Do a Little Paintng

Really, I had no idea the decade was ending. Perhaps that's because, like most people with brains, I subscribe to the notion that decades are a fairly useless way of demarcating stretches of time and tend to get in the way of defining epochs. Except when it comes to the NBA, where history splits itself up into ten year chunks. More on that when the book comes out. So it's only natural, like the hair on my arms, that my personal favorite sports moment of the decade is the 2000's at their fulcrum: T-Mac/Bron on Xmas 2003.

Also, Ty Keenan busts loose with an exciting, sad, and definitive BELIEVE reminiscence.

When Stations Shift, You Find Your Own

Not that I think it's my God-given duty to size up the Finals and decide who's up, who's down, but you've got to admit that Lakers/Magic does present a certain number of curious proposition. For one, these two are neither mismatched nor equals. It's like they exist in parallel universes. The Lakers, as we all know, as flushed to the gills with ability, but only periodically harness it all. The Magic, well, we didn't realize it until recently, but so are they. And they bring it on the regular. Does that make Orlando overachievers, Los Angeles underachievers, and no one but the Cavs the underdogs? The Magic's has been a season of peaks and valleys, hitting their stride, then losing Nelson, then picking up steam again, then hitting a wall earlier in the playoffs when Howard's identity came into question and Turkoglu was hurt. And now, they're riding high, so high, again. The Lakers? Friday was the first time all playoffs they've looked like the Lakers we expected to see come and visiti pestilence upon the postseason. Now you tell me: Which is inconsistency, which on a voyage of self-discovery and perpetual adjustment?

What's more, while this series doesn't seem to have STAR BATTLE written all over it, it will certainly challenge the "nobody digs Goliath, ya dig?" axiom of the modern NBA. Because, simply put, Howard is love and lightness, Kobe the darkest side of Jordan, the least ecstatic aspects of his game, streamlined and boiled down to something potent, metallic, and kind of smelly. That's not to say that Kobe's still the man we love to hate, just that he'll never be easy to love—in much the same way that Chamberlain, and even Shaq, found themselves troubled by.

Here's some fragments from a piece I wrote this spring on Shaq for a certain well-known web magazine. This was from draft #3, and apparently wasn't snappy enoigh. So sorry, guys. In any case, I think it's pertinent here for describing just how far Howard is indeed with "the new Shaq," in terms of natural magnetism and ability to worm his way into our hearts without making us feel engorged or cloyed by absurdity:

O'Neal wouldn't be the first athlete always angling for the spotlight, or looking for ingenious forms of self-promotion. But compared to, say, the whip-smart expressiveness of Muhammad Ali in his prime, O'Neal is at once light-hearted and uncomfortably deliberate. He excels at spoken spectacle, assigning himself absurdist nicknames (my favorites: The Diesel, The Big Aristotle, and Shaqovic) and making off-color jokes about opponents, like his disparaging reference to rivals "the Sacramento Queens."

From the beginning Shaq saw himself as an entertainer, which explains 1993's platinum rap album Shaq Diesel and film roles ranging from the 1996's Kazaam, in which Shaq played a genie, to 1994's Blue Chips, an underrated look at corruption in college sports that starred Nick Nolte. The more he does, the more control he exerts over his image. And with good reason. In the fraternity of superlative NBA big men, O'Neal stands alone in his non-stop levity. Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Patrick Ewing, and peer Tim Duncan, to name a few, were pensive and aloof—and often criticized for it. O'Neal has seemingly spent his entire career trying to break the mold, replacing the towering, faceless Goliath with a hip-hop Paul Bunyan. Shaquille O'Neal may have been Joe Frazier or (young) George Foreman on the court, but preferred the garrulous, daft Ali role off of it.



However, this disconnect comes with a price. Shaq's behavior can get downright ugly when his ego, image, or brand are threatened, since this could send him plummeting into in the annals of large, bitter, awkward freaks. For evidence of this, look no further than the litany of "sidekick" guards who have proved essential to his success: Penny Hardaway in Orlando, Kobe in Los Angeles, and Dwyane Wade in Miami. In the post-Jordan NBA, smaller, more dynamic players are the unquestioned center of attention. Style-wise, they're the Ali's, with inventive games that suggest a richness of personality. Shaq, always the talker in these relationships, always casts himself as the alpha dog, a font of charisma whose dominant play was a matter of fact. At the same time, in each case the other guy was emerging as one of the most exciting, inventive players in the league, leading O'Neal to turn cold and toward them, and however incidentally, move on to another team. [I think you all know how Shaq fell over, and then turned on, Penny, Kobe, and Wade].

Nothing sums up this paradox more than the mural on the bus Shaq brought to an LSU game in 2007: some sort of gangster super-summit, where Shaq presides over Scarface, Tony Soprano, and Vito Corlene, among others. Hilarious, but also quite sinister. Not coincidentally, during his time with the Heat, Shaq was fond of an analogy that cast his Hardaway as Fredo, Kobe as Sonny, and Wade as Michael. Coppola's films and The Sopranos have been defanged by their absorption into pop culture. But watch those movies from start to finish, and you'll realize just how unsettling they really are.

Heavy, huh? Man, been waiting for a while to get that out. I have to say, though, that this series might explode this paradigm, and perhaps summarily frustrate Shaq's grand mission in life. Despite O'Neal's attempt to undermine Howard, or Howard's obvious inferiority as a pure center—perhaps one of the reasons this slippage is possible—Dwight, with his boyish good looks and effortless acrobatics, is that lovable big men Shaq never could be. Yes, we can debate for days when he is in fact a big man, or just a bigger Amare. But the Superman has stuck there without any sense that we're being forced into embracing his might (like how Superman really could have destroyed the world whenever he wanted). On the other hand, Kobe, while he remains the epitomal post-Jordan off-guard, we all know that this trappings of his game have become so methodical, his aura so admirably bleak, that it's transformed the dream-like "as an explosive shooting guard, I will get rings" of Jordan into a optimization of the position so that it embraces as much of the big man rigor as is possible. LeBron is unstoppable, quasi-religious. Kobe is so professional that he's always adjusting, a character who is about as Terminator-like as guards can possibly get. Like when they made the evil robot a hot lady for T3.

That's not to say that Kobe lacks charisma. He has kind of reached that rare, glare-laden apex where, no matter what his game has evolved into over the years, or what its finer points are, fans respond to him as a showman. You and I know, though, that the man is probably replacing his blood, or grafting metal onto his spine, in hopes of turning this positional role into something with the certainty, and even the purposeful vacancy, of the big man. Howrad is so young, it's hard to gauge where he's really headed. But for now, he's a hunk of muscle unstoppable down low who is also so easy to love. And it's Kobe whose human drives and expressions of self seem more of a technicality or, even to supporters like myself, an afterthought in his grand pursuit of basketball perfection. That's not to say he's totally inhuman, on or off the court, but the personality of his position (and by extension, the Good Kobe that has so many fans) is no longer a restriction on how he looks to put together grade-A efforts.



And to turn briefly to one more WTF about this series: Does this tell us shit about the future of the game? The Lakers are by no means a reasonable template for success. Top to bottom, that team is loaded. In ways new and old. What other team can boast one of the league's most promising pure centers, as well as its second-best Euro, and a post-Garnett weirdo—all who may or may not figure prominently into the game-plan on any given night? It's almost like a brief history of the last eight years of the NBA, all on one team. Except that participation by all is optional, or maybe selectively minimal. Put simply, other teams have no chance at copying this one, and that's without even getting into Kobe's embattled, but persistent, standing among the league's elite.

The Magic offer a far more interesting case. They have this big man who is both more and less than the past. There's a chance they stumbled into it, and that the tandem of Lewis and Turkoglu are both essential and came as a surprise. And when healthy, they have an All-Star point guard. This is old worship of height, plus the age of the point guard, plus a kind of post-Euro Sudoku puzzle that only master coach SVG could make sense of in such a non-obvious fashion (and, as Kevin Pelton has pointed out, this team would suck if deployed in obvious fashion). I also pick up a distinctly Pistons-meets-Suns vine int he way Lee, Pietrus, and even Reddick are used, though maybe now I'm just laying it on thick. In short, this team has everything but a Kobe or LeBron, which is a really fortuitous spot to be in. And chances are, any other squad with this roster would screw it up. So we might be looking at an utter singularity here that both bridges and invalidates the entire ferment of conventional basketball wisdom, past and present. In the end, it comes down to the twist you put on it. Traditions and trends, new and old, can tell you some basics, but past that, you're on your own. The question is, what does it take for a team like the Magic to be absorbed, as the Suns were? The Warriors certainly weren't . .

Orlando Magic, just keep being yourselves. History will sort out the rest. As will the results of this series, incidentally.

We Atone, You Listen

We're traveling light this week on FDPTDOCNBAP, as Dan and myself sit down with the mighty Kevin Pelton to talk about what we got wrong about the playoffs. The ray of hope comes when we stop to marvel at the that great variegated snake we call the Orlando Magic. Then at the end we ponder what could cause the age limit to change, how it's bad for standardized testing and college admissions counselors everywhere. If you enjoy it, be sure and check for the DoC mini-sodes, which strike without warning and address the day's events as they happen.

The Podcast:



Music:

1. "All Wrong" - Morphine
2. "Magic Pig Detective" - Melvins
3. "Shoot Your Shot" - James Brown
4. "Hot Freaks" - Guided by Voices
5. "Old School Rules" - Dangerdoom featuring Talib Kewli

For other means of obtaining this program, try iTunes and the XML feed.

TWO OTHER LINKS:

-Ziller send this Journal Times passaage along, with the subject head "Z RAMIFICATIONS": "The last word goes to Louisville Terrance Williams who, when asked what his natural position was, said: "I think like a point guard, but I have the size like a 3. So I guess I'm a 2.''"

-I fully support this effort to archive and create nicknames that aren't just a celebration of phonetics.

Baked Alaska

I usually hate the sun, in fact, it places undue pressure on me to love life and makes me that much more determined to hide in the shadows. But fuck it, it's been gorgeous here for three days, there's only so much basketball on, and no one's checking their email. So I'm suddenly filled with spring fever—more like compulsion—and have to get to the water and get my tan on.

Before I run out the door, though, I did want to say a few things about last night's game. Sorry for the lack of frilly language, these are more notes that grew out of post-game conversation:

-I recognize that this Cavs loss somewhat mutes my latest spasms of LeBron-mania.

-That said, it is kind of sad to watch Bron go straight at Howard like the DPOY doesn't have shit on him. You wonder if an angrier Dwight might help here.

-At some point, I began to wonder if the Magic could only win, or at least impress me with a win, if they made a comeback that was . . . ummm, magical?

-Based on conversations with my friend Nate, Kevin Pelton, and my own two eyes, it's become obvious to me: Howard is a monster on offense provided he's in motion. Give him the damn ball, just make sure he's cutting, leaping, or in a position to make one step and then dunk. That's why, even though he could stand to diversity his offense, it is on SVG and other players to see this gives them a tremendous weapon right now. See also Game 1 of this series.

-Someone needs to tell Howard that him stationary in the post is a total dead-end. Unless he's got a total mismatch. When Amare was a raw killing machine in 2004-05, the trick to his success was that he avoided this situation like the plague. Now, Howard will never be able to expand his range, or ability to put the ball on the floor, like Stoudemire has done—the main way he's overcome the obvious limitation of not playing in the post. So who knows what the long-term prognosis for Howard is. But Amare was never as imposing as Howard. There's no reason he can't be used creatively so that, in short, the post is always the terms set by Howard's lateral or upward motion.

-Not surprisingly, Kevin just realized he'd said something like this several years ago:

For years now, Howard has drawn comparisons to Phoenix's Amaré Stoudemire because of how both players have a prodigious combination of size, strength, and athleticism. The comparisons break down at some point, because Howard is a far better rebounder and defender than Stoudemire, but the Magic clearly learned from how the Suns accelerated Stoudemire's development by pairing him with Steve Nash and surrounding him with double-team neutralizing outside shooters.

And also. . .

We're trained to recognize that those kind of outside shooters help beat double-teaming of a post player, a style so popular in the NBA in the 1990s that was perfected by the Houston Rockets around Hakeem Olajuwon. However, the Suns of recent vintage have demonstrated that deep threats can be just as valuable when it comes to running pick-and-rolls. Even though Magic point guards Carlos Arroyo and Jameer Nelson are not on Nash's level, the Orlando pick-and-roll is still difficult to defend because teams can't leave the outside shooters to provide help and because Howard is so good at going up and getting the ball on lobs to the rim.

-KP adds: "The point now is they realized this a long time ago, and then seemed to forget it in these playoffs, either because Nelson/sorta Turkoglu were hurt or because of ORTHODOXY."

-Tangentially related, Rafer Alston is so weird. He's at his best as a straightforward guard. Nothing outside-of-the-box or too improvisational.

-So yeah, despite Joey's earlier critique of Howard, the Magic could be making a lot more of the current situation. And maybe Dwight could stop making me feel so damn bad for him, as LeBron plays like him with perimeter skills.

-It's true, I wrote something claiming that a big game from J.R. was more important to the Nuggets than Billups stepping it up. That probably would've made more sense around these parts. But I would still like to forget it happened.

-GO WONDER PETS!!!!!!!

There Is No Satisfaction in Singing Almost

There are so many things which I'd like to write about Dwight Howard that we should probably start with the most simple one: he's not nearly as good as he should be.

"Should" is subjective and judgmental, but really, it's a word of perfect utility right now. What else fits? Want to be objective? Want to shoehorn this obvious ineffable truth into some awkwardly fitting metric? Go ahead. If you want to tell me that the defensive player of the year, the leading all-star vote-getter, the first-team All-NBA center, the fifth-most efficient PER player has done just fine for himself (thank you, very much!), be my guest. It only proves the point. No matter what anyone says in objective defense of Howard, it only illustrates that he isn't nearly the player he should be. I mean, fine, let's do it your way: those pretty, shiny measurements don't belie the truth? You really want to tell me that oh-so-great Howard isn't underwhelming when he's the meek leader who has now twice in a row allowed his team to blow fourth-quarter leads against an opponent that is wounded and undermanned?

There is no avoiding this stark reality--precisely because Dwight Howard can otherwise be so good, that he isn't when it matters is hurtful. That he could be so much more only demonstrates that he should be. A break-out fifth season of more blocks in fewer minutes, steady authority over the defensive boards, and the occasional but expected 20-20 doesn't compensate for the fact that among "superstars," he's the one least likely to make you believe. Kobe, Lebron, CP3, Dwyane--those guys scare you, because you know they can choose victory. For that matter, who wouldn't pick a Billups, or a Pierce, or a Nash, or a Duncan before settling on Howard as a player in whom he or she will invest the confidence that a victory is only a will away? All of the misguided axiomatic reasoning that Howard is dominant means little when he so clearly isn't. As the Celtics get open looks across the court and at the rim, I don't see a defensive player who enables his teammates to be better. As the Magic live and die by the three, I don't see a pivot whose mere presence improves opportunities for the subordinates he's meant to bolster.

I get that some of it isn't his fault, but let's not forget, either, that most of it is. It is not Stan Van Gundy's pathetically panicked approach which makes Howard's hook shots awkward and ill-advised. It is not the neglect of passes which should have been thrown that limits Dwight's range. It is not the failure to work the ball inside-out which has robbed Dwight of an actual arsenal after five years. And forget the free-throw shooting; that probably wasn't even the problem on Tuesday night. Sure, it was stultifying that a 60% shooter at the stripe received the ball with 6 seconds left when trailing by three, but it was his first touch of the final three minutes because, after a series spent watching Superman stifled by an always-scowling Jimmy Olsen wearing Kryptonite green, his teammates surely had no faith that he could lead by example.

That's the great Dwight Howard? A player whose dominance has been exposed as such a charade that his own teammates are scared to throw him the ball? Dwight Howard should be better than that. His accolades and accomplishments certainly would say so. But again, I'm not relying on those perhaps objective data, because it's not the real point. Howard's frailty is like porn: you know it when you see it.

Of course, let's acknowledge the parts of this that aren't his fault. First, his coach sucks. Strategically and tactically, Stan Van has been exposed as a whiner whose strokes suggest that he'd be more comfortable in shallower water. It surely doesn't help Howard that the Magic do so little to maximize his strengths and keep him involved. (P.S. There is a sad parallel to be drawn between Robert Parish's regular ownership of Patrick Ewing as the latter's pupil is now owned by the former's successor.)

Second, in a league now made for guards and wings who move in new ways and play with new styles, the traditional notions of big men start to feel archaic. Which is not to say that they are obsolete--the Spurs have perfected a system which starts with the strengths of a traditional post. However, one can't fairly criticize Howard for all that he isn't without also recognizing that unlike, say, LeBron, Dwight is not an initiator of a class that can so easily dominate NBA basketball. He depends on others to get him the ball, to let him have some space, and so forth. A great big man can be the league's best player, or maybe the player who makes the greatest impact, as Shaq used to be. But even O'Neal needed teammates who understood him, and even O'Neal bristled at times when his teams didn't appear fully committed to the sacrifices required to extract all they could mine from him.

This last point is one worth dwelling upon for a moment: we treat big men differently. Throughout Lig history, great centers have enjoyed a unique romantic mythology. From Mikan, to Wilt, to Kareem, to Walton, to Moses, to Olajuwon, to O'Neal, it has been ever seductive to both witness and then embellish moments of domination when physical presence and prowess simultaneously illustrated the game and overpowered it. There has always been elegant simplicity behind the dunk shot, sky hook, Dream Spin, alley oop. We have memorialized the central big man as the hulking ubermacht, a tradition born of the general inclination toward celebrating a certain physical aptitude literally embodied by these biggest men. Arguably, the common narrative for a center, and the traditional role which we collectively envision, unfairly simplifies how it all works. Every great center listed above had help. Moreover, a player like O'Neal always needed an all-star wing to illustrate Shaq's own greatness, an odd cipher in which Shaq enabled a Penny, who in turn enabled a Shaq. Anfernee Hardaway ain't walking through the door in Orlando. Dwight does need some help.

Yet fairness should not substitute for honesty, and so we are back where we started: Dwight Howard should be better than he is, even once we control for bad coaches, limited teammates, and unfair notions of traditional big-man exceptionalism. None of this means that Howard won't get better, or cannot. In fact, the shortcomings of the Magic this year may ultimately serve to heighten the enthusiasm with which we congratulate Howard for an ultimate triumph. At 23, he has time to improve. But right now, not even YouTube dancing or elaborate all-star theatrics can excuse that Howard was invisible on Tuesday, did nothing to stop Sunday, and has emerged as something of a vexing enigma.

Really, he should be better than that.
 

Muse and Mechanics

Skeets and myself are both very busy men with a constant need to consume virgin blood and walk on ice. But when we aren't so busy, or need to take time out from said business to determine the future of basketball, the topic often turns to the alley-oop. It's often decried as the ultimate in showy, bombastic play—and not surprisingly, has been a hallmark of all the most FD teams ever. However, it's also money when executed by a pinpoint guard and masterful leaper. In fact, it can be so hard to stop, such an easy way to get points, that it sometimes feels like the new low post. That's one of those moments where I really understand why Hubie Brown constantly observes that the game is now above the rim, has an added dimension, and all that. Certainly, the likes of Paul and Chandler view it as a set play. And I can get bored by players who can only get points off of alley-oops, which certainly strengthens their case as something worthwhile.

If you accept the alley-oop as more like the pick-and-roll than the windmill, all sorts of perceptual doors begin to loosen. Remember McGrady's off-the-backboard self-oop? Why not use the backboard as a second floor, thus adding another (fourth?) dimension to the game. It sounds fancy and frivolous, but again, we're talking set plays, or at least shit that's been worked on in practice. Take a look at this Hedo/Howard connect, about 1:48 in.



Now, this might have been a botched shot. But the timing is so perfect, and the point of impact so high, it's hard to not see a glint of intentionality in there. And it was out of a timeout. If you buy that, then follow, and tell me it's not every bit as smart as a bounce pass into the lane. Plus, this is Hedo Freakin' Turkgolu, a player known to style a little, but hardly a hot dogger. Despite the sheer kookiness of the play, on the whole it feels a lot less trangressive than pretty much every possession of the 2006-07 Warriors.

What's the next step? Maybe this clip—granted, from high school, but introducing a totally volleyball element to the mix that echoes Wilt's never-ending devotion to that second sport.



When floating bodies become a passing surface, then all of a sudden I get dizzy and you're in the realm of basketball gadget plays. Exceptions, not a considerable planar extension of time and space. Still, this could work, people, and the more the NBA begins to see the 'oop as foundational, the more possible this kind of thing becomes. In effect, it becomes the new alley-oops.

Maybe we're putting the heads ahead of the other heads. But remember, the dunk itself was once thought of as useless tomfoolery. Now, most people would agree that relatively sane dunking is the easiest way to ensure the ball goes through the hoop. The paradox of progress is that imagination is always linked to style, and yet it also provides the seed for innovation that changes the face of function. Think about the way the Suns or Warriors use to alter the dimensions of the court (scrapped book idea: using advanced physics to prove this), all through a mode of play dripping with style. Is a team like the Magic or Hornets this close to another great, sustained breakthrough?

(Further, unrelated reading: Shoals Unlimited on losers and All-Star selection. Also, note all the questions posed herein. In one of the older chats I looked at to craft this post, Skeets and I decide that asking questions is the key to audience participation. What do you think?)