You've Been Scared

First, the widget: I think I've finally quit for good, which has me returning to Cigarettes Are Sublime and its effort to get at what, beyond tobacco, makes smoking great; Miike's remake of Graveyard of Honor is one of the few DVD's I own, and I find it as moving in its own way as The Wolves; since I'm going to see Leonard Cohen later this month, I've decided to conclude that New Skin for the Old Ceremony, which I listened to on repeat the only time I wrote a short story; a couple years back, Dr. LIC and myself randomly found out we were both huge fans of Israel Rabon's ultra-bleak The Street, about a homeless Jewish soldier in 1920's Poland; Charles Shaar Murray's Crosstown Traffic is like Greil Marcus if he actually liked music; I'm routinely amazed at how many people, myself included, have long been in the dark about Playing for Keeps, Halberstam's long-ass Jordan bio.

At many times in many hours, we have brought forth the notion of a Positional Revolution. These have been near-utopian ideals, which mostly involve either an entire team structuring itself around a single, atypical player (or as a series of interdependent roles that buck convention), or a bunch of do-it-all weirdos whose contributions shift from possession to possession. Old news for anyone who has read this blog before this year, which has been remarkably devoid of advances on that front.

That is, until about a week ago. That's when the Thunder signed Shaun Livingston, I remembered they had Thabo, and I started to wonder, what becometh of Russell Westbrook? You want to talk about Rondo as a PG lacking in jump shot? Westbrook is the point equivalent of a dirty bomb. He's so unpredictable, and riotously imperfect, that you really have to wonder how teams scouting him managed to keep any stable future hologram in front of them while taking their notes. It's not just that he lacks position, but that he undermines, even threatens, the stability of those around him.

No, this isn't that same old combo-itis again, or the curse of the tweener. I think it's pretty much established that this cliche, conservative as it may be, rings damningly true except in the case of certain active backcourts where two guards overstep their bounds just enough to mesh (this year, it's Williams/West). I see Westbrook as too unstable, divergent, and fundamentally bugged-out to fit into that synergistic relationship; to a lesser extent, I think this applies to Jerryd Bayless, which is why I tried to get Golliver to ask Pritchard just what they saw in Bayless. Did they think of him vis a vis a template, and worry about his imperfections, his tweener-nes, or see him as a singularity that would really put some balls back in "best available. "Best available" as a way forward, not a cop-out. FYI, that's kind of what I think the Thunder are doing, and I applaud them for it.



Yet so far, all thinking along these lines has been in the context of a system. The redemption of such players comes when, organically, they fit into a plan. They are, in some sense, without form until they fit. Or, no matter how sympathetically, they're bent and warped slightly to work well within whatever normal, or abnormal, system they've been cast in. They could be tweeners well-coached, multi-purpose threats, or guys responsibly down for whatever (Hedo!!). But what of the Westbrooks, possibly Bayless and Barbosa, maybe Tyreke Evans—all minscule heirs to Dwyane Wade, a player who at every turn has resisted pigeon-holing and even too much law and order from possession to possession. Not because he's selfish, but because he works best when set loose and asked to explode. With that will come equal parts individual and team, but you can't see it coming and planning for it is something of a fool's errand. Compare that with LeBron's "allow me to be all pillars of your temple" functionality.

You wonder, then, what's the way to describe Westbrook? I've written previously about a redistribution of labor, either on the macro or micro level within a team. Are there not, though, players most suited not to responding to these signals from the realm of ideas, but to serving as catalysts in their own right, whose mismatched, or garbled skill-sets is proof not that they don't fit in, or are to become lepers in the taxonomy of scouting (I love Jamal Crawford, but we're not talking about his kind of limbo here). We still think of these players, and even superstars like Durant, in terms of how they might best be used to make sense of the usual slate of basketball responbiltiies. Durant can, in a sense, become a position unto himself. But either through their relative insignificance, or sheer, explosive weirdness, there's a whole class of smaller players who are best served as fields of probability, abilities that cohere more as a mess of intriguing tendencies than a CV-ready mission statement. This is nothing less than the difference between believing in skills and being cowed by the notion of responsibility.

(Graphs by Ziller. This is the spectrum of positionality. Blue dots are continuity, red ones isolated occurrences.)







I want to step back here and nod in the direction of a conversation Silverbird5000 and I had the other day concerning, on some base level, stats. We eventually returned to the question of whether, in the most crude sense, something like adjusted +/- presumes (as Berri certainly does) that it's better to have a team full of players equally good at offense and defense, at perimeter and the paint, than a collection of folks who excel at some things but suck at others. Forget for a second that what I've just described is pretty much the way teams are built, since the game is as much a series of encounters in the moment as an overall flow of data, and dominance gets you more mileage than playing it close in all departments. But it also dawned on me how much this ultra-conservative version of basketball (where, say, you'd take two players that are 5 in all categories as opposed to two with a wider range of "scores") resembles a team like the Warriors of legend, where even Baron Davis could blur his PG's role with Jackson around, or the Amare-less Suns, or that ideal D'Antoni team mentioned in the press at one point of "all 6'8" guys who can run and pass."

Here, of course, is where the ultra-right and ultra-left unwittingly crash into each other, when Communism becomes Fascism, or communes giving way to cults. I doubt it ever works the other way—a sinister consolidation of power and crushing of all opposition giving way to egalitarian sunshine and light? But certainly, the nexus is both unlikely and potential ammunition for both sides, even if it's that moment where you look across the battlefield and realize your enemy is human. We all want the same thing, sometimes.



And now, we come to what should be the topic of the hour, Allen Iverson. I find it fascinating that, ever since the 2001 Finals, even those who decry ballhogs and bemoan the death of the league have a soft spot for the guy. He's heart personified, guts on a stick, a performer whose sheer visceral and emotional impact on fans is like being hit by an unshorn tidal wave. He is, in short, a stone classic, a Hall of Famer, and one of the most important players in the game (even if you want to argue over whether he's one of the best). But he's been both ahead of his time and, in his uncompromising version of the Wade philosophy, a prototype that could not move forward without reforms. It's a given by now: AI can't play any other way. Even with Melo, when he racked up assists and worked well with another scorer, he set the tone and rhythm of every possession, and forced all around him to pick on his idiosyncratic sense of timing, space, and cues.

We can argue over whether or not the 2000-01 Sixers were effectively built around him, since no one else on there even needs to touch the ball. I'd say, though, that in retrospect, Iverson isn't the man who wrecked the guard position, but a phenomenal talent who can't help himself—actually, can't help but transcend the very notion of roles and responsibilities. As irresponsible as it sounds, Iverson only works when you give him the ball and let him improvise. Let what come may. Not because he's a ball-hog, but because the game only comes to him on those terms. Just as, for the guards discussed above, there's too much going on there (and sometimes missing there) to try and assign them clear-cut responsibilities. We're talking about a stylistic profile, a new way of mapping an ordinarily maddening kind of player. Inconvenient truths, but ones that have yielded fruits at times. Iverson is perhaps too extreme to even fit this model, but what he would need is a team built to respond to his disproportionate hits and misses—not a normal one that pretends he's a point guard, or even one where he's paired with a complementary player, as if Iverson were merely singular, not totally fluid.

All of which brings us to Lamar Odom. At this point, the "could've been Magic" has turned from regret on fans' part to a kind of background myth: "That Lamar Odom sure is good, did you know he could've been Magic?" I'd say, though, that at this point in his career the Lakers use him precisely as this kind of x-factor. I'm sure it's a pain in the ass for the coaching staff, but allowing Odom to shape-shift within the triangle, as opposed to cast him as KG-esque New Synthesis, is exactly what's allowed him to finally gain legitimacy. We can only hope that, whatever happens to Iverson next, in cast more in the light of forward-thinking strategy, rather than the Angel Gabriel handing out pizzas in the Stone Age.



ABSOLUTELY ENORMOUS UPDATE:

Per audience request, here's Anthony Randolph's profile. We flipped it on its side and added some pentagrams to make it even weirder than it already is. However, also take note that we've added "handle" and "low TO's", so when you're looking at the other graphs, imagine those on there, too. They should only further affirm what we have discovered to be true.

Russell's Barber Can't Use Occam's Razor

So last week, the thing du jour around the basketball blogosphere was Michael Lewis's NYT article, specifically its discussion of how players like Battier, wholly complete and savvy behind-the-scenes type guys who do little things we can't notice, make happiness and winning. It's interesting stuff and more good than bad, but at this point is probably like two months away from falling into evil hands and being subverted into some form of scientific discrimination—maybe a reason to keep Julian Wright off the floor. What interests me at this point are the differences between the explosively subtle. The two top teams in the East both feature point guards who are both far from superstars and absolutely and completely indispensable to everything they do. And they could not be more different in every way possible. While Mo's fundamental soundness have stabilized the Cavaliers to a great degree, the far more interesting case study in my opinion is what Rondo's glorious incompletionism and rejection of fundamentals at the individual level have done for his team.



I'm not even going to try and put a quick label on Rondo. He simply defies them, whether positive or negative. As much as any player in the NBA, Rondo is paradox incarnate. Rather than being a paradigm of quiet contribution and efficiency at all times—the standard "know your role" PG—Rondo is at once an unstoppable for whom there is no possible answer and a gaping wound whose weakness provides a possible attack point. He is the type of young, talented, and developing player who normally thrive on bad teams, but he runs the point for the league's current juggernaut. He the worst shooting guard in the NBA, and yet leads all guards in FG%. He's brimming with athletic skill and his body looks like the product of Jay Bilas being allowed access to the Forge of Hephaestus, and yet he's more beloved by stat heads than scouts. His play is more audacious than any guard in the league, and yet he is the unknown star of the Celtics.

The fantastic of Rondo all traces back to the fact that he has no jump shot. This is hardly news. However, it is important to make some distinctions between having a bad jump shot and Rondo's jump shot. Russell Westbrook and Raymond Felton have bad jump shots. They are given space and it is the goal of every defense to force them into taking a shot, and it is a constant struggle for them to create lanes by trying to keep defenses honest. Rondo has no jump shot. He has eschewed it. It is a false God to him. It is not a part of his decision tree but an unwelcome last resort. Defenses do not try to force him to take a jump shot, for there is no pretense he will actually take one. When Rondo gets the ball in his hands, the clarity of his goal actually leads to a greater set of permutations than it normally would-if we are to stretch the metaphor of the outside shots, than the difference between other point guards' possessions and Rondo's possessions are the difference between a gunfight and swordplay.

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To wish, as most do, for a Rondo with a jumpshot is to wish for a sober Bukowski, a Woody Allen with normal relationships, Obama without the Bush era. Part of what makes him so much better this year, and most of what makes the Celtics tolerable now, is Rondo's embracing of his own destiny and his mandate to all others to get on board. Rondo this year has matured by regressing to his orginal state and taking it to its logical conclusion, rather than attempting to straddle compromise. Whereas last year, he flirted with the idea of playing like a conventional point guard and even started to become passable at it-last year 56% of his shots were jumpers and he shot a very acceptable 42% on them, which is far from terrible. All his shots were wide-open, yes, but that is a better mark than LeBron James has ever posted. This year, however, he has decided to completely reject any semblance of obeying a positional doctrine and has seen his jump shot FG% fall to 33% and, more importantly, has upped his percentage of "inside" shots to 58%, which is a full 10% higher than the next guard and higher than, for example, Pau Gasol and Amare Stoudemire.

At the same time, while Rondo would occasionally sit in the corner and take a passive offensive role last season and allow Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett to make the plays, this year he demands that the veterans fall into line and allow him to be the one who creates. And Rondo is perhaps the purest creator in the NBA. I've long maintained that point guards are like writers, whose effectiveness is determined not by their own personal ability to put the ball in the basket but to turn the court into their own dark funhouse and make the opposing team see the game on the point guard's revised and ultimately manipulative terms. Steve Nash's world is one of impossible choices-he is the best-shooting guard in the league, and he forces defenders to attempt to consolidate their force into a stationary Maginot line that he can fit the ball around. Chris Paul's is one of forced annexation-he is everywhere on the court he wants to be, invading spaces (against the Lakers, there was one possession where he got a basket by going to the basket by dribbling in step behind Lamar Odom's turned back) and blowing up rotations into a chaos only he can see angles through. Rondo's game is predicated, more than anything else, on his ability to become a creature of nightmares. While Paul is a wily trickster who flits around defenders and coerces them out of their comfort zones, Rondo uses his athleticism to fool defenders into seeing things as simpler than they really are. For Rondo to succeed without having any sort of personal go-to scoring moves, he must make himself capable of all things.



The most important of Rondo's myriad dichotomies is his relationship to the rebulous concept of completionism. Clearly, Rondo is an incomplete player on an individual level. However, on a team level, he completes his team in a way Battier could only dream of doing for his own. Rondo's lack of individual manuevers means that all of his actions are aimed at either getting to the basket or creating a wide-open shot for somebody else; his lack of completion makes him exist less as a player and rather as a concept of absolute efficiency-that he has no step-back jumper as his Plan B just means the game to him is an infinite number of paths to Plan A. Not only does Rondo thrive on the Celtics, but he could only exist on the Celtics-without options around him, his freedom would be channeled unto himself instead of serving to transform him into a manifestation of Occam's Katana Blade. And it should be noted that the receiving end of Rondo's creation is often a simple 18-foot jumper by Kevin Garnett, who, many years ago would once position himself as the roll man and look to spin and finish in a spectacular and wholly improvised fashion before he became Complete and relegated himself to an upgraded Antonio McDyess.

Mo Williams, who I'm realizing I find far less interesting than Rondo, nonetheless provides the counterpoint to how individual completionism can have team-level benefits. Mo utilizes a sort of hybridization of the short-lived Iversonian school of scoring, which is to block out the court and turn the game into a battle against one defender for the best immediately possible shot opportunity and the new efficiency-dictated model for scoring, which is to find a way to get the ball to the most high-percentage shots on the floor and to value quality possessions over shot creation.

Mo functions well as a finisher of created plays, but with the ball in his hands Mo has a few spots on the floor that he uses a screen to get to and can always get off a decent-percentage shot from. This shows in Mo's stat line-with radically different teammates around him, his PER is exactly the same as it was last year, and his shot breakdown remains nearly identical. Mo doesn't change dynamics of a given play the way Rondo does, but his abilities as an Island Unto Self provide a foundation atop which ball movement and the general Amazing made by LeBron can then be placed with Mo functioning as a safety net.

And so there it is-Mo succeeds with fundamentals, Rondo with spectacularly flawed gifts. To say that a combination of them would be the perfect guard is to miss the point of them entirely.

M.P. Levine!!!!!!!!!!

No one on the planet can say "Russell Westbrook" four times in a row. Fast or slow. It's the secret to his game, too.

Back more regularly in the next few days. . .

Lost Wonder

As usual, Ziller beat me to it, in officially blogging a sigh of relief that Kevin Durant has been moved to Small Forward. Gee, ya think? This was something I pined for back in the beginning of the season and something you would think wouldn't take this long to figure out. Gee, PJ, do you think one of the best freshman forwards in college history should be forced to play two-guard? Hell no.

The bottom line is that the Thunder already look and feel better under Scotty Brooks, who I must namedrop, as one of the few NBA guys I actually made friends with during my few years working for the Timberwolves. When I was 11 years old and working my first game, Brooks hit me with a $20 bill and actually chatted with me -- I felt a connection with him ever since that point. He was one of the true nice guys in the league, and also was a tough little bastard -- someone that Barkley would go to war for in their Sixers days and someone who played some key stretches during the Rockets' mid-90s title runs. Brooks has been city-hopping for a while, and may in fact be the next great coach. He provides the toughness of Scott Skiles, but also knows when to loosen his grip. Quoth Durant (again via Ziller):

"Not taking anything away from P.J., he wanted the best out of us," said Durant. "But Scott did a great job of giving us a little bit of room for error. Once we messed up he just told us what we needed to do better and told us that play was over. I think that kind of made us feel a little better. We just got to continue to build on it."



I can't think of a better situation for Brooks as a first-time coach, and for these Thunder players. Plus, when Brooks took over, they actually played like they were going to win a game, and because I fell asleep for the last two minutes of the Thunder/Suns game last night, I'm going to pretend they did. I could see an extreme sense of levity and comfort amongst these guys. And at very least I have seen in Westbrook and Durant, a potential small-big power-duo that by midseason will be competitive with D-Williams/Boozer, Nash/Amare, and Chris Paul/David West as far as these duos go. Not to mention next year, when Westbrook establishes himself as the official Deron Williams to Derrick Rose's CP3. Westbrook just has insane Dwyane-Wade-like upside and is fast becoming my favorite player in the league.

Now if the Thunder could only dump their supporting cast for better three-point shooters, we would have a serious team on our hands. Westbrook can get in the lane with the best of them, and Durant is JUST STARTING HIS CAREER NOW. In an email to Shoals and the Recluse last night, I officially proclaimed him "freed." Screw Glenn Robinson and Shareef Abdur-Rahim. This is the bizarro-KG-Dirk-assassin that we all were watching at Texas. It will take a year still for that player to emerge, but I could finally see the remnants last night, beginning to be reassembled.