Kevin Arnovitz recently wrote a great piece on TrueHoop comparing the NBA lockout to the recent contract dispute between AMC and Mad Men creator Matthew Weiner. Jason Whitlock has never met a sports narrative he couldn’t bend The Wire to fit. Looking at the world of sports through the lens of a TV show is hardly a novel concept, I’ll admit. However, I feel like the spectacular, just-wrapped fourth season of Breaking Bad can tell us a lot about where we are in this, the dreariest stage of the NBA labor negotiations. David Stern axed the first two weeks of the regular season on Monday. Everything we thought we knew about the incremental (albeit minimal) progress the owners and players have made towards a new collective bargaining agreement has been shown to be wrong. Between the revenue lost from the canceled games and the potential for the dispute to be taken to the courts, it sure looks as though this is going to get a lot uglier before any real progress is made.
COMMON-SENSE DISCLAIMER: The rest of this post contains significant spoilers from season four of Breaking Bad. If you haven’t caught up and are planning on doing so, I’d highly recommend that you stop reading.
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.
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
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 girlfriendfiancée 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.
You know that feeling you get when you pick up a 20-piece box of buffalo wings and drive home, and you’re so excited to eat them that you seriously contemplate taking off your shirt while in traffic, but decide against it because it’s a pretty terrible idea? And then you finally get to your door and you start fumbling with the keys. But this isn’t really a result of excitement; you’re just a really clumsy person who is also really awful at holding small objects. However, after a few violent shakes, the door is open and all is well and bright. You crash onto the couch, tune into the Sunday football games, and do your weekly ritual where you get wing sauce all over your fingers and wipe them under your eyes like some fragrant, off-colored eye black. Except you got buffalo sauce this week, you fool, not honey roasted BBQ, so the vinegary fumes and floating particles of capsaicin are just decimating your eyes. But not even that will stop the good vibes. And you continue to gnaw at the bits of cartilage left on the bones in absolute bliss, keeping track of the scores by wiping your saucy fingers on the walls in the form of appropriate alphanumeric symbols.
Drew Gooden knows that feeling. He knows you can’t do that at a Hooters, and he knows you can’t do it at a Buffalo Wild Wings. And that’s why he will soon become the proud owner of four Wingstops in the Orlando area (though he’d probably appreciate it if you didn’t do any of your Sunday rituals at any of his locations):
Gooden — who played last season with the Milwaukee Bucks and had two seasons with Orlando in the early 2000s — along with operating partner George Taylor III last month inked a deal with Texas restaurant chain Wingstop Inc. to open four new restaurants in the Orlando area. The pair, as Zerocon Food Systems LLC, plan to open the eatery in areas such as Altamonte Springs, Dr. Phillips, Lake Mary, the University of Central Florida main campus area in east Orlando and Winter Park, just to name a few possible locations.
But that’s the theoretical beauty of Wingstop. Where its main competition strive for a loud, social environment, Wingstop functions primarily as a takeout type of restaurant, because it (I assume) acknowledges how primitive the act of eating wings can be. And really, it’s not something to be done in the company of those who don’t know you. Because it’s basically a certainty that you aren’t making a good first impression eating chicken wings.
Shockingly enough, however, Wingstop was not Gooden’s first choice:
“I did lot of research on different franchises,” he said, adding that he wanted to land a Five Guys deal, but that the only franchises available were outside of the United States. “Wingstop is where Five Guys was four years ago, and now it’s got 15-20 locations throughout Orlando.”
Owning several Five Guys Burgers & Fries would have been a pretty wise decision if it were available. Gooden would then be following the precedent that Caron Butler established by owning six Burger Kings. Five Guys has seen a surge in popularity, especially in areas that aren’t blessed with In-N-Out Burger locations nearby (ie. most of the country). What sets Five Guys apart from its contemporaries is the multitude of toppings available to the eater. Though, the customization factor would be much more alluring if certain toppings (grilled onions, sauteed mushrooms) were cooked properly, and if the overall quality of ingredients was better. Oh, and about the prices… Sorry. Is my In-N-Out bias showing?
In any case, Gooden is making a wise investment. With games now certainly being cut, the reality of losing money should sink in quite soon. With Gooden’s fat contract signing last season, he should have plenty of funds for this venture. NBA players with sufficient capital should take notice. Drew Gooden is a good example of how to grow business outside of your main one. It doesn’t hurt that Gooden has found himself in a profitable market. We’re crazy for chicken, and will continue to be for the rest of time. After all, to quote (once again) the ineffable Brooklyn-based rapper Fabolous, “You can’t go cold turkey on fried chicken, you know?”
< 30 for 30 voiceover > What if I told you that the greatest fiscal mind in the NBA has career earnings that barely exceed the 2010-2011 mid-level exception? < /30 for 30 voiceover >
First, you’d likely call me out on the fact that I am exaggerating. Of course, you’d be right; Jared Dudley – he of the $5,818,028 career total in salaries – is probably not a financial wunderkind. He had a piece of advice for some of his fellow players, though, as they prepared for a work stoppage that we now know was inevitable:
“Since I’ve been in the league, which is four years, they’ve been letting me know that there would most likely be a lockout,” Dudley said. “They made it clear three or four years ago that the owners were preparing for this. The players association has held eight percent of every player’s contract and they’ll be giving that to every player in August to help them. Whatever money that a player made in their deal, they’ll get eight percent of that back so even if players have spent their money, they’ll be alright.”
However, if certain players aren’t alright, Dudley has no remorse for them. They’ll have nobody to blame but themselves because they’ve had plenty of time to prepare.
“If a player isn’t ready now, then they’ll never be ready for life after basketball,” Dudley said. “If you had four years in advance to save your money and you didn’t, then you deserve to be broke. You deserve to have problems.”
Certain fans debate whether players deserve playing time, rings or All-Star nominations. Dudley, on the other hand, sees no room for debate and has no patience for petty whining. He will tell you that you deserve to be broke if you’ve mismanaged both your time – four years of preparation for the impending doom, according to the Suns guard – and money as a professional basketball player earning millions of dollars per year. The fact that Dudley signed a five-year, $22.5 million extension with Phoenix, likely less than he could have received on the open market after serving as a spark plug off the bench for the Suns in 2010-2011, lends an air of credibility to his advice. Seemingly every major decision he’s made since entering the league has been with an eye toward the lockout and preparing he and his family for a prolonged work stoppage. For veterans and newcomers to the league alike to have not done the same is completely asinine. The writing was on the wall, and anyone foolish enough not to prepare will soon be separated from his money and begging the union to strike what the players consider an unfair deal with the owners.
No one should be broke this early into our long, national, basketball-free nightmare. Even without an ounce of forethought, players have various means to stay afloat during the lockout. Dudley’s note that the union withheld 8% of each paycheck to help with the loss of income is an important one – with an average salary in 2010-2011 of $5.675 million (as defined by the MLE), that’s $454,000 per player. Even Eddy Curry recently received a check for almost $1 million from the NBPA, as reported by Chris Sheridan*. Kobe Bryant and others are also willing to loan money to players who need assistance – reportedly with bank notes and the whole nine yards. And more and more are following the lead of the entire Denver Nuggets roster by seeking employment overseas. Those clubs may look to open up even more roster spots now that regular season games have been canceled, but working in Europe or China is fraught with problems getting paid and a lifestyle leagues away from what most in the NBA expect.
*More interesting is Sheridan’s note that 25% of players on long-term contracts are paid on a 12-month basis and are therefore collecting money from the owners year-round, regardless of the work stoppage and at a time when owners are seeing basketball-related revenue come to a screeching halt – at their own behest.
All these options provide the almost 500 members of the NBA with a potential lifeline if they find themselves drowning in a sea of debt or lacking in savings. If players are broke already or find themselves pressing in the near future to live their lives the way they want, however, there will be no sympathy from the man coming off a rookie contract. Players who find themselves in need of the kindness of others to make it through the lockout have only themselves to blame – and at least one in their midst won’t hesitate to tell them so.
Photo by Dru Bloomfield - At Home In Scottsdale on Flickr
The news that everyone has been dreading is official: The NBA will cancel the first two weeks of the season. What might happen next will be talked about in the coming days: union decertification, more cancelled games, and other unsure progressions. There isn’t much to say, but this isn’t good. No, this is very, very bad (and irritating and pointless, but only so many negative adjectives can be used at once).
For now, here are a few tweets that I think sum up this terrible situation pretty well.
Stern says that the first two weeks of season have been cancelled.
With the lockout draining all of the positive feelings created by a fantastic, wildly entertaining NBA Finals, many of us have been forced to find other outlets to replace our favorite form of escape. For me, this has meant lots more movies and TV, but also tons and tons of music. There’s been a plethora of great new music to listen to from, The Weeknd’s dark, drugged-out R&B found on House of Balloons to Kendrick Lamar’s West Coast-influenced Section.80. However, Kanye West has remained my go to artist in these dark times. Ye’s production and creativity is matched only by his massive ego and penchant for self-sabotage. The odd combination of over-the-top bravado and naked sensitivity leads to incredible emotional clarity and astounding insight. In a strange way, I’ve learned more about the lockout from Kanye West than just about anyone else. Let me explain:
“No one man should have all that power”
David Stern, I’m looking at you. Now, as much as I’d love to blame all of the NBA’s problems (including the lockout) on Stern, that would be both irresponsible and incorrect. Stern has done a lot of great things for this league, and this lockout has as much (if not more) to do with both the players’ and owners’ stubbornness as it does Stern’s failures. Still, Stern remains a frustrating figure for both myself and many other fans.
From what I understand, it’s Stern’s job to protect the health and integrity of the league, and do what’s best for the NBA at all times. Yet I can’t help but feel that he cares more about being right and asserting himself as an authority figure. His comments towards players and coaches are snarky and condescending at best, and at worst they’re power-mongering and borderline dictatorial.
Since the start of the lockout, hell even before it, Stern should’ve been focused on getting both sides to negotiate. He should’ve been encouraging discourse and debate rather than widening the divide. Instead Stern was busy wagging his finger and figuring out the most creative way to put his foot directly inside his mouth. It’s gotten to the point where every time he speaks I want to say “Sorry David, I’m really happy for you and I’ma let you finish but…. WE JUST HAD ONE OF THE GREATEST BASKETBALL SEASONS OF ALL TIME.”
“Ain’t no question if I want it I need it. I can feel it slowly drifting away from me”
I feel like this is pretty self explanatory. I want basketball and there’s this whole lockout thing looming… Got it? OK, good.
“How could you be so Heartless?”
How could you? Owners, players, how can you sit there and deprive of us of the sport we love? How can you be so selfish? While you quibble over how to split your riches there are stadium workers and team employees at home trying to make ends meet. YOU HAVE NO SOUL.
Ok so that last paragraph was sensationalized and overdramatic, but some toned down dose of that sentiment still remains. Maybe the owners and players don’t “owe” us anything, and maybe, as Ethan Sherwood Strauss argues over at Hoopspeak, us bloggers are pretending to care about stadium workers to hide our owns selfish intentions (my problem with that argument is they aren’t mutually exclusive—we can both legitimately feel bad for the employees and also selfishly just want to watch basketball again). The fact remains that there’s a legitimate chance we will be missing a good chunk of this upcoming season and that’s hard to justify considering how little both sides met throughout the summer. The fans have a right to feel cheated, and the owners and players can point the finger at each other all they want but that isn’t solving the problem at hand.
“I don’t know how I’ma manage, if one day you just up and leave.”
If there’s not a season at all… Let’s not even go there. I need to keep my sanity.
“The LeBron of rhyme. Hard to be humble when you stuntin’ on the Jumbotron.”
Look, I understand that both the owners and the players got to where they are today because of a healthy ego. It’s readily apparent that confidence is a key part of success both in business and in sports. However, once you allow pride to get in the way of rationale and logic, it becomes a dangerous game. I found the following from Ken Berger of CBS very interesting:
By holding out for 50-50, owners are drawing line in sand over $400M total over six years, half of which they'd lose by canceling 2 weeks.
If both sides are willing to take losses in order to prove a point, or to make sure they “get their way,” that’s a whole lot of bad for everyone. As Berger noted, both the players and owners will be hurt financially and of course the fans and writers will suffer from a lack of basketball. It’s time to let cooler heads prevail, cut your loses, (insert your favorite cliche here) and get a deal done.
“How you gon’ wake up and not love me no more?”
I THOUGHT YOU LOVED ME NBA? I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL!
“If somebody woulda told me a month ago frontin’ on yo, I wouldn’t wanna know. If somebody would told me a year ago it’d go get this difficult?”
“Everybody got the game figured out all wrong, I guess you never know what you got till it’s gone.”
Let’s go back to last summer for a second. Remember “I’m taking my talents to South Beach”? Remember the venom and bile over The Decision? Remember how “worried” we were about Miami dominating everything and being “forced” to watch two of the greatest players ever on the same team? Remember that over the top welcoming ceremony? Remember, “Not one, not two, not three, not four….”? I WANT TO GO TO THERE.
Thinking back on how upset many of us were over the happenings of last summer makes me want to vomit. We took all of it for granted. Now here we are stuck without basketball. I’d gladly be forced to watch The Decision at halftime of every game this year if it meant the lockout could be over. Lots of us treated the Heat trio as a doomsday, as if they had “destroyed” the integrity of the game. Back then we kind of sucked; maybe we deserve this.
“I’m lost in the world. I’m down on my mind.”
Ultimately this is what it’s all about. Without The NBA I feel adrift. I love basketball. I played it growing up and throughout high school, most of my most meaningful relationships were formed in one way or another through the game of basketball. Yes it’s just a game. Yes, at times it feels silly that I place so much meaning in sports, but it allows me to shift my focus away from an often depressing world. That has to be worth something.
It’s unsettling when reality creeps into our escapes. I don’t want to be told it’s just a business, because that makes it real; it reveals the impurities that cloud a beautiful game. So please, NBA come back, I’m feeling more than a little lost.
Porter dishing it off to teammate Bob Dandridge (#10) / Photo via arhenetwork.com
Kevin Porter tossed in 30 points and dished off 17 assists yesterday to pace the New Jersey Nets to a surprisingly easy, 106-95 victory over the Washington Bulles in National basketball Association action.
Career Stats: 11.6 ppg, 8.1 apg, 1.8 rpg, 1.4 spg, 48.3%FG, 73.7% FT
Accolades: 4x APG Leader (1975, 1978-79, 1981)
Kevin Porter was one of the purest passers the NBA has ever seen. The purity of his assists were equally matched by the chaotic turns his career took due to injury and bewildering trades. The winding path his career took conspired to obscure some of the truly masterful accomplishments of Porter. Normally, I like to narrate from start to finish a player’s career, but with Porter that’s simply not possible. Each theme must be teased and explained on its own. A simple, progressive Point A to Point B story just won’t do.
The No-Name Bullets: Disruptive to any sort of continuity is the lack of a stable name. Kevin Porter didn’t go about changing his name every day of the week, but it sure seemed the Bullets franchise was. Kevin spent five full seasons with them and they had 3 different locations: Baltimore, Capital and Washington. So, understandably, Washington Wizards fans of today may have a hard time identifying with Kevin Porter of the Capital Bullets even if he is the best pure point guard the franchise has ever had.
(Arguments for Rod Strickland can be entertained; there’s nothing pure about Gilbert Arenas)
On the move: Further obfuscating the Porter legacy is that he never stayed in one place too long. 8 full seasons and he never played for a singular location for more than 2 years. In his first three seasons, the Bullets did their Baltimore to Capital to Washington dance. Then for two seasons he was with Detroit. Then was traded to New Jersey for a year. New Jersey then traded him back to Detroit for a season. Finally Porter enjoyed free agency and returned to the Bullets. Even vagabonds don’t move around that often.
Dime Machine: Despite the tempest, Kevin Porter remained a top notch passer. Four times he led the league in assists per game. Furthermore, Porter was a stud in assist percentage, which is the estimated number of FGs a player assisted while on the court. 6 different seasons (1975, 1977 – 1981) Porter led the league and his career average of 37.5% is 14th all-time. Porter is the only PG near the top of the board who played during the 70s. In 1978, his moonlight season with New Jersey, Porter decided to make the experience memorable by breaking the record for assists in a single game:
Porter dished out 29 assists… and most of those handouts went to John Williamson and Bernard King, who scored 39 and 35 points respectively to help New Jersey down the Houston Rockets 126 – 122.
“He was just magnificent,” said New Jersey coach Kevin Loughery. “I’ve never seen anyone do quite as well as he did tonight.”
Scott Skiles has since tallied 30 assists establishing a new high, but I doubt we’re sneezing at Porter’s display. Kevin’s offensive contributions were not merely relegated to dishing the ball, either. He maintained a remarkably high shooting percentage for a point guard (48%) and was known to explode in a timely fashion despite his career average of just 11.6ppg:
Little Kevin Porter went on a scoring binge in the final quarter Sunday to lead the Washington Bullets to a 98-92 victory over the Boston Celtics, clinching the Eastern Conference championship.
…
Porter, a 5-foot-11 playmaker, scored 13 of his 21 points in the final quarter… Porter also had 11 assists, nine of them in the first half when Washington went ahead, 55-40. “They were gambling quite a bit,” Porter said. “And when they do, you have to take it to the hoop. Hopefully, you draw a foul or they come after you and you can dish it off.”
Knowing when to dish it out, knowing when to take it to the rack to salvage victory for the team. These are the hallmarks of a great point guard. Kevin Porter is assuredly one of those being the first player to record 1000 assists in a single season and is also (as far as my research shows) the only player to record a 25 point-25 assist game. Sadly, sometimes such talent doesn’t get the appropriate stage or setting to illustrate its greatness for all to see and remember.
This is one of the league’s heftiest payrolls and the current amnesty being floated by the owners is inspired by the Brendan Haywood’s of the world: a backup center making $45 million over the next 5 years. Not that anyone’s blaming Haywood. I’d take $45 million if offered it too. Anyhoo, the amnesty individual for my plan would be“Rowdy” Rodrigue Beaubois. Truth be told, we don’t know if he’s really underpaid due to glimpses of sparkling play in 2010 and an injury-plagued 2011. But he’s making $2.2 million a year until 2014. If he fulfills just his 2010 flashes full-time then he’s worth more than that.
Simply put, this is K.L.O.E. time. Sure Chase Budinger and Patrick Patterson have some claim to being underpaid, but Kyle Lowry is the engine that stirs the drink in Houston. Basically, Lowry is a poor-man’s version of early 2000s Jason Kidd. He’s a point guard who plays good defense, rebounds exceptionally well for his size, doesn’t have quite the vision of Kidd, but demonstrated a better jump shot during last season. That’s worth a bit more than $6 million a year.
We have a tie! Well, we would, but Marc Gasol’s qualifying offer from Memphis is a paltry $4.6 and is surely to be rejected allowing Marc to test the free agent waters. And rightfully so. The burly Gasol is worth more than that in the this world of hard-to-find offensively gifted centers. Memphis’s other criminally underpaid player is swingman, Tony Allen. That sentence was unimaginable a year ago, but Allen truly came into his own last season with claustrophobic defense and a junk offensive game that still worked. One of the NBA’s premier perimeter defenders should be paid more than $3 million a year.
The Beast from the Big East, DeJuan Blair has far exceeded all expectations just by remaining on the court fully healthy for the past two seasons. To boot, he’s been highly productive in his limited minutes as channeled spirit of Charles Barkley, without the freight train fastbreaks. For his 8 points and 7 rebounds in 20 minutes a night, Blair deserves to at least have a 7 figure salary. Besides, how many other human beings without ACLs can do this?
Photo by HAROLDO FERRARY-HAROLDO FERRARI-HAROLDO COSTA FERR via Flickr
If the reports are true and the league set a negotiating point before agreeing to a meeting, players are right to be angry. But union director Billy Hunter is apparently flying to Los Angeles for a meeting with players, and isn’t planning to be in New York on Monday. That can only anger the league further, as it is likely meant to do.
Well, there you have it. The summation of this past week’s general inactivity. Inactivity that was only interrupted for roundabout public sparring. Oh and also supposed haughty demands from the NBA to players on pre-conditions to any negotiation session. It appears that all the bridges have been burned and we’re facing the cancellation of regular season games come Monday. Tim Donahue of 8pts9seconds said it best on Twitter (@toothpicksray) about the current impasse:
It appears the last (and only serious) round of negotiations have failed to produce any harmony as the sides just can’t agree to a final split on basketball related income. Negotiations have seemingly reached a level where both sides need to have an intermediary step in and reasonably communicate what the other is proposing. Otherwise, I fear animosity may cloud the ability for both sides to hear the other out. Too many scars. Too much frustration. Too much anger.
To release our frustration, Marvin Gaye will serenade us with the song “Anger” from his Here, My Dear album. Hopefully, the two sides release the frustration soon and get back to business.
You might’ve seen this video of Kobe Bryant saying he’d like to play with Carmelo Anthony:
The most interesting piece of information from that clip is that Kobe told Carmelo that if he was to come to L.A. he’d expect him to join him for 6:00 AM training sessions. Apparently he wasn’t thrilled with this idea, but can you imagine if this had happened? Put aside all the reasons why Bynum for Melo never made sense for the Lakers and think about what Anthony would be capable of if he was as obsessed with basketball as Bryant. Imagine a fully realized version of Melo, using his quickness, strength, and basketball IQ to be a top-notch defender. Those who are unfairly labeled as Carmelo haters are quick to say that he has the tools to develop on the defensive end in a good system — I’d say a system where Kobe Bryant is screaming at you for missing an assignment is the best kind.
Obviously, Carmelo Anthony is not going to play for the Lakers. He’s where he wanted to be, with a co-star in Amar’e Stoudemire who, despite showing good leadership qualities last season from the beginning of training camp, is not Kobe Bryant. And Bryant might be the only guy, save for Kevin Garnett, who I can picture chastising Anthony for playing lazy defense and forcing him into early-morning weightlifting sessions. Bringing Mike Woodson in should help, but I still have my doubts about a Mike D’Antoni team holding him accountable for his bad habits. This means if he’s going to have the career season we want from him, it’s on him. Fortunately, there’s precedent.
If Paul Pierce hasn’t been a leader in the past, then what makes them think he’ll become one this season? He’s saying all the right things now, but when they start to lose tough games, that’s when it’s going to start hitting the fan. They don’t want to wait too long to unload him, because when the player dictates a trade by complaining and setting a bad example, the team gets much less value in return–like Toronto did last year with Vince Carter.
The above sounds pretty silly, given that it was written before the most statistically productive season of Paul Pierce’s career, the season where Bill Simmons says in The Book of Basketball, Celtics fans saw him become “everything we ever wanted.”
He wanted to be a Celtic. He wanted to be there when things turned around. He believed the Celtics were his team, for better or worse, that it was his personal responsibility to lead them. Everyone will remember his ‘08 season, but Pierce’s greatest season had already happened, the year he accepted the responsibility of a franchise player and killed himself every night. The groundwork for everything that happened afterward was laid then and there. Where did it come from? I couldn’t tell you. But it’s the reason a team like Denver ends up keeping ‘Melo for two extra years, because you never want a great player “getting it” as soon as he’s playing for someone else.
Via The Book of Basketball, p. 358
Pierce was 28 when he got it. Anthony is 27 and he clearly sees the Knicks as his team. It’s fantastic that he wants to be involved in off-court stuff, but to show that he’s worth completely gutting an exciting, promising team, he’s going to have to make the same on-court commitment that the veteran Pierce did. The season before Pierce’s career year ended with him yelling at Doc Rivers in a timeout during a blowout loss in Game 7 of the first round when Rivers was getting on him about defense. The end of Anthony’s first half-season with the Knicks wasn’t as dramatic, but it was disappointing – a first-round sweep at the hands of Pierce’s Celtics should be enough to motivate a man trying to lead his own championship contender. And while I submit that I have no idea if that series ever saw D’Antoni criticize Melo for his defensive focus, a couple of months prior his former coach said more than enough.
Approaching this (partial?) season, there’s already reason to be optimistic about Anthony – he’s healthy. Apparently his knee and elbow had been bothering him for the last seven years, and in May he finally had surgery on them. In addition to this, he’s slimmed down a bit. Despite my affinity for the pre-Melo Knicks and the post-Melo Nuggets and this scary Isiah Thomas stuff, I can get excited about seeing Amar’e and Melo work with a training camp under their belts. I’m not sure this team has the depth to properly compete against the upper echelon, but a true superstar turn from Anthony would certainly make that seem like a more realistic proposition. I can see it happening. Please don’t make me look stupid, Melo.
