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Here's an article I wrote about one of the most underrated to ever do it, Masta Ace, on hllo.net...
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Some Hip Hop
Here's an article I wrote about one of the most underrated to ever do it, Masta Ace, on hllo.net...
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More Updates
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JWill, my boy. One of the best stories I've ever gotten to do: the return of Super Cracker to the NBA.
Yessir
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Here's a story from a year ago I did on the two best big men in the 2009 class. Check out 2 future 1st-round picks...
Preboye
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Here's the final part of that article. It's from a few years ago on a dude named Preye Preboye from Springfield, MA.
Back Again
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So I've been away for a while. Grad school will do that to you. I'm going to start it off again by posting a lot of the work I've done over the past few years: articles and designs, etc. More so for my benefit than anything else/a way to keep track of everything.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Money
In honor of his induction into the Hall, MJ gets the special treatment. I don't think I ever grew up under the impression that this man wasn't God. Without MJ, my life would be a 180. I would've been a WR, sweating every day, trying to be the next Randy Moss. It would've been gloves and cleats instead of Spauldings and Js.
MJ was ball growing up. It never registered with me that there were 29 other teams. Chicago was all that mattered. Since he retired, I've been searching for a replacement cus that void is still there. Every time I watch videos on youtube or look at all my old basketball cards, it brings back childhood: one-on-one games in the backyard to 50, 6 am morning calls for Sportscenter, the 301, the 4th grade. I will miss you MJ.
(thanks to hoopsencyclopedia for making these incredible mixes)
A lot talking heads want to proclaim Mike as something short of what he was because of his Hall Of Shame speech. Contrary, Mike was all that. Arrogant. Self-absorbed. Could he fly? In his mind, he was never the passenger, drove the A to heights no one ever thought would happen. To someone like me? He was just the perfect blend. What other leaning, double-pumping J look so wet? Hell, I probably would've kissed him on the cheek if I ever met him. He made a weight-lifting, rap-digesting, six-pack loving man like me gay. Just for a moment though. When he hit that shot against Utah, the crossover on Mr. Russell, the spank and the splash, I was gay. When he was clutching that ball on Father's Day, rocking the bred 11s, I was gay. And millions of kids growing up were in love with him.
That ferocity, that self-drive and that maniacal approach to winning are characteristics I've tried to emulate forever. I want to be the best at whatever I do. No one better to study than the greatest athlete God ever created.
So Kobe, this is my shout-out to you. You want to have billboards in Barcelona? You want to be on Wheaties, on little girls' myspace pages, sitting on the tongues of everyone in every barbershop in the world? You are going to need every bead of sweat, every five-foot pull-up better be done with max efficiency. You have to be greater than the machines that make cars, smarter than every Harvard graduate. It is going to take something better than liquid fuel. You might have to have surgery, get cougar muscles put in your legs.
Because MJ is God around here. You are struggling to make that climb and oh, what a long climb it's going to be. 4 titles at 30? Feels more like 1 at 35. That's how bad people want to see you fail. 81 won't do it for you. All-time scoring leader won't be the key. 6 titles? Nah, you are going to need more than that. So you better be in the gym, and Ron Artest better be with you. You better give Phil some of that 'feel-young again' medicine. This mission won't work by yourself. This ain't Troy and you ain't Achilles. MJ is eyeing you too. Remember that. He is watching too, knowing his end marks the beginning...
Sorry y'all I got fired up watching some youtube clips. Haha- peace and love to Tha Family.
MJ was ball growing up. It never registered with me that there were 29 other teams. Chicago was all that mattered. Since he retired, I've been searching for a replacement cus that void is still there. Every time I watch videos on youtube or look at all my old basketball cards, it brings back childhood: one-on-one games in the backyard to 50, 6 am morning calls for Sportscenter, the 301, the 4th grade. I will miss you MJ.
(thanks to hoopsencyclopedia for making these incredible mixes)
A lot talking heads want to proclaim Mike as something short of what he was because of his Hall Of Shame speech. Contrary, Mike was all that. Arrogant. Self-absorbed. Could he fly? In his mind, he was never the passenger, drove the A to heights no one ever thought would happen. To someone like me? He was just the perfect blend. What other leaning, double-pumping J look so wet? Hell, I probably would've kissed him on the cheek if I ever met him. He made a weight-lifting, rap-digesting, six-pack loving man like me gay. Just for a moment though. When he hit that shot against Utah, the crossover on Mr. Russell, the spank and the splash, I was gay. When he was clutching that ball on Father's Day, rocking the bred 11s, I was gay. And millions of kids growing up were in love with him.
That ferocity, that self-drive and that maniacal approach to winning are characteristics I've tried to emulate forever. I want to be the best at whatever I do. No one better to study than the greatest athlete God ever created.
So Kobe, this is my shout-out to you. You want to have billboards in Barcelona? You want to be on Wheaties, on little girls' myspace pages, sitting on the tongues of everyone in every barbershop in the world? You are going to need every bead of sweat, every five-foot pull-up better be done with max efficiency. You have to be greater than the machines that make cars, smarter than every Harvard graduate. It is going to take something better than liquid fuel. You might have to have surgery, get cougar muscles put in your legs.
Because MJ is God around here. You are struggling to make that climb and oh, what a long climb it's going to be. 4 titles at 30? Feels more like 1 at 35. That's how bad people want to see you fail. 81 won't do it for you. All-time scoring leader won't be the key. 6 titles? Nah, you are going to need more than that. So you better be in the gym, and Ron Artest better be with you. You better give Phil some of that 'feel-young again' medicine. This mission won't work by yourself. This ain't Troy and you ain't Achilles. MJ is eyeing you too. Remember that. He is watching too, knowing his end marks the beginning...
Sorry y'all I got fired up watching some youtube clips. Haha- peace and love to Tha Family.
Take A Picture
Back to give y'all a little update on life. Sometimes I feel like time is just passing me by. I mean, I'm 23. That's pretty young, yet I feel like it is taking forever to get to where I want to be. There are so many people out there reaching for what they want...yet, I've known EXACTLY what I've wanted to do since probably '04. That's five years- five years of working on what I need to. I know I shouldn't ask, but what is taking so long? The only thing I can do is keep working to improve.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a very limited world view. It is kind of sad: my life is basketball, music, sneakers. That is about it. I used to try to hide it, felt ashamed by it. But, now I look at it as a positive. In this day and age, it is good to have a specialization. I mean damn, basically every news outlet is specialized. I was in Wegmans the other day and I saw some lacrosse magazines. Ten years ago, who would've ever thought that?
I can't help but be my own worst enemy. I've got to continue to open up a little bit more. Y'all ever get that feeling that people just don't care what you think? I get that all the time. My advice to myself and everyone listening: forget all that. At the end of the day, does it really matter what someone says about you? I know I care, but I shouldn't. That's the worst thing you can do to crush your dreams. Until next time...pass peace.
Anyone who knows me knows I have a very limited world view. It is kind of sad: my life is basketball, music, sneakers. That is about it. I used to try to hide it, felt ashamed by it. But, now I look at it as a positive. In this day and age, it is good to have a specialization. I mean damn, basically every news outlet is specialized. I was in Wegmans the other day and I saw some lacrosse magazines. Ten years ago, who would've ever thought that?
I can't help but be my own worst enemy. I've got to continue to open up a little bit more. Y'all ever get that feeling that people just don't care what you think? I get that all the time. My advice to myself and everyone listening: forget all that. At the end of the day, does it really matter what someone says about you? I know I care, but I shouldn't. That's the worst thing you can do to crush your dreams. Until next time...pass peace.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Sunday, August 9, 2009
some schoolwork
Here are some of the things I've made in graphics class w/ Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, etc. I'm pretty proud of myself considering I $%^&** suck at that stuff haha.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
A New Lifestyle
From that...to this...
Okay, in light of the summer coming to a close soon and my summer school of 6 weeks winding down to the final stretch, I decided to talk a little bit about how my life (lifestyle) has changed. Gone, the 6 XL tees and 38 34 jeans. Gone, the razored head...now I have hair again. Gone, hopefully is the self-absorbed, anti-social monster that inhabited my body for like 6 years.
And it aint just how I'm dressing thats different (still can't believe I'm rocking large tees and going to the mall checking for PLAD shorts plad haha), I'm actually listening to different music.
I've gone from this
to this
I was talking to my boy the other night. He was right on, couldn't believe. How someone go from Tribe Called Quest, PE, G Rap to bumping some Bobby Valentino I don't know. Still can't figure it out. But Imma roll with it for now.
It's called growing up I guess. Getting my grown man on. Now, all of a sudden I worry my Ford Ranger aint gonna cut it when it comes to the women. I never figured I would be spending cake on a new ride, especially when this one gets me where I need to be...always reliable (even with a destroyed bumper). But, going home, I feel like I have to get a new one.
Oh yea, I'm searching for new shades (never worn them in my life haha) and walking around in cut-offs. I think I might have to give away 90% of my wardrobe to another kid looking to swim in his clothes. But, my kicks are not going ANYWHEREEEE.
Check yall later.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
a couple hidden gems
Electric Circus, bear with me, is honestly one of my favorite com sense records. Hate all you want, I love the flow. Soul Power and Electric Wire Hustle Flower are my joints. Seriously. Com comes hard on those tracks-- it is tough to hear sometimes because the tracks and so different from what is expected. And the production is nice most of the way through. And New Wave is something I play at least once a week. Its just a straight weirded-out joint, but that is why I like it. Besides Jimi Was a Rockstar, I can play everything else.
Idlewild gets hated on simply because it can't make Kast 4 straight classics. They kill it on Mighty O. And In Your Dreams. And everyone knows bout Hollywood Divorce. It is a nice change of pace album.
Yes, I've Been Busy
So once again, I've been away for a minute. This thing isn't going anywhere tho. Been doing my thing up here at Newhouse in Syracuse. Been chillin with people like Malik Rose, Donyell Marshall, Brevin Knight, etc. Naw just playing, but they've been here taking classes and shit.
Some random thoughts on the past couple days: the real one that's been weighing over my mind-- is Jerry Buss really going to risk giving away LO? I swear to God, this team won't win another chip next year w/out the Candy Man. He changes the whole dynamic of that team. 12 and 9 off the bench, yall know the rest. What they even doing messing around with this thing? 3 yrs and 27 million? And they took that away? C'mon Buss, you will make that money back.
Drop a 4 year deal for 36 mill and its a wrap. No one is swapping LA and Showtime for South Beach, which has DWade, who could be out, Beasley who will never be great, Pat Riley who is loosing it, and Jermaine O'Neal lost it 3 years ago.
STAY LAMAR!! stamp your place in Laker history.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
This Dude...
John Wall is going to be a monster. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love his game.
Some Brain Tidbits
Anyways last night was wild. I've never done less with more before. First we went to a school karoke thing...that was kind of weak. I didn't feel like dropping the $$$ needed to make it fun. So then we left, went back to the spot and I had to drop the gauntlet in a few ping pong games. You know how it is.
After that, we went to my boys house party. Once again, more liquor needed. Bounced from there to go downtown, made it dt at like 1 and didn't do much there besides watch people throw down and get arrested.
The walk back to the car took 45 minutes because we followed a drunk kid. Made it home and felt unsatisfied.
But, the one good thing from the night was I was able to check out the rumored Erin Andrew's naked tape. It is very cool.
Oh and here's a video used for laughing:
Saturday, July 18, 2009
I'm BAAAAAAACK
Sorry y'all for being gone so long. I went away for a week and then just started grad school at Syracuse.
Unfortunately, my new apartment didn't have internet/cable for 2 weeks so I was sort of cut off. School been working me out, so I didn't have time to check in with y'all. But now, it is back to business.
So what has the past 3 weeks been like? Well, I went to a lakehouse only to have the jetski break. That sucked...I had a steroid shot in my back for a herniated disk...that sucked. Saw Bruno...that really sucked (no pun intended)...moved into a new place, meeting new people and changing up my lifestyle. Say goodbye to the 6 XL shirts (sorry Fenlon), and size 40 jeans. Its a new day even though Imma still rock kicks. Peace and love.
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Mock Draft 2
We are 1 day away from perhaps the most exciting day of the year. This year should be even more interesting with so many teams searching for ways to move up and so many teams looking for ways to move out. Here's another attempt at how it will shape out:
1. LAC- Blake Griffin, PF
2. MEM- Hasheem Thabeet, C: If they keep the pick, the big man will be it. But, the TWolves (with their as-of-now 4 first rounders) and Celtics are trying to move up to get here. It is 50-50 that the Grizzlies keep this pick...Thabeet isn't in love with them.
3. OKC- James Harden, SG: For a while, it seemed Rubio would end up here, but GM Sam Presti doesn't want to anger Russell Westbrook. Apparently, this is the pick the Knicks are trying to get in order to draft Curry. It would probably take Wilson Chandler and a future first to get it done. James Harden would fit in nicely with how this team is shaping up.
4. SAC- Ricky Rubio, PG: Minnesota really wants Rubio and want to nab him at 2 if they can trade up. If they don't, he will fall to 4. The Kings aren't sold on him, but I doubt they pass up this talent for someone such as Tyreke Evans or Johnny Flynn and they don't need Curry.
5. MIN- Stephen Curry, SG: There is a strong chance this is someone else picking here. Possibly Memphis? Or NY? Either Minnesota will take Curry for themselves or they will be picking him for someone else; I doubt he drops past 5.
6. MIN- Tyreke Evans, SG: He is the best talent available at this spot. I don't think they will pass on him twice.
7. GS- Jordan Hill, PF: I don't see the Warriors taking another small guard or wing. They will go with the best big man available. Jordan Hill will take over for Brandon Wright, who is rumored to be on the block.
8. NY- Jrue Holiday, PG: Brandon Jennings is saying the Knicks won't pick him. But, he is also saying they will find a way to get Curry: he's their guy. I have a feeling the Knicks will pull the trigger to get Curry, who fits their system and adds another element of excitement for LeBron. So I don't think this will be them picking Holiday.
9. TOR- Johnny Flynn, PG: Everyone keeps putting DeRozan here, but sources say the Raptors really like Flynn and want a change of pace guy beside Jose Calderon. Flynn is considered the better prospect, so I don't think it will be a big surprise if he goes here.
10. MIL- Brandon Jennings, PG: He has been getting good reviews, the Bucks need a PG (Jeff Teague is high on their list, but they don't need to take him here). They will go with the best talent at a position of need.
11. NJ- Terrence Williams, SG: The Nets are going to steal Charlotte's guy.
12. CHA- Gerald Henderson, SG: Charlotte will go with the lesser of the two players who falls to them out of Williams and Henderson. DeRozan is a possibility, but given the Bobcats history of taking experience pros, it looks like they will pass.
13. IND- DeJaun Blair, PF: He fits a need and the concerns about his ACLs are starting to go away. Really, there is no one else for Indiana to take here
14. PHO- DeMar Derozan, SG: If he falls here, no way the Suns pass on a top-5 talent in this draft. He is insurance in case they attempt to trade Jrich and his huge contract this summer or next year. For a team that has gotten old quickly, this would be a great pick.
15. DET- Austin Daye, SF: The Pistons really like this kid and he is worth taking a risk on here.
16. CHI- James Johnson, PF: I keep hearing the Bulls are trying to move up and get that number 11 from New Jersey. If they stay put, expect them to go big and Johnson will be a solid pick for them. He has a lot of potential and gives them a strong presence to counter Thomas (who is on the block) and Noah. They may also reach for Mullens.
17. PHI- Ty Lawson, PG: This is another easy one. Philly will take either Lawson or Maynor here. Lawson projects as the better pro though and also loves the up-tempo style the Sixers are running.
18. MIN- B.J. Mullens, C: They aren't going to keep this pick because there are too many suitors willing to take a risk on the big man. Philly, Chicago and Detroit are all trying to get their hands on him. Perhaps a trade with Chicago for their pick (James Johnson) and a few other assets?
19. ATL- Earl Clark, PF: If Clark slides past Detroit at 15 then he may not get picked until here. Atlanta was hoping for a PG, but they got one in Jamal Crawford. So I see them going a different route; they have enough guards. Clark is very similar to some of their other forwards, but he is a big talent at this spot in the draft. Take the best player at this point, Atlanta.
20. UTA- Sam Young, SF: They are enamored with him, according to sources.
21. NO- Tyler Hansbrough, PF: They need help inside and Hansbrough can provide some toughness behind David West.
22. POR- Omri Casspi, SF: Portland moved up to steal this guy from the Kings. They don't need any other players, so they can stash him in Europe for another year or two. He will also be a trade asset.
23. SAC- Demarre Carroll, SF: Sacramento wants to get tougher and Carroll is one of the tougher, defensive-orientated players in the draft.
24. DAL- Jeff Teague, PG: Another Devin Harris-clone for Mark Cuban and co. They would be more than happy with this one.
25. OKC- Eric Maynor, PG: This would be a huge slide for Maynor. The Thunder are in a position to take the best talent available because they need depth at every spot. Maynor would be a nice change of pace behind Westbrook.
26. CHI- Nick Calathes, PG: The Bulls are trying to move up or find a way to get Mullens. Chances are they don't keep this pick. If they do, they will probably take another guard to add to their backcourt depth. And Calathes gives them the added incentive of letting him play overseas for a season or two. Chances of them keeping this one though are very slim.
27. MEM- Toney Douglas, PG:
28. MIN- Jonas Jerebko, SF: Minnesota will either give up this pick to move up or will take a guy who doesn't plan on playing this year. They are already very young and can't afford to carry so many rookies.
29. LAL- Victor Claver, SF: The Lakers definitely won't keep this pick, they will sell it or draft a Euro who they don't need to pay. All their efforts are on bringing back Ariza and Odom.
30. CLE- DeJaun Summers, SF: The Cavs are trying to move up (perhaps to get Earl Clark). I doubt they will keep this pick. Summers is a decent player, but he isn't going to be much help to a team that will do anything to make LeBron happy.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Bill Simmons Actual Writes A Decent Article?
Here's Simmons' recent article on the Lakers 09 chip and Kobe. Even though we all know him to be an unforgiveable Laker and Kobe hater, he actually comes through with a nice piece of writing. He still lashes out at times with his blind hate, overall it was a great read:
Kobe '09: Change we can believe in?
By Bill SimmonsPage 2
I had trouble stomaching the 2008-09 Lakers for the same reason I've never bought Tom and Katie or Hillary and Bill. It always felt like something of an arrangement to me. Let's try to pull this off. It will put us in a better place. We can do this. I can tell the difference between "These guys love each other" and "These guys put up with each other for a few months because of the carrot dangling at the end." At least I'd like to think I can.
Ultimately, does it matter? That's what I want to figure out. The 2009 NBA Finals are over and I have three lingering questions, none of which, thankfully, include the words "referee" or "official."
1. Did Kobe Bryant change as a player/person/leader/performer from 2008 to 2009, or did his circumstances change?
If Kobe DID change, I swear on the souls of my children, I would admit it. I would say, "Yes, I watched every minute of the past two postseasons, and my God, Kobe finally put everything together, learned how to be unselfish and what a glorious day it was." After all, we're all in this together: It's in our best interests for Kobe to push himself up a level, simply so we can say we were there to witness it. I am jealous of everyone who watched Russell and Wilt and Cousy in their primes. I wish I could have seen a young Doc flying around in half-filled ABA arenas. I wish I could have watched the 1969-70 Knicks in person. In Kobe's case, we already knew we were following one of the better basketball careers of all time. That fourth title propelled him into the top 10 and yanked the "Can't win without Shaq" monkey off his back; ultimately, the exact ranking doesn't matter. He's one of the best players ever. He has to be mentioned now.
Of course, it's much sexier to blurt out angles like "Kobe changed!" in the spoken form. Announcers and studio guys speak in sound bites. They have to be ready to say something interesting as soon as the host looks at them and says, "What do you think?" For instance, Jon Barry told us after Sunday night's game that Kobe is the closest thing to Michael Jordan that any of us will ever see.
Ever?
I haven't even turned 40 years old. I have half my life left, if not more. You're telling me I won't see another hyper-competitive, super-athletic 2-guard average 30-plus a game and win an NBA title? (Hell, I just saw it three years ago with Dwyane Wade -- a performance that, by the way, surpassed Kobe's effort this month.) I found the constant stream of Kobe-related hyperbole to be a little off-putting; it was like hearing a buddy self-consciously mention how cool his girlfriend was so many times that it made you wonder, "Wait, is something going on here? It's almost like he's trying to convince himself every time he brings it up."
For two solid months, my readers kept asking why the media played up tired Kobe-related storylines at the expense of anything else that might have been interesting. (By the Finals, even a two-minute "Check out Adam Morrison on the Lakers bench, what an insane fall for the No. 3 pick of the 2006 draft, this has to be bittersweet" discussion would have been better than hearing how NOBODY UNDERSTANDS HOW GREAT KOBE BRYANT IS for the 350th time.) The simple answer is that the networks gravitate toward angles they think casual viewers like my mom or your 82-year-old uncle want to hear. The complicated answer is that you can't explain all the reasons why the 2009 Lakers were better than the 2008 Lakers in one sentence. Fortunately, that's why I'm here.
They had the second-best player in the league (Kobe), the second-best center (Pau Gasol), a talented forward with a unique set of skills (Lamar Odom), a breakout swingman (Trevor Ariza), a terrific leader and character guy at point (Derek Fisher), and that's about it. They caught three breaks from February on -- Kevin Garnett's knee injury killing Boston's season, Cleveland stupidly opting not to move Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract for one more piece, and Yao Ming breaking his foot in Round 2 -- and cruised from there. You would not call them great, just very good. I would compare them to the 2003 Spurs, 2005 Spurs or 2006 Heat -- the cream of a flawed crop of contenders.
Did they deserve to win the title? Of course. But they didn't win because Kobe "really wanted this" and "trusted his teammates" and "finally figured it out" and all that revisionist crap. Check out the relevant per-game numbers from the postseason:
2008 Kobe (21 games): 30.1 pts, 5.7 reb, 5.6 ast, 3.3 TO, 22.0 FGA, 9.2 FTA, 47.9 FG%, 81 FT%, 30 3FG%, 41.1 MPG.
2009 Kobe (23 games): 30.2 pts, 5.3 reb, 5.5 ast, 2.6 TO, 23.0 FGA, 8.6 FTA, 45.7 FG%, 88 FT%, 35 3FG%, 40.9 MPG.
Hmmmmmm. Am I crazy ... or do those numbers look EXACTLY the same? He brought his turnovers down a little, did a little better from the charity stripe, and that's about it. Ironically, "Unselfish And Finally Getting It" Kobe averaged more shots in the 2009 playoffs than "Selfish And Doesn't Get It" Kobe did in 2008 AND made less of them.
But wait, you say. Kobe played so much better in the 2009 Finals than the 2008 Finals. Everyone kept saying it so it must be true! Actually, not really.
2008 Kobe (six games): 25.7 pts, 4.7 rebs, 5.0 ast, 3.8 TO, 21.8 FGA, 8.2 FTA, 40.5 FG%, 80 FT%, 32 3FG%, 42.8 MPG.
2009 Kobe: (five games): 32.4 pts, 5.6 reb, 7.4 ast, 3.2 TO, 27.0 FGA, 8.8 FTA, 43.0 FG%, 84 FT%, 36 3FG%, 43.8 MPG.
He averaged 6.7 more points and his assists jumped from 5.0 to 7.4. He also averaged 5.2 more shots against a team without a prototypical 2-guard to defend him. The Magic were forced to double him constantly and take their chances that Ariza, Odom and Fisher wouldn't kill them from deep. What happened? Those three guys made 21 of 45 3-pointers (44 percent). The 2008 Celtics defended him one-on-one, pushed Kobe toward their help defenders in the paint, closed out better on open shooters and even swallowed up Gasol to some degree. This time around, Kobe's teammates (and Orlando's defense) made his job easier. Last time? Not as easy.
The other key? Ariza. The '08 Lakers couldn't stretch the floor unless they (A) played Vlad Radmanovic (an unequivocal defensive liability), or (B) went small with Sasha Vujacic at the 2 and Kobe at the 3 (a problem against bigger 3s such as Paul Pierce). Ariza magically solved this issue by peaking at the perfect time, transforming into a first-class defensive stopper, making a staggering 47.4 percent of his 3-pointers (40-for-84 in the playoffs) and rising to the occasion when it mattered. He played the Horry/Posey/Bowen/Cooper supporting role to perfection. You cannot do better.
Thanks to Ariza, the '09 Lakers finally made sense: Their best five was Kobe, Gasol, Ariza, Odom and Fisher (well past his prime, but still occasionally effective). Not only did the '08 Lakers lack a "best five," they didn't catch any breaks. The '09 Lakers caught a few breaks. They stayed healthy when other teams didn't. Every time their opponents screwed up in crunch time and gave them a second life, they took advantage. They never collapsed like they did in Game 4 of the 2008 Finals. They deserved to win.
If you're playing the "Shut up, Kobe was better this spring!" card, your only real evidence is two signature Kick-Butt Kobe Finals Games (Games 1 and 5). But if you're selling the "Kobe finally gets it" angle, then why was he gunning for 40 points at the tail end of a Game 1 blowout when he had already taken 30-plus shots? In Game 2, why did he go one-on-four for the winning basket (and miss) and ignore three wide-open teammates? Why did everyone so willingly gloss over the fact that, from the second quarter of Game 3 through overtime of Game 4, he missed 31 of 46 shots and kept shooting, anyway? Or that, near the tail end of Game 5, Kobe was so desperate to drain the clinching dagger that he clanged two 27-footers and allowed Orlando to climb within 12? Or that he didn't have a single clutch moment in the Finals other than his sweet dish to Gasol during their frantic Game 4 comeback?
In my opinion, nothing fundamentally changed: Kobe still wants to dominate and he still wants to win, and sometimes, you can't do both. Before the 2004 playoffs, Phil Jackson described him like so: "Sometimes his needs to overwhelm the rest of the ballclub's necessity. ... As we get into the playoffs, that'll dissipate, because he knows that he's got to put his ego aside and conform to what we have to do if we're going to go anywhere in the playoffs. Any player that takes it on himself to do that [play for himself] knows that he's going against the basic principles of basketball. That's a selfish approach to the game. You know when you're breaking down the team or you're breaking down and doing things individualistic, you're going to have, you know, some unhappy teammates ... and he knows these things ... intuitively, I have to trust the fact that he's going to come back to that spot and know that the timing's right. The season's over, things have been accomplished, records have been stuck in the books, statistics are all jelled in, now let's go ahead and play basketball as we're supposed to play it."
Did Kobe do a better job of conforming this spring, or did the Lakers do a better job of surrounding him with efficient players who complemented him? Think about what he had in the 2004 Finals: Gary Payton sullenly standing in the corner, Karl Malone limping around, an out-of-shape Shaq who wasn't totally invested anymore, the immortal Devean George and Slava Medvedenko, a washed-up Rick Fox ... I mean, come on. Those guys battled constantly, with the battles centering around the same thing: Kobe wanted to spread his wings, everyone else wanted him to conform. They weren't invested in his individual success. They were threatened by it.
Not the 2009 Lakers. Take Gasol, who shot 62 percent from the field in the last two rounds. You know how many shots he attempted in those 11 games? 120. You know how many big guys would have been happy with a situation in which their coach said, "I know you score six out of every 10 times we get you the ball, but you're going to have to live with 11 shots a game because we can't win a title unless Kobe's happy?" Not many. Shaq didn't like the arrangement and got shipped out of town. Gasol came from NBA Hell (Memphis), and he was willing to sacrifice to make the Lakers better. He's a big reason they won. He crashed the boards, killed himself on defense and reinvented himself as a complementary sidekick of the highest order.
Did you hear about Gasol's sacrifice during the playoffs? Not really. Just like you didn't hear about Odom's willingness to give up minutes and touches during a contract year (a rarity in the NBA these days), or Ariza's red-hot shooting and the irony of Orlando giving him away last season. We always heard about Kobe sacrificing, but really, the key to the 2009 title was that he finally found three talented sidekicks willing to sacrifice for him. Big difference.
2. Did the '09 Lakers really like each other, or was it like a Bill-Hillary thing?
I don't know. I couldn't tell. The media tried to convince us that, yes, Kobe and his teammates really did love each other. We witnessed everything short of Kobe taping an "Oprah" show so he could jump up and down on her sofa. (Wait, I guess that was the premise behind "Kobe Doin' Work." Scratch that thought.) As I watched the Lakers celebrating Sunday, I thought it looked like a bunch of actors celebrating the game-winning scene in a sports movie. Maybe it was because the Penguins seemed so genuinely euphoric in Detroit on Friday night; 48 hours later, any team that didn't match that same passion was going to seem suspect. I just know the Kobe-Jackson hug was so contrived I kept waiting for the director to come in and say, "Cut, cut ... guys, we're gonna have to do this again."
Kobe's assist totals did spike in 2009, making the Lakers a more-rounded offense.
Here's my theory: I believe the other Lakers made an arrangement of sorts -- no different than the Clintons probably did back in the day -- even if they never came out and admitted it to themselves. This might be something of a flawed relationship, but we give each other the best possible chance to win. Let's make this work and keep our eyes on the prize. We don't have to be in love, but we can still love and respect one another. Maybe that's why I kept expecting the loudspeakers to play Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" as the Lakers were celebrating Sunday.
Again, the lightning rod here is Kobe. If you want to play the "We'll Never See Anyone Like Him Again" card, you're probably right ... but not for the reasons you might think. He grew up atypically from most NBA stars, the only male child of a successful professional player, someone who never had to worry about money and even spent seven formative years abroad. The Lakers acquired him when he was 17. He started an All-Star Game when he was 19. He signed a $71 million contract when he was 20. He married when he was 22. He won three titles by the age of 23. He became a father at 24. He also became the most polarizing figure in sports at 24, thanks to whatever happened in Eagle, Colo. The next four years were awkward as hell -- the league's most gifted player struggling on a series of forgettable teams, the most-discussed athlete in any sport, someone who learned to feed off constant negativity much like Barry Bonds did -- before fate intervened in October 2007, when a trade to Chicago fell through and Gasol/Ariza were gift-wrapped for Los Angeles a few months later. The rest is history.
Watching from a distance, what stood out (and still does) was how alone Kobe seemed during that stretch. Unlike Jordan, Shaq, Manning or Tiger, we never saw his parents in the stands. Unlike LeBron or Brady, we never heard about his close-knit group of buddies who had his back and attended every game. Unlike Duncan, Nash, Barkley, Favre or Magic, we never felt like his teammates doubled as his buddies. Unlike Bird, Kareem or Jordan, there wasn't a mystique that went with him, an undeniable force of personality that set him apart.
Who did Kobe have? His wife, his daughters and his agent. That's it. During Sunday night's celebration, when Kobe's family materialized immediately -- almost on cue -- the cynical side of me wanted to throw up, but the rational side was thinking, "Of course, they're here. He doesn't have anyone else." I wouldn't call the situation weird or anything, just atypical for a league in which stars normally surround themselves with longtime friends who knew them before they were famous. And it fits in with the rest of the Kobe package: He's an unconventional superstar in a conventional league. Almost like a successful child actor who beat the odds and turned out relatively normal.
Two months ago, I wrote that Kobe made a mistake playing in the 2008 Olympics because his biggest threats (LeBron, Paul, etc.) were given a glimpse into what made him him -- how hard he worked, how committed he was, how he was consumed by basketball -- and argued that he inadvertently gave away a competitive advantage. When I mentioned this theory to colleague and longtime Kobe expert J.A. Adande during a recent podcast, Adande respectfully disagreed, saying Kobe NEEDED that experience. He needed to fit in with that crew. He needed to be accepted as one of the guys. He craved that social respect from his peers. He wanted to crack jokes, bust chops and everything else. He would absolutely do it again, Adande maintained.
Listening to the argument, I joked Kobe sounded like one of those high school seniors who killed herself finishing with a 4.0, running the newspaper and the yearbook and playing three sports, and only realizing right at the end that she had never bothered to develop any lasting relationships. Like Ione Skye in "Say Anything," actually. But Adande was right. Kobe was making up for lost time. Most superstars prove themselves statistically on inferior teams, work up a healthy hunger for winning and getting over the hump, then make all the necessary sacrifices to make that happen. Kobe went in reverse -- he enjoyed team success early without ever establishing his statistical chops, leading to some serial ball-hogging, four scoring titles and even an 81-point game. After that, maybe he realized there was a better way and awkwardly reinvented himself from there. A little like watching A-Rod, actually -- another "child athlete star" -- only Kobe learned to play the part and A-Rod still can't figure it out.
That brings us back to Sunday. There was a certain detachment compared to other moments we witnessed over the years: the Celtics breaking the Sweaty Awkward Hug record as the '86 Finals wound down; Magic's Lakers flipping out after vanquishing the '87 Celtics; Isiah's teammates hoisting him in the air after the 1990 Finals; the prolonged, "I couldn't have done this without you" hug between Jordan and Pippen after a grueling 1998 Finals; Duncan beaming as he watched Tony Parker accept the 2007 Finals MVP; even the crazed display of emotion from the Celtics last June. We can tell when a team connects as a whole. We can. I wasn't quite there with Kobe and the 2009 Lakers, for the same reason that those overachieving high school girls can't make up for lost time just by hitting a few parties after final exams. Nice effort, I understand why you did it ... but no. You can't change who you are.
One last thought: Will Kobe's teammates make the same sacrifices next season that they did this season? Pat Riley argued in his book "Showtime" that a defending champion's biggest threat is the "Disease of More" -- players wanting more shots, more money, more minutes, more everything. He also argued younger teams are more likely to fall prey to this disease. The 2008-09 Lakers happen to be a fairly young group of guys. Will Kobe's supporting cast remain as unselfish next season? I am dubious. Arrangements only last so long.
3. Why was the media so desperate to convince us Kobe HAD changed, that his quest to win a fourth title was a storyline that dwarfed all others, that we needed to understand this was a GREAT PLAYER WE ARE WATCHING, that he really wants this, that he's like a coach out there ... I mean, what was the motivation here?
I wish I knew. It was perplexing. In my opinion, the following storylines were more interesting ...
Storyline A: I have written about the "Nobody Believes In Us!" phenomenon many times, but the 2009 Lakers were the first "Nobody Believed In Me!" team. As Washington Post columnist Mike Wise pointed out, the key Lakers were alternately dismissed, dumped by a previous team, pigeonholed as a certain type of player, overlooked for whatever reason or thought to be washed up: Kobe, Odom, Gasol, Ariza, Bynum, Fisher, even Jackson. All of them had something to prove -- not as teammates, but as individuals. Now that's a unique angle. I wish I had thought of it first.
Storyline B: OK, this has nothing to do with anything ... but I can't stop thinking about Joey Buss. Granted, there's a chance I would have been just as tongue-tied on national TV at age 19. But who thought it was a good idea to have him speak extemporaneously in front of a worldwide audience? How did he become the "alternate governor of the Lakers," and what does that mean? Are people in Southern California frightened that two of their governors are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joey Buss? Did they throw him out there to answer the question, "What would have happened if Fredo had gotten control of the Corleone family?" Did they bring him out to make the Maloofs feel better about themselves as overmatched legacy kids? Has he ever been discreetly stared at by a bunch of country club workers and had one of them say, "Fifty bucks says the Buss kid picks his nose." Do I have to retire the Unintentional Comedy Scale now?
Where was Jerry Buss? Where was Jeanie Buss? How did this happen? How can I get more Joey Buss in my life? And why didn't I know about him before Sunday night? More importantly, when are they putting the Buss boys in charge of the Lakers????? I vote for right now. Like, today. This moment. Please. I am begging you. This would be like a cross between the Hank Steinbrenner Era and "Tommy Boy." I never thought there would be a silver lining with a Lakers title, but dammit, there was.
Storyline C: The 2009 Lakers were built the same way someone goes on a three-hour craps run. In other words, don't even think about duplicating it. Seven solid "What if that coin flip had turned up tails instead of heads?" moments shaped the team. Namely, what if Jackson hadn't developed a relationship with Jeanie Buss? (No way he comes back to deal with Kobe again otherwise.) What if Anthony Carter's agent hadn't forgotten to send in his contract in time during the summer of 2003, creating enough cap space for Miami to sign Odom as a free agent, then giving Miami enough pieces to trade for Shaq a year later? What if the Lakers had traded Odom like they almost did about 35,000 times? What if Kobe hadn't blocked the Chicago trade -- and he did -- right before the 2007-08 season because the Bulls were giving up too much? What if Chris Wallace hadn't given them Gasol for 30 cents on the dollar? What if Otis Smith hadn't done the same in giving away Ariza? And what if Fisher's daughter hadn't fallen ill, forcing an unprecedented situation in which Utah released him from his deal so he could play for the Lakers?
(That's seven "what ifs." Seven. Amazing. The Chicago part remains the most incredible. You forget how close that was; I don't think I saw it explored once during the Finals.)
Storyline D: Kobe and Phil. I know, it has been done. Many times. But the story had so many layers that I still don't feel as if we nailed all of them. My favorite image of the 2009 Finals was Phil's face after Kobe went one-on-four at the end of Game 2, something I jokingly called The "Should I point out to him that MJ would have absolutely passed there?" Face in my column.
You know what his reaction reminded me of? Being married. Spend enough time with a person and you accept their strengths and weaknesses for what they are. For instance, I am messy. I leave clothes on the floor. I will make coffee in the morning, mistakenly leave a little coffee on the counter and not clean it up. I'm just selfishly absentminded about little things like that. My wife stopped complaining about it around three years ago. When I do those things now, she just makes the Phil Jackson Face. Crap. I'm stuck with him. It's not even worth getting into it. The plusses outweigh the minuses. Let's move forward. Jackson never made that face with his first wife (Jordan); with his second wife (Kobe), he makes it every so often. You could say they're an imperfect match, and if you want to keep the domestic analogy going, they even legally separated in 2004 after a couple of unhappy years. Now they might go on like this indefinitely.
It's just one more reason why Phil Jackson is the greatest basketball coach ever. He sold the greatest player ever on the benefits of being a good teammate, which wasn't an easy task because Jordan was a demanding, insensitive jerk at the time. Jackson nearly brought the Bulls to the '94 Finals without the greatest player ever, which remains the single most incredible coaching job of my lifetime. He won 72 games. He won 10 titles. Last but not least, he harnessed the talents of the single most difficult superstar not named "Wilt" the NBA has ever seen. He did this gradually, over the span of a solid decade, and he even had to walk away once for effect. You can't credit him for "changing" Kobe, just for nudging him in the right directions and helping him understand the balance between dominating and winning. What Kobe did with that understanding, ultimately, was up to him.
Anyway, I could have listened to people explain the Phil-Kobe relationship all day. Frankly, I still don't understand it myself. But if a coach spends enough time with a player, they really do start to feel like a married couple. Russell and Auerbach were like the Cleavers. Havlicek and Heinsohn were the Bunkers. Magic and Riley were the Huxtables. Jordan and Jackson were the Simpsons. Duncan and Popovich were the Barones. Phil and Kobe? They were definitely the Sopranos. And I don't need to tell you who was Tony.
If you want to remember anything about Kobe '09, remember his remarkable ability to bring it every night.
Storyline E: I'm all for appreciating Kobe's greatness; it's just that my colleagues sold the wrong angle. Since he squashed the Chicago deal, Kobe has won MVP, All-Star MVP and Finals MVP awards; he played in two straight Finals and won a title; he starred on an Olympic gold medal team, took over as its alpha dog down the stretch and handled business in what was shaping up to be Spain's version of the 1980 USA-USSR hockey game; and most amazingly, he played in the maximum 164 regular-season games and 44 playoff games without getting a summer break because of the Olympics. And he did it despite turning 30 in August 2008 and passing the usually dangerous 1,000-game mark last season.
You know what? We just witnessed one of the great two-year stretches in the history of professional basketball if the determining factors were durability, consistency, individual success, team success, statistical excellence and degree of difficulty. Kobe's 2007-2009 stretch ranks alongside these post-shot-clock efforts (in no particular order): Bill Russell (1961-63), Jerry West (1964-66), Wilt Chamberlain (1966-68), Bill Russell (1967-69), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1970-72), Larry Bird (1985-87), Magic Johnson (1986-88), Michael Jordan (1990-92), Hakeem Olajuwon (1993-95), Michael Jordan (1996-98) and Tim Duncan (2001-03). Not a fraud on the list.
I would rather see Kobe linked with everyone above and not just Jordan, if only because the MJ comparisons are tiresome. We're never seeing another Jordan, just like we're never seeing another Brando or Lennon. It's just not happening. They might compare statistically and stylistically, but Jordan could command a room of 10 people or 20,000 and get the exact same reaction: Every set of eyes trained on him for as long as he was there. His personality, his charisma, his aura, his passion ... indescribable. Like nothing I have ever seen. Nobody remembers this now because he hasn't played in awhile, but Jordan was always the coolest guy in the room. Without fail. He was like Doctor J. crossed with Sinatra. Remember those dopey ads when somebody said, "My broker is E.F. Hutton," and everyone else in the room froze? That was what happened to an arena when Jordan walked in. You would freeze, and you would hear screams, and then it would be a sea of lightbulbs. And everyone was saying the same thing, "I get to say I watched Michael Jordan."
Kobe always wanted people to feel that way about him. He shaved his head, made music videos, jumped cars for viral videos, changed his number, stole MJ's fist pump, created that creepy face where he stuck his bottom two teeth out ... none of it worked. He will never command a room like Jordan did. Sorry. But he does share one crucial trait with Jordan: He's a professional of the highest order. He shows up every single night. It's just ingrained in him. Since they acquired Gasol 17 months ago, the Lakers have not lost three games in a row. Why? Because of Kobe. He will always try hard. Always. It's the best thing about him. And really, that's what made Kobe's performance special this spring: The degree of difficulty for someone maintaining that intensity for 20 months -- without missing a single game or getting a summer break -- is absolutely off the charts. It's remarkable.
At this specific point in his career, Kobe Bryant shouldn't have been able to play as consistently well as he did. He shouldn't have been able to survive overtime periods in Game 2 (his 205th straight game in 20 months) and Game 4 (No. 207) and thrived in Game 5 like he was playing Memphis in mid-January. Basketball might be a team sport, but in this specific case, an individual's will stood out and made the accomplishment of the group seem ancillary.
Look, I don't know how much of Kobe's personality is contrived. I don't know if this is the same selfish guy we watched five years ago, only with a freshly polished veneer that hides every demon lurking inside. I don't know if he learned how to play the part of a leader, almost like a trained actor, to throw everyone off his selfish scent. I don't know if he's sitting there tonight thinking, "I won my fourth title!" instead of, "We won the title!" Odds are, we will never figure these things out.
But I do know this: What Kobe Bryant accomplished over the past 20 months ranks up there with anything that ever happened in the National Basketball Association. He walks among the NBA gods now. Like it or not.
Kobe '09: Change we can believe in?
By Bill SimmonsPage 2
I had trouble stomaching the 2008-09 Lakers for the same reason I've never bought Tom and Katie or Hillary and Bill. It always felt like something of an arrangement to me. Let's try to pull this off. It will put us in a better place. We can do this. I can tell the difference between "These guys love each other" and "These guys put up with each other for a few months because of the carrot dangling at the end." At least I'd like to think I can.
Ultimately, does it matter? That's what I want to figure out. The 2009 NBA Finals are over and I have three lingering questions, none of which, thankfully, include the words "referee" or "official."
1. Did Kobe Bryant change as a player/person/leader/performer from 2008 to 2009, or did his circumstances change?
If Kobe DID change, I swear on the souls of my children, I would admit it. I would say, "Yes, I watched every minute of the past two postseasons, and my God, Kobe finally put everything together, learned how to be unselfish and what a glorious day it was." After all, we're all in this together: It's in our best interests for Kobe to push himself up a level, simply so we can say we were there to witness it. I am jealous of everyone who watched Russell and Wilt and Cousy in their primes. I wish I could have seen a young Doc flying around in half-filled ABA arenas. I wish I could have watched the 1969-70 Knicks in person. In Kobe's case, we already knew we were following one of the better basketball careers of all time. That fourth title propelled him into the top 10 and yanked the "Can't win without Shaq" monkey off his back; ultimately, the exact ranking doesn't matter. He's one of the best players ever. He has to be mentioned now.
Of course, it's much sexier to blurt out angles like "Kobe changed!" in the spoken form. Announcers and studio guys speak in sound bites. They have to be ready to say something interesting as soon as the host looks at them and says, "What do you think?" For instance, Jon Barry told us after Sunday night's game that Kobe is the closest thing to Michael Jordan that any of us will ever see.
Ever?
I haven't even turned 40 years old. I have half my life left, if not more. You're telling me I won't see another hyper-competitive, super-athletic 2-guard average 30-plus a game and win an NBA title? (Hell, I just saw it three years ago with Dwyane Wade -- a performance that, by the way, surpassed Kobe's effort this month.) I found the constant stream of Kobe-related hyperbole to be a little off-putting; it was like hearing a buddy self-consciously mention how cool his girlfriend was so many times that it made you wonder, "Wait, is something going on here? It's almost like he's trying to convince himself every time he brings it up."
For two solid months, my readers kept asking why the media played up tired Kobe-related storylines at the expense of anything else that might have been interesting. (By the Finals, even a two-minute "Check out Adam Morrison on the Lakers bench, what an insane fall for the No. 3 pick of the 2006 draft, this has to be bittersweet" discussion would have been better than hearing how NOBODY UNDERSTANDS HOW GREAT KOBE BRYANT IS for the 350th time.) The simple answer is that the networks gravitate toward angles they think casual viewers like my mom or your 82-year-old uncle want to hear. The complicated answer is that you can't explain all the reasons why the 2009 Lakers were better than the 2008 Lakers in one sentence. Fortunately, that's why I'm here.
They had the second-best player in the league (Kobe), the second-best center (Pau Gasol), a talented forward with a unique set of skills (Lamar Odom), a breakout swingman (Trevor Ariza), a terrific leader and character guy at point (Derek Fisher), and that's about it. They caught three breaks from February on -- Kevin Garnett's knee injury killing Boston's season, Cleveland stupidly opting not to move Wally Szczerbiak's expiring contract for one more piece, and Yao Ming breaking his foot in Round 2 -- and cruised from there. You would not call them great, just very good. I would compare them to the 2003 Spurs, 2005 Spurs or 2006 Heat -- the cream of a flawed crop of contenders.
Did they deserve to win the title? Of course. But they didn't win because Kobe "really wanted this" and "trusted his teammates" and "finally figured it out" and all that revisionist crap. Check out the relevant per-game numbers from the postseason:
2008 Kobe (21 games): 30.1 pts, 5.7 reb, 5.6 ast, 3.3 TO, 22.0 FGA, 9.2 FTA, 47.9 FG%, 81 FT%, 30 3FG%, 41.1 MPG.
2009 Kobe (23 games): 30.2 pts, 5.3 reb, 5.5 ast, 2.6 TO, 23.0 FGA, 8.6 FTA, 45.7 FG%, 88 FT%, 35 3FG%, 40.9 MPG.
Hmmmmmm. Am I crazy ... or do those numbers look EXACTLY the same? He brought his turnovers down a little, did a little better from the charity stripe, and that's about it. Ironically, "Unselfish And Finally Getting It" Kobe averaged more shots in the 2009 playoffs than "Selfish And Doesn't Get It" Kobe did in 2008 AND made less of them.
But wait, you say. Kobe played so much better in the 2009 Finals than the 2008 Finals. Everyone kept saying it so it must be true! Actually, not really.
2008 Kobe (six games): 25.7 pts, 4.7 rebs, 5.0 ast, 3.8 TO, 21.8 FGA, 8.2 FTA, 40.5 FG%, 80 FT%, 32 3FG%, 42.8 MPG.
2009 Kobe: (five games): 32.4 pts, 5.6 reb, 7.4 ast, 3.2 TO, 27.0 FGA, 8.8 FTA, 43.0 FG%, 84 FT%, 36 3FG%, 43.8 MPG.
He averaged 6.7 more points and his assists jumped from 5.0 to 7.4. He also averaged 5.2 more shots against a team without a prototypical 2-guard to defend him. The Magic were forced to double him constantly and take their chances that Ariza, Odom and Fisher wouldn't kill them from deep. What happened? Those three guys made 21 of 45 3-pointers (44 percent). The 2008 Celtics defended him one-on-one, pushed Kobe toward their help defenders in the paint, closed out better on open shooters and even swallowed up Gasol to some degree. This time around, Kobe's teammates (and Orlando's defense) made his job easier. Last time? Not as easy.
The other key? Ariza. The '08 Lakers couldn't stretch the floor unless they (A) played Vlad Radmanovic (an unequivocal defensive liability), or (B) went small with Sasha Vujacic at the 2 and Kobe at the 3 (a problem against bigger 3s such as Paul Pierce). Ariza magically solved this issue by peaking at the perfect time, transforming into a first-class defensive stopper, making a staggering 47.4 percent of his 3-pointers (40-for-84 in the playoffs) and rising to the occasion when it mattered. He played the Horry/Posey/Bowen/Cooper supporting role to perfection. You cannot do better.
Thanks to Ariza, the '09 Lakers finally made sense: Their best five was Kobe, Gasol, Ariza, Odom and Fisher (well past his prime, but still occasionally effective). Not only did the '08 Lakers lack a "best five," they didn't catch any breaks. The '09 Lakers caught a few breaks. They stayed healthy when other teams didn't. Every time their opponents screwed up in crunch time and gave them a second life, they took advantage. They never collapsed like they did in Game 4 of the 2008 Finals. They deserved to win.
If you're playing the "Shut up, Kobe was better this spring!" card, your only real evidence is two signature Kick-Butt Kobe Finals Games (Games 1 and 5). But if you're selling the "Kobe finally gets it" angle, then why was he gunning for 40 points at the tail end of a Game 1 blowout when he had already taken 30-plus shots? In Game 2, why did he go one-on-four for the winning basket (and miss) and ignore three wide-open teammates? Why did everyone so willingly gloss over the fact that, from the second quarter of Game 3 through overtime of Game 4, he missed 31 of 46 shots and kept shooting, anyway? Or that, near the tail end of Game 5, Kobe was so desperate to drain the clinching dagger that he clanged two 27-footers and allowed Orlando to climb within 12? Or that he didn't have a single clutch moment in the Finals other than his sweet dish to Gasol during their frantic Game 4 comeback?
In my opinion, nothing fundamentally changed: Kobe still wants to dominate and he still wants to win, and sometimes, you can't do both. Before the 2004 playoffs, Phil Jackson described him like so: "Sometimes his needs to overwhelm the rest of the ballclub's necessity. ... As we get into the playoffs, that'll dissipate, because he knows that he's got to put his ego aside and conform to what we have to do if we're going to go anywhere in the playoffs. Any player that takes it on himself to do that [play for himself] knows that he's going against the basic principles of basketball. That's a selfish approach to the game. You know when you're breaking down the team or you're breaking down and doing things individualistic, you're going to have, you know, some unhappy teammates ... and he knows these things ... intuitively, I have to trust the fact that he's going to come back to that spot and know that the timing's right. The season's over, things have been accomplished, records have been stuck in the books, statistics are all jelled in, now let's go ahead and play basketball as we're supposed to play it."
Did Kobe do a better job of conforming this spring, or did the Lakers do a better job of surrounding him with efficient players who complemented him? Think about what he had in the 2004 Finals: Gary Payton sullenly standing in the corner, Karl Malone limping around, an out-of-shape Shaq who wasn't totally invested anymore, the immortal Devean George and Slava Medvedenko, a washed-up Rick Fox ... I mean, come on. Those guys battled constantly, with the battles centering around the same thing: Kobe wanted to spread his wings, everyone else wanted him to conform. They weren't invested in his individual success. They were threatened by it.
Not the 2009 Lakers. Take Gasol, who shot 62 percent from the field in the last two rounds. You know how many shots he attempted in those 11 games? 120. You know how many big guys would have been happy with a situation in which their coach said, "I know you score six out of every 10 times we get you the ball, but you're going to have to live with 11 shots a game because we can't win a title unless Kobe's happy?" Not many. Shaq didn't like the arrangement and got shipped out of town. Gasol came from NBA Hell (Memphis), and he was willing to sacrifice to make the Lakers better. He's a big reason they won. He crashed the boards, killed himself on defense and reinvented himself as a complementary sidekick of the highest order.
Did you hear about Gasol's sacrifice during the playoffs? Not really. Just like you didn't hear about Odom's willingness to give up minutes and touches during a contract year (a rarity in the NBA these days), or Ariza's red-hot shooting and the irony of Orlando giving him away last season. We always heard about Kobe sacrificing, but really, the key to the 2009 title was that he finally found three talented sidekicks willing to sacrifice for him. Big difference.
2. Did the '09 Lakers really like each other, or was it like a Bill-Hillary thing?
I don't know. I couldn't tell. The media tried to convince us that, yes, Kobe and his teammates really did love each other. We witnessed everything short of Kobe taping an "Oprah" show so he could jump up and down on her sofa. (Wait, I guess that was the premise behind "Kobe Doin' Work." Scratch that thought.) As I watched the Lakers celebrating Sunday, I thought it looked like a bunch of actors celebrating the game-winning scene in a sports movie. Maybe it was because the Penguins seemed so genuinely euphoric in Detroit on Friday night; 48 hours later, any team that didn't match that same passion was going to seem suspect. I just know the Kobe-Jackson hug was so contrived I kept waiting for the director to come in and say, "Cut, cut ... guys, we're gonna have to do this again."
Kobe's assist totals did spike in 2009, making the Lakers a more-rounded offense.
Here's my theory: I believe the other Lakers made an arrangement of sorts -- no different than the Clintons probably did back in the day -- even if they never came out and admitted it to themselves. This might be something of a flawed relationship, but we give each other the best possible chance to win. Let's make this work and keep our eyes on the prize. We don't have to be in love, but we can still love and respect one another. Maybe that's why I kept expecting the loudspeakers to play Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" as the Lakers were celebrating Sunday.
Again, the lightning rod here is Kobe. If you want to play the "We'll Never See Anyone Like Him Again" card, you're probably right ... but not for the reasons you might think. He grew up atypically from most NBA stars, the only male child of a successful professional player, someone who never had to worry about money and even spent seven formative years abroad. The Lakers acquired him when he was 17. He started an All-Star Game when he was 19. He signed a $71 million contract when he was 20. He married when he was 22. He won three titles by the age of 23. He became a father at 24. He also became the most polarizing figure in sports at 24, thanks to whatever happened in Eagle, Colo. The next four years were awkward as hell -- the league's most gifted player struggling on a series of forgettable teams, the most-discussed athlete in any sport, someone who learned to feed off constant negativity much like Barry Bonds did -- before fate intervened in October 2007, when a trade to Chicago fell through and Gasol/Ariza were gift-wrapped for Los Angeles a few months later. The rest is history.
Watching from a distance, what stood out (and still does) was how alone Kobe seemed during that stretch. Unlike Jordan, Shaq, Manning or Tiger, we never saw his parents in the stands. Unlike LeBron or Brady, we never heard about his close-knit group of buddies who had his back and attended every game. Unlike Duncan, Nash, Barkley, Favre or Magic, we never felt like his teammates doubled as his buddies. Unlike Bird, Kareem or Jordan, there wasn't a mystique that went with him, an undeniable force of personality that set him apart.
Who did Kobe have? His wife, his daughters and his agent. That's it. During Sunday night's celebration, when Kobe's family materialized immediately -- almost on cue -- the cynical side of me wanted to throw up, but the rational side was thinking, "Of course, they're here. He doesn't have anyone else." I wouldn't call the situation weird or anything, just atypical for a league in which stars normally surround themselves with longtime friends who knew them before they were famous. And it fits in with the rest of the Kobe package: He's an unconventional superstar in a conventional league. Almost like a successful child actor who beat the odds and turned out relatively normal.
Two months ago, I wrote that Kobe made a mistake playing in the 2008 Olympics because his biggest threats (LeBron, Paul, etc.) were given a glimpse into what made him him -- how hard he worked, how committed he was, how he was consumed by basketball -- and argued that he inadvertently gave away a competitive advantage. When I mentioned this theory to colleague and longtime Kobe expert J.A. Adande during a recent podcast, Adande respectfully disagreed, saying Kobe NEEDED that experience. He needed to fit in with that crew. He needed to be accepted as one of the guys. He craved that social respect from his peers. He wanted to crack jokes, bust chops and everything else. He would absolutely do it again, Adande maintained.
Listening to the argument, I joked Kobe sounded like one of those high school seniors who killed herself finishing with a 4.0, running the newspaper and the yearbook and playing three sports, and only realizing right at the end that she had never bothered to develop any lasting relationships. Like Ione Skye in "Say Anything," actually. But Adande was right. Kobe was making up for lost time. Most superstars prove themselves statistically on inferior teams, work up a healthy hunger for winning and getting over the hump, then make all the necessary sacrifices to make that happen. Kobe went in reverse -- he enjoyed team success early without ever establishing his statistical chops, leading to some serial ball-hogging, four scoring titles and even an 81-point game. After that, maybe he realized there was a better way and awkwardly reinvented himself from there. A little like watching A-Rod, actually -- another "child athlete star" -- only Kobe learned to play the part and A-Rod still can't figure it out.
That brings us back to Sunday. There was a certain detachment compared to other moments we witnessed over the years: the Celtics breaking the Sweaty Awkward Hug record as the '86 Finals wound down; Magic's Lakers flipping out after vanquishing the '87 Celtics; Isiah's teammates hoisting him in the air after the 1990 Finals; the prolonged, "I couldn't have done this without you" hug between Jordan and Pippen after a grueling 1998 Finals; Duncan beaming as he watched Tony Parker accept the 2007 Finals MVP; even the crazed display of emotion from the Celtics last June. We can tell when a team connects as a whole. We can. I wasn't quite there with Kobe and the 2009 Lakers, for the same reason that those overachieving high school girls can't make up for lost time just by hitting a few parties after final exams. Nice effort, I understand why you did it ... but no. You can't change who you are.
One last thought: Will Kobe's teammates make the same sacrifices next season that they did this season? Pat Riley argued in his book "Showtime" that a defending champion's biggest threat is the "Disease of More" -- players wanting more shots, more money, more minutes, more everything. He also argued younger teams are more likely to fall prey to this disease. The 2008-09 Lakers happen to be a fairly young group of guys. Will Kobe's supporting cast remain as unselfish next season? I am dubious. Arrangements only last so long.
3. Why was the media so desperate to convince us Kobe HAD changed, that his quest to win a fourth title was a storyline that dwarfed all others, that we needed to understand this was a GREAT PLAYER WE ARE WATCHING, that he really wants this, that he's like a coach out there ... I mean, what was the motivation here?
I wish I knew. It was perplexing. In my opinion, the following storylines were more interesting ...
Storyline A: I have written about the "Nobody Believes In Us!" phenomenon many times, but the 2009 Lakers were the first "Nobody Believed In Me!" team. As Washington Post columnist Mike Wise pointed out, the key Lakers were alternately dismissed, dumped by a previous team, pigeonholed as a certain type of player, overlooked for whatever reason or thought to be washed up: Kobe, Odom, Gasol, Ariza, Bynum, Fisher, even Jackson. All of them had something to prove -- not as teammates, but as individuals. Now that's a unique angle. I wish I had thought of it first.
Storyline B: OK, this has nothing to do with anything ... but I can't stop thinking about Joey Buss. Granted, there's a chance I would have been just as tongue-tied on national TV at age 19. But who thought it was a good idea to have him speak extemporaneously in front of a worldwide audience? How did he become the "alternate governor of the Lakers," and what does that mean? Are people in Southern California frightened that two of their governors are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Joey Buss? Did they throw him out there to answer the question, "What would have happened if Fredo had gotten control of the Corleone family?" Did they bring him out to make the Maloofs feel better about themselves as overmatched legacy kids? Has he ever been discreetly stared at by a bunch of country club workers and had one of them say, "Fifty bucks says the Buss kid picks his nose." Do I have to retire the Unintentional Comedy Scale now?
Where was Jerry Buss? Where was Jeanie Buss? How did this happen? How can I get more Joey Buss in my life? And why didn't I know about him before Sunday night? More importantly, when are they putting the Buss boys in charge of the Lakers????? I vote for right now. Like, today. This moment. Please. I am begging you. This would be like a cross between the Hank Steinbrenner Era and "Tommy Boy." I never thought there would be a silver lining with a Lakers title, but dammit, there was.
Storyline C: The 2009 Lakers were built the same way someone goes on a three-hour craps run. In other words, don't even think about duplicating it. Seven solid "What if that coin flip had turned up tails instead of heads?" moments shaped the team. Namely, what if Jackson hadn't developed a relationship with Jeanie Buss? (No way he comes back to deal with Kobe again otherwise.) What if Anthony Carter's agent hadn't forgotten to send in his contract in time during the summer of 2003, creating enough cap space for Miami to sign Odom as a free agent, then giving Miami enough pieces to trade for Shaq a year later? What if the Lakers had traded Odom like they almost did about 35,000 times? What if Kobe hadn't blocked the Chicago trade -- and he did -- right before the 2007-08 season because the Bulls were giving up too much? What if Chris Wallace hadn't given them Gasol for 30 cents on the dollar? What if Otis Smith hadn't done the same in giving away Ariza? And what if Fisher's daughter hadn't fallen ill, forcing an unprecedented situation in which Utah released him from his deal so he could play for the Lakers?
(That's seven "what ifs." Seven. Amazing. The Chicago part remains the most incredible. You forget how close that was; I don't think I saw it explored once during the Finals.)
Storyline D: Kobe and Phil. I know, it has been done. Many times. But the story had so many layers that I still don't feel as if we nailed all of them. My favorite image of the 2009 Finals was Phil's face after Kobe went one-on-four at the end of Game 2, something I jokingly called The "Should I point out to him that MJ would have absolutely passed there?" Face in my column.
You know what his reaction reminded me of? Being married. Spend enough time with a person and you accept their strengths and weaknesses for what they are. For instance, I am messy. I leave clothes on the floor. I will make coffee in the morning, mistakenly leave a little coffee on the counter and not clean it up. I'm just selfishly absentminded about little things like that. My wife stopped complaining about it around three years ago. When I do those things now, she just makes the Phil Jackson Face. Crap. I'm stuck with him. It's not even worth getting into it. The plusses outweigh the minuses. Let's move forward. Jackson never made that face with his first wife (Jordan); with his second wife (Kobe), he makes it every so often. You could say they're an imperfect match, and if you want to keep the domestic analogy going, they even legally separated in 2004 after a couple of unhappy years. Now they might go on like this indefinitely.
It's just one more reason why Phil Jackson is the greatest basketball coach ever. He sold the greatest player ever on the benefits of being a good teammate, which wasn't an easy task because Jordan was a demanding, insensitive jerk at the time. Jackson nearly brought the Bulls to the '94 Finals without the greatest player ever, which remains the single most incredible coaching job of my lifetime. He won 72 games. He won 10 titles. Last but not least, he harnessed the talents of the single most difficult superstar not named "Wilt" the NBA has ever seen. He did this gradually, over the span of a solid decade, and he even had to walk away once for effect. You can't credit him for "changing" Kobe, just for nudging him in the right directions and helping him understand the balance between dominating and winning. What Kobe did with that understanding, ultimately, was up to him.
Anyway, I could have listened to people explain the Phil-Kobe relationship all day. Frankly, I still don't understand it myself. But if a coach spends enough time with a player, they really do start to feel like a married couple. Russell and Auerbach were like the Cleavers. Havlicek and Heinsohn were the Bunkers. Magic and Riley were the Huxtables. Jordan and Jackson were the Simpsons. Duncan and Popovich were the Barones. Phil and Kobe? They were definitely the Sopranos. And I don't need to tell you who was Tony.
If you want to remember anything about Kobe '09, remember his remarkable ability to bring it every night.
Storyline E: I'm all for appreciating Kobe's greatness; it's just that my colleagues sold the wrong angle. Since he squashed the Chicago deal, Kobe has won MVP, All-Star MVP and Finals MVP awards; he played in two straight Finals and won a title; he starred on an Olympic gold medal team, took over as its alpha dog down the stretch and handled business in what was shaping up to be Spain's version of the 1980 USA-USSR hockey game; and most amazingly, he played in the maximum 164 regular-season games and 44 playoff games without getting a summer break because of the Olympics. And he did it despite turning 30 in August 2008 and passing the usually dangerous 1,000-game mark last season.
You know what? We just witnessed one of the great two-year stretches in the history of professional basketball if the determining factors were durability, consistency, individual success, team success, statistical excellence and degree of difficulty. Kobe's 2007-2009 stretch ranks alongside these post-shot-clock efforts (in no particular order): Bill Russell (1961-63), Jerry West (1964-66), Wilt Chamberlain (1966-68), Bill Russell (1967-69), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1970-72), Larry Bird (1985-87), Magic Johnson (1986-88), Michael Jordan (1990-92), Hakeem Olajuwon (1993-95), Michael Jordan (1996-98) and Tim Duncan (2001-03). Not a fraud on the list.
I would rather see Kobe linked with everyone above and not just Jordan, if only because the MJ comparisons are tiresome. We're never seeing another Jordan, just like we're never seeing another Brando or Lennon. It's just not happening. They might compare statistically and stylistically, but Jordan could command a room of 10 people or 20,000 and get the exact same reaction: Every set of eyes trained on him for as long as he was there. His personality, his charisma, his aura, his passion ... indescribable. Like nothing I have ever seen. Nobody remembers this now because he hasn't played in awhile, but Jordan was always the coolest guy in the room. Without fail. He was like Doctor J. crossed with Sinatra. Remember those dopey ads when somebody said, "My broker is E.F. Hutton," and everyone else in the room froze? That was what happened to an arena when Jordan walked in. You would freeze, and you would hear screams, and then it would be a sea of lightbulbs. And everyone was saying the same thing, "I get to say I watched Michael Jordan."
Kobe always wanted people to feel that way about him. He shaved his head, made music videos, jumped cars for viral videos, changed his number, stole MJ's fist pump, created that creepy face where he stuck his bottom two teeth out ... none of it worked. He will never command a room like Jordan did. Sorry. But he does share one crucial trait with Jordan: He's a professional of the highest order. He shows up every single night. It's just ingrained in him. Since they acquired Gasol 17 months ago, the Lakers have not lost three games in a row. Why? Because of Kobe. He will always try hard. Always. It's the best thing about him. And really, that's what made Kobe's performance special this spring: The degree of difficulty for someone maintaining that intensity for 20 months -- without missing a single game or getting a summer break -- is absolutely off the charts. It's remarkable.
At this specific point in his career, Kobe Bryant shouldn't have been able to play as consistently well as he did. He shouldn't have been able to survive overtime periods in Game 2 (his 205th straight game in 20 months) and Game 4 (No. 207) and thrived in Game 5 like he was playing Memphis in mid-January. Basketball might be a team sport, but in this specific case, an individual's will stood out and made the accomplishment of the group seem ancillary.
Look, I don't know how much of Kobe's personality is contrived. I don't know if this is the same selfish guy we watched five years ago, only with a freshly polished veneer that hides every demon lurking inside. I don't know if he learned how to play the part of a leader, almost like a trained actor, to throw everyone off his selfish scent. I don't know if he's sitting there tonight thinking, "I won my fourth title!" instead of, "We won the title!" Odds are, we will never figure these things out.
But I do know this: What Kobe Bryant accomplished over the past 20 months ranks up there with anything that ever happened in the National Basketball Association. He walks among the NBA gods now. Like it or not.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Game 3: A Night Of Firsts And Lasts
It's funny. People all day long have been asking me about last night. Everyone figures I'm my normal ornery self after a playoff loss-- angry, frustrated, and generally not fun to be around. Today wasn't like that. I've never been more satisfied with a loss before. If the Magic have to shoot an NBA record 63% and need Kobe Bryant to play one of his worst fourth quarters of his career to win by only four points, I will take it.
I knew coming into this series that a guy like Rafer Alston was going to have one game in the series where he got it going. Last night: 4-4, 11 points in the first quarter. That set the tone for the whole game. Mickael Pietrus followed that with 18 points off the bench, hitting ridiculous fallaways and stupid running floaters.
The Magic have yet to solve the Gasol-Odom combo and I think Kobe needs to work to get them the ball a little bit more. I'm really not concerned at all right now; I am convinced the Lakers will win AT LEAST one of these next two. This series will be over in 5 or 6.
Never again will Kobe falter as he did in Game 3 and never again will the Magic shoot as well as they did. Because of those points, I'm happy. Game 3 further sulidified in my mind that LA is the better team.
Pause 4 Porno
Not really...I've just had a bad day and need some comedy to pick me up. I got a flat tire from a damn key (I know, ain't never heard that one before)...missed my MRI appointment. So now rehab, and thus ball, are going to have to wait a little longer. I can't take this steez no more...
Get on that Kobe...just make sure she get down, word to the Boulder Detectives
I feel bad for Sam...
What's better: the clumsy, stupid kid or the parent laughing at him??? HAHAAHAHAH
One mo...
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
The Pulse's Mock Draft 1.0
As we close in on the end of the NBA season and move closer to the end of June, draft questions inevitably come up. This year more than ever, I expect a lot of movement--whether it is teams moving up and down or key players being sent from team to team.
This draft lacks the star power of recent ones and there is no way it can top the production of last year's rookies. Still, there are a great many role players and specialists available. Here we go (just the Lottery today):
1. LA Clippers- Blake Griffin, PF: This one is easy. The best talent in the draft. The only sure-fire All-Star. The Clips already have Randolph, Kaman, and Camby up front but you don't pass up this talent. A dream scenerio would be package Randolph to someone for a shooter and another pick, but no one really wants him. They might be forced to give up Camby to a contender (SA, Bos?)
2. Memphis- Hasheem Thabeet, C: Even though James Harden might become the better player, I have a feeling the Grizz are leaning towards the big man. Why? Mayo and Gay. This team has literally NO front court depth. Still, the one problem is their best big man is Marc Gasol, who is also a center. Would they just take Harden here...or try to trade down and grab an extra asset? I'm saying they are trading down and this Thabeet selection will go somewhere else.
3. Oklahoma City- James Harden, SG: The real twist...OKC really wants this man, so the only way Memphis can get their man is to work out a deal w/ the Thunder. Thabeet isn't a bad fit here, so I'm sure OKC would look into it. I've heard rumblings of a Rubio pick, but I think eventually, GM Joe Presti will realize he isn't worth it, considering you have Russell Westbrook there already.
4. Sacramento- Ricky Rubio, PG: This one is obvious. If Rubio falls this far, the Kings won't pass him up. The Spanish point has already taken a liking to the Cali capital and this team needs help at the lead guard spot next to Kevin Martin. He is a tough kid, fitting the Maloofs vision of getting tougher and more defensive orientated. Plus, he will have a few years to grow up on the outskirts of the L.
5. Washington- Jordan Hill, PF: I don't think the Wiz are really even interested in Hill. He looks like a little bit of a project. But, this team really doesn't need to draft a point at this position in the draft. Possibly a trade down to pick up Johnny Flynn. They just need to worry about Gilbert Arenas' reaction: should they trust he will be back 100 or not?
6. Minnesota- Tyreke Evans, SG: The Wolves really could use help all over the place. But Steph Curry doesn't make sense next to Randy Foye, and there are no big men that are worth it here. Another possibility is Jrue Holiday, a big guard to pair w/ the aforementioned Foye. Still, I am seeing Evans here-- one of the best talents in the draft -- whether or not the Wolves deal this pick or not.
7. Golden State- Demar DeRozan, SG: Once again, rumblings are mounting Curry might fall here. Next to Monta Ellis, who just recently signed a monster deal? No way. The Warriors need another athlete on the wing and DeRozan would create a young nucleus of Ellis, himself, Anthony Randolph, and Andris Beidrins. Not bad. If this is the choice, I am betting on a deal by the end of the summer for GS to rid themselves of the deals they have given to either Corey Maggette or Stephen Jackson.
8. New York- Stephen Curry, SG: A match made in heaven. No way he gets past the Knicks. As others have mentioned, he is perfect in the D'Antoni system. If this happens, that is basically the 'good bye' to Nate Robinson. And there are sources saying Donnie Walsh is attempting to cut costs by signing and trading David Lee. The makeover will continue before 2010, but I think Curry will make it through the seige. The Knicks will only need a big guard who can initiated offense to make this work because this man is not a point.
9. Toronto- Jrue Holiday, PG: And it will be Toronto that makes the mistake of taking Holiday over Johnny Flynn. Flynn will become another Aaron Brooks while I see Holiday as just a decent role player. Flynn is a difference maker with his speed and shot-making. With Anthony Parker likely gone to FA, the Raptors will be in the market for a wing player. They could trade up to get DeRozan or trade down to get Gerald Henderson. Those scenerios could easily happen, so this is a hard pick to predict.
10. Milwaukee- Johnny Flynn, PG: A perfect set-up for the Bucks. They are in need of some speed in the backcourt and Ramon Sessions probably is going to greener pastures. Michael Redd needs some athleticism next to him. Flynn would give this team a little attitude and swagger (something they need) and I think he will be one of the surprises of next year's season. I've heard they like Jeff Teague as well, so if someone presents something to move up, they could move down to pick him.
11. New Jersey- DeJuan Blair, PF: A nice set-up for the Nets. They need a rugged player inside and Blair will be a valuable role player/starter for a while. I think Henderson and Terrence Williams will also get looks because besides Vince Carter, they are sorely lacking on the wings. Still, NJ won't ever become enamored w/ this guy, so a trade is actually pretty likely.
12. Charlotte- Gerald Henderson, SG: Another team that needs help on the wings. LB and MJ love players who can contribute right away from big schools, so I think they will take a player here in Henderson who will turn in an average NBA career.
13. Indiana- Brandon Jennings, PG: The Pacers are in the market for a point. TJ Ford has been up and down and Jarrett Jack is ready to cash in with someone else. With Jim O'Brien's high-octane offense, Jennings would be able to play and learn on the fly. He has as much talent as anyone in the draft outside of BG so I think you have to take him here. This pick probably means Ford will hook on with someone else by the trading deadline next year. Indiana probably won't mind that.
14. Phoenix- James Johnson, PF: This is a tough one to predict. Phoenix needs depth everywhere. Normally, they should take the best player available. I think it should be Terrence Williams. Yet, Steve Kerr has proven himself to be a very bad GM, taking just a quick year to shed this team of it's identity. He'll either take James Johnson or he take Ty Lawson, which would be just as stupid.
More tommorrow...
This draft lacks the star power of recent ones and there is no way it can top the production of last year's rookies. Still, there are a great many role players and specialists available. Here we go (just the Lottery today):
1. LA Clippers- Blake Griffin, PF: This one is easy. The best talent in the draft. The only sure-fire All-Star. The Clips already have Randolph, Kaman, and Camby up front but you don't pass up this talent. A dream scenerio would be package Randolph to someone for a shooter and another pick, but no one really wants him. They might be forced to give up Camby to a contender (SA, Bos?)
2. Memphis- Hasheem Thabeet, C: Even though James Harden might become the better player, I have a feeling the Grizz are leaning towards the big man. Why? Mayo and Gay. This team has literally NO front court depth. Still, the one problem is their best big man is Marc Gasol, who is also a center. Would they just take Harden here...or try to trade down and grab an extra asset? I'm saying they are trading down and this Thabeet selection will go somewhere else.
3. Oklahoma City- James Harden, SG: The real twist...OKC really wants this man, so the only way Memphis can get their man is to work out a deal w/ the Thunder. Thabeet isn't a bad fit here, so I'm sure OKC would look into it. I've heard rumblings of a Rubio pick, but I think eventually, GM Joe Presti will realize he isn't worth it, considering you have Russell Westbrook there already.
4. Sacramento- Ricky Rubio, PG: This one is obvious. If Rubio falls this far, the Kings won't pass him up. The Spanish point has already taken a liking to the Cali capital and this team needs help at the lead guard spot next to Kevin Martin. He is a tough kid, fitting the Maloofs vision of getting tougher and more defensive orientated. Plus, he will have a few years to grow up on the outskirts of the L.
5. Washington- Jordan Hill, PF: I don't think the Wiz are really even interested in Hill. He looks like a little bit of a project. But, this team really doesn't need to draft a point at this position in the draft. Possibly a trade down to pick up Johnny Flynn. They just need to worry about Gilbert Arenas' reaction: should they trust he will be back 100 or not?
6. Minnesota- Tyreke Evans, SG: The Wolves really could use help all over the place. But Steph Curry doesn't make sense next to Randy Foye, and there are no big men that are worth it here. Another possibility is Jrue Holiday, a big guard to pair w/ the aforementioned Foye. Still, I am seeing Evans here-- one of the best talents in the draft -- whether or not the Wolves deal this pick or not.
7. Golden State- Demar DeRozan, SG: Once again, rumblings are mounting Curry might fall here. Next to Monta Ellis, who just recently signed a monster deal? No way. The Warriors need another athlete on the wing and DeRozan would create a young nucleus of Ellis, himself, Anthony Randolph, and Andris Beidrins. Not bad. If this is the choice, I am betting on a deal by the end of the summer for GS to rid themselves of the deals they have given to either Corey Maggette or Stephen Jackson.
8. New York- Stephen Curry, SG: A match made in heaven. No way he gets past the Knicks. As others have mentioned, he is perfect in the D'Antoni system. If this happens, that is basically the 'good bye' to Nate Robinson. And there are sources saying Donnie Walsh is attempting to cut costs by signing and trading David Lee. The makeover will continue before 2010, but I think Curry will make it through the seige. The Knicks will only need a big guard who can initiated offense to make this work because this man is not a point.
9. Toronto- Jrue Holiday, PG: And it will be Toronto that makes the mistake of taking Holiday over Johnny Flynn. Flynn will become another Aaron Brooks while I see Holiday as just a decent role player. Flynn is a difference maker with his speed and shot-making. With Anthony Parker likely gone to FA, the Raptors will be in the market for a wing player. They could trade up to get DeRozan or trade down to get Gerald Henderson. Those scenerios could easily happen, so this is a hard pick to predict.
10. Milwaukee- Johnny Flynn, PG: A perfect set-up for the Bucks. They are in need of some speed in the backcourt and Ramon Sessions probably is going to greener pastures. Michael Redd needs some athleticism next to him. Flynn would give this team a little attitude and swagger (something they need) and I think he will be one of the surprises of next year's season. I've heard they like Jeff Teague as well, so if someone presents something to move up, they could move down to pick him.
11. New Jersey- DeJuan Blair, PF: A nice set-up for the Nets. They need a rugged player inside and Blair will be a valuable role player/starter for a while. I think Henderson and Terrence Williams will also get looks because besides Vince Carter, they are sorely lacking on the wings. Still, NJ won't ever become enamored w/ this guy, so a trade is actually pretty likely.
12. Charlotte- Gerald Henderson, SG: Another team that needs help on the wings. LB and MJ love players who can contribute right away from big schools, so I think they will take a player here in Henderson who will turn in an average NBA career.
13. Indiana- Brandon Jennings, PG: The Pacers are in the market for a point. TJ Ford has been up and down and Jarrett Jack is ready to cash in with someone else. With Jim O'Brien's high-octane offense, Jennings would be able to play and learn on the fly. He has as much talent as anyone in the draft outside of BG so I think you have to take him here. This pick probably means Ford will hook on with someone else by the trading deadline next year. Indiana probably won't mind that.
14. Phoenix- James Johnson, PF: This is a tough one to predict. Phoenix needs depth everywhere. Normally, they should take the best player available. I think it should be Terrence Williams. Yet, Steve Kerr has proven himself to be a very bad GM, taking just a quick year to shed this team of it's identity. He'll either take James Johnson or he take Ty Lawson, which would be just as stupid.
More tommorrow...
Magic Vs. Lakers- Game 2
That was one of the best-worst game I've seen in a long time. As a Laker fan, I don't know whether to be excited going to Disney World up 2-0 or down because of the way we played. In particular, Kobe was just awful. That was THE WORST 29 and 8 game you will ever see. Down the stretch, he turned it over and forgot about his teammates. Hell, he made Hedo look like Joe Dumars. Extremely disappointing.
As for the rest of the Lakers, I am impressed by Lamar Odom's play in particular. I am waiting for one of those games where he decides to zone out, but so far so good.
And Fisher is finally back: 13 points and a bunch of critical plays in this one.
My outlook for game 3: I expect Dwight Howard to have his best game of the series: somewhere around 23 and 16. The Magic will play at a frenetic pace and guys like Alston, Lee, and Pietrus will hit probably close to 10 3's. If the Lakers want to stay in this game early, the killer Kobe is going to have to show up. The Magic are too good to be swept and I think they will win this one.
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