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Tag Archive - tyler hansbrough

Dirk Nowitzki: A Softy We Can Get Behind

May 19, 2011 in by with 3 Comments

There’s such a stigma about softness in the NBA. It’s commonplace to idolize those players who embody toughness, who sweat blood, who play through pain, who seek out contact like Eddy Curry seeks out all-you-can-eat buffets, who fear no opponent. Now it’s just as normal to belittle the finesse players — the ones who spare viewers the macho routine, who don’t need to feel dominant to play basketball.

Basketball is a sport of grace, that requires the utmost focus and skill — the greatest player will be a meticulous tactician, a heady player who knows what he’s doing. Basketball is a game of grace and fluidity, but it seems that those qualities can only be appreciated if there’s a ferocity underscoring them.

It’s really not surprising that the embrace of manliness has come to the fore. As the NBA has evolved, the game has become decreasingly physical, metamorphosing from a game primarily defined by bruisers to a game appreciably defined by skill. Many feel a need for sports to be contests of strength and hatred for one’s opponents, so it makes sense that these fans would cling to those aspects of classic basketball and long for more of that style.

In the same way, these same people can’t help but berate those who act counter to their desires. Deviation from that course of aggression and physicality is inherently wrong, and those players who choose that alternate route must be ridiculed relentlessly for their decision. After all, they’re a bunch of sissies, obviously.

Not even getting in to the social concerns with some of these softness labels (words like “woman” and “pussy” come to mind), a trend has developed over the years in which the players coming over from Europe are necessarily soft, for it has to be a product of nationality, not training regiment, amateur-basketball factors, or anything else. (Or maybe it’s just that Americans are intolerant of other cultures and want to flaunt their “superiority.” Either way.) That is why there’s always a slight preoccupation with drafting foreign prospects or giving them a chance on an NBA roster.

It is true that this dubious nature has not just surfaced as a result of neanderthals’ preconceived notions, as European players have not had the greatest track record in the NBA. But the change in the physical nature of the game is only one cause of failure for international prospects. Rule differences, season length, cultural boundaries, and many other adjustments have a hand in the development or lack of development for these players.

Along with the clear division between the tough guys and the “wusses,” let’s say, there’s another duality that develops: the guys who live to hurt and get hurt are the icons of basketball — that is, they’re good. The ninnies? They’re just bad at basketball. There’s no better illustration for this phenomenon than Laker Nation’s treatment of Pau Gasol over the last four seasons.

In 2008, when the Lakers lost, he was a creampuff (an efficient one, at that, but damn me to hell if that matters — they lost!) who was helpless to succeed because he couldn’t handle the grind of the game. In 2009 and 2010, when the Lakers won, he broke free and somehow instantly became tough. This year, they lost again, and Pau was back to playing for the London Silly Nannies.

There’s a statistical correlation between Gasol’s success and the Lakers’ success in those four postseasons, and there’s no way that other factors could’ve possibly had an impact on his vacillating play. There’s no way Bynum’s absence in 2008 hindered him at all. There’s no way the team’s abandonment of the triangle offense limited Gasol’s play in 2011. He’s just too much of a pansy to handle it all.

This is interesting, though: it seems as if choosing whether to call a player soft or not is a matter of convenience. When it helps to excuse a player’s performance as a product of his cotton-candy nature, that’s just fine. When his performance need not be excused, though, his softness is no longer a topic of discussion. So …

What if the NBA had someone who exemplified the qualities of these players that are routinely labeled softies — but managed to use that softness to his advantage to dominate in the NBA? These playoffs have solidified one guy’s nomination for this role. That guy would be Dirk Nowitzki.

When you think soft, Nowitzki isn’t typically someone who comes to mind. After all, he screams, growls at his opponents, and likes to pump up the crowd. But take a look at his game.

This is a guy who has developed his jumper to have a natural fade on it, such that he falls away from opponents when he shoots. He had nine dunks all year. He attempted fewer shots per game at the rim than Tyler Hansbrough. He doesn’t really jump to contest shots. He shoots a lot of free throws, but many of the fouls he takes are slight taps on his arms, not Andrew Bynum-style maulings. You’ll often see him getting knocked off balance by smaller defenders in the post. And you don’t seem him intimidating other teams with hard fouls himself on defense.

You would attribute a lot of those characteristics to the wuss category, so perhaps it’s not the way that these guys play the game that makes people call them soft. Maybe a player has to be bad in order to be considered soft. Maybe we’re willing to look past finesse play so long as it results in wins.

There is no doubt people looked at Dirk in a different light just five years ago, when Dwyane Wade went off in the 2006 Finals, and the Mavericks crumbled after a confidence-building 2-0 lead in the series. Dirk was seen as soft then. The next year, after the Mavericks embarrassingly bowed out to the Warriors in a 1-8 upset in the first round, Dirk was still soft like ice cream. Now, though, no one’s saying that, even while his game has barely changed.

All this talk has surfaced lately about where Nowitzki ranks among all players in the league’s history, with some endeavoring to contend that he belongs in the all-time top 10. Whether or not that’s accurate, it might make some people realize that one of the greatest players to ever touch the hardwood is someone who has been called a weakling.

Maybe Nowitzki is the guy who can make it cool to be soft, who can break that mold of needing to be tough, who can be that graceful tactician without any underlying support of a grizzly nature.

Here’s to changing the culture of basketball for the better, Dirk.

At least Tyler had a big day

April 16, 2011 in by with 5 Comments

The Pacers not winning was a bummer. Not so much because it’s the Pacers, but because it would have been such a great story. But alas, this is the NBA. Best team wins 9 out of 10.

But man, what a game by the ‘Bro. Look at his career. Dude comes in as the most hated college player since Redick. Works hard to do well in Pacers camp. Then comes down with what is first called an ear infection, but is later diagnosed as vertigo. VERTIGO. Who the hell gets vertigo who isn’t mountain climbing?! Then he busts his ass to come back from that, does so, and has a pretty great season once O’Brien gets canned. Everyone’s reacting today like “oh, that’ll never happen again.” Guy has game. Even if it’s a bizarre archetype.

When he got whacked in the head and went down, it was a legitimately scary moment (which didn’t stop the Bulls fans from booing like crazy). He went to the back, came back out, and KILLED Boozer. Killed him dead. Carlos Boozer is normally bad at defense. The “Bro made him look even worse.

Shame they didn’t win. I had a “WELCOME TO CHICABROUGH” headline all picked out and everything.

MORE: Was it a back-breaker for Indy, already?

The Alternate Path To Establishment

March 24, 2011 in by with 6 Comments

Photo via Genseric 455 on Flickr

I’m a sports anchor/reporter by trade. The sports television world is an exciting, fast paced industry, one that I had longed to be a part of for most of my childhood, so having been lucky enough to land a job not long after college was a dream come true.

The one part of the profession that I find both frustrating and exciting is the lack of an archetype for the blueprint of success. Talk to 20 successful reporters and you’re apt to hear 20 vastly different stories for how they got to where they are. To be sure, most professions have a degree of variance between starting point and the journey to ultimate end point, but the wiggle room for differences is slight compared to the media world.

Lawyers attend Law School and work their way up at their firm, hoping to one day make partner. Doctors attend medical school, complete their residency and work their way up in either private practice or a larger organization. I’ve met reporters who started in radio, been newspaper reporters, spent time in the public relations world, I even ran across one who started as a secretary on a political campaign. In the TV world, the ends justify the means.

Similarly, the NBA is hardly a bastion of concrete paths to establishing oneself, be it as a star, role player or career-long bench warmer. Careers and roles are fluid, for most they are in a constant state of flux. This lack of a yellow brick road to firm ground is what makes the League simultaneously thrilling and frustrating as we watch players rise and fall, overachieve and bust before our eyes. Even within the context of the unknown, the lack of sturdiness to both reality and our perceptions of it, the series of events that have led up to Tyler Hansbrough’s blistering March are unique.

Perhaps no college star in recent memory has at once reaped the benefits and seen the damning effects of college stardom as the former North Carolina standout has.  A household name seemingly by the end of his freshman season, few players in the last decade have spent so much time in the spotlight so as to be simultaneously revered by college fans and opponents, but equally dissected by pro fans.

Even Adam Morrison – riddled with deficiencies that we could all see would manifest them at the pro level eventually – was given a fighting chance in the beginning. Hansbrough, quite possibly the best college player of his decade (from a career accomplishment standpoint) was written off as an NBA player the second his career at Carolina ended with a national championship. The stigma of his physical limitations was enough to overshadow a four-year run of consistent production that has rarely been seen in arguably the college games most storied conference.

Shortly after being drafted by the Indiana Pacers – he simply vanished from national awareness. Plagued by a prolonged bout with vertigo and failing to click on any level with then head coach Jim O’Brien, Hansbrough went the way so many predicted for him, disappearing into obscurity, the fact that it was matters beyond his control didn’t matter.

In late January, O’Brien was fired and interim head coach Frank Vogel immediately pledged increased playing time for a now healthy Hansbrough who has averaged 27 minutes a night over the last two months. But all we want to talk about is March, the time when the second-year pro used to take center stage at Chapel Hill, a titanic force amidst the college game. Now he is doing it for the Pacers, posting averages of better than 20 points and 8 rebounds over his last 10 games, numbers that scream breakthrough, finally getting it, establishing himself, arriving on the scene.

At the risk of creating an uprising in Tar Heel Nation, we know this degree of production is unlikely to last. Hansbrough, for all of the improvements he is making in his game, is simply capitalizing on scenarios where defenses aren’t paying him the level of attention afforded a player producing his kind of stat line. If and when this does happen, his numbers will likely return to the much more believable line of 15 and 6, his averages since Vogel took over the reins in Indiana. But this isn’t about whether or not Hansbrough will continue his ascent to become a full fledged star or regress to his likely mean and operate as a solid starter for the next decade in the Hoosier State. This is about how he arrived at being the focal point of this conversation.

We live in an age where players develop before our eyes, each step of the way analyzed and assessed. Somehow, Hansbrough has managed to avoid this scrutiny, his growth as a player executed behind the scenes during his exile on the bench. Yet, this may be exactly why he has managed to emerge as a viable option for the Pacers since his reemergence. Had he been treated in the same manner as his equals at the college level – the Durant’s and Beasley’s of the world – he undoubtedly would have been set up for failure under the heat of the spotlight. At the same time, rare has been the player so accomplished in college, who has the bar set so incredibly low. Maybe that’s why this sudden explosion over the last couple of weeks has the NBA buzzing.

At this point Hansbrough’s extended test run with big minutes is akin to seeing a movie where expectations are low, but the finished product is above average so the reviews are great – isn’t it? The only problem is his career happens to be a film we’ve already seen, but has just been redone slightly better a few years later. The forward has already spent so much time in the limelight that by the time his NBA career began his strengths and weaknesses were widely known and his ceiling as a player appeared to be reached, he’s just adapted.

Maybe it’s appropriate that Hansbrough’s path to emergence in the NBA is unconventional as most fans would likely agree that it mirrors his role as an unconventional player. While most college stars develop in the spotlight and further their growth or fade away as the light grows brighter, Hansbrough instead departed into the shadows before returning to outdo initial expectations. For a player who has built himself on a tireless work ethic and hustle this trajectory only stands to further entrench him as the archetype for the heralded college star turned forgotten commodity in the NBA.