoops:
Thank you for reading and listening.
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Remember last summer when the bubble started and life was chaotic and ridden with anxiety and you weren’t sure if you felt up to get back into NBA basketball again and then acknowledged Irishman Michael Malone sent out this lineup …
… and you were immediately all the way back in?
Look at Hollinger’s timestamp, a full year ago. Which means this league in all its currency dragged on your energy and interest for a dozen months, ten of which were filled with games to pay attention to. That’s a lot. Too much.
Our fix disappeared sometime early Wednesday morning but our brains haven’t stopped. Jalen Rose yelled at Kendrick Perkins, fine, we needed that, but the kvetch didn’t end with KP groaning. Media started ranking things again, NBA things, grading them. It’s summer out, I don’t want to hear about grades.
And I don’t want to hear any more bellyaching, which is why we’re sticking friendly.
FRIENDLY IDEAS FOR 2022
From a fan.
SHOTS FOR SHOTS
We all saw this, posted before Giannis hit 17 free throws in Game 6:
The obvious follow-up: Giannis’ favorite fast food chicken chain offers Bucks fans in attendance 50 free chicken nuggets (total value of product involved: $1.12) if Giannis makes 17 free throws in a game.
The obvious problem: Giannis’ favorite fast food chicken chain makes good food but it is also run by a bunch of a**s.
Better follow-up: Bucks offer $17 gift certificates to local bars (the team even has a list of Buck-approved pubs on its website) every time Antetokounmpo hits 17 free throws in a game. Kids get into bars (with their parents) in Wisconsin, so everyone in attendance makes out.
That’s enough for a domestic beer and well shot and then a good beer (you bring the cash for tip). Meanwhile, the kids have seventeen bucks to wipe out on Cokes and whatever this bar’s kitchen has to serve to keep its liquor license.
Instead of wasting all his time on his milquetoast neolib b**t Marc Lasry can just do right by the people. Let them make their own decisions with how to fill up that $17, maybe a double-tall in a pint glass because you’ve got a ride home? Maybe an almond cordial shot and six plain soda waters (with no ice)?
Maybe you can exchange the certificate for 17 singles to roll through one of six gaming machines the state of Wisconsin mandates be placed within 48 inches of every beer tap.
UNIFORMS HAVE TO SETTLE DOWN
It’s all backwards now, the Chicago Bulls’ bench is on the opposite side of where Jordan used to sit, and half the league’s teams suit up looking like they’re wearing the uniforms from CBS’ (alternate) 4:30 game.
If the NBA wants to follow the NFL’s lead and run with dark-colored uniforms for every home team, fine, the opposing team has to wear white uniforms while working on the road.
Here is a list of colors that are not white:
- Orange2. Mauve3. Light orange4. Yellow5. Blood red orange6. The Miami Heat in yellow7. Any color that is not white
Here is a list of colors that are weird:
- “Cream”
Also, the Bulls have to wear white at home. Best uniform in basketball and you waste it on games in Indianapolis?
NO MIDSEASON TOURNAMENT
No, instead of finding new ways to introduce us to sponsors and wear out the athletes who entertain us, the NBA should take the time and effort it was going to spend on a midseason tournament during football season and instead work on making NBA League Pass something better than the least-liked website on the internet.
It’s not that I mind logging in four times a quarter, it’s just that my phone and laptop get awfully hot every time I have to do it. Way warmer than what it sweats through while streaming games illegally after inevitably bailing on League Pass. At least with those you get to learn about Australian tire sales.
THE MINNESOTA TIMBERWOLVES CAN’T BE THIS DWEEBY
This picture is horrifying. They took it right before A-Rod told the other guy that they weren’t going to get to go to space in Bezos’ Cock Rocket.
There is no way this country is running out of rich guys, and Minnesota had to settle on these two? Why do they always shave their heads? Why can’t we ever get billionaires that look like Treat Williams with a beard?
THESE IDEAS ARE GETTING A LOT LESS FRIENDLIER
Yeah well subscribers understand that I had a bag quarter-full of Calm Down but then the officer took it from me.
START GAMES ON TIME
You flip to ESPN when the NBA game is supposed to start, you see the players and they’re only shooting around. This isn’t timely, and it isn’t the same for TNT games.
When there’s a game on TNT you flip to TNT, see ‘Seinfeld,’ and then try to remember if TNT is two channels up or two channels down from TBS. You wonder if your parents were confused about the same thing thirty years ago. You wonder if all the choices you made to avoid their futures ironically brought yours to their same, exact, point.
You find TNT and of course ‘Bones’ is on but just a minute of ‘Bones’ before ‘Bones’ ends. You wonder how a show called ‘Bones’ manages to scare up these wisecracking endings but, geez, they land it, corpse and all. Two or three minutes later and the basketball game tips off.
Why? Because Charles Barkley hasn’t showed up to set on time.
ESPN needs to hire the habitually late. With George Jones moved on, I hear Jermaine O’Neal is available.
Available, eventually.
THE SPURS HAVE TO TELL US WHAT THEY’RE DOING
Just, an idea.
Like, “San Antonio, what’s your deal?” And they would have to answer.
BRING BACK THE SUITS
Coaches can’t coach in team-issued practice gear, it has to stop, they look like the new owners of the Minnesota Timberwolves out there.
The NBA is the league of showy opulence, money spent on things which devalue as soon as it scurries off the lot, and its coaches should be forced to express themselves via whichever sportwear collection they choose. If they choose “blue blazer and khakis,” as Gregg Popovich did 97 times a season between 1998 and 2018, more power to the coaches.
Coaches need a bit of relief from being coaches, even if it means having to think about how many suits to take on the road, or how to tie a tie. Matching colors? Don’t push.
I don’t know what part of the brain NBA coaching derives its power from, but these sleep-deprived coaches need some sort of daily, real world task to accomplish before they go Full Thibodeau.
FREE RADIO ON THE NBA APP
Preppin’ kitchens or washing dishes to the sounds of the ol’ ballgame? The NBA should be after this.
I’m entering my third decade of paying for League Pass, if you don’t count those two seasons the NBA gave it to me for free after they felt sorry for me when I got laid off. We’re all already on the NBA’s app, the NBA knows everyone we’ve swiped and how many steps we haven’t walked, it should give us something back for all that access.
It’s impossible in the bustle of traffic to find whichever ESPN radio outpost is left to broadcast the league’s national games, let alone the local channels that bounce between affiliates. NBA League Pass audio, something I paid for in the century before this one, should be free to anyone who pops in for the app. It sells the product, it sells the local culture, it sells League Pass, and it costs the league nothing.
We stared at your screen for a full year in a row, NBA, we even tried to develop a currency based around your visual highlights. It’s time for you to give our eyes a break.
AT LEAST ONE EX-PLAYER IN EVERY PARADE
One that never won a ring. One that never came close, preferably:
Lakers win again next year? Bring back Brian Cook. You can try to get Kwame Brown, I would really like you to try to get Kwame Brown, but it’ll probably be Brian Cook.
Nuggets? Andre Miller, and all the cognac we can lift.
The Nets have so many to choose from, Ed O’Bannon’s done some fine work off the court, Jamie Feick looks like he could do some embarrassing stuff on a float, but I’d have to invite Stephon Marbury. Maybe also the not-the-Nets’ all-time leading scorer Robin Lopez, as a joke.
The Suns? The Suns aren’t winning a title.
Sixers? Elton Brand is already going to be there and I don’t want Sam Hinkie within 1000 yards of a championship parade unless you want everyone there creeped out. I’d pick Charles Barkley, mostly because the Suns aren’t winning a title.
THIS DATE IN HISTORY’S REGRETTABLE TRANSACTIONS
Today, we look at July 23rd 2001.
HORNETS AND COACH PAUL SILAS SIGN EXTENSION
Silas’ Charlotte Hornets turned in a semi-surprising second-round playoff run in 2001 amid rumors of franchise displacement, the team rewarded him with another two years at the NBA’s cheapest rate ($1.5 million) for head coaches. Low pay, and also the highest point.
The now-New Orleans Hornets made the Eastern quarterfinals again in 2002 but fell in the first round in 2003, mainstays Jamal Mashburn (broken bone in his shooting hand) and Baron Davis (bone bruise to his surgically-repaired left knee) gutting through injuries. With the Hornets and Silas at an impasse over salary, the team removed the 59-year old from the head coaching position in 2003 by declining to pursue contract negotiations, most recently valued at $2 million a year.
Silas said he received a phone call Sunday from team co-owner Ray Wooldridge, who said the Hornets would not renew his contract.
“The decision was made for me. It was a little surprising, but they have the right to make their own decisions,” Silas said. “We had a good ride, and I appreciate the opportunity they gave me.”
The a*e that owned the Hornets, George Shinn, lived in the same neighborhood as Silas. Silas decided to pay him a visit:
Paul Silas was ringing the doorbell of the man who had just fired him, and nobody was coming to the door at George Shinn’s house.
Silas kept ringing, and someone inside disconnected the chime.
So Silas knocked and knocked and knocked until Shinn’s son finally answered, telling Silas that his father was in the shower.
“I said, ‘Well tell him to get on down here,’” Silas recalled.
The co-owner of the New Orleans Hornets and the ex-coach eventually had a talk, which Silas said was amiable in the end.
With a coaching hole to fill, the Hornets reached out for some cheap labor.
From Sam Smith at the Chicago Tribune:
The New Orleans Hornets must feel proud. They have hired the worst coach in NBA history.
Who?
Tim Floyd.
Oh, Sam goes on.
What a great country. Do your job as badly as it has ever been done by anyone, antagonize your bosses and virtually every player on the roster, see nothing but improvement for the team only after you've left.
And then get a three-year contract worth about $4.8 million to coach one of the top teams in the Eastern Conference.
Told you the Hornets bid low.
He rarely worked on the floor at practice unless the owner was around and was always quick to run to the side of an influential columnist making a rare trip to practice. He seemed like he could charm you out of your wallet, or perhaps $4.8 million over three years.
But it would be surprising if Floyd isn't moving on before long. His combustible relationships with Bulls players were legend, Floyd frequently stalking out of meetings screaming and cursing, players laughing about his inability to control himself or deliver any workable plan.
Floyd had bitter relationships with Jamal Crawford and Ron Artest and tried to humiliate Tyson Chandler, calling him lazy in front of reporters. All, including Elton Brand, improved dramatically after they left or Floyd left, as did the Bulls.
Unsure of themselves, the free agents the Bulls brought in and out during Floyd's tenure were in no position to challenge the coach. But when the team brought in veterans such as Charles Oakley, Ron Mercer and Greg Anthony, they were shocked at Floyd's lack of game plans and organization.
The Hornets fired Floyd after one year, because he sucks.
DETROIT SIGNS MAURICE EVANS
An undrafted swingman in 2001, Evans is the guy who asked for more playing time from the Detroit Pistons, so they traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers, featuring (swingman) Kobe Bryant’s 40.8 minutes per game.
Buoyed with all that rest, Evans went on to a formidable career in BIG3.
DETROIT SIGNS RATKO VARDA
Here are two things I know about Ratko Varda.
Three things. Here are three things I know about Ratko Varda.
-
Do not cross him.
-
He went on to grow this mustache.
-
He played garbage minutes in Michael Jordan’s first exhibition game as a Wizard.
These are the three things I know about Ratko Varda.
Don’t ever forget the first one, I nearly did.
(This is also Rick Carlisle’s first exhibition game as NBA head coach.)
NEW YORK RE-SIGNS ALLAN HOUSTON
In 2000 Dave Checketts traded Patrick Ewing, sign-and-traded for four-years and $36 million of Glen Rice and then got the heck out of town after New York’s first-round exit in the 2001 playoffs. Checketts left GM Scott Layden as the lone buffer between James Dolan and the New York Knicks and, with no rebuilding options on the table, a capped-out Layden committed to more of the same and six years of Allan Houston.
Aged 30 at the time of its signing, Houston didn’t make an All-Star team during the contract. Houston and his achy knees worked only 70 games for the Knicks in the two seasons prior to the summer of 2005, when the NBA gave a waiver provision to each luxury tax-paying club, known as the ‘Allan Houston Rule.’
That’s what we called the amnesty provision in back in 2005. It was a weird time, we all thought bangs were a great idea.
When the amnesty rule was announced earlier this summer, many believed it was a certainty that the Knicks would cut their ties with Houston, the longest-tenured member of the team. Some even nicknamed the amnesty provision the ‘Allan Houston Rule.’
But Houston’s close ties with Knicks owner James Dolan, along with incoming coach Larry Brown’s history of coaching Houston with the 2000 U.S. Olympic team, also factored into the decision for him to remain on the roster.
Isiah Thomas ran the Knicks then. Just the voice you want.
“[Houston’s] working hard, trying to get back, and he believes one day he’ll get back to his original form,” Thomas said. “When you have players that have been injured for some time, you have to find a way to move on and make the roster better. If Allan was to come back and regain his form, then it’s an added bonus.”
If Patrick Ewing came back to regain his form, that would be an added bonus, and not just because Isiah recently signed Jerome James to start at center. Don’t bank on bonuses.
Houston’s contract had two years and $40 remaining, but Thomas chose to waive Jerome Williams with the Allan Houston Rule, eliminating the final three years of the the forward’s contract.
“Jerome was a big asset in our rebuilding program, and he was great with our young players,” team president Isiah Thomas said. “But this was a tremendous opportunity to save more than $21 million.”
Which is way less than $40 million, but this was Dolan. He’s good friends with these players, they hang out and everything.
In weighing the amnesty option, Thomas said “there was some discussion about Allan.”
The final decision to cut Williams instead was not made until Friday. Houston’s friendship with James L. Dolan, the Cablevision chairman, played a role.
“The way Mr. Dolan handled it I think is the best way to do it,” Houston said.
The thing where he saves you from having a rule named after you?
“He’s trusting me that basically I can do it.”
He did not do it.
TORONTO RAPTORS SIGN ROOKIE MICHAEL BRADLEY
Under terms of the collective bargaining agreement, the 6-10 Bradley, who left Villanova after his junior year, receives a three-year contract that has an average salary of $1.1 million.
“We are happy to have Michael signed and look forward to his contributions to our franchise,” Raptors general manager Glen Grunwald said. “He has the tools and a great feel for the game.”
Bradley played five years, worked 173 games.
Thirteen players drafted after Bradley’s No. 17 selection went on to NBA careers of ten years or more: Jason Collins, Zach Randolph, Brendan Haywood, Gerald Wallace, Samuel Dalembert, Jamaal Tinsley, Tony Parker, Gilbert Arenas, Scalafuckinbrine, Mehmet Okur, Earl Watson, Bobby Simmons, and Jarron Collins. Even Trenton Hassell made it nine years.
Here’s Bradley enjoying a meal and interview alongside obvious teammate Eric Montross:
You don’t remember Bradley and yet he wasn’t nearly as cloaked as Joe Forte (No. 21, 25 career NBA games), Kirk Haston (No. 16, 27 games), Brandon Armstrong (No. 23, 108 games), Raul Lopez (No. 24, 113 games) or, sadly, Jeryl Sasser (No. 22, 82 games).
The Raptors waived Bradley with a month remaining on his guaranteed third-year in favor of veteran Corie Blount, a veteran addition already ineligible for postseason play.
Which was no problem for the Raptors, because Kevin O’Neill was coach at the time.
DALLAS MAVERICKS RE-SIGN MICHAEL FINLEY
By 2001 Michael Finley hadn’t missed a game in four years. The 28-year old averaged at least forty-one minutes per game during that stretch, twice eclipsing 42 minutes a night, leading the league in minutes per game three times. In nine seasons with the Mavericks, Finley averaged 39.7 minutes per game, averaging 19.8 points and guarding the opposition’s best perimeter scorer.
At the 2005 trade deadline the Mavericks added Keith Van Horn in exchange for expiring contracts with fanfuckingtastic NBA names (Alan “Hendu” Henderson, Calvin Booth). Van Horn’s addition plopped over $15 million onto next season’s payroll, in a league with a $49.5 million salary cap and $61.7 million luxury tax threshold.
Player salaries waived via the 2005 amnesty provision still counted against the salary cap, the provision simply provided for dollar-for-dollar luxury tax relief. No basketball, just bailouts. The Mavericks ended up using the Jerome Williams Rule on Michael Finley with three seasons left on his deal:
The Mavericks spent all day Monday exploring trade options, and waited until just before the late-night deadline to release Finley and take advantage of the provision in the NBA's new labor agreement.
Dallas avoided a dollar-for-dollar tax on Finley's $15.9 million salary for the 2005-06 season. The two-time All-Star is due $17.3 million and $18.6 million over the final two seasons of the seven-year contract owner Mark Cuban gave him in 2001.
The Mavs cut salary commitments in 2004 by refusing to compete with Phoenix’s offer for Steve Nash and, eyeing massive extensions in Josh Howard, Dirk, Jason Terry and Devin Harris’ futures, were capped from making any moves in the 2005 and 2006 offseasons.
Finley joined the Spurs and won a ring in 2007, the same year the Mavericks lost in the first round.
Even with Finley’s savings, the Mavericks still paid $17.3 million in luxury tax penalties in 2005-06, second-most in the NBA, behind the Allan Houston-led New York Knicks, whose $126.6 million payroll won Isiah Thomas’ Knicks 23 games in a year where they didn’t own their top draft pick.
I did all this to get back at Isiah. He blocked me on Twitter after this joke:
Took the time to type ‘RT’ in and everything.
We do goofs here. You don’t need any more info, you don’t need anything else to think about, you need goofs.
And this price? This price is a goof.
WHITING H. & G.
Heads and guts. A selection from the greatest summertime concept album of all time.
Subscribers get a big Bulls thing next.
Be well, and thank you for reading and listening!
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Races for crummy playoff seeds always existed. More importantly, very good basketball teams are often in races for crummy playoff seeds, either due to injury, intrigue, or repeated denied applications for entry into the Eastern Conference. Limping defending-champions are no strangers to these rungs, nor are top-heavy Western outfits hung with ill-fits. There’s always a Dallas, a Golden State, a Portland. Sometimes Cuttino Mobley is there, sometimes he isn’t.
The difference in 2020-21 is the first-year novelty of the play-in. Last year’s bubble debut didn’t feel official, this similarly hamstrung campaign somehow scans as orthodox by comparison.
Next season, 2021-22, is when things truly return. And, just as was necessary during a pandemic, it would be nice to see the NBA make some severe cuts.
Kelly has suggestions. Beyond adding Cuttino Mobley.
THE PLAY-IN STAYS
NBA teams are really,
really
really
good.
There will be times when the Eastern play-in bracket is filled with Suckwadian outfits, but this is not the season. The West routinely fills the middling spots with supremely playoff-quality clubs.
The idea that the NBA considers two-thirds its rosters postseason-caliber makes no sense at first blush, but a trip to the agate argues otherwise. Russell Westbrook delights in Washington, Golden State, Portland and Memphis performed all season as proper playoff teams. The Rockets are bad, the Thunder are bad, but the Pelicans (who play better defense now), Pacers and Spurs, I assure you, are not bad.
The NBA runs two-thirds deep. Three of its best players came directly from professional competition overseas, so imagine what the rest of the roster looks like. Additionally, Duke, Kansas and Kentucky haven’t stopped producing MVP candidates. This pipeline is weightier than ever yet the NBA hasn’t added a team since 2004. Back when its least-liked coaching avatars were still two years into the four-year run of refusing to take international competition seriously.
The NBA wants us to take its 21st and 22nd teams seriously and I, for one, am way ahead of them.
Yet the NBA can’t keep this up. Too many games that count.
The season has to eliminate contests, somehow, in ways that wouldn’t shift stakes toward a tournament ending on Christmas Day (sports fans do not have the capability to care enough about pro basketball during the peak gridiron season), and without forcing the players and owners to give cash back.
There is no letup, in the 82-plus play-in scenario, which is exhausting for at least two-thirds of that two-thirds. Teams of all percentages were used to taking little breaks inside that 16-seed setup, familiar spots in the October-to-April calendar they could anticipate and pace themselves through. The play-in traipses on this in ways which cannot be blamed on the rush of pandemic scheduling.
The answer isn’t to excise the compelling and rewarding thing, no matter how much LeBron kvetches. The answer is to create a more reverent schedule, something appropriate for the arc of competition. The answer is not adding more weeks, the NBA needs to cut the amount of games it plays. Phoenix does not need to be in Cleveland on Tuesday. Detroit does not need to host Charlotte a second time in a season.
And idc what Chris Paul meant to Trae Young growing up, there is no need for Phoenix to be in Atlanta on Wednesday.
You know who would be fun to watch in Atlanta on Wednesday? Miami. Charlotte. Washington. The Magic. You know who should be in Cleveland on Tuesday? A similarly-shyte division opponent, in a league that still counts divisions for some form of credit.
Fewer games means better basketball which eventually results in a product featuring greater teeth to lug to market. Start doing your job, empty suits. Figure the future out.
HALFTIME
In a clip from 1980 Bill Russell and his suit from 1967 introduce a feature on referee Darrell Garretson. They’re trying to tell me that Garretson’s job is hard, but really all he had to do was learn Darryl Dawkins’ uniform number.
This video is 3:33. Foreshadowing.
Referee reviews take too long, the ends of close contests should not be this demanding to view. There is no reason NBA referee reviews cannot have a time limit.
The playoffs are soon, mainstream sports fans by the millions are about to re-introduce themselves to the NBA’s 52-minute fourth quarters and for absolutely nothing but paperwork on a Friday afternoon.
It can wait until Monday. Limit each review to a minute. If a correction isn’t agreed upon in time, the original call holds.
NBA, babe, you’re selling me an entertainment product and the product takes too long to get here. I am Dennis Miller in 1989 and I will always tell funny jokes.
NOT AS MANY THREES
It absolutely does not bug me that teams shoot as many three-pointers now, your attitude changes once you re-consider three-pointers as the same space-defying 16-footers Bobby Dandridge used to hit. Alternately, the coded language which clotted the NBA’s slower seasons still rings in these ears, non-fans whose eyesight precluded them from recognizing that even the worst shooters on the 2000-01 Philadelphia 76ers were far more accurate on jumpers than the best on any classic club from your gloriest year.
So, I’m cranky. I see every one of these 24-foot splashes as a thumb in the nose of the jamokes that told me none of these dribblers could stroke.
But it is the future, 2021, and pretending this rebellion ends with the Clippers (41.7 percent on three-pointers in 2021) or Utah (43.3 three-point attempts per game) is to deny the inevitable. The NBA has a fundamentals problem, there are far too many of them, it has to stop.
The kids are only going to get worse with these things — elbow under the ball, brushing before bedtime — teams will have no choice but to rely more and more on the attempt that earns them a comparatively disproportionate amount of points. So, yeah, I think they should limit three-pointers.
To 33. Teams only gets 33 a night, nothing cute with quarters or the last two minutes or bonuses or anything like that, 33.
The scarcity (only ten teams shoot fewer than 33 three-pointers per game, three clubs attempt over 40) adds to the intrigue. Doc Rivers may not want Joel Embiid using six of his team’s 33 before halftime, and I can already hear a fearful “remember, the Lakers only have two three-point attempts remaining” in Mike Breen’s tremulous voice.
Better yet, imagine someone’s shaky shooting elbow as they step-in from the three-point line to attempt a two-pointer with no threes remaining, a tie in the balance, a buzzer about to ring. A showy heave for the three-point win suddenly morphs back into a nervous two-point jumper that you’re supposed to nail.
Eight three-pointers per quarter, you little babies, will be enough. Points per possession will go down, but scoring (as the league pushes to run more and more to secure easy twos) won’t crater. Transition work will be crucial, outlet passes will abound.
Also,
GUILLOTINE FOR FAST-BREAK DENIERS
Zach Lowe touched on this last week, the penalty begs reassessment. Larry Brown rode intentional fouling on fast-breaks all the way to a gig as 2004 Olympic coach, the league suffered untold transition casualties in the years since. How many literal hundreds of fast-break slams and jams did we miss out on because of fouls at half-court? F*g war crimes, man.
Amp up the penalties on bear hugs in transition. The NBA’s minor league already awards a technical free throw and the ball back to the team hacked on a break, which is weaksauce (with an additional $1.50 charge for two extra ramekins of weaksauce). The fouling team still gets to play defense against a field goal attempt, the things that count for three and two points. That free throw means NOTHING to these savages.
Will the punishment I’ve settled upon cost the Milwaukee Bucks some depth in the postseason? Surely.
The return will be worth it. We’ve already missed out on too many slam-jams.
MORNING SUNRISE
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Brooklyn 124, San Antonio 113 (overtime)
The Nets, silly Butterfingers in Saturday’s defeat, turned the ball over five times all Monday, 53 minutes, five slipups, five-three, five.
This is a brand new team that’s never trained at a camp together and yet it kept its eye on the thing, in San Antonio. The Spurs finished regulation on 10-0 run, admittedly far from ideal, but Brooklyn pounced so hard in overtime that Coach Popovich moved to empty his bench before the mini-period concluded.
The Spurs also took care of the ball and worked with alacrity — if a shot was there, take the damn shot. This insistence helped when things grew hairiest:
The problem for Brooklyn on this play — James Harden — was everyone else’s problem for the rest of the evening. He orchestrated, expertly.
Harden finished with 30 points, 14 rebounds, and 15 assists. He pulled two steals and didn’t turn it over in 44 minutes. Nobody’s put a line like that up since they started counting individual turnovers, which they started in 1977, knowing Shawn Kemp was going to show up in ten years.
The Spurs wouldn’t be moved off their spot, so Nicolas Claxton (late of Brooklyn’s rotation) had to come off the bench and screen and finish, 17 points and three blocks in 17 minutes. Screen for Harden, let James Harden go.
In overtime? Bruce Brown continued his excellent, excellent reads. A floater and a kiss to Irving in the corner (two of Kyrie’s 27). Brown finished with 23 points on 10-13 shooting, and guarded every last one of those 6-foot 5-ish Spurs guys (there are 53 of them).
The Nets were delinquent in letting a double-digit lead slip into an overtime obligation. And that was about it.
Nets, 23-13Spurs, 17-13
Dallas 130, Orlando 124
Mavs looking a little sneakier now that they’ve got nothing but good point guards. The team wins the non-Luka minutes because of Jalen Brunson and you remember James Brunson. He’s like Rick Brunson but good.
Dallas pick-and-rolled Orlando to death and good, they had to, something had to overcome Dallas’ defense. Bad communication and iffy activity from the Mavs in this one: Magicmen Michael Carter-Williams and Evan Fournier are tall and broad but they shouldn’t be that tall and broad, certainly not that often.
Fournier popped five threes and MCW (18 points, eight boards, six assists) dragged his hips inside repeatedly. Nik Vucevic did All-Star stuff (29 points, 15 rebounds, eight assists) in Dorian Finney-Smith’s face because Kristaps wasn’t going to guard that. Also, Magic coach Steve Clifford decided that no, no, he wouldn’t be playing Mo Bamba on Monday.
Clifford went for it, and good for us. We got another fun game with a totally squared and sustainable Luka Doncic three-pointer to cinch it.
Jalen Brunson enjoyed 24 points on 13 shots, the Magic gave good chase and kept lottery odds.
Mavericks, 17-16Magic, 13-22
Philadelphia 130, Indiana 114
The Pacers need a break. They made a game of this early in the third but this, this wasn’t a game.
Let’s fill this space, instead, with old Pacers reminiscing over how happy they were upon Larry Bird’s arrival as coach in 1997, because these here Pacers didn’t much enjoy working with Larry Brown:
Travis Best, guard: I was elated. The Larry Brown situation was not one of the best for me my first two years.
His expectations of me were the total opposite of what kind of player I was. Had he been there for another couple of years, I probably would not have re-signed with the Pacers after my contract was up.
The last year had left a bad taste in everybody's mouth. At that point everybody had tuned him out. Guys were ready to start fresh.
Rik Smits, center: Anything after Larry Brown was easy. I liked Larry as a person but he was a bear to deal with on the basketball court. Nothing was ever good enough. It was obvious we were ready for a change and Bird was the complete opposite. He knew what it was like for the players. He realized the situation we were in. He said, “I’m going to get you in the best possible shape. You know what you're doing on the court.” He didn’t try to teach us like Larry Brown used to do. It was a good fit at that time. Everybody was excited about it.
Antonio Davis, forward: Larry Brown was a stickler for doing things the “right way,” but you always felt it was a moving target. You were thinking, “What is the right way? Every time you come in here you explain the right way differently.”
At times you wanted to throw your hands up and say, ‘Man, I don’t want to hear that today.”
Best: I didn’t even know what [the Right Way] meant. I had been hearing that for two years.
All from Mark Montieth’s must-read oral history on the 1997-98 Pacers.
New Orleans 129, Utah 124
Absolute recipe for disaster for your Pelicans on Monday but the group rose to its test, downing the top team in the league, leading by 17 deep into the third quarter. The Jazz hit 17 three-pointers, Utah’s usual, but I promise New Orleans chased around shooters. Promise.
The Jazz outscored NOLA by 30 from behind the three-point arc, reversing a four-game trend that saw opponents only total a 15-point advantage over the Pelicans. New Orleans was supposed to be getting better at this! Recipe for a room full of poison.
New Orleans’ answer was law, 76 points in the paint for the Pels plus more than a few midrange flicks. Spot you 30, spit on the blacktop.
The backcourt tandem of Lonzo Ball (23, seven boards, eight assists) and Eric Bledsoe (11-5-5) didn’t turn it over a single time and hounded Mike Conley and Donovan Mitchell into a 11-33 campaign from the field. New Orleans’ bench shot 15-20, and made a scoreless statue out of Joe Ingles.
Nobody could stay in front of Zion, who (32 rebounds in three games) apparently is not terrible at rebounding anymore?
February’s best offense kept Utah on a tilt-a-whirl all evening, the Pelicans barely worked enough magic on the defensive perimeter to hang tight.
Josh Hart, Bledsoe and Ball were particularly helpful, Zion and Brandon Ingram (26 points) more engaged on that end (with dozens of exceptions), and most assuredly every New Orleans Pelicans opponent will not be the Utah Jazz from here on out. Imagine what the Pelicans should start doing to normal teams.
Bulls and Heat up next.
Pelicans, 15-19Jazz, 27-8
HALFTIME
This is marvelous, some weird and bad jokes, everyone drinking Snapple, Wilt Chamberlain deciding it was OK to say “motherfucker,” Shaq wearing his finest (free from the shoe company) basketball jersey to a suit-and-tie photoshoot with Bill Russell, Bill Walton, Wilt, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Anyway here’s a quote of Wilt’s from 1972 that I think about a lot:
“I read that McDonald’s has sold eight billion hamburgers. That means every person in the country would have to eat 25. And I’ve never had one, so some guy would have to eat 50.”
I also noted this, from Wilt:
“By 1980 I’ll be a forgotten religion. I’ll just be remembered vaguely as the guy who was lousy at the free throw line.”
Make Wilt the logo. We’re standing on his shoulders.
Denver 118, Chicago 112
The Nuggets are bad in the clutch but, listen, the Nuggets were and are not as bad in the clutch as our beloved, Zach LaVine. He’s an All-Star, a good dude who’s worked his tail off, but sometimes he’s a bowl full of jelly down the stretch of close contests, of which the Bulls are now 9-12 in.
A fine mark, these outcomes are mostly coin flips, but LaVine’s repeated burps are more than a little frustrating. They’re not representative!
Denver won this game because Nikola Jokic was allowed space and vision on his way toward nine assists and 39 damn points.
Chicago ran past Denver’s lacking transition defense and rode Coby White (20 points, 10 rebounds) in the third period — a term that saw coach Billy Donovan wave for a timeout 32 seconds in.
The Bulls shaped up, taking advantage of your usual Thadeisms (12 points on 6-9 shooting, five steals, four assists, five rebounds) and two f****n’ threes from Luke Kornet. It’s like I’m explaining the game to the cab driver.
Denver slowed the damn thing down in the fourth period, Wendell Carter Jr. was out of his depths while up into Jokic’s armpits, Thaddeus and Kornet were no better.
Monte Morris became a Nugget starter four games ago and he’s turned it over four times since then, in 128 minutes. In 178 minutes (and seven games) prior to his starting promotion, Monte turned it over two, whole, times. This is obscene.
Nuggets have won eight in a row over Chicago. If memory serves, each of those games came on the night before Thanksgiving.
Nuggets, 19-15Bulls, 15-18
Cleveland 101, Houston 90
He’s right. Best shot-blocking guard I’ve ever seen.
John Wall tried so hard, the poor guy. Second night of a back to back, dropped 17 in the first quarter just to give his team a chance and all it got him was a five-point deficit after 12 minutes, at home, to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
February’s worst offense was no match for Cleveland’s utter rebounding dominance plus the combined skill of Cavalier backcourt partners Darius Garland and Collin Sexton — GARTON.
GARTON landed Houston on its heels all evening, while rookie helper Isaac Okoro helped keep the Rocket perimeter in check.
Victor Oladipo, for instance, finished with 20 points but he also took 21 shots, committed six turnovers, and was seen laughing inappropriately a few times.
Actually maybe it was appropriate.
Cavaliers, 14-21Rockets, 11-22
Portland 123, Charlotte 111
Let’s get LaMelo out of the way first, there was this pass …
… plus this inexplicably left-handed layup, plus the way he kept Charlotte in the game, 30 points, plus the make-good convo with Carmelo “Melo” Anthony.
Don’t let them tell you Charlotte’s legs gave out, Portland was out ahead of this before the Hornets started to crumble, before the triumph of taking Sacramento on a Sunday tugged for its toll.
Give Portland its credit, the Blazers were in their own building after over a week away, after working 12 of 16 on the road. PDX enjoyed a practice weekend and it showed, Derrick Jones Jr. was all hustle, all night, Charlotte counterpart P.J. Washington (three points) missed seven of eight shots a night after dropping 42 on the Kings.
Robert Covington wasn’t after shots, but the ball found the Blazer, 21 points on 11 attempts, five three-pointers, 10 rebounds, two assists, two steals, two blocks, two facemasks. Nassir Little gave good in the second half, Rodney Hood in the first. Probably should have switched those names.
Gary Trent made a point to seek out trips to the rim, 17 points on 7-11 shooting and he even earned a free throw in the win. Carmelo was magnificent, again, a team-high 29.
And, really, you’d let your offense bother your defense if you were Terry Rozier, too.
Trail Blazers, 19-14Hornets, 16-18
JUST FOR A MOMENT
March is here, you made it through winter. It’s all beaches from here on out.
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PREVIOUSLY: NORTHWEST, CENTRAL, ATLANTIC
GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS
This cursed franchise somehow snuffed three seasons in a year and a half, between Klay Thompson’s two severe leg injuries and the dual shock of Kevin Durant’s Achilles tear and flight to Brooklyn. This whole thing is sudden and weird and most certainly not cool.
The W’s made out with perhaps the most sensible pick inside a nutrageous draft, and it’ll earn Minnesota’s lottery selection later this year, but 2020-21 is another standby season. One in which two of its championship holdovers will have to fight like mad just to return GSW to the ranks of “playoff-caliber.”
C: Kevon Looney — completely fell off last year but is rather suitable to cling to the starting position another year as long as Steve Kerr is coach. PF: Draymond Green — a bum foot to start this season, minding this 30-year old’s minutes will be crucial. If Dray loses faith in his perimeter shot, GSW sinks. SF: Kelly Oubre Jr. — sparkling performer can live off turnovers and cuts, needs to show up against the good teams. SG: Andrew Wiggins — if his opening night performance is any indication, the first six years of his career were indication enough. PG: Stephen Curry — drag to waste two prime seasons like this, but he can’t press.
Marquese Chriss produced like a starting-quality NBA big man last season, then Draymond trashed the Suns, it was great … Rookie Jordan Poole made a third of his shots last season, the same mark Bob Cousy contributed in seven games as Cincinnati Royals player/coach in 1969-70 … Nico Mannion is the son of Pace Mannion, who used to have a horrifying mustache … Alen Smailagic will shoot, guys, do you want someone to shoot? Alen said he could.
Thank goodness the NBA didn’t lose James Wiseman to Minnesota or New York or Charlotte or Chicago or Cleveland or some other hopeless outpost. His footwork needs a major upgrade and he doesn’t understand the least bit about defense, but his placement on the Warriors is a best-case statement for both player and franchise … Brad Wanamaker is 32 just after this season ends, Brad’s one of the best backup point guard but we’re not picking up a colt, here.
Damion Lee, capable all-around shooting guard … Eric Paschall gets to the line a lot, which is nice of him, but I don’t know where he fits on a championship contender … Kent Bazemore acts as a good holdover until Klay returns, though his defense isn’t what it used to be … Warriors kept swingman prospect Mychal Mulder to keep Bazemore real tight, paranoid.
Sixth in the West
Pace Mannion was just one of two men in this jacuzzi with a mustache:
L.A. CLIPPERS
The Clippers never showed any indication that they were nearing championship contention in the regular season, there was always an excuse, something was always lacking.
It came to light in the bubble, Denver’s 3-1 comeback in the Western semifinals was assured the minute the Clippers clinched Game 4, so now the Clippers strut to stage with New Doc. Younger Doc, one that’s less likely to have paid to see Andre Thornton play in person.
The problem with New Doc is the same with the Old Doc: Tyronn Lue can’t run point guard, and he can’t perform what we’d call “legal surgery” on Paul George’s shoulders.
C: Ivica Zubac — is awfully good at the position.PF: Marcus Morris — fine postseason after a cruddy regular season blip with the Clips. SF: Kawhi Leonard — enjoyed his first strong campaign as a playmaker in 2019-20, something he’ll have to keep up with this grotty passing crew. SG: Paul George — still awfully good, and responded well in the regular season to what was asked of him — playmaking, defense, outside shooting. The bubble was messed up for a lot of people.PG: Patrick Beverley — owns enough to act the lead guard on a championship team. Kawhi and George expected Beverley to remain the voice of the club in 2020, to speak up on their behalf when Kawhi and Paul shirked out, we saw how that turned out. Pat can’t keep quiet in what needs to be a championship-or-bust season for this aging crew.
Hard to imagine Lou Williams being less angry this season … Serge Ibaka’s ability to catch the ball at the top of the chaos and pick a pizza that everyone likes, legendary … Rookie center Daniel Orturo shouldn’t have to pull many minutes this season, but the sturdy second-round pick won’t go away quietly … Jay Scrubb is a 6-6 JUCO guy who can shoot, score and board … Terance Mann wasn’t terrible as a rookie, Amir Coffey is not Cuttino Mobley (he’s just left-handed) … New Clipper assistant Kenny Atkinson is trying to make a client out of the bouncy Mfiondu Kabengele.
Here’s to hoping it isn’t so bad that Ky Bowman has to play a ton at point guard … If Luke Kennard is healthy, he can make a massive difference, but Detroit didn’t seem to think his knees were any good. Kennard’s legs will endure heaps of playmaking responsibilities this season … Reggie Jackson in a compressed season is going to be horrifying … The only place Patrick Patterson can get a job is with the Clippers … L.A. is just about hard-capped so depth providers like Beverley, Patterson, Kennard, Jackson and Nicolas Batum (such strong potential up front) badly need to keep their salts straight.
Third in the West
LOS ANGELES LAKERS
Won the title a few months ago, and rather handily. Did the best it could with the offense and competed exceptionally defensively. And it wasn’t a clinical performance, lucky us.
The Lakers won the title two months ago, and they’re going to play like it for the next two months.
C: Marc Gasol — a marvelous addition who, even in his aged (35) state, still basically balms every slight irritation present on these defending champions. PF: Anthony Davis — stats as big as your house, pairing with LeBron added years to his legs. G/F: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — also has done well associating himself with James. Kindly continue the playoff shooting. SG: Wesley Matthews — out of central casting, in fighting trim after a year in MKE.G/F: LeBron James — finally proved he could win the big one.
It’s important to remember Dennis Schröder was traded to Los Angeles, he didn’t sign with the Lakers, and that some people aren’t always as fully on board with your projections as you’d expect them to be. Hopefully Dennis changes his feelings about peeling off the bench, because he’s going to score about 240 points per possession alongside Montrezl Harrell, James or Davis, and extra-pass guy Alex Caruso.
We put our heads together for a few years and finally determined that Kyle Kuzma is fine, everyone, he’s fine … Markieff Morris will surprise you with a few passes this season but don’t play him at forward … Hey Kelly don’t forget to build up Talen Horton-Tucker until nobody wants to read about the Lakers anymore … Quinn Cook wasn’t at his best last year but at least he knows the plays.
At least he knows most of the plays.
Undersized scoring power forward Devontae Cacok put up 19.4 points and a dozen boards in only 24 minutes per game with the Lakers’ minor league affiliate last season … Younger teammates laugh because Jared Dudley is so old that he’s got a Twitter account … The Lakers kept 28-year old forward Alonzo McKinnie in the JaVale McGee but not the (still unsigned) Jordan Bell, score this one for Bulls fans.
If the Lakers lose to any other team in the NBA four times in seven tries, this season will have been considered a severe disappointment. Any lingering setbacks suffered in the compressed regular season should be solved by the leisurely pace of the NBA’s playoff bracket.
Tops in the West
PHOENIX SUNS
The Suns finally spent real money on a head coach, and look what happened. Monty Williams gave the Suns purpose on offense and responsibilities to contend with, defensively.
Suddenly sick of saying “I told you so,” the holdover Suns responded to the addition of both a competent coach and competent point guard (the since-departed Ricky Rubio) with a competent showing. The Suns nearly made the postseason, which is the season after the season that the Suns usually play in.
The attitude carried over to the offseason, when Phoenix pulled the trigger on the two years and $85.6 million remaining on Chris Paul’s contract, alongside what’s remaining of Chris Paul.
C: DeAndre Ayton — production remained same but defense improved considerably in his second season.F: Jae Crowder — why didn’t he just sign in Orlando? Did Jae think the bubble was in Phoenix? Good pickup because Crowder doesn’t have to hit shots for his spacing to be effective. I don’t know what his excuse for rebounding is. F: Mikal Bridges — discovered success in clipping the three-point shooting a little. SG: Devin Booker — found comfier space to finish inside or splash behind the arc last season under Monty. PG: Chris Paul — role of “always being right” suits Paul (who has a player option next year) wonderfully. This will be a fun spot to play before he maneuvers his way to Miami.
Of course it was Cameron Payne who turned Phoenix’s minus position (backup point guard) into a major plus earlier this year, this year is 2020 … Centers used to be as big as Dario Saric so, yes, keep working him at center … And not Damian Jones, who is so bad defensively … E’Twaun Moore can do a bit of everything and defend and not turn the ball over in the backcourt, marvelous acquisition.
Frank Kaminsky, acquisition … The Suns should like Abdel Nader, but there’s a glut at what he does unless the fourth-year really starts cranking from outside … Love Jevon Carter L-U-V Jevon Carter but if Cam Payne flakes again the Suns’ ballhandling might be rough off the bench again … The Suns draft for need because why the hell not and Jalen Smith is OK, pairing him with Ayton this early will only produce good things … Langston Galloway hits shots and is gonna win game or two for you, these are healthy pickups … Enjoyed Cameron Johnson as a rookie, a zero-mistake, zero-rebound, sweet-shooting big forward.
No. 6 in the West
SACRAMENTO KINGS
The Kings enter the season with Luke Walton remaining at the coaching helm, the lamest duck since the last coach Sacramento let dangle.
It will take the Kings ages to free themselves from Vlade Divac’s term as general manager. De’Aaron Fox re-committed to the team with a contract extension, but the club had to sit the 2020 offseason out because, hey, Vlade (who quit in August) used up all the cap space and drained the fridge of diet pop. Actually there’s one left in there but it’s caffeine-free.
Could you imagine the boxes Vlade left? Just the illegal deals, the hand-written stuff, you hit CTRL-V on a laptop and Adam Silver’s phone number pastes out.
C: Richaun Holmes — immediately earned the starting center spot away from the long-departed Dewayne Dedmon, cashing in on years of strong reserve play. Nothing flukey about him. PF: Marvin Bagley — a fine talent, badly needs some good luck. SF: Harrison Barnes — three years and $61 million left for Good Jeff Green.SG: Buddy Hield — how can you underrated your own player but still overpay (four years, $94 million) him?PG: De’Aaron Fox — remarkable improvement for someone who has to learn from this noise. Let the league’s assistant coaches recognize this when it’s time to create an All-Star team.
The Kings picked up Hassan Whiteside on a minimum deal which is gonna be rough for Hassan because I’m pretty sure he still owes Miami and Portland money after those last few years … Jahmi’us Ramsey made the club just to piss off Buddy Hield … Nemanja Bjelica’s giant ass is essential to his scoring prowess, don’t ask him to move it … The Kings plucked Tyrese Haliburton because everyone said Tyrese Haliburton was can’t miss and Sacramento was keen to prove everyone wrong.
Glenn Robinson III is somehow just as infuriating as his father was … Cory Joseph is a real coach on the floor because he shoots like he’s wearing a sport coat … Jabari Parker is proof that Kings aren’t born, but made.
There is a good core here, Bagley hasn’t even started what will turn into a fruitful career and Fox is for real.
The Kings just want to take a year off, and we’d like to let them.
No. 14 in the West
FIRST LIGHT
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You were right, all of you. The 2019-20 regular season, pre-bubble, ran without charm. There was no reason to watch.
The season felt like it began only weeks after the last one ended. After Houston bled into Golden State which bled into Toronto’s championship which bled into the draft which wasn’t done by the time Durant confirmed on a Sunday afternoon that he’d be in Brooklyn, now. Then the earthquake hit, and with it Kawhi, and all of this was seventeen months ago and not seventeen decades ago.
The 2019-20 regular season came off as inessential, not for lack of contenders but the absence of cohesion. It was as if the entire league needed a break and a half and, whoops, by March, it got one.
It is December now and 2020-21 is three weeks away and yet it doesn’t feel like the season ended just weeks ago, which it did, or that three-quarters of the teams require a pause.
Every team wants to win, now. Los Angeles and L.A. are tip and tops, for sure, but that doesn’t mean every team in every conference (2) isn’t trying to challenge.
Perhaps the Pistons, Cavaliers, Knicks and Thunder acknowledged 2021 won’t serve as a major uptick, but none of these clubs have ruled themselves out of the play-in race. The 2021 NBA draft looks nicer with each new morning, generational talent remains a championship bedrock, and yet nobody is clipping sandbags.
For those that dig those transactions, it should only get better. This trade deadline should act a doozy, with agents looking to lease their free agent-y players to the sort of promised land that Jordan Clarkson ($52 million!) launched into. No team in the Eastern playoff race will consider 2021’s top seed an unconquerable collection, everyone’s a player away.
The trades aren’t ending. Hell, Charlotte is probably counting the weeks until it can give Hayward the Blake Griffin-treatment. Nobody really ever leaves this market.
This certainly hurt interest in 2019-20, though the changes helped.
The play-in tourney and lottery squash kept an incentive for what fans and Hinkies alike hate the most: the 38-win team with an edge. Atlanta looked absolutely hopeless last season, years away from the postseason, yet the front office should well be lauded for going for it.
No club bottomed out. Every outfit is trying to make the most of their roster, as even the lone tanker in OKC boasts primetime, playoff-tested performers who wouldn’t look out of place on TNT Thursday. OKC knows that if it wants the kid still playing in Stillwater, it can trade one of its trillion first-round picks to move on up.
Everybody wants to put wins up, and it hasn’t been this way in decades. The pressure on this season should be fascinating.
UPSET AT HOW THIS ALWAYS IS WITH THE LAKERS
It doesn’t bother me that the Lakers attracted Marc Gasol in the same offseason as Montrezl Harrell, 2019’s championship pivot with 2020’s Sixth Man Award-winner. Doesn’t bug me that Cleveland helped make it happen, eating JaVale McGee’s contract in a cap-clearing deal.
It doesn’t bug me because it is likely Harrell will even sniff the late fourth quarter of a close playoff game, it doesn’t offend because the Lakers drafted Gasol in the first place, and because KCP earned that three-year, $39.1 million deal (with the third year only guaranteed for $4.88 million) by rimming in all those Very Tough Shots.
I don’t mind it because the Lakers don’t just have the best player in the game, they have LeBron James.
The NBA’s top player, on most seasons, isn’t anywhere as good as LeBron James, and isn’t nearly as sensitive (or as corny). LeBron is not Kobe, and Shaq had nowhere near the staying power of LeBron. Los Angeles’ perpetual NBA advantage, by this point inarguable, won’t always be this strong.
The best player won’t always be LeBron. Enjoy him while he’s around.
HALFTIME
This is Ted Stepien, Cleveland Cavaliers owner, and the time he dropped a bunch of softballs from the 52nd floor of Cleveland’s Terminal Tower as thousands looked on below.
In a somewhat eerie foretelling of events to come Stepien reportedly said “This is bad, I’m really going to hurt somebody.”
Just before his first throw someone on the observation deck told him to make sure he threw the ball far so that it would clear the base of the building. With this in mind Stepien launched it roughly 50 feet away before it began hurtling towards the earth. A few seconds later it smashed into a car below, leaving a massive dent.
The second ball nearly beaned a 66 year old factory worker, just barely missing his skull and nailing him in the shoulder. It was badly bruised but the man refused medical attention. Stepien’s third ball rocketed towards the ground and shattered 24-year-old Gayle Falinski’s right wrist. By this time many people were starting to flee, and those that stayed were pushed away from the tower by police in order to try and keep them out of the way of the aimless projectiles.
Following the debacle, Stepien lamented his outfit’s lack of preparation.
“It was ill-advised. It's unfortunate that there wasn't a practice or a dry run. This is a dangerous stunt.”
In a settlement, Stepien later paid $35,875 to Ms. Falinsky.
THIS ISN’T BENEATH THE SUNS
Not by a long shot.
Here is a tweet from former Suns GM Ryan McDonough, still up,
First of all, wasn’t (current Suns GM) James Jones the only one that got out of the Brooks & Brooks debacle unscathed?
Secondly, this isn’t a good post. It’s not funny, there’s no burn, only a needless tag for Oubre and enough treadmill-tweet energy to power a fleet of Lincoln Town Cars. John Hollinger at least has the good sense to get paid for carping about front office semantics, and for more than 14 re-tweets.
Kelly Oubre’s been a Sun, recently, and the new Golden State Warrior is damned happy to be out of Phoenix:
“I can play for an owner -- somebody who actually cares about the organization and not just the perception of the organization on the media end of it.”
The Suns might make the playoffs this year, and they will probably pay Chris Paul over $44 million to play basketball next year, but the whole stink is still there. The same stink that hamstrung D’Antoni and Nash and eventually Steve Kerr, the same foundation that hired McDonough, the same group sitting through James Jones’, say it softly, mercurial stylings.
TORONTO HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
The Raptors knew it wouldn’t last forever and, look, it didn’t.
Kawhi split and Marc Gasol always had a foot out the door and Serge Ibaka (for the first time in his career) thought it lovely to be courted. The return is what Raptors fans used to brag out: Masai Ujiri’s fringe finds stepping up, followed by more slash-and-dash moves to secure the sort of superstar Toronto deserves.
At least Fred VanVleet is totally 6-1.
CHARLOTTE HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
In spite of of his impermanence, Gordon Hayward still found teammates in Boston. His rebounding improved and while his free throw rate dipped, it wasn’t terrible. His expected future decline, even with a price tag that pays Hayward $31.5 million in 2024, doesn’t make this an obscene valuation provided he stays healthy. Which he probably won’t.
It makes Boston worse, but it creates confidence in Charlotte. Even if Terry Rozier regards passing as something best suited for the left-hand lane, even if Devonte’ Graham sleeps with the ball in his bassinet.
My list of “pros” is longer than Hayward’s face: Gordon won’t get to mope on national TV as much, the East’s play-in tourney will be slightly more talented, Bill Simmons is upset.
These are all wintertime treats.
BOSTON HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
Kemba Walker just had the, whaddya call it, f****n’ stem-cell injections into his knee.
This was not a thin team in the bubble, even with Gordon Hayward out there missing layups. Walker is out until January, he hopes, Wanamaker is gone and he wasn’t really that great to begin with. Theis is a year older and there is no way in hell new signee Tristan Thompson is still only 29.
Try not to let the rumors bother you, nobody from the Indiana damn Pacers was going to save Boston’s 2020-21, but your anxiety is well-founded. Walker may never be the same. The Celtics owned the nicest setup, picks for ages and salary cap space to spare, now it can barely field a rotation (on top of the game’s two best young swingmen).
They’ll still beat the hell out of the Sixers.
DETROIT HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
But it’s fine. Plumlee is sweet to make fun of but he can pass. The draft weirdness (Isaiah Stewart strangely at No. 16, a whole lotta movement to acquire Saddiq Bey) is a little alarming and Jerami Grant probably isn’t a $20 million player unless you’re a rookie NBA GM and this is your first offseason.
And the Pistons don’t need anybody, right now. The team is years away.
They’ll be fun, though, with Blake and Plumlee dishing around and Delon Wright getting his fair share of the ball. Past Piston outfits revealed no such appeal.
Also, trading second-round picks, like, who gives a rat’s ass?
Look at the gunner they just got:
He can’t jump, but the 6-8 Deividas Sirvydi IS left-handed.
DENVER HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
Remember all those times in 2020 when Michael Porter Jr.’s guy did something cool, like cut to the basket unopposed, and Michael Porter Jr. didn’t notice?
Wal-Mart crapped out, didn’t want to pay for a winner, and Nugget fans will have to find slim solace noting that Jerami Grant wasn’t as great at defense as they said he was, anyway.
And at least they still don’t have to pretend Juancho Hernangomez is really good.
MILWAUKEE HAD A ROUGH OFFSEASON
It isn’t fair to compare players when a market is involved, real apples-to-oranges stuff, but in Milwaukee’s instance Torrey Craig can be an upgrade over Bogdan Bogdanovic for so many reasons. Bogdan needs the ball, Craig will score half as much but you’ll never see him touch the thing this game is named after.
There is the argument to make that the Bucks still require a “needs the ball”-type to sop up possessions against second units. In an ideal world, Bobby Portis might be that guy. In MKE’s world, Portis might have to start. You tend to worry about a front office once they start signing a bunch of tantalizing, Knicksian names, someone like Portis. Makes you wonder if Noah Vonleh was next, luckily your Bulls stepped in.
Giannis signing the supermax changes nothing, he’ll be on the block until the Bucks win a championship. His team’s attempts at immediate validity, in an offseason that changes out lead stories every hour, was embarrassing.
If you want to be taken seriously, don’t leak s**t.
While we’re doling advice,
TAKE MORE BANK SHOTS
The ball hits the box, it goes in. You don’t have to be a good shooter, you just have to aim well.
A basketball attempt doesn’t have to float to a certain apex before an extinguished arc nose-dives toward just beyond the tip of the goal, no, f**k all that.
Hit the box, let it bounce in.
From Micah Adams, via Marc Stein’s newsletter:
Duncan converted 945 bank shots (good for 1,890 points) over the final 13 seasons of his career, shooting 59.1 percent on bankers over that span.
Hit the box.
From straightaway, even, Kelly?
Bank it. Call it.
ROUNDUP
The Blazers signed Harry Giles and he’ll rarely play but I’ll be with him when he does, his game is weird and you should watch it … Denver re-signed Paul Millsap but the problem is that it’s 2020 now, almost 2021, and the Paul Millsap that Denver needs is the Paul Millsap Denver signed in 2017 … Memphis kept De’Anthony Melton and they should, every team needs a Haslem of its own … Steven Adams’ contract extension with the Pelicans is only for two years, who cares, he can play in spots and Adams is sizeable contract to trade who will be 29 when the contract is up.
For those of you worried about fit, well,
He said they won’t be punked, so they won’t be punked. He said they won’t be punked.
Minnesota signed Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, who is a small forward that plays like a center and will earn minutes with his offensive rebounding capabilities … Your Wolves also re-signed the aforementioned Hernangomez, who is only 25 and good in the locker room … RHJ is also friends with several players on the roster … Minnesota also picked up Ed Davis and I guess this turned into a whole Minnesota Timberwolves bit … The Timberwolves only have a swingman glut if you think Jarrett Culver can actually play
Shaq Harrison earned a bit of tread online to start the week and for good reason:
That’s a good post.
Harrison can absolutely press and play in this league, I understand his many side-splitting faults but it’s also hilarious no team has backed him with the mild confidence of a minimum contract yet. Especially with the Knicks retaining Elfrid Payton, Harrison would be so lovely in Tom Thibodeau’s hands (even if New York is up to a dozen potential perimeter starters) … (save one) …
Sacramento didn’t match Bogdan Bogdanovic’s offer with the Hawks because when you miss your exit you gotta take your L and drive on to the next exit, not slide across two lanes and the gravelly-side of an exit ramp just to aim at what you want. Sacramento didn’t have to ruin Bogdan’s life for eight months just to improve their offseason grade by a letter on someone’s newsletter.
Anyway, subscribe to my newsletter.
CAUGHT UP
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The roughest part is that it’s still a little too easy to see why the Knicks traded Patrick Ewing on this date, 20 years ago.
He asked for a deal, and it was never sensible to say “no” to what a client of David Falk requests, especially if you’re in the year 2000.
Also, that’s about the only reason.
Dealing Ewing for various Suns, Lakers and SuperSonic rejects (Glen Rice, Luc Longley, Travis Knight, plus two first-round picks) crippled New York’s salary cap for years to stretch. The best they’d top out with Rice (a dozen points per game, 75 games, 25 starts in 2000-01) was a 48-win season and embarrassing 2001 first round exit.
Ewing wasn’t a success in Seattle but his large contract ($18 million in 2000-01) ran out in the summer of 2001. Knight and Longley’s contracts expired in 2004, though they’d be waived years before their salaries left the cap.
The 33-year old Rice signed to a four-year, $36 million contract with New York as part of the package, he’d only last a season in New York before general manager Scott Layden shipped him out for (the lengthy contracts of) Shandon Anderson and Howard Eisley, two former Layden draftees.
The best player sent to New York in the transaction, future Heat rebounding ace Vladimir Stepania, was waived before he could join the club.
Layden and president Dave Checketts also traded the 2001 and 2002 first-round picks (Tony Parker and Tayshaun Prince woulda been available) out partway through 2000-01 in exchange for Falk client Othella Harrington, and 36-year old Mark Jackson.
Checketts resigned after the 2000-01 season.
NEW YORK DIDN’T RESPECT EWING ENOUGH
Ewing’s finger-roll miss knocked New York out of the playoffs in 1995, and while the Knicks gave Chicago a scare in 1996, 1997’s demolished wrist took quite a bit out of Patrick.
Fan frustration grew, as typified by this 1998 documentary:
By 1999, Patrick Ewing wasn’t in the way of Marcus Camby, Camby was just as ill-suited to play 40 minutes per contest as the aging Ewing.
New York hadn’t been sated in its thirst for new blood by 1998’s Camby acquisition, or the 1999 deal that netted Latrell Sprewell. When Seattle reportedly offered Vin Baker outta the gate, the fervor (in a year that saw the Mets and Yankees make the World Series) to deal Ew grew louder.
THE KNICKS WERE STILL A BIG DEAL
New York hadn’t been mistreated by two decades of James Dolan at this point, and the NBA’s world was certainly a lot smaller then.
Knick legend carried a disproportionate amount of weight, what with a New York tabloid scribe on every Sunday broadcast to give fascinating interviews like this one:
The NBA’s TV contract with NBC was up in the summer of 2001, the Knicks fielded a playoff team and often a championship contender for the length of NBC’s 1990-2002 run with the NBA.
The nascent internet ranters wanted to blow it all up, but you can’t rebuild in New York, they told us, as if we weren’t around in the 1980s.
EW WANTED OUT
Pat tore his Achilles missing what could have been a game-tying shot at the buzzer of Game 2 of the 1999 Eastern finals. The Knicks rallied to win that series in spite of Ewing’s absence, giving credibility to the idea that New York was better off without its longtime star.
Ewing also wanted a contract extension, greater certainty that he wouldn’t be dealt during next February’s trade deadline, all the perks of having carried a franchise for a decade and a half.
The Knicks let the summer get the best of them, and genuinely received fair value (an aging Rice, a stopgap center in Longley, whatever Travis Knight was) for the last year of the 38-year old Ewing’s contract. In a vacuum, at least.
With Marcus Camby in ascension, and Allan Houston due to become a top free agent target in 2001, Layden sent Patrick packing:
“It became clear that he was looking for a change, and when he requested a trade, we respected his request.
“It was important in doing so, however, that we had the ability to add value, and with Glen and his All-Star credentials, as well as two veteran big men and draft picks, we believe we have done that.”
Ewing’s expiring contract wouldn’t have put the Knicks under the cap in the summer of 2001, when the offseason’s top prize was Chris Webber. C-Webb’s eventual $122 million deal started at $12.75 million (on a $42 million cap).
Howeva, a creative front office sustains the attack while freeing up cap space at the trade deadline, as Checketts worked in 1996.
Instead, the Knicks tried to keep the train rolling with Rice, but only after Rice dragged Chicago through the fallback ringer. New York was reportedly assured (by Falk) of disgruntled Atlanta Hawks big man Dikembe Mutombo’s availability at the impending trade deadline.
Atlanta wanted nothing to do with Glen Rice’s mid-thirties. Philly later scored Mutombo at the deadline in exchange for 27-year old All-Star center Theo Ratliff, alongside the best month of Toni Kukoc’s career.
All the Knicks were left with was Rice, spurned by the Lakers, and the limping Longley, jettisoned by the Suns, signed through 2004:
“Phoenix knew what was going on. That's why they traded me. Their doctors had seen the X-rays and giggled at them.
“I brought up my ankle in my physical with the Knicks, and they said, ‘Have you been playing?’ I said, ‘Yes,’ and that was it.”
The Knicks waived Longley a year after the trade.
The SuperSonics, in open revolt, fired coach Paul Westphal 15 games into Ewing’s lone season in Seattle. Seattle changed ownership midseason, to the execrable Howard Schultz, and Ewing (9.6 points, 7.4 rebounds in 26.7 minutes per game as a SuperSonic) never got that contract extension. Seattle did not make the playoffs.
Ewing signed a two-year deal worth $4.7 million with Orlando in the summer of 2001. The Magic bought Patrick out for $1.5 million following one reserve season (65 games, six points and four boards per contest) with the club. He retired in 2002.
“If I had it to do all over again,” Ewing told Shaun Powell in 2010, “I wouldn’t have requested a trade.”
And if the Knicks had to do it all over again?
Huh.
Probably deal him for Blake Griffin and (a signed-and-traded) Bismack Biyombo and a coupla a picks. Then deal the picks to get Mario Hezonja and Jabari Parker back.
HALFTIME
1991 Athleticism: Greg Dreiling’s behind-the-back pass, Rick Mahorn’s post-up moves.
Boston 117, Miami 106
Ain’t it a trip when the Celtics don’t let up?
Miami doesn’t let up either, not with all that s**t in its veins, but Boston at least let the Heat consider the prospect in Game 3. The C’s left it tough for Miami to get to its spots, every bit of offensive panache had to be preceded by a bit of panic
Goran Dragic and Bam Adebayo are Miami’s true playmakers, and the pair combined to notch five turnovers in the first quarter alone, eight all day. Jimmy Butler managed only 13 shots and 17 points in 37 minutes, Jae Crowder (2-10 from the field, all threes) saw the his percentages roll to the back of his head.
The Heat missed shots, but in the face of some good-ass Boston Celtics defense. Even when Miami wasn’t throwing the ball away the attack remained relatively sloppy, a far yelp from the sort of whippets we saw darting across the outside in the first two contests of the Eastern finals.
Tyler Herro yanked Miami back to contention with 11 points in the first four minutes of the second quarter(22 all day), but the Heat’s ball still stuck, and Boston couldn’t let up. The Celtics’ offensive insistence persisted even when they were taking the ball out of the net, with that girl, from the bus.
Jaylen Brown was your hero, turning Grant Williams into a Game 3 stud off Boston’s bench, flipping tables, closing out expertly on Miami’s shooters, offering three steals, five assists, only two turnovers in 43 minutes, and a team-high 26 points on 17 shots:
Boston’s offense is only going to become more comfortable as this series moves along. Miami’s best chance in Game 4 is the game of their lives.
Heat lead series 2-1, Game 4 on Wednesday at 8 PM Eastern on ESPN
NBA AWARDS ARE STUPID, WHO CARES
I’ve changed my stance.
AND HE HITS THREES, TWO
GOLDEN STATE UPDATE
“Hey, who was the last free agent who chose to come here? Mark Price?”
Golden State Warriors General Manager Garry St. Jean in 2000, after acquiring Danny Fortson and Adam Keefe.
And actually the correct answer was “Mark Price on one leg.”
IT’S ALL ABOUT YOU
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NOVEMBER WAS BLEAK
Scottie Pippen hurt his foot in the 1997 Eastern finals but played through it, averaging 20 points, 8.3 rebounds and 3.5 combined steals/blocks in the 1997 NBA Finals. He was set to enter 1997-98 as the NBA’s 122nd-highest paid player, working off a long-term contract signed during the days when emerging NBA stars could re-negotiate contracts on the fly.
No such provision existed in 1997, but Pippen had to vent somehow.
Pippen’s yearly charity game at the United Center hit in September 1997, unrolling the usual cadre of big names: Gary Payton, Jason Kidd, Ray Allen, Chicagoans Antoine Walker and Michael Finley alongside other NBA notables. Chicago Bulls Randy Brown and Ron Harper were also scheduled to appear.
Chicago general manager Jerry Krause sent Pippen a notice before the contest, warning him not to play, allegedly threatening Pip with a fine if he set (injured) foot on court. This outreach, paired with legitimate trade rumors that had Scottie Pippen in a Boston Celtics uniform throughout part of the previous summer, infuriated Pippen. He thought he’d seen enough already.
Pippen skipped his charity game and underwent foot surgery in October, a good three months after he shoulda gone under the knife, it cost Scottie the first three months of 1997-98. After working 95 games in 1995-96 and 101 contests in 1996-97, Pip was going to do what was best for his beat-to-hell body ahead of one final free agent turn.
And for good reason. No other Bull, not even Dennis Rodman, threw himself around as much as Scottie Pippen during the second three-peat.
(Krause would re-recognize as much at the 1998 NBA Finals, away from the ring, spying a shot of the Bulls training staff flat-out wailing on Pippen’s back with fists and arms during Game 6, literally trying to push the spasms out.)
Before Jerry could grow wise, however, Pippen had to play out his frustrations in the press. Scottie begged Arlington Heights Daily Herald beat reporter Kent McDill to quote him on record, to put his trade demands in print.
“I ain’t coming back,” Pippen told the Arlington Heights (Ill.) Daily Herald on Sunday night.
“I want to be traded. I want to go to Phoenix or L.A.”
The Suns boasted Jason Kidd, Phoenix was first in line with cap space in the bid to sign Pippen when he became a free agent the next offseason.
Pippen said the thing that finally set him off was a letter from Krause in the summer telling Pippen that because of his injured foot, he could not play in his own charity game. Pippen said Krause threatened to fine him if he did play.
“Can you believe it?” Pippen said.
Pippen had surgery on his foot in October and is expected to be out until December or possibly January. But when Pippen was told he would not be traded if he was injured, he said, “Maybe I’m healthy.”
Monday, his only comment was, “I’m fine.”
Pippen’s malingerer turn was unexpected, but it was likely just a boast — Pippen’s soft tissue injury would need the full three months to heal.
Jerry Krause traveled with his club, ridiculously, even sticking on the players and coaches bus to games and airports. Days after Pippen’s trade demand, on a bus trip to a hotel in Seattle, an intoxicated Pippen unloaded on his boss in full view of his teammates and coaches, screaming at Krause, again demanding to be traded.
Chicago coach Phil Jackson’s lone counter was to wheel around, pick up an empty bottle of beer, and point to Pippen — you’ve had enough.
Bulls reserve center Joe Kleine, on his first road trip with the team, assumed his new coach was toasting Pippen.
Chicago stumbled into Seattle to take on new SuperSonic Vin Baker and the rest of coach George Karl’s club. Baker popped a game-winner over Luc Longley to seal the game, dropping the Bulls to 8-6 on the season.
A loss in Indianapolis a few days later dropped the defending champions to 8-7.
It was low, man. Low.
RODMAN SAVED EVERYONE’S SPIRITS, JUMPERS
In a 15-game stretch between Dec. 10 and January 7, Rodman averaged 19.4 rebounds per game. In the spot when the Bulls needed him the most — with few other advantages on the table — Rodman won the club game after game after game.
The Bulls enjoyed about 89 possessions per game in 1997-98, the lowest mark (Charlotte) in 2019-20 was 96 possessions per game — it was a different battlefield and there weren’t a lot of caroms to share with the other nine guys out there.
Buoyed by an incentive-laden contract in 1997-98, Dennis led the NBA in defensive and total rebound percentage that year at age 36, averaging 15 boards per game. His run was crucial for Chicago’s chances — Dennis takes a few more days off and the Bulls play Game 7 of the 1998 Eastern finals in Indianapolis.
Rodman earned the dragging defending champions chance after chance with his 17 percent offensive rebounding percentage (tops in 2019-20: 23-year old 7-footer Ivica Zubac at 15.2) and deft passing.
A waltz through the lane with the Dallas Mavericks isn’t the stiffest kitten in the litter (that would be Atlanta), but the touch is just the same:
EVERYONE WAS TIRED AND OLD AND INJURED
After working 100 games to glory in 1995-96 and 101 in 1997’s successful title defense, the thirtysomething Bulls were mostly blown to bits by the time 1997-98 arrived.
These bangups persisted throughout the regular season and playoffs, ponder this beset rotation:
Michael Jordan — fucked up shooting wrist.Toni Kukoc — major plantar fasciitis flares, out of shape upon re-entry.Bill Wennington — plantar fasciitis (missed 1997 postseason).Luc Longley — plantar fasciitis, knee problems. Steve Kerr — broken collarbone suffered when Derrick Coleman sat on him.Scottie Pippen — surgery, protest.Rodman — just fine.Ron Harper — 82 goddamn games, pal.
The scenario played out as you’d expect: Chicago limped to ninth in offense in 1997-98, Jordan shot a career-low (in a full season) from the floor. The team was 24th out of 29 teams in free throw attempts despite Jordan attending to nine free throw chances per game.
It was the sort of year where Luc Longley (a career-high 11.4 points per game) had to step up to survive. Nobody was aided by the extended three-point line. Steve Kerr rang 57-130 (43.8 percent) from behind the arc but Chicago was 23rd out of 29 teams in three-point percentage.
Pippen’s return on January 10 didn’t immediately ring with streaks of splendor.
Recall that this was how Pippen rated out to Phil Jackson in December:
Our strength coach, Al Vermeil, worked Scottie out today, and was stunned to find his vertical leap is only 17 inches.
That's the same as Joe Kleine’s.
Scottie’s used to be 30 inches or so. His leg strength is shot. So now we’re looking at another month or more of rehab.
JERRY KRAUSE F*G HATED PHIL JACKSONPHIL JACKSON F***G HATED JERRY KRAUSE
“I don’t care if it’s 82-and-oh this year, you’re f*g gone.”
That’s what Jerry Krause said to Phil Jackson behind closed doors.
What he said in public was nearly as strident:
“Phil only wanted to coach one more year, and we only wanted Phil to coach one more year.”
Hamstrung by payroll constraints — Michael Jordan’s $33.4 million contract alone exceeded 1997-98’s $26.8 million salary cap — Krause was forced to dance around the margins.
He signed Joe Kleine to the veteran’s minimum and, in the first Bulls trade since the team’s acquisition of Dennis Rodman two years earlier, Krause traded for veteran swingman Scott Burrell in September, 1997.
The price was 1994’s first round draft pick Dickey Simpkins, a 6-10’ish power forward left off Chicago’s playoff roster in 1995, 1996, and 1997.
(It was around this time Chicago Tribune columnist Bernie Lincicome misquoted Jerry Krause about the whole “players and coaches don’t win championships, organizations do”-thing.
Lincicome was among those who relayed the quote incorrectly to Michael Jordan, which led to Jordan’s Flu Game-inspired counter: “I didn't see the organization playing sick last year.”
Krause’s actual line, as recounted to Adrian Wojnarowski, was “‘Players and coaches alone don’t win championships. Organizations do.”
This is also what the beat writers in Krause’s presence — including the late Lacy J. Banks and Terry Armour — heard.)
Reserve power forward Jason Caffey enjoyed life in 1996-97 as Rodman’s reserve, a starting chore during Dennis’ bouts with suspension and injury.
With Rodman on good behavior in 1997-98, however, Caffey’s minutes dimmed and frustrations grew. A close relative of his was murdered early in the campaign, which also doubled as Caffey’s contract year.
Caffey was 6-6, and Chicago was desperate for someone to at least approximate Bison Dele’s defensive performance from the previous season, a Scott Williams-type. The champs needed someone, eh, about Dickey Simpkins’ length.
Krause unexpectedly dealt Caffey at the 1998 trade deadline for taller forward David Vaughn, who played three times, dunking once in a blowout win over Cleveland, before his release.
Caffey averaged 10.9 points and 5.9 rebounds in 25 minutes per game with Golden State after the trade deadline, re-igniting Phil Jackson’s rather paranoid concerns that his front office was rooting for his club’s demise. These initial concerns reportedly bubbled after Krause’s “we only wanted Phil to coach one more year”-comment the previous summer.
Krause responded by finding his 6-10 forward off of the waiver wire: Dickey Simpkins signed with the Bulls for the rest of 1997-98.
Because Simpkins was released by Golden State to make room for Jason Caffey.
“This is a strange business,” Simpkins said, shaking his head.
“You never understand why teams do this and why teams do that. You just have to keep it in perspective. That’s one thing I’ve learned.”
Simpkins made the 1998 playoff roster. He averaged 1.2 points and one rebound in 5.7 minutes per contest, shooting 37 percent from the field.
INDIANA WAS NEVER SCARY, COME ON
Michael Jordan wasn’t part of many Game Sevens — der wuz 1990’s famous loss in Detroit, plus a beatdown of the Knicks in 1992’s Eastern semifinals.
The Pacers extension to seven games against Chicago in 1998 was legitimate. Indiana’s movement (benched by offensive coordinator Rick Carlisle) was miles ascendant from the trudge Larry Brown left as Pacer coach in the mid-1990s, the beef inside was considerable, Larry Bird’s club shot 39 percent from deep.
Farmboys, all.
Not an issue.
Chicago won Game 5 at home by 84 points with MJ busting Fred Hoiberg, Jordan had to slip for Indiana to get away with Game 6, all Mike had to do in Game 7 was bury his head and, boom, 15 free throws.
(ESPN better show some Kukoc highlights.)
UTAH WAS SCARY
If there was ever any doubt, it was in Utah.
Utah earned home court advantage in the Finals, and the Jazz skunked Chicago in Salt Lake City during the regular season. The Jazz also took two of three against Chicago in Utah during the 1997, the team had an edge.
In Game 1, it showed. Badly. John Stockton killed ‘em by death. Stupid bangs and all.
The defending champs dragged it to overtime before Stockton scored over Kerr on a couple of drives, Stockton destroyed him all night.
Flash back a few years, 1983.
Kerr’s only scholarship offer out of high school was to Gonzaga. The school invited him up for a trip to campus, and chance to play with the varsity.
John Stockton was about to enter his senior year, and Steve Kerr From 1997 will take it from here:
“He kicked my butt,” said Kerr, the memory obviously as keen today as it was the day it happened 14 springs ago.
“He worked me over, up and down the court. He was quicker, he was faster. He was nice about it, but he kicked my butt . . . This guy nobody'd ever heard of. I was devastated.”
As were the Gonzaga coaches.
They didn't even bother to wait until Kerr flew back to Los Angeles to give him their decision.
“They said thanks but no thanks,” said Kerr. “They wouldn’t be needing my services.”
In the United Center hallway, Kerr paused.
“You know,” he finally added, “I wonder if John Stockton even remembers that day?”
(Remembers the day he cost a scholarship to a kid that eventually ended up in the Final Four, same kid he played in the NBA a bunch of times, including these here NBA Finals?
Probably.)
It was Chicago’s good luck that Arizona coach Lute Olsen stepped in to give Kerr the shot at playing college ball. Steve Kerr’s Game 2 rebound gave Chicago its 1998 title.
I don’t mean “Steve Kerr’s comeback,” I mean, “Steve Kerr’s rebound.”
With his Bulls down 85-84 and less than a minute remaining in Game 2, Kerr pulled up for an open transition three-pointer. It missed, but Kerr wrested the rebound away from Last Two Minutes of a Close Game Karl Malone and dished to Jordan near the basket.
Michael’s and-1 put the Bulls up two points, a decisive lead.
NBA.com captured it brilliantly at the time:
The win in Game 2 stole the home-court advantage, and Chicago held Utah to 54 points in Game 3 and prevailed sensibly in Game 4.
Though the Jazz extended the season with a Game 5 win, Chicago already had three wins in the bag. The power forward was wrestling and gambling with Billy Corgan, in his off-wrestling hours. It was a grin by then.
From the Washington Post’s Michael Wilbon, in 1998:
Did you hear the word Michael Jordan used late Friday night to describe the final 1.1 seconds of Game 5, when the Bulls had the ball and were drawing up a final play to win the game and a sixth NBA championship?
“Cute.” That’s the word he used.
“I thought it was cute just thinking about it,” he said.
It was. And after a stop and a score, everyone got to go away for the summer.
And nobody had to come back.
If you’re looking for Bulls stuff, stuff about Michael, this is your place.
For as long as this lasts, we are documenting every game of Michael Jordan’s second three-peat.
We’re in the 1995 comeback right now, and this goes through the summer, through fall, as long as we have to. Emails full of anecdotes, updates, clips, goodness, 72-win greatness. A good time in front of your laptop, a fine time in control of your phone.
PREVIOUSLY IN 1995
PIPPEN RIPS KRAUSE : BULLS WITHOUT MJ : MJ BACK : MJ GOOD NOW : ORLANDO BRINGS THE RAIN : MICHAEL IN ATLANTA : FREE TOP 55 KNICKS (MICHAEL JORDAN SCORED ON) FREE : BOSTON’S IN CHICAGO : 10-9-8-76ERS : WHOOP-DE-DAMN-DO
NEXT: WEEKEND WITH CLEVELAND
Thank you for reading, listening!
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If you were in the arena when Michael scored, from 1984 through 1998, you’re eligible for this list.
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Buck Williams — refused to shave his head for the 1997 playoffs and his teammates agreed with the decision: Chris Childs said if Buck “cut off his hair, his head would look like a toaster.”54. Chris Childs — never threw at MJ. 53. Allan Houston — is anyone really an “Allan Houston fan?”52. Brad Lohaus — Dan Patrick called this guy “the Vanilla Gorilla” in like the eighties. 51. Greg Anthony — Republican. 50. Mo Cheeks — 34 years and and straight up the kilt for 23-year old Rod Strickland.49. Rory Sparrow — Jordan’s inoffensive future teammate.48. Pete Myers from 1989. 47. Pete Myers from 1998 — included a second time because I didn’t want to put Mark Jackson on here.46. Monty Williams —
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Rolando Blackman — raised in Brooklyn, where Jordan was born. Neither of the adult versions helped the Knicks. 44. Kiki Vandeweghe — Portland’s GM once sent surreptitious tape of Vandeweghe’s practices to the Spurs in an effort to encourage San Antonio to trade for him. The Knicks received no such tape (but traded for him anyway). 43. Brooks Thompson — fake, ass, name.42. Derek Harper — one of the good ones. 41. Charlie Ward — not one of the good ones. 40. J.R. Reid — Charles Barkley was told Reid considered himself blackballed from the NBA after J.R.’s vicious hit on A.C. Green’s trash talk, and Barkley agreed — “that, and lack of talent.”39. Scott Brooks.
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Darrell Walker — he’s the defensive one, I always confuse him with37. Trent Tucker — the shooter who changed the rules. 36. Chris Mills — Celtics boss Rick Pitino signed Mills to a six-year deal in July of 1997 and then wanted to trade him two months later and the Knicks were all like “yeah man, this guy must be great.”
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Doug Christie — actually quite good in defending Michael Jordan (while with other teams). 34. Pat Cummings — to be fair to Pat he was usually the guy taking it out of the basket after Jordan scored on someone else. 33. Bill Cartwright — contrary to Knick tradition, Cartwright did perform several ballgames for the club from 1984 through 1988.32. Anthony Mason — if anything the Knicks shoulda asked Mason to guard Michael more often. 31. Bill Martin — Knick outsider saw Jordan hit the 1982 NCAA game-winner, too.30. Stuart Gray — big center bothered the Bulls so little as a Pacer, Knick. 29. Brad Wright — he was in there.28. Gerald Wilkins — watch the Jordan Stopper stop Jordan from getting 61:
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Eddie Lee Wilkins — looking like dad. 26. Kennard Winchester — two minutes in garbage time (but the name). 25. Xavier McDaniel.24. Jawann Oldham — asked to be traded from Jordan’s Bulls to New York. Immediately changed course (“I enjoyed running with Michael Jordan and Orlando Woolridge”) after the Knicks made him their fourth center: “I’m tired of being the fourth man on the totem pole. It’s like stacking three aircraft carriers in the harbor.”
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Hubert Davis — so accommodating that Jordan (“swinging a baseball bat as he negotiated”) once traded for him. 22. Kenny Walker — a Slam Dunk Champion in the same year Jordan tried the three-point shootout, which is like winning a Grammy for the best album the year Stevie Wonder releases ‘The Secret Life of Plants.’21. Ron Cavenall — yeah man: Ron Cavenall. 20. Doc Rivers.
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Chris Jent — assistant in Cleveland forever because Mr. Fancy Pants had to have his own “personal shooting coach.”18. Fred Cofield — now a Knick scout. 17. Bob Thornton — Chicago-ass name. 16. Herb Williams — other Bulls got him, too.15. Charles Smith — more a finesse player than anything. 14. Ernie Grunfeld — avenged as much by taking Jordan’s job with the Wizards and running like Pete Myers with it for 16 years. 13. Bernard King — last guy to lead the NBA in scoring before Jordan ended that s**t.12. Butch Carter — once sued the New York Knicks’ backup center. 11. Anthony Bonner — sorry, man. 10. Chris McNealy — now you’ve heard of him. 9. Ken “The Animal” Bannister — not explicitly Jordan-related, but
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Larry Johnson — “Everybody’s talking about when John Starks dunked on Michael Jordan — that didn’t happen.”7. Anthony Bowie — Jordan hit him up in 1998 and he made Doug Collins angry in 1996, listen, Anthony Bowie is my kinda guy. 6. Rod Strickland — maybe the greatest Knick, ever?5. Gary Grant — what can I say about Gary Grant beyond “Chris Dudley was the only Knick left.”4. John Wallace — as portrayed above. 3. John Starks. 2. Charles Oakley. 1. Patrick Ewing — really a three-way tie for first:
PREVIOUSLY IN 1995
PIPPEN RIPS KRAUSE : BULLS WITHOUT MJ : MJ BACK : MJ GOOD NOW : ORLANDO BRINGS THE RAIN : MICHAEL IN ATLANTA
Monday: CELTICS IN CHICAGOWednesday: 1-2-345-SIXERS
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That the Knicks will celebrate the franchise’s 40th anniversary of New York’s 1970 NBA championship is no surprise, that Knick team was legendary, and the Knicks don’t have many title-winners.
They won again, in 1973, and that’s been about it for the NBA’s hometown franchise. The globe’s spun enough to deliver championship revolutions to two different sun spots in Detroit and Golden State, decades apart, but the Knicks can’t even get a taste inside the century they live in.
So, celebrate the past, before the past shuffles off. The Knicks will commemorate the occasion on March 21 — Walt Frazier and Willis Reed and Bill Bradley will attend, so will Bill Hosket and John Warren and Don May.
MSG never mentioned bringing along Phil Jackson, an obvious reunion choice in spite of the games he missed in 1969-70 (all of them).
The New York Post already noted that Marv Albert — the voice of he Knicks between 1177 B.C. and 2004 AD (After Dolan) — will not attend.
Mike Breen, last seen explaining the “crucial delegate process” to a teenager, will likely run as master of ceremonies.
The whole thing is dick, stupid dick, the Garden can’t act its age for a single evening in advance of chasing off what it thinks is best for its New York Knick consumer.
Basketball’s richest franchise shouldn’t have to answer any more questions as to why it only fielded two championships in 74 seasons, or only seven playoff game wins in 19 seasons under Dolan, yet we’re bringing it up again because the Knicks can’t get a party right.
The Nets luxuriously enjoyed 54 playoff wins since James Dolan took over the Knicks in 2001, under like 14 owners and while playing in six different medium-to-large cities inside the tri-state area.
The Knicks are legendary in spite of this, all this mess.
A few minutes of strong Knick basketball at MSG clears away all the muck, basketball fans can’t help but ache for the sport to convey its basest fears inside the arena that’s spooked so many horses, and Happy Hairston.
Knick fans aren’t the ones to sit in front of old clips all night, they don’t need to, the voices inside their heads are almost as old as color footage:
“It would’ve been nice to see the guys,” Albert said when contacted by The Post.
“I was not invited.”
Marv Albert was let go by MSG ahead of the 2004-05 season, he’d been with the team since 1967 with the exception of two seasons in the late 1990s — the Knicks were kind enough to re-hire Albert after he pled guilty to sexual assault and battery charges in 1997.
MSG floated Marv’s escalating salary as the reason for his 2004 departure, Albert countered that he couldn’t see eye-to-eye with Dolan on the content of his broadcasts: “[Albert] was told to be less critical of a somewhat improved Knicks team with a new coach, Lenny Wilkens.”
The MSG owner then did his usual inside a cloth diaper:
Responding to criticism from Albert that Dolan wanted him to be a homer, the Knick owner charged in a WFAN interview, “Marv didn’t like the team. I basically felt he didn’t like the Knicks.”
Marv Albert, not a Knick Guy.
Dolan said Albert made no attempt to get to know the players by visiting the locker room. Dolan said he didn’t mind Albert being critical of a lousy performance, but felt his overall view of last season’s Knicks was negative.
Let me just go ahead and speak up for the entire 2003-04 New York Knick roster and say “hey we don’t need that dude in the locker room.”
“I’ve asked him not to say they’re bad for the season, because why would anyone watch?” Dolan said, adding viewers want “a fan of the team.”
Yo Dolan you just said your team was gonna be “bad for the season” on the radio and everyone heard it.
The Marv-eh-less Knicks won 33 games in 2004-05, six fewer than in Albert’s final year. Wilkens was fired before midseason.
Also, same s**t:
Also, Dolan said he’s not looking to sell the Knicks or Rangers.
“We’re not looking to get out of the business,” he said, adding that the Garden will go through a “big renovation.”
We can relay that Albert was a bit of a smartass at times covering Knick games, yet with nothing tangier than what you’d pick up from your typical modern TNT broadcast. His convivial tone sustained, it wasn’t Bootleg Marv, trust me.
Albert didn’t have to be: New York’s team wasn’t an embarrassment yet, only one taking an expected swoon after years as a playoff mainstay. James Dolan worked to change all this.
In doing so, he denied several more weeks of Marv Albert calling the cream of his team’s Keith Van Horn highlights:
(OK, maybe Albert sounds a little surprised every time Keith Van Horn made a decisive move, but none of us could help it at the time.)
The Van Horn tribute is the only instance we can find of Marv calling games in 2003-04.
Albert is certainly no hero in his lifetime, but at least he did make fun of Chris Dudley once:
Jackson’s absence is somehow easier to defend: Phil didn’t play in 1969-70, his third season, after back surgery.
His sidelined duties included de facto fringe scout and unofficial team photographer, Jackson was not an overwhelming part of the 1970 team, but for his presence as the team’s designated Walter Mitty:
Phil Jackson’s published accounts of these moments helped mold the way we look at these Knickerbocker champions, he’s acted on behalf of New York’s legacy in ways the culture couldn’t have dreamed back in 1970.
To deny him a spot in the celebration over a technicality is Knick business as usual. As would Jackson’s decision to decline, nobody does passive/aggressive like Phil Jackson.
The center/forward was a veteran during the championship year, voted a full playoff share. And had it been Nate Bowman who missed every game that championship season after back surgery, you could be damned sure the Knicks would track down Nate Bowman and his bad back and make this right.
Jackson, however, made the mistake of working for Dolan and MSG from 2014 through 2017, giving both Derrick Williams and Arron Afflalo two-year contracts. There probably woulda been more than a few boos upon Jackson’s introduction on March 21, but James Dolan couldn’t handle the chances of any cheers.
All they had to do, was do it the right way.
They’re tiny, these people.
With weird, fake teeth.
KENNY WALKER IN A FIST FIGHT
Most unusual.
Each player was ejected, as Johnny Hoops 2000 explained.
The Pistons, waiting on the other side of 1989’s Eastern playoff bracket, were upset Pippen didn’t earn the same punishment Isiah Thomas earned (two games, $5000, broke his damn hand) after his fight with Bull Bill Cartwright:
“Rod Thorn (league operations director) set a standard with Isiah Thomas which he obviously never intended to keep,” said Pistons owner William Davidson.
Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause said: “We didn`t expect Scottie to get suspended.”
Pippen was fined $3000, Walker $1500. “Pippen was fined the larger amount for initiating the fight,” explained Thorn.
NETS ARE IN NEW YORK NOW
And Jacque Vaughn is the Nets’ new interim head coach.
Brooklyn fired Kenny Atkinson on Saturday, kowtowing to the general unease that set in when Kyrie Irving determined he wouldn’t be able to coach the club while recovering from shoulder surgery.
(“Dream or not,” Irving told reporters, “my vision was real.”)
The NBA is basically where it stood during the NBA/ABA era, when coaches could thumb easily through scads of available professional jobs on top of all manner of enticing college work. Not all those guys wanted to coach Wilt.
Atkinson may work a TV gig in his off months, runs about right with the time coaches would take a year off from hoops to make more money at their father-in-law’s car dealership.
Coaches want to get the f**k out of here now. They can spot trouble kicking up a dust cloud on the horizon and cobble together an escape route quicker than Friday night turns to Saturday morning.
And when the guy that wants you out doesn’t know what he wants? It’s time to agree with him about wanting out.
Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant don’t dislike Atkinson as much as Kyrie and KD don’t really know what they like yet, they only know what they don’t like. It’s annoying, but we should give them their space. We might get some awesome basketball out of it.
It’s a drag that the same timing that handed Brooklyn its pair of All-Stars also gave the club its largest lot of head-scratchers and counting — distracted thumbs with bum shoulders and heels to match.
But they had to beat the Knicks.
There isn’t a different way to do this, when Kyrie and Durant give word that they’re interested, you jump.
Coaches are replaceable, same as nearly any player, and culture is an illusion that can be drummed up with a few lucky floaters. It’s OK that we’re doing all this, life is still certainly spot on for Sean Marks.
CARTWRIGHT GETS BARKLEY
While we’re at it.
“I just remember getting hit,” Barkley said after the game. “After that, I don't remember nothing.”
Dr. Norman Scott, the Knicks’ team physician, was called onto the court underneath the basket where Barkley lay unconscious. After Barkley was revived, he was helped to the 76er dressing room.
Dr. Scott examined him and said a concussion could not be ruled out. Barkley refused to go to the hospital, and after remaining in the dressing room for about 15 minutes, he returned to the bench and watched the remainder of the game.
Mark Jackson won the game in overtime.
Charles probably had a concussion.
YOU BROUGHT THE SUNSHINE
Some Yacht for the big Captain Upstairs.
A little Steely Reggae on this humble Sunday. We’re glad you’re here with us!
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Ron Harper is my favorite basketball player, his style of selflessness is my ideal.
A 6-6 non-shooter coming off two knee surgeries is not the prototype for Michael Jordan’s ideal triangle offense backcourt mate, yet Harper used his wits and clear and winsome love for the game to find daylight.
He’s a mensch, Ron is.
These performers? Also mensches.
ALL-MENSCH TEAM
C: Dwight Howard, Los Angeles Lakers
Dwight hit a three-pointer on Wednesday, he’s attempted a shot from outside the arc in consecutive games and the approach doesn’t look natural.
The play develops, and because basketball is the way it is now, Dwight ends up outside the corner and open. He shoots it only because he has to, it looks like this:
(also, Dwight Howard canned a three-pointer as a Laker in 2012.)
The Lakers are 19-3 because the team takes care of bidness, Frank Vogel’s crew knocks off the crummy teams and frustrates the good ones. Wednesday’s win over Utah was never going to stun anyone — the Jazz are struggling and were playing at home for the first time in a dozen days — but that doesn’t mitigate Los Angeles’ message.
Howard sticks to his man as often as he can, Dwight has purple hair now (so you can tell it’s him). Frank Vogel clipped Howard’s defensive freelancing, this commitment carries over to the scoring end.
The guy takes fewer than seven shots per 36 minutes played, he’s hit 75 percent of his field goals and Howard’s rebounding is as stout as ever. The second-time Laker screens and slashes and gets out of the way offensively, saving his best efforts for the opposite end: Dwight’s block rate represents a career high.
Fine styling for a man set to turn 34 on Sunday.
Dwight Howard has been part of seven NBA organizations in the last 40-odd months. Party-goers clap with their eyes when Dwight leaves a conversation huddle to “go make my rounds,” this is not the dude you want added to a prominent group text. If Howard ever asks what you’re doing after anything, make something up about your kids.
The Lakers put him in the rotation, trusted Howard’s with a notoriously sensitive type in LeBron James, and counted on your Dwight to helm a top-three defense. He’s been marvelous, from the top.
I still don’t want him at Sean and Emily’s housewarming on Saturday.
PF: Paul Millsap, Denver Nuggets
The 14-year vet turns 35 around the All-Star break, pundits were ready for Paul to crack, for the production to plummet and for the gray to take grips.
Pundits were probably right to, 34 is old and 35 is even older. Paul’s still put ‘em all to shame.
Millsap hits half his threes in 2019-20, there’s some leg. His aggression (!) and versatility have gone a long way toward pushing Denver to the top of the NBA’s defensive rankings.
And he’s happy LeBron James already began carping about calling thirtysomething NBA players “washed.”
“Honestly, I’m glad he came up with it,” Millsap copped to Mike Singer at the Denver Post:
“It’s something that’s been on my heart for a while. Just not understanding the complexity of getting older.
“Thirty-four being old, I just never would’ve thought in a million years, why not in the NBA? Why not in basketball? As you get older, we have more opportunities, more things going on in our lives that we take it away from basketball and our bodies.
“If you continue to put the same energy into your body, into your craft, I think you’ll be all right.”
SF: Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, Toronto Raptors
The guy moved to Toronto and immediately earned the ire of his coach.
Rondae worked four (garbage time) minutes in the season’s first 20 days, his first real game wasn’t until Nov. 10.
Hollis-Jefferson responded to the burn by crashing harder than anyone’d ever imagined.
Your guy doubled his offensive rebound rate, all he does is cram glass now. RHJ picked up 39 offensive rebounds in 298 Raptor minutes so far, he lefty-lopes in put-backs and plays s**t-hot defense.
The team loves him — offensive rebounds are just more beer for us — and Rondae recently announced plans to open a charter school in his hometown of Chester PA.
It’s been a good Mensch Month.
SG: James Ennis III, Philadelphia 76ers
The rugged swingman was supposed’ta work for the Rockets and supposed’ta work for the Sixers last year, but nothing quite clicked until recently.
The 29-year old hits half his shots and over 42 percent of his threes and he rebounds like someone who’s sick of being turned down at the company store.
Philadelphia coach Brett Brown can probably explain this better:
“He’s having a hell of a year. I bring him off the bench because I want stability and I want more of a veteran presence coming off the bench as the game unfolds.
“He’s a sneaky offensive rebounder. He’s a physical defensive player, a prideful defensive player that has qualities that give you confidence when it’s 98-98 and there’s five minutes left. He should be on the court.”
It is good that Brown has been able to identify a member of his best lineup, he only has four more slots to fill.
PG: gotdamn Spencer Dinwiddie, Brooklyn Nets
I’m not convinced I’d convert your last $482 into his currency.
Also I’m not even convinced he’s even signed his last contract, likely in a bid to keep Spencer off the hook for some white collar crimes. Those 20.8 points of his sure as hell kept Brooklyn in the playoff bracket.
The 11-10 Nets are perfectly mediocre without Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant. With Garrett seriously Temple in the starting lineup and Iman kidding me Shumpert in the rotation.
BKN’s triumphed seven times and lost three contests (most recently in heartbreaking fashion to Miami) with Dinwiddie leading at point guard.
Joe Harris is really high on the dude:
“Right now, Spencer is our best player on the court. We live and die with him making plays down the stretch.”
Kyrie Irving is better at basketball, though. He’ll start for the Nets in a few weeks, when his shoulder doesn’t leave him feeling sideways.
Zach Braziller at the NY Post was around when Dinwiddie explained he deals with this sort of crummy contingency:
“If you don’t roll with it, you will be out the league,” Dinwiddie said. “You don’t have a choice. I could be out here trippin’ and I’ll be gone. If you roll with it, we figure it out and I get to stay and sometimes, every so often, I’ll have like a big game.”
“It would be nice to score 30 and stuff — who doesn’t want to do that? — but the league kind of works in a certain way.”
Don’t try to change it. Save your subversion for the cryptocurrency pursuits.
SIXTH MAN: Omari Spellman, Golden State Warriors
The GSW forward/center is 22, and like a lot of us he let his 21st year get way, way away from him.
The Atlanta Hawks looked like they plucked a steal when the club selected Spellman No. 30 in the 2018 NBA draft, yet his ballooning weight contributed to a disappointed rookie campaign. ATL dealt Spellman to GSW in the offseason for Damion Jones.
Omari went on record with Anthony Slater at the Athletic:
Bro, you give a 21-year-old who has never had that kind of money $60,000 a month — like, after taxes — it’s like, bro, he’s going to fk that up. There’s no he might fk that up. No. He’s going to f**k that up at some point.
Certain people, you just don’t see it. Their fk-ups aren’t appearance quantified. It could be several things they’re doing that you don’t know. But you could see I’m f***g up. I’m fat. It’s different for other people.
Spellman doesn’t blame the Hawks, crediting the medical and coaching staff for outlining him with options to succeed.
Atlanta goes hard, though, Spellman (11.1 rebounds per 36 minutes with the Warriors) now insists he’s “blessed to have been traded.”
Strong self-awareness from the young professional. This league is full of them and I enjoy this.
HONORABLE MENSCHION
Delon Wright, the aforementioned Garrett Temple, probably Chris Paul, Moe Harkless, Evan Fournier, you for not violently reacting to the title above this list.
MY FAVORITE PARTS OF THIS OLD CLIP
Longtime Washington executive Bob Ferry, ex-Laker coach Pat Riley, and New York Post columnist Peter Vecsey chat with Baseball Boy Bob about the upcoming 1991 NBA draft.
- Pat Riley knows a red hat when he sees one, talks up Greg Anthony.
Riley was named New York Knick coach six days after this segment aired, the Knicks used their No. 12 pick on Anthony when Greg fell out of the lottery.
Pat started Greg Anthony 74 times in four seasons before leaving him unprotected in the 1995 expansion draft in favor of Charlie Ward and Monty Williams.
As a result, in-prime Greg Anthony was expansion-drafted to play on a team in Vancouver that won 15 games, and now even his Basketball-Reference page uses a Vancouver uniform.
Big fan of Greg Anthony, Riley was.
- Bob Ferry immediately encourages the Charlotte Hornets to select Billy Owens first overall, pointing to the team’s hole at small forward while mentioning lacking incumbent “just-not” Johnny Newman by name. On NBC.
(A decade after this broadcast, Johnny New averaged 10.9 points per game for the New Jersey Nets.
Around the same time the NBA pulled the plug on Billy Owens’ disappointing career. I’m not on NBC, I can say mean things.)
After telling the Hornets to grab Owens, Ferry then asks Charlotte to choose Larry Johnson with the same selection. I don’t, either.
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Bob Costas knows a :24 second buzzer is about to blare, yet still makes a buzzer sound with his mouth. Into a tiny microphone, on TV.
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Kings executive Jerry Reynolds told Peter Vecsey that “even the Kings can’t screw up this draft,” because yeah we were also making routine Sacramento Kings jokes 28 years ago.
Reynolds nailed it, sending the No. 3 selection (Billy Owens) to Golden State for 26-year old shooting guard Mitch Richmond.
He screwed up all the other drafts.
- Costas spotted Riley’s lame joke and burst through an opening, asking Riley if he’s “talked with Dave Checketts.”
Checketts was Knick president at the time, the last guy who was (kinda) good at being a Knick, players included.
Vecsey then asks Riley if he’s “talked with David Khan,” the then-rival sportswriter and future Timberwolves flop.
Pete makes things uncomfortable, we need that.
Riley also pronounces it “Dikembe Mu-tooooom-bo.”
- Vecsey reports that draft prospect Brian Williams — Bison Dele — is vacationing in the “South of France” and then he makes a Left Bank joke.
6.5. Luc Longley’s beautiful, looming, outline:
- Crack of the Bat Costas selects Stanley Roberts for the Orlando Magic, noting that aging center Greg Kite started for the expansion club the season prior.
Riley charges with a smile that Costas hadn’t “even seen Roberts play” and Costas uses this as another chance to dig in on Riley’s impending Knickdom. It’s a lot of uneasy fun.
The lottery then ended, as all NBA lotteries should, with the selection of Mark Macon.
LOOK AT THIS GUY WAIL ON THE FLUTE
Saxophone Guy David Sanborn used to host a show called ‘Night Music,’ Lorne Michaels syndicated it and the show specialized in highlighting some of the day’s more tasteful yuppie acts, alongside a retinue of established artists.
Donald Fagen once performed on the show, uncomfortably.
In this clip, Sonic Youth performs the Stooges classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog” alongside the house band and it’s pretty good.
There’s a keytar back there, Kim Gordon is in a KISS shirt, Hiram Bullock plays guitar like a dork but then HOLY COW FLUTE GUY GOING NUTS FLUTE GUY IN A BLACK LEATHER DUSTER ROCKIN OUT.
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On Sunday we’re running a column that looks a lot like this one, Monday we’ll cover the Clippers’ trip to Indianapolis, Boston’s in town after that, another BtB pops up on Tuesday night, there’s a lot to goof around with.
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WHAT THEY TRIED IN 2018-19
To win an NBA championship behind a preening, near-prime LeBron James and his palm-selected cast of journeyman.
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2018-19
37-45, tenth in the Western Conference
LeBron turned 34 on Christmas Eve, and it all turned to s**t.
An impressive victory over Golden State the next afternoon left the Lakers at 24-14 (No. 4 in the West), yet James sat 17 of the next 18 games with the first major injury (a groin pull) of his career. The Lakers were still three games over .500 a month later when Lonzo Ball went down with a severe left ankle sprain — cursing the team’s defense.
Coach Luke Walton appeared hideously overmatched, former basketball personnel executive Magic Johnson was confirmed as a bit of a prat upon quitting the Lakers on the final day of the regular season.
OFFSEASON INS AND OUTS
Here: Anthony Davis (trade with New Orleans), Avery Bradley (free agent, two years and $9.8 million with a player option for 2020-21), Quinn Cook (FA, two years, $6 million), Danny Green (FA, two years, $30 million), DeMarcus Cousins (FA, one-year and $3.5 million), JaVale McGee (FA, two years, $8.2 million, second year is a player option), Kentavious Caldwell-Pope (FA, two years, $16.6 million), Jared Dudley (FA, one year at $2.6 million), Alex Caruso (FA, two years, $5.5 million), Troy Daniels (FA, one year at $2 million), Rajon Rondo (FA, two years at $5.2 million), Kostas Antetokounmpo (claimed off waiver wire), Dwight Howard (free agent).
Gone: Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart, Brandon Ingram, Isaac Bonga, Jemerrio Jones, Moritz Wagner (three-team deal with New Orleans and Washington), Mike Muscala (free agent, Oklahoma City), Tyson Chandler (FA, Houston), Reggie Bullock (FA, New York).
Luke Walton was fired as coach at season’s end, replaced with a staff including Frank Vogel as head coach alongside Jason Kidd as lead assistant and top “source close to the situation.”
Former Raptors assistant Phil Handy was also added to the staff, alongside longtime NBA head coach Lionel Hollins. Forever Laker Mike Penberthy and holdover assistant Miles Simon remain.
PLAN FOR 2018-19
Lunge for a championship behind the returning James and his newest, brutish screen-and-roll partner: Anthony Davis.
On some nights, the Lakers will boast the top two players in the NBA in the starting lineup. It doesn’t matter that the coupon’s expired.
FREAK FOR 2018-19
James and Davis turn in MVP-styled seasons yet lacking depth fails Los Angeles again. Vogel looks ill-suited for his Hollywood turn, Kidd can’t keep out of the papers, the leaks rage as the rudderless ship plops a martyr onto the mast (where the lookout used to be).
The Lakers couldn’t hold onto the ball or get to the line last year, some of that stuff ain’t gonna change: Los Angeles will act dominant in regular season spots but the club will have to bank on the postseason to prove how awesome it really is.
COME ON LOOK AT
This is on your team, now.
Laker fans should see if they can steal Joel Meyers, too.
MAYBE LINEUP
C: JaVale McGee — turns out “JaVale McGee” was a pretty good-enough NBA center for a decade (and counting). McGee’s holes are obvious, but the blocks and boards and finishes are there.
PF: Anthony Davis — mini-Kareem (26 points, a dozen boards, four assists and three blocks in his last Who Gives a S**t-year with NOLA) that cannot help but crush once the rolling goes right.
SF: LeBron James — began prepping for his show-offy, MVP season of 2019-20 since 2018-19 was still careening toward oblivion: LBJ will find the return to No. 1 a little tougher at age 34/35. Basketball doesn’t let you half-ass it without your whole ass showing at some point.
SG: Danny Green — worked with LeBron in his rookie year. Nailed 45.5 percent of his three-pointers last season yet not good at the basketball-things you can only do with one hand.
PG: Rajon Rondo — a starfucker, to be sure, but Rajon keeps himself humble by turning the ball over a ton. Has more career miscues than ex-Laker Chris Paul, who has over 7000 more NBA minutes of being Chris Paul under his belt.
THERE WILL BE A BENCH
PF: Jared Dudley — notes-you-can’t-hear-explainer pulled in 155 rebounds in 1220 minutes last year, shot 35 percent from deep. Perfect for this team, I cannot wait for the book
G: Avery Bradley — worked up the best basketball of his NBA life in 14 games with Memphis last season, combo guard will be crucial to Frank Vogel’s machinations in 2020.
F: Kostas Antetokounmpo — averaged 10 points and six boards during 25 minutes a night in the minors last year, blocked 60 shots in 40 games but isn’t hitting threes yet. Lakers hope Kostas and his brother Giannis can burnish this skill as teammates.
SG: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope — turned the ball over 475 times since entering the NBA in 2013, Russell Westbrook has 1956 turnovers since 2013 (in 43 fewer games). Caldwell-Pope is way better at “turnovers” than Russell Westbrook.
G: Quinn Cook — had his chances with the Warriors last season and shot well, 40 percent on threes and 51 percent on twos, the 26-year old never gets to the line and isn’t a passer.
F/C: Devontae Cacok — immovable object led the nation in rebounding during his junior year at UNC-Wilmington, nearly won the title during his senior campaign. This 6-7 Touch Factory made 80.8 percent of his shots as a sophomore, averaged 12.3 a game in his college career.
C: DeMarcus Cousins — Nah.
PG: Alex Caruso — ran hot (48 percent from deep) last season but the 25-year old has yet to crack 1100 career minutes. The Lakers would do well to squeak him into primetime minutes this season.
SG: Troy Daniels — 40 percent from deep on his career. Six NBA seasons, 168 career assists. Fabricio Oberto managed 300 assists in six NBA seasons.
C: Dwight Howard — some people are just born Lakers.
G: Talen Horton-Tucker — strong, heady athlete who won’t turn 19 until Thanksgiving (American). Not your quickest scorer and shot 30 percent from long range during his one year at Iowa State, is probably funny and plays good defense.
PF: Kyle Kuzma — imagine Cedric Ceballos but boring.
PROJECTED RECORD
52-30, fifth in the West.
LET’S WATCH THIS
Doc Rivers misses the game-winner for the Clippers, who had James Edwards out there on defense for the final possession.
James Edwards in, for defense! Larry Brown was one hell of an iconoclast.
Threatt’s shot put the Lakers in the playoffs, one spot behind the No. 7 L.A. Clippers:
“I think this game proved the L.A. Lakers are still the best team in L.A.”
Following the season, coach Mike Dunleavy quit the Lakers to take a job in Milwaukee.
PREVIOUSLY: Toronto, Indiana, Washington, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Orlando, Boston, New York, Brooklyn, San Antonio, Miami, Detroit, Phoenix, Dallas, Sacramento, Utah, Memphis.
NEXT: Oklahoma City.
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WHAT THEY TRIED IN 2018-19
Make the playoffs, picture Dwyane Wade performing to a primetime audience one final time. Basic cable.
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2018-19
39-43, ninth in the Eastern Conference
Wade (15 points per game in 26 minutes a Miami Nite, two starts) came to ball. The 37-year old propped up the Heat in dynamic ways that rang well beyond his occasional last-second theatrics.
The rest of the club wasn’t up for much: Goran Dragic sat 50 games, Dion Waiters 38, and fancy-passing Justise Winslow missed two weeks in March with Miami clawing for its playoff life — listen, zone defense is hard. The whole gang returned in time for a 1-5 record in April, denying Wade his last hopes for a postseason show-off.
Gabrielle Union is hilarious. She could have lived on TNT for a week and a half, but instead we got Orlando. Instead we got Detroit.
OFFSEASON INS AND OUTS
Here: Jimmy Butler (sign-and-trade, four years and $140.8 million), Meyers Leonard (trade, Portland), KZ Okpala (No. 32 pick in 2019 NBA draft, trade with Phoenix), Tyler Herro (No. 13 pick), Udonis Haslem is back.
Gone: Dwyane Wade (NBA retirement), Hassan Whiteside (dealt to Portland), Josh Richardson (dealt to Philadelphia), Ryan Anderson (waived).
PLAN FOR 2019-20
Wreck some playoffs. Wreck the opponents’ sleeping habits.
Charged with heading Miami’s gnarly defense, Goran Dragic faded a bit last season offensively, we didn’t get our usual Goran around the rim or midrange. The 33-year old will have far, far less to do this season with Butler dominating damn-near everything, sparks are everywhere, this thing never stops moving.
Waiters, Kelly Olynyk and Meyers Leonard appear to be in their primes, Winslow isn’t far off, and last season’s No. 6 defense should earn a shot in the arm without Wade dragging its dimensions down.
FREAK FOR 2019-20
The Heat unfurled the league’s fifth-worst offense last season, mostly due to its indulgent insistence on curating an unworkable, yet finely-tuned mix of two-point jumpers. If this sustains, the Heat will have to work one and a half times the average bear and, s**t, this is something that Pat Riley would say.
Additionally, Butler wasn’t due for Thibodeau Time taking hold for another few years yet the breakdown watch begins now — especially if the Heat keep up this 3 AM business.
These Heat might be outclassed by the top half of the East, but you get the feeling Miami doesn’t mind its defects. This is a group of guys who can perform well while feeling put-upon, no matter how genuine the scrutiny.
COME ON LOOK AT
You’d think we’d have some fun here, that we could see a spark in the first season, but remember this is Miami: Brent Barry couldn’t get minutes with Pat Riley, and not the ancient Brent, nah, he was 27. Suitable Brent Barry.
If Herro realizes he can keep his dribble in this league, he’ll be dope as hell and right away.
This point of observation only counts if Tyler’s able to keep his dribble in this league right away.
MAYBE LINEUP
F/C: Kelly Olynyk — perhaps the flick up to ostensible center will perk him up, shot only 35 percent from deep last season. Already 28 so it’s time to have some sort of year.
C/F: Bam Adebayo — excitable (8.9 points and 7.3 boards in 22 minutes), dependable, won’t hurt you at the line (73 percent career) and only just turned 22. If we still did things the wrong way, this would be Bam’s fourth season at Kentucky.
F: Justise Winslow — hasn’t broken out, may never make an All-Star team yet I’m wholly enthused about his next 10 years of NBA basketball. Less forward to the years after that.
SG: Jimmy Butler — just turned 30, but somehow retains the puerile quirks of someone much younger. Will be a monster at basketball this season.
PG: Goran Dragic — wasn’t sloppy or selfish last round, just wasn’t nearly as potent. Play off the ball will be crucial.
THERE WILL BE A BENCH
F: Kyle Alexander — shot-blocking big spent four years at Tennessee, performed ably at Summer League.
G: Tyler Herro — this team badly needs someone beyond Dion to not think before shooting a three-pointer.
PF/C: Udonis Haslem — only worked 74 minutes last season and 72 the year before after 499 career starts and years in the Heat rotation. If long acrimony between Haslem and coach Erik Spoelstra exists then each party would be smart to air respective grievances.
At this point I don’t know what either side is getting out of this relationship. If Haslem feels as if he has NBA basketball left to play then he should do it with a franchise that feels the same.
G/F: Derrick Jones Jr. — Miami lost this guy for a month midseason and fell a half-dozen games in the standings. It’s true Jones can dunk but did you also know he can cram?
F: James Johnson — if he wants to roll in like Joe Ingles or one of the Morris brothers, well, James is on the wrong team for that. Johnson can really play and I hope he’s back in the rotation soon.
SG: Dion Waiters — was only healthy for maybe half of his 44 games last year, a determined Waiters (a dozen points on 41 percent shooting in 25 minutes) sure as hell gutted one out. He still isn’t good.
C: Meyers Leonard — won’t hurt you on the glass nearly as much as he will defensively. Is good, 45 percent on threes the last two years and the Heat need to find space for him.
PG: Jeremiah Martin — scored nearly twenty a game as a senior at Memphis last season, over two steals per game. Went undrafted before signing an Exhibit 10 deal with Miami over the summer.
Rob Schneider’s nickname character on SNL, the one in the room with the copy machines, this was a funny character.
“The Richmeister.”
G: Kendrick Nunn — lefty averaged 19.3 points per game off the bench of the Santa Cruz Warriors last season.
The tagline makin’ copies is repetitive and silly and each of Schneider’s movie-starring efforts are trash, his opinions are odious, but those sketches were f****n’ hilarious.
The Sting one, the one where they put the copy room in the Koresh compound, also the one where he bugged his co-workers while each attempted to create and print a photocopy. All great.
SG: Davon Reed — former Miami Hurricane star averaged 14 a game in the minors last year on 40 percent shooting.
The only thing Donald Trump has ever truly laughed at was the Rob Schneider sketch about nicknames and makin’ copies, I fully believe this, still doesn’t mean “Richmeister” wasn’t a funny sketch.
F: KZ Okpala — athletic ex-Stanford scorer missed Summer League as the Heat shuffled its free agent promises around. Taken high in the second round, the 20-year old is not what we’d call “a passer.”
G/F: Duncan Robinson — averaged 21 a game and nearly hit half his threes at Sioux Falls last season. Stunk in 15 games with the the big club last year.
F: Chris Silva — from Gabon, worked three years at South Carolina yet went undrafted last June. Went to Udonis Haslem’s high school.
Imagine the re-introduction of the White House Correspondents' Dinner: Donald Trump convulsing in laughing fits as Rob Schneider just hands out nicknames for 44 minutes.
PROJECTED RECORD
46-36, third in the East.
LET’S WATCH THIS
The Heat did not hire someone to sing the Star-Spangled Banner for this game. They chose a different song.
After the Heat start laughing on the bench, the producer shifts to a shot of my favorite kind of mascot pose: the Solemn Mascot.
This particular singer now performs in character as Sir Elton John.
PREVIOUSLY: Toronto, Indiana, Washington, Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Orlando, Boston, New York, Brooklyn, San Antonio.
NEXT: DETROIT.
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WHAT THEY TRIED IN 2018-19
To deliver on Fred Hoiberg’s promise as an NBA head coach, shuttling spacey prospects around until the rest of the league couldn’t catch up with whatever the Bulls already executed. Establish Jabari Parker as a superstar Chicago could call “home.”
WHAT HAPPENED IN 2018-19
22-60, thirteenth in the Eastern Conference
Parker sucked, Hoiberg couldn’t survive a 5-19 start to the season: I think he coaches football at Nebraska now.
Former volunteer high school football assistant Jim Boylen was brought in to further embarrass the club, he’d round into a passable coach by season’s end but not before much consumable consternation.
A February trade with the Wizards relieved them of Jabari and eased the pour on Chicago’s sweaty brow. Acquisition Otto Porter averaged 17.5 points on 48.8 percent three-point shooting as a Bull yet the club’s front office (John Paxson, still, and Gar Forman) was keen to tank for the season’s remaining weeks.
OFFSEASON INS AND OUTS
Here: Coby White (No. 7 overall pick in 2019 NBA draft), Daniel Gafford (No. 38 pick), Thaddeus Young (free agent, three years and $41 million), Tomas Satoransky (free agent via sign-and-trade, three years and $30 million), Luke Kornet (FA, two years and $4.5 million).
Gone: Robin Lopez (free agent, Milwaukee).
PLAN FOR 2019-20
Compete without making waves. Create 30-odd grunt of wins while developing the same pleasant hum so many other NBA also-rans manage to effectively buzz (without mortifying an entire fan base along the way). Everyone could stand to improve their their-point shooting a few notches, perhaps the youngsters could make up for Otto Porter’s eventual cooling.
FREAK FOR 2019-20
Boylen overwhelms again as Chicago cornerstones Lauri Markkanen (19 and nine at age 21 last season, come on) and Wendell Carter (over 10 points and seven rebounds in 25 minutes per, 58 blocks in 44 games) chafe in the face of basketball they know better than.
Thaddeus Young finds it hard to contribute his brand of patient, settled basketball amidst a stocked frontcourt.
COME ON MAN LOOK AT
This felt like spring training, I cannot wait to watch him try this against taller, stronger men. Coby gives the whiff of a person aching to hurry up to their late 20s.
MAYBE LINEUP
C: Wendell Carter — I see no weakness in him. Imagine, last season was the worst Wendell Carter will ever be at the game of ‘NBA.’
PF: Lauri Markkanen — team’s point guard problems made second-year life tougher on Markkanen than it shoulda been, could take a massive jump this season if his shot is true.
SF: Otto Porter — should blend wonderfully in a slimming Chicago frontcourt, he can’t fall back on some of the bad defensive habits that crept in toward the end of his stay in Washington.
SG: Zach LaVine — still passing, still trying defensively, gets to the line in tricky situations. It’s on a bad team, but he’s put the work in (while remaining a treat to watch during the rough spots).
PG: Tomas Satoransky — starts a good play and digs in on what the assistants are calling defensively. Satoransky isn’t a superstar but he’s a “point guard,” this quote doesn’t include the word “problem” any more.
THERE WILL BE A BENCH
PG: Ryan Arcidiacono — never gets to the line but hits a fair amount of his all-over shots, you can’t count him out at the end of a shot clock. Two years for $6 million for the 24-year old, next year is a team option.
PG: Kris Dunn — was demonstrably worse in his second year with Chicago after proving demonstrably better the season before, Bulls have no choice but to keep him on in hopes he hits a wildly unsustainable amount of mid-range twos. Players that cause havoc are worth waiting out.
C: Cristiano Felicio — Bulls hoping for an improvement in dunking percentage, better understanding of “peripheral vision.”
F: Thaddeus Young — all he was was everything for the Pacers last season, Bulls were right to pay for the space he’ll fill.
C: Luke Kornet — hit 70 threes in 193 attempts (36.3 percent last season), isn’t really impressive in warmups, either.
F: Denzel Valentine — turned it on a little during his second season but missed what woulda been the 25-year old’s third campaign with a series of left ankle surgeries, “procedures.” This isn’t the best time for a position change, despite Chicago’s icky swingman depth, there’s no shame in being Otto Porter’s pretty-OK backup until the next contract figures itself out.
F: Chandler Hutchinson — struggled through an undistinguished rookie year, but it was hard to fit in with that mess. Problem for Chandler: Chicago is gonna be a mess this year, too.
F/C: Daniel Gafford — ferocious shot-blocker and throwdown artist is a laaangsty 6-11, should be some fun this season.
G: Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot — 25-year old has not been good at NBA basketball yet.
(UPDATE: So now he’s on Cleveland.)
SG: Brandon Sampson — minor league callup is gonna have to hit a lot better than 38 percent (11-29) from long range in order to make up for all that other stuff he isn’t doing.
PG: Shaquille Harrison — pugnacious defender a delight to watch perform, is left-handed yet can punch the ball out of bounds with either fist.
G: Coby White — could finish May batting .180, if you know what I mean, but these years will be worth it.
PROJECTED RECORD
32-50, eleventh in the East.
LET’S WATCH THIS
This entire uncomfortable interview is just one, red, fuzzy sweater.
A little background into our sad, little fight.
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NEXT: Milwaukee.
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(Never Too Much podcast: Three years! And we appreciate the Knicks! We often fear them.)
The Chicago Bulls wrapped up a home win over the New York Knicks in Game 2 of the 1996 Eastern semis on a Tuesday, May 7. A boon for Chicago, as the NBA didn’t schedule Game 3 until Saturday.
The Bulls, up 2-0 following two bouts with Knickerbocker bruisers, were in pain.
“The wear and tear of playing close to 100 games” caught up to Michael Jordan (back spasms) in the opening round, Jordan removed himself from action twice against New York in Game 1 of the semifinals.
Cohort Scottie Pippen copped to performing only at “70 to 75 percent,” grimacing through a 11-36 field goal mark in the first two wins of the series. The wrack of shooting for 72 wins between Nov. and April was tugging at Chicago, its opening round slugfest against Miami didn’t help the preponderance of contusions.
Though Game 2’s win provided three days of “rest” before the next contest, super sixth man Toni Kukoc couldn’t make it out of the workweek. Only hours before the Bulls’ plane was set to depart from Chicago on Friday afternoon, Kukoc sprained ligaments in his back during a final team practice, ruling him out for the series.
What promised to be a long week of rest and recovery only created chaos in Chicago’s frontcourt. Kukoc shot just 1-11 at Madison Square Garden in 1995-96’s regular season but his presence kept Chicago credible when Pippen and Jordan took their blows.
The Knicks gave Chicago all it could handle in losing efforts during the first two contests in the series, now New York would have MSG on its side in its efforts against a Bulls team that hadn’t won a thing, yet.
Delighting in the compression, NBC scheduled the Bulls and Knicks to play on Saturday, May 11 and again on the next day.
Back-to-back playoff games at Madison Square Garden.
On Dennis Rodman’s birthday weekend.
The Knick series was a busy time for Dennis. Basketball was often involved.
Dennis had a book to promote: ‘Bad As I Wanna Be’ debuted in stores on May 12, 1996. Rodman appeared at a downtown Chicago book-signing the day before Game 1 draped in a feather boa, he traveled to Greektown to visit with Oprah on the day between Games 1 and 2. The push worked, his story eventually topped the New York Times bestseller list, beating out ‘The Dilbert Principle.’
The 34-year old averaged an NBA-best 14.9 rebounds in 1995-96’s regular season, compiling a 26.6 rebound rate. Dennis pulled in 31 rebounds against New York in the first two games of the series as Chicago owned its offensive glass.
The 6-11 Kukoc’s rebound rate was a third of Rodman’s in 1995-96 but Toni won the Sixth Man Award going away, only missing a single regular season game. Kukoc’s presence allowed Scottie Pippen to take five games off in March to rest an assortment of heel and back injuries, Toni served as salve when Rodman sat out a six-game suspension midseason for head-butting referee Ted Bernhardt.
New York was thick as s**t, though.
The Knicks started Patrick Ewing and Charles Oakley up front, enough to call in sick, plus 250-lb. Anthony Mason led the NBA in minutes while starting at NYK small forward. It was a brutish lineup, and New York swept the Cavaliers in the first round of the 1996 playoffs in a series that featured an average of 80 possessions per contest.
These were slow drags, performances the Bulls would have to consider without Kukoc’s 26-minutes of award-winning Toni. With Pippen aching and center Luc Longley (10 fouls in 60 minutes so far in the semifinals) minding the most Ewing a man could, Rodman was going to have to outrank even his own standards.
Dennis wrapped the boa ‘round and got ready for work, but not before Lorne came calling.
From the Northwest Indiana Times’ Sunday edition on May 12, 1996:
Producers of the television show "Saturday Night Live" phoned Bulls media assistant Tom Smithburg early Saturday morning as they were putting the final touches on their skits.
Apparently, the guys at SNL were asking for Dennis Rodman to perform in a segment as a weatherman. Guess they wanted to add some thunder to the show.
Literally pressed for time, the paper couldn’t recount Dennis’ actual work on Saturday evening, or Sunday morning, while performing on ‘Saturday Night Live.’
(On the night between back-to-back afternoon NBA playoff games.)
Rodman appeared in the cold open as himself, sort of.
Norm MacDonald’s Bob Dole impersonation introduced Rodman as Dole’s choice for vice-presidential candidate in the upcoming 1996 elections. Christine Baranski acted as SNL’s host and musical guests The Cure played something called a “Mint Car.”
Dennis also appeared as “Literary Correspondent” alongside MacDonald on ‘Weekend Update,’ minutes after Saturday night pogoed into Sunday morning. Promoting the insides of ‘Bad As I Wanna Be’ while shirtless and possibly nude, parroting his infamous interaction with Teddy Bernhardt.
After the bit asked MacDonald to chide Rodman for using coarse language, Dennis head-butted MacDonald right onto the floor. Crucially, Rodman was not asked to appear on that evening’s ‘Goat Boy’ sketch.
Later in the month MacDonald appeared on ‘Late Night with Conan O’Brien’ to explain why Rodman’s playact headbutt moved MacDonald to take a trip to the emergency room a day after the SNL episode aired.
In the segment, the Canadian comedian expressed frustration at receiving the first hospital bill of his life, alongside his unavailing attempts to explain to disbelieving ER staff that MacDonald’s head hurt because “Dennis Rodman headbutted me!”
“On the TV!”
Rodman’s ‘Saturday Night Live’ episode made no mention of the New York Knicks’ Game 3 win over Chicago, a conquest that took place hours earlier and on the same network, over at Madison Square Garden.
Only NBC’s mid-SNL advertisements promoted Rodman’s appearance in Sunday’s Game 4, the NBA basketball game scheduled 16 hours after SNL wrapped.
The Bulls lost Game 3 in overtime on Saturday afternoon, Rodman played all but 10 seconds of the 53-minute contest. He’d pulled 16 rebounds in the afternoon hours before appearing on late-night programming, and his night didn’t end once evening turned to morning.
‘Saturday Night Live’ afterparties rage until the light threatens, hours which appeal to Rodman.
MacDonald explained his post-show experience with Dennis to The Big Lead in 2011:
I was at Saturday Night Live and Dennis Rodman came into the show. He was a guest on the show and the Bulls were playing the next day against the Knicks at noon, right?
I said, “Dennis Rodman is f*n’ there, he’s got like eight ws, he’s smoking weed and s*t.”
All of a sudden, like, we’re at the afterparty, it’s like four in the morning, the guy’s still drinking and partying. I’ve got this inside information. He’s probably going to suck the next day.
Game 4 was scheduled for 5:30 on Sunday evening, Mother’s Day.
Norm MacDonald bet on the Knicks.
Back-to-back games in the playoffs weren’t common, yet the NBA scheduled them until 1999.
The Knicks didn’t play back-to-back playoff games during Pat Riley’s run as head coach yet caught the quirk in 1996: Jeff Van Gundy’s first postseason running the Knicks. Michael Jordan’s B2B experience consisted of back-to-back losses against Detroit in 1988 and back-to-back wins over New York in 1989.
“It was normal then,” Van Gundy told the Second Arrangement. His Knicks also played the Heat on back-to-back playoff nights in 1997, and against the Pacers in 1998.
Righteous between-game alterations weren’t as paramount a necessity in 1996’s back-to-back setting, Van Gundy relayed, because the Knicks and Bulls knew each other so damn well.
“It’s not like there’s a different level of preparation,” Van Gundy added. “The Jordan-thing, the triangle, it’s not like a ton changed.”
In 1996, nary a mention was made of the back-to-back burden during Marv Albert and Matt Guokas’ call. Press accounts from the time didn’t bemoan the rush, Bulls coach Phil Jackson didn’t carp about the concession nearly as much as you’d think Phil Jackson totally would.
It’s a really weird thing to do, asking NBA teams to make count of playoff games in consecutive days, but this was also probably the best thing to ever ask of Dennis Rodman.
Chicago 94, New York 91 (Bulls lead series, 3-1)
Dennis wouldn’t play all but 10 seconds in Game 4, no way, Phil Jackson was familiar with his team’s starting power forward tripping the light fantastic and Phil liked to experiment anyway.
Chicago’s first half saw stretches with Randy Brown and Steve Kerr in the same backcourt alongside Rodman, Scottie Pippen and Michael Jordan up front. Anything to get through another first half.
Forty-one year-old No. 3 center James Edwards received four rather conspicuous minutes (lifting four shots, making one) in the second quarter alongside small forward Jud Buechler (3-3 shooting in five minutes), whom Jackson slotted for a stretch at the four. With Longley again saddled with foul trouble, midseason signee John Salley worked eight compelling minutes at second center.
Every Bull minded the glass, and by design: Chicago “only” rebounded 25 percent of its misses in the Game 3 loss, down from (an outrageous) 40 percent in its two wins.
“One of the many strengths of the triangle is the ability to post up different players,” Van Gundy explained to the Second Arrangement.
“Combine that with the movement and our double teams and it creates offensive rebounding opportunities. Dennis was a terrific offensive rebounder.”
The Bulls picked up second chances on nearly half its misses in Game 4. Dennis acted as the backline comfort during a second quarter run that saw the Bulls force eight Knick turnovers, Rodman pulled five offensive rebounds in the first half, ten caroms total.
By the halftime break it was only a little after 6:30 PM on an early Sunday evening, Rodman already had ten boards and his Saturday night probably ended, like, 12 hours ago.
(And his Saturday began with an NBA game.)
Dennis ran irrepressible all Sunday, hoisting long jumpers during breaks in the action, heaving long outlets passes within a competition averse to transition hoops, he even earned a technical a minute into Game 4 for slyly tapping the ball out of Charles Oakley’s hands after the whistle stopped play.
“The NBA office is in New York,” reminded Rodman after the contest.
“They want to make sure the game is close.”
Dennis dished three assists out of the triangle, including one to Ron Harper for a four-point play. Rodman ate the lunch of Anthony Mason (0-2 on Sunday) during Mason’s lone isolation foray, anticipating and accepting a charge on Mase’s spin move.
Rodman spent half of Sunday splayed on some sort of floor.
He dove and slid into the Bulls bench after fruitlessly sprinting to corral his own block of a Patrick Ewing post-up shot, Dennis dove out of bounds to collect Randy Brown’s block of a Charlie Ward jumper, he took another charge.
“He was a hard-nosed player,” confirmed JVG. “Never dirty.”
NBC hadn’t discovered synergy yet: Marv Albert made only one mention of Rodman’s “strong work on ‘Saturday Night Live’” the evening before, utilizing the sort of language typically reserved for a long reliever’s strut back to the dugout after steamrolling through a spotless eighth.
The effort was left to NBC reporter Jim Gray to disclose Dennis Rodman’s broken right pinkie finger, originally dislocated during the regular season and re-aggravated by Rodman during a Game 4 tie-up with Patrick Ewing.
“He’s playing with a broken pinkie,” Gray reported from the sideline in the third quarter. “It’s very painful to him, but he’s going to continue in the game”
The Bulls scored 10 points in the first 10 minutes of the fourth quarter in Game 4, Chicago was starving for buckets when Jackson outlined the release to Rodman in a huddle with 1:41 left.
“(Jackson) said once I got the ball to go to the basket, do something to create something or do something with the ball.”
Rodman created, at the moment’s emotional peak, finding the seam to deliver a drive-and-dish to Chicago reserve center Bill Wennington, who stuffed a dunk.
“They figured I was too much of a chicken to take a shot, too much of a lazy bum to play offense,” Rodman told the media following Game 4.
“Every once in a while I'll surprise you.”
Ewing and Pippen traded buckets after Rodman’s surprise. New York owned the ball and a one-point lead with 50 seconds remaining when Wennington (who lined up repeatedly against Ewing while the pair worked collegiately in the Big East) forced Ewing into a traveling violation.
The Bulls’ next possession again featured Rodman dishing to Wennington, this time for a short jumper.
The Canadian center’s two-pointer wrested the advantage from New York, a lead Chicago would secure with a Rodman defensive rebound on the next, game-sealing stop of a possession. After free throws confirmed it, the Bulls escaped Game 4 with a 94-91 win and a 3-1 lead in the series.
Rodman pulled 19 rebounds in the contest, 35 on the weekend (in about 30 hours), totaling 66 rebounds through a four-spot Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason combined for 70.
“So I bet against the Bulls,” Norm MacDonald explained in 2011, “and he had like 300 rebounds and, like, what?”
Norm lost his wager.
“I guess these guys can just … I guess especially with basketball you just be stoned and play the f*g game.”
Van Gundy, to the Second Arrangement, offered a broadcast air-appropriate take:
“You can’t have all milk-drinkers on your team.”
In the minutes after Game 4, Rodman related his sway to the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith:
He wore a T-shirt that argued for legalizing same-sex marriages. He wore a furry black hat draped over his eyes.
“This is what I am,” said Rodman, hair painted, tattoos rippling and body pierced, just coming off a ‘Saturday Night Live’ appearance and supposedly a late-night staff party into the early hours of Sunday morning.
“I wasn't always like this. It took me a while to find my identity and what I wanted to do and which direction I wanted to go.
“I don't try to be a big, big role model for kids. But kids look at me as independent and happy and free and I love what I'm doing, and that is more of a role model than anything.”
When Dennis Rodman woke up on Monday, he was 35 years old.
IN THE WAY
Though I respect most of its members I am not what you would call “a Toto fan.”
This song, however, burns because the Brothers Johnson do it.
To it.
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(From the Never Too Much podcast:
Patrick Ewing on Dennis Rodman the next year.
Dick Van Dyke on Dick Cavett in what turned into a sublime leg-crossing contest.)
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Kawhi Leonard got what he wanted.
All he had to do first was win a championship for the entire country of Canada ahead of settling in on the dismantling of a team from Oklahoma City.
From there, Kawhi signed with the Los Angeles Clippers. Four years and $141 million to play for what looks like the best collection of talent in the NBA at the moment.
Thunder star Paul George will join Leonard as California-raised Clippers, George became a member of the organization on Friday night when the Clippers sent a 1980s-amount of first-round picks to OKC in exchange for the 29-year old MVP candidate.
The Clipper trust absolutely unloaded its cabinet in advance of what the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise needed in order to survive. OKC will receive Los Angeles’ first-round picks, with no protection or consideration, in 2022, 2024 and 2026.
The Clippers owned the rights to Miami’s unprotected first-round selection in 2021, this asset is the property of the Thunder now. Woj reports the Clippers will also send a protected (1-14, also via Miami) first-round selection to the Thunder in 2023, and Oklahoma City has the right to swap first-round draft slots with the Clippers in 2023 and 2025.
It doesn’t end there: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the widely-admired combo guard who turns 21 on Friday, will head from the Clippers to the Thunder. Danilo Gallinari, the 30-year old forward that managed 20 points per game in 30 minutes for LAC in 2018-19, is also off to OKC. His $22.6 million contract expires after the season.
Kawhi Leonard and Paul George should provide explosive with the Clippers. Pat Beverley is back as lead point guard for Doc Rivers’ charismatic crew, the group boasts productive, disparate center depth in the form of Ivica Zubac and Montrezl Harrell and shooting in the form of second-year stud Landry Shamet. Lou Williams still comes off this team’s bench, the pitch is set.
This is how you Los Angeles.
SAM PRESTI
Oklahoma City’s role in all this was unforeseen, maybe it shouldn’t have been.
The Thunder were set to become one of the NBA’s highest-paid teams in 2019-20 without even dotting a single new document, Muscalas don’t count, OKC owed so damn much. The Thunder were a first round failure in the last postseason, the ease and adaptability of the ongoing NBA summer no doubt rattled the Thunder’s best player.
It would be easy to feel sorry for Sam Presti’s Thunder were it not for the group’s role in safe-harboring Russ and his tilting instincts for too long: OKC had to know the connection between George and Westbrook would taste choleric in time. Westbrook turns 31 in November, this is who he was.
The haul astonishes: Shai’s a sensible star, Danilo’s a baller.
The picks, outrageous. The NBA thought it was out of its mind when the Nets sent a crippling array of assets to Boston for a swatch of aging stars in 2013, but it turns out we were paying attention to the wrong side of the problem.
The trick isn’t minding the draft picks, apparently, it’s settling on the stars. That’s at least what the Clippers and Lakers are gonna try and tell us, in a sweaty decade, when the Pelicans and Thunder still roll with rookie deals earned from excising an unhappy superstar ever-so-long ago.
And now the Thunder have an excuse to deal Russell Westbrook (two years, $78.75 million), and to take a step back after its own decade of playoff prominence.
The Thunder didn’t win a championship during this term but, remember: Oklahoma City had Russell Westbrook in its lineup nearly the entire time.
LAKERS
Kawhi Leonard would have had to work hard as a Laker, even if load management left him at 60 games. It was too daunting a setup. There wasn’t a team there, only two billboards and a whole lotta holes to fill.
Kawhi’s incumbent Raptors sometimes only filled seven seats in the box score during the postseason yet even Toronto appeared far heartier than the Lakers’ top-heavy alignment. The Clippers boasted depth from the outset that huddled ready in rank even after Shai and Gallinari were lost to Oklahoma City.
The Lakers did not recover, inking Danny Green to a woof of a two-year, $30 million deal and increasingly passable JaVale McGee to a two-year, $8.5 million contract. Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is back, they’ll have LeBron understudy Quinn Cook, the “smaller signings” never really developed names and the Lakers wouldn’t-a signed ‘em anyway.
The Lakers had to do it, Los Angeles had to try and secure Kawhi yet in its end the Lakers were still outfoxed by a Clipper team that never tanked, by Doc Rivers and Lawrence Frank. A coupla coaches.
A team with LeBron James on it and an in-prime Anthony Davis will have to scramble, the Western Conference doesn’t schedule many days off and the Lakers will have everyone’s TNT-best ahead of them when it comes time to line up.
Davis’ departure from New Orleans looks sleazy by this summer’s comparative moves, LeBron offered no lure, other players still want to whoop that ass rather than sitting aside it on the podium.
James’ MVP season won’t be enough to distance the Lakers from the rest of the cast. This is not what was supposed to happen.
Ahahaha.
HALFTIME
Scottie Pippen skulking, Jaren Jackson Sr., Penny Hardaway, Stephon Marbury goes at Jason Williams, Rick Pitino’s Celtics and Rod Strickland with a reverse.
Vince Carter drops 27 in the Air Canada Centre’s debut, including two off a Charles Oakley lob.
I believe this particular Sunday’s SuperSonics/Lakers game was the impetus for the Chet Harper’s turn at ESPN just a few weeks later.
KAWHI LEONARD AND YOUR CLIPPERS
Doc’s team is the reason you had to wait so long. Derided for most of July as a trailing third in the two-way race for Kawhi, the Clippers instead vaulted over the frontrunners in using its trunk’s worth of preparedness to pull ahead in the pecking parade.
Suddenly Paul George is a Clipper and Kawhi Leonard in Toronto makes no sense, none, not with another Californian setting up shop in L.A.
The Clippers didn’t leak anything, the club retained Beverley and pulled Moe Harkless and yet that wasn’t the point. Leonard wanted to play for them, he was willing to delay his decision until the Clippers developed options, Kawhi even ran the lengths to encourage those options to make a little ruckus on their side of the phone.
While the rest of the world assumed Leonard to be within protracted arm’s length of his pen and paper, Kawhi worked the lines in search of a second superstar.
Paul George’s seeming unavailability proved no obstacle, there was enough juice here to keep us all fat and giggly and Leonard and the Clippers didn’t mind taking a shot.
It never hurts to ask, to wait and be patient, and ask again. In doing so, Kawhi Leonard changed how all this is played.
While getting exactly what he wanted.
TORONTO
Toronto’s cheeks still hurt from smiling, the Toronto Raptors won a championship last month.
The Toronto Raptors are the reigning NBA champions, because the Raptors won the NBA title in 2018-19.
Toronto shouldn’t feel satisfied with a single title, a single ring doesn’t befit a metropolis that is larger than most other NBA cities. The Raptors shouldn’t be keen to take its only trophy and meekly skulk back into irrelevance and thankfully they won’t, Masai Ujiri is around.
Yet the Raptors didn’t take Kawhi Leonard into the fold as an emerging team. The Raptors were on last legs and the rest of the league knew it.
Loftiest of all, Ujiri knew it. A game-closing, oft-unstoppable superstar was the only thing that was going to put Toronto into title contention. Leonard’s abilities came straight from central casting and there the Raptors were, in February, when Ujiri traded a 26-year old center for a 34-year old one.
The Raptors are an aging champion, and by the time Pascal Siakam sniffs Paul George’s blend of two-way dominance Kawhi Leonard will be in his 30s. Leonard turned 28 the day before Kevin Durant, never happy in his prime seasons, agreed with Brooklyn. The same day 28-year old Nikola Mirotic shocked the NBA by signing with Barcelona.
NBA players have seen too many of their brethren take the money and talk themselves into employment terms with diminishing appeal. It’s important to get these years right.
Sometimes it means walking away from the best year of your life.
RHYME THYME PEOPLE
Soul Train Saturday, and hot-damn that hook.
Three minutes and 24-seconds of stank-face.
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The note that began, can also destroy.
“Lowry on floor.”
After that jot, a bunch of scratches about passwork, trust on offense, the nonsense I usually stick the word “alacrity” into later.
Quick decisions! Room for alternate reads! More basketball s**t, then, again:
“Lowry diving.”
Notes about transition defense, baskets being taken away, baskets becoming earned, and then the first repeated note of the evening:
“Lowry on floor.”
More and more notes, pages of them. Critical, enduring moments bled into blue reminders on a legal pad. Gobs of information, scratched together in a desperate bid to lend recall to thought, yet all I’m seeing is the last note, repeated once again:
“Lowry on floor.”
(He was on the floor more than four times in Game 6. My notes aren’t great.)
Lowry made 44 percent of his threes in the 2018 postseason, he made more than half his field goals and 22-35 of his looks in the first three contests (the ones with a whiff of a chance) of Toronto’s Eastern semifinal loss to LeBron’s Cavaliers.
It wasn’t Kyle’s fault that Jonas Valanciunas couldn’t time his jumps, it wasn’t his call to keep LeBron in the Eastern Conference for so damn long, but they traded his best friend and most talented teammate last summer.
Nothing’s ever been settled for Lowry. Not until Saturday.
He wasn’t drafted into the perfect stall, he wasn’t blessed with a Dr. J or Bobby Jones to bang with right out of college. He won’t get the same treatment that Maurice Cheeks earned for ably outplaying the outclassed Henry Bibby, the same Hall of Fame confirmation that Cheeks cultivated for doing exactly what his really good teams demanded for a decade.
Lowry hasn’t had the same outfits to deal with since he was drafted by Memphis in 2006. A decade ago he was third-most famous player (Rafer Alston, Brian Cook) inside a three-player deal that gifted Alston with a trip to Orlando and the NBA Finals.
The draft pick he was dealt outta Memphis for (DeMarre Carroll) went on to be a co-Player of the Month on the East’s top seed in 2016. Memphis mainstay Mike Conley’s made many more millions than Kyle Lowry since 2010, this trend will continue through 2021. Lowry literally lost his starting job in Houston due to illness before catching on with the Raptors.
Lowry’s lived with the ignominy that hits when yours is the threshold that James Dolan refuses to breach: Dolan’s Knicks sent a lottery pick to Toronto in exchange for Andrea Bargnani in the summer of 2013 yet refused to do the same for the 27-year old Lowry a few months later.
He’s a natural irritant on the court, it’s the only thing that comes easy to him. The trust took forever, Lowry had some coaches to row with, and LeBron took ages to finally accept his lame-o destiny in Los Angeles.
Everything pinned on 2018-19, but then Lowry had to watch as Kawhi Leonard sat enough contests to hand Milwaukee its home court. Kyle shot worse than 40 percent against Philadelphia in the semifinals, he missed 29-39 threes, to our uncultured eyes there appeared no breakthrough.
Kyle’s the one that reminded us that these things rarely come 42-points atta time. We should have paid more attention to the way he settled his Raptors to begin Game 4. Deep in Philadelphia, Lowry’s hometown, with Toronto performing under a 2-1 deficit.
Lowry leapt into seven points and three assists in his first eight minutes of action against the Sixers, checking out for a blow after dragging his team to a 21-11 lead. When PHILA popped its strongest bids in the third quarter — an 8-0 run, three free throws at a trip for J.J. Redick — Lowry and Leonard answered with jumpers. Good ones, the kind you wanna stand and watch go through.
He had legs, yet we didn’t recognize nearly enough gam. Lowry’s Game 1 performance in Milwaukee was treated as a one-off. Meyers Leonard earned more lasting credibility for his freaky first half against Golden State.
None of us saw the star swinging again and it didn’t, not even when Lowry popped 25 in Game 4. Free throws feel different than field goals, we gotta see Kyle splash sometimes to believe in it.
What goes with the fall returns with the spring. Finally.
THIS DATE IN NBA PLAYOFF HISTORY
(1993: Seattle downs Phoenix 103-99 in Game 2 of the Western finals, tying the series.)
Seattle needed seven games to down the Lakers in the second round, the team had no time to recover before the Western finals and looked sluggish in its Game 1 defeat.
SuperSonics coach George Karl was pressed for explanation as to why his SuperSonics dared shoot 42 percent in Game 1.
New York Times columnist Tom Friend referred to Ricky Pierce’s 3-8 showing — 42 percent, by the way — as “horrid” and Seattle’s coach was bemused in response:
“The air density here has us shooting the ball shorter, how's that? Man, who gives a hoot. Let's get Larry Bird to come out; maybe he can analyze our releases.”
Friend also somehow managed to crib Karl’s shootaround notes, passing along for public consumption:
Not far from Karl's lap was a tan folder, containing his scribbled notes for this afternoon's pep talk. On it, he listed four keys to Game 2 success:
*Penetration. If point guard Gary Payton can weave past Suns guard Kevin Johnson, he can flick the ball back outside to wide-open Pierce and Eddie Johnson.
*Transition. The Sonics do not want to walk the ball upcourt.
*Good basketball decisions. Payton, more than anyone, attempts ghastly passes.
*They are soft. “We must be the aggressor,” Karl wrote. “Bodies. Tougher position. Physical. They want loose and quick.”
A night earlier Barkley was feted at Majerle’s, the Mr. Pubb’s-styled sports bar that Friend hilariously called “pretentious” in his Game 2 lead up.
The votes were in, Barkley was the 1992-93 NBA MVP, he’d receive the award just before Game 2 tipped:
Seattle responded in Game 2 by unleashing their Ricky, 34 points on 13-20 from the floor, while Sam Perkins’ stretched-three with under 10 seconds to go clinched it. Tom Friend wrote a fantastic gamer that you should also open in an incognito window.
The press asked Barkley what he would do with his new award:
“Well, my daughter got my gold medal,” Barkley said. “I got no trophies at home. My family fights over all of them. My grandmother's got most, and my mom one or two. I mean, I don't want to sit around every day and think about what I've accomplished. Life doesn't stop. Yesterday, I got m.v.p, and today Seattle doesn't give a hoot.”
Seattle had no hoots to give.
BELIEVE IN IT
I take a lot from this tune! You would too, if you’ve seen what I’ve seen.
Thank you for reading, listening, don’t you want to try this with the Finals and NBA draft?
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Up until ESPN took over, the NBA’s lottery took place on a weekend.
Up until 2002, when the Rockets won the right to draft Yao Ming midway through a Boston Celtics/New Jersey Nets Eastern finals tilt, the drawing was shoved within the sort of space that suited it — 15 minutes of draft gab in between actual basketball.
Honest-to-greatness NBA playoff games saw their halftime spaces interrupted by the sad state of seven-to-14 sacks of sometimes-smiling team representatives sucking up the seats in Secaucus. It was a woeful misuse of available intrigue, something Disney got right to changing once it became time for ABC/ESPN to inherit LeBron James in 2003.
The Cavaliers won that one. They’ve won a lot of these — four lottery victories in 2003, 2011, 2013 and 2014 alongside the time they were able to finagle the top pick out of Philadelphia back in 1986.
The NBA really likes giving Cleveland the best chance it can.
The Sixers won the top overall pick in 1986, the 67-win Boston Celtics won the second pick.
This was the second lottery.
The Knicks vaulted up to grab the top spot in 1985, awarding the league’s largest city with can’t-miss center Patrick Ewing. The league’s lottery process then handed the top two spots in the 1986 draft to a pair of clubs that had traded off Eastern Conference championship titles for six seasons running — a marathon that would roll past 1986 and 1987 as Larry Bird’s Celtics continued apace.
Even with its own aging core Philly seemed straight in line to pick up where Bird’s Celtics left off. PHILA was flush for the rest of the 1980s after the 52-win Sixers plucked Charles Barkley out of the 1984 draft (due to a six-year old transaction with the Clippers).
Second Year Sir Charles turned a 20-point, 12.8-rebound, 3.9-assist second season for the 58-win 76ers in 1985-86 — the Sixers had the second half of an NBA basketball game scheduled right after they won the top pick in the NBA draft.
Watch the second half above, an Eastern Conference semifinal Game 7, or the entire contest right here. Barely any talk of a damn lottery.
Compare that to whatever happens Tuesday — when any number of NBA skidmarks could vault toward the right to introduce themselves to Zion Williamson — and whatever chatter pops up as ESPN sets to broadcasting a Golden State Warriors/Portland Trail Blazers contest.
Hell, look at what the Washington Post’s Mike Wilbon wrote in the aftermath of 1986’s event, as it corresponds with whatever Wilbon will shout about on TV Wednesday afternoon:
None of the six other club officials here complained about their draft order today, because there does not appear to be any one potentially dominant player who stands out from the rest, as Patrick Ewing did last year. There does not appear to be any great disparity between the top seven to 10 players in the draft pool.
Wilbon quoted 76ers general manager Pat Williams:
“It doesn't seem quite fair that the clubs with records this good are picking No. 1 and No. 2. But the league powers had a chance to study this method two years ago, and they made their decision.
We both got these picks with off-the-wall trades. . . . This is the last thing in the world the league powers would have orchestrated.”
Wilbon outlined the route Williams took to secure Philadelphia’s strain of luck:
This was the culmination of a deal struck back in 1979. Today, Williams remembered driving back from a preseason game at Capital Centre in October 1979 and getting so itchy to make a deal with the San Diego Clippers that he pulled into a gas station in New Jersey, found a pay phone to call the West Coast and made sure the deal was still on.
San Diego owner Irv Levin reportedly wanted to give up his first-round draft choice in the year 2010; Williams wanted something a little sooner, like 1983. They settled on 1986, and today that pick -- obtained straight up for Joe (Jellybean) Bryant -- became the No. 1 pick in this year's draft.
Williams' biggest worry was that the Clippers would fold before he could get his draft choices.
(In 2010, with its own pick, the Los Angeles Clippers selected Al-Farouq Aminu. Man all this s**t is tied together.)
The Post wasn’t the only one to fawn over the trades, and rightfully so.
Pat Williams finagled 1984’s Charles Barkley selection out of the San Diego Clippers six years earlier, in a deal sending scorer World B. Free to the moribund franchise.
Sports Illustrated detailed the old deals before adding this kicker:
Oh, yes, [Jellybean] Bryant is out of the NBA, and Free, while still an able performer with Cleveland, won't be missed next season by the Barkley-led (and Daugherty-strengthened?) Sixers.
Reminded of the existence of a professional basketball club in Cleveland, Williams got to work.
He wasn’t long for the Sixer job, after publicly committing to taking the reins of Orlando’s expansion franchise as soon as 1985-86 wrapped up. Following the Bucks’ dismissal of Philadelphia in Game 7, Williams had one bit of business left to settle with the Sixer team he’d run for a dozen years.
The Cavs initiated the business after Williams declined to commit to a single player after winning the 1986 lottery. Twenty-five years later, former team owner Gordon Gund outlined the machinations:
“Thanks to Dick Watson, our cap guru, we figured out that Philadelphia was going to have a very hard time signing the first pick overall.
“So I talked with [Philadelphia owner] Harold Katz about a trade. We negotiated for the first-round pick and were very fortunate to get the first pick the night before the draft. I made the decision, but Dick was the one who identified that they would need to do something.”
Williams dealt the top overall pick in the 1986 draft for 25-year old Cavs forward Roy Hinson, a Rutgers product who averaged 19.6 points and 7.8 rebounds in 1985-86. Cleveland also sent $800,000 — “a significant amount of cash,” Williams noted in 2016 — to the capped-out 76ers.
Philly wasn’t done. Williams may have already agreed to run a new team, but he was set on delivering his Sixers a winner through the end of the decade.
“I was totally locked in to leave Philadelphia on a high note, and we had everybody involved. Our coach was Matt Guokas, assistant Jim Lynam, assistant GM John Nash, the veteran scout Jack McMahon, and a very much involved owner, Harold Katz.
“We were all gathered for many, many days talking and analyzing and seeing exactly what we could do. So there was no lack of focus. Everybody wanted to do the very best that we could to make it a productive draft day.”
On draft night the Sixers dealt 31-year old star center Moses Malone to the Washington Bullets for 27-year old Jeff Ruland (a two-time All-Star with Bullet averages of 19 points and 11 rebounds per game and 60 games per season), and the other Cliff Robinson (a 25-year old small forward who averaged 18.7 points in 1985-86).
The Sixers also sent two first-round picks (set to be Anthony Jones, and Harvey Grant) to Washington, in exchange for someone taking Moses Malone’s three remaining All-Star trips off Philadelphia’s hands.
Williams explained the thinking in 2016:
“Charles was a low-post player, by and large, and we thought that he and Moses would kind of contradict each other, so it would probably be wise to open things up and let Charles have full sway. Ruland was more of a high-post center, a passing center, so we felt that was going to be a good combination for us.”
It should have been. The pieces all fit on paper, the same material Jeff Ruland’s arches were made out of.
The 76ers would remain a playoff team for the rest of the decade on the back of Barkley, and hardly the youthful trio of established NBA contributors Williams brought to Philadelphia in exchange for, uh, the top overall pick in an NBA draft, Moses Malone, and two other first-round picks.
(Also Terry Catledge, the Sixer forward Williams would later use with his third selection for the Orlando Magic in 1989’s NBA expansion draft.)
Cleveland’s desperation to secure Daugherty was understandable, even Williams admitted after the lottery there existed “no down side to Daugherty. He's the surest pick.”
The Cavaliers cleaned house after 1985-86, firing coach George Karl and GM Harry Weltman, the team technically worked without a general manager during the 1986 draft. Indiana Pacers executive Wayne Embry agreed to terms with the Cavaliers to become Cleveland’s next general manager beginning in the offseason, but Embry had to finish his 1985-86 work with the Pacers (holders of the No. 4 pick) first.
Embry was permitted by both sides to influence Cleveland’s decision-making from afar, he encouraged Gund to follow through on the deal for the top overall pick and eventually for the Cavs to choose Daugherty ahead of Maryland star Len Bias.
With its own first-round selection at No. 8, the Cavaliers chose Dayton native Ron Harper, a Michael Jordan-clone who averaged 22.9 points and started 82 times in his rookie season. That Cleveland even had first-round selections was nutty enough.
In an 11-month stretch from 1980 through 1981, the Cleveland Cavaliers traded away three future first-round picks to the Dallas Mavericks, in three separate transactions.
They kept going back to the well:
The 1986 selection went to Dallas along with the 1983 first-rounder and the late Bill Robinzine for Richard Washington and Jerome Whitehead on Oct. 30, 1980.
On Feb. 7, 1981, Cleveland then traded its 1985 first-round pick to Dallas as part of a trade for Geoff Huston. Later that year, on Sept. 16, the Mavericks got the 1984 selection for Mike Bratz.
All to Dallas! The Mavericks picked up Sam Perkins, Detlef Schrempf, Roy Tarpley, Derek Harper out of these deals, and the NBA created a clause named after Cleveland owner Ted Stepien, preventing teams from dealing first-round picks for consecutive years.
Prior to his workings with Dallas, Stepien was best known for acquiring a fella by the name of “Don Ford” in exchange for what would become (after Cleveland lost 67 games in 1981-82) the top overall pick in the 1982 draft, James Worthy.
The NBA stepped in soon after, asking Stepien and coach Bill Musselman to stop making so many trades. Ted sold the team to Gund in 1983.
There remained the matter of the Cavaliers’ suck.
“Trading away top picks means not being able to build with youth,” Gund explained in 1986. Well, yeah.
“We felt it was necessary to get the '83, '84, '85 and '86 draft picks back.”
Oh, I didn’t know you could do that.
When he purchased the Cavaliers in the spring of 1983, Gund insisted that establishing “credibility with the fans” would stand as “an impossible task” without getting some picks back. Though several cities were open to NBA expansion, the league wanted its club in Northeast Ohio.
The NBA let the Cavs buy four future first-round picks for $500,000.
As explained on the date of the sale:
1983 -- As before the sale, the Cavs draft either 19th or 20th overall, depending on a coin toss between San Antonio and Phoenix. However, they also receive a bonus pick, number 24 overall, at the end of the first round.
1984 -- The Cavs will pick immediately after where they would have selected, but not better than 12th overall.
1985 -- The team picks immediately after where it would have selected, but not better than any team not making the playoffs.
1986 -- The team picks immediately after where it would have selected.
Not only were the Cleveland Cavaliers allowed to buy four draft picks for less than what World B. Free made that season, each selection got to edge The Next Team down a spot.
The Cavs sucked in 1984 and picked as highly as the NBA’s agreement allowed — using the No. 12 pick to select Tim McCormick to pair with Cliff Robinson (same guy) in a deal to move up to No. 6 (and the right to be wrong about Mel Turpin).
The 1985 selection (Charles Oakley, No. 9) was also shipped out on draft night — the second consecutive year Cleveland traded its first-round pick — in exchange for No. 11 pick Keith Lee and 1983’s No. 13 selection, Ennis Whatley.
Cleveland was able to take Roy Hinson with the pick it bought in 1983.
Roy, plus $125,000, earned the Cavaliers the top overall pick in the 1986 NBA draft.
Daugherty didn’t even win Rookie of the Year. Indiana Pacer rookie Chuck Person — selected in part by Pacers/Cavaliers executive Wayne Embry — took that one home.
This stuff belongs on a Sunday.
MEET ME IN THE BOTTOM
Now you know why I like small amplifiers.
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One versus three, season series tied at 2-2.
TUE, THU, SAT, MON, WED, FRI, SUN
Warriors in six.
WARRIORS STARTERS
C: Andrew f*g Bogut — this st again.PF: Draymond Green — Huge work down the KD-less stretch of Game 5 plus 13.2 points, 10.7 rebounds and 8.2 assists per (Houston) game, your Dray is crucial.SF: Andre Iguodala — Hit 20-29 two-pointers vs. Houston. If Andre slides toward funky double-figures again in Durant’s absence (13.5 in the semis), PDX is toast. SG: Klay Thompson — Took only five free throws against Houston yet still managed 19.2 a game (plus 2.2 steals), will be exhausted by the time Portland is over.PG: Stephen Curry — Hasn’t locked in, and I’d like to see him try.
Curry’s only infrequently adjusted to his injured left hand, less supremely to the vicissitudes of repeated games against a single team. The 31-year old can’t let his colleague matchup or the post-Houston giggles get to him, he’s got to get back toward sensibly leading Golden State toward its tornadoes.
It would be nice to count on Game 6’s second half as a harbinger for Steph, but there will be a lot in this series to get distracted by.
GOLDEN STATE ROTATION
There won’t be any two-day shades for rest in this series, so if Kevin Durant wants clearance to play Portland he’ll have to fly some ways ahead of schedule, even if we’re calling this thing “mild.”
Ramona Shelburne reported on Monday that Durant won’t even be re-evaluated in time to play Game 2, May 22nd’s Game 5 in Oakland only puts KD at two weeks removed from a setback that should probably take about that long. Once Durant returns he’ll be like the best player in basketball, but with a little lingering calf pain.
Kevon Looney (14-18 on field goals) was as helpful as they come against Houston, he’s only just turned 23 and his sense of process has begun to pay off … The most relateable move in NBA basketball is Shaun Livingston’s determined drive into an open-14 footer (that he shoots several inches too strong) … Quinn Cook brought the good minutes down in Texas during Game 6, likely the start of something.
Steve Kerr’s interest in Alfonzo McKinnie dimmed against Houston because offensive rebounds from small forwards aren’t that important and because Alfonzo is on a 1-11 tear from long range since Game 3 in Los Angeles. I’m not gonna pretend to have a clue as to whether or not Kerr will trust him defensively against Portland, as opposed to Houston, the Warriors don’t need to gnash as much at Terry Stotts’ movement with Jusuf Nurkic out of the picture. This seems like a lot about Alfonzo McKinnie.
DeMarcus Cousins has a torn quad, he would be wonderful in a Finals appearance as it seems like a lot to expect Boogie back for this round … Jonas Jerebko missed 1-5 threes against Houston and one of those hit the the side of the backboard, he’ll play against Portland because he’s nice to the refs … Jordan Bell might finally be in shape for the 2018-19 season, he worked up two fouls and two blocks in 10 minutes of important fun in Game 6, it would be a breeze for both sides if his minutes carried over.
Golden State can win if it handles the turnover battle. Portland takes care of its ball but the Blazers won’t ask opponents to cough it up.
The champs turned it over 17 times in Kevin Durant’s Game 6 absence in Houston, a slight uptick. Any screwups in this series (some necessary, as the Dubs get back to a pre-KD’eed style of silly) will be wholly Golden State’s fault.
The Warriors will freeball without Durant around, his placid half-court touch will be missed until he can play again.
If Golden State’s legendarily brazen balance returns, hardly a given considering the stakes, the team should roll.
TRAIL BLAZER STARTERS
C: Enes Kanter — Any buckets you could get on your way toward the bench, Enes, that would be great.PF: Al-Farouq Aminu — With so much to mind already, can he also solve Draymond?SF: Mo Harkless — Missed 8-10 threes against Denver but kept up his pokey interior game, could find holes in Oakland. SG: C.J. McCollum — Just checked, Klay Thompson ain’t anything like Gary Harris.PG: Damian Lillard — Freed from scheduled bouts with Nikola Jokic’s armpits, Lillard could see his anxiety lessen even further against the familiar bums from Golden State.
PORTLAND ROTATION
Ahahahaha Zach Collins is defending missed shots like mad and the 21-year old has a JaVale-sized block rate in the postseason, he’s from Las Vegas like Greg Maddux and the Blazers can’t lose (until the World Series) … Rodney Hood only has a bone bruise, all those do is hurt like hell and not go away. Hood is “day-to-day” and likely out for Game 1.
A remark so able that we needed to be charmed by it twice:
Evan Turner is a delight and it was wonderful to see him barrel into Sunday.
Meyers Leonard has nearly as many fouls (18) in the postseason as he does rebounds (19). Remember that year when he hit 10-13 from long range in the playoffs, yeah, this is not that year … It’s not like Seth Curry (41.7 percent on threes in his first postseason) hasn’t played NBA games around his brother before, he’ll be fine.
Athletic small forward Jake Layman isn’t unplayable, the Blazers just don’t play him a hell of a lot. He’s kinda sidelined until he learns to hit a three-pointer, 32.8 percent this season in spite of 33 starts and 1300-odd minutes and a bunch of sweet dunks. Layman never gets to the free throw line and it wouldn’t matter if he did, I should stop now because we already saw what happened with Alfonzo McKinnie.
Portland can win if the same capability which earned that final trip to Denver sustains. You don’t have to shove an entire series into Game 7, that’s what makes them so easy to win, but you do have to shove an entire series into getting there.
The Blazers have proven sensible in times of stress, the team’s possessions can outlast Golden State’s best if it delivers one trip at a time — Houston’s 2018 trip to its own Game 7 should serve as strong-enough influence.
Portland still has horses.
STUFF THAT MADE SENSE AT THE TIME
“Portland is on a road trip, it struck an early lead but it couldn’t sustain its swing between the starting and backup shifts. The Blazers were sloppy, and a lot of them thought they could win this by dribbling into that disadvantage and taking a pull-up, that wasn’t the case.
“You can’t blame the Trail Blazers for wondering where the revs went, this team was in New York on Tuesday and Milwaukee on Wednesday, but you can remind the boys that you cannot beat Golden State — or most NBA teams — on touch alone.
“The second half of this game should have been played at an airport, Portland had no chance.” — Nov. 24.
“Golden State ran too cool and too sloppy yet still had enough — this can’t be right — defensively (??) to push Portland into thinking twice about those available looks.
“This was mostly a Dog Show from four angles but you could see the where the paws were supposed to come down. Portland wanted to make GSW pay dearly for its turnovers and Golden State was mad to rile the Blazer backcourt up: C.J. McCollum and Damian Lillard combined for 14-42 on the night.
“Draymond Green was so good, setting those screens. Hit a three to nearly clinch it in regulation and the guy worked up gnatty defense all night (see preceding stat).” — Dec. 28.
GOLDEN STATE DRIVES GEORGE KARL OUTTA HERE
This isn’t a classic game, March 18, 1988. Only George Karl’s second-to-last game as Warrior head coach.
The Warriors were gutted, down stars from the seasons before due to trades and injury.
First-year team president Don Nelson dealt for Ralph Sampson a month into 1987-88, a deal Karl eagerly supported, yet the center missed his usual allotment of knee and back injuries and was long shelved by the Portland game.
There was also some other dumb stuff.
By the time of Portland’s victorious visit to Oakland, Chris Mullin was only 10 weeks back from his 50-day absence from the team. The 24-year old spent 31 weeks at a rehabilitation clinic midseason in order to treat an alcohol dependence.
“That season began strangely,” George Karl offered in the pages of 2017’s infamous ‘Furious George’ biography (that I bought with my own money).
“In the summer of 1987, Nellie resigned at Milwaukee and came to Golden State to be my boss and mentor and to improve our personnel.
The media wondered why the best coach in the NBA — Nelson — would move to administration. Sometimes I wondered, too.”
The champion Lakers waxed Oakland two nights after Golden State’s loss to Portland on March 18, less than a year removed from the Warriors’ remarkable Western semifinal against Los Angeles.
Golden State’s owners scheduled a meeting with Karl three days after the Laker loss, George maintains in the 2017 bio that this sort of “keeping track” — midseason coach and owner chats at a downtown hotel — “wasn’t unusual.”
After “an hour or so” of what Karl called “covering all the bases” with the two owners, Golden State’s side started to play baseball.
Then the conversation took a turn I didn’t expect and wasn’t ready for: my future with the team. It didn’t go well for me; I had no allies in the room. A young coach of a losing team is going to be looking over his shoulder, but what made things worse for me, I told our owners, was the feeling that everyone — including them — wanted Nellie to coach. No, that’s not true, they said.
True or not, I was asked to resign, but it was a firing.
And Don Nelson, the general manager of the damn team, wasn’t around for any of it.
From the UPI, the next day:
Karl resigned in the middle of his second season Wednesday following a lengthy mid-morning meeting in San Francisco, during which Karl asked team owner Jim Fitzgerald for a contract extension and was refused.
From Karl’s book:
Nellie acted innocent. He told the press that I’d asked for a contract extension during my meeting with the owners. Which is crap. I just wanted any sort of gesture from them that they weren’t about to replace me with my mentor.
The UPI:
“Fitzgerald has confirmed he wants former Milwaukee coach Don Nelson to take over next season. Nelson, currently a Warriors front-office official who has said he doesn't want to return to coaching, promised to give the matter some thought and said he would probably make up his mind 'in a week or two.’”
From Karl’s book, one of two written by him that I’ve paid money for:
The team announced that Nellie would be in charge of the search for my replacement. Ten days later, Nellie had his man: himself. Maybe he established a precedent.
(Karl then compared Gregg Popovich’s 1996 move to replace Spurs coach Bob Hill with Popovich to the time Dick Cheney convinced George W. Bush to let Cheney run as vice president. It’s a really fun book.)
Don Nelson, upon the news of his ascension, promised he’d “contacted two unidentified college coaches who turned down the job” alongside contacting “two other coaches with professional experience.”
Nellie also tried to lower his own bar a bit.
I'm a good basketball coach. But I don't feel I'm the best coach. There are many who are equally as good or better.
The people I was recommending and offering the job to, I felt, were better coaches.
Somehow, through all this plus 20 wins, the Golden State Warriors enjoyed the franchise’s best attendance in a decade during 1987-88.
I mean, they deserve at least a few good years.
THE SAD BAG OF SHAKY JAKE
This song rolls, Humble Pie was so dope.
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Never Too Much podcast: Game 3 previews, subscription pitch, loads of funn!
May 6 1990: New York beats Boston 121-114 in Game 5 to win series, 3-2
The Knicks hadn’t won in 26 tries at the Boston Garden entering Game 5, over six years’ worth of losses on the Celtics’ home floor.
The C’s were older but Boston wasn’t getting any lousier.
Larry Bird averaged 24 a game in 1990-91, 75 contests and 7.5 assists per game. Kevin McHale hit for 21 a night, 24-year old Reggie Lewis scored 17 a game in only 32 minutes. Dennis Johnson, in his final season, turned the ball over 117 times in 75 games.
The Celtics won 52 times and had a top-six offense, nobody got an offensive rebound against them, and Boston won the first two games of this series at the Garden by a combined 40 points.
The deciding Game 5 shoulda been Boston’s turf, Celtic cleats were familiar with the territory and Boston was due a semifinal rematch against the champs from Detroit. New York was nobody’s underdog.
Yet these Knicks pulled it off, and in Boston:
Patrick Ewing’s 31 points and ten (10!) assists led New York, Charles Oakley grabbed 17 rebounds with one hand, Knick point guard Maurice Cheeks played every minute and scored 11 of his 21 points in a decisive third quarter surge.
“This is as low as it gets,” Bird spat after the loss.
“This is unbelievable.”
New York lost 10 of 16 games (and six of eight at Madison Square Garden) before it found out on March 24 that Charles Oakley would have to miss the rest of 1989-90’s regular season — six-to-eight weeks — with a broken left hand.
Oak injured it in the first quarter of an Orlando contest he’d play 40 minutes in — dude grabbed 19 boards and six NBA fouls with a broken hand.
“It's a big loss for us,” Knick swingman Johnny Newman relayed to Newsday.
“He not only rebounds, but he does the other little things, the intangibles that you don't notice. We're going to really have to come together now.”
The Knicks limped to a 6-7 record and the fifth seed in the Eastern bracket, abandoning home court hopes for the first round while Kenny “Sky” Walker and Kiki “Opposite of Sky” VanDeWeghe traded beats at the forward positions.
Oakley returned for Game 1 in Boston but Knick coach Stu Jackson sunk the forward on the bench, the same spot he’d sit in for Game 2 — Oakley offering 19 points and 11 rebounds in 37 combined minutes of second team action.
Boston ran up 2-0 in the series with Walker and VanDeWeghe starting, each pulling a total of six rebounds over the pair of defeats.
Game 3 shifted back to New York, where Oakley found his spot in the starting lineup awaiting him — 13 boards (six offensive), 14 points and five assists in Game 3, and a plus-27 in 29 minutes of six-foul work in the Knicks’ Game 4 blowout victory.
This wasn’t all Oakley brought back to New York.
Following an embarrassing, 29-point blowout loss in Game 2, Oakley rapped his teammates as “selfish” in the face of a Celtic club that sprang for 46 beautiful assists (16 belonging to Larry Bird) on the way toward 157 Celtic points in the victory.
New York’s first practice in the wake of Oakley’s comments scrimmaged “so intense,” Knick coach Stu Jackson revealed later, “that I had to shorten practice for fear someone would get injured.”
The Knicks switched Oakley onto Robert Parish in time for the trip back to MSG, ensuring Patrick Ewing’s double-team-less duty on Kevin McHale. With no available lanes to fill, the Celtics dropped both contests in New York
Ewing was in the midst of a breakout season, adapting and growing within every game.
Game 3 saw the 27-year old center struggle for his 33 points, he needed 34 shots, while Game 4 pictured Ew grabbing seven steals, 13 rebounds and five assists to position with his 18-24 shooting and 44 points.
Game 5 was gonna be at Boston, though.
“When you’re in the Garden,” Bird opined later that month, “you should win these kinds of games.”
Larry Bird didn’t see it coming.
“We started off really good, but it went back and forth. I kept waiting for us to run off 10 or 12 points, but it didn't happen. I'm as shocked as anybody else.”
Bird copped a team-high 31 points in Game 5, with nine rebounds. In his final NBA game, Dennis Johnson enjoyed a 21-point, 10-assist throwback effort as Boston led by four at the half.
From the Washington Post’s David Aldridge:
Midway through the third, though, the Celtics made a push. Bird's drive and a three-point play by Lewis made it 73-66 at 6:42. A couple of baskets by Boston would have had New York on the ropes.
Jackson called time.
“We knew there would be a moment of truth for us," he said, “and the moment came when we were seven down. I just told them: ‘This is your moment. What are you going to do?’ And they came out and dug down defensively.”
The Knicks held the Celtics to one field goal in the next 5:49. And they pecked away. The 33-year-old Cheeks took over, scoring eight of the next 12 Knicks points on his usual variety of moves. His spinning layin through a thicket of taller Celtics' arms at 3:03 of the third gave New York a 78-77 lead.
Bird missed a dunk at 4:30 in the fourth quarter (any remaining YouTube footage has been scrubbed) and Ewing’s three-pointer with 121 seconds to go left his Knicks up a dozen.
The center dished 10 assists in the win, adding four blocks and 31 points.
“Patrick did a great job making the plays out of the low post,” Bird explained later. “If we doubled him he made the pass, and if we didn't double-team he made the basket.”
“He was a monster. I thought it was one of Patrick’s defining moments,” Stu Jackson told the New York Post in 2011.
“Early in his career, as great of an offensive player as he was, he didn’t make the best decisions when people threw different looks at him. In that particular game, he made every right decision you could possibly make.”
Knick forward Gerald Wilkins started, guarded Bird, and finished with a dozen points.
While the rest of his Knick teammates spent Saturday night in Boston, Wilkins was in Chattanooga the night before Game 5, at his wife’s side as she delivered daughter Jasmyn Alexandria.
Wilkins got into Boston at 8:30 that morning, in time for the afternoon tip
“When she grows up, I'm going to tell her she was born on the day when we beat the Celtics, something neither I, nor my teammates could accomplish in six years and it came during the all-important playoffs.”
Happy birthday, Jasmyn Wilkins.
THUMBS CARLLILE
Thumbs Carllile?
Thumbs Carllile.
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Portland 97, Denver 90 (series tied 1-1)
Nikola Jokic relayed late on Wednesday that Trail Blazers “didn’t even play that good” in Portland’s Game 2 victory, and he wasn’t incorrect.
“They can play better than that,” Jokic qualified, kindly.
There was no malice or Westbrook-sized skunk to the Nugget center’s scouting report, he was correct in his estimation that Damian Lillard (5-17 shooting) and C.J. McCollum (8-20) typically contribute better performances, and that Portland in full didn’t have to rise to full flight in order to steal the home court advantage.
All the Blazers did was cool some jets. Jokic missed 10-17 shots, runners in the face of Enes Kanter and Zach Collins, he worked with five fouls for a stretch and wants each and every one of those 10 misses back. Jokic’s lone three-point attempt, a miss with 26 ticks left in the contest, could have cut Portland’s advantage down to two.
It was off. Same as Paul Millsap (6-14 shooting) and his leans, sure as you’re born same as Gary Harris, who missed 8-12 attempts.
The Blazers delivered structure and control of this game in its most oppressive time of season.
Portland made sure Denver had a deficit to chip at, PDX ran up nine after nine minutes.
Mo Harkless and Al-Farouq Aminu copped three-pointers to start and of course Enes Kanter grabbed seven boards and collected nine points in the opening quarter. Denver wasn’t terrible but Portland made sure the home team couldn’t ease in: Terry Stotts ensured his team owned crunch time edge at the outset.
Jokic didn’t score in the first period, and the Blazers ran Jamal Murray (1-4 in the first) through so much s**t. The Nuggets began to rattle on the open three-point attempts and before long a trend developed: Denver missed 4-20 from long range in the opening half, some punk’s idea of a joke.
The home team’s second half intensity rang out a bit but the Blazers quickly matched the sneer, capably contending with the sort of focus and alacrity that the Nuggets missed so badly.
Malik Beasley rang the bell with a few free throw trips but he clanged 5-8 from the stripe, huh.
Monte Morris missed seven of eight shots, at home no less, and Will Barton’s 11 boards (three offensive) could not cheer up that 1-6 mark from the floor. Torrey Craig’s nose was demolished in the first half, he’d courageously return to hit a three and the softest slice of Enes Kanter’s shoulder.
Murray, clutching a pained right thigh bruise leftover from an encounter with Jacob Poeltl in the first round, missed 12-18 shots and had to sit out the final minute of a contest.
“Weird game.”
That’s Jokic talking again.
“Weird day.”
Nonstop offensive rebounds made this a game for Denver in the fourth, but Jokic needed eight attempts for eight points in the period and Gary Harris didn’t even score.
Denver shot 2-9 from deep in the second half on its own damn floor, it made 61 percent of its free throws, it was a real What the Hell Wednesday out there.
For Denver at least.
Lillard and McCollum combined for 14 in the fourth, Evan Turner gave positive minutes during his turns and Portland’s bench was magnificent.
Zach Collins’ secured makes on five of his six attempts, the 7-footer put himself in a position to be accurately credited for some of Jokic’s closest misses.
Rodney Hood roamed from the weak side and found three blocks, he’d also lock in on 15 points, and Aminu stalked expertly underneath without catching his arms in anything.
Portland played well enough to win what just happened to be a playoff game. In a postseason full of heroics, Game 2 felt a little off.
It didn’t feel incorrect, though. Portland pushed its way into the weird.
Game 3 in Portland on Friday at 7:30 local on ESPN.
THIS DATE IN PLAYOFF HISTORY
(Game 4, Raptors beat Knicks 100-93, tying the best-of five series at 2-2)
The Knicks were supposed to win this series.
New York was better (read: more famous) and highly experienced (old) and the only reason the Knicks kinda had a problem with Toronto in a playoff series a year before was because The Knicks’ Supposed Biggest Issue (Patrick Ewing) was stuck in the lane, getting in the way.
By Game 4 Ew was a Seattle SuperSonic and trade deadline pickup Mark Jackson was around to lend some sensibility to the team’s multi-headed monster at point guard.
New York’s issue was that Chris Childs had to be part of the package that returned Jax to New York. Typically Childs was part of the problem.
Happy Raptor Chris Childs enjoyed seven points in the first quarter of Game 4.
“Guys who have played a lot of playoff games know they have to come out and be the aggressor,” Chris noted after the win.
“We couldn’t sit. We couldn’t wait.”
The Knicks piled up a dozen turnovers by halftime, a monstrous amount inside a 90-possession game. Childs finished his evening with 25 points, with four assists and three steals.
“Quite frankly,” Mark Jackson observed after New York’s loss, “he hurt us.”
Childs, a Knick for nearly five years, didn’t understand why any of this was news.
“You’ve seen me play.”
CARTER AND OAKLEY
Vince Carter entered Game 4 shooting 30.8 percent from the floor in his series.
Following a loss at home in Game 3, Raptor teammate Charles Oakley took offense to Carter’s self-described role as a “catalyst” in Toronto’s offense, preferring Vince to “be a man” and leave the catalysis for smaller, shittier players.
Carter scored a team-high 32 in Game 4 and explained how his Oak worked:
“He’s always in my ear. I love it. It don’t bother me. What, am I supposed to hide from him now? Not at all.”
The 24-year old kept on.
“I love it. That’s his way of telling me we’re behind you. Regardless of what [the media] says, ‘We’re behind you.’ That’s how I see it. That’s his way of telling me, ‘Bring it.’ I know how Oak is. I didn’t even know what he said. He’ll never say, ‘Did you read the papers?’”
Oakley hadn’t the time to read the papers, Charles was too busy beefing with Vince’s mother.
At some point during Game 4 TNT’s cameras found Michelle Carter for a midgame interview, Michelle nailed the opinion that “those” on the Raptors “who did the talking weren’t doing too much on the court.”
Oakley was briefed on the comments after the win, his initial response was to remind reporters that Toronto coach Lenny Wilkens’ “contract is up in two or three years.”
He’d Oak on:
“I don’t take a lot of shots,” Charles explained. “If she’s got something personal with me, I’m not hard to find to find.”
Caught after practice the next day, Oakley further explained his role as Toronto’s catalyst:
“I shoot five or six times, go out and play defense and make sure everything is clicking. I'm like a transmission in a car. You can't see me, but I make the car go.”
A year earlier Oakley watched as his team’s head coach executed a lawsuit against New York center (and first round opponent) Marcus Camby, right in the middle of a playoff series.
Now he was inside a Mom Beef.
“I wasn’t trying to get on Vince,” Oak explained after Game 4.
“I’ve been telling Vince all year, ‘take it to the hole, you can kill these guys. You’re one of the best players in the league.’ I’ve got nothing against his mom.”
The 2000s were shaping up rather remarkably for Charles Oakley.
“Like I've said, the league is not like it used to be.”
ALL ‘N’ ALL
This whole album, and in a car, promise me you will.
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The Pistons’ problem is that Detroit knows its basketball.
Your Detroit Pistons were in the top-10 in attendance every year in the 1990s and it ranked either first or second in Butts Seated from 2002 through 2009. People get out to watch the Pistons when the effort is warranted.
The Pistons have a new arena, I been there and it’s awesome, downtown Detroit is beautiful and the rest of the clubs in the city’s sporting ecosystem are struggling, in relative terms. The Tigers lost 98 games last season, another 98 in the “spring” and summer before that.
The Red Wings haven’t even made the Stanley Cup Playoffs since 2016, when the team was knocked out of the opening round for the third straight year. The last time the Red Wings won a postseason series, Jason Maxiell was still on on Pistons.
If you haven’t watched a Detroit Lions loss since the time Dave Krieg handed off to Barry Sanders 13 times for a total of -1 yards in the 1994 NFC Wild Card game, rest assured that the Lions do indeed still suck, I just checked, 6-10.
There is room for another outfit to step in, to create some sparks and remind followers why they loved watching pro basketball so much in the first place. This year’s Pistons were not that team.
Yet they were was a success.
An unmitigated success: Dwane Casey helped overcome a culture chasm and the potential pissibiliaty of a superstar on the way toward the postseason. The postseason!
These Pistons were fun to watch, these Pistons competed and grew within the practice-free confines of a regular season, and these Pistons learned to deal with each other. You saw it in the sweep to Milwaukee, Detroit talked and remained connected, it just had its ass beat.
Blake and the boys may not be the best of friends, but this isn’t an improvement in the comparative sense — nobody gets judged by a scale just because the cameras caught you hating.
From NOLA’s low point came an understanding. And from there, some form of purpose. That’s all a collection ever needs.
The Pistons fell to Dallas and to those meanies from Milwaukee in the nights that followed the Reggie Jackson interruption, yet the club finished the season on a 20-13 tear in spite of Blake Griffin sitting five contests (and dragging his pained left leg around for maybe twice as many).
It was in the East but the Pistons have always been in the East, and the East has been like this for two decades by now.
Casey and his staff created a system that allowed others to step in, literally, moving pieces and passes around until it became apparent to defenders that everybody, here, was chipping in. I don’t know how this team managed to make it to 21st in offense.
But that was, like, it.
Griffin’s yearly injury didn’t happen to hit in April, he didn’t land on someone’s ankle, that just might be how his knee is now.
The All-Star’s proven quite capable of overcoming what dragged him in 2018-19, but pulling that s**t at 30 is gonna be different than how things felt at 29, and Blake’s not gonna get out of 2019-20 as a 30-year old.
Can the Pistons bank on another season of Griffin (24-7-5) bailing teammates out over and over? The forward dragged them to win after win, doing the second and third quarter work that keeps so-so teams in the thick of better-than-them ballgames.
Blake’s gonna feel an inch shorter now in every season he returns for, is that line-drive jumper of his (36.2 percent from behind the three-point line, somehow) ready to do the heavy lifting? And how willing is Griffin gonna be to throw his body into those 7.3 free throws per game again, just to make up for another Luke Kennard Night?
We know Griffin’s owed quite a bit — $110ish million over the next three seasons — but he’s gonna put in. He’s a good dude and he’s seen some NBA s**t, Griffin understands that nobody sticks in purgatory for too long because Brook Lopez just blocked 14 of his team’s shots.
Kennard missed two-thirds or more of his attempts 27 times this season, but he’s also figured out the lurch it takes to launch an NBA-sized three-pointer. Luke did a lot of growing in 2018-19, his balance is right and his opportunities as a playmaking partner with Griffin are boundless.
Detroit is clearly banking on Kennard to make some style of leap next season. Stan Van Gundy’s No. 12 pick in 2017 will be under clean contract control for the next two seasons, a welcome relief for the NBA’s eighth-highest payroll in 2018-19.
Most of this crew should return.
Reggie Jackson’s around for another year at over $18 million, his knees will ring just as worrisome in 2019-20 as this season but at least he’s come to accord with Griffin. Starting rookie swingman Bruce Brown is on his first NBA contract.
Ish Smith, the free agent that won so many minutes for the Pistons this year as a reserve point guard, will be a free agent this summer. In order to stick under the sort of luxury territory that allows for mid-level exception usage, the Pistons may have to whisper the same s**t teams always do about Ish Smith — he’s maybe 5-11, and he turns 31 in July.
Thon Maker is still on his rookie deal, he’ll be back to do whatever it is people think he does, and Jon Leuer will return for the final season (at $9.5 million) of the four-year, $42 million contract the Pistons signed him to in 2016. I must have been the only person in the NBA that got sober that summer.
Langston Galloway is also under contract in 2019-20, at $7.3 million, and the swingman will have to step into increased scrutiny should the Pistons be forced to wave goodbye to free agent Wayne Ellington, as so many others have done.
The Pistons have a team option on Glenn Robinson III’s $4.26 million deal for 2019-20, Glenn struggled with ankle and knee issues for the second season in a row, I’m not sure if I’m ready for Glenn Robinson’s kid to be too old for basketball.
The other chunk of that eighth-ranked salary comes in the form of Andre Drummond’s graying (he’s 26!) beard. Drummond will earn over $27 million next season, but he’ll have the option to pick up the $28.75 million owed to him from Detroit in 2020-21.
Dre and Blake played well this season, the pair’s communication is sound and time together will only increase what was, honestly, pretty damn good this season.
If next year’s Pistons start slow, however, the urge will return. The club is set to only employ Griffin and Brown and Kennard and Khyri Thomas (plus this June’s draft pick) in 2020-21, the clearest chance for a do-over that Detroit has seen in ages.
Dealing Drummond away from a limping Pistons outfit midseason for assets and perks would only accelerate that effort.
In this modern age, holes in the middle don’t matter nearly as much as gaping craters at the point guard position. Detroit only has to look up its own top to recall as much — this team lives and dies with Reggie Jackson, goodness!
The move to retain Drummond would surely sweep just as strongly, Andre made strides yet again in 2018-19, malleable bigs don’t grow on trees and Blake’s gonna badly want a badass behind him. Andre owned both boards this year, it was the only thing the Pistons did well.
The front office cannot be cynical in its approach. Detroit has seen too many of these band-aids slip off in the shower, Piston fans aren’t going to show up for cheap thrills, these people want a basketball team with promise, for once.
In 2018-19 it got a team it could at least be proud of. A major success, indeed.
Previous kittens: INDIANA
RIDING HIGH
God I love a synth patch. It’s the sound of Sim City.
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Golden State 132, L.A. Clippers 105 (Warriors up 2-1)
The Clippers were told to make Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson work, dammit. Something something something OUR HOUSE something something CHESS PIECE something something NEATLY TRIMMED GOATEE.
It didn’t work, nothing worked, the Clippers even let the lead get up to 36 points (to account for the line outside the place) and it still wasn’t enough.
Golden State owns too many options to count, and when the helpers come alive you’ve got apsatively no chance against the champs.
Andre Iguodala played his ass off in this win: Kevin McHale should learn that he doesn’t like to be called “Iggy” and Dre’s Game 3 strut ended with three three-pointers, two blocks and 15 points.
Andrew f*g Bogut grabbed 14 rebounds, four offensive (because you can’t joke about anything anymore).
Alfonzo McKinnie made his way to every loose ball via several loose limbs, and Kevon Looney ran masterful in his attempts to process everything he’s ever been told about NBA defense.
The Clippers responded with JaMychal Green’s missed assignments and a ton of shots that went halfway down and out.
Danilo Gallinari missed 11-13 attempts in his bid to earn double-figure free throws (halved it, 5-5), rookies Shamet and SGA combined to clang 10-12, Lou Williams missed 7-11 shots.
And poor Patrick Beverley could only do so darn much against a Golly twice his size:
He’s gonna look so good next to Kevin Knox.
Game 4 in Los Angeles on Sunday at 3:30 PM on ABC.
Philadelphia 131, Brooklyn 115 (Sixers lead series 2-1)
The Sixers started Greg Monroe because they needed someone to mop up minutes. They understood that Monroe’s worn six uniforms in four years, not including 14 trips to tailor as a Celtic.
They get that he only played 480 minutes this year, and that most of that space was spent explaining why his arms can get rim on one side of the court but barely touch net on the other. He’s Greg Monroe, he’s somehow only 28 and here because Joel Embiid can’t be.
It turned out fine, just fine. Monroe’s curly-fry defense crunched hopeless in the face of D’Angelo Russell and it took Greg a while to realize which team he was supposed to be rebounding for, plus he did miss 9-13 shots before we could get to the end of this sentence.
But Monroe did hold the trunk in time for Boban Marjanovic (14 points, eight boards) to enter appropriately, and he settled a usage-heavy Sixers starting lineup in the spots of game where the fewer names, the better.
Philly did the best with what it could on Thursday, the team shitcanned T.J. McConnell (two minutes of garbage time) and didn’t dress the available Zhaire Smith yet the stars were more than enough.
Every Sixer got a strong taste in the first quarter, the visitors’ growing lead was cemented by the inclusion of Boban alongside the lamestain entrance of Net reserves Spencer Dinwiddie and Caris Levert (1-7 combined in the first).
The Sixers fielded athletes at every spot plus Boban’s taste and touch, this realization crushed the Nets. With the rotations slimmed and the stars fit to burn, Brooklyn conceded a competitive disadvantage at most running positions.
Tobias Harris took cunning advantage.
Harris has parked 8-12 three-pointers in his first postseason as a Sixer.
LeVert returned to make some hay of his release, he’d curl into 26 points before the evening was through, Dinwiddie also re-emerged to develop some OK action and 15 bench points.
Brooklyn looked outclassed, though, even with Embiid cramped on the bench.
Down at home, the Nets rolled out a zone to counter Joe Harris’ inability to match J.J. Redick (26 points, 7-17 shooting) and it eventually drew blood. Rondae Hollis-Jefferson slipped in for 10 (!) free throw makes, there were second half spots where BKN looked to have a Game 3 in them.
As Redick’s legs left him, however, Ben Simmons stepped into solemnity.
Simmons contributed 15 points, two blocks and three assists in the fourth period.
If it takes him this long to wind up, fine. I’m cool with this advancement.
Monroe, we’ll figure out later.
Game 4 on Saturday at 3 PM in Brooklyn on TNT.
San Antonio 118, Denver 98 (Spurs lead series 2-1)
Listen, if Derrick White is going to be this good all the damn time, I’m gonna want some of my monologue jokes back.
The second-year Spurs guard bodaciously careened through Game 3. The 24-year old’s 36 points were outrageous enough — White refused to take fliers on looks around the basket — his defensive capabilities dragged San Antonio over the top.
Derrick was part of a strong Spur collaboration to yank Jamal Murray out of his warm zones, rendering the Nuggets guard uneasy all evening. Murray reacted to the scrutiny like he was just asked to explain the documentary he pretended to also watch.
Jamal didn’t have much help. Will Barton missed 4-6 shots, his entire form looks different. Gary Harris ran 4-13 from the field and Nikola Jokic’s 22-point, seven-assist, eight-board night didn’t dent like it was supposed to.
Paul Millsap ran a thorn in San Antonio’s side all evening yet his play was never going to push the visitors ‘round a corner. It took the purpose of Denver’s delightful bunch of bench (Malik Beasley hit five threes, pulled nine rebounds, Monte Morris delivered spotless point guard play yet again) to make fertile the fields of play.
San Antonio wanted its salt back. The Spurs lived in the lane all evening, it wasn’t just White.
When initial penetration efforts folded the San Antonio Second Nature slipped into its spring schedule, the offense innately folds into each and every available slotted receptor because these Spurs need this s**t to survive.
No Manu, no Timmy, no Parker and no gahdamn bow ties standing around explaining things.
Instead, we bring you TV’s Derrick White:
Confidence resonating, White was asked to step forward and instead he decided to jump up.
Game 4 in San Antonio on Saturday on TNT at 5:30.
IF I EVER LOSE THIS HEAVEN
All the Quincy Jones albums are great, I went and checked.
Thank you for reading, maybe listening! Consider contributing, you won’t regret it.
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HELLO ONE AND ALL!!
Utah 118, Phoenix 97
Utah’s starting lineup (minus Ricky, still without Derrick Favors and his bum back) sparked a dud, Phoenix ran out to an early lead and even reigned by 13 at one point.
Devin Booker left the game with an ankle injury around the same time Donovan Mitchell (29 points) began to develop his wind. Around that same issue, Dragan Bender began to consider the math needed to line up four three-pointers in an NBA game.
He’d miss each, the Suns’ most reliable scorer was Richaun Holmes and Richaun Holmes usually scores best if there’s literally nothing between him and the rim (and sometimes the rim remains an obstacle).
Rudy Gobert dunked a bunch and Joe Ingles (with a bit of a contingent in Phoenix, I reckon) was demonstrative in his bid to put these pups away.
Grayson Allen also managed six field goals for Utah, two threes and a couple of squirts around the basket.
For some reason I feel like a big bowl of milk, right now.
Jimmer Fredette made 5-11 looks for Phoenix but missed all four of his three-pointers. He’s yet to hit an NBA three-pointer this season, despite taking some rather CBA-level attempts.
Jazz: 48-30, No. 5, prolly going to be your Number Five.
Suns: 18-61, could really struggle in this season’s final week.
Later in the evening, for their civic duty, these gentlemen were awarded two cases of Arizona’s state drink.
Portland 116, Memphis 89
Memphis earned its (ten-point!) third quarter lead: Delon Wright sprung wily and (starting center) Ivan Raab worked nicely (if not precisely) around the goal.
Chandler Parsons faced up and hit three threes on the night, that was kinda gross, 16 points in total. Memphis even tried to make a scorer out of Jevon Carter (2-6, five boards, six points, four assists), which left me delighted.
After the half-break the Trail Blazers began defending like a year-older team. PDX responded wonderfully to Memphis’ attempts at a zone — Zach Collins can’t rebound for s**t but he can sure sneaks in for buckets, 18 points.
The Grizzlies made Mo Harkless beat them and he did, 5-7 shooting and four steals. Enes Kanter hit 10 field goals and Evan Turner whurped another triple-double.
And yet Damian Lillard (8-18 shooting, 20 points and 10 assists, nothing crazy) looked twice as good as anyone else on the court.
You can’t keep your eyes off him, and for the good reasons. It wasn’t the shoes.
Trail Blazers: 50-28, I had ‘em for 44 wins. Analysis you can count on.
Grizzlies: 31-47, Joakim Noah was unavailable.
Atlanta 130, Philadelphia 122
The Sixers ran without Joel Embiid again but Jimmy Butler was around for this stepback, this 76er snoozer outta ATL.
The Hawks were the better team, and by a lot, only free throw attempts kept Philly around (and the Sixers still biffed 16 freebies).
Atlanta bottled Ben Simmons under cap and wouldn’t let Butler ease into his heroics. J.J. Redick had to take 23 shots, and J.J. Redick had to lead the Sixers in scoring (30).
Atlanta made a finisher out of Simmons and he couldn’t relate. Ben boned short-shot after short-shot and looked nervous to head to the line — Simmons missed five of eight freebies, 6-17 from the field.
T.J. McConnell had to get the Sixers together, which is never fun. Tobias Harris leaked out for 21, but offense wasn’t truly the problem.
PHILA couldn’t find Trae Young in transition — I mean, he’s Trae Young — and the visitors had a miserable time trying to hang with the rookie in screen/roll situations. By the fourth quarter, the Sixers had to trap to get it out of his hands.
Who’s hands?
Young hands:
John Collins enjoyed 25 points, stepping up with Trae stuck at half-court, while Alex Len hit his season average with 11 points.
DeAndre’ Bembry hit for 17 points and six rebounds in Vince Carter’s absence, the Hawk swingman also dished four assists in 21 minutes. This could be something.
Kevin Huerter added 15 points on 6-12 from the floor, often altering his shot’s release point so that its light could not be veiled by the billowing shadow arisen from the nebula of Boban Marjanovic’s looming excellence.
Pivots Amir Johnson and Jonah Bolden did well to contribute on Philadelphia’s offensive glass, but otherwise they’re running laps.
Hawks: 29-50, No. 12 in the East.
76ers: 49-29, third in the East.
Orlando 114, New York 100
New York is horrible at defense and it showed, look at Orlando and all these points.
Nikola Vucevic worked his way toward 29 points with 13 rebounds, while Terrence Ross’ 23 points (on only 14 shots) made the difference in a runny, runny game.
This was Terrence’s first knockout performance in two weeks, he was able to step into looks during the third quarter and put New York away.
What New York and Orlando both learned, this year, is that nothing puts Mario Hezonja away.
Talkin’ mess to fans, playing with the mascot. Mario fouled out, too.
Someday we’ll all return to Orlando, just like this.
Magic: 39-40, living with the No. 8 seed in the East, half-game up on Miami.
Knicks: 15-63, Knick fans will vote Mitchell Robinson onto the 2020 All-Star team.
Indiana 108, Detroit 89
The Pacers and Pistons really should consider not scheduling each other for a few years.
This contest outlasted a miserable start because it had to, NBA rules enforced each of those 48 minutes and only the Pacers seemed to want to really do something with it.
Tyreke Evans started for Indiana and missed a dozen shots in 13 attempts, he dished one assist.
However, the addition of that Other Ballhandler was so badly what the Pacers needed on so, so many possessions. The team’s movement ensured, pushed-down scorers like Bojan Bogdanovic and Doug McDermott were able to feed off quick post-ups and related, forward-y moves.
The Pacers fielded a bench, people to make shots in places the Pistons didn’t have. T.J. Leaf worked again and splished both his buckets, Domantas Sabonis connected on seven field goals and pulled in 13 rebounds (because there were so many rebounds).
The remaining movement did the Pacers well in the third quarter, the team lived at the line even while missing damn near every field goal. DET’s Reggie Jackson (16 points) did his best to loft in Blake Griffin’s absence, and Wayne Ellington curled for 26, but the Pistons never had this.
Thom Maker started with Griffin resting that knee, and the Pistons were felled by his Makerisms — repeated issues of Thon’s offense, and defense.
Pacers: 47-32, No. 5 in the East.
Pistons: 39-39, No. 6 in the East and way the hell behind the Pacers.
Charlotte 115, New Orleans 109
This game was sloppy and its players were bored, only waiting out the seconds until the inevitable happened:
Stay in Charlotte. I already growled about this on Never Too Much.
Make as much money as you can, and figure out the Best Fit later.
Hornets: 36-42, No. 10, two and a half games out.
Pelicans: 32-47, Anthony Davis sat the contest after developing back stiffness.
Minnesota 110, Dallas 108
Luka Doncic was outstanding, but he also attempted a rather lame three-pointer late in this contest that managed to never have a chance while still somehow ruining all of Dallas’ chances at a win.
The Mavericks couldn’t hit a three but, hell, Minnesota can’t stop anything. Immovable doof versus wholly-resistible dud.
Jalen Brunson is like Rick Brunson, but good. On the other hand, Minnesota’s defense: Dallas enjoyed a season-high 64 points in the paint.
Minnesota basically took the victory due to Luka’s bad miss and because Karl-Anthony Towns was able to long-arm his way into score after score, 28 points on 12-15 shooting.
Between Mitchell Robinson’s Dawkins-y throwdowns, KAT’s stellar performance and Andre Drummond’s 28 points, the NBA enjoyed quite a bit of Connie Hawkins-styled reach on Wednesday.
Timberwolves: 35-43, I was for a play-in tournament until I watched this game.
Mavericks: 31-47, Anstey.
Chicago 115, Washington 114
Nothing I can relay about the 52 seconds of live action I witnessed from this performance will be nearly as entertaining as taking a bathroom break with this Michael Jordan (vs. KG) clip:
I mean, you get Kevin Harlan delivering some weird flowetry about Stanley Roberts, it’s a trip.
(Later during a free throw a Bulls fan yelled “hey! Burger King!” out at Stanley.)
(Then again this was 1998 and Burger King was actually good back then.)
Walt Lemon Jr. won the contest for Chicago with a pair of free throws.
Bulls: 22-57, apparently the execution down the stretch was flawless.
Wizards: 32-47, “hey! Burger King! But in 2019!”
Boston 112, Miami 102
On the surface it appears odd that Miami routinely returned to the same zone that Boston so wonderfully picked apart on Monday, but the Heat are going to need that sort of support system if the club is to make the playoffs.
The odds turn rather rough after Wednesday’s loss. Josh Richardson left the game with a creeping left leg injury during the third quarter and Boston hit 27 free throws to Miami’s 12. The Celtics were always in the middle of that zone.
This is how a series works, though, and sometimes the NBA sports you a two-game series during the worst of the regular season. Miami threw its best at Boston for a few days and the odds didn’t pan out, though the Heat had some chances.
Justise Winslow, that ain’t him out there. Just so you know.
We’ll visit with Boston on Friday and post a BtB overnight.
Celtics: 47-32, No. 4 in the East.
Heat: 38-40, half’a game behind Orlando, No. 9 in the East. No. 9.
No. 9.
Houston 135, L.A. Clippers 103
I don’t know what’s gotten into Houston’s defense but the club has it so the other side doesn’t want to finish plays, now. Like, the pick and roll just gives up. I’ve never seen it so tired.
This wasn’t ever much of a competition, and the Rockets just put together an outrageous pair of wins.
Rockets: 51-28, third in the West.
Clippers: 47-32, sixth in the West and I think we’ve developed tiers.
Toronto 115, Brooklyn 105
Your Nets suffered from repeated Trouble With Gasol, Marc pinned five assists in the first half and picked four steals to explain away that 3-10 shooting.
Toronto didn’t lack for buckets.
Kawhi Leonard was Cohen-level turgid on his way toward 26 points but Pascal Siakam slinked gorgeously toward his team-leading 28:
Five assists and 10 rebounds, one turnover.
Toronto turned it over seven times all day, one fewer than what Brooklyn coughed up in the first half. BKN cleaned up its act as the night moved along, but it couldn’t get a handle on Toronto’s offensive board’woork.
Caris LeVert (1-9 shooting) fell back a bit after a string of strong games and D’Angelo Russell (11-25 from the floor) still takes some nutrageous shots.
Raptors: 56-23, second in the East, 2.5 games behind Milwaukee.
Nets: 39-40, No. 7 in the East.
Denver 113, San Antonio 85
Nikola Jokic needed a help-me game, and the Nuggets did well to involve him early. To seek the pivot, to make sure the Old Man settled before anyone else got to grabbing from the table.
This is part of what pushed Coach Pop out of the game, escorted off for arguing butts and strikes: Gregg Popovich loudly articulated expectations for LaMarcus Aldridge to earn the same treatment from the referees that Jokic was set to embrace.
The game needn’t get down to that grimy a level, the Spurs were never truly in this. San Antonio never led and two of its double-figure scorers (Davis Bertrans, Lonnie White IV!) tacked their totals in garbage time.
Denver learned from Tuesday’s whupping. The home team went all out with jumpy defense and dangerous decisions on the other end — everything worked because the hustle was in regard.
San Antonio tried a zone and nothing helped, first day of the rest of Denver’s life.
Monte Morris and Malik Beasley got their brims back at home, 19 points for each off the pine. Mason Plumlee delivered exceptional defense and four field goals, Nikola nearly peeled off a triple-double and Torrey Craig picked up three fouls in 19 minutes. The Nuggets are back.
Show patience with Gary Harris (5-10 shooting, 11 points).
The Gary we see in May should act remarkably smoother than the fella we’ve practiced with in spring.
Nuggets: 52-26, No. 2 in the West, 1.5 games behind Golden State.
San Antonio: 45-34, No. 8 in the West, half’a game behind OKC.
PACK IT UP
My oh my, what a great drummer can do for a recording.
Thank you for reading!
I gotta do that button again:
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Portland 122, New Orleans 110
If you are here to figure out why Julius Randle scored 45 against Portland, understand that the Trail Blazers can’t guard your screen and roll and that PDX has a little trouble meeting bodies coming through the rye (at the front of the rim). This was in place well before Randle started tapping his way past 30.
The Blazers weren’t alone in the giveback.
At one stretch in the contest Portland fielded Enes Kanter and Zach Collins up front against the pairing of Randle and New Orleans center Jahlil Okafor. Had I been cleared for action, Kelly Dwyer would have finished the second quarter with eight points on 4-6 shooting (four boards).
Portland’s defense improved considerably as the night rang along, but Randle refused to let up:
(Anthony Davis sat out the entire contest, and it was good to see New Orleans play with purpose as a result. There are good dudes on this team that deserved much better than what 2018-19 gave back.)
Damian Lillard was nice (24 points) when he had to be in the second half and C.J. McCollum hit half of the 20 shots he took. New Orleans had no chance in the face of that backcourt, no help with PDX’s buttwork on the offensive glass.
Rodney Hood traveled and Jake Layman missed all six of his field goal attempts.
Trail Blazers: 42-26, No. 4 in the West.
New Orleans: 30-41, No. 12 in the West.
Milwaukee 113, Miami 98
This is a game that should get to us. The Bucks needed half a game to turn out twice as better as the Miami Heat, another playoff team working at its home arena.
The Heat don’t play well at home, news to those of us that got to watch the Bucks drag through the first quarter and a half of this Florida Turn.
Miami led by as many as 23 in the first half, the front of the rim was unapproachable to Milwaukee and Justise Winslow was acting like a real jerk at the front of the line.
Little bench spurts kept MKE in business, Pat Connaughton and Ersan Ilyasova each popped five field goals and three three-pointers and D.J. Wilson scored a bit of prime time. Khris Middleton earned 21 points, helpful when Miami began the game by hitting six of its first eight three-pointers.
And Giannis Antetokounmpo found his compass in the second half.
Six turnovers, two steals and three blocks.
Justise Winslow bruised a thigh partway through this contest, he’d return but his scope was never the same. Those things bleed nasty, keep a concerned eye on our guy as Miami looks to wrap up its playoff bonafides.
Bucks: 52-17, tops in the East.
Heat: 32-36, game up on Orlando for the last playoff spot, MIA vs. ORL on Sunday.
L.A. Clippers 128, Chicago 120
Teams have complained about Doc Rivers’ set of screens dating back to his years with the Celtics. Not from earliest days, Mark Blount would never be caught getting in another basketball player’s way, but the successful sorts of seasons.
Bulls coach Jim Boylen loves Ryan Arcidiacono because Ryan played for Villanova during the NCAA tournament, Ryan was on CBS and Villanova’s coach had good hair and an engaging backstory.
When Clippers big man Montrezl Harrell knocked the ex-NCAA point guard out of the NBA game in the first half with a rough screen, Jim Boylen became upset.
We’ll let Doc Rivers take over from here:
Reminder ahead.
Head coaches don’t talk to each other during games, unless a bad joke needs laughing at. Jim Boylen’s brand of iconoclasm has its set of detractors.
The Bulls were outclassed in other areas, too, the Clippers ran supreme when the club kept options open and Chicago had no answer for a production with so few transition opportunities for Lauri to lap up: L.A. made enough shots and only turned it over seven times.
Clippers: 40-30, No. 8 in the East, six games up.
Bulls: 19-51, several men down.
Detroit 111, Los Angeles Lakers 97
This was not a fun game to watch on TV, in lieu of highlights I instead think you should watch a hungover Bernard Black engage two visitors:
(English people hug weird.)
Blake Griffin played the Lakers for eight quarters this season and only pulled in two rebounds.
Blake was the one forced to jam a win down the throats of the visiting Lakers, hitting one of his three field goals in the final seconds to cinch it. Los Angeles stayed on the court credibly for far too long, JaVale McGee was quite the factor.
A win’s a win, Detroit, but, yikes.
Shout out to Piston scorer Langston Galloway, 23 points and four three-pointers on a night where everyone played like Thon Maker.
Pistons: 35-33, No. 6, tied with Brooklyn.
Lakers: 31-38, please don’t come back to Michigan for a while.
Charlotte 116, Washington 110
Kemba Walker had his fourth quarter silhouette standing in at the outset of this win, Charlotte needed his burst and Washington needed an early reminder.
The Wizards have worked hard all season, the team truly has, but Washington loses concentration in the time it takes for a Sununu to stiff a server.
Scott Brooks’ crew slipnutted 14 turnovers in the first half alone before registering as “hapless” defensively for strands of the second half.
Charlotte isn’t great, and Walker (10-28 shooting on the night) tired after a spell, Washington used offensive rebounds and a few gnatty deliveries from Jabari Parker (17 points) and Jeff Green (20 points!) to keep close and familiar.
Tony Parker was your Dagger Darling, answering runs for his beloved Hornets and pumping in 16 points.
Jeremy Lamb squeezed the Wizards out of contention with 18 bench points of his own plus eight rebounds, as (say it with me) Bradley Beal’s effort-fisted 40 couldn’t keep Washington above water.
Hornets: 31-37, No. 10 in the East, one game out of the bracket.
Wizards: 29-40, No. 11 in the East, out of the bracket.
Philadelphia 123, Sacramento 114
It was delightful to see the Kings give it a go, and not with some cynical exercise meant to take advantage of all the trap game trappings. This was the Kings’ last contest in a tough road trip and though PHILA was ready for its guests, Sacramento put dat collective butt on the line.
The Kings stuck with the offense, pretty or otherwise. SACTO wanted to create readers out of its writers and the bigs were still allowed to make significant decisions from whatever post looked best. A whole lot of sideline trust in a contest that could have gone uneasy.
Harry Giles dished four assists and contributed a dozen points. Marvin Bagley has only been 20 for a coupla days, he recently returned from an imposing knee strain and you can hardly tell, 15 points and a steal.
Philadelphia’s instruction was just as sublime, the team built buckets and stops off the back of its movement and trust. The Sixers finished the night a better basketball team than they started the evening as.
Jimmy Butler developed more great looks than great looks made and he made quite a few, 22 points on 8-14 shooting.
Beautiful action cleared spaces for our man to do Jimmy Butler Things, even with Ben Simmons and/or Joel Embiid bashing around within the same lineups. There’s room ‘ere.
Embiid directed some killer defense down the stretch and Simmons hit both his free throws again (along with 18 points).
Bobi played nice early on and T.J. McConnell thinks he looks cool with his mouthguard hanging out like that.
76ers: 44-25, No. 3 in the East.
Kings: 33-35, No. 9 in the West.
Houston 106, Phoenix 102
Chris Paul’s absence was badly felt for the hosts. Houston exhibited little cohesion on Friday, it looked like the Suns dragged the Rockets away from the TV.
Phoenix runs good action, you might not like the shots or the players folding over the tortilla on these wraps, but the Suns remain fun to participate within and Friday’s heaves were falling.
DeAndre Ayton turned the ball over seven times but he hit just as many field goals and pulled in twice as many rebounds. If you experienced adolescent troubles with the ‘7’ possibilities on the Multiplication Table, I apologize.
Houston was really shitty defensively with Kenneth Faried roaming.
Richaun Holmes capped a double-double off the pine and Devin Booker got his 29. The Suns weren’t right there, but they were close to kinda being “right there.”
I guessed Kelly Oubre would shoot an attempt on the wrong end of the court on Friday’s podcast, I had to be sated with him missing a wide open dunk:
I hate it when I miss dunks.
James Harden won the evening for Houston, he directed teammates in and out of sight lines and finished with 41 points and 11 assists. Harden turned the ball over six times and talked when it was appropriate to talk. The dude hit 14 rebounds and pulled in nine necessary defensive rebounds. It was Jordanesque.
In the last minute of the game, Harden was beat off the dribble by Devin Booker and stripped by Oubre. It was Austin Dayesque.
Rockets: 43-26, No. 3 in the West.
Phoenix: 16-54, last in the West.
San Antonio 109, New York 83
I stayed in on a Friday night* and watched this.
Spurs: 40-29, No. 6 in the West, half-game up on Utah.
Knicks: 13-56, Kadeem Allen wasn’t bad.
*a Friday night in Indiana.
THE BLUES WALK
If you want to introduce a friend to jazz, this tune is a good track to start nodding to.
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Boston 128, Golden State 95
The Celtics won this game because Boston stopped trying to figure out what was wrong with themselves long enough to concentrate on what was beatable on the other side.
Nothing is wrong with the Warriors, either, this was only a basketball game that Boston won handily.
The contest did highlight just how f*g important Klay Thompson is to these Warriors, the band was begging for scores in spots during this performance and Thompson (who delivered wonderfully lusty basketball during GSW’s recent road swing) is the sorta pressure release that creates room to breathe.
When you can breathe, you can score, and Golden State had a hard time swimming its way toward pockets of oxygen on Tuesday in the face of Boston’s traveling pants.
The defense was Celtic-like, something to expect.
Boston’s offense was another trigger: Celtics actually gave up the ball early in a possession, the Celtics trusted its own movement and expectations.
Ball met hands, Gordon Hayward splashed 30 points on 16 shots and Jaylen Brown found himself covered in robusto sauce — 16 points on ultraquick posts and flings, teammates giving a little more, Brown leaning on the hits that make him tricky.
The Celtics led by as many as 35, by the fourth quarter Steve Kerr was ready to put David West in to make a point.
Celtics: 39-26, No. 5 in the East.
Warriors: 44-20, tops in the West.
Philadelphia 114, Orlando 106
Jimmy Butler wears a braid and ninja headband now because it’s been about a month since everyone else started it, so Jimmy has to do it now. One hundred percent chance Jimmy came into third grade out of the summer of 1996 to declare that he was gonna become a storm chaser as soon as he grew up.
The Sixer swingman contributed pristine basketball down the stretch, making PHILA look phoolish for going away from him all game. Steals and buckets and stops, Jimbo was apsatively dominant in the closing minutes against a Magic defense that has earned every bit of its top-ten ranking.
Orlando’s offensive picture in the clutch was rather clouded, what with Jimmy Butler stealing the ball away from Nikola Vucevic, or Jimmy’s ribbon getting in Evan Fournier’s face.
J.J. Redick canned six three-pointers on the night, and when his cans ran out, Mike Scott hit his third three-pointer of the evening. It sealed up Philadelphia’s fourth win in six post-Break tries without Joel Embiid.
Amir Johnson started and rang two blocks, he hit 5-9 from the field and a three-pointer.
Couldn’t get a shoutout:
76ers: 41-23, No. 4 in the East.
Magic: 30-36, No. 10 in the East.
Houston 107, Toronto 95
The Raptors fell behind early because the bench couldn’t hack it, and because the Rockets owned all the answers for what Toronto did best. The Raptors weren’t angry, they were more disappointed with themselves than anything.
Houston held on to its lead, as high as 22 at one point as Toronto failed to crack 40 points in the first half, Rox held on loosely through the comeback and into the conquest.
James Harden was enough, 35 points, Eric Gordon hit three three-pointers and P.J. Tucker made Kawhi Leonard’s isolation forays appear as if they were performed inside of those human-sized cubes that they blow dollar bills into for the cash grab.
Leonard finished hitting 10-22 shots, 26 points, but you’d watch him fumble in the box and wonder why he couldn’t just pocket 40.
(P.J. Tucker.)
Chris Paul doesn’t add stardom to Houston’s equation anymore, just another level of supreme competency. Someone else making the exact right play at the exact wrong time for an opponent.
Paul missed nine of his 10 shots, but he beat the Raptors in 2019 on a team with Nene playing backup center.
Rockets: 39-25, No. 3 in the West.
Raptors: 46-19, second in the East.
Memphis 120, Portland 111
You can bend over backwards to let yourself become discouraged at the thought of the Blazers blowing a game to the stupid, self-defeating Grizzlies, or you can run through what Portland just gave you.
The Trail Blazers haven’t played at home since before the All-Star break, which was in 2018. The team ran nearly perfect on its road trip ahead of the flight to Memphis, Friday’s close defeat at the hands of the deeply-staffed Raps only left to sting an otherwise spotless trek.
The Blazers outlasted ESPN games and a Sunday afternoon contest in Charlotte that started around mid-morning out in Portland. The team has a top-five offense and it wants us to consider it a postseason comer.
That’s still in place, Memphis has its sparks and the Blazers were ready to roll a little. Portland’s defense was stretched at the wrong times and Mike Conley (40 points on only 18 shots) hit some outrageous stringers.
The visitors had trouble with Memphis’ pick and roll and the resulting beef from a Gasol transaction (Delon Wright was superb on both ends, 25 points, Jonas Valanciunas hit 6-7 buckets, very necessary).
Ivan Raab is the NBA’s best frontcourt passer (on a six-game night) and Joakim Noah absolutely changed the Grizzly capabilities each time he entered the game.
The Blazers weren’t terrible, C.J. McCollum remains a stud and the bench helpers were aware, the defense just suffered a bit.
Thursday (against Oklahoma State) will be Portland’s fifth home game since January. Yet look at this record.
Grizzlies: 26-40, No. 14 in the West.
Trail Blazers: 39-25, No. 5 in the West.
Minnesota 131, Oklahoma City 120
Minnesota worked up a superb game, the passing was crisp and the movement looked almost natural, super weird for this team, super weird.
The Wolves defense, in spite of the final holler listed above, was good enough to encourage OKC away from its Easy Spots and back into what Russell Westbrook brings — 38 points on 15-28 shooting, six assists, but not a lot of function or fear cultivation.
The Thunder ran normal, Paul George returned and missed 17 shots, 10 three-pointers, the team missed 13 free throws and could not match whatever it was that Minnesota brought to a Tuesday.
The Timberwolves’ urging was impressive, the spacing and movement was sound, Minnesota dragged OKC all over the court in the Thunder’s attempts to mind it all. MIN plugged 11-22 three-pointers.
Even Andrew Wiggins cut quickly, acted quickly (still Stephen Jackson-styled slow, but speedy for Andrew), he looked great taking those long twos. Wiggins finished with 18 points, he hit for a steal and a block and the satisfaction of the home crowd.
Also, Karl-Anthony Towns clocked a few heads together.
In a midgame interview, former Timberwolves two-point scorer Tony Campbell accidentally referred to himself as “a great Katt Williams fan” before correcting himself.
Timberwolves: 30-34, No. 10 in the West.
Thunder: 39-25, No. 4 in the West.
Indiana 105, Chicago 96
Your Bulls started slow but began coming together once they became convinced they could win the game. Chicago couldn’t, but its reads on both ends were encouraging. Indiana is a lot to try and shut down.
‘Course the Bulls were still the team that left Bojan Bogdanovic wide open in the corner with a minute to go and the Pacers up five, c’mon Chicago, Bojan splashed his fourth three of the evening and he’s back up to 43 percent on the season.
Chicago went small late and Indiana traipsed, Darren Collison finished several awfully-needed scoring possessions (22 points) and IND did well to seek out Lauri Markkanen (4-14) and Otto Porter (1-5 from behind the arc).
Thaddeus Young had six assists and 11 rebounds.
Quinn Buckner is delightful.
Pacers: 42-23, No. 3 in the East.
Bulls: 18-47, No. 13 in the East.
MY ADORABLE ONE
Love this version, gorgeous pedal steel solo.
PHIL LESH AND HIS WEIRD BASS.
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Orlando 103, Golden State 96
Basketball has a clock and the game still demands that you work up intelligent output within the clock’s terms. Time’s flat circle even exists within Orlando, a place we’ve all spent a month in (one weekend).
Your hometown Magic did not play exceedingly well in this win, but the club’s shots went in and the defense was pointed and accurate enough to reel in the victory. Terrence Ross was around for a lot of it.
Golden State wasted its fourth quarter, wasted it, it was a Wednesday night in Orlando and the champs managed 15 damn points. Frittered away the period with turnovers and a weird insistence on getting DeMarcus Cousins the ball in the spots of the court he likes least. These places are tough to find.
Boogie likes to pass as much as he likes to shoot but he doesn’t love anything as much as having the ball, DMC could not connect for his sloppy new team (ohfer four in the fourth) down the stretch of a contest he got to finish. Boogie wasn’t prepared to admit frailty in the face of OK Orlando footwork.
Facing a fourth quarter deficit, the Magic dug in to take the sorta stupid threes they usually love to lose games with. Aaron Gordon nailed a triple late and cinched the game on a tip-in after Warrior forward Jonas Jerebko found himself lost in the movement.
Klay Thompson was fearless in Kevin Durant’s absence (rest) but his touch faded as the night drew Orlando-y. Stephen Curry needed 33 shots to score 33 points, the Warriors plugged in 96 points per 100 possessions and the team just lost to Florida.
Nobody on the Magic was especially astounding, the home team just had the sensibility to steer right once the Warriors decided to use the cigarette lighter to set the passenger seat on fire.
Magic: 29-34, No. 8 in the East.
Warriors: 43-19, just lost to Orlando, tops in the West.
Houston 121, Miami 118
The Heat played well enough to win this performance, Miami’s Texas effort was supreme and its execution mostly on point. The Heat worked on the second night of a back-to-back, flying in from Florida same as these here Rockets, but it wasn’t legs that felled Miami.
Nah, James Harden is just nutty. You don’t even have to relent and yet he’ll still park four home runs in a game.
Harden collected bucket after bucket in the second half, scheming to add to his total (fifty-eight, FIFTYEIGHT, 58!!) while the Heat slowly lost its nerve.
Miami started on a string, doubling Harden yards from the rim on the second night of a back to back, flying righteously in Hassan Whiteside’s continued absence (hip pointer), establishing a 21-point lead at one point without looking like a racer that skipped its last pit.
Goran Dragic’s hair has grown back at an astonishing rate after a disastrous recent cut. In back-to-back nights against Golden State and Houston the reserve point guard administered a 24-points per game average alongside eight total assists and only two turnovers in 45 minutes. And, again, the hair looks great now — he really grew into it.
Dion Waiters splashed threes late, Miami made 15-28 (53.6 percent) overall, your whole Heat appeared to have the arc.
Houston’s defense turned up as your evening dragged along, mainly because Miami had to take the ball out of the damn net so much because James Harden was with basketball.
Sometimes, in this super-speedy culture, James gets five at-bats per game.
Rockets: 37-25, fifth in the West.
Heat: 27-34, tenth in the East.
Utah 111, Denver 104
Not an illustrious game, but a rather impressive one. Utah just had itself a midweek.
The Jazz put the screws on Nikola Jokic, got the driver right and turned the knob the good direction, Nikola finished with 13 boards and seven assists but also with as many made baskets (five) as turnovers and fouls. Rudy Gobert is long, Utah had a way of making Jokic feel like a squished-in power forward.
The visitors did well in mapping without Ricky Rubio (hamstring), Utah held up to some Denver defensive scrutiny even with backup point man Raul Neto sidelined with the same setback. Joe Ingles (10 assists) provided a dish, but his setup is wholly different from that of Neto and Rubio’s — the Jazz won this while circling wagons.
Your show-stopping regulars (Will Barton, Jamal Murray, the forever young Paul Millsap) helped Denver pull a game out of this.
The Nuggets entered halftime down 17 and nearly yanked a one-possession plot out of the final minute, yet a goaltend call went silly and Donovan Mitchell’s nine ultraclutch points in the second-half of the fourth quarter tucked the squealer in Utah’s pocket.
Utah came back to top the Clippers and held on to frustrate the Nuggets in 48 hours, Mountain Time-hours. Get real.
Jazz: 35-26, No. 6 in the West.
Nuggets: 42-19, No. 2 in the West.
Indiana 122, Minnesota 115
Karl Anthony-Towns sprinted magnificently in the first quarter, running up 23 of his 42 points, but the Pacers do well with a stated goal hanging over them.
Thaddeus Young led a righteous second quarter charge, 11 points and two steals, while Bojan Bogdanovic (14 points in the game’s final 7:22) spun expertly down the stretch of the contest.
Bojan wore a beautiful red blazer to the game because he “thought we were on TNT.”
KAT needs help.
Andrew Wiggins is severely deficient as a competitive basketball cog at this level and Minnesota felt the sting when it replaced Luol Deng’s fourth quarter minutes with that of the (game, but also missing dunks) Anthony Tolliver. Deng’s aching left Achilles is killing Minnesota’s playoff hopes.
Also Andrew Wiggins. Destroying those hopes.
Tripping those hopes on the way out of the elevator and into the lobby, walking away and pretending not to hear anything with the earbuds in but, guess what, someone left their earbuds back up in the hotel room.
Pacers: 41-22, third in the East.
Timberwolves: 29-33, No. 11 in the West.
Cleveland 125, New York 118
The whole game happened: Larry Nance Jr. fouled out, Marquese Chriss missed all five of his shots and Mitchell “Yoke” Robinson made each of his five field goals. Even better was New York forward Noah Vonleh, 7-7 from the floor, Mr. November now back to make March all his.
At one point in the broadcast, Clyde Frazier lamented the loss of available Raisin Bran on the Knick postgame flights.
New York got its buckets throughout, Cleveland can’t guard anyone and wouldn’t know where to stand if you asked a Cavalier nicely.
Then Damyean Dotson had to leave — he’s a Knick and was playing well on both sides, DDOT took a hard hit in the fourth and would not return. His teammates showed their respects by quietly packing their respective Wednesdays away in response, suddenly the bloom was off the Mudiay and the hops on Dennis Smith Jr. flattened.
Cedi Osman picked at openings and hit three three-pointers. Kevin Love (26 points on only a dozen shots) reminded us that greater things do exist and Ante Zizic (needed comeback buckets) enforced the idea that this was still a Cavalier versus Knicks contest.
And Collin just rolled ‘em in.
New York pushed until its end, there was a note in his pocket and the handwriting read “Henry Ellenson (sp?),” but this was Cleveland’s turn to arouse.
Cavaliers: 15-47, No. 14 in the East.
Knicks: 13-49, No. 15 in the East.
Philadelphia 108, Oklahoma City 104
With Paul George resting his sore shoulder, the Thunder decided to start Markieff Morris in the MVP’s absence. In rejoinder, Philly ran up double-figures before Markieff could race off the floor in favor of Dennis Schröder, who still plays a lot like Dennis Schröder.
Joel Embiid also sat for the Sixers and the clubs did well to compare drawn straws. Dennis and Russell Westbrook had their woes finding the right shots, Philly rarely had as much trouble — where once stood Wilson Chandler, now stomps Tobias Harris.
Or Mike Scott, OKC. Cover Mike Scott. All he does is Mike Scott, people.
FEELS LIKE SUMMER
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GOOD MORNING PEOPLE!!
Golden State 125, Sacramento 123
It’s clear that the break done spoiled these players, pampered these coaches. It’s nearly impossible to spend a long weekend amid the all free towels and room service pot stickers and not develop an attitude of sorts.
Dave “Looks Like a James” Joerger had it out with Buddy Hield late in the contest, chafing at his star for missing defensive designs dab in the middle of Buddy’s attempt to keep the Kings alive. Hield hit a couple of desperation threes late in the contest but passed up on a deep three to win it on the game’s final possession, spiraling into a two-point miss with Joerger echoing off the egg crates.
The Kings were fantastic, Sacramento hung with the champs and gave us a season series to teeheehee over.
De’Aaron Fox ran unbowed and Marvin Bagley (28 points, 14 rebounds) was capable of playing crucial two-way minutes. Willie Cauley-Stein kept his wits and Corey Brewer (who is on the Kings) hit three three-pointers. Draymond Green typically does terrible things to Harrison Barnes, but the ex-GSW ran for 13 points and two clutch buckets late.
Steve Kerr had to spray DEATHLINEUP all over the Kings in the second quarter, the sometimes-smiling Kevin Durant went nuts in the second and third quarters, Stephen Curry ran a beacon all evening:
Nemanja Bjelica (DNP-CD) is out of Sacto’s rotation in the wake of the Barnes acquisition.
Bogdan Bogdanovic starts at small forward now, Sacramento has an uneasy luxury on its hands moving forward with the ascension of Harry Giles (eight rebounds on Thursday) and Bagley. Yogi Ferrell is also averaging an all-time low in minutes per game, this is just primo soap opera s**t.
Warriors: 42-16 (tops in the West)
Kings: 30-28 (1.5 games out of the playoff bracket)
Milwaukee 98, Boston 97
Players creep carefully around probable playoff opponents, the skulk takes on even more stealth around teams that have met each other before. It’s instinct, nobody wants to upset anyone else this early, particulars just wanna to lap up a drink from the standing water and wait until spring brings its spots back.
The Celtics ran without Gordon Hayward (sprained right something) and it showed, BOS could have used another playmaker and spacer, the Celtics shot just six free throws all night. Jaylen Brown was keen to be a part of a real game again, he was a sprinter and hit 6-9 shots with five bench boards.
Jayson Tatum wasn’t bad and Al Horford compiled mental notes (alongside 8-21 shooting, 17 rebounds, five assists, 21 points, two blocks and three steals) to contend with in May. Kyrie missed two-thirds of his shots but came on late, wasn’t enough.
Nah, Ersan Ilyasova (4-4 shooting) lost his mask over the All-Star break and Malcolm Brogdon (15 points) wanted to make damn sure he was counted as “part of this.” Khris Middleton hit his fair share of answers on the way toward a 15-point night but the routine was run by Giannis Antetokounmpo.
He’s such a thrill to watch, and then he’ll end your evening. Giannis gotta be the last one standing.
Bucks: 44-14 (tops in the East)
Celtics: 37-22 (No. 5)
Portland 113, Brooklyn 99 (Thursdays on NBC)
Each team took ages to prime the pump but Portland outlasted its hosts in this victory, an impressive and intriguing start to a road trip that will keep the Blazers outta PDX for a fortnight.
Enes Kanter entered, he sure did, compiling 18 points and nine rebounds and sloppy defense off the Blazer pine: Meyers Leonard and Zach Collins sat all evening.
Kanter supplied the blow for Jusuf Nurkic, who needed a little time in a seat to survey the floor and get used to the idea of not letting players from the other team touch the ball (after he threw it).
Jusuf recovered from his five turnovers long enough to trod beastly, even cramming on Jarrett Allen, 27 points and a dozen boards with three blocks. Portland’s offense was wack, its timing shot to hell, the boys needed every one of these lay-ins.
Even with Kanter whiffing, the Nets didn’t have enough bodies to lean in with. Caris LeVert (12 points on 11 shots) still needs time to work his tail off and BKN clunked 29 of 36 three-pointers in the loss.
D’Angelo Russell was made to look weary, 4-16 shooting, Shabazz Napier had to finish so many plays and this sometimes (2-11 shooting) went well (11 assists).
Portland capitalized on random clangs and touch from beyond, on a night when Dame Lillard blurped 16 of 21 field goal attempts.
Different heroes are going to have to stand in and all over this trip, Seth Curry (ohfer three) and Evan Turner (missed all five shots) can’t look so bloody ordinary out there if the Blazers want to turn corners.
Trail Blazers: 35-23 (No. 4 in the West)
Nets: 30-30 (No. 6 in the East)
Philadelphia 106, Miami 102
Working without MVP candidate Joel Embiid (bum knee), the Sixers went with the next-best thing:
Marjanovic’s impact waned as the evening moved along, spirits having already soared.
Miami made it back because its bench was the drug: Derrick Jones Jr. and Rodney McGruber and Bam Adebayo all crashed toward necessary scores, Dwyane Wade hit 8-18 shots in his role as the guy that kind of keeps things interesting until he runs out of breath.
The Sixers responded with the crush: Ben Simmons was a load all night in the post, even against Miami’s phalanx of tatted arms. Tobias Harris (Sixer-high 23 points) picked his spots and Jimmy Butler worked diligently as a shooting guard asked to play point guard.
T.J. “A Little Annoying” McConnell ran toward five assists in a dozen minutes, Mike Scott was not paying attention. J.J. Redick missed 7-10 shots but had the legs to nail a clutch three-pointer late, he’s going to have those wheels now that opponents are charged with chasing Butler and Harris around for 44 minutes.
76ers: 38-21 (No. 4 in the East)
Heat: 26-31 (No. 10)
Cleveland 111, Phoenix 98
The Cavs enjoy playing alongside each other, and the Suns are still figuring out if that’s the case. Throw in the road setting, All-Star break estrangement plus Kevin Love’s return and you had all the tools to make the visiting Suns look way worse than the rebuilding Cavaliers.
Phoenix isn’t way worse, suck hits a saturation point with tanking teams, but the Cavs had the competence advantage.
Cedi Osman returned to complete Cleveland’s circle, five assists and 19 points and a fine floor game for the punters to appreciate. Ante Zizic had his way finishing inside, missing two shots in nine tries, while Love had an elbow under it — 16 points and three three-pointers to go with 11 rebounds.
Matthew Dellavedova pitched 11 assists, David Nwaba gave good minutes and Marquese Chriss got to boast unconvincingly to the Phoenix bench after each of his two field goals.
Phoenix was paced by Devin Booker’s 30 points and 28 terrible decisions, he’d finish with nine turnovers. DeAndre Ayton managed five offensive rebounds and 13 points but otherwise looked like a rookie in October.
Cavaliers: 13-46 (Nope.)
Suns: 11-49 (Nooo.)
THEME FROM BULLITT
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