A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Wrap-up
Dear reader,
Thanks for putting up with my NBA ranting. Next year, I’m going to try and get it written up far enough in advance that we can post a division a day, leaven those posts with my usual ramblings, and keep VM on a more even keel.
As it is, I don’t think any newsworthy events happened in the past week. Let me know if you can think of anything I missed.
–The management
PS: Oh, yeah. I forgot: you think maybe Pim Fortuyn had a point?
NBA Preview: Atlantic Division
by Gil Roth
Boston Celtics
Danny Ainge is a goddamn idiot. For years now, Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks has played a high-stakes game with his players’ contracts: he tends to overpay, but at least he keeps enough desirable assets on hand that teams would take on one of his bad contracts just get the rights to one of his useful players.
A few years ago, I thought that practice would crash and burn, because Cuban gave Raef LaFrentz a 6-year/$60 million deal. No one would take that contract off his hands, I figured, reducing the Mavs’ flexibility for years.
What happens? Boston GM Ainge trades for him, sending back Antoine Walker’s contract, which Cuban just parlayed into an affordable scoring point guard in Jason Terry, and another expiring contract in Alan Henderson. The rich get richer, and the poor get a Mormon.
Ainge, not content to saddle Boston with a gigantic contract for a player who can barely play, went on to make several more deals, driving his coach to quit in mid-season. The upshot? His team now features one legit star (Paul Pierce(d), who is the most sullen top-12 talent in the league), one knuckledheaded but unstoppable talent (Ricky Davis), and one over-the-hill-but-too-prideful-to-admit-it malcontent (Gary Payton, who seems to have entered the weight room exactly once in his career, and that was only to grab a dumbbell to throw at teammate Vernon Maxwell). To recap: that’s three pouting egomaniacs who need the ball to be effective now taking up the 1, 2 and 3 positions on the “once-proud” Boston franchise. Recipe for disaster, coming right up!
They’ve also got a bunch of young draft picks, including some 18-year-old who was putting up Chamberlain-like numbers in high school (like 42 ppg and 19 rpg). This team could feature a reprise of Gary Vs. Vernon, with Ricky filling in for Mad Max. I’d pay $34.95 to see that one on Pay-Per-View, but I’m not right in the head.
New York Knicks
The Knicks floundered for a few years, and then brought in Isiah Thomas last year as GM, and he shook things up. Unfortunately, he ended up with lots of offense, but no coherent defensive philosophy. That’s death in the NBA. This offseason, he traded all of his expiring contracts (the most important asset for trades) for Jamal Crawford, a wanna-be point guard (see Rose, Jalen) who can score in bunches but doesn’t shoot a high percentage.
He oughtta get along great with Stephon Marbury. And Tim Thomas. And Penny Hardaway. And Allan Houston, if he ever comes back from knee surgery. Speaking of too much offense, this squad actually includes three players who’ve put up 50 in a night (Crawford, Marbury and Houston). Given how bad their defense is, they might need all three of them to do that if they want to win.
Supposedly, they have a rookie who’s a great leaper and electrifying player, but seriousy, those are a dime a dozen. Tamar Slay and Lavorr Postell were two recent ones who played for NJ and NY, and they didn’t catch on really because they don’t have an awful lot of talent.
The team’s top pick last year, Michael Sweetney, looks too doughy to be a good power forward, but he looks better than the team’s centers, Nazr Mohammad and Vin Baker, who’s recovering from heart surgery, alcoholism, and the fact that his drinking cost him at least $35 million.
If they can somehow learn to play D (not likely under Lenny Wilkens), maybe they’ll win this weak-ass division and get swept in the first round by a more organized, better-disciplined team (almost any of the other 14 squads in the east).
New Jersey Nets
Don’t get me started. I wrote a lengthy diatribe against this team and its horrible offseason, and then they got worse. Two of last year’s starters are gone, Jason Kidd is recovering from a knee injury, and their center—whom they signed for $22 million despite a deteriorating kidney condition—has announced that he wants the team to pay him most of the money and let him leave so he can sign somewhere else to try to win a championship.
The only positive on the squad is Richard Jefferson, who got a pretty lucrative extension in the offseason. He’s an amazing talent, but he’s going to be burned out by carrying too heavy a load in the first months of the year (provided Kidd comes back and contributes a bit before he gets traded to Dallas (Jason Terry and spare parts) or Denver (Andre Miller and Marcus Camby).
Otherwise, it’s a pretty terrible roster, filled with role players and no big talents, including one guy who has played on seven teams in his first eight seasons.
Philadelphia 76ers
Allen Iverson is the biggest enigma I’ve ever seen in the NBA. He flat-out cannot play with any teammate who deserves more than role-player status. Oh, he’s fine when you surround him with defensive guards, shot-blockers, rebounders, and perimeter defenders, but just try to send in a single player with a scoring dimension, and it all melts down. Want a list? Try Jerry Stackhouse, Tim Thomas, Larry Hughes, Toni Kukoc, Keith Van Horn, and most recently, Glenn “Antoine Carr” Robinson. Now, the big tip-off should’ve been when he couldn’t get along with Kukoc. Unfortunately, they traded the Croatian Creation for the Mongo from the Congo (Dikembe Mutombo) and reached the NBA finals that year, so people seemed to think that it made sense to keep surrounding Iverson with role players who wouldn’t get in his way.
Of course, he started breaking down—a natural result of relying on natural speed and quickness and never bothering to work out—and the team began deteriorating. Now, they’ve got a defensive-minded coach who’s already worked in one of the most bizarre scenarios in hoops: the Boston Celtics of Pierce-Walker vintage, which featured two uncontrollable outside scorers and little else. Coach O’Brien somehow brought this strange group to the eastern finals a few seasons ago; no one is sure how.
The belief is that he’ll get the Sixers playing tough defense, and let the scoring work itself out. If Iverson stays healthy enough to play 75-80 games, they might be alright. The coach has already benched (prelude to a dumping) Glenn Robinson in favor of some defensive-minded rookie. Weirdly, he also benched defensive-minded center Samuel Dalembert, the Haitian Croatian, for Marc “Don’t Call Me Mark” Jackson, who doesn’t play D but loves to shoot 12-footers.
I have no idea how all this is going to turn out, especially since Robinson seems pissed off and might end up getting waived, but I think they’ll win the weak division, and get home court in the first round.
Toronto Raptors
Long-term, this team is doomed. A few years ago, ownership overpaid a bunch of players just to induce star swingman Vince Carter to stay. Carter then turned out to be moody, brittle, and too eager to settle for a jump-shot, moody. Worse, the guys they overpaid (Jerome Williams, Antonio Davis, Alvin Williams) weren’t very good. They made a nice pick in the draft last year with Chris Bosh, who reminds me a little of Jermaine O’Neal, but they managed to trade one headache (Antonio Davis and his bloated contract) for another in the person of Jalen Rose, a me-first scorer who spent nearly a decade trying to convince coaches that he was really a point guard, but who’s yet to make another player better in his career.
So now the Raptors are built around Carter and Rose, who have gigantic contracts, and Bosh and Donyell Marshall, who’s developed into a solid contributor in his last few seasons (since he spent time in Utah with Jerry Sloan, about whom Tom was correct). They’d love to get rid of Rose, but there’s no one who’d take him, and Carter wants to be traded, but ownership knows that the fans would leave along with Carter, since he still dunks really hard, when he’s not being a sissy and firing up 20-footers.
Toronto does get bonus points for signing Rafer “Skip to my Lou” Alston, but that won’t be enough for them to reach the playoffs. For that, Carter’s gotta return to the monster threat he was a few seasons ago.
More on the NBA
Excellent reportage [in the NBA western previews], but in what sense does Shawn Bradley qualify as “marginally talented?†He does throw a really accurate elbow, but if it weren’t for Don Nelson, Bradley would be toting a sandwich board somewhere outside Topeka, or holding hands with a midget in some bumpkin carny. He’s been in the league for more than a decade, and every time he takes the floor I see him do something that convinces me he’s never even seen a basketball before in his life. It’s just astounding.
Don Nelson makes me miss Buddy Ryan, who I like to think can be found in secret bunker somewhere beneath the Painted Desert, stroking a white Persian cat and chuckling insanely to himself.
I’m disappointed that I can find no combination of letters in a Google search that prompts it to ask “Did you mean ‘Mxyzptlk?’†That one line about Bzdelik has rendered me completely unable to watch Nuggets games this season. Honest. It has absolutely nothing to do with mopey Marcus Camby, ‘Melo’s unsettling resemblance to Seattle Storm Favorite Daughter Betty Dixon, or the cosmic surreality of seeing K-Mart in a Denver uniform.
It’s increasingly confounding to me how you lose 60+ games with Tracy McGrady. On the other hand, there may not be a better place than Houston if you’re going to cleave to the “dribble around, jump nine feet in the air as soon as you see daylight, and then figure out what to do with the ball†school of NBA play. And speaking of Kobe Bryant, every time I  flipped over to the Lakers game last night I wondered how they could forget to give the dunking mascots their trampoline. I’ve never seen anything like it. L.A.’s in for the most entertaining .300 season in NBA history.
* * *
Fink’s Sonics Preview
Nate McMillan’s been seeding his farewell speech for about a month now. I suffer from poor digestion, and so was unable to watch the Sonics more than about once a week last season, but I can’t shake the impression that McMillan hasn’t he faintest idea what the heck he’s doing. This comes as little surprise to those of us who know he was hired on suspicion of being able to get Gary Payton to stay, and because he’s the only fan favorite since ‘78 who is remotely likeable or could pass a criminal background check. Given a choice between arm-folding (to which Nate brings a brooding stoicism that could almost be described as contemplative if he weren’t always murderously pissed off) and finding-one’s-ass-with-both-hands, I’d be inclined to take the latter. Sure, we all whine about not having a post threat and the staggering amount of payroll wasted on three guys who could be smelted into a center slightly worse than Rick Smits; but I believe Nate’s squad last year was talented enough to look like a basketball team for more than two games in a row if he could MAKE UP HIS GODDAMN MIND ABOUT ANYTHING.
Rashard Lewis is about to embark on his fifth “breakout year,†but to be fair it’ll only be his second full season playing a position he’s remotely suited for. And starting your career in an offense run by Payton can mess up your game for a long long time. Just ask Desmond Mason.
Reggie Evans suffered terribly from Nate’s inability to see that if you’re losing 100+ point games in the last two minutes, scoring is not your problem, and taking a voracious rebounder and your foremost energy player off the bench just might not kill you, even if he is an offensive liability.
The departure of Calvin Booth means the mediocrity at center is now merely bipolar, which should clarify matters enough that Nate might play the same guy for as much as a whole week at a time.
Danny Fortson might not accidentally kill anybody, and if he does, there’s a better than average chance it won’t be one of is teammates. Nick Collison and Lil’ Robby Swift clearly have their hearts set on being basketball players when they grow up. Management will have sold them for scrap metal and a deli tray before that happens, of course.
Luke Ridenour should continue to improve this season, despite taking time off mid-year to star in a remake of “My Bodyguard.†This is a shame, because Antonio Daniels is an actual point guard, and one that defends, no less. He’s tough, quiet, hardworking, and exactly the kind of player this city of basketball morons doesn’t notice. It’s a little confusing to all of us that Nate appears to actively hate him.
I don’t know what to do with Vladimir Radmanovic. He’s the other side of the Euro: he comes out of a youth academy that drilled him so mercilessly on fundamental basketball that he appears to have no instinct on the court. People think he doesn’t hustle, but I expect that the sight of a loose ball still comes as kind of a surprise to him. Plus he’s, like, Jessica Simpson’s age. I’d just hate to see them move him out of pique (for peanuts, naturally) and than have him turn into the newest edition of the Slavic Instant Mis-Match. (I ask you to do nothing to disturb my blissful ignorance of how pointless it is to fit him into a lineup that includes Ray Allen and Lewis.)
I miss Brent “Bones” Barry like a brother, but he looked swell in the LA/Sac game last night. My only hope is that it occurred to someone to exact his promise that he’d return for his broadcasting career. I figure he can continue the grand tradition of Killer Zombie Broadcasters like Hubie Brown and Doug Collins.
I refuse to acknowledge the presence of Dominque’s kid until he does something more interesting with his hair.