Author: Gil

by Tom Spurgeon

(Here endeth VM’s NBA week! Hope it didn’t hurt too much!)

Mostly Above the Halfway Point Division

Seattle Supersonics

Looking over Seattle’s 2005-2006 roster is like learning about the marriage of a couple you thought had broken up months ago. Last year’s experiment in having a bunch of free-agents on roster so that they’d play hard to garner a big pay day in free agency paid off really well — especially for the Sonics, as nobody wanted most of Seattle’s players despite the team’s very effective 2004-2005 season. My primary theory is that because they’re as physically unattractive as the 1986 Boston Celtics, people may expect more than even their division-winning season brought about. Or, alternatively, no one wants to break up this team before High Resolution becomes the sports-watching standard and every hoops fan in America gets to see this team and its unfortunate skin marks and tufts of hair in God’s format. My tertiary theory is simply no one has any idea who plays on Seattle sports teams.

Seattle also managed to retain the services of Jesus Shuttlesworth, perhaps the only perennial all-star and one-time film actor with star wattage so low he can be outshined charisma-wise by local WNBA players.

Predicted record: 50-32

* * *

Denver Nuggets

George Karl, with the shady, doughy appearance and split of a bad guy on the Superman television show (Dean Cain era), enjoys as his primary virtue the fact that he looks totally in charge. He’s the kind of guy you ask about sporting goods even though he’s just standing there in t-shirt and jeans, or that you keep your eye on in a bar to see if he’s messing with your drink order by a shake of his head in the bartender’s direction. Don’t laugh — in an era where coaches seem split between corporate nobodies and confused ex-players, this is a highly desirable skill. He’s a coach and he looks like a coach.

Unfortunately, unlike other evil genius icons such as Joe Paterno, James Lipton and Governor George Pataki, Karl has failed to flatter and/or bludgeon a specific fan base into loving him no matter what the exit polls and scoreboards say. Karl’s last prominent gig as a coach was leading the 2003 World Basketball tournament team to consecutive losses against Aquilonia and the Country of the Houyhnhnms. I think most basketball fans are just waiting for the Nuggets to lose a few dozen games so this can be spat back in Karl’s face. Okay, maybe that’s just me.

The Nuggets as a team are entirely too dependent on Carmelo Anthony’s unique physical balancing act: staying skinny enough to be efficient on offense and to dodge the occasional morning practice right cross from teammate Kenyon Martin No. 1, but not so skinny he caves in to a sudden on-court pang and eats Earl Boykins.

Predicted record: 49-33

* * *

Minnesota Timberwolves

The brief rise of the Minnesota Timberwolves a year or two ago was interesting for the unique public persona grafted upon noted post-rebound screamer Kevin Garnett, who joined the league as an 11-year-old white girl in 1982. Perhaps unique among all sports celebrities, Garnett had become saddled with an underachiever label that received consistent reinforcement through his own advertising appearances, including one in which a psychological projection of Garnett berates the real Garnett for his lack of post-season success, which one supposes was supposed to draw attention to the power forward’s high standards rather than a tendency to slip into dementia. The only thing that comes close in recent memory to Garnett’s self-sabotage through ad spot is Matthew McConaughey’s “Yep, I’m a good-looking, lightweight dumbass” cologne campaign. Thankfully, the only humiliations that Garnet suffers these days is that people seem to prefer using their remote control on the Black Eyed Peas by a ratio of 2000 airings to one, and, once again, on the court.

As for positives beyond their loudest star, the Timberwolves are no longer coached by a white guy named “Flip” and they’ve jettisoned their hateful old men — including Latrelle “The Provider” Sprewell and Sam “Magic Jeep” Cassell — for a few inoffensive younger types, something that worked really well for Cheers and not so well for that one iteration of Van Halen we’d all like to forget.

Predicted Record: 38-44

* * *

Portland Trailblazers

Unbeknownst to most people outside the Pacific Northwest, the Portland trailblazers are an experiment in community karma. As the city itself completes a 20-year renewal that has resulted in an entire metropolitan of art-loving, bike-riding, farmer’s market- attending, beautiful souls, the Trailblazers team has in return for a string of sell-outs that would make a Greek military historian take note absorbed the entire region’s bad impulses and, as a result, devolved into a one of those gangs from a Beach Party movie. After several years of resulting player malfeasance including re-enactments of the pot-suffused car-destroying joy ride from Fast Times at Ridgemont High on I-5, and a Warren Oates movie moment regarding a poor soul bred primarily for pit fighting (not Ruben Patterson), the nonsense has finally reached the coaching staff. Nate McMillan, the longtime Sonics icon who ended up the coach in Portland the same way a guy after his first fight with his high school sweetheart might end up married in Vegas, spent a portion of the off-season in some sort of bizarre legal tussle with a leftover assistant coach who claimed McMillan doesn’t really want them there. Worst episode of Judge Hatchett ever.

The ball team’s chances depends on the development of players who would stab maturity in the face with a knife if it looked like it might cross the room and tap them on the shoulder. The Blazers somehow managed to dump Damon Stoudamire only to get smaller at the point guard position. Zach Randolph has the quick feet of someone who can dance between cars in a late-night parking lot to get in a kick or two on someone already being punched down to wheel-level. Worst of all, their center is named “Joel.”

Predicted Record: 32-52

* * *

Utah Jazz

The Utah Jazz were my dark horse pick for the Western Conference Finals last year. I based that selection on

1) a few snippets of Nostradamus’ prose concerning a “Mehmut D’Okur” and “the third Napoleon between two rivers.”

2) wishing beyond measure for that moment when Karl Malone would want to come back to Utah and be turned down

3) they were really good in 2003-2004 and added a bunch of better players.

Boy was I stupid.

Despite my confidence in them, the 2004-2005 Jazz won about three games and one-time favorite player to watch Andrei Kirilenko, a combination of Dolph Lundgren’s Rocky IV haircut and a shoddy 1960 giveaway toy with a wire infrastructure, became a skinny Larry Krystowiak.

I think what happened to the Jazz is what happened to the Indiana Hoosiers college basketball team in the late 1990s — coach Jerry Sloan became just old enough that he could no longer kick everyone’s ass, but not quite old enough to leave most of the coaching to his assistants while he made commercials that only showed on local cable.

Predicted Record: -12-94

by Gil Roth

(Last day of NBA Week here on VM! Soon, it’ll be back to confessional rambling and snarky comments about the news!)

Atlanta Hawks

This team, hands down, gave us the most entertaining story of the offseason. They offered Phoenix way too many assets for a free agent sign-and-trade of Joe Johnson, then saw their “team governor” minority owner submarine the deal, because he felt it was too expensive.

The other two ownership groups had to sue to get the guy “de-recognized” by the league, and then had to buy him out, which made the Johnson deal even more expensive. Is JJ worth it? Of course not! He put up nice numbers as a complementary player with Phoenix, but he’ll be exposed when he’s controlling the ball this season.

His main reason for leaving the Suns, of course, was that he was tired of being the fourth option.

The rest of this team looks pretty awful. Al Harrington got exposed last year when he wanted to go be the main man in Atlanta. Unfortunately, there’s not even a Gold Club for him and JJ to head to for solace. At least they can go The Cheetah, Atlanta’s only choice in fine dining gentlemen’s clubs.

Projected record: 18-64

* * *

Charlotte Bobcats

I thought they’d be adequately bad last year, and I was right. Bad, but not record-setting bad. This year, though, it looks like their draft was coordinated by the marketing department. They took a pair of guys from UNC with high picks, one of whom clearly came out of college too early, since he made the prediction that the Bobcats will make the playoffs this season.

The team had some success developing its young players, like Gerald Wallace, and watched Brevin Knight somehow post 9 assists per game. That career resurrection was enough to get him consigned to the bench this year, where he’ll tutor Ray Felton in how to be undersized and play on 7 teams in 8 years.

Projected record: 21-61

* * *

Miami Heat

This team is completely befuddling. They were within 5 minutes of getting to the finals before they melted down against Detroit. So, rather than tweak with the lineup, they blew up half of it, bringing in a couple of no-defense gunners in Antoine Walker and Jason Williams, an over-the-hill ass in Gary Payton, and one of my favorite players from two seasons ago, James Posey. How will they fit together? Will all those new guys need too many shots to be effective? Will Antoine Walker get into a fight with Shaq over the post-game buffet spread?

I have no idea. The mere presence of Shaq will keep guys in line, and Dwyane Wade made The Leap last year into superstar status, as he single-handedly carried the team in the second round of the playoffs, but a lot of these new players seem like raging idiots, to be honest.

That said, I’ll pay to watch Jason Williams any ol’ day. I know that, every game, he will try to make at least one pass that no one else in the league would think of throwing.

Funnily enough, Shaq complained that he was too skinny last year, and that’s why he got injured. So he decided to bulk up for this year. Now, I’m firmly convinced that, by the end of his run in LA, he was topping 400 lbs. The fact that he retained such amazing footwork is like watching that scene in The Freshman where Brando ice-skates pretty gracefully around a rink.

I imagine that a bunch of these pickups were made with an eye toward beating Indiana, not Detroit, and that the smartitude of the plan will make itself clear in late May, leaving me feeling like an imbecile.

Projected record: 60-22

* * *

Orlando Magic

Steve Francis, who seemed to have a sorta gay relationship with Cuttino Mobley, went in the tank after the Big Cat got traded to Sacramento. At some point, they’ll have to shift him to SG for good, but it won’t matter. Like Stephon Marbury, he has no clue about how to make other players better.

I saw him play last year, and pile up a ton of assists while his team was down by 16. There are some nice players on this team, but they’re not exactly going to ride their big high school oaf back to the playoffs. He’s a good rebounder, but he has no instincts for offense, except for dunking putbacks.

Grant Hill made a nice comeback last year, but I can’t imagine that he can sustain it for another season. I hope they figure out some way to run him at the point, and get the scorers to concede that Hill’s the best ball-handler on the squad. Won’t happen, because of Francis, but it’s nice to hope.

Projected record: 28-64

* * *

Washington Wizards

Okay, I was completely wrong about this team last year. I joked that they were trying to recreate the “magic” of the 2001-02 Golden State Warriors by reuniting Gilbert Arenas, Antawn Jamison, and Larry Hughes. Turned out they’d learned to play in those intervening years, and put up a pretty good season. Unfortunately, they got swept in the playoffs by a Miami Heat team that was missing Shaq for the whole series. So, they were good, but not that good.

They lost Hughes in the offseason, but it would’ve been insane to re-sign him at the money Cleveland offered, so they added Antonio Daniels instead. Then they traded Kwame “I’ve still got upside” Brown to LA for Caron Butler, which really helped them restock. I think this team is in better position than last year’s was, but I’m a retard. So I’m going to predict that they make a little jump next year into the second-tier of playoff squads.

Projected record: 50-32

by Gil Roth

(NBA Week continues on VM! Don’t worry; it’ll be over soon!)

Chicago Bulls

Surprise team last year, but easily one of the worst playoff teams since the 1999 Atlanta Hawks, which actually made the second round. Fortunately, karma realigned itself and booted this team from the playoffs early, after Chris Duhon decided to try to catch an inbounds pass with his shoulder-blades.

They have some nice components, and they got rid of Eddy Curry, who was the least effective rebounder I’ve ever seen at his size.

The simple fact that they now have Tim Thomas on the team means they’ll post a worse record than last year. They may as well waive him and try to get some karma-cap relief, because he will poison the locker room to the point at which coach Scott Skiles goes nuts and tries to beat him to death after a game.

Projected record: 42-40

* * *

Cleveland Cavaliers

I’m not sure why I’m predicting them to be better than last season. Their big addition was a player (Larry Hughes) whose skills too closely mirror those of LeBron James. I thought they needed a dead-eye shooter who can light it up from the perimeter. Unfortunately, they went with the “he’ll be the Scottie to LeBron’s Jordan” mentality, which is asinine.

I mean, let’s look at all these perimeter players who are “Top 10 talents” in the NBA: Kobe, McGrady, LeBron, Ray Allen, Vince Carter, Paul Pierce, etc. These guys keep piling up monster numbers, but they’re not exactly marching through the playoffs, because it’s too easy to configure defenses to limit their touches or drive them to areas on the floor where they’re uncomfortable. They’re not worth a damn without either a good point guard, or an overpowering center (Yao doesn’t count, since he can’t stay on the floor). Jordan was once in a lifetime; get over it.

LeBron’s fun to watch, but that team’s going as far as Zydrunas Ilgauskas can carry them. I guess they’ll win a few more games than last year, especially if their crazy-haired Brazilian stays off the injured list, but I don’t see them making noise in the playoffs.

Projected record: 48-34

* * *

Detroit Pistons

They’ll be so happy to not have to hear Larry Brown’s voice, it’ll carry them for the first 6 weeks of the season. After that, it’ll be interesting to see if they respond to their first losing streak with comments about “that’s not how coach Brown would do it,” and “way to get out of the first round of the playoffs that one time, coach Saunders.” Which is to say, this team better be self-motivating.

The Pistons remain a pretty bizarrely assembled team, but I wouldn’t put it past them to make another good playoff run, squaring them off against the Pistons in the second round. Then we can see a Bird/’Nique duel between Darko Milicic and Jonathan Bender.

They are a deep squad, and Saunders loved playing a defensive zone when he had long players like Kevin Garnett & Joe Smith, so he’s probably drooling over the possibilities of playing Rasheed Wallace and Tayshaun Prince with Ben Wallace ready to pad his blocks-per-game stats while leaving his defensive assignment free to get offensive rebounds.

Projected record: 52-30

* * *

Indiana Pacers

Last year, I predicted that Ron Artest would melt down at a key point and submarine his team’s chances. I didn’t think it would occur quite as soon as it did last year, but it just goes to show you how uncontrollable my psychic powers are. It’s like a mediocre episode of the Twilight Zone, I tellsya!

That said, I predict that Artest will keep his crap together this year, post a multi-game streak where no one he’s guarding gets a single basket, and put up at least one 50-point game. People will start talking him up as an MVP candidate, implicitly hoping that he melts down and beats a player to death after a tough loss.

In preparation for PG Jamaal Tinsley’s annual dozen-game trip to the injured list, the Pacers signed Euro-import Sarunas Jasikevicius, formerly with Maccabi Tel Aviv. ‘Runas won the last three Euroleague titles, so I guess bringing him into Israel made sense. I mean, given Lithuania’s history with Jews during the war, I could imagine that some people were skittish about making him a national hero. On the other hand, we Jews do love us some hoops.

Reggie Miller finally retired, which means the last active player from that era is, um, Cliff Robinson? Is Kevin Willis still around? Anyway, it symbolizes the end of an era, of which Reggie was the tail-end. All the old-timers, just post-Magic/Bird, are gone: Olajuwon, Drexler, ‘Nique, Barkley, Ewing, Stockton, Malone, Reggie, um, Blue Edwards, Tom Chambers, Dan Majerle . . . All retired. Of course, as good as all those guys were, Hakeem & Drex were the only ones who managed to win the title, so I guess it was an era of heroic underachievers. Regardless, it sure beat the Gary Payton / Larry Johnson era that followed, but hey.

The Pacers still await Jonathan Bender’s breakout season.

Projected record: 75-7

* * *

Milwaukee Bucks

So happy with their #1 overall pick in Andrew Bogut that they traded for a starting center a few days before the season begins. I read yesterday that SG Michael Redd, signed to a massive deal in the offseason, is one of the worst defensive guards in the league. They’ll benefit from getting TJ Ford back this year, unless he takes another nasty spill and ends up paralyzed. The frontline seems huge, with Bogut, Magliore, and Bobby Simmons, but I just think those winters in Milwaukee are so bitter that the team will suffer a rash of terrible injuries, and be lucky not to lose 50 games.

Also, Bogut can’t jump over the Sunday paper. No one on this team will beat anyone to death, but GM Lenny Harris may pull a Matthew Broderick on some unsuspecting Wisconsinites driving home from a game.

Projected record: 34-48

by Tom Spurgeon

San Antonio Spurs

The Spurs are the first team in NBA history where the better they play, the more likely the shooting guard’s family is to be kidnapped and ransomed.

Other than looking forward to Michael Finley’s adjustment period, the only thing about the regular season with the Spurs worth watching is if Tim Duncan owns slacks and a sports coat, or will take some of the money with which he buys giant wheels of cheese or train sets or whatever and pay off the dress policy fines in advance. It’s an amazing policy that unites Tim Duncan and Allen Iverson against the commissioner’s office. The other good story, if you get the whole thing and not just the Extra! version on some red carpet somewhere, is how Eva Longoria’s father basically pimped his daughter to hang out in the same locker room Larry Kenon once roamed. It’s really creepy. So are the Spurs, who play good enough to win yet not quite good enough we win by watching them play.

Projected Record: 80-2

* * *

Dallas Mavericks

In the midst of a playoff game against Phoenix that ended like that weekend your hometown girlfriend visits you in college, giant revolving haircut mannequin Dirk Nowitzki and guard Jason Terry began to exude some winning Pat McCormick/Paul Williams big man/bitty man chemistry. One hopes to see them in matching powder blue cowboy suits at some point during the forthcoming season.

Because the Mavericks were coached for years by Don Nelson, team members tend to blink and stare as if they were slightly abused show business children uncertain how to function in the real world. New coach Avery Johnson comes to the team from a league program that gives high-profile positions to ex-players who can’t talk, following a trial run by Bill Cartwright in Chicago.

Projected Record: 54-28

* * *

Houston Rockets

Houston’s development of Yao Ming reminds me of the job NASA’s done as caretakers of the space shuttle portion of the modern space program. Okay, not really. Mostly it reminds me of people sucking at things. Ming’s a unique offensive talent with little clue how to play defense in danger of never developing his potential and becoming a burnout/bad knees case because of time demands back home. The NBA had done little to alleviate the latter through negotiation and intervention and the Rockets’ solutions to the former have included: hiring a coach that cares so little about offense that hitting the backboard counts as a score during scrimmages, a consultant who betrayed his own talent to take more shots and whose primary contribution to league history was to make promises he couldn’t keep, and teammates who can’t do much of anything other than dunk, hit 40 percent of all wide-open three-pointers and bump into people. It’s like Yao Ming is being punished, and maybe he is.

Projected Record: 48-34

* * *

Memphis Grizzlies

I know more about the Memphis Sounds from the 1974-1975 ABA (Rick Mount’s shoulder surgery year) than I do the Memphis Grizzlies. I saw them play once back in Vancouver, in a giant building with tons of empty seats, but I couldn’t even tell you what their uniforms look like now. Look for Kimani Ffriend to be the first Grizzlies rookie profiled by all the NBA satellite shows, but only if he makes the team.

Lawrence Roberts is this year’s case of a college player who lost money by returning to college for his senior year; I hope he sticks on this squad, although I don’t expect to see him much. Wouldn’t it be cool if there was a Fennis Dembo Overcooked Traveling All-Stars squad featuring players like Roberts and that Porter kid from Auburn?

Projected Record: 41-41

* * *

New Orleans/Oklahoma City/Baton Rouge Hornets

It’s depressingly easy to make comparisons between the Hornets and the city of New Orleans, but the basketball team is more a nation in the throes of a structural collapse than a victim of natural disaster. What I can remember off the top of my head is that Chris Paul, Chris Andersen, and Jackson Vroman are on this squad, which should mean a few highlights before the final score of 98-63 is slapped up on ESPN. The Hornets will play the majority of their home games in Oklahoma City, a temporary home suggested by the Sacramento Chamber of Commerce so as to avoid a 19th straight win in the players’ “Worst City to Visit” poll.

Projected Record: 2-80