HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Sam Smith

Delonte West didn’t say it when he returned to the Cleveland Cavaliers last week after a leave of absence to treat the effects of depression and mood swings.

But he, like Vin Baker and Kendall Gill and Dennis Rodman and Brian Williams and Ricky Berry and Chamique Holdsclaw and Jason Caffey and many more-and many now still reluctant to come out of their dark closet-believe they know what people are thinking, really, what most of their coaches and teammates are thinking, if they acknowledge suffering from depression.

“You’re making $4 million and you are professional athlete. It’s the American dream. And, oh, by the way, the country is going into the crapper and people are losing their jobs all over the place and they’re losing their homes and their retirement money and they can’t get health insurance. And you’re depressed! I’d gladly be depressed for $4 million a year. Gimme a break!”

A break is what they want, and what they need, but what is so difficult to get from the doubting glances, the stigma that still goes with it in society in general. And especially the macho world of professional sports. The general notion is athletes get compensated so well and everyone would want the jobs they have, so they have to put up with the booing and pressure and demands and public critiques. C’mon, it’s $5 million or $10 million. Or more. Per year!

Though I’ve often sat courtside with fellow reporters and asked them to work with maybe 20,000 people behind them yelling, “Verb, verb, verb you idiot!”

But it’s way more than that.

There are all sorts of theories about mental illness in athletes that include the stress to perform they are under along with the scrutiny that goes back to high school days, the vagabond lifestyle of living on the road or being traded that removes the solid home foundation, childhood trauma, like Chicago prep basketball player Leon Smith who was a ward of the state and lived on the streets at times, and head injuries from playing active sports.

But it’s not so easily identified.

Those dark moods, feelings of helplessness, inability to perform are also tied up in brain and chemical reactions in the body that don’t come up on your handy MRI.

A few years ago John Amaechi, who played for the Orlando Magic and Utah Jazz, announced he was gay in a book that described what he said were the prejudices against him by fellow players and coaches because of being gay in the macho world of professional athletics. I have no doubt there were some incidents. But I’d suggest “coming out” as a depressed man or woman in pro sports is as difficult or more so because there doesn’t appear to be any behavioral difference. Sometimes someone seems just to be acting like a jerk.

You know what, the heck with him!

Gill experienced that when he was with the Seattle Supersonics. And here is a really, really tough guy and true gentleman. After Gill’s NBA career ended, he became a professional boxer. He is a martial arts expert. There is rarely a room he’s been in during his life in which he wasn’t the toughest guy, if also often the most gentle.

But he was sleepless in Seattle.

He took a five-day leave from the team after suffering bouts of insomnia and overwhelming anger as he says his coach continued to mock and bertate him for his dark, moody behavior.

”Just when I thought I’d gotten out from that cloud of being labeled the guy who wasn’t happy, George (Karl) would push me right back,” Gill said after being traded to New Jersey. “Have you seen ‘Godfather III’? Al Pacino had paid all of his business partners off, then right after that he says, ‘Just when I think I’m out, they pull me right back in.’ ”

West talked about similar feelings on his return last week, inexplicable anger toward a referee in a team scrimmage and self destructive behavior. Like many athletes with similar issues, West told Cleveland reporters the playing was the easy part.

“You kind of hide behind the personality that’s created by the fans or the media,” he said. “But we’re still people, too. Besides the fame and the finances, you still have to deal with emotional and family situations on a daily basis just like everybody else. In the gym, I’ve always found peace.”

Ever hear the old cliché about money can’t buy happiness.

It probably was said by the first celebrity to suffer from depression.

The web site realmentalhealth.com lists these famous people among those supposedly known to have suffered from depression: Abraham Lincoln, Audrey Hepburn, Boris Yeltsin, Brittany Spears (yes, we assumed), Buzz Aldrin, Charles Darwin, Dick Cavett, Edgar Allen Poe, Ernest Hemingway, Halle Berry, Harrison Ford, Jim Carrey, John Denver, Isaac Newton, Marie Osmond, Mark Twain, Mike Wallace, Rod Steiger, Sheryl Crow, Tennessee Williams, Winston Churchill and Woody Allen.

Though it’s probably more difficult in sports to admit it and have it understood.

Such was the Super Bowl mystery a few years back when Barret Robbins of the Oakland Raiders took off on the day of the Super Bowl and later was openly condemned by some teammates. The gregarious football analyst and former star quarterback, Terry Bradshaw, has talked openly about his inability to cope away from the game unt il taking medication for depression. Miami running back Ricky Williams left the game and was treated for a social anxiety disorder.

The problem athletes often have is peers cannot accept that failure to cope. Sort of when the going gets tough the tough get going kind of thinking. C’mon, man, snap out of it and play, they’ll hear, or expect to hear.

So they usually don’t say much.

Often there is a burial in harmful substances, like drugs or alcohol.

Baker was a four-time All Star with the Milwaukee Bucks and Seattle Supersonics and was widely known around the NBA to have a drinking problem. Coaches, teammates and management blamed him and his staggering career when the alcohol abuse continued. At points, Baker even tried to say he suffered from depression and alcoholism wasn’t the biggest problem. Eventually, he received treatment. But his peers could identify and understand alcoholism better than depression. They could see a drunk guy. No one could see a brain out of control.

Often we dismiss it as merely erratic behavior or a “goofy” guy, like Ron Artest or Rodman.

Stop coddling them, sympathesizers often are told.

But it’s an illness that shouldn’t be seen as weakness of character or treated like a cold that will eventually go away, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. People who suffer from depression cannot merely pull themselves together and get better without treatment.

There was Berry, a promising forward for the Sacramento Kings, who committed suicide at 25, Brian Williams, later known as Bison Dele, who walked away from a lucrative contract at 30 and later was believed to have been murdered by his brother, who then committed suicide and Bill Robinzine, who played mostly for the old Kansas City/Omaha Kings and committed suicide.

I asked an NBA coach about this the other day and he didn’t have any good answers.

“More and more players are suffering from depression,” he said. “They just don’t get treatment. Then they get down and start (blaming).”

I’m not sure I have any good answers, either. We like to belittle and make fun of erratic or unproductive behavior in sports. It’s not always depression. Some of them are jerks and slackers. But some are hurting, and I wish there were an MRI for that.

Good luck, Delonte. You’ve dealt with the hardest part.

Bob Whitsitt, now a sports and business consultant, was one of the most successful team sports officials in the 1990’s, executive of the year in the NBA and general manager of NBA and NFL teams. He recalls a day talking to various members of his team and staff about the U.S. fighting a war again.

Whitsitt received several quizzical looks.

“Our country is at war and I’ve got guys who didn’t even know literally what I was talking about,” recalled Whitsitt in an interview last week. “These guys are not stupid people. But they just expect the paycheck to just show up. Sometimes you need to step back and appreciate what a great deal you have here.

“Guys think owners have unlimited pockets and the money is everywhere. Well, c’mon,” adds Whitsitt. “These are going to be interesting times.”

That’s because the economic crisis that is involving Wall Street and Main Street may end up in court as well, namely the 94 by 50 one that NBA players have come to assume is immune from the hardships that face the rest of the world.

“Let’s say this coming February or March a whole lot of NBA offices are going to be hoping the economy really improved,” says Rick Welts, chief operating officer for the Phoenix Suns. “Because next February or March is when teams expect commitments for the following season.

“We’re not there yet,” added Welts, “but this all, obviously, impacts the money available in player salaries.”

No one is about to feel sorry for an NBA All-Star who has to “settle” for $8 million per season.

But the forces are beginning to form in the general economy that could lead to NBA salaries and revenues rolling back along with the rest of the economy.

About time, you say.

It would be interesting to see, and it’s not far fetched for perhaps the first time in the NBA in the last 25 years.

Let’s be clear here. No great depression is imminent for the NBA and its players and teams because finances for the 2008-09 season are pretty much assured.

If the federal “bailout” deal is a success, it should be business as usual. But that remains to be seen for the entire nation.

NBA finances are fairly simple.

There is a national media deal which all teams share, and then there is local ticket sales, broadcasting and sponsorships, the latter which effectively spell the difference between economic success and failure.

Commitments for season tickets, broadcast rights and advertising are pretty much locked up in the early spring. And while there were mumblings about housing issues back then, there seemed to be no great panic on the horizon.

So NBA teams are basically in good shape for this season.

But there are signs already.

The Suns remain one of the NBA stars on the business side. NBA sources said their season ticket renewal rate for this season was about 95 percent, one of the best in the league. But league sources say about four percent declined to follow through on their commitment despite putting down hefty deposits.

The Phoenix experience is not unique. Some team officials say it’s been happening all around the NBA and teams, despite having the majority of the commitments remaining solid, have begun to increase the number of partial ticket plans, increase and encourage group sales, ease payment terms on the tickets and divide up suites to sell per game or for partial season.

Sponsors also are starting to back off in some spots with team officials from several teams saying they are seeing fewer commitments from home builders and mortgage companies, for obvious reasons, and the growing fear about the effects of major financial failures, especially in New York.

New York, Chicago and Los Angles, the three largest markets, generally are unaffected by the economy. With poor teams most of the last decade, Chicago and New York have remained among the top daily grossers in the NBA along with the Lakers, who have been more competitive.

Also, it’s generally agreed around the NBA it’s easiest to sell the most expensive tickets, the courtside and lower bowl tickets. Now, some teams are beginning to wonder about that so called given with the pressure that is being generated on CEOs and spending that seems frivolous or wasteful, like sporting events.

That effect should be seen for next season’s renewals even if the economic rescue plan is successful.

All of this also is likely to lead to serious questioning of the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, which expires after the 2010-11 season. And even though there is an option clause it’s not likely to be exercised.

That’s because when the last agreement was signed, NBA commissioner David Stern did a disservice to his teams and players’ chief Billy Hunter did a disservice to the majority of his membership. Don’t be surprised if there’s some work stoppage in trying to remedy the issue.

It’s the length of contracts, which has been a huge burden for teams. It’s become evident with a dozen or more players with eight-figure contracts being bought out, released or left to wither on the bench because of lack of production. It was a sensitive issue at the time, and to get a deal, Stern felt the need to agree to five and six-year contracts instead of more reasonable three and four-year deals supported by many within the league. The NHL was out on lockout for the season at the time and Stern didn’t want his league to join in the bad publicity while some owners with dual arenas couldn’t afford both leagues dark.

Now with so many of the top stars, like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, voluntarily seeking shorter, three-year deals, it seems clear that is a long enough time period for a contract and supported by the stars of the game.

It seemed a good deal for the players and an issue its union wouldn’t budge on. But the effect, especially if there is a downturn in revenues from the economic crisis and players’ salaries are adjusted downward, is so much guaranteed money going for buyout players and thus less left for the so called middle class player.

“You want to put those dollars back in the pockets of guys who are producing and not paying guys not to play,” notes Whitsitt. “Giving guys $20 million to go away hurts the product and hurts the team.”

Another issue that is likely to come up again with the economic crisis is the NBA’s continuing slide, like some say with the country, toward a greater division between rich and poor.

Big markets traditionally have been immune to their teams playing poorly. They’ve been able to be profitable anyway. Plus, those big markets have greater revenues from local TV and advertising. So they drive the increases in the salary cap with their bountiful local market revenues.

Now, the economic issues will be putting a greater strain on the typical fan to attend games compared with larger markets that should have a bigger business base to draw from even with some major companies suffering.

Lamented one marketing executive: “The guy is being hit with big gas increases, housing costs. He can’t sell his house. Maybe he can’t buy. He’s worried about his retirement income. We become a luxury pretty fast.”

According to Team Marketing Report, the average NBA ticket last season was almost $50 and almost $300 for a family of four to attend a game. It seems likely fewer individuals and families are going to be able to afford that kind of entertainment.

It usually was said sports and movies were recession proof, though it seems questionable for sports at those prices.

What’s likely to continue is the shift to watching the games on television, especially with more high definition service and national league packages for sale.

It can be something of a financial offset since teams can charge greater advertising rates if TV ratings are higher. But it hardly makes up for the loss at the box office, and figures to hurt the small markets most.

Of course, there are exceptions, and you cannot even buy season tickets in Oklahoma City with the team moving from Seattle. Also, the NBA went a long period with attendance increases with new arenas being built. That trend seems about over now as it’s also going to be increasingly difficult to find financing for a new arena in this credit market. It also figures to affect teams that are for sale as potential new ownership groups are saying it is becoming more difficult now to put togethe r a group and get financing.

“There are only so many Paul Allens,” says Whitsitt, who long worked for the Trail Blazers and NFL Seahawks owner. “They already have teams or don’t want teams. Buying you look for a combination of equity and borrowing and it’s difficult to grind out.

“A lot of guys like to talk and pretend they are experts,” says Whitsitt. “The truth is none of us really know what is going to happen. But logically things don’t look good across the board.”

Three guys show up for their job orientation and who knows what they did, though it seemed to involve drugs and sex. Another guy makes a video apparently demeaning his country and finding enough vile words for an HBO special.

I know I’m excited.

It means our favorite guys are back.

Yes, it’s just about time for the NBA season.

Of course this is an overstatement. But that’s the inescapable burden of the NBA. I’ve been around this league for almost 30 years and believe its people are better than in any sport. No, golf isn’t a sport.

But part of the fun of loving the NBA is our guys do some goofy stuff.

I’m hereafter nominating those goofs for my Reggie Harding memorial award.

My preseason nominations are the Kansas Three, rookies Mario Chalmers and Darrell Arthur from Kansas and Michael Beasley from Kansas State. No, kids, you aren’t in Kansas anymore. And you shouldn’t have brought Dorothy to rookie orientation. Or her sister.

Then there’s Josh Howard, who slammed the national anthem this summer on a video (don’t these guys ever learn, Melo?) as the topping for his drug use admissions last season and excess partying in playoff defeat.

I’m told all Dallas Mavericks players this season when standing next to Howard will have to wear those “I’m with stupid” t-shirts that Kenny’s mom wears in South Park episodes.

And then there’s Ben Gordon, who really is a very good and decent guy, who seems to have turned down enough money to bail out Wall Street while working through an aimless free agency.

Oh yeah, Reggie.

Reg was a troubled young man who was one of the first to be drafted by the NBA without attending college. He was a seven footer from Detroit. He played four decent NBA seasons (twice even averaging a double/double through trouble shortened seasons) and one double/double season in the ABA, and was shot dead on a Detroit street corner in 1972 at age 30.

Reg wasn’t the brightest guy and so the story goes once, wearing a mask, he decided to rob a store in his neighborhood. The owner recognized Reg as there weren’t a lot of seven foot holdup men around.

“Reg,” the man said, “don’t do it.”

Replied Harding: “It ain’t me, man.”

You’d think Ron Artest retired this trophy, but Josh is working hard to wrestle it away.

As for my man, Ben, I weep for him.

Eventually, Gordon will be a rich young man. You’d say he probably is now since he’ll likely sign a one-year qualifying offer for about $6.4 million this season and thereafter become an unrestricted free agent.

And then what?

That’s the rub, and I understand Gordon’s position, much stated to the Bulls.

Ben: “I’m the leading scorer on the team for the last three years. I should be highest paid.”

Bulls: “We like you and believe you are valuable and would like you to remain with the Bulls. But you turned down $10 million a year for five years last year and you and the team had a bad season. So we’ll offer you maybe $9 million or so for six years, again more than $50 million. But you really are a classic sixth man, a great scorer with limited ballhanding and passing skills and you’re, what, six foot tall? We haven’t gotten any trade offers for you (OK, Miami said they were thinking briefly about Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks, but who wants Banks’ contract and Marion’s pout?). Go get an offer somewhere and we’ll make a deal. And, who, after all, is going to give you $10 million or more of saved cap room next summer when everyone is waiting for 2010 and LeBron, Wade and Bosh?”

And so Gordon sits with the rest of us suckers watching our money disappear.

Hey, I should have sold my house last year. But I didn’t. Now I can’t.

It’s timing. It’s life.

Sorry, Ben, the market for six foot shooting guards, no matter how good a guy you are and hard you work, isn’t there.

Take the $9 million or $9.5 million (estimate) and be a very, very, very, very rich man.

OK, not as rich as some of your friends.

But, hey, the guys at Lehman Brothers thought they were rich last week.

I understand well how this works.

It’s about respect, right?

No, it’s about competition.

You don’t become a pro athlete unless you compete at everything. They compete in conversation. So when all us old timers who are trying to find the airline without baggage fees say you are rich whether you make $8 million or $12 million and never can spend it all, anyway, we don’t get it.

It’s the same in your office. A salary of $75,000 might sound great until you find out the sinkhole at the next desk makes $85,000. Then it’s misery.

Especially with athletes.

It really isn’t about the money. Sort of. No one really realizes how good they are until you try to play against them. What gets you to that level is the desire (and we’d love to see it more often when they are there) to compete all the time.

Gordon’s like that. And he’s a worker.

I hate this being him because he is a dedicated guy. I’ve traveled with the Chicago Bulls on and off the last few years and just about every city the Bulls land in Gordon gets off the plane and heads directly to a gym to shoot. There are few guys in the NBA who practice as much, certainly not on their shooting. Every summer, Bulls coaches rave about all the work Gordon has put in.

And then it turns out he’s still six feet tall.

No one on that Bulls team gets as much defensive attention, so it didn’t go so well with Ben Wallace averaging $15 million. Geez, and the guy can’t make a layup.

Gordon asked for $15 million last season and didn’t budge. The Bulls offered $10 million and didn’t budge.

Next!

So this summer Luol Deng signed after he rejected a deal last year close to $60 million for five years. It was announced this time at more than $70 million. But with, according to league sources, perhaps $20 million deferred in the first five seasons, the present value of the contract is believed to be slightly less than Deng was offered last season. The Bulls are believed to have made a similar proportional offer to Gordon, like Deng, slightly less than Gordon could have made last year. But seemingly a lot of money.

Gordon averaged more points than Deng as well and now Larry Hughes is there making about $13 million a season and he’s no Ben Gordon. Where’s the loyalty?

So Gordon remains unsigned.

It seems clear the Bulls will not trade him, and though Gordon this summer talked of having played his last game for the Bulls and never playing for the qualifying offer, he has nowhere else to go.

Were he even to get an overseas offer, he’d still be a Bulls free agent when he returned as you cannot by rule play out your free agency somewhere else. Plus, the European offers have been even less than the qualifying offer and much less than Gordon keeps rejecting here.

So he’ll come in and disrupt the team by, what, shooting all the time?

Duh.

It’s what he does.

Gordon’s not going to hurt the team, and the Bulls know it.

First, he’s not a bad guy, and he would become unrestricted if he signs the one year offer. Not a great time to lay down.

Plus, he always comes in shooting anyway. What’s he going to do to undermine the team? Pass?

So the Bulls will panic because they can’t afford to lose him in free agency and get nothing in return? Right? Hardly.

Admittedly, it’s not a great free agent class next summer, though Carlos Boozer and Hedo Turkoglu could be there. The teams most likely to be $10 million or more under the cap to sign someone unrestricted likely figure to be from among Memphis (not spending money), Oklahoma City (probably not with the big relocation fee due), Portland (got guards), Miami (going for Boozer, we hear), Indiana and maybe Minnesota. So if you are spending, you lock in Ben Gordon and pass on a chance for Wade or Bosh? LeBron is going to New York or New Jersey, as we know.

No. If Gordon wants to go anywhere and get paid he probably would have to come back to the Bulls anyway for a sign-and-trade. Which is why the Bulls don’t seem in any hurry to make a deal.

And with a signed Deng and No. 1 pick Derrick Rose, they need Gordon. Who else is going to score? Gordon has a chance to have a terrific season, and perhaps the team improves as a result.

The Bulls have made it clear they aren’t going to make a bad deal to accommodate Gordon, and they aren’t about to panic. Most Americans’ portfolios don’t look like they did two weeks ago, and so the timing isn’t great for Gordon, either.

But Gordon still has a chance to be guaranteed some $50 million or more. Hey, it would be more than Josh Howard got.

I know, I know. Bad example.

My guess: Gordon ends up re-signing with the Bulls at some point.

I’m afraid I’m the guy who defined athletes’ political activism through the words of Michael Jordan.

It was some 20 or so years ago when I was the beat writer covering the Chicago Bulls before their championship run. One of the great charms of Jordan as the guy’s guy he really most is – and I always felt perhaps the biggest reason for his amazing success – was his constant, almost relentless pursuit to make everything a contest, including conversation.

There’s rarely been anyone better at getting the last word, and making it a good one.  Jordan wanted to win the conversations, too.

Politics never has been a big priority with professional athletes, and particularly not among team athletes.

There have always been exceptions, like Bill Walton, who was something of campus activist while at UCLA. Walton once even went to deliver a letter to Richard Nixon asking him to resign. And there was Roosevelt Grier, the former NFL lineman, who was at Robert Kennedy’s side when he was assassinated. Barack Obama has drawn comparisons to the Kennedys and Bobby had several athletes with him at times, including Lamar Lundy and Deacon Jones from the NFL.

But mostly athletes, if they took sides, were Republicans based on their exceptional earnings and desire to keep corporate tax rates lower – something generally associated with the GOP. You could hold the Republican national convention in the locker room at a PGA golf tournament and have trouble finding anyone as liberal as John McCain.

In the late 80s, one of the senators from North Carolina, Jordan’s home state, was Jesse Helms, in my opinion a very bad man and whom I believed to, let’s say, have racial views that didn’t seem egalitarian. Jordan loved to debate, no matter the topic, and even on issues you would never hear him discuss, he’d have strong opinions. So I was making my case for Harvey Gantt, the black mayor of Charlotte. I said Jordan should be working for him

Jordan knew him and liked him, and his politics, which Jordan didn’t discuss often, skewed much more toward Gantt.

But there was this restraint holding him back, one that is regularly counseled to the greatest of the athletes, meaning the ones who are the most marketable: Don’t offend anyone.

And Jordan truly was the first in that field.

Sure, big-name athletes always have endorsed products. Wheaties boxes have features athletes for decades. I would buy anything I could that had Mickey Mantle’s picture on it.

But in his groundbreaking shoe deal with Nike, Jordan became the first true athletic corporate figure.

So as I droned on and on about the pernicious Helms, Jordan eyed me and with a twinkle in his eyes, offered: “Republicans buy sneakers, too.”

I did a few of those Ralph Kramden “hom-a-na, hom-a-nas,” and fell silent.

Swish!

Jordan’s imprint is on virtually every style change in the NBA in the last 20 years, from longer uniform shorts to shaved head.

And despite an occasional condemnation from an activist like Jim Brown, politics as well.

Heck, Charles Barkley for years used to ruminate about running for governor of Alabama, though he’d vacillate between which party he’d represent.

But this year, with Obama running for president, the first black man to represent a major political party for president in the U.S., it appears that in record numbers professional athletes are taking an active role in support for the Democratic ticket, which probably is most representative of their history.

While professional athletes historically have been Republican-leaning or apolitical because of their economic levels, the huge majority, other than golfers and tennis players, come from poor or modest backgrounds which align with the Democratic party platform.

Generally counseled to avoid political discussion, this year’s extraordinary American presidential contest has shaken many from their neutrality.

Among those who have been active in the Obama effort have included former great centers Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Rookie (again) Portland center Greg Oden announced on his blog his support for Obama and afterward Obama gave Oden a phone call and, according to Oden, Obama said the Trail Blazers looked strong this season with the Oden/LaMarcus Aldridge pairing.

Hey, the Democrats keep saying they needed to get more to the center. Is this what they meant?

Others who have been involved with the Obama effort include the Suns’ Grant Hill, Atlanta’s Marvin Williams, Barkley, the Knicks’ Stephon Marbury and the Clippers’ Baron Davis. Though it’s not just the Democrats getting support as the Kings’ Spencer Hawes has been an active worker for Republican candidates.

Davis has hosted events for Obama in California and declared after Obama’s acceptance speech Davis felt like “going out to Venice Beach to register people.”

For anyone who’s even been there, “people” would be a loose term.

Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod said he was at an event with Davis and was impressed by Davis’ commitment and said the campaign has been pleased with the show of support in the usually neutral athletic community.

“A number of these athletes are deeply involved in their communities and they see an awful lot of need,” said Axelrod. “Obama is a guy who inspires a sense of both involvement and possibilities for solving these problems and they respond to that.

“From a generational standpoint athletes relate to him,” Axelrod added. “There’s a feeling among some people that all athletes are selfish and disinterested, but it’s not true. There are so many who are involved in the community, give of their ti me and money, like tremendous efforts after Hurricane Katrina, and they see Obama as someone who can inspire change.”

And, by the way, yes, Jordan has been a contributor to the campaign.

Stephon Marbury has been hinting around for a year or so that it would be him, an NBA All-Star, to flee to Europe because it pays better than the NBA. But Marbury no longer is a star, assuming he ever really was. Perhaps Allen Iverson, who is a star, arguably one of the most popular NBA players in the world. After his contract expires at the end of next season at age 34, is he going to be offered anywhere near the $20.8 million he’ll make in 2008-09? Not likely.

So how do you say, “Bubba Chuck” in Russian?

“Ultimately, someone big is going to (leave the NBA for) Europe,” predicts attorney Herb Rudoy, perhaps the premier European representative among NBA agents along with partner Luciano Capicchioni. “I think one NBA player in the next couple of years will get a significant offer and go. There are maybe a dozen teams with big money now. Someone will go.”

No, not Josh Childress, who is said to be going to Greece in a $20 million/three year deal. Not Carlos Delfino or Jorge Garbajosa, taking European deals after playing with some success in the NBA. It’s not like there’s some raid of talent reminiscent of the old ABA-NBA battles of the 1970’s.

But with the decline in the value of the U.S. dollar and some hints of a recession even feeling its way around the NBA in the form of more teams cutting back big spending or declining to use their salary cap exceptions to avoid paying the luxury tax, NBA players are beginning to take a serious look at playing in Europe as a legitimate alternative.

Mostly it’s European players, who are finding the NBA not as hospitable and welcoming as they’d hoped and who enjoy substantial income tax advantages that Americans don’t when they play in Europe.

Viktor Khryapa left the Chicago Bulls for Russia, Juan Carlos Navarro couldn’t wait to leave the Memphis Grizzlies (no surprise there) and New Jersey Nets players Bostjan Nachbar and Nenad Krstic are said to considering joining the likes of Garbajosa and Delfino in an NBA exodus.

The reason is money, and it’s manifesting itself in various forms.

Forget the bosa nova. Blame it on the euro.

One factor is the U.S. is at or near recession – with the euro growing more valuable in comparison, making it more lucrative in earnings than the dollar.

More so has been an economic explosion in European sports with money pouring in from a variety of sources. There is no European league like the NBA, so teams used to be run like operations for civic pride and responsibility. Now, in addition to rich owners buying teams in several places, they are being run more like businesses with substantial naming rights deals, signage and advertising.

The result is perhaps a dozen teams with budgets to compete with NBA teams, the main ones in Russia, Greece, Spain and Italy.

It once was that American star players, still limited to a pair per team, came at the end of their careers, like Bob McAdoo or Dominique Wilkins or because of problems in the NBA, like Micheal Ray Richardson and Roy Tarpley.

Rookie Danny Ferry bolted the Clippers in 1989 to force a trade, but that was rare.

But now Rudoy says his client, Tiago Splitter, a first-round draft pick of the Spurs, wanted to come to the NBA but could not afford to turn down his European offer.

“Splitter was 100 percent committed,” said Rudoy. “He wanted to come. But his team made him an offer (equal to $5 million annually) that he couldn’t say no to. All his intentions were to come to the NBA. So I also think you may see NBA teams not taking European players in the middle or late in the first round (with guaranteed salaries less than $2 million annually).”

Of course, it’s not like the NBA is about to lose its best talent.

There are risks leaving the U.S., terrorism aside. American players tend not to be the most adaptable people to different cultures, and all have heard horror stories of players not being paid or dumped after a bad game. And try collecting in Moscow. FIBA doesn’t exactly stand behind players to guarantee salaries like the NBA does.

And, especially with top players, European teams cannot compete with the large second contracts many NBA players can get after their rookie deals.

But Europe is now starting to see billionaire owners who might like an ego player or two. And the NBA isn’t exactly in boom times. Restricted free agents, like Childress, have trouble getting offers and so few teams are below the salary cap. Many more are close to the luxury tax and refusing to spend anywhere close. Previous wild spenders like the New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks are cutting back. The Denver Nuggets, another big luxury tax payer, recently have Marcus Camby, arguably the league’s top defensive player, to the Clippers for, effectively, nothing to save money. Free agents like the Bulls’ Ben Gordon and Luol Deng are getting no offers.

There’s also been rumors that even teams like the champion Boston Celtics are not offering their rookies the full scale (teams can pay 80 to 120 percent) in some additional cost cutting moves more and more teams are employing.

It’s not exactly a trickle down from the subprime financial crisis. But some NBA players, other than the top stars, are starting to feel the financial pinch as well.

And maybe soon for some top NBA player or players a trip to Venice won’t automatically mean an afternoon at the quirky Los Angeles beach community.

It was love at first sight, really. The perfect yin and yang, sun and moon coming together, different but making up the whole, complementary forces of basketball nature. Kevin Garnett was the defender but not the finisher. Paul Pierce and Ray Allen were the shooters but not defenders or truly team players. Garnett was the ultimate team player, perhaps too unselfish. Allen and Pierce were the shooters, eye on the basket and not their teammates.

It proved to be the perfect union, and the result was what was missing for all three as the Boston Celtics behind Garnett, Pierce, Allen and a host of effective supporting players defeated the Los Angeles Lakers Tuesday 131-92 to win the 2008 NBA championship.

The Celtics were as hot as the Lakers were cold, as aggressive as the Lakers were passive. Ideal symmetry for the denouement.

It was the Celtics 17th alltime NBA championship, the franchise’s first since 1986 and denied Lakers coach Phil Jackson his record breaking 10th NBA title as a coach (he remains tied with Boston patriarch Red Auerbach) and Lakers’ star and league MVP Kobe Bryant his fourth and first without Shaquille O’Neal.

It was achieved, finally, in impressive and symbolic fashion as Allen, before going out for a time with an eye injury, opened up shooting the Lakers into difficulty, Pierce passing the ball impressively as the Lakers crowded around the (expected) series MVP and Garnett scoring early from the perimeter, as he’s always done, but also making the key defensive plays, if so subtle.

One play, mostly unnoticed, was typical.

Bryant began the game trying to drag his worn teammates along and hit three three pointers in the first quarter and by halftime was the only Laker even scoring in double figures. So there was Bryant after the Lakers fell behind 24-20 in the first quarter trying to curl around a screen for a quick jump shot.

As Bryant ran by the screen with his defender caught behind, Garnett stepped out briefly to deny the curl and pass and Bryant had to go to the top of the key to receive the ball and face up now against all five Celtics defenders. It was a subtle move by Garnett, but typical of the reason why the Celtics were the league’s best defensive team this season and smothered the Lakers throughout this series with their defense.

By halftime, after a 34-15 second quarter, this series was over and the Celtics were celebrating.

There’s been much talk in these Finals about a trip along the Boston parade route that the Celtics’ so called Big Three took early in the season with coach Doc Rivers and about their bonding in the preseason during their trip to Europe.

But that doesn’t explain how the Celtics won the championship after having the league’s best regular season record.

They did it with defense, obviously, but also commitment and tactics.

We all knew they’d be good after trading for Allen and Garnett, but they still were starting two non scorers in Rajon Rondo and Kendrick Perkins. It had to be more than scoring, and it was. And it had to be more effort than they knew, and it was.

One instance in preseason stands out.

The Celtics were running suicides, those halfcourt sprints after practice, and not surprisingly Garnett was beating everyone.

It’s why Garnett, though not the offensive finisher to carry a team and a player who does not dominate from the post despite his size, was the key because if your best player practices the hardest, it’s difficult for anyone else to coast.

Still, Pierce has often been known to ease through seasons and particularly practices, not always the most motivated team player. He fought openly with Rivers when Rivers came in with demands Pierce expand his game and be more unselfish. Little progressed because the team was so bad and lacking in talent Pierce had license to continue to shoot and score.

Now flip to 2007.

Pierce was jogging through the drill in his L.A. cool mood and Garnett turned angrily and demanded, “Are you going to run with me!”

No one ever had challenged Pierce like that in Boston, and certainly no great player.

Message received and understood.

But Garnett needed Pierce as well. The book on Garnett, more whispered because he was such a great competitor, was you bang him and he’d float outside. He rarely went to the free throw line, just like in this series, and down the stretch, like in Game 5, he could miss them. Pressure? Exhaustion from effort? No one ever fully understood with Garnett as he did play so hard and was so intense he’d often be screaming at teammates as well.

But he couldn’t be counted on to finish and carry a team. It’s one big reason why his Minnesota Timberwolves failed so often and advanced past the first round just once, when Garnett had a younger Sam Cassell and Latrell Sprewell to pass off the baton after the third quarter.

Yes, Pierce time. Though generally not regarded a top 15 or perhaps even top 20 player because of his poor team showings, Pierce never shrunk from the spotlight and chance to win a game. He loved the last shots. He’d wave players off. Likewise, Allen would take the big shot, but he wasn’t much on creating of the dribble or creating space. So as the defense might eye Garnett or would eye Pierce, Allen was there with that quick release and shot.

Neither Pierce or Allen was ever known much as a defensive player, and with their teams it wasn’t like it was demanded much since they were required to score. Garnett could average 20 points as well, but it was defense first, team play first. But no one was going to mistake him for Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan making the big shot.

And so it was the ideal coupling. Not only because they came together but because they needed one another to have any chance at success. What each lacked, someone else was there to supply it. What each needed, the other was there to provide the inspiration and motivation.

Once again, the Celtics’ universe is in harmony.

This NBA Finals has been chased by history. There’s Kobe Bryant, and, inevitably, there are the comparisons with Michael Jordan and Bryant’s hunt for Jordan’s legacy. There’s Paul Pierce and the comparisons with the great Boston Celtics legends. Larry Bird and Magic Johnson were brought together by the NBA before the series began to discuss the great Celtics-Lakers rivalries of the 1980’s. Images of Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, Russell, Cousy and Havlicek have hovered over the games, ghosts of the legendary past.

I’ve been thinking about this as I’ve watched the series. These teams have accounted for half the championships in the history of the NBA, produced most of the so called memorable moments, maybe even some left in the next week.

But as I watch these great players and recall their incredible basketball ancestors, I wish everyone could have seen more of the player whom I consider the most perfect in NBA history, Oscar Robertson.

I’m perhaps not the ultimate judge, though I was fortunate to have seen in person more of Jordan’s games than any journalist. I am old enough to have seen Wilt and Russell Sunday afternoons on TV and have seen the likes of Jerry West, Elgin Baylor and Wilt Chamberlain in Madison Square Garden, near where I grew up.

That’s the good news compared with most of the fans today who missed that era. The bad news is they’ll likely live much longer. Yes, there’s always a but.

Everyone around sports is asked at one time or another about the best ever, and in basketball we generally agree it’s Jordan, the championships being the dividing line. Wilt was more dominant and his statistical achievements remain effectively out of reach. Of course, it’s impossible to compare between eras. Was Willie Mays better than Babe Ruth?

Was Joe Louis better than Muhammad Ali?

I recently spent some time talking with Robertson, who turns 70 later this year.

If I owned an NBA team, I’d hire him as team president or general manager because Robertson still knows the game as well as anyone I’ve spoken with in the last 30 years.

Not that Robertson even would accept. But the NBA should in some way acknowledge the effective blackballing of Robertson for his principal role in the labor action - the Oscar Robertson suit - that granted free agency to NBA players. Robertson even found himself forced off network TV after his career ended, in large part, because of his labor activity.

It seems difficult to believe that no one would ever give Robertson a chance to coach or run a team, something that just about all the great players in the game have done.

Yes, Robertson was an outspoken figure. But there are few people in the history of the game I’ve ever found who were both able to play the game to its highest level while also understanding how that is accomplished.

Sure, Robertson notices. He’s been the successful owner and CEO of his own chemical company in Cincinnati, married for almost 50 years, a devoted father who a decade ago donated a kidney to his daughter. He does some appearances for the NBA and the Basketball Hall of Fame, though always has remained more on the periphery, the name always mentioned when someone in today’s guard-dominated NBA achieves something.

Then it becomes something like, “The first since Oscar Roberston in…” Or Joins Oscar Roberston with…”

“Kobe, LeBron, they are very good players, no doubt,” says Robertson. “But they are what the ESPNs of the world are pushing all the time. It behooves them to push these guys. I understand. They’re always saying who is the greatest and asking guys who weren’t around and never saw guys play, like it all just began.

“I give them this. They make the guys seem so glamorous they seem so much better than everyone else,” says Robertson. “But here’s a guy (Chamberlain) who averaged 50 points and 25 rebounds. I averaged a triple double one season (Robertson averaged a triple double in his first five seasons combined). And while I’m also averaging 30 points (with only about 18 shots per game). Now guys get triple doubles with 10 points.

“There’s no question guys like Kobe, LeBron, Chris Paul could play against anybody,” Robertson continued. “But they’ve got guys averaging one or two points a game making $5 million. And some guys getting a million dollars who don’t even get in the game. And they think they deserve it.”

Robertson laughs at his own observation. He knows he can sound bitter, though he isn’t.

“I’m grateful for the life I have,” he says. “The family is doing fine. I’m working hard every day, going out and competing.”

Would he still like to in basketball?

“I never was given a chance to get involved in a managerial position,” Robertson observes. “Life goes on. But like an elephant, you never forget. You just bring up what happened and go on.”

It’s likely one reason Robertson never was fully embraced by the NBA establishment. He was always direct, and always black. And that combination wasn’t popular or acceptable for a long time.

Though not the first black player, Robertson perhaps was the most outspoken and active. He took on the players’ association presidency when most declined in the era of the game’s reserve clause and few rights for players. His wife marched at Selma. He regularly suffered through segregation and discrimination because of his color growing up in Indianapolis and playing ball in Cincinnati, both southern style cities. He believes he was ignored by Indiana U. for a scholarship, despite being the state’s Mr. Basketball, because “they had too many (blacks) on the team.”

He fought always and it led to eventually a trade from Cincinnati to Milwaukee, where he would get his one NBA championship, to a bitter parting there as well when he felt pushed out of the game because of age at 35 and the longtime effects around the NBA of his labor activity.

Through it all, he retained his dignity and pride, but most of all to me played the game as perfectly as it could be played.

Tim Duncan is now renowned for his fundamental play, but longtime observers of basketball will tell you no one was more fundamentally sound than Robertson, the ultimate quarterback in the ultimate team game.

Certainly, the statistics alone bear that out in his triple doubles, effectively accounting for more points per game than everyone but Chamberlain.

There wasn’t anything Robertson couldn’t do as well as any other player in the game, though in a time when dunking was considered an insult and flashy, individual play was frowned upon, Robertson was the most coolly efficient player of the game.

There’s a famous quote from Dick Barnett, who played on the early 1970’s Knicks’ title teams and against Robertson in high school when Robertson’s team won the first of its two state titles, that describes Roberston: “If you give Oscar a 12-foot shot, he’ll work you until he has a 10-foot shot. Give him 10, he wants eight. Give him eight, he wants six. four, two. Give him two, you know what he wants. Right, baby, a layup.”

Robertson knows there’s some old fogy in all the old guys. He laughs about shooting guard and point guard.

“A guy can’t do something, now they create a position for him,” he notes. “He can’t handle the ball so he’s a shooting guard.”

Robertson was just a guard. Oh, what a guard.

No, he didn’t get the championships, so he rarely gets into the discussion of the greatest. Though if you ask him his all-time team the guards are Jerry West and Robertson. His misfortune was to play for a poor franchise in Cincinnati that would have gone out of business if he weren’t available in the territorial draft. The Royals had the misfortune of being moved to the East when the Philadelphia Warriors relocated and spent the 1960’s going against Boston and its six or seven Hall of Famers every season in the playoffs.

Eventually, toward the end of his career Robertson would get to Milwaukee and get Abdul-Jabbar his first championship with what could have been the best team ever. The Bucks were 65-11 when coach Larry Costello rested the regulars for the rest of the season and they lost five of the last six. No one chased record seasons then.

But to hear Robertson talk about basketball skills is to understand what’s missing in today’s game.

In asking Robertson about skills, he doesn’t talk about dunking or shooting or dribbling as much as filling the lane at the proper angle, rubbing off a defender on the pick-and-roll, seeing the court to know where the help is coming from, pacing yourself and your speed (Robertson looked slow because of that but was one of the game’s quickest players), knowing when to hit a teammate with pass the moment he frees himself from the screen and where to get him the ball so he can shoot in rhythm.

Asked about that, Robertson mentions Duncan and Jason Kidd and then is quiet.

Robertson is occasionally at book signings these days for his book, “The Big O: My Life, My Times, My Game.”

It’s his life story with interesting tidbits about losing in his first high school season to Milan High School the year it won the Indiana title in the famous Hoosiers story. Robertson also notes how the movie just happened to leave out the part about the team Milan really beat, Muncie Central, was an integrated team.

Robertson changed the game as much as any of the pioneers of the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. But if you watched Jordan back his opponent in for a fadeaway or fallaway, that was Robertson. Seeing Johnson spinning on a drive or protecting the ball with his body driving, that also was Robertson.

Robertson was a natural that way. Even as a kid playing against bigger kids, they’d try to trap him to take advantage of his small size then. Robertson said it was then he learned to recognize the double team, where his teammates were to pass and how to blow by to avoid the pressure.

Just speaking with Robertson is like a lesson in pure basketball, what really makes it a game of grace and beauty. That’s not dunking and shooting three-pointers or some behind-the-back pass. Robertson could do all that as a kid, but growing up a black basketball player in the 1950’s you stayed away from that lest you not be considered serious. The Harlem Globetrotters were the clowns of basketball then and a popular act. But they also bordered on the insulting. Many whites looked at the Globetrotters as black basketball, clowns performing for white audiences. You know, “Dance, kid.”

So guys like Robertson avoided the possible comparison by making their plays and then getting into defensive position. This was no joke.

Robertson gives an example of how he saw the game in his book and it should be required reading for every high school and college basketball player and guard.

“Say I have the ball at the top of the key and I am dribbling, keeping my defender at bay with my body as I read the court,” Robertson writes. “Down on the baseline, Jack Twyman is running toward a pick set on the low block by Wayne Embry. Maybe Jack’s defender is trailing him, which means, I hope, Jack will run past the pick, curl tightly around it and pop out in front with his hands ready so I can hit him with a pass in rhythm. I’m watching for this. But I’m also watching to see if the defender is going to aggressively overplay or pop over Wayne’s pick and try to deny that very pass. If he does try to play aggressively, I’m trusting Jack to gauge this and react, perhaps fading to the corner for an uncontested jump shot or perhaps he will slip back door and be available for a bounce pass and a layup. Maybe Wayne, after setting the pick, is going to be able to pop out for an open shot. Or maybe he will roll to the basket. Meanwhile, I’ve got my defender in front of me looking for the first chance to reach in, ruin our plans and head the other way with the ball.”

And yes all this is about two of three seconds.

Robertson also notes the play is just a part since if Twyman is running through picks and not getting the ball or Embry is fighting for position and likewise ignored, how often do they continue to do that and how quickly are they getting back to defend if the guy with the ball is shooting and making plays for himself, no matter how successful.

Robertson was averaging more than 10 assists per game overall through his first nine seasons in the NBA, and that at a time when as assist was only counted if the scoring player did not dribble with the ball. Now, a player can get an assist if the scorer has up to two dribbles.

“Winning is not complex,” says Robertson. “You need good players playing together.”

Somehow you believe Robertson would have gotten it done for some team if he’d only been given the chance. It’s a shame that the NBA has too long wasted one of its most valuable resources.

I was reading the report last weekend of Chicago Bulls center Joakim Noah being arrested back at the U. of Florida for marijuana possession. And I’m thinking, “Why is this news? Isn’t it news if it was reported Noah—have you ever looked at or listened to this guy?—wasn’t using marijuana?”
 
But here we go again with NBA reefer madness with Noah and a month or so ago the dumbest player in the NBA—that certainly would be Josh Howard now in what no longer appears a close contest—volunteered he’s a regular offseason marijuana user and figured it was no big deal because it’s use was commonplace in the NBA.
 
Geez, didn’t anyone ever give this guy that speech about if your friend jumped off a building or told the world he was committing a crime would you do it, too?
 
Anyway, this all hardly qualifies as an epidemic, though many would have you wringing your hands and again lamenting the social ills of the NBA. Yes, back in 2001, Charles Oakley decided that maybe 50 to 60 percent of the players in the NBA used marijuana. A few years later, the Rocky Mountain News surveyed NBA players and from a sample of about 60 decided that some 30 percent of the players were using the drug.
 
Both of these accounts followed a 1997 New York Times report of substance abuse among NBA players and threw out a figure of 60 to 70 percent, though lost in the fine print was no real distinction between alcohol and marijuana.
 
And, yes, there’s the rub.
 
I know, I know, marijuana is illegal and alcohol is not.
 
But this should give pause to everyone who reads and reacts to headlines of NBA players using or being arrested in connection with marijuana.
 
I don’t know how many players in the NBA use marijuana, though we do know now about Noah. We’ve previously heard issues with Allen Iverson, Chris Webber, Robert Parish, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Rasheed Wallace and at one time most of Portland, though it is a particularly liberal place.
 
Of course, we’ve also heard the same about former President Bill Clinton, who insisted he didn’t inhale, and now U.S. Senator Barack Obama, who also wrote in his first book about experimenting with “blow,” the street name for cocaine.
 
Using Aristotelian logic, perhaps this means more NBA players than we think could be running for president, though in the Democratic party. Which might not be a bad thing because perhaps they’d be too mellow to be declaring war so often.
 
But I digress.
 
Actually, two issues strike me when these NBA drug scare stories arise.
 
One, of course, is the shocking notion that young men in their 20’s might be experimenting with a mild drug that men in their 20’s who’ve gone on to be the leaders of our nation experimented with when they were in their 20’s.
 
That is what your 20’s generally are for. There’s an old saying about socialism from Winston Churchill that says if a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart.

If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain. The point is your 20’s is for asking and answering questions and experimenting with life.
 
So marijuana should be legalized, right? It’s not legal, so that’s the answer for now. It’s also illegal to file taxes that do not perfectly represent your income and expenses and to go over the speed limit when driving. But I’m told it’s happened.
 
The larger question to me being around the NBA is the effect of alcohol.
 
The NBA has a drug testing policy, probably the toughest in sports and for the longest time since cocaine use was a major issue in the late 1970’s and the players wanted it cleaned up. All players are tested for drugs including marijuana up to four times per season.
 
Do some players in the NBA still get away with using marijuana? Sure. I’ve heard some names, though they don’t invite me along. What’s the percentage? Who the heck knows?
 
I believe it’s far less than any of the estimates thrown around. Though I do know alcohol abuse is rampant and I’ve witnessed that for many years.
 
Because there is drug testing, the stimulant of choice in the NBA now perhaps more than ever is alcohol. I’m told the fellas enjoy their vodka and Red Bull. And, of course, beer, which had been widely distributed in sports locker rooms for years before St. Louis Cardinals player Josh Hancock was killed in a car accident last year driving home from a game.
 
This is the trickiest issue of all for all of us because while alcohol is legal, it is frequently abused. Do you think more people are killed by drunk drivers or pot smoking drivers? How do you feel in the parking lot after your favorite major league baseball game knowing that guy sitting next to you with 12 cups stacked high is driving home? But with the games often sponsored by your favorite brew, what’s the choice?
 
I recall during the winning years of the Bulls franchise in the 1980’s and 1990’s seeing players like Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen dropping several six packs in their gym bags after the game. Drinking on the way home? Who knows? Maybe they had drivers. I don’t know.
 
I recall being in the team hotel and seeing the waiter taking empty liquor bottles on the tray from the room of Vin Baker. It was widely known around the NBA at the time Baker was drinking heavily. But it was legal. Should I as a reporter have written about it? It’s not like Baker was doing anything wrong but throwing away his career as he’d later go into rehab.
 
The team knew about it and teammates did as well. So did Baker’s representatives. But the stigma of going into rehab could cost him a contract, so no one ever said anything.
 
I know of several players now around the NBA who tell me teammates have serious drinking issues. They say the team and their agents know. But no one wants to do anything for fear of losing, A. The player as an asset; B. The player having a chance to get a better deal or new contract when his current one expires.
 
What’s my responsibility to write about it? What if the player drives and kills someone or himself? Could I have warned someone by reporting it? But what right do I have if he’s doing nothing illegal? And the people closest to him and for whom he works aren’t doing anything?
 
It seems to me these are the bigger issues facing the NBA—and all sports—today. Yes, there’s marijuana use in the NBA, and to anyone who saw Noah with his white suit on draft day in 2007 you figured there was a marijuana arrest in his future. But the league has bigger substance abuse issues, which don’t seem to be addressed by anyone.

The 2008 playoffs are about halfway finished, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that the champion is going to come from the Western Conference yet again.

Have you been watching this Celtics-Cavaliers series?

No, I don’t blame you. I have been watching, though I enjoy finger nails scraping across a chalkboard and Republican presidential debates.

This most highlights the reason why the Eastern Conference is inferior to the Western Conference. The East has turned Ray Allen’s sweet jump shot into Muhammad Ali against Trevor Berbick. Yes, Cavs coach Mike Brown makes a mockery of the game with his slowdown, half court, walk-it-up, unimaginative offense that generally puts LeBron James, arguably the best open court player in NBA history, in a one/four set against a wall of defenders.

It would be truly amazing if James remains in Cleveland when his contract expires with that system, which could have him used up by the time he’s 28. The amazing part is Boston has allowed itself to be lured into Cleveland’s stuck-in-mud game, which probably is smart in the short term for the Cavs.

They should lose Game 7. But too many of the Celtics flaws – flaws we all talked about before the season that seemed resolved in a brilliant 66-win run – seem all too real.

Could three All-Stars in their 30’s who’ve never had much playoff success and have just come together stand up to the crucible? It seems no now. Kevin Garnett’s critics say he ran away from late offensive responsibility, and it’s seemed to be happening again. The ball doesn’t go to him enough, which is a Boston mistake, and he seems too willing to give it up, a Garnett failing. Could too much have been strained out of them pushing for that brilliant regular season? But it did give them Game 7’s at home in a season of parity when home court really matters.

The Celtics were wonderful to watch all season, scoring in transition, which Cleveland is good at stalling, moving the ball and themselves. But Cleveland invited them into bad basketball hell and the Celtics obliged.

Though Rajon Rondo bailed out Boston in Game 5 with a couple of big time first half threes, Rondo is mostly ineffective in the half court since he’s a poor decision maker and shooter. Sam Cassell doesn’t fit because he needs the ball and can’t defend. The Celtics Friday finally went back to Eddie House, who’d helped them all season but fell out of favor in the failed Cassell experiment. Kendrick Perkins has been useless and with Rondo that’s two players who don’t have to be guarded, allowing teams to pack it in even more. He should have yielded some time to Leon Powe. But the Little Nine doesn’t matter as much as the Big Three. Larry Bird never blamed Greg Kite. OK, but he was kidding. The Celtics impressed all season with unselfish play, but have failed to impose their collective will against two teams, the Hawks and Cavs, who have far inferior talent.

Whoever comes out of the West it’s difficult to see threatened by an Eastern team.

So what else have we learned in the last month?

Yes, Chris Paul is brilliant. But Deron Williams is brillian. Yes, maybe missing just the last letter. Really, really close.

Though Williams’ Jazz went home Friday night, we’re now waiting to see Williams and Paul in the USA team backcourt this summer. The duo now look like 1-2 in NBA point guards with Williams now officially the league’s most overlooked player, especially with Paul the darling of these playoffs.

But Kobe Bryant would still be my playoff MVP. No one gets more defensive attention and makes more big shots.

Williams can’t have the freedom in Jerry Sloan’s structured system that Paul has. Still, Williams averaged 21.6 points and 10 assists in the playoffs and 24 points and 12 assists the last five games against the Lakers.

The Jazz lost because Carlos Boozer couldn’t make shots, allowing the Lakers’ big men to stay inside, where Boozer was too small to play effectively inside.

The Lakers now look like the title favorites, and that’s without Andrew Bynum.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson hardly got any credit this season for pulling together what looked like a disaster of a Lakers season back in October as Bryant fought to be traded to the East, where he no doubt would have turned into Ricky Davis.

But with the Lakers now setting up what could be a five-year run, Jackson could pass Bill Russell in championships.

Figure them the favorite over who emerges from the Spurs-Hornets Game 7.

What we seem to be encountering there with three Hornets blowouts at home is less the power of home court advantage than two teams meeting, the Spurs on the way down and the young Hornets on the way up.

The future West landscape is beginning to look like the Lakers, Hornets, perhaps Trail Blazers and Jazz.

The Spurs hardly are done with Tony Parker at 26. But Manu Ginobili soon hits a hard 31 with all those falls and flops and international play and Tim Duncan is 32. Their supporting cast is mostly applying for Medicare. It’s why you see the young Hornets too quick for the Spurs too often. Look, this has been a serious decade long run. Few ever go that long. Few have been better than the Spurs.

Even if the Hornets don’t get by the Spurs Monday in Game 7, they are awfully close in their rear view mirror.

This quirky home court dominance in the conference semifinals has led to a mostly boring round with few game winners or buzzer beaters and plenty of blowouts. But with only the Pistons and Lakers winning on the road, at least we get a pair of Game 7’s, which don’t come along much.

So what else have we learned?

Oh, yeah. That Richard Hamilton isn’t bad.

While much was made of Rodney Stuckey stepping in for the injured Chauncey Billups against the Magic and not making a turnover in two games (though Lindsey Hunter threw away his walker and mostly played that first game), it was Hamilton who came up huge with 30-plus games and averaging 43 minutes the last three games.

Yes, Tayshaun Prince’s block on Hedo Turkoglu in the clinching game was the defensive play of the playoffs. Though Duncan’s three in the Game 1 with the Suns to send the game in double overtime – still the best game of this playoffs – remains the best moment in these playoffs.

The worst? The fire in New Orleans, as if they don’t have enough disasters, the choking pregame smoke in Boston, Carmelo Anthony declaring his team quitters (hey, was that another forced Anthony shot?), the Spurs hack-a-Shaq. As Mark Jackson would say, “Spurs, you’re better than that.” And the foolishness of the Washington Wizards, who seemed to have taken Gilbert Arenas‘ entertainment-instead-of-basketball lead by importing a failed rapper to try to mock LeBron James’ rapper friend.

It seemed they could have been using the stuff Josh Howard – wink, wink – says he saves for summer.

So we’re halfway there and if this is where amazing happens, then the games have to be getting better. Although I’m not holding out much hope in the East.

Mark Cuban is a smart guy. I know this because I hear him tell everyone that. I find it difficult to challenge since he knew when to get out of the dot com boom and became a billionaire. I had no idea when to dump my newspaper stock and now am writing for basketball web sites. Good ones, mind you. But I am working. Cuban is dancing, with stars and just in general, it seems.

Last week, he was at Wrigley Field in Chicago sitting with maverick Tribune Co. owner Sam Zell, sparking once again all kinds of talk in Chicago about Cuban purchasing the legendary baseball Chicago Cubs.

The conventional wisdom has been that baseball owners, having watched the NBA basically fine Cuban more than Rasheed Wallace, won’t vet Cuban and allow him anywhere near their sport.

Now, with Zell the hellion looking to maximize profits on selling the team and stadium, you can be sure no matter what baseball says, Zell will feel entitled to the biggest bid. He’s the kind of entrepreneur to fight for it and in the American way warn baseball that its antitrust exemption doesn’t allow it to ignore the top bidder, no matter how bad his TV dancing may be.

The conventional wisdom (by the way, who are those people?) also has been Cuban doesn’t have the money, estimated at perhaps a billion dollars, to get into baseball in Chicago. Not in a sport without a salary cap. Not while also running the Mavericks.

See where I’m going here?

Is it time for Mark Cuban to cash in again? I can see – thus far my speculation – Cuban trying to sell the Mavericks to step up into baseball and one of the elite franchises in American sports history. One that is stocked with talent poised for a great run, where Cuban can even enhance his sports reputation. It’s Cuban’s kind of bold, headline-making move.

Chicago or Dallas? C’mon. Get real. Cuban is from Pennsylvania and went to college in Indiana. He’s a lifelong baseball fan. It’s a better environment for wardrobe of Cuban’s t-shirts.

Few know better than Cuban when to sell high and buy low, and now would be the perfect time to dump the Mavs and trade up to the Cubs.

Look, the Mavs are done. Did you see how happy Avery Johnson was to be fired?

No, they’re not an expansion team or a perennial loser, but their run is over.

Though Cuban and I have differed on his real impact given the team was on the brink of breaking through when he bought it, Cuban did some great things in Dallas. He helped get a beautiful new arena built. He involved the fans and scared the heck out of the local media. He should run for governor with that record.

But the Mavs maxed out and have been in decline since blowing that Game 3 fourth quarter lead in the 2006 Finals.

They’re out of the playoffs in the first round for the second consecutive season and looking for a new coach, said to likely be Rick Carlisle. They took a calculated gamble in trading for Jason Kidd, and it didn’t work. Look, they knew the window was closing and they took a shot. I can respect that, even if it didn’t work.

It’s over for this Mavs’ group.

Five of their top six players, including Jerry Stackhouse as sixth man, will be at least 30 for next season. Three are at least 34. They’re one of the league’s oldest and now slowest teams. They gave up too much youth and future in draft picks for Kidd.

The West is changing. The Hornets are young and athletic. The Trail Blazers could emerge if Greg Oden is healthy. The Lakers look like they have a run in them if Andrew Bynum can return to health next season. The Mavs as now constituted look like a team that’s going to struggle just to make the playoffs and be an easy out for the next several years. They’ve won at least 50 games for the last eight seasons. That’s a longer run than most get. It’s over.

And knowing Cuban you figure he knows. Give the man this: He reads markets well.

You don’t get to be much of a media star with a declining sports asset.

What a great time to sell, especially with the Cubs beckoning, a team with no championship for 100 years, a team that’s loaded with talent, just as the Mavs were when he Cuban bought them. It’s the chance to be a hero in one of the world’s great cities and media markets. Imagine how famous Cuban could then make himself, which, after all, seems to be what he is most about.

There was opposition among NBA owners to Cuban at the time he purhcaed the Mavs. Many had heard of his antics and iconoclastic personality. But commissioner David Stern couldn’t resist. It’s generally understood around the NBA there is regret they accepted Cuban given the way he has bashed and questioned the league so often. But Cuban offered to pay way more than the Mavs were valued at. Ownership equity increases like players’ salaries. It was just too tempting.

Once someone is paid something, that becomes the basis for that talent, the NBA definition of market value. Samuel Dalembert gets $64 million. Now Tyson Chandler wants $65 million because his stats are better. So Cuban pays some $280 million for a franchise valued at perhaps half that and Stern sees equity increasing for everyone with a new market set.

So what if Cuban makes an astronomical offer for the Cubs, one of those offers you can’t turn down?

Zell is certainly a character and non conformist. He owes no allegiance to baseball owners. Friends say though he is a minority partner in the Chicago White Sox, he doesn’t even like baseball. He has a massive debt to finance in purchasing Tribune Co. You can believe he’ll take the highest offer for the Cubs and Wrigley Field matter who makes it. You also figure he’d love to make baseball explain why it wouldn’t accept the best offer if it is Cuban. How does Congress sanction that with baseball’s antitrust exemption?

No one wants to get into that fight.

Though for a billionaire, Zell needs money now to service that huge debt. He’s not likely to want payment dragged out in a legal fight with baseball over its right to select the new Cubs’ owner. Of course, Zell also seems fond of telling people where to go just to show how rich he is and they aren’t. He’s is unpredictable. After all, who buys a huge media company in this environment?

As for Mark Cuban, you’ve got to figure the NBA, especially in Dallas, is a sell now. And MLB might well be the buy. Mark Cuban didn’t get rich sitting on declining assets.