Before I get into NBA Commissioner David Stern for the umpteenth time this postseason… which he came perilously close to tainting with his over-the-top legalism… I should note I have always had great respect for the way he has run his league.
He has brought labor peace after the wars of the ‘90s, and actually enhanced the profitablilty of the industry in the post-MJ era, while beset by all manner of calamities.
It’s hard to imagine the NBA without this little giant running it…
Although I have to admit I was trying to a few weeks back, when his minions looked this close to suspending Rajon Rondo for Game 7 of the Boston-Chicago classic.
That was the tip of the iceberg, in a crackdown on fighting and flagrant fouls… although there haven’t been any fights or bad flagrant fouls…. so it had become, play the game, await the league review with its upgrades and downgrades, and see who was available for the next game.
The most competitive postseason the NBA had seen in years… or ever… has had to struggle for attention with the perception the league is also in the midst of a crime wave, or merely refereed by boobs.
There were boobs, all right, but they’re the NBA officials, who are now always over the refs’ shoulders, telling them to call all those ticky-tack T’s and flagrants, until the consequences became so alarming, even an NBA lawyer could figure out they had to lighten up.
Midway through the Conference finals, Kobe Bryant and Dwight Howard are both sitting on five T’s, two short of what they need to be suspended.
Howard had six, which given his inclination to celebrate, which is now thought-crime, meant he was a dead man walking, until the league quickly rescinded his last one from Game 4 of the East finals.
How close they came to suspending Rondo in the first round, we’ll never know, but it came down to a league review.
As far as actual violence, it was no biggie, but it was clearly discernible and prompted Hinrich to come back and shove Rondo.
Coming off an incredible 128-127 Bulls win in three overtimes, the run-up to Game 7 was dominated by the review, as the Bulls lobbied behind the scenes for Rondo’s suspension, and Chicago papers took up the cry.
Wrote the Sun-Times’ Ron Allen:
After watching the replay, it seems obvious–this is clearly more of an egregious display of unsportsmanlike conduct than Dwight Howard’s errant elbow… Rondo’s gotten away with another flagrant foul in this series when he fish-hooked Brad Miller. After reviewing the play, league officials somehow determined that because Rondo didn’t wind up, he was going for the ball. Perhaps these same league officials are due for a makeup call?
Actually, it wasn’t close to being as bad as Howard’s elbow to Samuel Dalembert’s head, for which Howard was suspended, even if that would have only been a T or a flagrant in the old days… like five years ago.
Ending the suspense, the league announced it would take no action on Rondo.
With a foul to give, Wright gave Anthony a little bump, which Mark Wunderlich didn’t call, before Melo’s game-winning three.
I thought it was a no-call. As an intentional foul, it was a disgrace. At the very least, it was arguable.
Nevertheless, within hours NBA counsel Joel Litwin announced it was an error.
Not only did the NBA sell out its own ref, it told everyone on the staff they had better call every touch or twitch, or they could be overruled in public.
Not that this was an unintended consequence. It was the message Stern wanted his refs to get.
Stern is on an ongoing mission to mollify his owners, who constantly complain about the officials, and demonstrate to all the system is on the up-and-up, as opposed to the oft-alleged conspiracy to get the right teams to the Finals.
Unfortunately, the complaining never stops, it just moves around according to which owner is losing.
And the harder Stern tries, the worse things get, as if he’s thrashing around in quicksand.
With TV replays a plus at games — where their use is limited to easy-to-see, objective judgments, like whether a shot was in time, or a toe was on a line — Stern now wants the use of video expanded.
Aside from its use at games, it’s already a disaster.
Every time the league reviews an incident, be it minor or major, it makes it bigger, by a factor of, say, 100.
Of all the rags-to-riches stories among NBA coaches, there was never one like Chuck Daly, who, for all his larger-than-life style with his big hair, big smile and $5,000 suits, arrived thinking he was the luckiest man they ever let walk the sideline, and left as a giant.
In a league in which talent overwhelmed Xs-and-Os (if your X was Wilt Chamberlain, it didn’t matter where they put their Os) and coaches customarily came from the ranks of the players, he was from as far out in left field as you could go.
In a subculture in which poverty and entitlement are soon intertwined, as with LeBron James, raised by a single mother and a superstar by age 17, Daly was Older than Old School, a Depression Baby, through and through.
For all the millions Daly made, and the clothes deals he got – if there was one irony in life he appreciated, it was that when you got money, all of a sudden, you didn’t need it – he never stopped being who he was.
When Daly finally reached the NBA at 48, as a 76er assistant, he used to tell young Doug Collins, “I don’t trust happiness.”
Collins, who, like many of his players, remained close to him, called him, “the Prince of Pessimism.”
That was Daly, gregarious, garrulous and always upbeat, even if he could always feel the darkness closing in on him.
“His gift,” as Detroit president Tom Wilson said, “was his charm, I think.”
Daly’s tenacity and his love for the game weren’t bad either. Only three coaches who started in high school have won pro titles: Jack Ramsay in Portland, Hubie Brown in Kentucky in the ABA, and Daly, who won two in Detroit, to go with his Olympic gold medal as coach of the one and only Dream Team.
Of the three, Daly was the 100-1 shot. Ramsay and Brown grew up in youth basketball hotbeds in Philadelphia and northern New Jersey, respectively. Daly was from tiny Kane, Pa., in the football-mad western end of the state, got no farther as a player than St. Bonaventure and Bloomsburg State, and spent eight years coaching high school in Punxsutawney, Pa., where the the closest thing they had to a star was a groundhog, and he also taught English and speech and coached the golf team.
“I guess I’ve paid every due you can pay,” Daly would tell the Orlando Sentinel’s Tim Povtak when he coached the Magic in the ‘90s. “But I never thought I was anything special. I’ve always admired those other guys, tried to learn from them. I’m a very average coach of average intelligence. I’m a lifer, just a working coach. That’s all I am. I got lucky to be where I am today and I’ll never think otherwise…
“You can’t change who you are and where you came from. I’m a product of my parents’ genes. They were humble people. Sure, I enjoy nice things now, but you never really know for sure if you will still have them tomorrow. Anyone who grew up in the Depression will understand how I feel.”
Joining a two-man Duke staff under Bubas– the other assistant was Hubie Brown – in the fall of 1963, Daly found himself sitting on the bench at the Final Four the next season, where the Blue Devils reached lost in the Finals to UCLA.
Had Daly become a career assistant, like Bill Guthridge, who sat next to Dean Smith for 30 years before getting his shot, and had never gotten a shot, Chuck would have still thought he was the luckiest former Punxsutawney coach who ever lived.
Nevertheless, Daly was going onward and upward, and in characteristic style, the hard way. He got a lot of breaks, but few that weren’t barbed, like fishhooks.
His first two years as a college coach were at BC, following Bob Cousy. His next six were at Penn, where Dick Harter had built the Ivy League school into a national power, Daly looked like the ordinary guy who turned up after the big guy.
In the fall of 1977 came a real break, an invitation by Billy Cunningham, the new 76er coach who had never coached a day in his life, to become his assistant.
Daly and Cunningham were friends, although Chuck’s NBA network didn’t extend much farther than that. The pros at that time were even more leery of college people than they are now. I was then covering the 76ers for the Philadelphia Bulletin, and the day they announced Chuck’s hiring, I ran into the other assistant, Jack McMahon, a beloved NBA warhorse in his own right, before practice.
“Now,” said Jack, laughing, “I can coach two coaches.”
With the 76ers becoming Eastern powers, Daly got more “breaks,” like the offer to coach the Cavaliers in the fall of 1981 in the madcap Ted Stepien era.
Knowing the odds, but unable to turn down an NBA job at 51 with no certainty of ever being offered another, Daly accepted… with reservations… staying at the Holiday Inn in Richfield, O., south of the city, near the arena they played in.
It turned out to be a good move. Stepien fired him halfway through the season, after they went 9-32.
Two seasons later, Daly got an offer from a real team, if a real turbulent team, when Detroit GM Jack McCloskey, a former Penn coach, brought him in to organize their high-scoring circus with Isiah Thomas, Kelly Tripucka and Vinny Johnson.
Daly had a new thought – maybe we should guard someone – which would lead to a total makeover into the scourge known as the Bad Boys.
Before that, however, Daly had to survive, with owner Bill Davidson, the beloved, but itchy-fingered “Mr. D,” ready to fire him in his fourth season. Thomas, then the owner’s favorite of favorites, went to bat for Daly, giving him breathing room, which Chuck would never forget.
If Daly knew anything, it was how things worked. Brendan Suhr, who arrived as a young assistant from college where coaches rules, remembers Thomas messing up over and over in a game, prompting Suhr to ask Daly why he didn’t sit his butt down.
“He’s our guy,” Suhr says Daly told him, “and tomorrow, he’ll still be out guy.”
Reconfiguring the team around the hated Bill Laimbeer and the menace, Rick Mahorn (“McFilthy and McNasty,” Boston announcer called them), with more new defense-oriented young players like Joe Dumars, Dennis Rodman and John Salley, Daly made it work in a whole new way, putting in his Jordan Rules to hold off the Bulls and their new wunderkind.
Essentially, they all helped on MJ, depending on where Michael was, and if he dared to drive the lane, heaven help him.
Today’s flagrant foul controversy stems from commissioner David Stern’s resolve to protect Jordan from the Pistons and later from Pat Riley’s knife-between-the-teeth Knicks, leading to new rules against violent play.
The Bad Boys lived up to their name and then some, starting with Laimbeer, the contradiction of contradictions, a rich white kid from the suburbs who was the biggest thug of all, a political right winger who was best friends with Thomas.
They had Comptitiveness coming out of their ears, fighting each other when no one else was available. Even Laimbeer and Thomas went fist city one day in practice.
Despised as they were, they had a class all their own. Leading the Lakers, 3-2, in their first Finals in 1987, they lost the pivotal Game 6 in the Forum, 103-102, after a ticky-tack call against Laimbeer in the final seconds put Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on the line to win the game. Amid all the questions he got, Laimbeer never uttered a word of complaint.
They broke through in 1988, sweeping the Lakers, becoming only the second team to repeat since the Bill Russell Celtics the next spring, polishing off the Trail Blazers.
“That was a special era,” said Daly. “We were an unliked team in the NBA but frankly, we couldn’t do it any other way.”
Daly rode out the string in Detroit, leaving in 1991 and taking a higher-paying job in New Jersey, where he spent two years and got the Nets into the playoffs twice.
After a stint in TV, he returned with Orlando for an even higher-paying gig in 1997, going 33-17 in the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season, his last, at 68.
Money was never a problem after that, nor was life. Daly and his wife, Dorothy, retired to Jupiter, Fla., near Chuck’s pals, Billy Cunningham and Rollie Massimino, and they golfed from dawn to dusk.
It was retirement the way it was supposed to be. I sat next to Chuck in the press row in Auburn Hills for a game in the 2005 Finals, when the Pistons lost to the Spurs. An icon in Michigan, he still kept a place there because he had so much media stuff going.
He wasn’t one bit different than the Chuck Daly I met in 1977, and wouldn’t have been one bit different if I had met him in Punxsutawney in 1962.
This news that he had pancreatic cancer was a blow for everyone who knew him and saw him surmount so much. The NBA Coaches Association dedicated the postseason to him, with a lot of them wearing CD pins, and announcing the first Chuck Daly Award, to the winner.
Chuck passed away Friday at 78, with his family around him and and entire league mourning. I’m sure he went out the way he came in, finding the odds stacked against him… again… taking it to the limit one more time.
After he helped the Pistons win their second NBA title in 1990, Daly wrote his autobiography. It never sold very well. People were puzzled by the title. But he understood. He had lived it: “Every Step a Struggle.”
I’ve been writing about Larry Brown as long as I’ve been covering the NBA, which goes back to 1969.
Larry was in the ABA then. One of my good friends, Mike Littwin, then a young writer starting on the Virginia Squires, met him before I did. Mike was doing the rookie thing, walking in the door, seeing the guys, and thinking, “What, now what?”
At that point, Larry, who was a veteran point guard, walked up to him, introduced himself, and said if there was anything he could do to help, just ask him.
No, it’s no coincidence that every writer I know loves Larry. We all know he’s nuts but we love him, to a man.
I’m Jewish, so for me he was like the Sandy Koufax of basketball. I met him in 1977 when the Denver team he was coaching joined the NBA, and got to know him in the ‘80s when he coached the Clippers. After that, I essentially wrote a feature every time he changed teams, or every three years, give or take.
Not that the stories were all the same – I hope – but they were all about Larry, and the pattern never changed.
It didn’t take me long to get it down pat. When he left the Clippers and went to Indiana, I could break any stay with any team down into its constituent parts, which I called the Five Stages of Larry Brown: Arrival, Early Struggle in Which He Tries to Trade Everyone Starting With His Star Player, Triumph, Frustration, and I’m Out of Here.
By Triumph, I mean, Triumph Equal to or Beyond Anything They Could Imagine, like taking a UCLA team with four freshmen in rotation to the NCAA Finals; winning an NCAA title with a Kansas team that was 15-13 at mid-season; taking the 76ers who were 22-60 when he got there, to the NBA Finals; stunning the Shaq-Kobe Lakers to take the Pistons to an NBA title.
Conrad Brunner, who was covering the Pacers when Larry got there and later went to work for the team, told me it held true, every step of the way.
By then, I knew most of Larry’s friends, like Donnie Walsh, the Indiana president, who had been on Frank McGuire’s staff when Larry played at North Carolina, who then served on Larry’s staff in Denver, and finally hired him in Indiana.
Donnie told me the story of Larry’s first job, at Davidson, which doesn’t appear on his resume – because he left before even conducting a practice, upset that they wouldn’t re-carpet his office.
“I told him, ‘You’ll never get another job,’” said Donnie, only missing by 12.
It was Donnie, who summed up Larry’s personnel moves in one sentence: “If you followed the logic of the deals he wants, you would trade all your players, and wind up getting them all back.”
Oh, by the way, all that meshugas – Yiddish for Larry Brown – works.
If you haven’t noticed, the Charlotte Bobcats, whose franchise record is 33 wins, are in a strange new place at this time of the year… a playoff race… it just shows Larry still has it, even at age 68.
This is really important for him because his last stop, and by far his biggest splash, was in New York, where he lasted a year, went 22-60 and was fired by corporate boss James Dolan, who was used to the losing but had never seen anyone who ignored his orders and kept telling the truth about the team, as Larry did.
Larry being Larry, he did it in style, once conducting a roadside press conference with the beat guys, who had been barred from the practice facility by the team.
Showing how crazy that episode was, the Knicks then tried to claim Larry had breached his contract, which said he had to have a team official present when he talked to the press.
Some jobs, you’re better off losing, no matter how spectacularly you go down in flames.
Not that anything else has changed much. This has been your basic Larry Brown season
The pre-season started with a horrific loss in the exhibition opener, after falling behind Orlando, 41-9, in the first quarter, after which Larry said he didn’t think they’d win in the entire pre-season, which turned out to be true.
By that time, he didn’t think they might win any games in the regular season, either.
It wasn’t that bad but it wasn’t that good. They were floundering at 7-16 but then Larry’s teams always fall on their faces out of the gate his first season. As Mike Gminski, who played for Brown in Philadelphia, told the Charlotte Observer’s Rick Bonnell, the first thing Larry does is practice everyone until they drop. They start the season with their legs dead, until they recover, at which time, they’re in better shape than everyone else.
Larry will also want a trade for some guy no one would look at twice, like Eric Snow, who turned out to be the answer to the question: Who can you pair with Allen Iverson?
This time, Larry got the Bobcats to unload their star, Jason Richardson, sending him to Phoenix for the Suns’ Boris Diaw and Raja Bell.
GMs all over the NBA were going, “Why didn’t I call Charlotte first?” when the Bobcats did a 180, almost from the day Diaw arrived.
Using him as a point forward – kind of his own Magic Johnson – Brown turned the Bobcats, with their non-shooting small forward, Gerald Wallace, and their non-playmaking point guard, Raymond Felton, into a coherent unit.
They lost the first two games with Diaw, and then won 21 wins of their next 38, as he averaged 15 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.1 assists.
In early March, a six-game winning streak carried them to 28-35, 1½ games behind No. 8 Chicago. Two losses later, they’re still one of six teams within a half-game vying for the last playoff slot, so this race is just starting.
Of course, it could also constitute the Triumph phase of Larry’s stay.
The Bobcat organization, if you want to call it that, is headed by absentee owner Bob Johnson, who may not be as bad as George Shinn, who had a sex scandal, alienated city officials trying to get a new building, and carpet-bagged off to New Orleans, but is no prize, either.
Johnson adopted a sky-high ticket scale to take advantage of their new downtown arena, turning the entire region off.
Charlotte is lot different than when the Hornets became their first major league team. With the NFL Panthers there, and all the bad will after years of setting NBA attendance records with the Hornets, the city is still cool to the Bobcats. Even with this season’s pleasant surprise under a Tar Heel great, they’re No. 26 in attendance.
Taking heavy losses, Johnson puts little back into the team. Brown would have been there last season, except they wanted to go with a cheaper, $1.5 million model, instead, so they hired Sam Vincent, who went 32-50 and lasted the one season.
Felton, who came on big-time this season, may not be back. He’s a free agent and they have young DJAugustin, even if the one is ready and the other isn’t.
Let’s just say, Larry didn’t last long with a lot more supportive ownership than he has now, Michael Jordan or no Michael Jordan.
And Mike ain’t around much himself. So who knows, this might not be Larry’s last stop?
Earlier this season, after his Boy Scout troop stunned the mighty Lakers in Staples Center, I told Larry, “You can coach for another 68 years.”
It wasn’t literally true. He won’t live that long.
For years, the West Finals used to be the NBA Finals. Now, the East is rising and the way things are going, they may not even hold the West Finals.
The Lakers, of course, rule the West, and the second-best team is… is…
There is no second-best team.
The aging Spurs aren’t what they used to be yet, having gone from Twin Towers to a single tower, with Matt Bonner, a 6-10 small forward, alongside Tim Duncan.
The young Hornets aren’t what they were, either. The Jazz need Carlos Boozer back to see if it can be what it was. The Nuggets are twice as good as they were, which leaves them half as good as they need to be. The Suns and Mavericks aren’t lost causes but definitely aren’t what they were. The Trail Blazers just emailed the doctor who did Greg Oden’s microfracture surgery, reserving the right to sue to protect their interests if Greg doesn’t pick it up.
The T-Wolves are on an amazing run but I’m not sure they’re ready for the Lakes and it’s a tad early for the promising (well, one day) Grizzlies and Thunder, too. The Warriors are deciding between competing and imploding as Monta Ellis arrives and Chris Mullin packs. Sacramento is trying to get Rick Adelman back, or at least Reggie Theus. The Clippers just got a notice from Staples Center to win the occasional game or go back to the Sports Arena.
Who does that leave?
Oh yeah, the Rockets, the pre-season favorites to challenge the Lakers. No, really, you could look it up.
After picking up Ron Artest and Brent Barry, they looked formidable, indeed, on paper.
On the floor, however… well, we don’t really know what they look like because they’ve only been on the floor three times.
With injuries to Artest, Barry, Shane Battier and, of course, Tracy McGrady, they never saw their entire rotation until Dec. 22, when they beat the Nets in New Jersey.
Not that cohesion was an issue but the only other two times they were all there, the next night in Cleveland and a week later at home against the Wizards(?!), they lost.
With all the games they’ve lost (Battier 22, Barry 14, McGrady 12, Artest nine, Rafer Alston six), it’s impressive that the Rockets have played as well as they have.
Unfortunately, the problem isn’t as simple as getting healthy. The problem is T-Mac. Whatever is going on with him has been going on for years, and it’s getting worse.
For sure, his body is breaking down, coming off knee surgery, with chronic problems with his back and shoulder that have caused him to miss 15-4-35-11-16 games in his last five season.
The problem is, no one seems to know how bad any of Tracy’s conditions is, including Tracy.
He’s always announcing he’s shutting it down (as opposed to the Rockets’ medical staff announcing it), then coming back and playing in a game or two, then shutting it back down in another game or two.
On the floor, he looks like he’s hurting, coasting or both. His teammates were sympathetic but their displeasure began to leak out several weeks ago, as when Alston was asked if they were all on the same page, and answered, “Not at all.”
For his part, McGrady, who with his cousin, Vince Carter, might be the NBA’s nicest star players, has been a totally stand-up guy and completely out of touch.
Adelman was finally obliged to talk to ask him to pick it up, in practice as well as in games, noting, “I told him today, ‘There’s going to be times you’re going to succeed and times you’re going to fail, but that shouldn’t have an effect on how hard you play.’”
Tracy laughed it off as a momentary inconvenience, telling the Houston Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen, “Kick me when I’m down, because I swear to you, I’ll be back up.”
Tracy also said his friends were keeping him up on all the criticism and the slurs aimed at him. “They know how I eat that up,” he said. “They know how I take that all in and use it as motivation.” He then played 42 minutes and scored 26 points in their next game, a win at Oklahoma City. Then he shut it down, once more. Finally, after another return and shut-down, they announced he would take two weeks off to work of his conditioning.
Three months into the season, coming off surgery, with all the problems he’s had and he’s just now going to get in proper condition?
The worst part for the Rockets is that McGrady is still their best offensive player, the only one creative enough to knit everyone together as playmaker and scorer.
Make that the second-to worst part. The worst part has become that the rest of the dressing room is now fuming.
There was even a report that Yao Mingno longer speaks to Tracy and wants him traded, which Houston press people say isn’t true. Yao and Tacy still chat amiably as they always have, although that means nothing. The Houston guys say Yao is as upset as everyone else.
Signing Dikembe Mutombo to come in and block shots again at 42 was done in part to bring his sunny elder-statesman’s countenance in to help calm everyone.
Of course, with the gregarious Deke’s charm, you also get his candor, as when he tacitly acknowledged how bad the situation was in his inimitable style.
Announcing he would hold a secret team dinner, Mutombo joked, “I’m planning to get people under the ground and into the bunker and we’re going to discuss the problems like Vice President Dick Cheney. Just let me get them into the bunker like Vice President Cheney. I won’t start any wars. And I won’t shoot anybody in the hunting field either.”
This may not have gone over well throughout Houston, corporate headquarters for Cheney’s old company, Halliburton, but then, Deke’s standing may now be higher now than Cheney’s.
In any case, the Rockets have a major issue and it’s not togetherness.
It’s Tracy and unless they resolve it, by getting him over the hump or figuring out a way to get it done without him, they may go down as the best team no one ever saw.
More things have changed than that. As you start to look around, you find you suddenly have boundless energy and a keen insight into things you didn’t know anything about, like the Internet, the stock market and the future of global communications.
On the other hand, you don’t care about things that seemed important, like clothes. Now a T-shirt will suffice, no matter where you’re going.
Oh, and you have an obsession with this NBA team you own, that seemed to be going down the drain.
Even if you have a lot going on, like trying to buy the Cubs, which Commissioner Bud Selig will never let happen —Bud likes owners with a more reverent attitude toward commissioners—and SEC is charging you with insider trading, you’re still out there suffering day-by-day with your Mavericks.
You bought the franchise when it was nothing… just as coach Don Nelson started to pull it together.
Of course, dying to help, you got him Dennis Rodman, who scuttled the rest of that season like an anvil dropped from space.
In subsequent years, you and Nellie disagreed about which of you was the genius, but you managed to put your personal feelings aside and let Nellie do what he does.
Then, when Nellie left and the legal proceedings began, you even went Avery Johnson, whom Nellie nominated to succeed him. Avery took Nellie’s offensive team and made it defend.
Voila!
Avery went 16-2 after stepping in for Nellie, 60-22 in his first full season and 67-15 in his third, giving him the highest winning percentage in NBA history at that point.
You let Steve Nash go… to back-to-back MVP seasons in Phoenix and still wound up as a better team!
It looked like it was going to become a championship team except for your misadventure in the 2006 Finals after going up, 2-0 and blowing that 13-point lead in the last six minutes in Miami when it looked like you were about to lead, 3-0.
Now all everyone remembers is you railing about the referees, you getting fined $250,000 by Commissioner David Stern, Avery changing hotels and bristling at the press, presaging your losses in Games 4, 5 and 6.
The next season was even better and worse: 67 wins, utter domination of the regular season, followed by that first-round loss to the Warriors… and that damned Nellie.
The season after that, 2007-2008, you started 35-17 but that was only No. 3 in the West as everything changed.
The Lakers, who had almost lost Kobe Bryant, were back with Andrew Bynum on the rise and the Grizzlies donating Pau Gasol.
Worse, the Suns had just beaten you to the obvious move —Shaquille O’Neal— who would have fit naturally with you but fit awkwardly with them.
So now, you had to think up a dramatic move of your own… Jason Kidd?
Unfortunately, you gave up Devin Harris, your best player under 25, and it would have been nice if someone had figured out Jason would fit about as well with you as Shaq did with the Suns.
Your offense was built around isolations for Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard, leaving little for Kidd to do but hand them the ball and get out of the way.
So you finished 16-13, lost in five games to the Hornets in the first round and offed Avery, who was supposedly too controlling and making everybody crazy.
Now you’ve got Rick Carlisle, a sharp guy who turned around his first two teams, the Pistons and Pacers, but it’s clear your days of winning 55-60 are over.
What do do now?
Make trades in the hope of patching on the fly?
Back up the truck?
Unfortunately, there’s a certain point at which you’re out of good moves—and you’re there.
If you want to trade, you’ll soon discover the only players anyone wants will be Dirk, Josh and Brandon Bass, the ones you’d want to rebuild around.
If anyone knows you, they know you won’t ever be trading Dirk, your No. 1 fave.
There are deals out there, they’re just loaded with risk and freighted with huge, long-term contracts (see: Zach Randolph, Eddy Curry, Stephon Marbury or your choice of any Clipper of Bobcat.)
On the other hand, when you see it’s not working, how long do you intend to gaze at it?
Detroit’s Joe Dumars just decided he wasn’t going to watch his veterans—who had been in the last six East Finals—die by inches, plunged boldly into the future and, in the meantime, aligned his fate with Allen Iverson.
Meanwhile, Denver just went from uncoachable with AI, Carmelo Anthony et al. to semi-lucid with Chauncey Billups there to restore order.
We don’t know how they’ll wind up but it was Denver’s best shot to right the ship before Carmelo abandons it and it pushed Detroit headlong into the future.
Of course, the best thing would be if you can get one of those flashes of genius like creating Broadcast.com.
Did you ever see that movie, “Weird Science”, in which two geeks program all the facets about their perfect woman into a computer and out pops Kelly LeBrock?
In any case, you’d better figure out a new way to get where you’re going because you’re not getting there this way.
OK, who out there remembers that spring two years ago when it was the Clippers, not the Lakers, who owned L.A.?
Not that it was such an important milestone since the Clips would soon re-cross it, going in the direction they had come from, after rising from decades of ignominy to reach the second round of the 2006 West semifinals and putting Phoenix on the ropes.
They’ve been rolling and tumbling ever since. It’s still not like their old Dark Ages but if they don’t handle things right, a round trip won’t be out of the question.
Reconfigured as this season’s team is after the mysterious loss of Elton Brand and the departures of Corey Maggette and Shaun Livingston, talent isn’t the problem.
With Baron Davis, Chris Kaman, Marcus Camby and last season’s rookie find, Al Thornton, they may even still have a shot at the playoffs if everything works out spectacularly.
Of course, everyone in the West has the same problem with all eight slots appearing to be spoken for by the Lakers, Hornets, Jazz, Spurs, Suns, Rockets, Mavericks and Trail Blazers.
In addition, the Clippers have one problem no one else has: Themselves, which is to say their front office, which is really to say madcap owner Donald T. Sterling.
Before reverting to type last season, Sterling was coming off the best years of his career as an NBA owner, which coincided with the hiring of coach Mike Dunleavy.
Investing in Dunleavy as he had never invested in anyone, Sterling gave his coach control of the entire basketball operation to go with a four-year, $22 million extension – more than the rest of Donald’s coaches had made put together.
Arriving at a good time in 2003 with profits flowing and a roster loaded with good young players, Dunleavy took them into the second round, where no team in the history of the franchise in Los Angeles, San Diego or Buffalo had ever been… Where they were about to take a 3-1 lead until Raja Bell tied Game 5 with a three-pointer with :01.1 left in the first overtime in Phoenix.
The Suns won in double overtime and ultimately put them away in Game 7 back in Phoenix, ending the Clipper Spring, amazing as it was with their TV ratings eclipsing those of the Lakers, whom the Suns had ousted in the first round.
Jack Nicholson even came to Game 5 in Phoenix, although Brand joked later, noting the fact they had lost, “We’re not sure Jack will be invited back.”
It was good they enjoyed it because it soon ended. They missed the playoffs in 2007 when Sam Cassell turned back into an old man after his salary drive the year before and Livingston was lost after his devastating knee injury.
Last season was a disaster before it started with Brand tearing his Achilles tendon, but that was just the start of their problems.
With nothing to do but endure this disaster, Sterling turned back into Donald Sterling, targeting Dunleavy in one of the rare interviews he granted, telling the Los Angeles Times’ T.J. Simers he might “make changes.”
Dunleavy, fearing he was being punked in the eyes of his players, fired back, daring Sterling to fire him, dropping hum the owner’s Seventh Circle of Hell.
Sterling put Dunleavy on ice, refusing to accept his apology or even take his calls – which posed a problem since Mike was running things, assuming anyone was.
I guess you can see why Donald doesn’t do more interviews.
Aside from undermining his coach, it had been totally meaningless. With Dunleavy’s $22 million deal kicking in, Sterling wasn’t about to fire him if they lost the rest of their games and they came close enough, going 6-26 after the All-Star break to finish 23-59.
They paid a horrible price for their dysfunction. At the trade deadline, the Clippers were close to agreement with Memphis on what would have been a companion deal to the Grizzlies’ trade that sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers. This one would have sent Mike Miller to the Clippers for the expiring contracts of Cassell and Aaron Williams and their No. 1 pick.
The principals were down to how much lottery protection the draft pick would get but Sterling refused to OK it.
Dunleavy couldn’t even talk to his owner on the telephone. The request had to be forwarded by team president Andy Roeser. With Sterling always reluctant to give up draft picks who work so cheap, it died there.
Only then did Sterling reconcile with his coach.
Things picked up last spring when the Clippers got lucky with Baron Davis, who had always wanted to come home and was at loggerheads with the Warriors over a new deal. However, no sooner did they sign Davis then they lost Brand.
What happened may always be a mystery. Everyone’s favorite Clipper, Brand set new standards for loyalty and service in seven seasons with them (although he tried to leave in the only other chance he had, signing an offer sheet with Miami in 2003 and begging Sterling not to match it).
Dunleavy, with whom Brand had been close, said Elton helped recruit Davis, volunteering to take less money to make it happen. Brand and his agent, David Falk, acknowledged Elton made a verbal deal with Dunleavy – which, Falk pointed out, was a violation of the CBA.
Whether it was Falk who turned him, Brand definitely turned on the Clippers during negotiations, refusing to return their calls and using their offers as a wedge to get more out of Philadelphia, even as the Clippers promised to renounce as many players as they had to to beat the 76ers’ offer.
Now Dunleavy is picking up the pieces, yet again. Happily, he has some good pieces which lend themselves to a new uptempo style, rather than playing half-court basketball and pounding the ball inside to Brand and Kaman.
However, they’re in fast company and this will also require stability in their front office.
This is where I came in, with the U.S. dominant and its Olympic team playing its rear end off.
The first Games I covered were in 1984 in Los Angeles when Bob Knight drove his college players as only he could. With their star power – Michael Jordan, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullin, Sam Perkins – and that level of effort, the world was overmatched. The talk then was that it, along with the 1960 team with Jerry West and Oscar Robertson, were the best there ever were.
The 2008 U.S. team was like the pro version of Knight’s team, with the same effort and even more star power. That was fortunate for the Americans because when they got into that shootout at the end with Spain, they needed every bit of firepower they had.
Even in 1984, things were changing, although no one knew how much.
As good as Knight’s team was, there was someone out there capable of playing with them – the USSR – but it boycotted.
Four years later at Seoul, the last Soviet Olympic team with Arvydas Sabonis, Sarunas Marciulionis and a cast of jump shooters whipped John Thompson’s U.S. squad fair and square. That did it for U.S. college players, who bowed out in favor of the NBA stars who were supposed to put the U.S. back on top forever, starting with the Dream Team’s triumph at Barcelona in 1992.
It turned out to be forever or 10 years, whichever came first.
Boris Stankovic, the far-sighted head of FIBA who made it possible for the professionals to participate, turned out to be even farther-sighted than he knew.
“Now NBA players are dominating,” said Stankovic at Barcelona, “but one day – not in my lifetime but one day – the world will catch up.”
Stankovic is still going strong and if the world hasn’t caught up, it has definitely closed the gap.
It wasn’t long before the Americans couldn’t just show up and accept everyone’s surrender. If they couldn’t shoot, had no chemistry and/or weren’t together long to prepare for the international game, they were in trouble. As U.S. scout Tony Ronzone, the Pistons’ director of basketball operations said in Beijing last week, “And that’s all we sent.”
At the 2002 World Championships in Indianapolis, the pros representing the U.S. lost their first game, to Argentina. For good measure, they then lost to Yugoslavia and Spain, too.
Then came the Athenian Nightmare in 2004, when nine members of the team that qualified the preceding summer bailed amid scare stories about terrorism. Larry Brown wound up with a makeshift team with Stephon Marbury at the point, Lamar Odom and Richard Jefferson at forward… And lost three more games.
Then the U.S. got serious, with Jerry Colangelo setting up an ongoing program and Coach Mike Krzyzewski making sure his team had plenty of time to prepare for the 2006 Worlds in Saitama, Japan, where they… lost?
Greece stunned them in the semifinals as point guard Vassilis Spanoulis ran pick-and-roll after pick-and-roll down the stretch and the U.S. broke down completely.
That was how far the world had come. Even if the U.S. players parked their attitudes, put in the time and took it seriously, they weren’t guaranteed anything if all the pieces weren’t there. Indeed, there was one piece of the puzzle missing but it – he – arrived the next summer in the person of Kobe Bryant.
Out the summer before after knee surgery, Bryant came joined the team for the 2007 Tournament of the Americas, determined to make an impact on defense. This was a suprise for anyone who didn’t know Bryant but he had seen the game against Greece – which aired at 3 am on the West Coast – which was all he had to see.
On the very first possession of his Bryant’s first game against Venezuela, he pounced on point guard Greivis Vasquez, a rising freshman at Maryland who had missed a triple-double by one rebound in his first game at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Bryant tipped the ball away, dove on the floor after it and when Vasquez got it back, jumped up, stole Vasquez’s next pass and started a fast break the other way.
“That’s the clip Coach K always uses, Kobe diving on the floor,” says Ronzone. “You’re talking about an MVP player in the NBA who just made a statement to USA. basketball… And what that did is it took our defense to another level. What you’re seeing is something that started last summer in Las Vegas, which is amazing.”
Even the Dream Team wasn’t known for its defense but for its firepower and star power.
If the 2008 team resembled Knight’s, it’s no coincidence. Knight was once Krzyzewski’s mentor; Krzyzewski even broke down game film for him at Los Angeles. Kryzewski’s team would be one of the smallest teams the U.S. had sent in decades with no seven-footer and only Dwight Howard and Chris Bosh over 6-9. It was also probably the most athletic they ever sent with Howard and Bosh able to get out on shooters.
This team was more than just good. In a refreshing change, it was nice.
After years of arrogance and macho that turned the world off as fast as the Dream Team turned it on, Colangelo and Krzyzewski set out to show the U.S. could regain its preeminence without looking like an And 1 Mixtape.
The horror show had started in the 1994 Worlds at Toronto where the so-called “Dream Team II” with its Young Guns, put on an Ugly American Clinic. Bristling at comparisons to the Dream Team whose play they couldn’t begin to match, the Young Guns, notably Larry Johnson, Derrick Coleman and Shawn Kemp, showboated, rubbed it in opponents’ faces and talked trash.
That deal where the opposing teams wanted their pictures taken with the Dream Team? That ended at Toronto.
“I don’t know if vile is the right word or disgusting,” said Australia’s Andrew Gaze. “There should be at least some pleasure in playing the game, some dignity.”
Replied Johnson: “I didn’t come here to make friends. I’ve got enough friends.”
All it took was some leadership and all of that went away.
“I really do believe from everything I know from people I respect, the people in the world thought the American teams didn’t respect them,” says Colangelo. “Didn’t respect them as teams, as individuals, arrogant, that kind of thing. And that had to end….
“From those first meetings with players, I said, ‘Look, this is what people think of us. We have to change this. We have to come in with a whole new attitude. We have to show respect for our country, show respect for our team, show respect for our opponents. And anything less than that’s not going to fly.’”
Old foes like Gaze and Lithuania’s Sarunas Jasikevicius who had bristled at their old arrogance, noticed the difference.
“I think they’ve been outstanding, the way they’ve conducted themselves,” said Gaze, doing TV at Beijing. “They may be coming from a fairly low base from some of their predecessors in the way they’ve gone about it….
“I think they’ve really taken on the challenge, not only to resurrect the reputation of what goes on the court but what goes off the court.”
I’m pretty confident Spain would have beaten the 2000 U.S. team that night. (Of course, it would have beaten the 2004 team. Like, who didn’t?) The 1996 team with Shaquille O’Neal, Hakeem Olajuwon and Charles Barkley might have been in trouble.
Unfortunately for the game, which gains immeasurably from real drama in the Olympics – even if it doesn’t go over so well in the U.S. – FIBA is about to change things again.
By 2012 in London, the conical lane will be gone and the three-point line will have been moved back from it’s present 20-6, one foot longer than the college line to 22-2.
Insiders say FIBA is doing it to get one set of rules worldwide, in the sure knowledge the NBA won’t be changing its rules. The international rules evened things out, minimizing the impact of all that U.S. athleticism, enhancing the importance of the international teams’ shooting prowess.
Not only isn’t anything broken, it was really getting interesting, so why are they trying to fix it?
Anyway, there’s no doubt the U.S. is back. For how long remains to be seen.
No, really, I think this Ron Artest trade has turned the West completely around.
Well, until the season starts, anyway.
After that, everybody in Houston will be on their own, as everyone always has been everywhere Ronnie has been. Even after a relatively quiet two-plus seasons in Sacramento, Ron Artest isn’t like anyone else – not even in the NBA, which is largely comprised of eccentrics.
He’s more like the crocodile in “Peter Pan” who swallowed a clock so wherever he goes in search of Captain Hook, Hook can hear him ticking.
Of course, it’s not totally impossible that, having tried everything else, Ronnie just shows up and plays… So what then?
Are the Lakers, Spurs, Hornets and Jazz going to swoon?
How about the young Trail Blazers with Greg Oden joining Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge on a team that was good enough to go 41-41 last season?
Even if the West no longer has all the super teams it did from 2000 to 2007 when the Lakers, Spurs, Kings, Suns and Mavericks posted nine 60-win seasons, the conference still has a wide selection of The Next Best Thing.
The Lakers should be better, not to mention more than a collection of cream puffs, with Andrew Bynum rejoining the team that made the Finals without him.
The Spurs aren’t what they were but with Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili in their primes and Tim Duncan close enough to his, they aren’t over, either.
The Hornets wouldn’t go away last season and may not this season either, with Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler still coming and a nice pickup in James Posey.
Utah is coming off back-to-back 50-win seasons, has won three playoff series in two years and has Deron Williams, The Chris Paul Nobody Knows, still coming, too.
Artest won’t be a patented misfit in Houston as Shaquille O’Neal was in Phoenix, turning the Suns, the team no one could guard, into a team that couldn’t guard anyone willing to involve Diesel in a pick-and-roll.
Nor will this be a cultural clash like Dallas turning over an offense built entirely on isolations to Jason Kidd and telling him to do his magic.
Unfortunately, the Suns and Mavericks got it backwards. Shaq was the Mavericks’ play but the Suns beat them to it. Kidd would have been fine in Phoenix.
The real problem for the Suns and Mavs was being in the West, where the burden of proof was so high. The Suns looked scary at the end, winning 15 of their last 20. Then they blew double-figure leads in Games 1 and 2 in San Antonio, the Spurs started running about 50 pick-and-rolls a night, Parker wound up averaging 30 points and the Suns wound up on vacation.
At the top of their game, the new Rockets with Artest, Yao Ming, Tracy McGrady, Luis Scola and Shane Battier would be truly formidable. They were already a tough defensive team and Artest is a lot tougher and a better defender than anyone they had, even Battier.
Now to see how close they ever come to the top of their game.
This isn’t like putting together an all-star team in baseball, where even if you hit third and I hit ninth, I’m still getting my three at-bats. Basketball teams have to mesh. If Artest has a problem with Yao and Tracy getting more shots, this won’t work.
Artest has always been a unique talent, not only capable of scoring 20 points but of knocking the other team’s 20-point scorer down to 10 or so, whether the opponent is a two, a three or a four. With Ronnie’s big, wide body, he can post anyone up and command double-teams, freeing up others.
The problem – on the floor – has always been that he takes a lot of bad shots, then gets upset when he can’t take more and the offense goes through someone else, like Jermaine O’Neal. The overriding problem is that when Ronnie’s upset, we’re not talking about merely being upset.
This was still a slam dunk for the Rockets, who weren’t sure of getting out of the first round – and hadn’t since 1996. Great as McGrady is, the less you have to have from him, the better he is.
Rick Adelman is one of the last of the players’ coaches who can actually coach. He and Artest are already on good terms, from their half-season together in Sacramento.
In the most compelling reason, Artest is on the last year of his contract, so how much trouble could he be?
Oh, I forgot. He’s Ron Artest, capable of being more trouble than any team – or league – can handle. Remember the Auburn Hills riot that set the NBA’s image back about 40 years and is the reason we have to watch those “NBA Cares” spots? That was all Ronnie.
By the way, even if the East had something of a renaissance last season, this is why the league should seed the playoffs. With the overall imbalance, there’s an East mindset (what, us worry?) and a West mindset (us worry). That’s why 55-win West teams like the Rockets go out on limbs while East teams chill, as when Boston let Posey go.
Not that anyone knows how this particular move will turn out, but the West just got even more Western.
You don’t normally like to see your roster go belly up in the Finals which, even that far along, suggests a fundamental problem. Take the Lakers. The Celtics just did.
It’s not good to discover you’re not tough enough, especially up front since no one is likely to be inclined to send you one of their tough big men. Nor would the draft be of much use, even if they were in it, which the Lakers almost aren’t, with only one pick at No. 58. However, this is an extraordinary case with the Lakers expecting seven-foot, 275-pound, 20-year-old Andrew Bynum expected back next fall.
Bynum, who missed the second half of the season, had been breaking out in his third season, looking so impressive that Kobe Bryant, who had excoriated Laker management, demanding to be traded, changed his mind about the whole thing.
If this was embarrassing – Bryant also railed at the Lakers for not trading Bynum for Jason Kidd – Kobe is now on board in a big way (“He’s a legitimate, 7-1, long-wing-span, natural shot blocker so add Andrew, it takes us to another level defensively.”)
Hurt on Jan. 13, Bynum was expected back in March but wound up undergoing arthroscopic surgery and missing the rest of the season. With Pau Gasol arriving to take his place – another piece of good luck for the Lakers who wouldn’t have been pursuing the deal with Memphis if Bynum hadn’t been hurt – the Lakers were never sure how good they were.
They certainly weren’t physical and or imposing defensively. On the other hand, their offense was so good – – they were 34-8 with Gasol in the lineup going into the Finals – there didn’t seem to be anyone better, or close.
It was almost as if they were on a lark. They would be better next season but in the meantime, why not try to take advantage of the opportunity at hand?
They wound up running into the Celtics, who looked out on their feet after going seven, seven and six games deeps in the three first rounds, but seemed quite refreshed in the Finals.
Bryant, who had smoke coming out of his ears in the interview room after their Game 6 loss in Boston, was over it by the time he talked to Laker beat writers three days later after his exit interview with head coach Phil Jackson.
“I’m comfortable with what we have,” Bryant said. “Whatever Mitch [Kupchak, Laker GM] decides to do, he decides to do. It’s more of a relaxing summer for me because I know we have an opportunity to win. It’s exciting.”
With Bynum’s rehab now progressing, the Lakers do have one decision to make with Andrew up for an extension at or near the maximum-salary.
Nevertheless, the Lakers can let it play out according to their own comfort level.
They could extend him this summer (unlikely), wait to see how he holds up in training camp and sign him before the opener (possible) or wait until after the season, when he’ll be a restricted free agent and they can match any offers (also possible).
Aside from that, the Lakers just have to make the pieces fit with Bynum at center and Gasol moving to power forward.
That would move Lamar Odom to small forward… if he ever gets there.
At the moment, there’s speculation the 6-10 Odom will be shopped for a more small forward who’s a better outside shooter.
(That means, forget those Shawn Marion rumors. Like Odom, shooting from the outside is the worst thing Marion does.)
(As for those Richard Jefferson rumors, shooting isn’t what RJ does best, either.)
In what could be viewed as a preview of next season, Boston’s Kevin Garnett roamed off Odom in the Finals, just as the Lakers did with Rajon Rondo, giving Lamar any outside shot he wanted.
Odom faded, Garnett helped jam up the high-powered Laker offense inside and that was that.
Jackson wanted a small forward who could shoot and space the floor badly enough to start the inconsistent Vlade Radmanovic while labeling him “my favorite Martian.”
Beyond the question of how Odom will fit in the new configuration, he has one year left on his contract at $14.1 million and wants an extension. Meanwhile, the Lakers have financial issues. These don’t threaten the franchise, which probably grossed $175 million last season, but they’re issues, anyway.
As a result of the Gasol trade, Jerry Buss is looking at an additional $90 million in additional salary and luxury tax over the last three years of Pau’s contract – which was the reason Memphis got so few offers – unless the Lakers get some money off their cap.
With trade-Lamar stories all over the local papers, an irate Kupchak said the team hasn’t even had those discussions yet. However, Odom was originally in the package going to Memphis for Gasol, until Grizzlies owner Michael Heisley took him out, opting to lesser players and more savings.
And the Lakers will be holding those talks soon, with only one problem position, small forward.
Jackson, who wants to get tougher – and has never minded getting loonier – loves Sacramento’s Ron Artest, who just happened to be hanging this postseason, even going to Boston for Game 6.
Artest has tried to get himself traded to either Los Angeles team for years and can opt out of the last year at $7.4 million on his Sacramento contract. However, with the Kings unlikely to do a sign-and-trade unless they get Bryant, Bynum or Gasol, Artest could only get the Lakers’ $5.4 million veteran’s exception.
Of course, with Artest and Jackson, anything’s possible from Ron-Ron in purple and gold to a peaceful summer in Lakerdom.
Stop me before I suspend again.
Where to start?
For years, the West Finals used to be the NBA Finals. Now, the East is rising and the way things are going, they may not even hold the West Finals.
Pretend you’re Mark Cuban.
