Invites for Frost

I don't like what I'm hearing. Not from LeBron, who has boldly asserted that he could win the scoring title every year, but from the rest of us. No, it's not the case that any other player could top LeBron if both gunned all-out, Gervin/Thompson-style, each day of the night. You know why? Because unlike Durant or Melo, James has way more at his disposal. He could work the post, or just run up the court and through all defenders on every possession. Yes, it was a matter-of-fact statement, calm and hardly with the lurch of a braggart. At the same time, LeBron is differentiating himself from his peers. Hey, everybody, he has untapped potential still. He knows it, and if he totally broke out of a team system to go for numbers—which, incidentally, he is less likely to do than anyone on this short-list—amazing thing would happen. We used to know it, and now he's slipping it in himself. Going after him for it seems a waste of time, but at the same time, there is something chilling about this off-hand press release. Forget at your own peril.

I am about to say two things involving NBC's Pro Basketball Talk, both of which involve folks I consider e-pals. So no one think this is a mix-tape war. Kurt lead the "is this news?" charge on the LeBron front; to him, I say yes and no. In what order, I'm not sure. No, in that we should knew, but yes, in that he reminds us? Or yes, in that it he reminds us (and himself) what's still buried inside him, and no, after that it's a no-brainer. Let's move on. Krolik, whom some of you may remember from his contributions to this site, took poor Monta Ellis to task the same day for calling himself the third-best player in the league. First, I would like to thank John for bringing to my attention Rolling Stone's embrace of Durant. Of course, it all makes sense—KD, and the Thunder in general, are the most indie rock-friendly team in the league. They even took that from the Sonics' storied past. El ouch. As for the meat of the story, look, shouldn't Ellis be ignored even more forcefully than James? Let him have his fun. If you think he's the problem with the Warriors, you must have an undue amount of faith in the D-League.

Ellis isn't perfect, and his career is at loggerheads. But if an obviously talented, frustrated, and aimless still-young guard on a team built out of nonsense brags to a generally indifferent media, is he really going to war? Not to neglect my role as a member of the media, but come on, let's give Ellis a break. At least until we're all convinced that he's being given a chance to screw up convincingly. Neither his non "right way" play (either caps or quotations all the time, I thought), nor his inflated ego are tethered to reality. I don't know, maybe I'm underestimating all these call-ups. But this is a man floating through trauma. Do we really want to hold him accountable in the same way—even less so, maybe—than the game's best player? Ellis may deserve more grief than James, and is certainly empirically wrong in a slew of ways, but it's only LeBron James whose words have any meaning past the narrow context of "punk spews crap" headline.

Oh, and Amare hates T-Mac. Pass it on.

Sprinkles

Three things of note:

-The above very interesting Dr. J. video. Get involved, get into it.

-I was a guest on The Dagger Report, where Mike Prada, Kyle from Truth About It, and myself let the Arenas anguish and confusion flow.

-Finally, I am happy to announce that tonight's meeting of the SSSBDA went fine, though I want to change it to SSSDBA, which stands for "Death by Arrival." Instead, I was convinced to change our name to "Basketball Death Association." However, I would also like to announce the official end of my fatwa against Stephen Curry. No, he's still no point guard, and the non-stop love for him must eventually expire. Tonight against the Cavs, though, he looked damn good: streaking to the basket with quickness and agility, beating defenders with the crossover, displaying real urgency when knocking down threes, and filling up the stat sheet. Curry can play on or off the ball, pile up points from all over, and move the ball around well enough, too. He's creative and exciting, and is at his best when his confidence guides him, but is also more than a little careless. In other words, he and Monta Ellis are turned out to be more like each other than we'd ever expected. Ty Keenan just called him "the white Monta."

Also worth noting: While Curry remains the darling of purists around the world, he's also an ideal Nellie guard (Ellis comes up short on that count). And only in that haywire system by the Bay could this golden boy actually thrive. That's a cruel irony, but one I can applaud all day, and maybe even makes me like the kid a little more. Not just grudgingly respect him.

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.

Ring Out Loud

Ken and Dan check with each other, and with the league as it is at this particular and exact time.



In summary: the Lakers and Celtics are good. The Timberwolves aren't. We're not sure who the second-best team in the West is. Everyone should probably make a trade, especially with Golden State.

Along the way we contemplate time and object permanence. Plus, Ken makes a special announcement.

It's as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast as FreeDarko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast gets. Dig it.

Songs from the episode:

"It's So Obvious" - Wire
"Things I Did When I Was Dead" - No Age
"Love Will Tear Us Apart (Live)" - Joy Division
"Boys, You Won't" - The Wrens
"20 Minutes/40 Years" - Isis

No Boulder Too Vague

Hey, it's me. I'm back again. The video above is how I feel when my sick comes back, like it just did after a morning of relative lucidity. I have seen every Jekyll & Hyde movie and this is my favorite. It also made it very hard for me to believe that Spencer Tracey was not in some way related to the Martin Sheen clan, at least when he turned into an id-fueled monster.

You probably wonder why I'm posting, given that I'm writing like a happy seminar on text messaging. It's because, as you probably all know, THE WARRIORS ARE FOR SALE. No, not the team, but for all intents and purposes, the team. If you want to trade for anyone on the Warriors, you can. It hurts to see Nellie go out like this, the limits of his imagination reinforced so gravely. He has no idea what to do with anyone tall, no matter how multi-faceted they are. We all have our limits, and I suppose blind spots are part of true vision, but his inability to make Randolph work is just dumb. At least D'Antoni can plead "system." However, it heartens me that Curry can be had, too. I was worried we'd have to wait till this summer, when they draft John Wall and have to bring him off the bench (thus precipitating a sit-in by every local broadcaster around the league).

It's strange and possibly emotional, but most of all—and speaking of D'Antoni—the stage is set for forever. Have you ever heard of the Braves/Celtics swap? Here's an ESPN article on it. Walter Brown bought the Braves after taking cash instead of that crazy St. Louis Spirit settlement, merger blah blah blah. He was governor of Kentucky at some point and had a friend who died when he parachuted out of an airplane with too much cocaine strapped around his waist. It was in front of the governor's mansion. The parachute malfunctioned. But enough about him. In 1978, Brown sold the Braves to the guy who owned the Celtics, and bought the Celtics from him. Also, they traded the core of each team across state lines.

The analogy doesn't work perfectly, but for the sake of the living, let this happen with Golden State and the Knicks. What I mean by this is, if the Warriors want to lose everyone and save money, and the Knicks (as we know) have no one good and aren't getting LeBron, why not send D'Antoni someone to love in the form of Ellis, Randolph, Curry, and Morrow? That's like the absolute primordial super factual D'Antoni team! Sure, there's no PG, but it can't be worse than what they've got now.

I am going to lie down again. Think it over and write some open letters!

I Couldn't Help But Notice Your Pain. Share It with Me!

We're off and running with this season. Few truths have been settled upon, but among them are that the Knicks are horrible and the Warriors are dysfunctional. Again.

Ty Keenan and I decided to share our self-loathing as we embark upon the newest version of the same old suck. (Pause?)

Dear Joey...

I think it's important to establish a context for how depressing the Warriors are, so let's start at the top. Outside of the two-year apex of the We Believe era, Chris Cohan's tenure as owner has been extremely depressing. For the second half of the '90s and most of the '00s, seasons begin with no hope and little to get excited about. The organization once tried to sell acquiring an aged Mookie Blaylock (for a pick that became Jason Terry) as a move that could bring a playoff berth. The team has typically drafted towards the middle or end of the lottery, and the top picks they've earned have typically flamed out (see Mike Dunleavy and Joe Smith). Their best pick of the last 20 years, Gilbert Arenas, left because of an eccentricity in the collective bargaining agreement. To a certain extent, fans accept that things probably won't work out, and we adjust our expectations accordingly.

This has a few consequences. First, we never really get our hearts broken, because the expectations are never high enough to cause genuine frustration. The closest we've come was in 07-08, when they won 48 games and missed out on the playoffs. But then Baron left for the Clippers and they brought in Corey Maggette, and only the blind optimists expected much of anything from the team last season. This lack of expectations can be seen as either a positive or a negative -- we never experience highs, but we also don't feel much pain.

But that eternal expectation of failure means that the franchise has a toxic brand, the kind of thing you can only change with a new ownership group and the culture it brings with it. Cohan essentially torpedoes any chance the Warriors have of becoming a perennial success: even if a new coach or star rookie were to come in, bullshit business practices and backroom dealings would spell everyone's doom before long. Yes, James Dolan has his obvious problems, but the Knicks will always be the Knicks; the team can attract respected names like Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni in a way that the Warriors can't. Maybe they'll fail too, but at least you live in the hope that things can better. That beats being perpetually downtrodden.



Dear Ty...

Of all the people I have never met and never will, John Wooden is by far the most influential. I talk about and think about him almost every day of my life. That's weird. Him and Tony Soprano. I internalized so many of his aphorism (Wooden, not Tony), in no small part because my dad always treated Wooden as some kind of deity. Among these enduring lessons is that you should never confuse activity for accomplishment. When they make a DVD about the Knicks over the past decade, the cover should have a picture of Dolan and the title should be "Look How Much We've Accomplished."

You're right that a total absence of hope is a unique sort of losing and misery which Knicks fans haven't experienced. Zealots, myself among them, may dramatically proclaim that all is lost, the team will never win, and numbness has set in as the ineptitude proceeds unabated. But to some extent, that's posturing. It is New York, New York does matter in a unique way (even though most people hate this idea), and there will always be the credible notion that things can turn around quickly. That brings me back to my original point: a Warriors fan will never appreciate the excruciating frustration that arises as a team with such vast resources and so much perverted self-awareness regularly makes grand gestures that only make things worse. I would argue that this brand of losing is far worse, because Knicks fans not only know what they're missing, but also know how often they've failed to recapture it.

The amount of money wasted on has-beens is embarrassing. (I typed that sentence eight times because I wanted to see if I could do so without cursing.) I am disgusted by it. The loose decisions and yearly radical realignments have reflected zero cohesion or ideology. The basic chemistry of basketball evades the organization as an institution. The Knicks are always--ALWAYS--a macabre amalgamation of spare parts. Never once in all of the modern rebuilding has any person with the authority to do so embarked upon a plan to assemble a true nucleus. The Knicks' draft history probably stands out as the single worst in the NBA. No one in the organization appears to understand what differentiates good decisions from bad ones. That may change with Donnie Walsh and Mike D'Antoni, but the former did anoint the latter despite D'Antoni's poorly masked contempt for defense. That's not a championship philosophy, so I am not sure SSOL is anything more than driving a Ferrari into a dead-end wall and creating a spectacular explosion. And this all happens in "The World's Most Famous Arena," underneath championship banners, and in front of fans and media who will never forget the model clubs that authored the Knick legacy which taunts the franchise as it simultaneously grows larger but recedes further away.

Being a Knicks fan has come to resemble illness. I have never had meningitis, but it's been described to me as an inflammation of the membranes that run along your brain and spinal cord. Other parts of my body have been inflamed. It can be awful--the pulsating pain, the swelling, the knowledge that something deep down is horribly wrong (at least for a moment). That's what it is like to be a Knicks fan--the anger and incredulity painfully gnaw away, and the root causes seem so remotely situated that you are left hopeless. You feel powerless to do anything which might alleviate the distress. And it just hurts so fucking much all the time.



Dear Joey...

I'm not going to argue that the Knicks have been put together with a plan beyond "LeBron probably likes tall buildings," or that the sins of Isiah are somehow comparable to those of other failing teams. That's a unique sort of pain that Warriors fans will never experience.

But there's also something unique about the experience of watching a team with legitimate young pieces and knowing it will never work out. Discounting the ownership situations, there's not that much separating the Warriors from the Nets -- both teams have solid young cores worth building around, and the Nets' far superior cap situation isn't a huge advantage when you consider both teams have histories of failure and roughly equal chances at nabbing a quality pick. The contexts are wildly different, though: the Warriors have Chris Cohan and Robert Rowell, and the Nets have a Russian oligarch and Jay-Z, one of the most recognizable faces on the planet. There is a sense of continual progress.

Monta Ellis, Anthony Randolph, Andris Biedrins, Anthony Morrow, and Stephen Curry (yes, Shoals, I mentioned his name in a positive context) are nice young pieces with skills that contribute to winning teams. But any joy I take in their game happens almost entirely within the moment, which isn't terribly different from the way I watch a great dunk or block or fastbreak from a team I don't root for. In fact, it's almost more enjoyable to watch someone like Kevin Durant play well, because I allow myself to see a brighter future for him. With the Warriors, I know Monta will continue to resent the management, or Randolph will be back on the bench in two minutes, or Biedrins plays for a coach who will never fully appreciate him.

This is no way to live. Positives deserve to be considered positives, not illusory highs on the way to more disappointment. If rooting for the Knicks leads to anger, then being a Warriors fan is something like the stereotype of depression: I know failure is right around the corner and would rather sleep all day.



Dear Ty...

Sorry, but you queued up a true dork for this one: Rooting for the Knicks leads to anger; anger leads to hate; hate leads to suffering. That's the path to the Dark Side. Maybe that should be the title of my proposed Knicks retrospective DVD.

You're right that Knicks fans have no idea what it's like to watch a team with promising young pieces. The Warriors have, and have had, enough talent for a legitimate NBA starting lineup. The Knicks have not. The Knicks' best young player is on the Rockets, and his name is Trevor Ariza. Maybe you also could consider LaMarcus Aldridge and Jo Noah Knicks, as each was chosen with a Knicks draft pick after the Brickers decided that they just had to have Eddy Curry. Utah will enjoy a similar privilege this coming year because the Marbury trade was so good that the Knicks continue to be haunted by it. Their other best recent draft pick is the starting center for the Nuggets. He, of course, was traded for Antonio McDyess before Antonio became an amiable, productive elder statesman and was still just a walking knee problem. Look at this drafting!

New York's best homegrown players of recent years are David Lee, Nate Robinson, and Wilson Chandler. Lee is either an ideal companion for a dominant center or a perfect leader for a team's second unit. Robinson is a carnival attraction. Chandler, like Lee, should be a star on a second unit or the final starter on a loaded team. Instead, those three, Danny G, Jordan Hill, and Toney Douglas comprise the closest thing the Knicks have had to a young nucleus since, like, 1985. Pardon me for my restrained enthusiasm. Some Knicks fans like to make a big show about Douglas's potential or Danny's shooting, but let's be real--these aren't players whose presence and production augur for real contention in the future. Unless LeBron and Chris Bosh show up in July.

(Don't even get me started on how dumb that plan seems given the lowering salary cap and the paucity of attractive prospective teammates.)

What this Knicks fan shares with you, though, is that empty, episodic excitement. Like when you're hopped up on caffeine but otherwise running on empty. When the Knicks manage to successfully come back from one of their usual twenty-point deficits, I am, as you wrote, excited in the moment. I cheer for Al Harrington's black-hole routine or Danny's quest to make more threes than two because it can be cool when it works. These glimpses of functional basketball are fun but perpetually undercut by the knowledge that the success is fake, though. The team never builds toward anything. One comeback is followed by another string of blowouts or dooming first-half lethargy. My briefly felt joy also immediately summons my resentment as I have the meta experience of knowing that the happiness I am feeling will inevitably be replaced by the usual cocktail of frustration and disillusionment.

And yet, I soldier on. You wonder, why do we keep rooting for these teams if they're so flawed, and if the experience feels like an affliction. For me, some of it is stubbornness. I've already invested so much for so long that I don't want to walk away now. Much like waiting on Michigan football's resurrection, hoping for a Knicks revival carries along the promise of elation amplified by the suffering I've committed to the franchise. Some of it is my worship of routine. Rooting for (while loathing) the Knicks is just what I do. Liberated fandom has taken on new tangibility in an era of League Pass and internets. I could easily ride with Oklahoma City (Russy!) or New Orleans (Julian!) or New Jersey (CDR!) In some respect, I do. I follow those teams closely. Same with Portland, which has the man I discovered, Brandon Roy. And yet, the Knicks are my constant. They are a piece of my constitution.

Also, my deep cynicism has yet to extinguish the flickering flame of hope. Though I am deeply ambivalent about Mike D'Antoni, I appreciate his professionalism. I appreciate his sense of humor. I have witnessed the kind of exciting basketball he can cultivate when given the right players. Even if he, as the head man, can't deliver a championship, he can nonetheless implement a new culture to be inherited by a successor coach. Guided by this optimism, no matter how weak it is, I embrace the Danny G experiment and wish for the best. I convince myself that a real point guard is just one lucky trade or draft away. (Why they didn't take Ty Lawson last year I'll never know.) I regard Jordan Hill as a second-rate Amar'e in training. Generally, I just talk myself into it. That might be the essence of sports fandom, and it might be the most reverent and traditional part of my NBA experience. No matter how much the Knicks abuse me, I'm wedded to them, and I can never fully avoid thinking that tomorrow could always be better.

(That might be an offensive analogy. Sorry if it is. I don't support domestic violence.)



Dear Joey...

I love that you are upset about their drafting Hill over Lawson but don't even mention Brandon Jennings. A telltale sign of the broken fan: you get upset about your team passing over competency and don't even deal with the lost star.

I'm surprised you're even able to get excited about comebacks. I was talking more about single plays, the kind of moments that, in a sane world, would show promise for the future. But the Warriors are so bad at the end of games that I assume any moderately close game will result in a loss. I've never seen a worse halfcourt offense in my life, and the sad thing is that it'll only get worse if/when they trade S-Jax.

I'm unable to talk myself into anything GSW does, likely because 1) I've seen so little success over the years that it seems like a waste of time and 2) the team's strategies and goals are so unclear that I don't even know what I'd be talking myself into. So what could possibly keep me watching? I suppose the familiarity is comforting in itself, but were it not for the Mavs series, I could definitely have seen myself becoming less and less interested in the team and treating them like the Thunder or Hawks. I'd almost say that whatever liberated fandom I have arose from my Warriors fandom -- they were so boring for so long that I had to find the good in other teams if I wanted to keep watching the sport. (Incidentally, it's not a coincidence that Bob Fitzgerald and Jim Barnett are generally considered one of the best broadcast teams in the league. Years of wretched teams in Oakland have turned giving credit to the other team into a habit.)

But any time I feel like leaving them behind, I remember what it felt like to be in the arena during Game 4 against the Mavs. There aren't many other circumstances in which I'd hug random people and feel genuine euphoria without being self-conscious about it. There are other kinds of makeshift communities in my life -- synagogue, crowds at shows, blogospheres -- but I don't think any is quite as welcoming as a sports team. Maybe this would all be easier if I were more religious.

Cool Warriors Post!

Over at The Baseline, Bethlehem Shoals has bared his soul on the subject of this year's mangled Warriors, and maybe even found some good in there. If nothing else, as a learning experience for those who must touch shoulders with their carnival of doom:

You won't get there but by speaking their language, and then underneath, you figure out where you really stand. It's at once exhilarating and silly to watch Houston score on every possession down the floor in the third, and yet only a vision quest-like encounter with the Warriors—the NBA's great wacked-out foil—can help bring their season into focus.

Or, if you want to get crass, we crave this team's steady stream of nonsense and crash courses that, for all we know, might be part of Nellie's grand design. It drives longtime fans crazy. But when your team isn't going to win, better you stay relevant as a test of others' psychological mettle, accessible only by dark, dank ferry, or keep even yourself guessing about what's up and what's down. Oh, and make sure there's enough there to keep everyone hoping and wondering "what if." That's the Warriors, and that's why they matter. Even if, for those on the inside, it's begun to resemble normal.

Seriously, check it out! It's pushing 1,000 words and could easily have lived on this site, if I weren't trying to keep from anyone accusing me of being a Warriors or Thunder homer. By the way, I think the Power Rankings right now have to go:

1. Wizards
2. Thunder
3. Warriors
4. LeBron
5. Ariza

Also, I don't care what people say, JaVale McGee is always on the floor for the Wizards. No matter what the box scores say.

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.)

Left Turn at Midnight

Buy stuff in our name. Now, watch me wrestle with a topic beyond all human comprehension.

I tried writing about Nellie's new plan in a quasi-mystical, mytho-technical style, but then my brain collapsed, I fell into a wormhole, and at the bottom of time I was confronted by Anthony Randolph and Monta Ellis folding in and out of one another, only deepening my belief that these two not only share a special bond, but might be guided by the same hive-brain. Then I threw my laptop aside in disgust, and proceeded to absolutely flip out over Cavs/Heat. It seems like Moon is a budget Marion, and I wish I lived in a world where this was going to be our ECF.

Now, I find myself calmer, though maybe worse for wear, and ready to discuss what one can only properly dub Nelson's "negative rotation." What's most striking about this project is how heavy-handed it is. It reminds me of Stalin, or some other form of social engineering where the logic is prized above the actual human toll. Yes, Nelson has insisted that the vets will be fresher (TK suggests that he's realized he's incapable of managing their minutes in games, so this is the only option). But it's so ruthless, so decisive in its lunacy, that there's little room for empirically-induced change. What if the vets get creakier, lack rhythm, or one—say, Maggette—proves himself absolutely indispensable? The way Nelson's talking, you get the sense that this isn't about people, but about a structure, an idea.

It reminds me on some level of what D'Antoni promised us with the Knicks: Euro-like, a bunch of interchangable dudes getting 20-25 minutes a night each, depending on match-ups and that night's hot hand. The Warriors might be ideally suited for this philosophy, provided the youngsters came along some; it's not like Jackson, Maggette, Crawford, or Biedrins have insufferable egos. But this would be the ultimate coach's team. What makes Nellie so enigmatic is that he wants to organize in such a way that players will be free to undermine any notion of sound coaching. The 2006-07 Warriors, demented as they were, were the most reactionary kind of revolution. Nellie was the ringmaster, but on some level was able to trust his team, let them travel down paths he'd get started in his imagination. You couldn't find a more unlikely combination of a coach's team and one so much in the players' hands that at times, you'd swear you were witness to a mutiny.



Instead, Nelson replaced the screechy line-up tinkering of the first half of 2008-09, a kind of micro-managing that sought to compensate for the loss of spontaneous detail that occurs when a PG like Baron, Nash, or Hardaway guides a fluid assemblage. Now, he's going all Rauschenberg on the game, leaving the most gaping holes he can and watching the rest of the team scramble to adjust. It's a dramatic form of meddling that leads to hands-off ingenuity, forcing a group to gnash their teeth and survive by depriving them of what little comfort they have. This team may depend on its vets, but none of them are the focal point of it; it remains stranded between D'Antoni's vision and the traditional model, and simply lacks both the control and the chaos to recreate 2006-07's Baron/Jackson axis. In fact, you might say that it's replaced controlled chaos with chaotic control, all centered, ironically in the person of Mr. Jackson.

But, to return to my terrifying vision, I have to think that this is ultimately all about Ellis, Randolph, or the indistinguishable future that is the two of them. Monta's an undisputable star in the making, but no one knows exactly how he will flourish. Randolph has so much it people get queasy, and since the break has showed an almost untoward level of commitment, intensity, creativity, emotion, and willingness to be everywhere at once. It's almost as if Nelson wants to see how many gaps these two omni-positional talents can fill. As everyone else on the team foams at the mouth and is forced to surprise themselves, working every day toward realizing one of Nellie's core values (Control or Chaos), Ellis and Randolph are a secret experiment unto themselves.

There's a team to develop here, but it's entirely likely that by season's end, all notion of well-distributed depth, and a roster full of possibilities, will give way to the belief that what's needed is lesser beings to hang in the background as Ellis and Randolph are given free rein going forward. If it works perfectly, you'd get a foundation that's achieved some measure of order and logic, like a point guard unto itself. And then on top of that, those two. And behind it all, Don Nelson, about to unleash his most diabolical team yet.

We'll probably never know, though, if he's doing this to prove something to the world, to himself, or simply because he sees no other way forward.

As We Glide Upon Long Isles of the Night

Bethlehem Shoals: Okay, so let's set the stage. I wrote that provocative LBJ post only out of enthusiasm for this Warriors/Thunder game. Ziller announced through a major media conglomerate that this was our new talisman. Ty Keenan missed out on free tickets because he was busy mulling over my offer to chat this. And he, like Dr. LIC, were hungry. We certainly did "Let's do this," and here are the results.

BS: Local League Pass feeds are the last bastion of true regionalism.
Ty Keenan: Oh let me put the game on. I was watching Hitman.
Dr. Lawyer IndianChief: I'm watching this on mute.
BS: They've already said "fun" 6,000 times. SETTING THE STAGE.
Dr. LIC: Okay, turning the volume on.

BS: Fuck it, Anthony Randolph is the new Amir.
TK: That hadn't been decided yet?

Dr. LIC: Damn...Sabonis was NOT a Euro.
BS: Sabonis and Drazen, too.
Dr. LIC: Drazen gets real respect. So far I'm not convinced that Spaniards are real Euros either.
BS: Spanairds are a bad influence on basketball, and I mean that in the best way possible

Dr. LIC: My friend Paul just texted me: "What flag is on S-Jax's headband?" I'm guessing Jolly Roger.
TK: POW/MIA.
Dr. LIC: Oh wait, he was asking about the FD shirt.
BS What if Wade starts a trend with that giant face Band-Aid?
Dr. LIC: He stole that from Penny.

BS: I love that kids in the Bay have no choice but to root for Stephen Jackson.
TK: Why don't any of those kids like Monta? He should have a Dora the Explorer-type cartoon.
BS: The reason why Monta and Randolph should be together forever is that one looks like a bigger version of the other.
TK: The difference is that Monta looks like the happy baby and Randolph looks like the one who had colic.
BS: The other reason Odom likes Randolph is that AR's expressions are even more pained.



Dr. LIC: This whole Thunder coaching situation proved that everyone is wrong about everything. P.J. was hailed as the next Popovich; He couldn't even figure out what KD and Jeff Green's positions were.
BS: I thought he was brought in to sabotage the team. Under the pretense of being "a good coach for young players" which for some reason means yelling, not being imaginative and figuring shit out.
BS: Is Durant so skinny that his bones make a noise when he hits the ground?
TK: I definitely heard a noise.
TK: Monta's getting there.
BS: Monta has more first steps in any path across the court than any player in the league.
BS: Did Marco get tanner while he was injured?
TK: I think a little. It's been really dreary here over that period, too.
BS: I'm implying that he went out of town to tan.
TK: He might have a machine.

BS: There's Thabo!
Dr. LIC: This game is delivering.
BS: I just realized it's 33-26 with lots of time left in the first.
TK: It feels like it's only been five minutes or so
BS: Maggette is the most most Duke-like un-Duke Duke player in the world.
Dr. LIC: True.
TK: Jason Williams might have given Maggette a run for that though
BS: Crawford is like that guy who tries to find the most fucked up people in a bar as an excuse to get trashed

BS: 1) Warriors broadcast shows more replays of opposing team than any other local feed. 2) They once made a Derrick Rose dunk the dunk of the game (I think, TK can confirm this) and 3) They are as obsessed with monitoring Monta's explosiveness comeback as I ever was with Amare.
TK: #2 is definitely true. I think part of those might have to do with the fact that they were bad for so long. And they've had the same announcers for basically the last 10 years and the same color guy for longer. They've always had to make an effort to find something interesting to talk about the game.
BS: I am supposed to mention that I am not live-blogging these nachos
TK: I might want to write about FD college players at some point, because Weaver was totally FD in college but is boring as hell now. Or maybe I'm just not excited by him because he was so cool in college.
BS: (I am chatting with Nate Jones, and trying to explain to A. that I guess I would be cool with her going on a date with Tyson Chandler) I like Weaver. He's what Earl Watson should be.



TK: One thing Monta hasn't really figured out yet is the spin on his crazy finishes.
BS: This game is like floating through heaven: "Oh look, Anthony Morrow's first-born. Now how about an off-the-backboard 'oop, with the announcers intoning that "you knew someone was going to bring it out sometime." Also, Kevin Pelton and I have concluded just now that, if Chandler had gone to the Thunder, they could've fielded the longest line-up ever (Westbrook/Weaver/Durant/Thabo/Chandler).
TK: Green wouldn't be in that lineup?
BS: "Length" wasn't invented until 1992, so no.
> TK: wait, what does 92 have to do with it?
BS: I guarantee you both teams were up for this. I'm fairly certain it's known around the league that playing either of these two team is a rush. Oh, and if Jeff Green gets 20 boards, my foot will cave in. Wait, did the announcer just imply that Krstic sews his own jersey?

BS: What if the Thunder don't really play in Oklahoma City? Like they're on a soundstage in Hollywood that Bennett owns, and the players are all cool staying with the team beacuse it's really Los Angeles life?
TK: I've been exchanging emails with the guy at Run of Play. And he said his dad works next to the practice facility. Mentioned that he gets updates on the cars in the parking lot, but nothing on the players. So it's possible that they stage practices.
BS So anyway, the NBA is going to promote the fuck out of the Thunder starting next year because this team has such star power and is so fun. And none of them leave because it's really LA. Plus all the "fans" are extras, professional ones, waiting in line to audition for Eastbound and Down.

BS: This tableux of over-amped kids is really weird, even grotesque. It's like Rookie/Soph all over again. Maybe Kevin Durant plays his best in front of delirious seven year-olds.
TK: This is sorta like a baseball broadcast. Wait, did the Thunder just let Randolph dunk?
BS: His brand-new reputation precedes him. It's really weird how much he's changed his game recently. It's like a coach actually said something to him in English.
TK: Or Martian, in this case.
BS: Maybe Monta has to translate.



(Half of halftime)

BS A. just asked if she could go on a date with Chris Paul. I said sure. She said "actually, he'd probably make me build a fucking house."
BS Totally subjective: When they show Garnett's championship celebration,wtih some of that sad/surreal/dreamlike Adidas music under him, it kind of makes it make sense to me.
Dr. LIC: Eh
BS: Whatever, advertising rules my mind. Seriously though, it tugs at my KG heartstrings. It even makes that entire Celtics season have some pathos to it. Though maybe that's just because it's not front in front of me pissing me off.
Dr. LIC: That commercial is still wack. KG getting injured tugs at my KG heartstrings.
BS: I'm just a sucker for that music. Need i remind you of a certain KG ad?
Dr. LIC: The stand up comedian!!!
BS: TEARS IN HEAVEN
Dr. LIC: There hasn't been a commercial that important since.
BS: For you/me/us or the NBA as a whole? I'd argue "The LeBrons" was more important.
Dr. LIC: Culturally, but not for us. Man, I still can't believe that one Durant commercial had Buck65 music.

Dr. LIC: These "NBA Cares" commercials have officially reached the point of suspicious.
BS: Elaborate. . .
Dr. LIC: Like, you musta done something wrong to have to brag so much about doing good.
BS: Derek Fisher?
TK: Especially Derek Fisher.
Dr. LIC: With the MLB, it's just accepted that they "care."
TK: Is that true?
BS: Like it's not a matter of action? It's a state?
TK: I'm not sure anyone thinks MLB is morally good anymore. They could probably use their own version of those ads.
BS: I think steroids are an entirely other world of morality. Like the way people don't understand how bills get written in Congress. Wait, that's a bad analogy. Whatever, it's a series of parallel moral concerns.
Dr. LIC Modern problems vs. Old Testament sins. That's steroids vs. NBA issues.
Dr. LIC: (Alvin Gentry is secretly coaching the whole league right now)
BS: Okay, I've got this. MLB=Sharia. Please, neither of you be singing a West Side Story tune right now. Though I've got to admit, it's kind of a hot name for a lady.

Dr. LIC: The Warriors have stockpiled enough players. They have to make a big trade for an A-gamer this off-season, or else they'll be the Jerry West Grizzlies.
TK: Every contract is really long, though.
BS: I think you are greatly underestimating how much the Warriors resemble a guerilla movement. Do they move ahead by forming coalition with center-left parties?
Dr. LIC: South Africa?
BS: Let's just drop this. I went to a talk by an ex-Tamil Tiger the other night and that stuff's been on my mind, but I obviously don't know enough about the actual facts.
Dr. LIC: Kyle Weaver, Carl Landry, Kyle Lowry are all the same person to me.
BS: You cannot fool Jamal Crawford with ballhandling. He may not be a great defender, but that other thing's a point of pride for him.



TK: I almost feel like they're making up the score.
BS: Like, adjusted for their having scored too much? Or inventing it for the sake of having to have something?
TK: No, fabricating
BS: That's how I feel about soccer. Also—another dilletante alert—I read today that in Saudi Arabia all budget and data and prices are just made up
when they need them for major deals, projects, etc.
Dr. LIC: Wow
BS: Westbrook is out Monta-ing Monta.
TK: I just want to say that i'm incredibly proud of being right about Westbrook.
Dr. LIC: Me too.
BS: I liked Bayless better, just to be contrary.

TK: That was the greatest broadcaster question ever: "When you're flying in for an awesome fingerroll, how do you know not to use glass? Tell all the youngsters out there."

Dr. LIC: Okay, hear me out on this... in the NFL, too many quarterbacks were getting hurt. So they changed the rules—wussified them, really—so QBs get more protection. And even though they still get busted up (Brady), it seems to have worked somewhat. I think the NBA should do the same with foul rules inside. You've got Amare, KG, Al Jefferson [and Bynum] dying at crucial junctures. Like, start making fines inside a fineable offense. We get higher scores (Gentry style) and less injured bigs.
BS: You are really broken up over this.
Dr. LIC: Dude, KG. Amare. Al Jeff. This fucking SUCKS. That shouldn't hapen.
BS: The problem is that players like Kenny Thomas still exist. Nick Collison, etc.

BS: "Anthony Randolph possibly hit a chair" has weird echoes of "Luke Ridnour couldn't guard a chair."
TK: I think if you said that out of context people would think he got in a fight with a chair.
BS: Anthony Randolph is "special" in so many senses. And no, i'm not calling him retarded.
BS: Maybe Odom said that quote about Randolph's bright future to finally deflect attention away from his own potential. He wanted them to shut up about how HE could've been the next Magic.
Dr. LIC: Stretch run here.
BS: This game is making me think I don't know anything about basketball. Oh and another very Duke thing about Maggette: never seemed interested in leading the league in scoring from a bad team, even though he possibly could've (which no one else from Duke, save Hill, ever could've).

BS: Wait, is Jackson keeping Durant from going off?
TK: He's still 8/13. I'm not sure why he was out for so much of the third.
BS: That's what I love about Durant, even his quiet games are All-Star-ish. As opposed to guy who struggle to get good numbers on off-nights, and thus are impossible to ignore.
Dr. LIC: Durant is truly the quiet assassin. He really is like when people say "he has no conscience."
TK: This is making me imagine him as the insane person in a gothic novel.
BS: I am sure Kobe would be jealous of that remark. Okay, quick, someone come up with a Manchurian Candidate-inspired nickname for KD. Actually, that would be a dope ad.



BS: Durant is a scoring machine. I never really understood that cliche until seeing him this season.
Dr. LIC He really should be drawing double-teams, though. Maybe that's just Nellie's stupidity.
TK: Is anyone doing it? I could see people not wanting to acknowledge that he's already as good as he is.
BS: Who would you leave open? This team isn't THAT bad.
Dr. LIC: See, that's what I'm saying. The Thunder should be much better. The move to Oklahoma made them think they were an expansion team.
BS: Rebuildng from scratch makes anyone think they're an expansion. It's the great equalizer.
TK: What's their record since P.J. left?
BS: I'd do record since 1/1, since that's when Durant really started going crazy.
Dr. LIC: 12-30 since P.J. left
TK: 9-13 since 1/1, going into tonight.
BS: In the West, no less.

Dr. LIC: Watson is the most Blaxploitation last name ever.
BS: Like Matt Watson? Watson like Sherlock Holmes's sidekick?
Dr. LIC: C.J.
TK: Earl, too.
BS C.J. and Earl Watson are two of the least Blaxploitation players in the league.
TK: James Watson definitely wouldn't like to hear that he has a Blaxploitation name.
Dr. LIC: The name is part "Watts," part "son."
BS: I like to pretend that Azubulke works in finance.
Dr. LIC: Kelenna Azubanky.
BS: Ugh. I'm embarrassed.

BS: "He's never going to go away." That's our next Stephen Jackson shirt right there.
BS Someone should do shirts [huh?] about stat inflation. And see what teams inflate the "right" players, versus those that random players have the biggest games against.
Dr. LIC: The Timberwolves.
BS: You're right, it probably has nothing to do with tempo.
BS: Wow, that was truly Odom-esque of Randolph. Forgetting he'd dribbled.

An Unofficial Guide to Guides

This began as a post about how awesome I was for making a point of watching Cavs/Warriors, and the difficulty of figuring out what to view on any given night. Then I realized that it didn't take a genius to pick that game, so instead I'm going to write about what I learned from Monta Ellis. But first, a few words about the Nuggets.

I always thought that Melo was the force that somehow legitimated Iverson, and all the other miscreants on that squad. That might have been wishful thinking, or aiming too low.

Reader Dave F. recently asked me whether it's possible for a team to made more FD by a decidedly un-FD player, a more traditional guy who serves as the organizing principle. He mentioned Yao, and it's true, under Adelman Yao has at times shown himself capable of both taking part in a more complex offense and holding down the paint. The real test case, though, is Billups. We all know Chauncey used to be a hoot when on Minnesota, and isn't exactly the purest point in the galaxy. But his sense of economy and control do have a conservative streak to them; Nash, Paul, Rose, or Baron are more creative and unpredictable, even if they're closer to the positional archetype. In fact, you could that the ideal PG is supposed to introduce an element of instability to throw off opponents, while themselves maintaining a new-found grasp of this discovery. It's a dualism that explains why today, the league's premier playmakers often find themselves on fast, inventive team—and why all my favorite teams have, or badly need, such a player.



Billups, then, is neither too much nor too little of a point guard, and as such is the perfect equilibrium for a Denver team made up of various forms of excess and lack. His job isn't to encourage K-Mart, J.R., and Nene, but in effect, manage them. Neither dashing "floor general" nor feckless "game manager," Billups is entrusted with turning craziness into a useful commodity, ordering and meting it out so that players are compartmentalized without being squelched. Maybe that makes him a lion-tamer, or the guy in charge of The Wild Bunch. Denver may not have the least conventional roster in the league, but it's certainly the most streaky and combustible. Billups can juggle these pieces (one of which is George Karl, natch) through a combination of equanimity and pragmatism. I will punch you if anyone makes an Obama analogy here.

This isn't as simple as saying "Chauncey Billups runs the offense." He's the star in the middle of the solar system that holds everything else in its stable orbit. And here, we stumble into quite the equivocation, since by conventional measure, Melo is the "star" of that team, and Billups's predecessor, AI, certainly had more star power. But taken literally, the primary function of a star is to provide gravity, cohesion. That can be in the form of leadership, or the more concrete work of Billups I've described. I would say that Iverson was always a bigger star league-wide during his time on Denver than he was on his own team. This might be where stardom ceases to be frivolous, and begins to overlap with terms like "value," and the debates everyone's been having about what makes an All-Star. I think it goes without saying, though, that Billups seems more impressive in this capacity, harnessing the forces of darkness, than at any point in his storied Detroit career. Denver needs him to make sense, but he needs Denver to exhibit just compatible, and essential, he can be to a team.



That's because the Pistons were, depending on how you look at it, starless—big planets all floating in a row—or a team of minor stars who didn't care for stragglers. I'm not offering a critique of how Detroit played, more that attitude that earned them so much praise, and yet some always hankering to see them add an uber-component. For instance, as much as I loved this year's Warriors as a scraggly band of freedom fighters hanging out in Oakland and giving other teams nightmares whose ultimate result was mere annoyance, they were most definitely starless, even if Jackson, Crawford and Maggette are prone to the kind of play (and numbers) associated with taking charge and holding things together. I've always found it admirable that Jackson, despite being the captain and arguably that team's Shawn Marion (wholly original piece that dictates the overall structure, even as the PG shapes it from second-to-second), never seemed particularly interested in stardom. Say what you will about S-Jax, but the man is smart about basketball, right down to the way he balances the ethic that made him beloved as a Spur with the inner crazy encouraged by Nellie ball.

And so we finally arrive at Monta's return. That the first game of the year for a player with one good season under his belt, who might be the best player on one of the league's worst teams, seemed like an event should tell you something about Ellis. Well, adjust that for my personal biases, but certainly Ellis has the capacity to captivate and punctuate like no one else on the Warriors. Basketball-wise, Monta's just adding another scorer whose can handle the ball a little. He's not that much better than Crawford. But when he's on the floor with the Warriors, that team suddenly has a sense of purpose. He's not hands-on like Billups, nor is he as vocal as Jackson. And yet all of a sudden, the Warriors have an identity. They're no longer a subversive mess, as likely to undo themselves as to irritate others. They're that same rag-tag people's army, but with a charismatic punch that allows them to believe in themselves. It's a swag-laden way of leading by example. Call it the reverse Ewing theory—a team lacking inner logic for whom a seemingly pointless star is the only way to justify themselves. It's also the best possible explanation for why the Wizards need Arenas, and maybe why the Warriors pursued him this off-season.



Rather than write an actual conclusion—no way it needs to get any more abstract and high-flown—I'd like to say a few words about the Oklahoma City Thunder. I know that as a resident of Seattle, I should hate this team. Then again, I refuse to hate David Stern, who is far more to blame than, say, Kevin Durant. But along with Denver, LeBron with a healthy team, and presumably now Golden State, they're one of the only squads I can now reliably count on to be entertaining. Yes, Durant's maturation, Westbrook's crash-and-burn progress, and Jeff Green Jeff Green-ing his way to Jeff Green-ness are all rad. However, it's the packaging, the location, and the irrepressible obscurity around them that makes them so compelling. This is an NBA team that, for all intents and purposes, might as well not exist. They play in a city that matters only to the people who live there. Their uniforms are unrelentingly generic, like the plain white can, black type BEER they sell some places. The name of the team seems like a placeholder, unless you bother to acquaint yourself with life in Oklahoma. I kind of admire Clay Bennett for crafting such an utterly blank brand, so strong is his faith in OKC's appetite for NBA ball, plain and simple.

The more this team grows, the more all this seems mysterious, sneaky, or hermetic, rather than simply laughable. When I sleep, I dream of makng a shirt that puts Durant on the cover of Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, and I even think the music serves as a decent soundtrack. By contrast, Hawks/Bobcats were red carpet regulars. This team is living in caves, stockpiling arms, camping out on the Big Love compound. I don't know what their purpose is, but the bare bones image and total lack of exposure makes them seem so much more severe, even unsettling, than if they had a cartoon horse on their unis. Durant's good enough now to reclaim that "assassin" epithet; on this team, it's as haunting as it should be. They may practice an hour's drive from any number of campy militias, but mark my words, the Thunder will be the first NBA team to catch on with Waziristan hobbyists.

Impressionable Youths

Earlier today, Shoals told a group of Brooklyn middle-schoolers that they should be into Anthony Randolph.

With any luck, this moment will redefine the book report and lead to the greatest 7th-grade science fair in the history of the world.

(H/T Trey)

The Best of Everything and Its Discontents

Please, do spend some time with the links post I put together earlier today.

But hold up and stop the virtual presses, even if it means sticking your hand in there until it's pulped and spewing blood everywhere. Crawford for Harrington. Knicks officially dead, my trip to the Garden possibly postponed. The 2007-08 Golden State Warriors become my favorite team of all time and we start a Wiki on them, just like this bullshit local NPR show is telling me to do.

Knicks thinking to the future, Crawford not a true point, blah blah. Bring him to Nellie—and this might be the difference between this current incarnation of D'Antoni-ball (training wheels, system will guide you) and the all-out psychedelic meltdown happening in Oakland—and you're looking forward to a back court of Monta and Crawford, with Maggette at PF, Stephen Jackson somewhere, that Latvian guy whose name I can't spell at center, and a bench of Turiaf, Wright, and He Whose Name Is Not Spake. And Azubulke. Oh, and the net result of the Anthony Morrow experience. Nelson will have to dream up all sorts of treats, instead of just letting them play loose, because they're not good enough for that. And then they will anyway. This team is so bizarre, so mismatched, and so lacking in any kind of internal coherence, that it will be like burning down a forest for the trees, or whatever the saying is.

Truly overwhelmed right now. I just know that we rarely get to see such a perverse need for both desperate coach-ly imagination and players taking themselves to their barely comprehensible limits because there's just no other option. This is not a celebration, or an affirmation, it's deep, dark, and even in failure will have the power to scar us for life. In a good way, like that one on your arm or hand that tells a story unto itself.

One Room to Another

Tonight is the Seattle launch party for the Almanac. I know it's unrealistic to ask all of you to come out here for it, but for those of you in the Northwest, here's the info:

FD Northwest Book Launch Thing

Redwood
514 East Howell Street
Capitol Hill

6-10PM

Early game is Rockets/Mavs, which should be okay, I guess. Second game is the far doper Blazers/Bulls. I'll have books for sale, our friends at Sports Northwest Magazine will be in the house, and there will hopefully be a lot of people drinking and talking ball.

Speaking of which, that was Greg Oden's coming-out party tonight. I can't stop making the Bill Russell comparison, which is obviously a style thing, not a prediction of 21,000 rings for Portland. Plus, only an idiot would not see the miles of implied qualifier in front of that. A few hours ago, I referred to him as "the richest man in the world's Tyson Chandler," which might be a little easier to stomach. Why am I flipping out? Because, at the risk of jinxing the PDX, the pop in his legs, in fact in his whole body, was astounding. I saw umpteen plays, some of them routine, that reminded me of a certain missed dunk. I don't want to say I suddenly find Dwight Howard less impressive, but he's definitely got to be redefined as a genre, not the only lineage going forward.

Also, these Warriors are simply ridiculous. Even weirder than I could've imagined. In retrospect, the 2006-07 team seems so. . . mainstream. Instead of churning out highlights, half of the playmaking or moves leave you totally confused, and the structural Nellie-logic is like a feral Moebius strip trying to chew off its own foot. Anthony Morrow only touches the ball with his fingertips. They are truly the Third World pirates of the NBA (that's not obvious, or racist, it's synchronicity).

UPDATE:

-My TSB two cents on Knicks/Celtics.

-Face revealed in a Seattle Weekly profile.

Oh, and also:



This should provide about 55 months of discussion right here. I, for one, was shocked to discover that swag could be swag, but also have negative characteristics. Yes, I am white and 30.

People Get Ready

Exhibit A: What the fuck is going on in that picture? I'll tell you what's going on—the only possible thing that explains this, Exhibit B:




(Both of these images were originally 666px long!!!!!)

The per-48s for that, if you're wondering, would be 39 points, 7 for 35 from the floor, 21 for 35 from the line, 25 boards, and 3.5 blocks. But he'd probably foul out first. I also didn't think you could be labeled a "point forward" if you had the spirit of an evil point guard.

This makes me feel vaguely bad about watching no ball all weekend, as does that Warriors/Grizz game that turned into a game between ten shooting guards. Though I like to think I was there in spirit, and maybe even contributed to it a little.

Let Us All Touch Feathers

Storm brewing, one that will, for reasons I don't quite get expect for the world's need to make my life a better place, flip Gerald Wallace to Oakland. Let's not even get into why Wallace helps a team, why Brown should like him (I did that last week, and felt dirty about it), and what a putz Jordan is.

Just cross your fingers that, by Monday, the Warriors will be looking ahead to a starting line-up of Monta/Wallace/Maggette/Jackson/Biedrins. Wright's ready to play, and my fascination with Anthony Randolph has now progressed into Dunwich Horror territory. In the last two days, I've both suggested that he's pulling the strings in Golden State's personnel moves, and convinced myself that he's too bizarre to ever engage the political process. Not in a harmless, kooky way, but something about his deformity as a player and single-mindedness about destroying the world. I fucking hate Family Guy, but that baby in there comes to mind.

But increasingly, the dopest thing about all this seems to be Don Nelson's attitude about all this. It's amazing how effortlessly he straddles the wide, wide borderland between absurdist provocation and Zen-like organics. That's always been his style as a coach, but talking about personnel, it's the same. Nelson's dangling Harrington out there like trash, which is of course exactly the wrong way to put a guy out on the market. He claims to be largely indifferent to whom they get in return, as long as he's good. Is he daring other teams to bid low, or just confident that he'll get talent regardless of the usual hoops he's supposed to jump through? Never mind that he's working with a failed front office and is forced to dictate moves from the margins of resistance.



When this new player shows up, does Nellie anticipate just throwing him out on the floor, gauntlet-like, and demanding everyone respond to this new stimulus? Or is this the "give me athletes with some skill and they will conquer the world" credo that fuelled the 2006-07 team, the one that makes him even more elemental than D'Antoni and more hands-off than Phil? The ultimate test of this might be, with a super-charged line-up, saying "fuck it" and installing Monta at the point whenever he gets back. That could either force everyone to adjust in creative ways, perhaps with Nelson's input, or burn the building down and leave no other option but to gallop through the ashes and send a message through the hills that way. It could well be his defining, and most triple-reverse masterful, hour.

I don't get why Harrington is so attractive to New York, except that he's better than Curry for D'Antoni's system. It gets tricky if the Knicks have to part with, say, Lee or Chandler to get this done. Given what I know about the team's plans, that seems like a deal-breaker. Could Wallace end up on the Knicks somehow? I'm not about to break out the Trade Machine, but dare I say that D'Antoni's more interested in passers and shooters than another Amare-like hell-raiser. Although, to be fair, Wallace is more like an Amare/Marion hybrid; still, his overall impact on a system would be more like Stoudemire. Plus, I'm assuming this is the kind of D'Antoni team that players have to assimilate, rather than one that assimilates them, and that's not Wallace's strong suit. The Warriors, on the other hand, would be miles away from even considering that fine distinction.

Apologies if this is stuff you've already. Here's a new Quotemonger. Also, R.I.P. to this dude:



I would include an obit, but they all mention the Black Keys. And my special bond with him lost just a little when I realized his surname wasn't "Meyer." But whatever, that first LP is getting buried with me.

UPDATE: Is it preposterous for me to think that, after Tuesday, sports/politics might be forever changed?



(h/t Shanoff)