The Lost Season: Peja Stojakovic, 03-04

Ignore the Vietnamese literature in the back.

With the threat of a shortened or even cancelled season upon us, there is very little we can do to restore a shred of basketball into our lives. What we can do, though, is reminisce over other “lost” seasons. Seasons which saw players or teams achieve extraordinary things that go beyond titles or awards, only to fade back into the background one year later. Here we will bring the tale of these lost seasons, the ones that touched us on a personal level, the ones we will never forget, though history itself might.

Previously on The Lost Season: Boris Diaw, 05-06, Bobby Simmons, 04-05, Seattle Supersonics, 04-05, Spencer Haywood, 69-70, Tracy McGrady, 02-03, New York Knicks, Nov. ’10 – Feb ’11, and Richard Dumas, 92-93.

This is about Peja Stojakovic’s unlikely near-MVP season in 2003-04. It’s also about something else entirely. 

Perched atop my old workstation is a Peja Stojakovic babushka doll consisting of three ceramic Pejas. Together, they didn’t quite form like Voltron, but they do form a set.  It was a Round Table Pizza promotional collectible in the Sacramento County area for the 2003-2004 season. Definitely a novel concept, though the thought of Peja having two smaller versions of himself living inside of him was a bit of a trip.

It was a gift for my brother from his girlfriend during their undergraduate years; a frivolous gift that belied the commitment the two had for one another. They were high school sweethearts separated by 500 miles of Interstate 5 running up and down the heart of California. She lived up north, he lived near the southernmost point of the state. But 500 miles can only be considered a deterrent if it impedes movement and progress. 500 miles was nothing.  She would often drive down from the Sacramento area to his San Diego apartment alone through miles and miles of farmland with nothing but CDs of oldies and Disney soundtracks keeping her awake. She’d stop at gas stations only to fuel up and spray off the flies, grasshoppers and a potpourri of other dead insects that had caked onto the car’s grill. She was a fast driver; an insect’s worst enemy. He was a Kings fan who had his heart broken many times before, but never by her.

His Kings had their hearts devoured and regurgitated in 2002. The sting was still readily felt two years after. But just as it seemed the empire was collapsing, the Kings found their unlikely savior in Peja.

Seven years ago, I sat in my room talking to my brother who was visiting home for the holidays. Knowing he’d be boarding a Greyhound the following morning, I spent as much time as I could talking ball with him. It was one of the only things we had in common. His interest had reached its peak. Mine was still developing.

“Peja’s scoring, rebounding well, and even getting assists. He might be the MVP this season. He’s taken over the Kings.”

For 58 games in 2003-04, Peja became the golden child of a system that stressed unity and collaboration. Peja didn’t take over the team (at least not in a forceful manner), but he was a pillar of stability that righted a team that was (almost literally) standing on its last legs. However, empires are rarely defined by their model citizens, but by figureheads ready and willing to absorb the glory in prosperity, and retaliate in defeat. Still, there was something special to behold in those 58 games.

He was a physics major with an nagging desire to cook. She had a life long dream of being a veterinarian. They were science majors. It should come as no surprise that chemistry played a major role in his love of the game.

—

“I heard something pop”: The Blueprint 

Soon after those four words were uttered, Chris Webber became a cautionary tale of the perils that lie after microfracture surgery. But at that point, it was just a stroke of terrible luck in a season already been rife with other injuries. Webber tore his lateral meniscus in Game 2 of the Kings’ first round series against the Dallas Mavericks in 2003, which meant yet another disappointing playoff run for a Kings team that seemed destined to win a championship only a year before.

Losing Webber for the rest of the playoffs was bad. Losing him for most next season was even worse. Without much of a veteran frontcourt behind Webber, the Kings actively searched for a player who could mimic Webber’s abilities in Rick Adelman’s high-post offense.

Brad Miller, then on the Indiana Pacers, was a highly coveted free agent chased by teams like Utah and Denver that were in dire need of a big man. Fearful that they would land nothing in return, Indiana orchestrated a three-team trade with Sacramento and San Antonio. Sacramento traded Scot Pollard to the pacers and  a young Hedo Turkoglu to the Spurs for Brad Miller, who would fill in as the de facto starting power forward in Webber’s stead. The plan worked. Maybe a little too well.

Miller didn’t just serve as a stopgap, he embraced the role and flourished in it. He was the perfect Adelman player — a tough, big bodied player who had impeccable passing skills for his size with a legitimate jump shot out to 20 feet. His quick assimilation to the Kings offense led him to his second consecutive All-Star appearance, and the only season in which he averaged a double-double. The Kings didn’t skip a beat.

What does this have to do with Stojakovic? Everything.

Reaping the benefits

[flash http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAyNFLXF-_k]

With Miller inserted into the starting lineup, the Kings had four players — Mike Bibby, Doug Christie, Vlade Divac, and Miller– capable of running the team in spurts. Adelman’s system meant constant motion at all positions, and liked to draw big men out to the top of the key to set up mismatches and find open cutters at all positions. With Stojakovic being the only pure shooter/scorer in the lineup, the elaborate flow of backscreens, cuts, and passes the team employed often created easy buckets. Needless to say, Peja went to town on these scoring opportunities.

Without much in terms of isolation scorers or low post scorers, the team could ill-afford to play (and expect to win) without deft ball movement. Yet, those two missing elements in the offense, which unquestionably point to the absence of Webber, didn’t serve as hindrances as much as they created a new way to realize Adelman’s limitless offensive system. The team was second in offensive rating, second in points per game, and had the second leading scorer in the NBA in Stojakovic. Of players who played 50 games or more that season, almost six averaged 10 points or more (Divac averaged 9.9). The Kings were a band of selfless benefactors and Stojakovic was the most willing recipient.

While the system played a role in cultivating Peja’s career season, it wasn’t as though it was a brand new concept. Adelman’s Princeton style offense deserves a good chunk of the credit, but in the absence of Webber, Stojakovic became a more well-rounded scorer out of necessity. He was efficient as ever in a standstill position, but diversified his game by taking his jumpers off the dribble, and being more open to backdoor cuts and inside finishes. Peja always had the size to do damage in the interior, and he was finally given the room to maximize his talents. He still wasn’t a big threat in isolation situations, as he was below average at best in off the dribble situations, but hidden facets of his game had emerged, along with the confidence of a star. There was no dip in his efficiency — still 48 percent from the field, and well over 40 percent from the three-point line — which was astounding given his higher usage rate and the significant uptick in minutes.

It was evident why Peja was considered an MVP candidate for most of the season. He was the central figure of Sacramento’s offensive juggernaut, and his ascension was the main reason why the Kings had the best record in the NBA for a good portion of the season. For a player who dominated his opponents playing a non-dominant brand of basketball, the fact that he finished fourth in MVP voting over the likes of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal (and even garnered a single first place vote) is startling in hindsight, but absolutely deserved with context.

The essential guide to killing momentum

23 games left.

The last quarter of the season. The time when teams begin their playoff push. Momentum may not mean much rolling into the postseason, but it never hurts to fine tune team strategies in time for the most important time of the year. For most teams, it means tinkering with potential playoff lineups and shortened rotations. For the Kings, it meant incorporating Chris Webber, who hadn’t seen the court in 10 months. Whatever quiet assertiveness Peja set as the standard for the season was swiftly tossed aside as soon as Webber began staging his “coup” with statements like, “This is still my team.”

… As if Peja directly laid claim in the first place.

At first glance, Webber’s numbers would indicate a full recovery. He was scoring, rebounding, and getting assist numbers much in line with prior seasons with slight decreases in most areas to account for the major rust accumulated. A second look would highlight his atrocious efficiency. He shot more than 18 shots a game — one more shot a game than Stojakovic averaged as the second best scorer in the entire league — on 41.3 percent shooting.  Now, how about the numbers that matter? The Kings were No. 1 in the Western standings before Webber’s arrival. The Kings went 11-12 with Webber, dropping to the fifth seed once the playoffs came around.

Stojakovic scored three points less a game than his season average in the presence of Webber. In deference to a more domineering presence, the Kings offense floundered. There were more isolation plays than normal. Screens were lazily set, or not set at all. Whatever offensive utopia the Kings had prior to Webber’s arrival was destroyed.

Peja was woefully inconsistent in the playoffs. It was the product of serious fatigue (Peja played at least 45 minutes in exactly half of the Kings’ playoff games that year, as well as averaging over 40 minutes a game for 81 games during the season), smart and physical defense from Minnesota’s Trenton Hassell, and a serious lack of communication in the Kings offense. If there wasn’t a rift between Webber and Stojakovic, they surely fooled everyone watching the games. Webber actively ignored Peja during key junctures, looking away from a cutting Stojakovic to turn and call for an isolation jumper. As such, Peja’s shooting numbers plummeted more than 10 percent from behind the arc and overall. In a memorable Game 7 against the Timberwolves in the second round, Peja was absolutely nonexistent. He managed only 12 shots and eight points in 46 minutes as the Timberwolves advanced behind a magical Kevin Garnett performance.

Just like that, the overachievers had massively underachieved — again. Webber would go on to question the toughness of his teammates in what very much resembled a scathing political campaign. Except there were no challenges to whatever office Webber was seeking. In the months Webber sat out of games, the growing desire to mold the team in his image must have festered. Stojakovic, who Webber presumably considered a threat, surely wasn’t challenging his authority on the team. The success that Peja had attained was organic; the result of playing within a system that didn’t squarely focus on any one player. Power is best placed in the hands of those who do not seek it.  Over the course the season, Stojakovic proved his value to his team and to the league without necessarily possessing an alpha dog mentality. Not even Peja could have predicted the heightened role he’d play in 03-04.  A unique set of circumstances vaulted Stojakovic to MVP-status, if only for one season. In the twilight of an influential Kings era, Peja Stojakovic stands as the last great leader of the empire. And while it met an ungraceful finish, Stojakovic became a symbol, a case study regarding the benefits of democratic basketball.

—

Seven years later, things are a lot different. Chris Webber is a studio analyst and an in-game commentator — one of the best in the business. Peja Stojakovic, far removed from the limelight became an essential waiver wire pickup for the Dallas Mavericks en route to their first NBA championship.  My brother is a full-time cook, and his girlfriend fiancée sews up cats and dogs for a living (and does so with a smile). They’re happy. And why shouldn’t they be? In a few months, they’ll start their own empire, one in which they can officially “argue like a married couple.”

Maybe I’ll wrap the Peja babushka doll and hand it to them as a wedding gift. At worst, they’ll throw it back at me, asking why I couldn’t find anything better. At best, it’ll be a reminder of the miles they’ve traveled together, and how far they’ve come since then. It’s been a long road for Peja, and for my brother. It’s been more than a decade in the making, but Peja’s been blessed with the validation that comes with being a champion. My brother will soon know that feeling.  May he know it well.