Not that Gilbert Arenas wasn’t riding for something like this as long as he has been riding, but let’s face it, as a Menace 2 Society, he’s the most overrated danger since Killer Bees and Y2K.
Only Gilbert could have created something like this out of thin air, blowing a joke up into the second biggest suspension in NBA history at a cost of $9.9 million.
I’ve got a great idea! If Javaris Crittenton is upset at me, I’ll put my guns in his cubicle and tell him to pick one, like we’re going to fight a duel!
Everything will be cool as soon as I tell them what really happened, like always.
In the meantime, I’ll pretend to shoot you guys and you all fall over like you’re dead!
That was they did in pre-game introductions at Philadelphia with Gilbert pretending to shoot his laughing teammates.
Antawn Jamison, the team grownup, was right in the middle, laughing his head off, although Wizard management somehow overlooked him it fined all the young guys.
For his piece de resistance– that’s French for “something only Gilbert Arenas would do” - he then walked into David Stern’s office and informed the commish he expected to be suspended for the season, and wouldn’t challenge it!
Here’s a little advice, Gilbert: Next time, why don’t we do the apology first and the jokes later?
Nevertheless, as Gilbert, who’s good at counting his blessings, at least if there aren’t too many, knows, it’s hardly a tragedy, with $80 million more coming on that contract that nice Mr. Abe Pollin gave him…
Or is it?
Wizard president Ernie Grunfeld has made it clear the team is still considering trying to void the contract.
The Pollin family, which is running things until summer, now makes constant reference to “the legacy of Abe Pollin,” which in this case means putting as much distance as possible between Abe and this incident, taking down all Gilbert’s pictures, erasing him from highlight reels, as if he was never there.
Of course, Abe, the ultimate nice-guy owner, gave Gilbert his silly $111 million contract two summers ago… with Gilbert having just sat out a season recovering from knee surgery… and about to sit out another season.
With Golden State in the picture, Abe actually offered Gilbert the $120 million max. In appreciation, Gilbert took less so they could get more players.
I don’t want to say they deserved each other, but they were a natural.
Wacky as Gilbert is, he’s a fun guy and a major talent/unbroken stallion, whose personality and charitable efforts made him the biggest star in town and a becoming face of the franchise.
Abe was always into doing the right thing, but when that conflicted with taking care of his own, he went with the loyalty. Wes Unseld, a great player and a better person, said Abe kept him years longer than he should have as a GM in the vain hope of getting it right, together.
It was a good-guy organization, if an uptight one after the Michael Jordan era when the p.r. people went bananas, keeping the press out of MJ’s path.
Grunfeld is a prince. His down-home No. 2 guy, Tommy Sheppard, once PR guy for the Nuggets, is among the most personable and popular people in the league.
Now, however, they’re doing the bidding of the Pollin family, which wants to protect their patriarch, perhaps with input from incoming owner Ted Leonsis, who’d love to take over with a clean slate and $20 million less in salary per annum.
Using this incident to dump this contract is naked opportunism that a) sucks, and is b) dumb, since it’s not likely to fly anyway.
An attempt to void the contract would entail a long, adversarial, further-distracting fight before an arbitrator… which the team would likely lose, anyway.
Arbitrators have hardly backed away from challenging the NBA and its teams, even in cases as outrageous as Latrell Sprewell’s physical assault on Coach PJ Carlesimo.
After the Warriors voided Spree’s contract, arbitrator John Feerick, the dean of the Fordham Law School, not only reinstated the contract but shortened Stern’s year-long suspension to the balance of that 1997-98 season.
Nor do the few precedents from similar cases look helpful.
In the fall of 2006, Stephen Jackson, then in Indiana, pleaded guilty to felony recklessness for firing his gun in the air to break up a fight outside a strip club… which also violated his probation for his part in the 2004 Auburn Hills Riot.
The NBA suspended Jackson seven games.
Arenas’ guns were unlicensed in the District of Columbia, as required by local law, but unloaded. SebastianTelfair once got a three-game suspension for bringing a loaded handgun on the Trail Blazers’ plane.
Washington insiders have predicted the team would offer to settle Gilbert’s deal. Luckily, the Wizards aren’t dealing with someone like Sprewell, who would have fought it to the Supreme Court before forgoing a penny.
Gilbert, who put his head on the chopping block for Stern, might take 50 cents on the dollar, or less.
This story doesn’t have any heroes, or martyrs, and would have been a lot smaller story in the first place without wild press reports.
Aside from that, it’s been a lot of fun. Excuse me, I have to go gag now.
If you want to know who leads this season’s Rookie of the Year race, and who’s likely to stay ahead, the short answer is Sacramento’s Tyreke Evans.
If you want to know the significance, that’s another matter entirely and may not reveal itself for years.
Of course, Blake Griffin, who’s probably still the best bet to head this class up, hasn’t even taken off his warmups.
And, of the players we’ve seen, who’s to say the most impressive this season will have the most impact in the years to come?
Who’s to say one of them won’t be Hasheem Thabeet, the No. 2 pick by Memphis and now a semi-embarrassment to the Grizzlies, who took him ahead of Evans, Jonny Flynn, Stephen Curry and Brandon Jennings?
Take a look at the last 10 All-Rookie teams. Among the players who weren’t first team are:
Danny Granger, beaten out by Charlie Villanueva.
Carlos Boozer, beaten out by Drew Gooden.
Andrew Bynum, who didn’t get a single vote while Nenad Krstic made the second team.
Joakim Noah, beaten out for second team by Jamario Moon.
Chris Kaman, beaten out for second team by Udonis Haslem.
Mike Conley, beaten out for second team by teammate Juan Carlos Navarro.
Leandro Barbosa, beaten out for second team by TJ Ford.
So it’s going to take longer than their rookie year to see who’s whom.
Significant or not, the rookie race has become a feature attraction on the big web sites that cover the NBA – which are almost the one media outlets covering the league.
In an age where great NBA writers like Sam Smith are allowed to take buyouts and wind up taking their columns to Bulls.com, we’re down to six NBA writers working for newspapers: Peter Vecsey of the New York Post, Mike Monroe of the San Antonio Express-News, Mitch Lawrence of the New York Daily News, Michael Lee of the Washington Post, Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, and me at the Los Angeles Times.
With unlimited space, big sites like ESPN.com and Yahoo! have a different mission: capturing “eyeballs”– market share – in an era in which there’s still something called a “first-mover advantage,” even if ESPN moved first years ago, surging to the fore.
As opposed to the specialized sites like HoopsHype, RealGM, DraftExpress or 82games, the big sites are like a combination of reportage, however feverish, as on “SportsCenter,” and discussion, however contrived, on “ESPN2.”
To fill up the unlimited space, stay topical enough to lure readers, there’s ceasless chatter about things that won’t be decided for years.
Who’s better, Kobe or LeBron?
Hey, we still don’t know how Kobe Bryant measure up to Michael Jordan, and won’t until Kobe’s done and we count up the titles.
Welcome to the Internet, the unending barrom argument.
Rookies have a prime position as a peculiar and interesting class and get a major promotional boost from the league, which runs rookie stats.
Of course, it’s not unusual for rookies to look like duds, like Memphis’ Hasheem Thabeet, now averaging 2.8 points and 3.2 rebounds, and to go on from there.
Reading ESPN’s David Thorpe for the first 10 weeks of Thabeet’s career it’s amazing he still has a career:
Nov. 26– “It’s hard to find something the Grizzlies can be happy about here. Thabeet has done so little for them on the court. But I watched him closely the other night and found something I’m sure they like: his attitude. And that’s no small thing. Getting Thabeet’s motor to run hot is an enormous challenge.”
Well, that’s something, at least, he has a motor!
Dec. 9– “Thabeet can improve in every area because he seems coachable. However, he is missing one ingredient that has me concerned about his upside: a motor that runs hot. Few players who lack what I call a ‘heartbeat’ develop that drive to dominate later in their careers.”
Oh, no, his heart stopped! That can’t be good, but, wait!
Dec. 16– “After looking D-League-bound to start the season, Thabeet has played his way into the surging Grizzlies’ rotation. In other words, he’s ahead of schedule. He’s fourth in blocks per 48 minutes among all NBA players, and his defensive- rebound rate ranks second to DeJuan Blair among all rookies.”
His heart has started beating again?
With apologies to Thorpe for cherry-picking his stuff, the problem isn’t his analysis – it’s the gig which calls on him to make an informed judgment weekly.
If Thorpe did it the way NBA people do, or at least smart NBA people, he’d qualify everything with “It’s really early,” defer judgments – and it would read like crap.
As for the professionals themselves, there’s always a certain percentage of GMs and scouts trying to cover their rear ends, whose mantra is “We want someone who’s ready to contribute now.”
Of course, the test for the 2009 draft isn’t the 2010 Rookie of the Year Award, but next decades’s All-Star teams.
If you take a close look, as Thorpe has noted in recent reports, you’ll see him 18 in the league in rebounds per 48 minute, ahead of players like Al Horford, Gerald Wallace and Marc Gasol.
You’ll also see him No. 1 in blocks per 48 minutes at 5.5, ahead of everybody.
(Not that per-minute production is all the “Moneyball” stat guys think it is. If he only averages 12 minutes, that’s the most important stat. Trust me on this, mathematicians, if he was better, he’d play more.)
What the numbers do show is that Thabeet is keeping up with the play going on around him. He’s not way behind as he was in his first two seasons at UConn, and last summer in Las Vegas.
If you haven’t heard, he’s 7-3 and athletic, too. Even if he’s never much on offense, taking 10 rebounds and blocking two shots a game would make him someone a fifth grader could design a defense around.
Not that Thabeet will be any factor in the rookie race. As it stands today, here’s how I see it:
Tyreke Evans – Looks like a bigger Dwyane Wade. His numbers this month, 22-5-5, are better than the 20-5-6 LeBron put up as a rookie.
In other words, meet your Rookie of the Year!
Jonny Flynn – He’s so good, the Kings actually thought about taking him over Evans and starting to show it with Kevin Love back and less and less triangle offense, which minimizes what he does.
Brandon Jennings – Of course, he isn’t as good as he was in that incredible 55-point game but he’s very good. Passing on him was an incredible screwup for the Knicks, who needed a point guard and weren’t that high on Jordan Hill, whom they took instead.
Stephen Curry – Slight as he was, he looked like he’d be very good, if not great, and still does.
Blake Griffin – That name sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
With his debut now pushed back to mid-January, it’s hard for people on the rookie beat to keep insisting he’s the best without any data to back them up, as in Thorpe’s Dec. 9 update:
“Based on what I saw from Griffin in college and summer league, I’m guessing he would be in the top four in terms of upside if he were healthy.”
Based on what I saw in college and preseason, if they did this draft over, Griffin would still go No. 1.
As for the rookie race, I’d expect him to average 12-17 points this season, get 8-10 rebounds, shoot 50 percent or so… and that won’t get it.
So, forget about the T Mobile Trophy, Blake. Happily in the NBA, life goes on with or without it.
Gee, who could have imagined Chris Paul’s world going so wrong?
Oh yeah, anyone who remembers the Charlotte Hornets’ world going so wrong.
For four years, Paul has been like a combination of Steve Nash and Will Smith, an NBA superstar with charisma bubbling out of him, capable of taking a rag-tag team with one other scorer (David West), one limited but willing big man (Tyson Chandler) and few shooters (Peja Stojakovic when healthy, RasualButler every other game or so, Mo Peterson when he could hit the broad side of a barn) within a game of first place in the West.
Paul did that two seasons ago at 22 , and didn’t even win the MVP. It went to Kobe Bryant, whose team won the West, with everyone aware CP3 had decades to win so many MVPS, he wouldn’t be able to see his fireplace.
Paul did a lot more than that, his smile and his play rescuing the NBA from its awkward position post-Katrina, with Hornets owner George Shinn aching to make his 2005 flight to Oklahoma City permanent.
Paul, who played his rookie season in Oklahoma, was so great, the Hornets, who had mattered little in New Orleans pre-flood, were guaranteed an audience when they returned in 2007.
That was the storied season that Paul led the Hornets to 56 wins in a stretch duel with the Lakers. It came down to their game in Staples the last weekend where the Hornets trailed by 30, then cut it all the way to one point in the fourth quarter before losing.
And now, this?
Gee, who’d have imagined Paul couldn’t single-handedly keep his little team up there if it didn’t not only didn’t get him help, it started dumping salary instead?
Oh yeah, anyone who gave it one second’s thought.
That was what started happening last season. In February, the Hornets traded Tyson Chandler, who was struggling with injuries, to Oklahoma City for Chris Wilcox and Joe Smith, or in other words, who?
The deal was done to dump Chandler’s $11.9 million salary. Coach Byron Scott wasn’t even consulted and fumed privately.
He wound up getting Chandler back when the Thunder doctors discovered an injury Tyson wasn’t even being treated for. That was a coverup to hide the real story: Thunder owner Clay Bennett pulled the plug, dismaying his basketball people.
Chandler finally went to Charlotte for Emeka Okafor, who makes as much and has a longer contract, so you can’t say the Hornets have given up.
Nevertheless, even with more acquisitions - Darius Songaila, Bobby Brown, Ike Diogu, rookie DarrenCollison - you wouldn’t say they’ve turned the corner just yet.
The preseason consensus still had the Hornets in the playoffs. It hasn’t looked that way over the course of the regular season, all one week of it.
In the opener in San Antonio, they trailed by 25 before losing by 17. In the home opener, they had to come from behind in the last 1:12 to keep the Kings from upsetting them.
In the third game, they were tied in the fourth quarter in Boston before losing by 10. In the fifth, they fell to the 0-4 Knicks in New York.
Paul had to be restrained from going to see Rondo and discussing it personally.
In New York, Paul got only a polite reception with the World Series ongoing. Subsequent visits may start to resemble the pageants they hold when LeBron James, whom the Knicks dream of signing this summer, arrives.
Paul has an opt-out in 2012, but the Hornets aren’t headed upward, as the Cavaliers have been since James arrived, and owner George Shinn doesn’t always wait to see the whites of his opponents’ eyes.
Shinn is the brainiac who wrecked a paradise in Charlotte, where they built him the largest arena in the NBA for his expansion team and packed it for years, setting annual attendance records.
With the team descending after a rocket-rise (sound familiar?) negotiations with civic leaders for a new downtown arena got so adversarial, David Stern, himself, couldn’t repair the breach. With no good option - Shinn was checking out towns like Newport News, Va. - he set sailed for the market that was the least bad, New Orleans.
After their near-miraculous 2007-08 season, the Hornets are now on a Reality Asserting Itself downtick. Byron Scott, 2008 Coach of the Year, is on the last year of his contract with no extension forthcoming, meaning he’s been set up to take whatever fall needs taking.
Paul doesn’t second-guess management, but in New York he delivered a coded message: “Let me say this: I want to win. I … want … to… win. Whatever it takes me to do, I’m going to find a way.”
If Paul is “frustrated,” the word everyone is using, check back in spring if they drop another seven games in the standings, as in last season’s No. 7 finish.
At that point, the heat would be on Shinn to fix it or face losing his star, as it was on the Lakers’ Jerry Buss with Kobe Bryant in the summer of 2007.
Buss almost buckled in that one and he has a lot more going in terms of market, resources, organization and moxie than Shinn, who could bow before the obvious and bail, once again.
It’s not likely this season. CP3 is with the program, they haven’t taken the fall yet and the city wouldn’t stand for a trade.
Next season is a long way off so we’ll defer the long-range predictions/guessing. Nevertheless, the tide is going out, not coming in.
It was a great summer for the NBA, with all the controversies and scandals involving other sports. Even if David Stern can’t come out and say it, thanks, Manny Ramirez, Brett Favre and Plaxico Burress.
Of course, peace is a transitory state in any league these days, and the NBA isn’t just any league.
The era of harmony just ended officially, with Stern locking out the people he has always praised for upholding the integrity of the game.
Unfortunately, there are priorities. The league’s negotiations with its referees are a small, but significant part of a bigger picture, involving the ongoing talks to renegotiate the deal with the players.
In other words, who needs integrity, at least for the first month of the season?
(Those of you who think the NBA has no integrity to uphold, which includes so many players, coaches and fans, should stop reading here. If I thought the NBA was fixed, I’d ask to cover something that wasn’t. At least, coaches and players are well paid for the screwing they insist they get but any fan who thinks it’s bogus and still watches will have to supply his own reason for wasting his time.)
To cut to the chase, there are only two possibilities:
1. Stern locks out refs, starts season with replacement officials, or scabs, puts up with the sturm und drang from even-more-horrified players, coaches and fans as long as he can, and makes a deal.
I’d say that would be Thanksgiving, at the latest.
2. The refs figure out they’re in a world of trouble, make the best deal they can, and start the season.
Since the two sides are reportedly less than $1 million part for the overall package – total – it will take a lot of bad will in the meantime to keep them from making a deal. Stern has spent the last three seasons, throwing his chunky body in front of the refs to protect them from all the slanders in the wake of the Tim Donaghy scandal.
As if that matters now. This involves bucks, and not just the tip money the refs take home, relative to the enormous NBA revenues. In a bad coincidence, the refs’ contract has run out 16 months before the NBA’s option to terminate its deal with the players… in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression… with league revenues projected to dive and Stern seeking major givebacks.
With Stern and Players Assoaciation Director Billy Hunter already talking about a new deal, the commissioner isn’t about to cut his refs a break in the meantime.
Hard-nosed as he is, Stern is actually known for maintaining labor peace in a turbulent era, with only one stoppage while the NFL, baseball and the NHL are in double figures, if you add them all up.
Of course, before signing the peace treaty, Stern is more like Jimmy Breslin’s characterization of President Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles:
“Smile now. Later send in the B-52s.”
The league has reportedly asked the refs to take $3.2 million in cuts. The refs’ new boss, Lamell McMorris, has reportedly offered to take $2.5 million in cuts.
That’s not enough of a difference to quarrel about, but watch them do it anyway, right up to the start of the season.
Stern, in a more conciliatory mood before talks with the players in the ‘90s, labeled himself “Easy Dave,” but he hasn’t said anything like that lately.
This is Stern in his Judge Dredd incarnation, welcoming McMorris, who’s in his first negotiation with Little Big Man to the NBA.
As hard a time as this is for Morris, his officials, at least, know they have to give up something. In Hunter’s first negotiation in 1999, Stern locked the players out for half the season and came close to shutting the whole circus down.
Personally, if I was a referee – even to a sportswriter in today’s challenging environment, it doesn’t look inviting – I’d take the short money and try to get a short-term deal, say, three years. By then, the economy may be better, and the players will have a new contract (presumably).
With entry-level refs getting almost $150,000, we’re not talking about blue-collar guys trying to feed their families. Actually, the refs are as blue-collar mentally as cops, performing a task even more thankless. In terms of relative contribution and the talent and the toughness needed to do the job, refs are the game’s most underpaid people, relative to owners, players, coaches, and top league administrators.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the year the refs are going to redress that injustice. In the only silver lining available, they’re about to become even more underrated than they already were.
Actually, Kurt Rambis, who got four rings as a Laker player wearing horn-rim glasses with “Rambis Youth” fans, and three more as an assistant coach, wasn’t exiled to Minnesota, he took over the Timberwolves of his own free will.
He’s not out of his mind, either. Of course, for a beach guy with a year-round tan, who spent most of his career in an organization with limitless resources, it won’t be exactly the same.
Still, Rambis wanted to coach again, after bombing—or being bombed—in his 37-game debut in the lockout-shortened 1999 season, although that can be summed up in two words: Dennis Rodman.
If Rambis never had a chance—Dennis was far beyond wanting to play, or sobriety, for that matter—it took 10 years for Kurt to get another chance.
All the while, Jerry West, who always had a keen eye for young coaches, has been recommending Rambis all over. Phil Jackson, who arrived leery of Kurt, who scouted for a year after being fired before joining Phil’s staff, became a big supporter. By the end, Kurt was Phil’s top lieutenant.
Rambis was also as Laker Family as Laker Family got with his wife, Linda, who works for the team, best friends with Jeannie Buss. Nevertheless, the cold reality was that Kurt wasn’t ever likely to succeed Jackson.
Kobe Bryant’s idea of Rambis as a head coach was formed in 1999. Actually, Rambis foundered trying to heal the breach between Kobe and the other players, which was so deep, Kurt fell in. In one meeting, Rambis urged the other players to consider Kobe’s age. Point guard Derek Harper got up and said that was crazy, it was Kobe who had to adjust to them. Harper lost his starting job, the rift stayed where it was, and wound up consuming them all.
If Bryant is down on Rambis, or merely OK with him, Kobe has others he’s passionate about: Hornet Coach Byron Scott, Laker assistant Brian Shaw… or my bet–Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, whom he reveres from their Olympic experience.
Actually, Rambis’ first chance at a coaching job this spring came from Sacramento, if you want to call it that. The Kings, who are almost paying ex-coaches enough to hire Phil Jackson at $11 mill per, offered Rambis two years at $1.5 million, their way of offering him a blindfold, a cigarette and a 401K before turning him over to the firing squad of fate.
In Minnesota, Rambis got four years and $8 million. Even if things don’t work out, he’ll last long enough to get a chance with a lot bigger 401K.
The hiring went over well in the Twin Cities, which is saying something for a market that snickered at the Timberwolves when they were making the playoffs annually but getting knocked out in the first round in their first six post-seasons.
In those days, when they had Kevin Garnett, Flip Saunders, Chauncey Billups, et al., their actual failing was being in the West, averaging 49.5 wins in the last four.
At 0-5, they finally crashed the top four to earn home-court advantage for the first time… and found themselves facing a Shaq-Kobe Laker team that had sandbagged its way to No. 5, and knocked the Woofies out in the first round again.
Not making the playoffs went over worse, as did trading KG, letting Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell move on, firing Flip, and their great 2006 draft-day deal, Brandon Roy for Randy Foye. These days, the Timberwolves are doing well when the community even notices they’ve done something.
The Wolves have actually struck off in a bold, new direction, hiring a dynamic, whip-smart Pres. David Kahn, who fired the Old Tradition Personified, Kevin McHale.
(I should note that David is one of my oldest friends and has been telling me how smart he is for decades, starting when he interned at the Los Angeles Times. Of course, if I claim to be his mentor, I have to account for failing to teach him how many point guards to draft in the same lottery.)
It’s fashionable, or mandatory, to sneer at McHale, who’s actually one of the coolest people in the NBA, even if he’s a little on the stubborn side (the Lakers offered him Lamar Odom and Andrew Bynum for KG, instead of Al Jefferson and all those Celtics who are no longer there.)
What is forgotten is what McHale did for the laughingstock franchise he took over with Christian Laettner and J.R. Rider, whom Kevin cleaned out en route to making the Timberwolves respectable, even if that was as far as they got in the West.
Unfortunately, owner, Glen Taylor, an approachable guy with deep pockets, was too loyal, if anything, giving McHale a blank check. With Kevin still in that great player’s mode of not wanting to explain himself, and with no one telling him he had to, they had the worst of both worlds, a mom and pop store that was not only low-powered but arrogant, freezing out the local press from the most mundane information.
Not that they didn’t come off well, but Kahn could have fired McHale, resigned the next day, and gone into the Twin Cities Hall of Fame.
David stuck around long enough to choose Johhny Flynn and Ricky Rubio, both point guards, at Nos. 5 and 6. Let’s just say it’s a good thing for all concerned Stephen A. Smith was no longer at ESPN for that one or he might have died of apoplexy on the set.
Kahn is now trying to coax Joventut Badalona to lower that $8 million buyout on Rubio’s contract, with no success so far.
Being a friend, I’m rooting for Rubio to stay where he is. With the excitement that grew around him, the mystique around Ricky will only grow by next spring, when they may be able to trade him for a top pick in a better draft, which could include big men like Ed Davis and Cole Aldrich.
Rambis’ arrival was almost as popular as McHale’s departure. The Minneapolis Star’s hard-nosed Pat Reusse called it “the most impressive coaching hire in the team’s two decades” noting Kurt is their first who could have been hired somewhere else.
It’s not that there’s nothing to build around… especially if you like power forwards. They have one established star, Al Jefferson, and one intriguing one, Kevin Love. At point guard Flynn, a warrior type with tremendous athleticism and leadership coming out of his ears, looked great in Las Vegas and then there’s Rubio/whoever they get for him.
Of course, if they win 30 games, Rambis will get coach of the year votes.
On the positive side, no matter how peculiar David’s insights, he won’t try to bring back Dennis Rodman. I don’t think.
You shouldn’t let the world see who you really are, if you don’t know who you really are.
It’s not that NBA stars always yearned for a way to communicate directly with their fans without having to go through the media. Actually, for decades they yearned for the media to come around so they could tell the difference between their games and those of the local high schools.
In those days with annual salaries in four figures, most players had off-season jobs, and everyone was a lot more lucid. But enough of NBA pre-history.
These days, with eight-figure salaries, the media has turned into a monster for NBA stars–and what player isn’t a star in his own mind?—or at least a monumental pain in the ass, since it still has the capacity to submit the players’ illusions to real-world testing.
Hence, the desire to avoid the media filter, now realized in the exploding potential for social networking, as just demonstrated anew by Stephon Marbury, that pioneer in expanding the boundaries of Narcissism.
According to NBA Musings, a blog for Celtic fans (I stood as much as I could, a shot of Steph primping in the mirror in his bathroom), he “stretched for at least an hour with R&B music blaring in the background” and then tweeted, “I’m about to shi! Shave and bath so we can get started with the day.”
It doesn’t get any better, especially if you’ve followed Steph’s car wreck of a career and have heard and seen all the dumb things he has said and done.
I guess the big deal is, you look on your hand-held and there’s an alert, informing you Stephon Marbury is personally inviting you, JoeFan@twitter, to sit in on his live telethon, in which you and he can chat in real time!
Personally, I would advise holding out until someone who has actually scored a point or two in the NBA lately holds his telethon, unless you’re really, really bored. I know, I have days like that all the time, but I’d prefer suicide to 24 Hours of Steph.
For those interested in Steph’s career, as opposed to his obsession with himself, he has played 47 games in two seasons, not because he was hurt but because he was suspended.
Two seasons ago, then-Knick Coach Isiah Thomas suspended him for jumping the team after his teammates voted that he should be benched.
Marbury then sat out the first 59 games last season, rejecting a $17 million buyout of the $21 million left on his deal until the club bumped it to $19 million.
Signing with the Celtics, who had great hopes for him in a limited role, backing up Rajon Rondo, Steph then fell on his face, averaging 3.8 points and shooting 34 percent.
Offered a $1.3 million deal for this season, presumably on the basis that nobody could be as bad as he looked, Steph then turned it down, and is still seeking a better offer.
Not that a segment of the mainstream press can’t be interested in anything any celebrity does, however clueless. The New York Post had its Knick beat writer spend all last season ghost-writing Steph’s account of events, giving readers a choice of alternate realities, everyone else’s or Marbury’s.
Actually, the problem with access to the public is the fact that it bypasses the media, which actually protects players when it can, and shows the player as he really is.
On draft day, Brandon Jennings, who’s new and just starting up his entourage, compounded his error in not showing up by telling all to a “friend”—rapper Joe Budden—who posted the conversation on Youtube.
It was quickly taken down, but too late. I just googled “Budden” and “Jennings” and got 72,800 results.
“This is what happened, right?” Jennings told Budden and, subsequently, the world.
“My agent is like ‘Well, we ain’t hear nothing. We ain’t have no guarantee.’ So we makin’ phone calls and (expletive) and (expletive) is saying like, ‘The workouts is great and everything and he’s the best point guard but we don’t know yet, we just don’t know….’
“I came out there and made my appearance (expletive) and I had the best appearance out of all them (expletives). And I was the best dressed, they said, by the way. I was the best dressed.”
Jennings also trashed the Knicks who “skipped out on me,” for taking Jordan Hill at No. 9, leaving Milwaukee to take him at No. 10, sending him to the tundra instead of Gotham.
Not that I’d attach too much importance to this, since Jennings isn’t much dizzier than anyone else his age in the draft. But that’s still pretty dizzy.
Then, there was Charlie Villanueva, who should own a piece of Twitter by now for publicizing the web site by tweeting at halftime of a game last spring. (To show how fast things move, four months ago you had to explain what tweeting was. Now anyone who doesn’t know doesn’t care.)
If you didn’t know much about Villanueva before, he was the player at the 2003 Nike camp who complained that LeBron James was getting all the publicity. After two merely OK years at UConn, Toronto took him with an ill-advised No. 7 pick, and traded him a year later to Milwaukee. Three years later, the Bucks let him leave without an offer, even after he averaged 17 points after the All-Star break last season.
Charlie has been tweeting all summer about the glorious future awating the Pistons, who just gave him a five-year $35 million deal.
We’ll see how that turns out. Personally, if I was a GM these days, I’d have a Twitter Exclusion. Anyone who tweets during games is excluded.
In the real world, the day Steph awoke at 9 a.m. to begin his Ustream show, Kobe Bryant probably awoke at the same time, even if it was 6 a.m. in California, and lifted weights.
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.
This farce has run long enough, and then some.
If you want to know who leads this season’s Rookie of the Year race, and who’s likely to stay ahead, the short answer is Sacramento’s Tyreke Evans.
Gee, who could have imagined Chris Paul’s world going so wrong?
What did they do with the beach, Toto?
You shouldn’t let the world see who you really are, if you don’t know who you really are.
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.