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Tag Archive - Luis Scola

Metta World Peace And The Dark Half

April 23, 2012 in by with 1 Comment

Photo by Omar Eduardo on Flickr

So all anybody seems to be able to talk about around the NBA today is the Elbow Heard Round the World. Discussions are taking any number of angles, from how long the apparently sardonically-named Metta World Peace will be suspended to how long James Harden will be out to whether the elbow was intentional or unintentional and how much worse the replay may have made it look. But in a basketball climate currently fixated on the means just as much as the ends when it comes to practices like tanking or flopping, it’s worth asking whether there’s a double standard applied to emotion in the NBA.

Intention is, ultimately, not something that can be determined by slow motion replay. We can attempt to intuit intention based on body language, but there’s simply no way to tell whether the-Artest-currently-known-as-World-Peace was trying to hurt Harden. After the game, World Peace said, “[I]t was unfortunate that James had to get hit with the unintentional elbow.” You can parse that any way you want, but it’s not going to get you closer to the truth of what happened.

It’s worth asking the question whether there is in fact any truth to get to when it comes to incidents like this. As it was when Kevin Love stepped on Luis Scola, the reprobation was quick in coming, but what’s more telling is the approbation layered onto the offending players directly before these incidents. Here’s video of the Love incident, including the play immediately preceding it:

Love fights tooth and nail for several offensive rebounds on the play preceding the incident before putting it in and the commentators (who are Rockets commentators, by the way) applaud him. “I’ll tell you: that’s the toughest customer in the league right there.” Thirty seconds later, though, watching the replay, their tone has changed dramatically: “Oh man! That is a dirty play.” “That’s dirty.”

Likewise, immediately before the elbow happens in the first video, Mike Breen’s professional excitement is palpable—it is, after all, his job to bring the game to life. “Artest DRIVES and finishes,” he says. “And the LAKER crowd FIRED up.” Quickly, though, his tone turns measured: “Oh no, let’s take a peek … oh, that’s disgraceful.”

Let’s be clear: I’m not calling out commentators for hypocrisy or any such thing. My desire is actually to tone down the moral aspect of this whole debate. The commentators are just reflecting the fundamental culture of competition, where emotion is prized, where a sort of unthinking state of being is praised as being “unconscious” or being “in the zone” when it comes to shooting, but vilified when it comes to “unintentional” elbows or stomps. This isn’t specific to basketball or even current sports—by some accounts, the Mesoamerican precursor to basketball involved human sacrifice and was used in place of open warfare for settling conflicts between factions. LeBron James is regularly chastised for thinking too much on the court at moments when he should just take over the ballgame, for making the right basketball play that’s the wrong one for winning the game.

Consider Michael Jordan’s shrug after hitting six threes in the first half against Portland in the 1992 NBA Finals. That shrug said, according to Marv Albert, “What can I do?” In a way, he was acknowledging the unintentionality of his play that night, that sense that he couldn’t have stopped hitting threes if he had tried. At some primal level, the intention behind Artest’s elbow and a particularly nasty, but legal, dunk is the same: to stoke the emotional fires higher in an effort to elevate play. One crosses the line into violence and injury while the other doesn’t, but this is maybe why asking about the elbow’s intentionality is the wrong question to ask. We demand that athletes walk a knife edge, praising them for playing with their hearts and not their heads and condemning them for letting their emotions get the better of them.

Was whatever drove Love to scrap and fight for those rebounds so different, deep down, from what boiled over into stepping on Scola? Is it even possible to extricate what makes Metta World Peace a tough, gritty player who will plow down the court for an emphatic dunk from what makes him a guy who will unintentionally clock a player as he celebrates? Both incidents deserve punishment, but if we can recognize that what is unacceptable can grow from the same root as what is glorified, we can better understand how inadequate intentionality is in describing action on the court, how one player playing “unconscious” can result in another one being knocked unconscious.

NBA Trade Deadline: Rockets and Wizards Talk Swapping Messes On The Kitchen Floor

February 2, 2010 in by with 6 Comments

Sources told ESPN.com that the Rockets have indeed expressed an interest in Wizards forward Caron Butler and center Brendan Haywood. But for a Wizards-Rockets deal to go through, Washington would almost certainly try to hold out for at least one of Houston’s rotation players, such as Luis Scola, in addition to McGrady.

The Rockets, though, are determined to keep the core of a roster that has unexpectedly managed this season without McGrady and the injured Yao Ming. Houston is thus believed to be offering Washington only the payroll relief that would come with McGrady’s contract.

The Rockets, sources say, have made it clear that they are willing to surrender McGrady’s $22.5 million contract before the deadline if they can get quality talent in return, but they also have the option of simply keeping McGrady for the rest of the season and letting his contract expire to gain payroll flexibility for an offseason retooling.

via Sources: Washington Wizards and Houston Rockets still talking Tracy McGrady trade – ESPN.

I remember a time where if you said Caron Butler was available and the returning player wasn’t a top flight superstar, you had to restrain yourself from spitting “Yes!” excitedly like a high school girl thrilled to go to prom with the neatest of the neato.

Or as I like to call it, two years ago.

Now? Scola? No dice. Can’t have him. Scola may not be Landry (as opposed to last year, where you said “Landry may not be Scola” but he’s just as much  a component of the Rox’ success, if not moreso because of his overall impact. Scrapping him is giving up far too much when you get so much off the books to seek a versatile wing. Those aren’t hard to find. Hard-nosed Argentinian swinghammers and oodles and oodles of cap space? That’s a much more valuable commodity.

But if the Wiz will accept a true rebuilding package, say McGrady, two off-in-the-distance picks and rights to Joey Dorsey, they should take it. That first trigger push on detonation is the hardest, but it’s better to commit to it, hard and steady, than waver, leaving yourself unsure of what to do, like trying to figure out which crappy monopoly piece to sell to your opponent just to try and stay afloat. The answer is liquidate and go play a game that doesn’t suck.

I’m inclined to believe Morey will hold on to the cap space. After all the big names are settled, LeBron, Wade, Amar’e, there are still going to be tons of players available. And those guys will have their value diminished as ‘disappointing’ signings compared to the bigs. Those are the guys Morey can bank on. Find the diamonds in the rough, swing for a slam dunk draft pick, and then have so many good players you won’t know what to do with them all. His belief in superstars may be the same, but it’s better to wait for the superstar to come than to try and invent one by overpaying in trades or free agency. Stars aren’t tricks of the imagination, they’re brilliant unto themselves.

It Was Earth All Along

December 18, 2009 in by with 3 Comments

I don’t know if you heard, but over the Summer, the Houston Rockets essentially swapped Ron Artest for Trevor Ariza. The former is a bit of a wildcard, known for ill-advised 3s, elite perimeter defense, and something about snake eggs. The latter is a superb athlete, a tremendous wing defender, and an emerging shooting threat.

So why is it that the Houston Rockets were so woefully underestimated coming into the season, when the only significant difference between last year’s playoff team and this year’s would-be playoff time is the (occasionally bad) shot creating abilities of Artest?

I…I don’t know. Count me among the many that refused to acknowledge Houston’s potential. I didn’t see where the points were going to come from, even if Ariza is a young, talented player on a perfectly reasonable salary. Call me crazy, but I wasn’t sold on Aaron Brooks’ ability to score consistently, much less run an offense. And I saw some problems among their rotation of bigs, which had fallen to three productive if undersized power forwards in the absence of Yao Ming. Not only is none of that true, but we’ve seen virtually the opposite. Ariza may not be capable of producing shots at an elite level (as his .383), but his ability to get out in transition and connect on reasonable 3-point attempts has been crucial to Houston’s surprisingly competent offense. Aaron Brooks may not have the most efficient lines, but he’s proven that he has the speed to be a Tony Parker-esque penetrating and scoring point guard, albeit one with a much better touch from outside. And those Rocket bigs? The ones who were supposed to have problems against traditional centers and more physical lineups? They have Houston as the 7th best offensive rebounding team in the league, the 13th best defensive rebounding team, and provide an interesting amount of versatility with the defense of Chuck Hayes, the scoring of Carl Landry, and the savvy of Luis Scola.

In terms of efficiency, the Rockets are a perfectly average team. But considering that Yao Ming is on an extended vacation and Tracy McGrady is just starting to see the court, that’s more than commendable. It stands testament to just how good of a coach Rick Adelman is, and just how far pure effort can get you in the NBA. A limited roster of second round cast-offs and undrafted diamonds (or at least opals or something) int he rough is just 6.5 games behind the Los Angeles freaking Lakers. And all they’ve done to get there is everything they said they would based on everything they’ve always had. Daryl Morey simply waited as pundit after pundit (and blogger after blogger) penciled the Rockets into the lottery, biding his time until the scoreboard and the standings could sway the collective opinion in a way he never could.

Luis Scola Could Be Attached To An Iron Lung And Still Be Upset He Missed A Rebound

December 7, 2009 in by with 0 Comments

Luis Scola was able to play without the protective goggles one game ahead of schedule, with the gash on his right eyelid healing enough to play without the protection on his eyes. He scored 21 points, more than in the two games with the goggles combined, but did not want to blame the goggles or the injury for any struggles.

“I feel better,” he said. “I don’t like to make excuses. I cannot put on the goggles anything. I was missing shots the last two games. I made them (Saturday).”

Via Rockets Notes- Chron.com

To paraphrase Scola, “Well, I mean, sure I’ve got this giant gash in my EYE, but really, who would be stopped by that? What kind of man allows himself to let down his teammates and fail when he knows he can succeed?”

…

Everyone turns at looks at T-Mac.

…

Awkward silence.

The McGrady Conundrum

November 20, 2009 in by with 0 Comments

Eventually, Adelman returned to the locker room and retreated with McGrady into an adjacent coach’s office. McGrady slammed the door behind him, a witness said, and that marked the start of a tense, sometimes loud exchange that could be heard in the locker room, sources said.

In the discussion, McGrady challenged Adelman to tell him the coach’s plans and timetable for the seven-time All-Star’s eventual return to the roster, sources say. McGrady felt like Adelman had been uncommunicative with him for weeks, and no longer wanted to hear from Rockets general manager Daryl Morey or trainer Keith Jones about the team’s desire to make him wait until next week to take another MRI.

via McGrady unsure whether Rockets want him – NBA – Yahoo! Sports.

In Ballard’s book (which I swear upon everything holy I’m writing the review for this weekend, blocked out time and everything), there’s a ton of juicy stuff about McGrady. I won’t spoil it, but I will share this tidbit I followed up on my own about.

The Rockets excel because they play the smartest basketball you can. Blocks tapped to teammates. Hustle plays. Great defense, both man and help. And they shoot from high percentage areas. Namely, at the rim, in the paint, and three pointers.

Looking at McGrady’s numbers alone actually looks pretty good. For example, the dreaded 16-23 foot jumper range, he decreased every season since 2007 (as he should with age, and that’s impressive with his injury history), going from 8.6 per 40 to 5.5 attempts per 40 in 2008-2009 (granted with only a 35 game sample, but still). However, when you look at it from a team perspective, he was third most, behind 2.8 minute players Brian Cook and James “Flight” White. Compare that with speedy guard Aaron Brooks, who only took 2.0 16-23 foot jumpers a game. The assumption would be, yeah, but he probably shoots the highest percentage, right? Wrong. Scola was 45%, Brooks 40%, even Ron Artest beat him with 36%. So McGrady takes the lowest percentage shot most often of the heavy-minutes guys, and makes the lowest percentage of them.

If you’re Rick Adelman, would you be itching to get this guy back when you have a crew of devoted space monkeys itching to execute smart play after smart play for reasonable pay?