Where Now, Endorser of Folly?

Hey all, neglect not my voluptuous team previews over at you-know-where.

All sort of crazy stuff coming down from the foggy hilltop lair of the Golden State Warriors. Down a bit in this Baseline post, you get Monta equivocating on just where he stands with the team, and whether or not he thinks Ellis/Curry could ever make that bank. Dude's got a point: Both are small, and while Ellis isn't say it, Curry's unproven, much less as a do-it-all weirdo that Nellie will demand if he's actually paying attention. For my three dolmas, I don't see why the team wouldn't go with Morrow, other than the fact that Curry's got just enough to keep everyone under his spell (or rather, to justify using him when his name is potentially big draw. At least NY felt that way.)

Morrow is a shooting machine, and while Ellis doesn't naturally play the 1, I fail to see exactly why the team wins by accommodating Curry, rather than trying to figure out how to best make the team work around Monta. Come on Nellie, you're letting down your foremost theoretial boosters! In fact, you could run out a line-up that's surprisingly conventional, albeit with a few wrinkles, and still learn a lot, teach others, and win some games. What's so bad about Ellis/Morrow/Jackson/Randolph/Biedrins, with Curry and Wright featured prominently off the bench?

But this ain't The Baseline, and you aren't here to watch me rattle off possible line-ups—however irrational, or ideologically-motivated, they might be. I come to speak to you of the current interactions of Jackson and Ellis with the press, respective. Jackson, in particularly, is somehow straddling the line between calm/cool and outlandish, saying, more or less, "I've seen everyone else go. The team I helped win is gone. The new formation is, if not looking for an identity, at least not that good yet. I proved myself with the Spurs, brought love to the Bay, and signed an offer I'd have been foolish to turn down here. Please trade me." Yes, there's a paradox there: WHY SIGN IF YOU WANTED TO LEAVE YOU SELFISH THUG FUCK!???!! But Nellie himself is talking a similarly rational game, along the lines of "we'll see what we can do, but it won't tear the team apart." In short, the two still seem to trust the other to exercise some form of reason—a funny sentence if ever there were one, but the way it is.



(By the way, I think most of my paraphrases are taken from this here San Francisco Chronicle story. For Monta, see Baseline link above.)

Ellis is a trickier proposition. He's being paid like the franchise, but is increasingly depicte as the odd man out. Why exactly has Ellis gone from one of the league's most coveted young players to disgruntled trade bait? Because he's not a true PG? Because his three-pointer has bad credit rating? This is a Don Nelson team we're talking about. For the same reason that we'd expect him to both respect Jackson's will to exit and forge ahead with him nonetheless, it's a total letdown that Ellis now poses such a quandry.Who exactly is Nelson waiting for when it comes to making this team fall into place? Is he suddenly appealing to the templates of convention? Yes, he loves Randolph. How are those two not a package deal? I guess there's some PR/business shit to sort out, but as for basketball, if ever there were a time for fearlessness on Nellie's part, today is that hour.

It's tempting to blame it all on Curry, and all that he stands for. But whatever, even his uneven skill set might end up best tucked away somewhere in a Ellis/Randolph superstructure. I don't get why, on the level of feelings and abstract coach-speak, Nelson seems so willing to break the mold as he plays reasonable with Jackson, but can't get a little restive or provocative when it comes to putting players on the floor.

Or perhaps the repartee with Jackson must be viewed alongside Nelson's threat to coach for free in 2011-12. The Positional Revolution has sapped him; now, he's smacking up and down the entire culture of labor and coach/team/player relations. That would be cool and all, but at this crucial time for the Dubs, when so much is possible and at the same time so much slipping away, now is the time for Nelson to get off his ass, slap some water on his face, and one more time ride into battle like the wind around him can drown out all but the sound of his own thoughts.

It's Judgment That Defeats Us

A profound believer in liberated fandom, djturtleface loves the worst or most peculiar teams in the league. In third grade he listed Rasheed Wallace as his idol, and currently writes for TheGoodPoint.com. He just started SB Nation's Memphis Grizzlies blog Straight Outta Vancouver, which is an exercise in pain, misfortune, and hope for a better tomorrow.

Like virtually all of his ‘We Believe’ teammates before him, turns out that Captain Jack was never quite as happy with being an act in Donnie Nelson’s circus as we once presumed.

Bear in mind that this is a player-coach combo once thought to have built the best rapport in the league. When on Oakland’s local sports-talk radio they would regularly call in as anonymous listeners to pose goofy questions to each other. Nelson gave Jackson more minutes and more regular minutes than any other player on the squad, which is actually quite an accomplishment since Nelson benched players like Jamal Crawford, who should nicely compliment his system, and the Anthony Randolph, who should be a fucking thunder-lizard or something, for the bulk of the season. Point is it’s becoming rather obvious that Don Nelson is to the NBA as Colonel Kurtz is to Vietnam.

Nelson is a man tortured and ruined by the combination of his own genius and the impossibility of his circumstance. Donnie can turn some undrafted kid out of the Georgia Institute of Technology into an explosive scorer in his rookie season, but couldn’t have cultivated a healthy, professional relationship with Dikembe Mutumbo. And while this phenomenon might be endlessly interesting to a casual observer, it seems to be particularly frustrating to those living the dream.

In the most FD of ways, Nelson’s dementia is clearly reflected by the style of his system, which makes his insanity almost a necessity. As I’ve written about in the past, teams that play asymmetrical basketball can be extremely effective, but are still extremely uncommon. This is because there are three enormous roadblocks that tend to prevent the more sane coaches in the association from being given a chance to prove their genius.



While Don Nelson has broken the mold by simply refusing to acknowledge the existence of any societal norm, most of us prefer not to have conversations with the demons inside our skulls, so front offices tend to get stuck on these worries:

Social: Lots of people pretend like peer-pressure isn’t real. Lots of social scientists know it’s an incredibly powerful force in decision making. Lots of professional sports teams have fans, which provide an enormous social pressure. NBA front offices trying to build unique squads have to make unique, sometimes questionable roster moves. Since lots of the fans aren’t members of the front office, it’s incredibly difficult for a franchise to teach them the rationale behind their action without alerting every other team in the league. And that kind of defeats the purpose of running a sneaky strategy the other teams aren’t built to counter.

Unless you’re Chris Wallace, chances are you don’t want to be perceived by your fans or the national media as like Chris Wallace—not to insinuate Chris Wallace is covertly building an asymmetrical team, just to insinuate most teams would probably rather hire Isiah Thomas as their new GM at this point. Some franchises manage to answer this convoluted equation, normally by branding their style so fans and media understand their personnel decisions. But most franchises find it much easier to just remove the whole unique squad part from the equation, then all you need to do to quell those incessantly riotous fans is trade for Shaq.

Cultural: This equation is much shorter. Coaches and GM’s aren’t always on the same page. Because of the ‘No Championships’ propaganda and the reason above, GM’s resist making particularly creative roster choices. Coaches need to win, or they get fired. So if the coach has a traditional lineup, there is too much pressure from the NBA’s win-or-burn coaching culture for that coach to tinker with the way the lineup is constructed and utilized. Who really wants to save a world that is destined to die?

As evidence I would like to submit that coaches using a unique system typically have nothing to lose because of their status (read: large and long contracts, or exceptionally short leash): D’Antoni, Nelson, Adelman, Karl are the legends; Stan Van Gundy and a bunch of interim coaches are the outcasts who need to show sparks of genius to have any hope of staying an NBA head coach.



Economic: Common sense would edict that a team using its personnel in unique ways to maximize their ability and minimize their flaws would get some serious discounts on players. In theory because they’re getting the maximum value out of each players skills, these teams could get by paying less for players who are seen as flawed in most systems. Sadly because of the branding issue even the most innovative team needs to have some semblance of consistency in player roles. The more unique your team becomes, the more unique skill-set necessary to make it work, thus the rarer the player that will plug into your asymmetrical system.

Since players and agents aren’t fucking morons, they know their team’s unique needs and use this as an advantage in their negotiations. How does a dude named Andrea makes $50 million over 5 years from a team bidding against itself, despite failing to contribute for a bad team over his entire career? He is seven-foot tall and can shoot on a team that’s trying to build the NBA’s closest approximation of Euro-ball. The Raptors have the opportunity to emerge as the strangest team in the NBA next season, but had to pony up serious cash to make it happen. I’m not exactly a trained economist, but common sense tells me that if supply equals one, it doesn’t take tons of demand for the price to rise.

Like most systems that persist over time, team development is well reinforced by structural forces that are perpetuated from Grand Minister Stern all the way down to the most ignorant of fans. There isn’t even an ounce of hope for Reformation at this point. Nelson is too egomaniacal to lead the revolution, the Magic are too repentant for their loss, and D’Antoni is too not in Chicago.

So where, precisely, are we, the fans who want nothing more than to just see something fucking new and different, to go from here? Well it looks like in the foreseeable future we’ll just have to keep on elevating our heartbeats over the positively titillating news that flawed dunk specialist Hakim Warrick will be joining the incredibly raw rookie Brandon Jennings, who might not even start over Luke Ridinour. And we will keep watching insufferably ugly, slow Bobcats games just to catch the token Gerald Wallace highlight. Or maybe we’ll track a Suns team that is a ghostly, back-from-Siberia version of its glory years. Crazy Donnie, you are a much stronger man than I.

Dream Angels: Z The Return

Structure (debuted Monday) now revised to be more precise. Here is the starting line-up for the 2010 Golden State Warriors. (UPDATE: Jax fixed.)

Of Course You Knew It

From the YouTube description: "Backstage at a Too Short show last year. Baron Davis (aka Flava Flav) claims that Stephen Jackson (aka Chuck D) is 'the sickest rapper' he knows. Baron lied. Stephen Jackson cannot rap." Whatever.

Don't forget to buy our newest shirts.

Real Recognize Self

Go to the bright, shiny, new store, cop this shirt, go to a Warriors game, and maybe S-Jax's friends will ask you to pose for a picture with the man himself. That's what happened to reader DR, who was gracious enough to send along the photographic evidence.

And really, seriously. No comments about Ray Allen's suggestion that Bron get political, or my reaction to it? It says there's a post underneath all the announcements.

Yin Yang Calamity (EDIAL in sheep's clothing?)

FIRST OF ALL: Don't forget about Free Darko's cause for the kids!

--Now let's set it off with the most important news of the year in FD-land, which is that Amir Johnson will be the Pistons' starting power forward. We promise there is more to come on this breaking development as the week progresses. This news, combined with the word out of Detroit that Curry is going to expand Tayshaun Prince's game, not to mention the progression of Stuckey, makes me salivating (pause) to watch the Pistons this year.

--A bit of overlooked intrigue on Gwen Ifill's "role" in the debate last week.

--I miss the old days, when we would have been the first to bring you this story, but no doubt it's probably getting pub on like thirteen blogs already. Most notable about this piece is that I forgot Stephen Jackson got RUN OVER BY A CAR.

--Have to link to Zill for his insight on Carmelo and the Nugs. Back when the T-Wolves were competitive, Carmelo + Denver were public enemy No. 1 for me. Now all I can do is shake my head at them for getting in too deep with Karl-ball, tossing Camby into the ocean, and digging a baby blue grave for Iverson. Not that this is the ballsiest of claims, but mark my words right now, after the Nuggets stroll to the All-star break with a barely passable .490-.510 winning percentage, Iverson will be shipped out to a contender and may even win his first ring this year. Could be Detroit, Boston, Dallas, or even Phoenix...I just don't see Iverson going out of this league quietly.


















--On to the topic du jour, what Gawker has dubbed the "Jewish Civil War." I'm sure many of you last week got a chance to see Sarah Silverman's plug for "The Big Schlep," shown below:



Amusing, sure. I admit I laughed. But after the novelty wore off, I started to recall that every election year, famous people from Michael Moore to Ralph Nader pull a whole bunch of stupid self-serving stunts that are supposedly "for the cause" but really do more harm than good and generally don't make people vote democrat, and the Silverman video falls into that dump of stunts. (I will say, however, that the whole cringe-inducing Will.I.Am. "Yes We Can" thing shockingly is an exception...shit definitely caught on). Further unsettling was Jackie Mason's response to this video, shown here:



Now, regardless of what YOU think of Silverman or Mason or their videos, picture that small-but-critical block of elderly Jewish voters in Florida. Assume they are "active" online. First, which video are they more likely to see? Second, which video is more likely to sway them? Silverman is speaking to young fanatics who are already voting Obama and are gonna have a tough time convincing their grandparents to do the same. Mason is speaking to his generation, and actually sounds like a rational human being. It pains me to say it because I was a huge Silverman fan circa Mr. Show, but I am siding with Mason here in terms of effectiveness, utility during a critical election in which old people have been shat on (how is it ok that McCain's death is being discussed as an absolute certitude?), and is just plain right.

As an aside, I've been following Silverman over the years and (HATE TO DO IT BUT I HAVE TO) have become increasingly uncomfortable with how comfortable she is being racist toward blacks. What pisses me off is that it's generally under the guise of "hey I'm making fun of Jews and I'm Jewish, so I can make fun of [black people] too," which is such a piddily defense given that self-loathing is virtually the first principle of Jewish comedy and is therefore a given. Second, she has exploited her hipster cred to where she has clearly become a White Act and rarely places herself in any context where a black person would call her out on it (by the way, did anybody catch her and Jenny Lewis at the Apollo? Wonder how that went over). Third, she's simply doing more racist-at-black-people humor than anybody else. Exhibits A and B (of Z) below.





And of course there's the episode of the Sarah Silverman Program where: "Sarah has been denied entry to a tennis club, supposedly because she is Jewish, and argues with a man that claims being black is harder than being Jewish, Sarah tries to prove him wrong by putting on blackface." Hyuk hyuk. Look, it's not like Jackie Mason is any sort of a mensch when it comes to race relations either, but I find Silverman's brand of "cool racism" particularly annoying. Apologies for my rant, especially to those of you who have given us shit over the past few weeks for not focusing enough on basketball. But when the term "Jewish Civil War" comes up, best believe FD is gonna be there to resolve things.