Lever’s low profile has been largely of his own doing. On the court his moves are efficient and, thanks to his stamina, relentless rather than spectacular. And he shows all the apparent passion of a CPA at a Chapter 11 hearing. “Some guys show their feelings, some guys don’t,” he says. “I may not, but they’re jumping around inside.”
Lafayette “Fat” Lever was indeed “relentless rather than spectacular.” But in a peculiar twist, that relentlessness became spectacular. Think of him as the stream of water that unerringly flows forth through the years, centuries and millennia and eventually turns into the mighty Mississippi or carves out the Grand Canyon.
This 6’3″ point guard was like that mighty stream. He just wore on you in every stat, every facet and every way.
I can see clearly now, the rain is gone. The lockout has lifted, we have a season, can I get an Amen? (Amen.) And in the spirit of renewal, our shiny new cadre of writers is putting together previews for all 30 teams in true HP style. From where teams are going to what their disgrace is to explorations of pop culture, we are about to rock, salute us, can I get an Amen? (Amen.) So sit back, relax, and ponder the awesomeness of this fully operational Hardwood Paroxysm 3.0. -Ed.Â
A BRIEF VIDEO PRELUDE: THE END OF AN ERA
by Connor Huchton
QUO VADIMUS (WHERE ARE WE GOING?)
by Sean Highkin
For as much drama as the Blazers have endured since the end of the 2010-11 season—the inexplicable firing and straight-up non-relacement of GM Rich Cho, Paul Allen’s villain role in the lockout, the will-they-or-won’t-they Brandon Roy amnesty talk, Roy’s tragic and premature retirement, the realization that Greg Oden will probably be a non-factor once again—I’m looking at their opening-day roster and can’t help thinking they’ve actually had a pretty good offseason, compared to a lot of  Western Conference playoff teams. They picked up two low-risk veterans in Kurt Thomas and Craig Smith for next to nothing to shore up a thin frontcourt. They responded to Roy’s departure by signing his good friend Jamal Crawford, who should provide scoring punch off the bench while clearing the way for Wesley Matthews to take over the starting role full-time. They upgraded from Andre Miller to Raymond Felton at point guard. These are all smart moves, made without much long-term risk, that should make the Blazers’ transition from Brandon Roy’s team to LaMarcus Aldridge’s a lot easier to finally complete.
The Smith and Thomas signings are especially important. Aldridge blossomed into an elite two-way player last season and somehow managed to avoid any major injuries, something that can’t be said of a lot of Blazers players the past few seasons. The problem is that he also played the second-most minutes in the league last year. He did this out of necessity, with Oden out completely, Joel Przybilla coming back a shadow of his former self, Marcus Camby battling knee injuries, and Sean Marks existing. But that kind of workload isn’t at all sustainable for a big man, especially one you’re counting on to be a franchise player. In Thomas and Smith, they now have two hard-nosed, durable veterans to throw out there when Aldridge needs to rest who can be counted on to at least know what they’re doing.
How far the Blazers go this season depends on a number of players. Felton has had little trouble fitting into Nate McMillan’s rotation in the two preseason contests with Utah, and there’s no reason to believe Matthews won’t continue to improve as he did last season. Along with Aldridge, that’s three sure bets out of the major-minutes contributors. Will Gerald Wallace, who looked a step out of place after being acquired at the deadline last year, find his niche going into his first full season in Portland? Can Nicolas Batum finally become the consistent offensive threat and lockdown defender he has the physical tools to be? Will Camby stay healthy? And if so, will he be with the team all year or be flipped in March? Can rookie point guard Nolan Smith crack the rotation and become a meaningful contributor? What about athletic combo guard Elliott Williams, who missed his rookie season with a knee injury? That’s a lot of variables, but they’re the kind that are more likely to pan out than the ones Portland dealt with last year, like “Can we count on a player with Top-10 all-NBA talent but no meniscus in either knee to lead us to salvation?”
POPULAR THEORIES IN BASKETBALL-CULTURAL CROSS-REFERENCES
by Danny Chau
The Unicorns, “Let’s Get Known”
Clues, “Let’s Get Strong”
Eras are taught as concrete divisions in time. Eras begin and end with significant shifts in attitude and policy. Walls are built and destroyed. So then what do we say about this year’s Blazers? There was no structural detonation of the roster, and yet on December 9, the team’s identity for the past five seasons dissolved. Brandon Roy went on medical retirement after five years in the NBA with knees that have long gone without essential cartilage between the bones, and a fragile knee ligament stands in the way of Greg Oden’s return from basketball after more than two years of surgery and rehabilitation. Familiar faces line the Blazers bench as the team readies itself for the upcoming season. But the odd sameness of the roster can’t mask the irrevocable shift that has occurred in this team’s direction.
Five years ago, Portland was rejuvenated by the tandem of Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, draft prospects brought in to move the team past its Jail Blazer persona. Roy’s stardom was apparent from the onset, with Aldridge’s tantalizing potential not too far behind. Fortune brought them the first overall pick in 2007, where they would select the most talked-about prospect since LeBron James and the most promising center since Yao Ming. Oden would miss the entirety of his first season due to knee surgery, but fans and pundits constantly looked down the road. This team — this triptych — would lead a future title contender. There was little doubt of that.
A little more than a year after The Unicorns released their sophomore album, they disbanded. The price of fame and acknowledgment was a rigorous touring schedule that drove the members apart, and drove them against their fans. Penner returned in 2009, five years after leaving his old band, to form the band Clues. On their self-titled debut is a song called “Let’s Get Strong,†a morose successor to his old Unicorns song. Penner strips everything off of “Let’s Get Known†— all of the radio fuzz, strings, and percussion. With only piano accompaniment, he takes a fragment of his former song’s melody and sings a ballad that runs contrary to the youthful optimism of his former self. It’s an epitaph for The Unicorns, or the Brandon Roy era of the Blazers, whose careers can be “summed up in a language of decay.â€
Penner and Thorburn have moved on, and both have their own bands. The Blazers have too. LaMarcus Aldridge, the only one left standing amongst the trio, will go into his first season as the undisputed first option on the team. While he is a lasting figure of the post-Jail Blazer era, he’ll be leading the team in a new direction; one nowhere near as fruitful as what was promised to us five years ago.
For Portland, it takes five years for an era to begin and collapse. And if there’s anything to be taken from Penner’s epitaph, it’ll take another five years to truly articulate how everything went wrong.
I’ve got wings, but they aren’t meant for viewing.
THE DISGRACE
by Scott Leedy
The Portland Trailblazers are bound to be a very good basketball team this year. Not a great team. They won’t be contending for a championship, but it’s hard not to like the personalities, and talents they’ve assembled. Blazers fans will pour their heart and soul into supporting this team, all the way through a first round exit. In and of itself, this is really nothing to be ashamed of; there’s nothing to hate about this team. It will be exciting to see what Felton can do when paired with LaMarcus Aldridge, and certainly all of Rip City is looking forward to a full year of Gerald Wallace. Still, much like the dreary but steady downpour that so often finds itself above the Portland skyline, the gloom of promise unfulfilled hangs above the franchise and its fans.
The Blazers are not a disgrace for what they are but rather for what they weren’t allowed to become. They didn’t so much fail, as they never got a chance to try. I’ve written about Brandon Roy’s injury and retirement previously, and Ben Golliver over at Blazer’s Edge wrote a fantastic retrospective on covering Roy; but all the reading and writing hasn’t really provided any relief from the hurt. The savior has fallen, and the once in a generation big man has become some cruel, twisted combination of perpetual sadness and too soon jokes.
I’m not sure where the franchise goes from here. I remember walking out of my high school summer league game to the news that Portland had received the first pick in the 2007 draft. I remember being so incredibly giddy, so excited to pair either Kevin Durant or Greg Oden with Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge. I remember adamantly demanding the Blazers draft Oden, and being very pleased when they obliged. There was an energy around the Blazers, around the city, amongst my friends; for the first time since the heartbreaking Western Conference Finals loss to the Lakers in 2000, we felt good about our team. I want to go back there, to get another chance, as if this time maybe it would be different. Alas, that buzz is gone now, replaced with an acceptance of this perverse fate. As if bitter disappointment was the only way this was ever going to end.
Artest told Yahoo! Sports he plans to wear No. 70 next season, but the NBA has rules that prevent players from switching their uniform number from year to year. The deadline for a player to change his number is in early March to have it go into effect for the next season and once a number is changed, it has to be worn for five seasons with that team before a player is allowed to change it (unless he is traded to a new team or leaves as a free agent).
Artest wore No. 37 after signing on as a free agent with the Lakers in 2009-10 and did switch to No. 15 last season. It’s not clear what he had to do to accomplish that.
The uniform rule does not come with any stipulations for a name change, however.
If there is a request or circumstance that calls for a number change within the five-year period is approved, it may come with a cost of some kind, according to a league source.
Look, I can’t say I care too much that Ron Artest is changing his name to Metta World Peace. As amusing as it’ll be to see “World Peace†on the back of a dude’s jersey during actual NBA games, I probably won’t start calling him that. Unlike Chad Johnson, who introduced the “Ocho Cinco†nickname informally a couple of years before making it official, Artest is expecting the entire sports world to start calling him by a new, esoteric name over a decade into a career that hasn’t exactly been low-profile.
No, what interested me most from Dave McMenamin’s report on Artest’s name change was the explanation of the process for jersey-number changes, something I’ve always wondered about and been fascinated by. Why does the NBA make players wear the same number for five years? Is it just so they don’t have to print new jerseys to sell? Major League Baseball doesn’t seem to have any rules about this whatsoever. When the Giants acquired Carlos Beltran at this year’s trading deadline, manager Bruce Bochy switched his number from 15 to 16 so that his new power hitter could keep the number he had worn for six years with the Mets. They made the decision at Beltran’s introductory press conference, and both his and Bochy’s new uniforms were ready for the game that night. Considering the NBA’s willingness to bend this rule for its stars (more on LeBron James and Mario Chalmers in a minute), its very existence seems somewhat archaic and unnecessary.
This got me thinking about other noteworthy number changes in recent NBA history, and the reasoning behind them. Continue Reading…
Blazers fans love to hate Paul Allen, and usually with good reason. We see him as the worst kind of overly meddlesome owner, one who has always been willing to spend to build a winner, but who can’t bring himself to just let his basketball guys do their jobs. He’s fired two extremely well-regarded GMs in the past two offseasons, and the general belief has been that Kevin Pritchard’s and Rich Cho’s main offenses have been not acting as yes-men for Allen. For Blazers fans, the losses first of Pritchard and then of Cho were tough to swallow, and Adrian Wojnarowski’s report last night of the team’s interest in Cho’s former Oklahoma City colleague Troy Weaver has prompted a round of here-we-go-agains. But perhaps we’re not giving Allen enough credit.
Maybe what we’re seeing here is Allen acting as something of a Robin Hood for small-market clubs. Those who argue against the need for increased parity always point to San Antonio and Oklahoma City as teams without the built-in advantages of, say, the Lakers, Knicks, or Celtics, who were able to build contenders through smart management and player development. And while not every team has close to those franchises’ level of front office, Allen is doing what he can to make it that way. Literally. His hiring of Cho from under Sam Presti a year ago was praised around the league, almost to the level that his ouster 10 months later was panned. But Cho landed on his feet, quickly taking the top job with the Charlotte Bobcats, the team he stole Gerald Wallace from during his stint in Portland. He immediately went to work in Charlotte, prying an extra top-10 pick from Sacramento on draft day. This drew plenty of eye-rolls from Blazers fans who wished he was still working on their behalf, but Bobcats fans had to feel like their team was in good hands. Which might have been Allen’s plan all along.
If the Blazers do, in fact, hire Weaver (which may come down to whether or not Weaver still has Cho’s phone number to ask questions about working for Allen), we could be seeing future of small-market basketball unfolding before our eyes:
1. Paul Allen snipes a highly-regarded executive from Portland’s toughest division rival, thereby weakening the Thunder and benefitting not only his team but also the Nuggets and Jazz.
2. This new GM pulls off a few one-sided deals in the vein of the Wallace trade, leaving the Blazers in better shape than when he started, and in the process building a reputation for himself as capable of running a team.
3. At the end of the season, the new guy is fired for some contrived reason having nothing to do with his talent or job performance.
4. He is promptly hired by another small-market club in need of a smart, level-headed GM. This move is praised by every NBA writer and executive, and boosts the confidence of that team’s fanbase. Now, one more small-market team is equipped with a talented and capable GM and is one step closer to competing.
5. Rinse and repeat.
Detroit, you’d do well to watch Portland next time there’s a season. This could be your future.
Brace yourselves, for the Lakers are engulfed in another slump. On the heels of a wholly impressive stretch coming out of the All-Star break in which the two-time defending champions went 17-1, they have hit a snag, dropping their last five contests — one of the recent blunders was Friday’s loss at the hands of the Portland Trail Blazers, who won with unexpected ease, 93-86.
This is, at minimum, the third time the Lakers have found themselves in a losing streak that’s troubling to some, impertinent to others during the season. Invariably, these spates of difficulty spark an unnavigable divide between those who consider any discernible losing streak as the ultimate apocalypse and those who could care less; after all, the playoffs haven’t started yet.
No matter one’s bent on the gravity of the Lakers’ regular-season losses, a trend has emerged this season through which one explanation is sufficient to pinpoint why they were defeated in any instance: they didn’t try hard enough.
No game demonstrated this trend better than Friday’s drubbing by the Blazers. As Phil Jackson said after the game, “These guys just don’t want to play hard right now.â€
(And comments like those are not a one-time thing, for those who view this as an aberration. Looking back to the Lakers’ loss to the Miami Heat on Christmas Day, here’s what Kobe Bryant notoriously had to say postgame: “It’s like these games mean more to our opponents than they do to us,†Bryant said. “I think we need to get that straight — play with more focus, put more [emphasis] on these games. I don’t like it. … We know what we’re capable of doing, and that’s part of the problem.â€)
In this Blazers game, how much did lack of effort really play in to the defeat? The knee-jerk response is obvious: the Lakers are agreeably better than the Trail Blazers, so they had to have phoned in the game to have lost. Yes, the Lakers shot a despicable 39.5 percent, but couldn’t that just have been the result of great Blazers defense?
Bryant shot just 10-of-25 from the field, due in large part to lockdown D from Wesley Matthews, who has emerged as one of the top Kobe stoppers this season. Factor in LaMarcus Aldridge’s containment of Pau Gasol, and it doesn’t seem all that ridiculous that the Lakers could have scored only 86 points.
Meanwhile, the Lakers won the battle of rebounding, a stat that many classify as an effort number, 52-41.
On Wednesday, the Lakers lost to the Golden State Warriors, 95-87, for the first time in 14 matchups. It was largely a poor showing for L.A., but Pau Gasol (18 points on 7-of-11 shooting) and Andrew Bynum (13 points on 5-of-5 shooting, 17 rebounds) were a pair of bright spots. If the problem was effort, care to explain why Pau Gasol only played 27 minutes throughout the game and not at all down the stretch? Presumably Jackson would want the guy in who was actually playing well. Furthermore, Bynum probably would have taken more than five shots if he were playing so effectively and no one else gave a hoot.
It appears, then, that the “effort†argument doesn’t really have much practical traction. More simply, the explanation is probably just that the Lakers get outplayed on occasion. It’s not a huge surprise that the Lakers and their fans would want to remain blind to that argument, though. Considering they have won the last two NBA titles, maybe that’s their prerogative.
Still, there is a disconcerting problem with the duality that the NBA community at large perceives of Lakers’ losses as lack of effort and losses of every other team as nonperformance — more simply, other teams “suck†when they lose. Such was the case Thursday when the Celtics fell to the Bulls in a fairly embarrassing manner. But it wouldn’t be right to say that the Celtics were disinterested in playing hard against the Bulls (after all, they soiled the proverbial bed and were undoubtedly outplayed). So why is it permissible to excuse the Lakers’ poor play that way?
Well, frankly, the Lakers have won a lot over the years. A lot. They have won so much that there’s a culture of win-or-die subordinate only to the delusion that the Yankees and their fans share. With that culture as a basis, the Lakers have done a masterful job of crafting a narrative in which their team bows down to no mortal — in the eyes of the Lakers, they are never underdogs and should never lose.
Consequently, accentuating the accomplishments of another team has a stigma of inner weakness attached to it. Acknowledging that the Blazers’ defense might have shut them down would have been tantamount to saying that the O’Brien Trophy was open for the taking, at least from their perspective. This is why you’ll never, ever see a Lakers player help up an opponent during the game or cry in the locker room after the final buzzer. They vigorously defend their image of toughness.
Phil Jackson didn’t win 11 titles by being an idiot, and it’s evident from his aforementioned comment that he’s aware perception is reality. He’s basically the only coach that will say anything legitimate to the media, and he uses that candidness to, well, construct an effective facade: the Lakers do try, and the appearance of apathy is just a cover for ineluctable vulnerability.
It might sound bunk, but there’s a psychological hurdle to beating the Lakers that is absent for other teams, most notably the Heat. And so long as the Lakers keep winning when it counts, it will remain impenetrable. That might not be right for the game, but it is most definitely right for the Purple and Gold.
I know the script says that Phoenix doesn’t play defense and they can’t get a stop. And I know that the Blazers are without their number one option on offense, their number three option on offense, and their young long wing shooter. I get that. But to ignore the swarming help defense Phoenix was capable of at times last night would be to do them a disservice.
Here’s the possessions that had me turn to Paroxi-wife and say “You can go to bed, now, this one’s done.” In the first quarter.
Bayless comes up and settles into the offense. By the time everyone gets where they’re supposed to be? The clock’s at 16 before he even initiates.
Bayless drives and tries to take his man off the dribble, but the Suns are set in a box and that ain’t happening. Instead of forcing a bad shot, he kicks out to Webster.
Except the Suns close. hard. Bayless follows through on the swing, but you’re already looking at a dwindling clock. Yet Webster, like Bayless before him, dribbles, trying to get the Suns to suddenly evaporate. Juwan Howard chills out. Fernandez is buried on the other side, Howard’s not getting that pass, and Bayless is swinging through. Yikes.
Webster outlets to Fernandez who pulls to the mid-wing. Despite A. the space he has between him and his defender, B. the fact that it’s Steve Nash trying to run out on him, and C. the fact that the clock is now at 8 seconds and they’re unlikely to get a better look because D. 3/5 of the Blazer offense is apparently starting a rub-a-dub down on the left block, Fernandez elects not to shoot. But he tries for the touch pass to an open Bayless. As long as the pass isn’t off, Bayless should be able to rise and fire.
The pass is off.
So Richardson’s back up in his face. Martell Webster doesn’t appear to have any discernible idea of what it is that his objective is, and starts trotting back the way he came, even though there’s only six seconds left on the clock. Meanwhile, Channing Frye and Jared Dudley are literally waiting on Bayless to dribble into their clutches baseline with the clock winding down. So naturally, Bayless dribbles RIGHT INTO THEM.
There are now zero Blazers really open, even with a double, and the shot clock is at 3. Which means that from the corner, Bayless has to throw a desperation kick out to Fernandez…
And of course the pass is long. So Fernandez barely has enough time to catch and throw up a prayer. But hey, Webster’s open in the corner!
Much is said about the precision that the Suns run with that makes it so hard to stop them. You’ve got the amazing Steve Nash passes. Amar’e and (lately) Jason Richardson’s athleticism. The three point acumen. But what sometimes gets lost in the shuffle is their ability to simply force you into impossible situations, due to presenting no-win scenarios that can only be achieved in transition. It’s much more difficult to create impossible plays to defend in the halfcourt set, because the opponent’s personnel is set, hanging out, ready. They’re not adjusting off the sprint, trying to locate anyone. The result of not only the speed with which the Suns execute the transition game, but the number of possessions they execute it in (via Synergy Sports, 13.6% of their plays are in transition), is akin to trying to run full speed through an antique store with eight rooms, end-to-end, that you’ve never been in before. Each room has a different wrinkle.
Like this.
In last night’s squash of the Blazers, the Suns got going early and never looked back. They especially used JRich. And while the Blazers’ personnel issues definitely need to be considered, there were a number of big plays that happened, especially in the second quarter, where even if healthy the Blazers were screwed. Take this example. With 47 seconds left to go in the first, Nash gets off and running like he always does. Richardson streaks to his left. The problem is that Amar’e is already ahead on the break. The defenders back are now faced with arguably the most efficient play in basketball, the Nash-Amar’e pick and roll, in the most efficient setting, transition. Here’s the result:
So here’s Martell Webster, with no one behind him, mind you, on account of that whole transition thing, trying to figure out what to do. He’s got Amar’e making what looks like a half-ass screen, but the real intent is just to get both perimeter defenders focused on cutting off Nash at the hip. After all, the first objective is stop the ball, right? Webster’s sliding down because if Amar’e breaks from that screen and just slides down, he’s got an easy one-handed dunk coming if Webster doesn’t get over.
Whoops.
Ruh-oh. While Webster’s trying to contain the most efficient play in basketball, a highly efficient shooter is spotting up on Nash’s left, with both perimeter defenders focused on containing the best transition point guard in the NBA. Which means right as Nash passes it, Webster’s too deep from trying to contain the STATATTACK and has to try and run off the three. Which he does. But by that point, JRich could have written a ballad, had that ballad published, then turned that ballad into a play, cast John Malkovich in the ballad-turned-play’s leading role, then spent the proceeds on a horse made of E-Z-Cheez before Webster’s gonna get there.
