Rick Bonnell needs to step his game up. And apparently I’m not alone in that conclusion: the second posting following Bonnell’s recent player-by-player review leads with the damning words “very soft analysis.” Indeed, I’ve seen more in-depth sports analysis in TV Guide’s NFL Preview issue. If you’re a paid commentator for the city’s largest newspaper, you’ve gotta deliver more than that, RB—especially in the off-season, unless you’re also the Observer’s horticultural expert or something else I don’t know about. And this was on the heels of his spectacularly milquetoast assessment of Charlotte’s off-season agenda, wherein he makes the following non-committal banalities:
1. “Do you cut the cord now or hope Vincent improves? I'd say the odds are 50-50.”
2. “If the Bobcats have the chance to draft Memphis' Derrick Rose in June, it wouldn't be bad to develop an alternative.”
3. “Kansas State's Michael Beasley is more a scorer than a defender, but he'd be a nice upgrade if the Bobcats luck out in the draft lottery.”
“50-50”? What kind of prediction is that? And as for taking Derrick Rose or Michael Beasley in the lottery? Gee, no kidding, Rick—you really think we should pick one of them over, say, Italy’s Danilo Gallinari? Way to put it out on the line like that. Hey, I think I realized what Bonnell’s other job is: advising the President on deadlines for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
Anyway, because we clearly can’t rely on Bonnell for anything that would inspire critical thought, let’s keep it in-house by posing this question: who would you say was the Bobcats MVP this year? This is almost certainly a silly question. It’s a little like asking, “What was the best Gerardo song?” But if you had to pick someone, who would it be?
First, I’ll go out on a Bonnell-like limb here and assume it’s either Richardson, Okafor, Felton, or Wallace. Second, I don’t have any sort of set criteria that I’m looking for in an MVP; however, whenever I’m choosing an MVP—whether it’s from the NBA, the NFL, or the cast of Battlestar Galactica (gotta be President Laura Roslin: strong but vulnerable, with the added bonus of looking like a former 80s metal video groupie)—I prefer that the decision be based on some sort of rational analysis. In other words, don’t do what ESPN’s J.A. Adande and Chris Broussard seem to always do, which is make a snap decision based on whatever they just saw two minutes ago. These lead to skewed perceptions, and this country is already overwhelmed with those. They’re why Citigroup posts a $5 billion loss and sees its share price rise while Bank of America’s stock plummets even though it was technically still profitable last quarter; they’re why Barack Obama rises out of a poor, single-parent household only to get branded an “elitist” (and also a “whiner” and “not tough enough” by someone whose most memorable televised moment in the past 6 months was crying after a loss in a primary).
So anyway, let’s take a look at the numbers. As an admitted worshipper at the Temple of Hollinger, my first stop is the PER category, which measures a player’s overall efficiency through the use of complex statistical analyses, calculus, the cosine, pi, and the blood of a freshly slaughtered calf. After mixing it all together, ESPN stat guru/witchdoctor John Hollinger tells us that Richardson led the way with an 18.48 in this category (15 is average), compared to the 17.57, 17.45, and 13.85 scores of Wallace, Okafor, and Felton, respectively.
A quick surf over to 82games.com, which is great for +/- measurements (which are regarded in hockey about as highly as RBI’s are in baseball, yet inexplicably ignored in basketball), and we see that Wallace was the category leader, with a Net48 of -2.3. This means that the Cats were outscored by 2.3 points per 48 minutes of playing time for Wallace. You’re probably saying to yourself that “-2.3” doesn’t seem like a very good score—let alone the best—and you’re right, it isn’t. This is why we were a bad team. But in this case the -2.3 bested Felton’s -3.3, Richardson’s -3.5, and Okafor’s -4.3. (It’s also worth noting that Matt Carroll tied Wallace’s mark of -2.3, and also that anytime Carroll was on the court, he and the rest of his 5-man unit outscored the opposition 51.3% of the time (none of the other “big 4” tops Okafor’s 44.3%). But this is where we get into the murky area of first-unit vs. second unit, which I imagine explains most of this discrepancy.)
Let’s quickly move on from there—because, frankly, the +/- scores are depressing—and look at the more traditional stats. This is where Richardson really achieves some separation. J-Rich led the team in scoring—21.8 to Wallace’s 19.4, and Richardson played in 20 more games. He was efficient about his scoring, too. His adjusted field-goal percentage (all points less FT’s, divided by FGA), .524, trailed only Okafor’s .535. He wasn’t shabby at all on the boards either (5.4 rebounds-per). Plus he was good for 3.1 assists and nearly one-and-a-half steals a game. There’s also that aforementioned durability: J-Rich played in all 82 games (tied with Okafor) and tied Wallace for 38.4 mpg.
Thus my vote Team MVP would be (in order) Richardson, Okafor, Wallace, and Felton (the order of the last two depends on how much stock you put in durability). Congratulations, J-Rich! Your prize is an autographed player review by Rick Bonnell, in which he describes you as “the best move on Michael Jordan’s watch” (Really? Sure it wasn’t the decision to draft Adam Morrison third overall, Rick?).
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Friday, April 18, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 4/18
The Bobcats season ended with a whimper on Wednesday—a literal whimper, that is, as owner Bob Johnson complained about a lack of “support” (or in other words, “money”) from Charlotte businesses. As always, Johnson’s timing was perfect…ly bizarre. Just a few days earlier, Johnson had publicly praised the “commitment of the community.” All of a sudden, however, Johnson was “absolutely concerned,” about the local corporations’ lack of “commitment to be a part of the Bobcats.” Jeez, talk about a flip-flop!
Johnson also claims to have lost “significant money” on the team so far. (Note: I’m assuming that at some point in the interview, he eventually expressed disappointment about his team still being lousy after four years and then followed it up with a public pledge to get better on the court, but I didn’t actually see anything about that). There are a staggering number of questions/interpretations that spring from the “significant money” remark. Off the top of my head:
1) What’s a “significant amount” of money for a billionaire?
2) How is losing a significant amount of money possible when your arena was built for free?
3) How is it possible after you’ve raised ticket prices for two straight years?
4) How is it possible when you’re one of just a handful of teams who don’t exceed the salary cap?
5) How is it possible when you compete in a league with built-in cost controls and revenue sharing?
6) How is it possible when you just sold the naming rights to your arena? We don’t know how much money was exchanged in the Time-Warner deal, but the average annual price for naming rights is $3 million.*
But the most interesting question of all is: how would Johnson wish the public to react to these complaints? The way I see it, there are only two choices: sympathetically (which is sort of unrealistic, considering—forgive me if I’m having a little trouble getting past this particular point—he’s a billionaire) or scornfully (as in, “How incompetent can one be to fail in the impossible-to-fail industry of sports-team ownership?”). If you’re Johnson, neither of these reactions seems desirable (I guess he’d rather be viewed sympathetically, but that’s not very manly of him, is it?), so what’s his motive? He’s practically turning himself into a real-life configuration of the pro wrestler-heel, who actively tries to get the crowd to hate him and complains to the refs when they don’t rule in his favor. But unless he’s about to announce he’s wrestling Mark Cuban in a “Loser-Leaves-the-NBA” Cage Match at SummerSlam, none of this makes sense.
Maybe he’s just bitter. You know, you go to some of these small town owners in the NBA, and like a lot of small town owners in other leagues, treating their teams as tax write-offs has been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced it. Instead, the paying fans actually want you to care about the team and make it competitive. So it's not surprising then that these owners get bitter, they cling to fan indifference or lack of corporate sponsorships as a way to explain their frustrations.
Anyway, I’m no billionaire businessman who rules his sports team from afar and is almost never seen in public except to exploit the fan base, but my advice to Johnson would be to get in on the new Foreclosure Prevention Act that’s currently kicking around in Congress and the Senate. True, his problems don’t have much to do with housing foreclosures, but then again neither do GM’s, Ford’s, or the domestic airlines—yet they’re all lined up for some sweet tax breaks and refunds that will be part of the bill. Oh wait, Johnson doesn’t actually have to pay any taxes on his arena. That’s right, not only was it built for him, he pays no property taxes on it. Is it possible to get breaks or refunds on taxes you don’t pay in the first place? I’m not even sure if Halliburton can answer that one.
Hmmm. Where to go when you’ve already received every possible hand-out? There’s got to be some sort of loophole out there—right? Otherwise, the only alternative would be to (shudder) put a better team on the court. I know, I know, that’s some serious outside-the-box thinking. But it’s just crazy enough to actually work.
*Ask.com
Johnson also claims to have lost “significant money” on the team so far. (Note: I’m assuming that at some point in the interview, he eventually expressed disappointment about his team still being lousy after four years and then followed it up with a public pledge to get better on the court, but I didn’t actually see anything about that). There are a staggering number of questions/interpretations that spring from the “significant money” remark. Off the top of my head:
1) What’s a “significant amount” of money for a billionaire?
2) How is losing a significant amount of money possible when your arena was built for free?
3) How is it possible after you’ve raised ticket prices for two straight years?
4) How is it possible when you’re one of just a handful of teams who don’t exceed the salary cap?
5) How is it possible when you compete in a league with built-in cost controls and revenue sharing?
6) How is it possible when you just sold the naming rights to your arena? We don’t know how much money was exchanged in the Time-Warner deal, but the average annual price for naming rights is $3 million.*
But the most interesting question of all is: how would Johnson wish the public to react to these complaints? The way I see it, there are only two choices: sympathetically (which is sort of unrealistic, considering—forgive me if I’m having a little trouble getting past this particular point—he’s a billionaire) or scornfully (as in, “How incompetent can one be to fail in the impossible-to-fail industry of sports-team ownership?”). If you’re Johnson, neither of these reactions seems desirable (I guess he’d rather be viewed sympathetically, but that’s not very manly of him, is it?), so what’s his motive? He’s practically turning himself into a real-life configuration of the pro wrestler-heel, who actively tries to get the crowd to hate him and complains to the refs when they don’t rule in his favor. But unless he’s about to announce he’s wrestling Mark Cuban in a “Loser-Leaves-the-NBA” Cage Match at SummerSlam, none of this makes sense.
Maybe he’s just bitter. You know, you go to some of these small town owners in the NBA, and like a lot of small town owners in other leagues, treating their teams as tax write-offs has been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced it. Instead, the paying fans actually want you to care about the team and make it competitive. So it's not surprising then that these owners get bitter, they cling to fan indifference or lack of corporate sponsorships as a way to explain their frustrations.
Anyway, I’m no billionaire businessman who rules his sports team from afar and is almost never seen in public except to exploit the fan base, but my advice to Johnson would be to get in on the new Foreclosure Prevention Act that’s currently kicking around in Congress and the Senate. True, his problems don’t have much to do with housing foreclosures, but then again neither do GM’s, Ford’s, or the domestic airlines—yet they’re all lined up for some sweet tax breaks and refunds that will be part of the bill. Oh wait, Johnson doesn’t actually have to pay any taxes on his arena. That’s right, not only was it built for him, he pays no property taxes on it. Is it possible to get breaks or refunds on taxes you don’t pay in the first place? I’m not even sure if Halliburton can answer that one.
Hmmm. Where to go when you’ve already received every possible hand-out? There’s got to be some sort of loophole out there—right? Otherwise, the only alternative would be to (shudder) put a better team on the court. I know, I know, that’s some serious outside-the-box thinking. But it’s just crazy enough to actually work.
*Ask.com
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 4/15
(Note: This is what I get for posting this late: first, the Pacers go on to get eliminated from the playoffs, rendering the second paragraph moot; second, Bob Johnson publicly vents his frustrations over the taxing life of being a billionaire sports owner, making a bunch of claims that--though I haven't read them thoroughly yet--are undoubtedly a) unintentionally funny, and b) intentionally hypocritical. I promise more analysis later in the week.)
You know how I was making fun of Shawn Marion the other day? Well, it’s worth mentioning that Marion’s antithesis is Joakim Noah. Reading Noah’s comments (he’s got a recurring journal in SLAM this year) after Marion’s is like chasing grapefruit juice with a cherry Slurpee. I’m still slapping my knee over Noah’s recap of a game against the Knicks at the Garden. “They came out for me, my people from 51st Street and 10th Ave. That’s how we do it,” wrote Noah, later adding that his family and friends “look good on him.” Anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with the layout of Manhattan knows how ridiculous this sounds. 51st and 10th Ave?? I live over in the East Village, where it’s not uncommon to see men openly walk around in dresses, and I think I’m even more hood than that. I’m surprised Noah didn’t give a shout-out to his homies in the "Bear Sterns projects" and tell them to keep their heads up. But I’m laughing with Noah, not at him, because he’s a total crackup, is team-first, and probably a joy to be around. Even when he’s understated (like when he described the situation in Iraq as “kind of disappointing”), he’s a treat to experience. And he can rebound—we could have used him this year.
Oddly, we didn’t need Noah on Saturday night against Indiana. "Rebounding was the key," Matt Carroll said of the Bobcats’ 107-103 victory over the Pacers. "There have been a lot of games this year when we were on the opposite end of the rebounding total. It's been our Achilles' heel." Similarly, the Bobcats have been Indiana’s Achilles’ heel, taking 3-of-4 games from them this year. Now the Pacers will play with the sword of Damocles over their heads, because they need to win their remaining two games and have Atlanta lose their two in order to seize the last playoff slot. In short, it’ll take a Herculean effort.
Okay, enough with the Greek allusions. The rebounding disparity in the series finale with Indiana—59-43 in favor of us, including a preposterous 20 offensive boards—was somewhat befuddling, especially when the Pacers had home court and an urgent mandate to win. However, before you ask why we can’t do this more often, just look at Indiana’s center situation: Jeff Foster started, and he can barely make a put-back, let alone a long-range jumper; and Jermaine O’Neal continued playing desultory minutes. The only other big of consequence, Troy Murphy, took just 2 shots (and missed them both). Thus, when the opposition has a front court as limited in their offensive capabilities as our own, we look good by comparison.
All of this makes me wonder what Rod Higgins’ current relationship with Andris Biedrins is like. Because they were together with Golden State, do you think there’s any chance Higgins has enough goodwill to lure Biedrins over here? If I remember correctly, AB wanted something in the neighborhood of $10 mil at the beginning of the season, and the Warriors were having none of it. If both parties are still stalemated, Higgins could be our opening. Biedrins is three years younger than Emeka Okafor and three million cheaper, plus he’s more offensively gifted and a certain double-double if given enough minutes.
Two final thoughts about the Pacers: first, watching our guards chase around Flip Murray was semi-depressing, because I couldn’t help but wonder how this season would have gone if we’d had Flip on our team all along. It’s not like he wasn’t available or overly expensive. Effective backup point guards are so abundant nowadays, I just don’t see how we failed so spectacularly to acquire one. I’ll admit it: Earl Boykins never materialized into what I’d hoped, although I still argue that he was better than Jeff McInnis—at least somebody had to cover Earl. Come draft time, I’m leaning closer and closer to advocating a big guy with rebounding ability and picking up a veteran backup PG second-hand.
The other thought was, what happened to Jermaine O’Neal? He seems a shell of himself. I never hear from him anymore, and frankly, I miss him. He used to have opinions that were refreshingly honest—he was the original Noah. Now he just looks like he needs a good cry, possibly after a psychiatrist tells him repeatedly that it’s not his fault.
You know how I was making fun of Shawn Marion the other day? Well, it’s worth mentioning that Marion’s antithesis is Joakim Noah. Reading Noah’s comments (he’s got a recurring journal in SLAM this year) after Marion’s is like chasing grapefruit juice with a cherry Slurpee. I’m still slapping my knee over Noah’s recap of a game against the Knicks at the Garden. “They came out for me, my people from 51st Street and 10th Ave. That’s how we do it,” wrote Noah, later adding that his family and friends “look good on him.” Anyone who’s even vaguely familiar with the layout of Manhattan knows how ridiculous this sounds. 51st and 10th Ave?? I live over in the East Village, where it’s not uncommon to see men openly walk around in dresses, and I think I’m even more hood than that. I’m surprised Noah didn’t give a shout-out to his homies in the "Bear Sterns projects" and tell them to keep their heads up. But I’m laughing with Noah, not at him, because he’s a total crackup, is team-first, and probably a joy to be around. Even when he’s understated (like when he described the situation in Iraq as “kind of disappointing”), he’s a treat to experience. And he can rebound—we could have used him this year.
Oddly, we didn’t need Noah on Saturday night against Indiana. "Rebounding was the key," Matt Carroll said of the Bobcats’ 107-103 victory over the Pacers. "There have been a lot of games this year when we were on the opposite end of the rebounding total. It's been our Achilles' heel." Similarly, the Bobcats have been Indiana’s Achilles’ heel, taking 3-of-4 games from them this year. Now the Pacers will play with the sword of Damocles over their heads, because they need to win their remaining two games and have Atlanta lose their two in order to seize the last playoff slot. In short, it’ll take a Herculean effort.
Okay, enough with the Greek allusions. The rebounding disparity in the series finale with Indiana—59-43 in favor of us, including a preposterous 20 offensive boards—was somewhat befuddling, especially when the Pacers had home court and an urgent mandate to win. However, before you ask why we can’t do this more often, just look at Indiana’s center situation: Jeff Foster started, and he can barely make a put-back, let alone a long-range jumper; and Jermaine O’Neal continued playing desultory minutes. The only other big of consequence, Troy Murphy, took just 2 shots (and missed them both). Thus, when the opposition has a front court as limited in their offensive capabilities as our own, we look good by comparison.
All of this makes me wonder what Rod Higgins’ current relationship with Andris Biedrins is like. Because they were together with Golden State, do you think there’s any chance Higgins has enough goodwill to lure Biedrins over here? If I remember correctly, AB wanted something in the neighborhood of $10 mil at the beginning of the season, and the Warriors were having none of it. If both parties are still stalemated, Higgins could be our opening. Biedrins is three years younger than Emeka Okafor and three million cheaper, plus he’s more offensively gifted and a certain double-double if given enough minutes.
Two final thoughts about the Pacers: first, watching our guards chase around Flip Murray was semi-depressing, because I couldn’t help but wonder how this season would have gone if we’d had Flip on our team all along. It’s not like he wasn’t available or overly expensive. Effective backup point guards are so abundant nowadays, I just don’t see how we failed so spectacularly to acquire one. I’ll admit it: Earl Boykins never materialized into what I’d hoped, although I still argue that he was better than Jeff McInnis—at least somebody had to cover Earl. Come draft time, I’m leaning closer and closer to advocating a big guy with rebounding ability and picking up a veteran backup PG second-hand.
The other thought was, what happened to Jermaine O’Neal? He seems a shell of himself. I never hear from him anymore, and frankly, I miss him. He used to have opinions that were refreshingly honest—he was the original Noah. Now he just looks like he needs a good cry, possibly after a psychiatrist tells him repeatedly that it’s not his fault.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 4/11
Bad news, everyone: according to a recent CBS News/New York Times poll, 81 percent of respondents believe that when it comes to the Bobcats, “things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track.” Oh hold on, I read that wrong. Sorry, they were the talking about the country, not the Bobcats. Never mind then, that’s not nearly as important. That’s an odd way of wording that survey, though. “Things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track”? It’s a bit cluttered—makes me wonder what the other options were on the questionnaire. Was it something like:
1. When it comes to the country…
A) Things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track
B) You know, it is what it is, but for the most part it’s, you know, all good
C) Sometimes things happen and you have to kind of make adjustments
D) I thought it was sort of crazy before, but lately, it’s like, WTF?
For what it’s worth, Bob Johnson thinks things are pretty seriously on the right track. In a recent interview, the Bobcats owner told The Gaston Gazette, “We've got a beautiful, downtown state-of-the-art arena. We've got a naming rights partner that's dominant in the media-content business. We've got a dominant carrier in the region in the content and sports promotion business. We've got a team that is building every year, we believe, to be a winner. And we've got a community that's committed, I'm convinced, to supporting the Charlotte Bobcats.”
We’ve also got an owner who’s delusional. I wonder what’s "convincing" him—the 8th worst attendance in the League? The sub-1 television ratings? The fact that 100% of the $265 million it took to build his “beautiful” arena came from the taxpayers’ state-of-the-art wallets? He’s right, the evidence is overwhelming. Mission accomplished. You had me at “no-jerseys-ranked-in-the-top-15-best-sellers.”
It’s also nice to see that Johnson’s the latest mogul to fall in love with saying the word “content” as much as possible. Guys like him LOVE to talk about “content,” especially when they can also talk about people “consuming” content. It really dresses everything up and makes it sound much cooler and more sophisticated, even when 90% of the time the “content” in question is sports, sit-coms, or blogs about celebrity pregnancies—“crap,” in other words. How refreshing would it be if Johnson or Rupert Murdoch called all of it "crap" instead? I guess that wouldn’t present as nice a picture though, especially in the context of “consuming” it or—worse—“streaming” it.
I assume Johnson was somewhat less convinced by the team’s two most recent showings: a narrow win over Minnesota and a sad loss to the Knicks. Coach Sam Vincent inexplicably praised the win over the T-Wolves, even though it came about more from missed Minnesota opportunities than anything else. “It was closer than we wanted, but we are trying to learn how to win close games,” said Vincent. This was funny for two reasons. First, it’s always absurd when coaches refer to “learning how to win close games” as if it’s a skill that can be achieved through lots of practice, like speaking Spanish or playing the guitar. Second, Vincent’s got it all wrong: we never trailed this game and at one point we were up by 18 against a team with just 19 victories—we should be learning how to win blow-outs. And maybe the Bobcats should consider switching majors, because after a 2-point loss to the Knicks on Wednesday, I don’t think we’re ever going to learn enough.
At least I didn’t pay to watch the Knicks game live. Neither did their new President, Donnie Walsh, but he got to attend anyway. In fact, not only did he attend, he was the whole storyline. I'm serious: in the NY Times recap, there actually wasn’t a single mention of the game itself; the entire article was a description of the Yoda-looking Walsh’s seating arrangements. Walsh is being hailed in these parts as a savior, even though the bulk of his credentials—as far as I can tell—are that he was born and raised in New York. Knicks fans certainly can’t point to anything he did with the Pacers in recent years as reasons for optimism. In the Times article, Walsh also had a bunch of quotations, all of which were—you’ll never believe this—spectacularly uninformative. Without getting into it, he assured everyone he’d be evaluating his options but offered no timetables on any major decisions. At least he didn’t use the word “content.” Hmm…Really old, doesn’t want timetables, bases his credibility on events that occurred decades ago…is this the Walsh Presidency or the McCain Presidency?
1. When it comes to the country…
A) Things have pretty seriously gotten off on the wrong track
B) You know, it is what it is, but for the most part it’s, you know, all good
C) Sometimes things happen and you have to kind of make adjustments
D) I thought it was sort of crazy before, but lately, it’s like, WTF?
For what it’s worth, Bob Johnson thinks things are pretty seriously on the right track. In a recent interview, the Bobcats owner told The Gaston Gazette, “We've got a beautiful, downtown state-of-the-art arena. We've got a naming rights partner that's dominant in the media-content business. We've got a dominant carrier in the region in the content and sports promotion business. We've got a team that is building every year, we believe, to be a winner. And we've got a community that's committed, I'm convinced, to supporting the Charlotte Bobcats.”
We’ve also got an owner who’s delusional. I wonder what’s "convincing" him—the 8th worst attendance in the League? The sub-1 television ratings? The fact that 100% of the $265 million it took to build his “beautiful” arena came from the taxpayers’ state-of-the-art wallets? He’s right, the evidence is overwhelming. Mission accomplished. You had me at “no-jerseys-ranked-in-the-top-15-best-sellers.”
It’s also nice to see that Johnson’s the latest mogul to fall in love with saying the word “content” as much as possible. Guys like him LOVE to talk about “content,” especially when they can also talk about people “consuming” content. It really dresses everything up and makes it sound much cooler and more sophisticated, even when 90% of the time the “content” in question is sports, sit-coms, or blogs about celebrity pregnancies—“crap,” in other words. How refreshing would it be if Johnson or Rupert Murdoch called all of it "crap" instead? I guess that wouldn’t present as nice a picture though, especially in the context of “consuming” it or—worse—“streaming” it.
I assume Johnson was somewhat less convinced by the team’s two most recent showings: a narrow win over Minnesota and a sad loss to the Knicks. Coach Sam Vincent inexplicably praised the win over the T-Wolves, even though it came about more from missed Minnesota opportunities than anything else. “It was closer than we wanted, but we are trying to learn how to win close games,” said Vincent. This was funny for two reasons. First, it’s always absurd when coaches refer to “learning how to win close games” as if it’s a skill that can be achieved through lots of practice, like speaking Spanish or playing the guitar. Second, Vincent’s got it all wrong: we never trailed this game and at one point we were up by 18 against a team with just 19 victories—we should be learning how to win blow-outs. And maybe the Bobcats should consider switching majors, because after a 2-point loss to the Knicks on Wednesday, I don’t think we’re ever going to learn enough.
At least I didn’t pay to watch the Knicks game live. Neither did their new President, Donnie Walsh, but he got to attend anyway. In fact, not only did he attend, he was the whole storyline. I'm serious: in the NY Times recap, there actually wasn’t a single mention of the game itself; the entire article was a description of the Yoda-looking Walsh’s seating arrangements. Walsh is being hailed in these parts as a savior, even though the bulk of his credentials—as far as I can tell—are that he was born and raised in New York. Knicks fans certainly can’t point to anything he did with the Pacers in recent years as reasons for optimism. In the Times article, Walsh also had a bunch of quotations, all of which were—you’ll never believe this—spectacularly uninformative. Without getting into it, he assured everyone he’d be evaluating his options but offered no timetables on any major decisions. At least he didn’t use the word “content.” Hmm…Really old, doesn’t want timetables, bases his credibility on events that occurred decades ago…is this the Walsh Presidency or the McCain Presidency?
Monday, April 07, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts 4/7
In the aftermath of another joyless loss on Saturday that explored new depths of meaninglessness, there’s only one thing that will make me feel better: skewering Shawn Marion. Bashing him is like my blog comfort food, especially without McInnis and Primoz to kick around anymore. But before I get started, did anyone else notice the “repetition”-themed series between Atlanta and Philly? Check it out: they played twice (home-and-home), and the games featured 2 Andre’s, 2 Josh’s, 2 Smith’s, 2 Williams’, and 2 Za’s. I had to bust out Jay’s “22 Two’s” to honor the occasion. If only Atlanta hadn’t traded Anthony Johnson and Sheldon Williams, because then we could have had 2 Johnson’s and 3 Williams’.
Anyway, onto Marion. In the latest SLAM Magazine issue, he has an “op-ed” piece—I guess you’d call it—about leaving Phoenix for Miami. This rambling, nonsensical monologue makes me wish the creators of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 would start a magazine solely for the purpose of satirizing interviews. Here’s my take on it (comments in bold) (note: #’s indicate empty clichés, and check out that last paragraph when he goes on a Houston Rockets-like streak of them—it's a real tour-de-force).
All right, I just want to make it clear and state for the record why I wanted out of Phoenix (he goes onto do neither). Actually let me change that: It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get out of Phoenix, but more so, always hearing my name in trade rumors really started to get to me (rumors that he started by constantly telling reporters how unloved he was—there was even a whole book on it). I love Phoenix. I played there for nine years and the fans were nothing but good to me. Time has really gone by (#1--it tends to do that); it doesn’t even feel like I’ve been in the League for nine years (huh? Okay, there’s your clear explanation).
I’ve been watching (the Suns) play lately and I think they do miss me a little bit. I do stuff on the floor they probably won’t be able to replace, but they have great players and they will be OK. What’s done is done (#2). Sometimes things happen (#3--actually, all the time things happen); God works in mysterious ways (#4—what’s mysterious about pouting until you get traded?). I wish those guys the best of luck. I have nothing but love for them (#5—nothing but good, nothing but love—quit with the “nothing buts”). That’s all I can do (huh? what’s all he can do?). This is a business (#6—just in case that first explanation wasn’t clear enough, I guess he's elaborating). But I really don’t want to talk about that stuff anymore (not that he’s really said anything useful yet), because that’s what everybody keeps talking about (sort of a variation on “nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded”—although I doubt that’s what Marion was aiming for). People are saying this and that (#7) and nobody’s getting it right (thank goodness we have his clear explanations). To be honest, it’s nobody’s business (umm, it sort of is when he’s a public figure; he and Chelsea both need to talk to someone about this). The people who need to know, know (translation: this doesn’t include any of you suckers). So I don’t even want to talk about it no more (in conclusion: he was tired of people talking, things happen, and time goes by—any questions?).
My first couple of games with Miami…well, I guess you can say it’s been different from what I’m used to. I’m so used to playing in Phoenix, having on one jersey and coming here putting on a whole new jersey in a new arena, it feels so weird. My emotions are high, my nerves at an all-time high. It’s still the same game, but it feels different, you know (“different,” “weird,” and “different,”—I do know). The atmosphere here (Miami) is unbelievable though. The fans are great, the teammates are great (sure they’re not "nothing but great"?), the coaching staff—what more can you ask for (insert first “Pat Riley abandoning team to scout NCAA games” joke here)? I can see myself in Miami for a long time. I’m trying to build a home here (unclear if this is literal or figurative); I want to grow with Dwyane Wade (ditto, and perhaps this line sounded less creepy than it looks on paper). Why not (why not “grow” with D-Wade? Is that what he's asking?)? Coach Mike D’Antoni has a certain system, and Coach Riley has a certain system. There is a big difference in the tempo of the game (I’m assuming it’s also "weird"). Everybody has their own way of approaching the game, and I was used to doing certain way for a while in Phoenix. Now it’s time to adjust (different, weird, need to adjust, he really paints a picture, doesn’t he, folks? I feel like I'm there). You have to respect Coach Riley’s way of coaching, because he has rings and that speaks for itself (insert second “Pat Riley abandoning team to scout NCAA games” joke here). It’s a learning curve for me, you know, because when you are used to winning and you come to a whole new environment and you start losing games, it’s definitely a challenge. “Extremely hard” is a better way to put it (this last move clearly exhausted him—witness the next two sentences). Nobody wants to lose, but I guess sometimes you have to lose. Everybody can’t win (#8—can’t even comment here, too busy falling out of my chair).
(They come fast and furious now; he really finishes strong) At the end of the day (#9), you live and you learn (#10). All I can do is compete the best way I know how (#11). I have no hard feelings toward any of my teammates past or present (I certainly hope he doesn’t have anything against his present teammates—he just got there!). Things happen (#12—wait, I thought that was only sometimes!). We move on (#13). (Take it home, Shawn) We just gotta do what we gotta do (#14). (If this interview were a concert, Shawn would leave the stage, the fans would beg for an encore, and he’d come out one last time and perform “It is what it is”).
Ahh. Thanks, Shawn. I feel better…Enjoy him, Miami!
Anyway, onto Marion. In the latest SLAM Magazine issue, he has an “op-ed” piece—I guess you’d call it—about leaving Phoenix for Miami. This rambling, nonsensical monologue makes me wish the creators of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 would start a magazine solely for the purpose of satirizing interviews. Here’s my take on it (comments in bold) (note: #’s indicate empty clichés, and check out that last paragraph when he goes on a Houston Rockets-like streak of them—it's a real tour-de-force).
All right, I just want to make it clear and state for the record why I wanted out of Phoenix (he goes onto do neither). Actually let me change that: It wasn’t so much that I wanted to get out of Phoenix, but more so, always hearing my name in trade rumors really started to get to me (rumors that he started by constantly telling reporters how unloved he was—there was even a whole book on it). I love Phoenix. I played there for nine years and the fans were nothing but good to me. Time has really gone by (#1--it tends to do that); it doesn’t even feel like I’ve been in the League for nine years (huh? Okay, there’s your clear explanation).
I’ve been watching (the Suns) play lately and I think they do miss me a little bit. I do stuff on the floor they probably won’t be able to replace, but they have great players and they will be OK. What’s done is done (#2). Sometimes things happen (#3--actually, all the time things happen); God works in mysterious ways (#4—what’s mysterious about pouting until you get traded?). I wish those guys the best of luck. I have nothing but love for them (#5—nothing but good, nothing but love—quit with the “nothing buts”). That’s all I can do (huh? what’s all he can do?). This is a business (#6—just in case that first explanation wasn’t clear enough, I guess he's elaborating). But I really don’t want to talk about that stuff anymore (not that he’s really said anything useful yet), because that’s what everybody keeps talking about (sort of a variation on “nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded”—although I doubt that’s what Marion was aiming for). People are saying this and that (#7) and nobody’s getting it right (thank goodness we have his clear explanations). To be honest, it’s nobody’s business (umm, it sort of is when he’s a public figure; he and Chelsea both need to talk to someone about this). The people who need to know, know (translation: this doesn’t include any of you suckers). So I don’t even want to talk about it no more (in conclusion: he was tired of people talking, things happen, and time goes by—any questions?).
My first couple of games with Miami…well, I guess you can say it’s been different from what I’m used to. I’m so used to playing in Phoenix, having on one jersey and coming here putting on a whole new jersey in a new arena, it feels so weird. My emotions are high, my nerves at an all-time high. It’s still the same game, but it feels different, you know (“different,” “weird,” and “different,”—I do know). The atmosphere here (Miami) is unbelievable though. The fans are great, the teammates are great (sure they’re not "nothing but great"?), the coaching staff—what more can you ask for (insert first “Pat Riley abandoning team to scout NCAA games” joke here)? I can see myself in Miami for a long time. I’m trying to build a home here (unclear if this is literal or figurative); I want to grow with Dwyane Wade (ditto, and perhaps this line sounded less creepy than it looks on paper). Why not (why not “grow” with D-Wade? Is that what he's asking?)? Coach Mike D’Antoni has a certain system, and Coach Riley has a certain system. There is a big difference in the tempo of the game (I’m assuming it’s also "weird"). Everybody has their own way of approaching the game, and I was used to doing certain way for a while in Phoenix. Now it’s time to adjust (different, weird, need to adjust, he really paints a picture, doesn’t he, folks? I feel like I'm there). You have to respect Coach Riley’s way of coaching, because he has rings and that speaks for itself (insert second “Pat Riley abandoning team to scout NCAA games” joke here). It’s a learning curve for me, you know, because when you are used to winning and you come to a whole new environment and you start losing games, it’s definitely a challenge. “Extremely hard” is a better way to put it (this last move clearly exhausted him—witness the next two sentences). Nobody wants to lose, but I guess sometimes you have to lose. Everybody can’t win (#8—can’t even comment here, too busy falling out of my chair).
(They come fast and furious now; he really finishes strong) At the end of the day (#9), you live and you learn (#10). All I can do is compete the best way I know how (#11). I have no hard feelings toward any of my teammates past or present (I certainly hope he doesn’t have anything against his present teammates—he just got there!). Things happen (#12—wait, I thought that was only sometimes!). We move on (#13). (Take it home, Shawn) We just gotta do what we gotta do (#14). (If this interview were a concert, Shawn would leave the stage, the fans would beg for an encore, and he’d come out one last time and perform “It is what it is”).
Ahh. Thanks, Shawn. I feel better…Enjoy him, Miami!
Friday, April 04, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 4/4
You know what’s frustrating? The “Coach of the Year” award has no qualifying adjective before it. It’s not “Best Coach of the Year” or “Most Valuable Coach,” just “Coach of the Year.” This is frustrating because it’s hard to parody when you want to nominate your pick for worst coach of the year. I’ve tossed around a couple of ideas, but none really stick: “Roach of the Year,” “Woe-ch of the Year,” “Douche of the Year,” “Faux-ch of the Year.” The “Most Valuable Player” award makes it easy, because if you want to nominate whoever you think is the opposite of MVP, well, then it’s (everybody say it with me): “Least Valuable Player” (followed quickly with “it's a three-way toss-up between Ben Wallace, Stephon Marbury, and Steve Francis”).
Additionally, people always complain that choosing an MVP is problematic because it’s undefined. But at least with MVP we get the words “Most Valuable” to work with; “Coach of the Year” is completely amorphous. Is it “Coach With the Best Team”? “Coach Whose Team Had the Biggest Turnaround”? For sure, they ought to have a “Purple Heart Coach of the Year,” which would go to the guy whose team isn’t any good, but given the circumstances, it’s just a miracle nobody’s dead. The obvious winner this year would be Indiana’s Jim O’Brien (the O’Neal injuries, the Tinsley injuries/shoot-outs, the Murphy/Dunleavy contracts, the Harrison bong-hits, the Donnie Walsh bailouts, the forced reliance on guys like Kareem Rush, the awful yellow alternative jerseys that make the team look like the “Indiana Cliffs Notes”, etc. etc.).
Anyway, you can probably see where I’m going with this. For lack of a better term, the “Anti-Coach of the Year” award should go to our own Sam Vincent. Where to begin? Actually, I know where NOT to begin, which seems to be where Michael Jordan and Bob Johnson ARE beginning: Vincent’s controversial decision to bus, rather than fly, to Milwaukee back in January. So far, this is upper management’s only public complaint, because it apparently almost cost $5 million in fines and Vincent didn’t consult with them first. Whatever. That’s like when the government gets all hot-and-righteous over earmarks, even though they only account for 4% of the deficit. Vincent's method of transportation to one game is a drop in the bucket of his underachievements.
How about playing a shooting guard who can’t shoot, a 2 at the 3, a 3 at the 4, and a legally-declared-comatose man at the 1 virtually all year? How about 8 minutes-a-game given to Jared Dudley in January, when his impact upon entry was almost always instantaneous and significant? What about all the Derek Anderson DNP’s? DA was a great glue guy last year and inexplicably marginalized this year. How about regressing in wins despite fewer injuries and the acquisition of a premier scorer (J-Rich)?
And to top it all off, Vincent began the year with guarantees of the playoffs. Yet now that we’re a smoldering grease-fire, Vincent’s actually indignant about talk of his dismissal. "Give me a break. Was I really supposed to come in in the first year and have 50 wins?" Vincent asked rhetorically of ESPN.com. No, Sam, but you were supposed to match last year’s 33.
I have this recurring fantasy in which Michael Jordan comes into a meeting one morning, sees Vincent sitting there, and spontaneously bursts into that refrain from the White Stripes’ song, “There’s No Home For You Here”: “Waking up for breakfast, burning matches, talking quickly, breaking baubles, throwing garbage, drinking soda, looking happy, taking pictures…So completely stupid, just go away!!” Instead, MJ’s just given the media the usual Donnie Walsh-isms about “evaluating everything at the end of the year.” This always strikes me as an extremely lazy, ridiculous thing to say when there are only 2 weeks left and all of the remaining games are meaningless. What’s going to change between now and then? Why don’t they just start evaluating right now?
Owner Bob Johnson’s no help either. He thinks Vincent’s done all right, but this is the same man who can’t sell the naming rights to the arena or get a cable deal worked out, plus spends most of his free time riding on the backs huge animals who’d just as soon trample him to death than jump on command over a silly, flower-covered obstacle. Never trust the opinion of someone who chooses to ride a horse voluntarily. “Did Sam do something that was just obviously so blatant that you said, ‘This guy could never get you there?’” Johnson said in a recent interview with the Charlotte Observer. “I don't see that at all.” Nor will Johnson see that hoof coming full speed at his face one day.
Wait, what am I talking about? How could I forget about Zeke Thomas? For every horrible decision Vincent’s made, Thomas has made it three-fold, plus he was the GM, so he can’t even hide behind the “hey, I’m just playing the guys they hand me” card. Plus Thomas apparently hasn’t been showing up for work lately. Oh yeah, and he started the year off getting slammed with sexual harassment lawsuit. Ha-ha, yeah, picking Vincent for worst coach this year would be like backing Dominique Wilkins over Michael Jordan for MVP in the 1990-91 season. But still, as they with the MVP talk, Vincent’s “definitely in the discussion.” In fact, the only thing really separating us from the Knicks is that we’re too poor to screw up that badly.
Additionally, people always complain that choosing an MVP is problematic because it’s undefined. But at least with MVP we get the words “Most Valuable” to work with; “Coach of the Year” is completely amorphous. Is it “Coach With the Best Team”? “Coach Whose Team Had the Biggest Turnaround”? For sure, they ought to have a “Purple Heart Coach of the Year,” which would go to the guy whose team isn’t any good, but given the circumstances, it’s just a miracle nobody’s dead. The obvious winner this year would be Indiana’s Jim O’Brien (the O’Neal injuries, the Tinsley injuries/shoot-outs, the Murphy/Dunleavy contracts, the Harrison bong-hits, the Donnie Walsh bailouts, the forced reliance on guys like Kareem Rush, the awful yellow alternative jerseys that make the team look like the “Indiana Cliffs Notes”, etc. etc.).
Anyway, you can probably see where I’m going with this. For lack of a better term, the “Anti-Coach of the Year” award should go to our own Sam Vincent. Where to begin? Actually, I know where NOT to begin, which seems to be where Michael Jordan and Bob Johnson ARE beginning: Vincent’s controversial decision to bus, rather than fly, to Milwaukee back in January. So far, this is upper management’s only public complaint, because it apparently almost cost $5 million in fines and Vincent didn’t consult with them first. Whatever. That’s like when the government gets all hot-and-righteous over earmarks, even though they only account for 4% of the deficit. Vincent's method of transportation to one game is a drop in the bucket of his underachievements.
How about playing a shooting guard who can’t shoot, a 2 at the 3, a 3 at the 4, and a legally-declared-comatose man at the 1 virtually all year? How about 8 minutes-a-game given to Jared Dudley in January, when his impact upon entry was almost always instantaneous and significant? What about all the Derek Anderson DNP’s? DA was a great glue guy last year and inexplicably marginalized this year. How about regressing in wins despite fewer injuries and the acquisition of a premier scorer (J-Rich)?
And to top it all off, Vincent began the year with guarantees of the playoffs. Yet now that we’re a smoldering grease-fire, Vincent’s actually indignant about talk of his dismissal. "Give me a break. Was I really supposed to come in in the first year and have 50 wins?" Vincent asked rhetorically of ESPN.com. No, Sam, but you were supposed to match last year’s 33.
I have this recurring fantasy in which Michael Jordan comes into a meeting one morning, sees Vincent sitting there, and spontaneously bursts into that refrain from the White Stripes’ song, “There’s No Home For You Here”: “Waking up for breakfast, burning matches, talking quickly, breaking baubles, throwing garbage, drinking soda, looking happy, taking pictures…So completely stupid, just go away!!” Instead, MJ’s just given the media the usual Donnie Walsh-isms about “evaluating everything at the end of the year.” This always strikes me as an extremely lazy, ridiculous thing to say when there are only 2 weeks left and all of the remaining games are meaningless. What’s going to change between now and then? Why don’t they just start evaluating right now?
Owner Bob Johnson’s no help either. He thinks Vincent’s done all right, but this is the same man who can’t sell the naming rights to the arena or get a cable deal worked out, plus spends most of his free time riding on the backs huge animals who’d just as soon trample him to death than jump on command over a silly, flower-covered obstacle. Never trust the opinion of someone who chooses to ride a horse voluntarily. “Did Sam do something that was just obviously so blatant that you said, ‘This guy could never get you there?’” Johnson said in a recent interview with the Charlotte Observer. “I don't see that at all.” Nor will Johnson see that hoof coming full speed at his face one day.
Wait, what am I talking about? How could I forget about Zeke Thomas? For every horrible decision Vincent’s made, Thomas has made it three-fold, plus he was the GM, so he can’t even hide behind the “hey, I’m just playing the guys they hand me” card. Plus Thomas apparently hasn’t been showing up for work lately. Oh yeah, and he started the year off getting slammed with sexual harassment lawsuit. Ha-ha, yeah, picking Vincent for worst coach this year would be like backing Dominique Wilkins over Michael Jordan for MVP in the 1990-91 season. But still, as they with the MVP talk, Vincent’s “definitely in the discussion.” In fact, the only thing really separating us from the Knicks is that we’re too poor to screw up that badly.
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 4/1
I watched the Bobcats last night for the first time since the loss to Memphis—not because I really wanted to, but because the slate of games last night was horrific (at least, in the 7 to 9 PM time slots). I felt like I was trying to select dinner off a Jack-in-the-Box menu. The choices were so appalling, that it was either this game or Indiana-Miami, which had only the potential allure of a Britney Spears/VMA-fiasco comeback performance from Jermaine O’Neal. Seeing my beloved team for the first time since the season officially went up in smoke was sort of like those scenes in sci-fi/action movies wherein the humans who escaped the alien attack return home and start sifting through the rubble.
Indeed, I clearly wasn’t the only one who’d given up: the Arena was deserted. As soon as I saw the vast emptiness in the lower bowl, I spontaneously began whistling the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Commentator Steve Martin charitably attributed the vacant seats to a “late-arriving crowd,” but as they failed to fill up, it became obvious that we were dealing with a “non-arriving crowd.” “I thought Rasho (Nesterovic) and Chris (Bosh), I could hear them talking on defense,” Raptors coach Sam Mitchell said after the game. So could the television audience, Sam. It’s not too hard to communicate when you’re practically the only ones in the gym.
Defense was mostly theoretical in this one. Emeka Okafor and Nazr Mohammed continue to be either unwilling or unable to drift outside the post to cover big guys with range—guys like Stoudemire, Garnett, Carlos Boozer, and, oh yeah, Bosh, who lit us up like jack-o-lanterns for 32 points. TJ Ford also had the creative freedom to penetrate in and then drift back for unopposed fade-away jumpers. Jamereo Moon stuck it to us on 6-of-7 FG attempts, Anthony Parker shot 8-of-14…Andrea Bargnani would have done some damage too, except he’s not very good.
The Bobcats also got theirs on offense. If we had just gotten a couple more 3’s to drop (8-of-24 overall)—and believe me, we were open enough—this would have been a different story. In fact, I’m not feeling great if I’m a Raptors fan right now. On the outer bubble of the playoffs and playing a road-weary team with absolutely nothing going for it (certainly not a crowd advantage), they could barely squeak out a 4-point win. Even Earl Boykins was playing some effective keep-away. Steve Martin noted as much when he observed, “Boykins is looking more and more a part of things every day.” Great, but when did we get him? Early February? I would have preferred if Martin had been saying this about a month-and-a-half ago.
Anyway, when Martin began describing the plot of the romantic comedy Pushing Tin to clueless booth partner Henry Williams, that was my cue to flip the game off (for reasons that were never made clear, Williams worried whether or not Quentin Tarantino directed). Before I forget, here’s the Helpful Office Tip of the Day: if you’re ever riding in an elevator and the only other passenger is female, whatever you do, do NOT start humming Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator.” It was on the radio that morning so it was in my head, I’m all the way up on the 34th floor, I wasn’t paying attention…I’m just glad that all I got was a funny look and not a lawsuit.
Indeed, I clearly wasn’t the only one who’d given up: the Arena was deserted. As soon as I saw the vast emptiness in the lower bowl, I spontaneously began whistling the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Commentator Steve Martin charitably attributed the vacant seats to a “late-arriving crowd,” but as they failed to fill up, it became obvious that we were dealing with a “non-arriving crowd.” “I thought Rasho (Nesterovic) and Chris (Bosh), I could hear them talking on defense,” Raptors coach Sam Mitchell said after the game. So could the television audience, Sam. It’s not too hard to communicate when you’re practically the only ones in the gym.
Defense was mostly theoretical in this one. Emeka Okafor and Nazr Mohammed continue to be either unwilling or unable to drift outside the post to cover big guys with range—guys like Stoudemire, Garnett, Carlos Boozer, and, oh yeah, Bosh, who lit us up like jack-o-lanterns for 32 points. TJ Ford also had the creative freedom to penetrate in and then drift back for unopposed fade-away jumpers. Jamereo Moon stuck it to us on 6-of-7 FG attempts, Anthony Parker shot 8-of-14…Andrea Bargnani would have done some damage too, except he’s not very good.
The Bobcats also got theirs on offense. If we had just gotten a couple more 3’s to drop (8-of-24 overall)—and believe me, we were open enough—this would have been a different story. In fact, I’m not feeling great if I’m a Raptors fan right now. On the outer bubble of the playoffs and playing a road-weary team with absolutely nothing going for it (certainly not a crowd advantage), they could barely squeak out a 4-point win. Even Earl Boykins was playing some effective keep-away. Steve Martin noted as much when he observed, “Boykins is looking more and more a part of things every day.” Great, but when did we get him? Early February? I would have preferred if Martin had been saying this about a month-and-a-half ago.
Anyway, when Martin began describing the plot of the romantic comedy Pushing Tin to clueless booth partner Henry Williams, that was my cue to flip the game off (for reasons that were never made clear, Williams worried whether or not Quentin Tarantino directed). Before I forget, here’s the Helpful Office Tip of the Day: if you’re ever riding in an elevator and the only other passenger is female, whatever you do, do NOT start humming Aerosmith’s “Love in an Elevator.” It was on the radio that morning so it was in my head, I’m all the way up on the 34th floor, I wasn’t paying attention…I’m just glad that all I got was a funny look and not a lawsuit.
Friday, March 28, 2008
What Okafor Wants, What Okafor Needs
As the season winds down and limps to a series of meaningless results, I thought I’d take a look at one of our most significant moves (or non-moves) of the upcoming off-season: what to do about Emeka Okafor. The two key numbers floating around the situation are his $5.4 million expiring contract and the $13 million dollar extension he refused at the start of the season. That was 4 months and another terrible-team-performance-in-a-mediocre-conference ago. Assuming the bridges haven’t been burnt between Okafor and management, Charlotte can still match any offers Okafor receives, and they’re free to unilaterally renegotiate with him in July. The question: what should they do?
First of all, I can’t stand visceral responses to questions like these. All they generally indicate is the respondent’s biases, which are usually dominated by what happened in the last five minutes. So let’s try a numerically-based response. I’m going to use John Hollinger’s PER statistic as a benchmark for performance, and I’m going to use, um, US American dollars as a benchmark for money.
Okay, currently, Mek sits 18th among power forwards in the PER rankings with a score of 16.64. Of the 17 guys ranked above him, the average salary is $9.5 million. Bear in mind, this spans the entire spectrum of salaries, from Carl Landry’s $400K to Kevin Garnett's $23.8 million. Due to the wide range of numbers, it might be more instructive to choose the median value, or the middle salary of the 17 incomes. In this case, it’s Carlos Boozer’s $11.6 million (he’s ranked 5th). Either way you look at it, both the average and median incomes of the 17 players ranked above Okafor are LESS than what he rejected. Probably the biggest red flag in there for the Okafor camp is that Rasheed Wallace--ranked 15th on the list and with a far beefier resume than Omeka--only scores $12.5 million in annual income. If I’m Okafor’s agent, I might be a little nervous right about now.
One card Team Okafor might play is Emeka’s durability. This would have been utterly ridiculous before the season began, given that his average games-played coming into '07-08 was just 55. Yet Okafor’s played a surprisingly robust 71 games this year, while the average games-played of the 17 guys ranked above him is just under 62. At first, this might seem like promising leverage for Okafor, given a guy like Chris Bosh, who pocketed $13 million this year while only appearing in 56 games so far. However, the salary-per-games-played average across the top 17 power forwards is $149K, and Okafor’s $13 million-per-games-played average would be $183 K. The median comparison is David West’s $167K-per-game, still far less than the amount Okafor nixed, and West was an All-Star…in the Western Conference. Comparisons in salary-per-MINUTES-played yield similar results. So far, Okafor and/or his agent look completely foolish for turning down $13 million. Likewise, the Bobcats would be foolish to repeat the same offer in any future negotiations.
Other than PER, what do the more traditional stats tell us about Okafor's value? Glad I asked! Okafor’s scoring this year is at a career-low (13.1 per game), as are his blocks (1.6 per game). His rebounds, personal fouls, turnovers, and assists are relatively stagnant. Yes, he’s 6th in the league in rebounds and one of just ten players to average a double-double. The average salary among that elite bunch, though? $11.4 million. And for some extra hot sauce, if I were Charlotte’s GM, I’d add that every one of those double-double guys (with the exception of Shawn Marion) is taking his team to the playoffs (and Marion certainly would have had he not sulked his way out of Phoenix). Further, if Okafor’s agent wanted to get all statistical on me, I’d politely direct him to Okafor’s turnover rate—that is, his percentage of possessions that end in a turnover: 13.2%. This is horrifically bad among power forwards—52nd, in fact, below such legends as Brian Cook and Matt Bonner.
Of course, contract negotiations don’t happen in vacuums. As lots of economists love to point out (it’s practically their version of “it is what it is”), a player’s worth is what the market is willing to pay. So is there a team out there with $13 million that they wouldn’t mind flinging at Okafor? If that’s the case, then none of these statistical comparisons mean squat. A quick glance at the League’s payrolls shows a few teams with some obvious financial flexibility, such as Seattle and Memphis. There are also a handful of teams with some wiggle room pending a) the resolution of their own personnel negotiations, and b) how far over the cap they’re willing to go. Miami, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Orlando fall into this group. And a wild card to be worried about (that is, if you actually worry about losing Okafor)? Those dastardly San Antonio Spurs. They’re currently $11.7 million over the cap, but they’ve got Robert Horry ($3.6 mil), Kurt Thomas ($8 mil), Michael Finley ($3.1 mil), Brent Barry ($5.6 mil) and Jacque Vaughn ($1.2 mil) all coming off the books, should they choose not to re-sign. And the allure of San Antonio might allow the Spurs to get a discount in their offering—which they’d just about have to implement, because there’s no way they’re paying Okafor more than Ginobli ($9 mil) and Parker ($10.5 mil).
As for the Bobcats, we’ll have about $10.5 mil in spending money this summer at a minimum (I’m going out on a limb by assuming we’re not going to retain Othella Harrington and Derek Anderson). $10.5 would be a “fair” price to offer Okafor, because it’s right around those averages I laid out earlier. We’ll have potentially more depending on how we handle Sean May ($1.8 mil), Adam Morrison ($3.9 mil), Earl Boykins ($400 K) and the two-headed Ryan Hollins/Jermareo Davidson-combo of raw mediocrity (keep one but not both, right? That’s another half a mil). The two X-factors are trade options (impossible to predict) and the draft. A circa-8th round pick (which is about where we’ll fall) will run us in the neighborhood of $2.5-3 million bones. So we can’t even offer Emeka that “fair” price of $10.5 millon without making some other moves—unless of course we go over the cap, but does anyone actually see that happening?
So there’s my Frontline: Okafor piece. After all that analysis, I must admit that I still don’t know how both sides are going to play it from here on out. This is like the “sports contract” version of the Iraq War: it’s a total mess that was started by a series of blunders, and nobody’s sure about what to do now. First, the Bobcats did a monumentally stupid thing by offering way too much money--$13 million—to Okafor. And then Okafor somehow one-upped their stupidity by actually rejecting the deal. Then he went out and didn’t live up to that value this season, but it’s also going to be hard for management to redact it. There are going to be hard feelings either way—Okafor’s going to be bitter if he takes less, and management’s going to be bitter if he gets away out of spite or they end up forking $13 million over to him—that is, if they can even figure out how. So we’ll see how this quagmire turns out this summer, as well as how each side manages to put a good face on it…
First of all, I can’t stand visceral responses to questions like these. All they generally indicate is the respondent’s biases, which are usually dominated by what happened in the last five minutes. So let’s try a numerically-based response. I’m going to use John Hollinger’s PER statistic as a benchmark for performance, and I’m going to use, um, US American dollars as a benchmark for money.
Okay, currently, Mek sits 18th among power forwards in the PER rankings with a score of 16.64. Of the 17 guys ranked above him, the average salary is $9.5 million. Bear in mind, this spans the entire spectrum of salaries, from Carl Landry’s $400K to Kevin Garnett's $23.8 million. Due to the wide range of numbers, it might be more instructive to choose the median value, or the middle salary of the 17 incomes. In this case, it’s Carlos Boozer’s $11.6 million (he’s ranked 5th). Either way you look at it, both the average and median incomes of the 17 players ranked above Okafor are LESS than what he rejected. Probably the biggest red flag in there for the Okafor camp is that Rasheed Wallace--ranked 15th on the list and with a far beefier resume than Omeka--only scores $12.5 million in annual income. If I’m Okafor’s agent, I might be a little nervous right about now.
One card Team Okafor might play is Emeka’s durability. This would have been utterly ridiculous before the season began, given that his average games-played coming into '07-08 was just 55. Yet Okafor’s played a surprisingly robust 71 games this year, while the average games-played of the 17 guys ranked above him is just under 62. At first, this might seem like promising leverage for Okafor, given a guy like Chris Bosh, who pocketed $13 million this year while only appearing in 56 games so far. However, the salary-per-games-played average across the top 17 power forwards is $149K, and Okafor’s $13 million-per-games-played average would be $183 K. The median comparison is David West’s $167K-per-game, still far less than the amount Okafor nixed, and West was an All-Star…in the Western Conference. Comparisons in salary-per-MINUTES-played yield similar results. So far, Okafor and/or his agent look completely foolish for turning down $13 million. Likewise, the Bobcats would be foolish to repeat the same offer in any future negotiations.
Other than PER, what do the more traditional stats tell us about Okafor's value? Glad I asked! Okafor’s scoring this year is at a career-low (13.1 per game), as are his blocks (1.6 per game). His rebounds, personal fouls, turnovers, and assists are relatively stagnant. Yes, he’s 6th in the league in rebounds and one of just ten players to average a double-double. The average salary among that elite bunch, though? $11.4 million. And for some extra hot sauce, if I were Charlotte’s GM, I’d add that every one of those double-double guys (with the exception of Shawn Marion) is taking his team to the playoffs (and Marion certainly would have had he not sulked his way out of Phoenix). Further, if Okafor’s agent wanted to get all statistical on me, I’d politely direct him to Okafor’s turnover rate—that is, his percentage of possessions that end in a turnover: 13.2%. This is horrifically bad among power forwards—52nd, in fact, below such legends as Brian Cook and Matt Bonner.
Of course, contract negotiations don’t happen in vacuums. As lots of economists love to point out (it’s practically their version of “it is what it is”), a player’s worth is what the market is willing to pay. So is there a team out there with $13 million that they wouldn’t mind flinging at Okafor? If that’s the case, then none of these statistical comparisons mean squat. A quick glance at the League’s payrolls shows a few teams with some obvious financial flexibility, such as Seattle and Memphis. There are also a handful of teams with some wiggle room pending a) the resolution of their own personnel negotiations, and b) how far over the cap they’re willing to go. Miami, Minnesota, New Jersey, and Orlando fall into this group. And a wild card to be worried about (that is, if you actually worry about losing Okafor)? Those dastardly San Antonio Spurs. They’re currently $11.7 million over the cap, but they’ve got Robert Horry ($3.6 mil), Kurt Thomas ($8 mil), Michael Finley ($3.1 mil), Brent Barry ($5.6 mil) and Jacque Vaughn ($1.2 mil) all coming off the books, should they choose not to re-sign. And the allure of San Antonio might allow the Spurs to get a discount in their offering—which they’d just about have to implement, because there’s no way they’re paying Okafor more than Ginobli ($9 mil) and Parker ($10.5 mil).
As for the Bobcats, we’ll have about $10.5 mil in spending money this summer at a minimum (I’m going out on a limb by assuming we’re not going to retain Othella Harrington and Derek Anderson). $10.5 would be a “fair” price to offer Okafor, because it’s right around those averages I laid out earlier. We’ll have potentially more depending on how we handle Sean May ($1.8 mil), Adam Morrison ($3.9 mil), Earl Boykins ($400 K) and the two-headed Ryan Hollins/Jermareo Davidson-combo of raw mediocrity (keep one but not both, right? That’s another half a mil). The two X-factors are trade options (impossible to predict) and the draft. A circa-8th round pick (which is about where we’ll fall) will run us in the neighborhood of $2.5-3 million bones. So we can’t even offer Emeka that “fair” price of $10.5 millon without making some other moves—unless of course we go over the cap, but does anyone actually see that happening?
So there’s my Frontline: Okafor piece. After all that analysis, I must admit that I still don’t know how both sides are going to play it from here on out. This is like the “sports contract” version of the Iraq War: it’s a total mess that was started by a series of blunders, and nobody’s sure about what to do now. First, the Bobcats did a monumentally stupid thing by offering way too much money--$13 million—to Okafor. And then Okafor somehow one-upped their stupidity by actually rejecting the deal. Then he went out and didn’t live up to that value this season, but it’s also going to be hard for management to redact it. There are going to be hard feelings either way—Okafor’s going to be bitter if he takes less, and management’s going to be bitter if he gets away out of spite or they end up forking $13 million over to him—that is, if they can even figure out how. So we’ll see how this quagmire turns out this summer, as well as how each side manages to put a good face on it…
Monday, March 24, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/24
Forgive me, O Spirit of Matt Devlin, for I have sinned: I didn’t watch the Miami-Charlotte game on Saturday. I have no excuse, either. It was on, I was home, but I just couldn’t do it. And to be honest, I don’t know how much I’ll watch of the remainder of the season, given that much of it will take place on the West Coast, and therefore it won’t start until around the same time Cinemax begins airing episodes of The Pleasure Zone and Kinky Kong. In my defense, I did watch basketball, but it was the Hawks-Magic game, as well as the Nets-Sixers, the Celtics-Hornets, and the Rockets-Suns. The difference between these games and our match-up with Miami is that in the first group, both teams had a vested interest in winning (although in the case of the Nets, I can’t actually prove this).
This brings us to the unavoidable fact that the meaningful part of the season is over. Do I believe in miracles? No, and I don’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman. We’re not making the playoffs, and we’re a bad team worsened further by poor management; this season’s lost. And thus my other defense for consciously avoiding this game is that it would be difficult to prove that either team was even trying to win. If you’re a boxing fan, you wouldn’t watch a bout in which one of the fighters was credibly rumored to be throwing the match; how unwatchable would it be if both fighters were trying to take a fall?
And in Miami’s case, it’s more than just a credible rumor. Half the team didn't dress and the coach was gone. How can I be blamed for not watching the Heat play when their own coach isn’t watching? I’m surprised there hasn’t been more made of this. Remember how much flack the Celtics took last year for tanking the season? At least Doc Rivers was there (or, more precisely, “physically present”) for the games. Nevertheless, Boston’s purposeful losing invoked harsh indictments, ethical debates, and endless navel gazing. Yet in the Heat’s case it’s treated as something of a joke (also, are they making Pat Riley prove that he’s scouting NCAA games? I haven’t seen him in the crowds. If I were the Heat owner, you better believe I’d be making Riles show me some receipts). I’m not sure why there’s this double-standard; maybe it’s something about the cities. Things from Boston have always been regarded more seriously than those from Miami; look at the difference between St. Elsewhere and Miami Vice. Both were serious 80s dramas, yet which has been more parodied through the years?
There’s also a more general double-standard when it comes to tanking in basketball and football. Football teams with no chance throw in the towel just as blatantly as basketball teams, but there’s never any stink over it. If anything, football teams do it more blatantly, because they don’t even have a lottery; their picks are guaranteed. But just as with performance-enhancing drugs and bad behavior on the part of athletes, football is Teflon when it comes to criticism.
I say this all as an unbiased spectator, by the way. When it comes to tanking, I don’t believe in doing it, but it’s not for any moral reason; it’s mostly because I don’t think it actually works. Thus my policy on tanking resembles my policy on acupuncture or buying a copy of The Secret. If teams that tanked were actually guaranteed high draft picks that would significantly improve them immediately, I’d be all for it. In the Bobcats case, I’d have probably been advocating them to throw games starting in about December for the past four years. But we’ve seen time and time again that it doesn’t work, so I’d rather go for the win.
Therefore, I’m happy to see that it looks like we actually did go for the win in Miami--especially since they acquired Shawn Marion. If there’s any joy to be had this season, it’s in the fact that Shawn Marion is now on a lousy team. I wish him nothing but professional failure the rest of his career, and I don’t feel bad about it. This is a man who had it all and still complained his way right out of a great situation, all because he felt unappreciated. Unappreciated? The man was a first-round draft pick, was paid the most on the team, made the All-Star team four times, and made countless ESPN, Dime, and Slam magazine covers. Oh, and he was lovingly given the nickname “The Matrix” by the fans. Who has a nickname but gets no attention? How could he have possibly felt unappreciated? It’s like watching your a dude cheat on his perfect wife and then get dumped, and now Marion is stuck with with the Roseanne Barr of sports teams.
As for the game, it looks like Gerald Wallace is getting back to form. Ever since he returned, the only thing I’ve seen him do with any intensity is chew his mouthpiece. At last, on the highlight reels for this game, he was going hard to the hoop. Coach Sam Vincent was happy to see the old Crash as well. “He's not settling for the jump shot and he's attacking the rim,” Vincent said after the game. “He is, in big part, the heart and soul of this team.” Two things: 1) I hope Vincent is letting Gerald know this, and not just us; 2) not sure if one can be the partial "heart and soul" of something—I think it’s got to be an all or nothing deal. Either way, I'm glad to see our boys were triumphant, even if I didn't see it.
This brings us to the unavoidable fact that the meaningful part of the season is over. Do I believe in miracles? No, and I don’t believe in Peter Pan, Frankenstein, or Superman. We’re not making the playoffs, and we’re a bad team worsened further by poor management; this season’s lost. And thus my other defense for consciously avoiding this game is that it would be difficult to prove that either team was even trying to win. If you’re a boxing fan, you wouldn’t watch a bout in which one of the fighters was credibly rumored to be throwing the match; how unwatchable would it be if both fighters were trying to take a fall?
And in Miami’s case, it’s more than just a credible rumor. Half the team didn't dress and the coach was gone. How can I be blamed for not watching the Heat play when their own coach isn’t watching? I’m surprised there hasn’t been more made of this. Remember how much flack the Celtics took last year for tanking the season? At least Doc Rivers was there (or, more precisely, “physically present”) for the games. Nevertheless, Boston’s purposeful losing invoked harsh indictments, ethical debates, and endless navel gazing. Yet in the Heat’s case it’s treated as something of a joke (also, are they making Pat Riley prove that he’s scouting NCAA games? I haven’t seen him in the crowds. If I were the Heat owner, you better believe I’d be making Riles show me some receipts). I’m not sure why there’s this double-standard; maybe it’s something about the cities. Things from Boston have always been regarded more seriously than those from Miami; look at the difference between St. Elsewhere and Miami Vice. Both were serious 80s dramas, yet which has been more parodied through the years?
There’s also a more general double-standard when it comes to tanking in basketball and football. Football teams with no chance throw in the towel just as blatantly as basketball teams, but there’s never any stink over it. If anything, football teams do it more blatantly, because they don’t even have a lottery; their picks are guaranteed. But just as with performance-enhancing drugs and bad behavior on the part of athletes, football is Teflon when it comes to criticism.
I say this all as an unbiased spectator, by the way. When it comes to tanking, I don’t believe in doing it, but it’s not for any moral reason; it’s mostly because I don’t think it actually works. Thus my policy on tanking resembles my policy on acupuncture or buying a copy of The Secret. If teams that tanked were actually guaranteed high draft picks that would significantly improve them immediately, I’d be all for it. In the Bobcats case, I’d have probably been advocating them to throw games starting in about December for the past four years. But we’ve seen time and time again that it doesn’t work, so I’d rather go for the win.
Therefore, I’m happy to see that it looks like we actually did go for the win in Miami--especially since they acquired Shawn Marion. If there’s any joy to be had this season, it’s in the fact that Shawn Marion is now on a lousy team. I wish him nothing but professional failure the rest of his career, and I don’t feel bad about it. This is a man who had it all and still complained his way right out of a great situation, all because he felt unappreciated. Unappreciated? The man was a first-round draft pick, was paid the most on the team, made the All-Star team four times, and made countless ESPN, Dime, and Slam magazine covers. Oh, and he was lovingly given the nickname “The Matrix” by the fans. Who has a nickname but gets no attention? How could he have possibly felt unappreciated? It’s like watching your a dude cheat on his perfect wife and then get dumped, and now Marion is stuck with with the Roseanne Barr of sports teams.
As for the game, it looks like Gerald Wallace is getting back to form. Ever since he returned, the only thing I’ve seen him do with any intensity is chew his mouthpiece. At last, on the highlight reels for this game, he was going hard to the hoop. Coach Sam Vincent was happy to see the old Crash as well. “He's not settling for the jump shot and he's attacking the rim,” Vincent said after the game. “He is, in big part, the heart and soul of this team.” Two things: 1) I hope Vincent is letting Gerald know this, and not just us; 2) not sure if one can be the partial "heart and soul" of something—I think it’s got to be an all or nothing deal. Either way, I'm glad to see our boys were triumphant, even if I didn't see it.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/20
Although we lost decisively to Dallas, Houston, and Cleveland in rapid succession, I was still feeling pretty upbeat on Monday. I was in a chipper, George Bush-ian mood—optimistic and cheerful despite the relentless stream of bad news. In fact, I nearly broke into a little tap-dance routine while waiting for the Memphis game to arrive like it was John McCain. Memphis is terrible after all, and after them, we had Indiana and Miami scheduled, and that’s about as sorry a threesome as Gov. McGreevey’s “Friday Night Specials.” So even though the immediate news wasn’t good (folks), things seemed fundamentally sound.
Side note: although it has nothing to do with basketball, another positive beacon was that they finally, FINALLY replaced the huge billboard ad for The Kingdom on the building adjacent to my apartment. Although the replacement was an ad for the 8 millionth energy drink concoction with some sort of “nuclear”-sounding name, it’s still an improvement. That stupid movie ad had been up there so long (“On September 28th, Trust No One”) that I thought I was doomed to a lifetime of looking at Jennifer Garner dressed ridiculously in Special Forces gear (yet with long, flowing hair).
Anyway, it's 72 hours later, and I’m completely broken. Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see: absolute horror. Who even cares how the Miami game is going to turn out? At this point, the only thing worse than losing would be winning. We have no chance at anything this year, so we might as well go for a draft pick. And yet, the draft doesn’t guarantee any salvation either, because it's not particularly top heavy with talent. I’ve been “playing” ESPN.com’s draft lottery a lot lately (they ought to come up with a cell phone version of this thing, a la Tetris and Solitaire, so I could do it on the subway), and the overwhelming majority of the time we end up with the 8th pick and Brook Lopez is our selection. And guess what the scouting report on him is? “Great big guy who can’t rebound.” Well, we already have two of those, and they’re called “Ryan Hollins” and “Jermareo Davidson.”
As for these last two games, I’m trying to decide where this Memphis-Indiana combo lands if we were to build a Top Ten 2008 Losses list. Before you even build such a list, you have to decide what hurts you more: close losses to good teams that rip your heart out and show it to you before you die (e.g., the Ray Allen Massacre game), blowout losses to good teams that grimly reveal how truly far away you are from relevance (e.g., that Pistons loss where they shot and made a million 3-pointers, that Golden State loss by 500 points, the recent Dallas loss), or blowout losses to bad teams that make you question how a fair and just God could ever allow such evil to befall you.
As you probably guessed, it’s that third sub-genre of losses that is the most dispiriting to me, and off the top of my head I’d throw the first loss to Philly in there (God, did the Sixers outplay us, and this is back when they were on the verge of fire sale-dom); at least two of the three Bulls losses (exacerbated by commentary by Red Kerr); that atrocious Nets loss in which we’d had about a week to prepare and Jason Kidd had just demanded a trade; that loss to the Wizards right after they found out Gilbert was gone for the year and Haywood for the game; that disgusting loss to Milwaukee in which we blew a 7-point lead and had the ball with, like, a minute left; the Knicks loss which I witnessed in-person like a public hanging…And I’m sure I’m repressing the memories of some others.
But these two losses to Memphis and Indiana have got to be 1-2 on the list, because they were not only miserable and humiliating, they also effectively killed the season. Memphis is essentially a scab team at this point, and Indiana ought to change their name to the “Milk Cartons”—anybody seen Jamaal Tinsley or Jermaine O’Neal lately? I was about to say Ike Diogu too(remember when he was the “wild card” of the Dunleavey/Hudson-Jackson/Harrington deal?), but he actually had a cameo last night. Indiana’s also a team bombarded by scandals and off-court drama involving Tinsley, O’Neal, most of the management, Shawne Williams, and David Harrison (who gets my vote for "Best Real-But-Fake-Looking Hair" Award—doesn’t he look like a cast member of Semi-Pro?). Also, their coach looks like the comic strip character Dilbert’s boss—not that that’s really relevant. Add it all up and these losses were truly disgraceful season-enders.
In Memphis we only scored 80 points, or roughly one point for every fan in attendance. I think there were actually fewer people at this game than those who saw that “Secret Game” between Duke and the NC College for Negroes in the 1940s. This was exactly the type of game that Jason Richardson should dominate, and instead he put up 8 points, and then blamed the road-heavy schedule. I’m sorry, but could someone please explain to me what exactly is “tiring” about being on the road? It’s not like Sam Vincent is making the team travel by canoe. If you’re a player, you pretty much have to just sit on a bus, sit on a private airplane, sit on another bus, and sit in your hotel room and order room service. During every one of these activities, you could also be asleep or doing nothing more aerobic than changing your DVD from Season 4 of CSI: Miami to a bootlegged copy of 10,000 B.C. You’re arguably less active on the road than when you’re at home and being pestered by children, baby-mommas, and entourages. I just don’t by the “on-the-road” excuse for a second.
If anything, it might be the cumulative fatigue of not having a reliable bench. How else to explain Raymond Felton failing to keep up with Flip Murray in Indiana? Felton’s logging almost 38 minutes a game this year--up 3 minutes from his career average--and it’s taking his toll (please keep this in mind, Rod Higgins, when it’s our pick in the draft and Russell Westbrook is still available). Meanwhile, Emeka Okafor’s minutes have increased as well, plus he hasn’t missed nearly as many games to injury. I expected him to deliver like Halle Berry in these last two games, and instead he put up a grand total of 10 points and 9 boards.
Getting schooled by the likes of Murray, Juan Carlos Navarro (21 points), Hakim Warrick (19 points), Darko Milicic (double-double), Troy Murphy (double-double), and Shawne Williams (16 points and a posterizing dunk on Jared Dudley) are bad indicators. So are allowing 18 offensive boards to the Grizzlies and nearly 50% shooting to a Pacers team playing without Danny Granger. They’re alarms akin to triple-digit oil prices and $2-a-share Bear-Stearns buyouts. Blaming all this poor performance on long road trips is like blaming the bad economy on tax breaks that might expire in two years. Without a more reliable bench, rebounders, and point guards, we’re not fundamentally sound, nor should we be optimistic about our future.
Side note: although it has nothing to do with basketball, another positive beacon was that they finally, FINALLY replaced the huge billboard ad for The Kingdom on the building adjacent to my apartment. Although the replacement was an ad for the 8 millionth energy drink concoction with some sort of “nuclear”-sounding name, it’s still an improvement. That stupid movie ad had been up there so long (“On September 28th, Trust No One”) that I thought I was doomed to a lifetime of looking at Jennifer Garner dressed ridiculously in Special Forces gear (yet with long, flowing hair).
Anyway, it's 72 hours later, and I’m completely broken. Darkness imprisoning me, all that I see: absolute horror. Who even cares how the Miami game is going to turn out? At this point, the only thing worse than losing would be winning. We have no chance at anything this year, so we might as well go for a draft pick. And yet, the draft doesn’t guarantee any salvation either, because it's not particularly top heavy with talent. I’ve been “playing” ESPN.com’s draft lottery a lot lately (they ought to come up with a cell phone version of this thing, a la Tetris and Solitaire, so I could do it on the subway), and the overwhelming majority of the time we end up with the 8th pick and Brook Lopez is our selection. And guess what the scouting report on him is? “Great big guy who can’t rebound.” Well, we already have two of those, and they’re called “Ryan Hollins” and “Jermareo Davidson.”
As for these last two games, I’m trying to decide where this Memphis-Indiana combo lands if we were to build a Top Ten 2008 Losses list. Before you even build such a list, you have to decide what hurts you more: close losses to good teams that rip your heart out and show it to you before you die (e.g., the Ray Allen Massacre game), blowout losses to good teams that grimly reveal how truly far away you are from relevance (e.g., that Pistons loss where they shot and made a million 3-pointers, that Golden State loss by 500 points, the recent Dallas loss), or blowout losses to bad teams that make you question how a fair and just God could ever allow such evil to befall you.
As you probably guessed, it’s that third sub-genre of losses that is the most dispiriting to me, and off the top of my head I’d throw the first loss to Philly in there (God, did the Sixers outplay us, and this is back when they were on the verge of fire sale-dom); at least two of the three Bulls losses (exacerbated by commentary by Red Kerr); that atrocious Nets loss in which we’d had about a week to prepare and Jason Kidd had just demanded a trade; that loss to the Wizards right after they found out Gilbert was gone for the year and Haywood for the game; that disgusting loss to Milwaukee in which we blew a 7-point lead and had the ball with, like, a minute left; the Knicks loss which I witnessed in-person like a public hanging…And I’m sure I’m repressing the memories of some others.
But these two losses to Memphis and Indiana have got to be 1-2 on the list, because they were not only miserable and humiliating, they also effectively killed the season. Memphis is essentially a scab team at this point, and Indiana ought to change their name to the “Milk Cartons”—anybody seen Jamaal Tinsley or Jermaine O’Neal lately? I was about to say Ike Diogu too(remember when he was the “wild card” of the Dunleavey/Hudson-Jackson/Harrington deal?), but he actually had a cameo last night. Indiana’s also a team bombarded by scandals and off-court drama involving Tinsley, O’Neal, most of the management, Shawne Williams, and David Harrison (who gets my vote for "Best Real-But-Fake-Looking Hair" Award—doesn’t he look like a cast member of Semi-Pro?). Also, their coach looks like the comic strip character Dilbert’s boss—not that that’s really relevant. Add it all up and these losses were truly disgraceful season-enders.
In Memphis we only scored 80 points, or roughly one point for every fan in attendance. I think there were actually fewer people at this game than those who saw that “Secret Game” between Duke and the NC College for Negroes in the 1940s. This was exactly the type of game that Jason Richardson should dominate, and instead he put up 8 points, and then blamed the road-heavy schedule. I’m sorry, but could someone please explain to me what exactly is “tiring” about being on the road? It’s not like Sam Vincent is making the team travel by canoe. If you’re a player, you pretty much have to just sit on a bus, sit on a private airplane, sit on another bus, and sit in your hotel room and order room service. During every one of these activities, you could also be asleep or doing nothing more aerobic than changing your DVD from Season 4 of CSI: Miami to a bootlegged copy of 10,000 B.C. You’re arguably less active on the road than when you’re at home and being pestered by children, baby-mommas, and entourages. I just don’t by the “on-the-road” excuse for a second.
If anything, it might be the cumulative fatigue of not having a reliable bench. How else to explain Raymond Felton failing to keep up with Flip Murray in Indiana? Felton’s logging almost 38 minutes a game this year--up 3 minutes from his career average--and it’s taking his toll (please keep this in mind, Rod Higgins, when it’s our pick in the draft and Russell Westbrook is still available). Meanwhile, Emeka Okafor’s minutes have increased as well, plus he hasn’t missed nearly as many games to injury. I expected him to deliver like Halle Berry in these last two games, and instead he put up a grand total of 10 points and 9 boards.
Getting schooled by the likes of Murray, Juan Carlos Navarro (21 points), Hakim Warrick (19 points), Darko Milicic (double-double), Troy Murphy (double-double), and Shawne Williams (16 points and a posterizing dunk on Jared Dudley) are bad indicators. So are allowing 18 offensive boards to the Grizzlies and nearly 50% shooting to a Pacers team playing without Danny Granger. They’re alarms akin to triple-digit oil prices and $2-a-share Bear-Stearns buyouts. Blaming all this poor performance on long road trips is like blaming the bad economy on tax breaks that might expire in two years. Without a more reliable bench, rebounders, and point guards, we’re not fundamentally sound, nor should we be optimistic about our future.
Monday, March 17, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/17
On Friday night the Bobcats entered a festival-like atmosphere in Houston. With the Rockets poised to capture the second-longest winning streak in NBA history, the crowd was ready to party. Even the announcers, Clyde Drexler and whoever does Houston's play-by-play, were more like red carpet fashion reporters. They were full of kind words for the Bobcats too, because—let’s face it—Charlotte had no chance, so why not patronize them?
Listening to them extol the coaching efforts of Sam Vincent (“he’s really done a great job developing this young team”), I thought they may have been laying it on a little thick, considering we’re on a pace to win 3 fewer games than last year, despite the importation of one of the game’s great talents (Jason Richardson) and no extensive injuries (save for Gerald Wallace, and we won 5 straight while that happened). In fact, this team has been spectacularly mismanaged in my opinion. Entering the season, we had two huge and long-standing weaknesses (crippling incompetence at center and backup point guard) that we didn’t address until much too late, and then we bumped everyone up 1 slot out of position to inexplicably make room for a decrepit, prime-less point guard (who—surprise!—hasn’t been picked up since we waived him). But that’s just me.
Then again, these are two announcers who regularly misuse the words “commodity” (a commodity isn’t a “great product,” it’s merely a “product,” like corn and soybeans) and “literally” (I don’t care how great a player is, he doesn’t literally put a team on his back), and the play-by-play guy also can’t pronounce “Omeka” correctly (he says, “O-mee-ka”), which is somewhat insulting, considering Okafor came of age in Houston. So I don’t know, maybe they legitimately believe Vincent has done a good job.
In any case, the announcers kept their cheerfulness up throughout the affair, even though the Rockets’ victory lap temporarily stalled with a scoring drought that lasted nearly 8 full minutes. This was something of an Epic Drought; it was like the Lord of the Rings of scoreless streaks. I’m not even sure if we’ve done something like this (although we probably have). The Rockets were stuck on 18 points with 4:09 to go in the first quarter all the way until the 8:27 mark of the second. During this streak, the Rockets failed to get to the foul line, and they missed 6 three-pointers, 2 jumpers, and a layup. The Bobcats went from trailing by six to leading 29-18. Even after the Rockets scored, they shot just 6-for-16 the rest of the quarter to close out the half down by 7.
In the third quarter, the Rockets righted the ship pretty quickly and the hometown celebration was back on. Assuming their more familiar role of being the offensively impotent ones in any given game, the Bobcats scored merely two points in the first four minutes of the third quarter en route to just 37 total second-half points. They never trailed by more than 14 though, causing the Houston announcers to break a record of their own for most times using the phrase, “And I’ll tell you what, this Charlotte team keeps hanging around!” At least they didn’t say we were literally hanging around.
On Sunday evening the Bobcats found themselves in Cleveland, and poor Matt Carroll found himself guarding LeBron James (just two nights after having to cover Tracy MacGrady—happy St. Patrick’s Day, Matty boy!). Both times Carroll was in colossally over his head, matching up about as well as Jesse “The Body” Ventura did with Predator. The King put up 33 points, 10 dimes, and 7 boards, and then shot a green laser missile that blew out Carroll’s guts in an exploding red mist—no wait, I meant, he also had two blocks on a steal while goading Carroll into 4 fouls. Conversely, Bron-Bron had no trouble guarding Carroll—in fact, I think he had a harder time handling Gisele Bündchen for the Vogue cover shoot. Carroll had a sparse 4 points and...that’s pretty much it, actually.
This was not a fun game to watch or hear. In the second quarter, slimy Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert came over to the announcers’ booth, causing both commentators to switch their “fake suck-up laughs” setting to “fully automatic.” When not chortling over Gilbert’s unfunny remarks, all three spent an exorbitantly long time being outraged by DeShawn Stephenson for recently calling James “overrated.” Sheesh, judging by their level indignation, you’d have thought Stephenson said, “If LeBron James was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Anyway, the sycophancy shock-waves generated by the announce team were so potent they must have knocked out the scoreboard, because it wasn’t visible for most of the third quarter.
Not that I really needed a scoreboard to keep track of this one. I simply needed to count the number of times Zydrunas Ilgauskas drew Nazr Mohammed way, way out of his comfort zone to know we were losing badly. Ilgauskas’ range (he scored 16 points, every one of which seemed to com via an 18-footer) left our interior defense reeling. Unprepared to deal with a big who could actually shoot jumpers, Mohammed and Okafor played in a distracted state (combining to shoot just 8-of-23), while Jared Dudley looked totally demoralized (0 points, 3 fouls, and just 5 boards in 22 minutes). Without any contributions from them or Carroll, we didn’t have enough juice to rally, although two late 3-pointers by Richardson made it look respectable. A still-tentative Gerald Wallace (10 points, 5 assists) insisted afterward that he “take the blame for this one” afterward, so maybe that theory about him costing us the Dallas game was actually his own.
Listening to them extol the coaching efforts of Sam Vincent (“he’s really done a great job developing this young team”), I thought they may have been laying it on a little thick, considering we’re on a pace to win 3 fewer games than last year, despite the importation of one of the game’s great talents (Jason Richardson) and no extensive injuries (save for Gerald Wallace, and we won 5 straight while that happened). In fact, this team has been spectacularly mismanaged in my opinion. Entering the season, we had two huge and long-standing weaknesses (crippling incompetence at center and backup point guard) that we didn’t address until much too late, and then we bumped everyone up 1 slot out of position to inexplicably make room for a decrepit, prime-less point guard (who—surprise!—hasn’t been picked up since we waived him). But that’s just me.
Then again, these are two announcers who regularly misuse the words “commodity” (a commodity isn’t a “great product,” it’s merely a “product,” like corn and soybeans) and “literally” (I don’t care how great a player is, he doesn’t literally put a team on his back), and the play-by-play guy also can’t pronounce “Omeka” correctly (he says, “O-mee-ka”), which is somewhat insulting, considering Okafor came of age in Houston. So I don’t know, maybe they legitimately believe Vincent has done a good job.
In any case, the announcers kept their cheerfulness up throughout the affair, even though the Rockets’ victory lap temporarily stalled with a scoring drought that lasted nearly 8 full minutes. This was something of an Epic Drought; it was like the Lord of the Rings of scoreless streaks. I’m not even sure if we’ve done something like this (although we probably have). The Rockets were stuck on 18 points with 4:09 to go in the first quarter all the way until the 8:27 mark of the second. During this streak, the Rockets failed to get to the foul line, and they missed 6 three-pointers, 2 jumpers, and a layup. The Bobcats went from trailing by six to leading 29-18. Even after the Rockets scored, they shot just 6-for-16 the rest of the quarter to close out the half down by 7.
In the third quarter, the Rockets righted the ship pretty quickly and the hometown celebration was back on. Assuming their more familiar role of being the offensively impotent ones in any given game, the Bobcats scored merely two points in the first four minutes of the third quarter en route to just 37 total second-half points. They never trailed by more than 14 though, causing the Houston announcers to break a record of their own for most times using the phrase, “And I’ll tell you what, this Charlotte team keeps hanging around!” At least they didn’t say we were literally hanging around.
On Sunday evening the Bobcats found themselves in Cleveland, and poor Matt Carroll found himself guarding LeBron James (just two nights after having to cover Tracy MacGrady—happy St. Patrick’s Day, Matty boy!). Both times Carroll was in colossally over his head, matching up about as well as Jesse “The Body” Ventura did with Predator. The King put up 33 points, 10 dimes, and 7 boards, and then shot a green laser missile that blew out Carroll’s guts in an exploding red mist—no wait, I meant, he also had two blocks on a steal while goading Carroll into 4 fouls. Conversely, Bron-Bron had no trouble guarding Carroll—in fact, I think he had a harder time handling Gisele Bündchen for the Vogue cover shoot. Carroll had a sparse 4 points and...that’s pretty much it, actually.
This was not a fun game to watch or hear. In the second quarter, slimy Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert came over to the announcers’ booth, causing both commentators to switch their “fake suck-up laughs” setting to “fully automatic.” When not chortling over Gilbert’s unfunny remarks, all three spent an exorbitantly long time being outraged by DeShawn Stephenson for recently calling James “overrated.” Sheesh, judging by their level indignation, you’d have thought Stephenson said, “If LeBron James was a white man, he would not be in this position.” Anyway, the sycophancy shock-waves generated by the announce team were so potent they must have knocked out the scoreboard, because it wasn’t visible for most of the third quarter.
Not that I really needed a scoreboard to keep track of this one. I simply needed to count the number of times Zydrunas Ilgauskas drew Nazr Mohammed way, way out of his comfort zone to know we were losing badly. Ilgauskas’ range (he scored 16 points, every one of which seemed to com via an 18-footer) left our interior defense reeling. Unprepared to deal with a big who could actually shoot jumpers, Mohammed and Okafor played in a distracted state (combining to shoot just 8-of-23), while Jared Dudley looked totally demoralized (0 points, 3 fouls, and just 5 boards in 22 minutes). Without any contributions from them or Carroll, we didn’t have enough juice to rally, although two late 3-pointers by Richardson made it look respectable. A still-tentative Gerald Wallace (10 points, 5 assists) insisted afterward that he “take the blame for this one” afterward, so maybe that theory about him costing us the Dallas game was actually his own.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/14
On an ESPN podcast, Marc Stein called our blowout loss to Dallas a “glorified practice session,” which actually may have been an insult to the Mavericks’ second-stringers. I’m pretty sure JJ Barea, Malik Allen, Antoine Wright, Juwan Howard, and Jamaal Magloire regularly give the starters more of a workout than we did on Wednesday. In fact, during a timeout in the second quarter in which Dallas outscored us 31-17, Coach Avery Johnson told his team that they were “playing against themselves right now.” He was right, because the Bobcats were pretty much playing with themselves—all game.
And thus the air went out of our little 5-game win-streak balloon. The biggest tragedy of not making it 6 in a row was that it would have set off a completely ridiculous “battle of the unbeatens” angle tonight between the Bobcats and the 20-straight Rockets. But if there’s an upside, maybe Mark Cuban will now feel happy and secure enough to allow bloggers back into his arena—just think of the Bobcats as champions of free speech.
The other upside was getting Gerald Wallace back. I was amused that Rick Bonnell felt compelled to write an article in the Charlotte Observer entitled “Wallace’s Return Didn’t Cause Loss.” Did anyone actually think that? Bonnell opens the article with the line, “This theory among some that Gerald Wallace's return had anything to do with the Charlotte Bobcats' winning streak ending is the silliest example of inductive reasoning I can imagine.” I think he actually DID imagine it. We’ve got some serious dissonance brewing at the Observer when one writer (Tom Sorensen) believes that nobody cares about the Bobcats, and another writer (Bonnell) believes that not only do they care, they care enough to concoct paranoid theories about why we lose games. But thanks, Bonnell, for putting those wild rumors to rest; I don’t know where we’d be without your forthright level-headedness. Your next task is to dispel those vicious rumors I’ve been hearing that Adam Morrison deliberately injured himself at the beginning of the year to try and opt out of his contract.
All that said, Wallace was a little woozy when he bravely stepped back on the floor. Entering the game about 9 minutes in to the first quarter, Wallace got his first shot blocked by Eric Dampier, fouled Dirk Nowitzki, missed a jumper, traveled, and missed another jumper. At this point, I was terrified that his injury was not just an injury, but some sort of disease straight out of a bad movie, in which he was knocked unconscious and woke up thinking he was somebody else—specifically, Primoz Brezec. But Crash finally sank his next jumper, and he finished with 14 points and 5 boards in just 22 minutes.
As for the rest of the practice—I mean, game—well, I did a little stat check on Wednesday afternoon just to see how our 5-game winning “spree” compared with our overall season averages. Not surprisingly, our 5-game stats were better across the board, but the biggest disparities were our points-per-game (up from 96.3 to 109), our 3-point % (37% to 45.4%), our opponents’ offensive rebounds-per-game (down from 11.8 to 8.4), and our rebounding difference vs. opponents (-2.5 to +6.6). And of course, all of this collapsed aganst Dallas faster than Elliot Spitzer’s reputation. The Mavs thumped us on the boards (47 to 32) and checked our scoring (93 points, although we still shot a robust 47.1% from 3-point range). They also shot with the accuracy of Robocop, hitting 53.8% of their field goals, including 10-of-24 3-pointers and complemented by 22-of-26 from the foul line. A lot of their marksmanship can be attributed to late rotations on our part, but a lot of it was also just because they’re good shooters (7th in the league)…and don’t forget Gerald Wallace, who we can all agree has been the weak link this year.
And thus the air went out of our little 5-game win-streak balloon. The biggest tragedy of not making it 6 in a row was that it would have set off a completely ridiculous “battle of the unbeatens” angle tonight between the Bobcats and the 20-straight Rockets. But if there’s an upside, maybe Mark Cuban will now feel happy and secure enough to allow bloggers back into his arena—just think of the Bobcats as champions of free speech.
The other upside was getting Gerald Wallace back. I was amused that Rick Bonnell felt compelled to write an article in the Charlotte Observer entitled “Wallace’s Return Didn’t Cause Loss.” Did anyone actually think that? Bonnell opens the article with the line, “This theory among some that Gerald Wallace's return had anything to do with the Charlotte Bobcats' winning streak ending is the silliest example of inductive reasoning I can imagine.” I think he actually DID imagine it. We’ve got some serious dissonance brewing at the Observer when one writer (Tom Sorensen) believes that nobody cares about the Bobcats, and another writer (Bonnell) believes that not only do they care, they care enough to concoct paranoid theories about why we lose games. But thanks, Bonnell, for putting those wild rumors to rest; I don’t know where we’d be without your forthright level-headedness. Your next task is to dispel those vicious rumors I’ve been hearing that Adam Morrison deliberately injured himself at the beginning of the year to try and opt out of his contract.
All that said, Wallace was a little woozy when he bravely stepped back on the floor. Entering the game about 9 minutes in to the first quarter, Wallace got his first shot blocked by Eric Dampier, fouled Dirk Nowitzki, missed a jumper, traveled, and missed another jumper. At this point, I was terrified that his injury was not just an injury, but some sort of disease straight out of a bad movie, in which he was knocked unconscious and woke up thinking he was somebody else—specifically, Primoz Brezec. But Crash finally sank his next jumper, and he finished with 14 points and 5 boards in just 22 minutes.
As for the rest of the practice—I mean, game—well, I did a little stat check on Wednesday afternoon just to see how our 5-game winning “spree” compared with our overall season averages. Not surprisingly, our 5-game stats were better across the board, but the biggest disparities were our points-per-game (up from 96.3 to 109), our 3-point % (37% to 45.4%), our opponents’ offensive rebounds-per-game (down from 11.8 to 8.4), and our rebounding difference vs. opponents (-2.5 to +6.6). And of course, all of this collapsed aganst Dallas faster than Elliot Spitzer’s reputation. The Mavs thumped us on the boards (47 to 32) and checked our scoring (93 points, although we still shot a robust 47.1% from 3-point range). They also shot with the accuracy of Robocop, hitting 53.8% of their field goals, including 10-of-24 3-pointers and complemented by 22-of-26 from the foul line. A lot of their marksmanship can be attributed to late rotations on our part, but a lot of it was also just because they’re good shooters (7th in the league)…and don’t forget Gerald Wallace, who we can all agree has been the weak link this year.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/10
Just to show you how I handle success, amidst this miraculous five-game winning streak, the first thing I like addressing is Tom Sorensen’s recent “Nobody Cares” article in the Charlotte Observer. First of all, Tom Sorensen has The Life. To be able to have one of those “In My Opinion” gigs—and I don’t even care what the subject is—and have that be your salaried job, well...I think it's the ultimate dream gig. Sure, there are lots of opinion articles, but generally they have some sort of stipulation attached; the author has got to be funny a la Bill Simmons, for instance, or he or she has to travel to exotic locales and eat bugs and report on the experience—that sort of thing. Judging by his articles, though, Sorensen has to do NONE of that. He definitely doesn’t have to be funny, or even creative, for that matter (unless that line, “I liked Jeff McInnis,” was supposed to be a joke—which it had to be, right? I don’t know how else to process that one, unless he meant he liked Jeff “as a person”). He doesn’t even have to do a stunt wherein he watches tapes of every single Bobcats game this season in a row for four days straight and then describe how crazy it made him. In fact, as he tells us straightaway in the headline, he doesn’t even have to care about the subject at hand, nor offer any documented reason why. I can only imagine the editors who authorized this: “No really Tom, just ‘I don’t really care about this team’ will do.” Man. Amazing work, if you can get it.
That brings me to the second observation: isn’t it odd that someone would take the time to write several paragraphs with the sole purpose of expressing his lack of interest in something? I mean, if a person truly doesn’t care about something, why would it ever occur to him or her to even write about it at all? I can’t imagine sitting down right now and typing an article-length piece about something I have no interest in like, say, stamp collecting. I could come up with something I DISLIKE, mind you, like a $2-trillion dollar war that began under false pretenses, for example, or people who think immigration is a “problem”; but it’s actually hard to even think of something that I have no feelings on at all, positive or negative, let alone write about it. This leads me to believe that Mr. Sorensen actually does care about the Bobcats in the sense that he dislikes them, for whatever the reason.
Think about it: how many times in your life have you talked about something in sports or entertainment of which you’re a fan, and at the first opportunity the person you’re talking to comes back with, “Oh, I don’t care about/watch/listen to that”? And usually the person says it in varying degrees of a snooty tone that suggests that he or she is “above” caring about something like that and wants you to know it. In fact, I would argue that “not caring” about something in popular culture equates to "not liking" it, because to know about it and not consume it means you’re actively ignoring it. And in fact, in the article, after stating that he doesn't care, Sorensen adds, “And you don’t care,” with the clear implication being that we shouldn’t care (unless we’re in a “cult”). So thanks for your 2 cents on the Bobcats, Tom, it was worth every penny. And to the editors of the Charlotte Observer, do you need any other In My Opinion columnists? I probably won’t do any more research than Sorensen, but when I’m passively insulting your readership, I’ll at least throw a joke in there.
The other thing that I need to get off my chest regards this deluge of articles about the success of the Bobcats’ recent lineup stability, specifically how Raymond Felton has settled in at the 1. I’m sorry, I know I talked about this before, but I still can’t read any line like Rick Bonnell’s in the recap of the victory over the Hawks without reacting much the same way I did to David Tyree’s Super Bowl catch: gasping in disbelief. “(T)he constant confusion about roles has been cleared up,” Bonnell reports. “(Jeff) McInnis' departure stabilized Raymond Felton's role as playmaker.” (Gasp). PEOPLE, Raymond Felton was a point guard ALL HIS LIFE, prior to this year. WHY was there EVER confusion on this? It’s like if all of a sudden in the past year, lots of people became confused about Elton John’s sexual orientation, and his publicists had to put out a massive press release confirming that he actually is gay. The confusing thing is that Felton was ever considered to be something OTHER than point guard; that’s what confuses me...ESPECIALLY when Felton’s abysmal career shooting percentage is well-documented (he's long been one of the worst in the league), which you would think would make him a poor a candidate to ever assume the role of, you know, SHOOTING guard.
By the way, in that same article, we also got a priceless quote from Sam Vincent, who describes releasing Jeff McInnis as a “gamble.” Whaaaaa?? This was a “gamble” only if you consider removing your finger from a burning stove to be a “gamble.” I really haven’t heard anything this preposterous since General Norman Schwarzkopf described attacking with all of our tanks, B-52’s, and smart bombs in the First Gulf War as a “hail-mary.” A gamble? What was trading away Primoz Brezec? Hitting on twenty in blackjack? How stupid does Vincent think we are, and is it more or less than Sorensen?
Anyway, I never thought winning 5 in a row could be so…exasperating. I should emphasize that much to Sorensen's chagrin, not only do I care, I’m ticked to death. Especially when it comes to the Washington win! They’ve been pounding us relentlessly all year for reasons that have been as mysterious as they have been frustrating. Antonio Daniels, for instance, seemed to transform from journeyman point guard to unstoppable killer cyborg from the future every time we played them. And Roger Mason would go from “guy whose name sounds like an obscure mid-major college” to “guy who needs to be invited to the next 3-point shooting competition.” But finally, in our last meeting, we turned the tables. In a crazy string of ironies, we ran out to a 19-point lead, we took and made the open 3-pointers, and we sealed the victory with free-throws down the stretch and—most unlikely of all—two HUGE offensive rebounds with a minute to go, one each from Nazr Mohammed and Jason Richardson. Oh, and how I could I have left this out: Felton had 14 points and 12 assists as…get this…the point guard! No, seriously!!
That brings me to the second observation: isn’t it odd that someone would take the time to write several paragraphs with the sole purpose of expressing his lack of interest in something? I mean, if a person truly doesn’t care about something, why would it ever occur to him or her to even write about it at all? I can’t imagine sitting down right now and typing an article-length piece about something I have no interest in like, say, stamp collecting. I could come up with something I DISLIKE, mind you, like a $2-trillion dollar war that began under false pretenses, for example, or people who think immigration is a “problem”; but it’s actually hard to even think of something that I have no feelings on at all, positive or negative, let alone write about it. This leads me to believe that Mr. Sorensen actually does care about the Bobcats in the sense that he dislikes them, for whatever the reason.
Think about it: how many times in your life have you talked about something in sports or entertainment of which you’re a fan, and at the first opportunity the person you’re talking to comes back with, “Oh, I don’t care about/watch/listen to that”? And usually the person says it in varying degrees of a snooty tone that suggests that he or she is “above” caring about something like that and wants you to know it. In fact, I would argue that “not caring” about something in popular culture equates to "not liking" it, because to know about it and not consume it means you’re actively ignoring it. And in fact, in the article, after stating that he doesn't care, Sorensen adds, “And you don’t care,” with the clear implication being that we shouldn’t care (unless we’re in a “cult”). So thanks for your 2 cents on the Bobcats, Tom, it was worth every penny. And to the editors of the Charlotte Observer, do you need any other In My Opinion columnists? I probably won’t do any more research than Sorensen, but when I’m passively insulting your readership, I’ll at least throw a joke in there.
The other thing that I need to get off my chest regards this deluge of articles about the success of the Bobcats’ recent lineup stability, specifically how Raymond Felton has settled in at the 1. I’m sorry, I know I talked about this before, but I still can’t read any line like Rick Bonnell’s in the recap of the victory over the Hawks without reacting much the same way I did to David Tyree’s Super Bowl catch: gasping in disbelief. “(T)he constant confusion about roles has been cleared up,” Bonnell reports. “(Jeff) McInnis' departure stabilized Raymond Felton's role as playmaker.” (Gasp). PEOPLE, Raymond Felton was a point guard ALL HIS LIFE, prior to this year. WHY was there EVER confusion on this? It’s like if all of a sudden in the past year, lots of people became confused about Elton John’s sexual orientation, and his publicists had to put out a massive press release confirming that he actually is gay. The confusing thing is that Felton was ever considered to be something OTHER than point guard; that’s what confuses me...ESPECIALLY when Felton’s abysmal career shooting percentage is well-documented (he's long been one of the worst in the league), which you would think would make him a poor a candidate to ever assume the role of, you know, SHOOTING guard.
By the way, in that same article, we also got a priceless quote from Sam Vincent, who describes releasing Jeff McInnis as a “gamble.” Whaaaaa?? This was a “gamble” only if you consider removing your finger from a burning stove to be a “gamble.” I really haven’t heard anything this preposterous since General Norman Schwarzkopf described attacking with all of our tanks, B-52’s, and smart bombs in the First Gulf War as a “hail-mary.” A gamble? What was trading away Primoz Brezec? Hitting on twenty in blackjack? How stupid does Vincent think we are, and is it more or less than Sorensen?
Anyway, I never thought winning 5 in a row could be so…exasperating. I should emphasize that much to Sorensen's chagrin, not only do I care, I’m ticked to death. Especially when it comes to the Washington win! They’ve been pounding us relentlessly all year for reasons that have been as mysterious as they have been frustrating. Antonio Daniels, for instance, seemed to transform from journeyman point guard to unstoppable killer cyborg from the future every time we played them. And Roger Mason would go from “guy whose name sounds like an obscure mid-major college” to “guy who needs to be invited to the next 3-point shooting competition.” But finally, in our last meeting, we turned the tables. In a crazy string of ironies, we ran out to a 19-point lead, we took and made the open 3-pointers, and we sealed the victory with free-throws down the stretch and—most unlikely of all—two HUGE offensive rebounds with a minute to go, one each from Nazr Mohammed and Jason Richardson. Oh, and how I could I have left this out: Felton had 14 points and 12 assists as…get this…the point guard! No, seriously!!
Thursday, March 06, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/6
Oooh yeah, three in a row! Not since the halcyon days of November 1st to the 19th have we looked this good. Apparently, Jeff McInnis’ way with the Dark Side was more powerful than even I thought. Even without Gerald Wallace, we racked up one W on the road and another over a playoff-hungry Warriors team. Granted, the Minnesota T-Wolves are the NBA equivalent of William Hung: sort of endearing and inspiring, but mostly untalented. Have you seen these guys? They’re all sort of misshapen, almost like they’re defective models off the NBA player assembly line. Craig Smith is kind of rotund and overly sweaty, Corey Brewer is skinny, Marko Jaric is squinty, Randy Foye’s kind of stocky, Bassy Telfair is kind of slow and small and can’t really shoot, Antoine Walker is kind of a salary dump, etc.
Even that “Wolf howl” sound effect blasts over the PA system at inappropriate moments. I swear I heard one after Jason Richardson drilled a 3-pointer. They also have a pair of television announcers who are unmatched in their ability to generate awkward silences after weird, vaguely homoerotic outbursts. After a generic put-back, one of them inexplicably yelled out, “Kirk Snyder is GOOD!!” (ensuing long silence). The best shout-out was, “Emeka Okafor is a MAN!” (ensuing long silence). Not “the man,” mind you, “a man.” I also took offense to one of them asserting that Jason Richardson is “the first go-to guy in Bobcats history.” Excuse me? Obviously, these guys have never heard of the legend that is Jason Hart.
None of this stopped the Wolves from getting indignant over a loss to the likes of us. Head coach Randy Wittman went all Neville Chamberlain afterward. "Tonight we tried to have a nonaggression pact with the other team, from the first play of the game to the last play of the game," Wittman said. "That's disappointing." Wait, did he just compare Sam Vincent to Hitler?
Then came the Warriors. You know how there’s been an endless debate over who are the biggest trade-deadline “winners” and “losers”? Here’s my choice for a winner: Chris Webber. He’s got to be thanking his lucky boosters that this year’s deadline wasn’t as quiet as last year’s, otherwise people would have had nothing better to do than focus on what a terrible acquisition he’s been: 9 games, 14 minutes per, 4 points, 2 assists, 4 reboards (and all these numbers rounded up). Fortunately for him, the plethora of deals has completely taken the spotlight off his disastrous reunion with Golden State.
As for the game itself, the Warrior roared out of the gate with 38 first-quarter points. Sam Vincent had to call two timeouts, and it had the same demoralizing effect as a boxer receiving two standing 8-counts in the first round. Monta Ellis was so fast that at times he seemed to be moving through people; he’s like X-Men’s Kitty Pryde if she also had the ability to draw lots of shooting fouls. Given Ellis’s speed, it’s mystifying why they didn’t just give the rock to him for the last 5-and-a-half minutes when they were ahead 106-105—he seemed a mortal lock to either score or draw the foul every time he had the ball. Instead, Stephen Jackson, Kelenna Azubuike, and Al Harrington all missed two 3-pointers apiece, and we pulled away for the win.
But I’m skipping a whole bunch. Before all this came a stunning turnaround of a 2nd quarter, in which we cut their first quarter scoring by half (just 19 points) and came storming back to take a 2-point lead at the intermission, spearheaded by Earl Boykins’ 9 points in the period. Matt Carroll scrapped for 11 boards and 4 steals, and Okafor got to the foul line 18 times. Our two most positive trends lately—Richardson and Jared Dudley—also continued to blossom. Richardson scored 42 points and Dudley did just about everything else—18 rebounds, 2 blocks, and a steal. He also drew numerous charges and generally played like a muthaf---in’ spiteful, delightful, eyeful.
Winning feels better than anything—even better thinking of Jeff McInnis in the past tense. Over the last two games, we’ve hit 52-of-70 foul shots, committed just 22 total turnovers, had 8 of the 10 starters score in the double-digits, and exhibited crunch-time defense (just 37 total fourth-quarter points allowed)—is this how it feels to cheer for the Spurs every game? Woooowww.
Even that “Wolf howl” sound effect blasts over the PA system at inappropriate moments. I swear I heard one after Jason Richardson drilled a 3-pointer. They also have a pair of television announcers who are unmatched in their ability to generate awkward silences after weird, vaguely homoerotic outbursts. After a generic put-back, one of them inexplicably yelled out, “Kirk Snyder is GOOD!!” (ensuing long silence). The best shout-out was, “Emeka Okafor is a MAN!” (ensuing long silence). Not “the man,” mind you, “a man.” I also took offense to one of them asserting that Jason Richardson is “the first go-to guy in Bobcats history.” Excuse me? Obviously, these guys have never heard of the legend that is Jason Hart.
None of this stopped the Wolves from getting indignant over a loss to the likes of us. Head coach Randy Wittman went all Neville Chamberlain afterward. "Tonight we tried to have a nonaggression pact with the other team, from the first play of the game to the last play of the game," Wittman said. "That's disappointing." Wait, did he just compare Sam Vincent to Hitler?
Then came the Warriors. You know how there’s been an endless debate over who are the biggest trade-deadline “winners” and “losers”? Here’s my choice for a winner: Chris Webber. He’s got to be thanking his lucky boosters that this year’s deadline wasn’t as quiet as last year’s, otherwise people would have had nothing better to do than focus on what a terrible acquisition he’s been: 9 games, 14 minutes per, 4 points, 2 assists, 4 reboards (and all these numbers rounded up). Fortunately for him, the plethora of deals has completely taken the spotlight off his disastrous reunion with Golden State.
As for the game itself, the Warrior roared out of the gate with 38 first-quarter points. Sam Vincent had to call two timeouts, and it had the same demoralizing effect as a boxer receiving two standing 8-counts in the first round. Monta Ellis was so fast that at times he seemed to be moving through people; he’s like X-Men’s Kitty Pryde if she also had the ability to draw lots of shooting fouls. Given Ellis’s speed, it’s mystifying why they didn’t just give the rock to him for the last 5-and-a-half minutes when they were ahead 106-105—he seemed a mortal lock to either score or draw the foul every time he had the ball. Instead, Stephen Jackson, Kelenna Azubuike, and Al Harrington all missed two 3-pointers apiece, and we pulled away for the win.
But I’m skipping a whole bunch. Before all this came a stunning turnaround of a 2nd quarter, in which we cut their first quarter scoring by half (just 19 points) and came storming back to take a 2-point lead at the intermission, spearheaded by Earl Boykins’ 9 points in the period. Matt Carroll scrapped for 11 boards and 4 steals, and Okafor got to the foul line 18 times. Our two most positive trends lately—Richardson and Jared Dudley—also continued to blossom. Richardson scored 42 points and Dudley did just about everything else—18 rebounds, 2 blocks, and a steal. He also drew numerous charges and generally played like a muthaf---in’ spiteful, delightful, eyeful.
Winning feels better than anything—even better thinking of Jeff McInnis in the past tense. Over the last two games, we’ve hit 52-of-70 foul shots, committed just 22 total turnovers, had 8 of the 10 starters score in the double-digits, and exhibited crunch-time defense (just 37 total fourth-quarter points allowed)—is this how it feels to cheer for the Spurs every game? Woooowww.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 3/3
Hmmm. In the last two games, we were highly competitive against arguably the best team in the league, and then we flat-out defeated a team that almost always kicks the crap out of us. And these results came despite not having our best player (Gerald Wallace) in the lineup. What happened? I’ll tell you what happened: we got rid of Jeff McInnis! Free at last, free at last, thank Rod Higgins Almighty, we are free at last! I’ll never know why it took the front office so long to do what was painfully obvious in the preseason (direct quote from my 2007-08 preview: “My two biggest dreads this year are Jeff McInnis and Primoz Brezec. I really think they are the primary reasons why the Bobcats have the potential to be bad-to-horrible this year.”), but by waiving McInnis, at least they’ve shown that they do eventually respond to the problem. If their indecisiveness with the whole McInnis/Brezec fiasco is any indication of how they handle the rest of their lives, however, I just hope none of their kids ever gets appendicitis.
All that said...I’m still ecstatic! This wasn’t just addition by subtraction, it was exponential multiplication by subtraction. In their recap of Charlotte’s win over Toronto on Sunday, ESPN.com wrote that the Bobcats “essentially acknowledged they are no longer in the playoff hunt when they waived veteran guard Jeff McInnis on Friday.” I’d argue the exact opposite—if we really wanted to tank games for draft positioning, we would have kept him around. Jeff McInnis is so slow and useless that I was waiting for Charles Barkley to challenge him to a foot race at next year’s All-Star weekend. With him gone, it’s the dawning of a new era.
Earl Boykins, Matt Carroll, it really didn’t matter. ANYONE does more in the 2-slot than McInnis. And why Felton was ever slotted anywhere other than point guard is just as mysterious. I mean, the guy’s 6’1” and has played point guard his whole life—why were we ever shuffling him around? Is anyone on the Miami Dolphins considering drafting Glenn Dorsey first overall and then moving him to free safety? Forget it, I don't care, I'm just glad it's over. I feel like Eminem once he finally got custody of Halie-Jade from Kim. Crazy McInnis is out of our lives now for good, let’s just try to forget the whole thing ever happened. And now that he’s gone, we can enjoy two things:
1. Jared Dudley. I haven’t loved a “Dudley” this much since Arnold Drummond’s best friend on Diff’rent Strokes. Against the C’s on Friday, he had 9 points, 7 boards, and 3 steals in just 27 minutes. These were a handful of forwards he was dealing with, too—Garnett, Posey, and Powe. And on Sunday, he had his greatest game yet: 17 and 10. He’s been deadly efficient all year, almost never taking a bad shot (50% shooting from the field). He’s almost like a “Moneyball” player: not an Adonis-looking guy, he just compiles the stats. If Dudley continues this trajectory, management’s going to have to think real hard about how much more they want to sink into Sean May (and I’m sure they’ll get back to us by, say, December 09).
2. Jason Richardson. I’ve bashed him a lot all year, but I have to admit that not only has he been great for the past two months or so, he’s even been tough. After what happened with Nate Robinson at the Garden, I didn’t expect to see him for a week, except maybe in civvies and sporting a pirate-style eye-patch. But he didn’t miss a single game and has gone for 30 both nights. And really, if you take out November, he’s been averaging over 20 points per game and playing over 37 minutes—in other words, he’s been right in line with his career averages. More importantly, he averages about one really "cool thing" per game—be it a windmill slam, a ridonkulous 3-pointer, etc. So although he hasn’t been the missing link that would connect us to the playoffs, he’s often the only reason to tune in right now.
I really have no idea how we kept things so close with Boston. The Celtics did miss a bunch of lay-ups (“at least 6,” according to the ever-impartial Tommy Heinsohn, and this estimate came roughly midway through the second quarter), but still, we were a Felton-drive away from having that puppy at 96-93 with two minutes left! Too bad. And then against the Raptors, we started out cooler than being cool—that is, “ice-cold”—by going just 3-for-12. To make matters worse, Rasho Nesterovic, who looks like a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster at center, was randomly unstoppable, scoring 13 in the first quarter. Toronto also had the two-headed monster of TJ Ford and Jose Calderon (who NEEDS to quit licking his fingers all the time when he doesn’t know where that ball has been—is that not the grossest habit this side of LeBron’s nail-chewing?) working it. But for whatever reason (aw hell, let’s blame this on McInnis too), we out-rebounded the Raps 50-37 (inc. 18 offensive boards—could that be right??) and hit 24 of 26 free throws. And just 7 total turnovers the whole game? We usually churn that out in a quarter. We really were the Anti-Bobcats in this one.
And Primoz…ah, Primoz. 11 minutes, 4 points, 4 fouls. Seems like only yesterday…
All that said...I’m still ecstatic! This wasn’t just addition by subtraction, it was exponential multiplication by subtraction. In their recap of Charlotte’s win over Toronto on Sunday, ESPN.com wrote that the Bobcats “essentially acknowledged they are no longer in the playoff hunt when they waived veteran guard Jeff McInnis on Friday.” I’d argue the exact opposite—if we really wanted to tank games for draft positioning, we would have kept him around. Jeff McInnis is so slow and useless that I was waiting for Charles Barkley to challenge him to a foot race at next year’s All-Star weekend. With him gone, it’s the dawning of a new era.
Earl Boykins, Matt Carroll, it really didn’t matter. ANYONE does more in the 2-slot than McInnis. And why Felton was ever slotted anywhere other than point guard is just as mysterious. I mean, the guy’s 6’1” and has played point guard his whole life—why were we ever shuffling him around? Is anyone on the Miami Dolphins considering drafting Glenn Dorsey first overall and then moving him to free safety? Forget it, I don't care, I'm just glad it's over. I feel like Eminem once he finally got custody of Halie-Jade from Kim. Crazy McInnis is out of our lives now for good, let’s just try to forget the whole thing ever happened. And now that he’s gone, we can enjoy two things:
1. Jared Dudley. I haven’t loved a “Dudley” this much since Arnold Drummond’s best friend on Diff’rent Strokes. Against the C’s on Friday, he had 9 points, 7 boards, and 3 steals in just 27 minutes. These were a handful of forwards he was dealing with, too—Garnett, Posey, and Powe. And on Sunday, he had his greatest game yet: 17 and 10. He’s been deadly efficient all year, almost never taking a bad shot (50% shooting from the field). He’s almost like a “Moneyball” player: not an Adonis-looking guy, he just compiles the stats. If Dudley continues this trajectory, management’s going to have to think real hard about how much more they want to sink into Sean May (and I’m sure they’ll get back to us by, say, December 09).
2. Jason Richardson. I’ve bashed him a lot all year, but I have to admit that not only has he been great for the past two months or so, he’s even been tough. After what happened with Nate Robinson at the Garden, I didn’t expect to see him for a week, except maybe in civvies and sporting a pirate-style eye-patch. But he didn’t miss a single game and has gone for 30 both nights. And really, if you take out November, he’s been averaging over 20 points per game and playing over 37 minutes—in other words, he’s been right in line with his career averages. More importantly, he averages about one really "cool thing" per game—be it a windmill slam, a ridonkulous 3-pointer, etc. So although he hasn’t been the missing link that would connect us to the playoffs, he’s often the only reason to tune in right now.
I really have no idea how we kept things so close with Boston. The Celtics did miss a bunch of lay-ups (“at least 6,” according to the ever-impartial Tommy Heinsohn, and this estimate came roughly midway through the second quarter), but still, we were a Felton-drive away from having that puppy at 96-93 with two minutes left! Too bad. And then against the Raptors, we started out cooler than being cool—that is, “ice-cold”—by going just 3-for-12. To make matters worse, Rasho Nesterovic, who looks like a sort of Frankenstein’s Monster at center, was randomly unstoppable, scoring 13 in the first quarter. Toronto also had the two-headed monster of TJ Ford and Jose Calderon (who NEEDS to quit licking his fingers all the time when he doesn’t know where that ball has been—is that not the grossest habit this side of LeBron’s nail-chewing?) working it. But for whatever reason (aw hell, let’s blame this on McInnis too), we out-rebounded the Raps 50-37 (inc. 18 offensive boards—could that be right??) and hit 24 of 26 free throws. And just 7 total turnovers the whole game? We usually churn that out in a quarter. We really were the Anti-Bobcats in this one.
And Primoz…ah, Primoz. 11 minutes, 4 points, 4 fouls. Seems like only yesterday…
Friday, February 29, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 2/29
Riding the subway over to MSG on Wednesday night, I was suddenly seized with panic. It occurred to me that by seeing the game live, I’d be missing out on the inane television commentary, which tends to account for 50% of my jokes (bizarre and/or unintentionally hilarious post-game comments and Jeff McInnis comprise the other 30% and 20%, respectively). Fortunately, former Bobcat/Piston Primoz Brezec came to the rescue by giving a Toronto paper a candid yet insanely distorted view of his legacy in Charlotte. Brezec’s account of his time here is almost 100% inaccurate; you could say it’s "exactly inexact." From the opening observation that Sam Vincent wants to be more “run-in-gun” (by playing Jeff McInnis for 30+ minutes?) to just two sentences later, when he claims he can “run for 3 days” (this guy missed practically half the season last year from “exhaustion”), Primoz delivers the most remarkably false piece of commentary I think I’ve ever heard. Anyway, thanks, Primoz! I hope you find success with the Raps, and that you get more than just garbage time. Because that’s not you, man. That is not you.
As for the Knicks game, I shelled out 120 bones for the affair, which in NYC translates to “nosebleeds.” I was pretty disappointed with the quality of the seating, to say the least. For $120, I expect to be close enough to get splashed when Zach Randolph throws a water bottle at one of his teammates. Instead, I was so high up that the only object visible was Jamal Crawford’s shoulder bandage. Funniest of all was when Earl Boykins matched up with Nate Robinson—it just looked like a ball dribbling by itself.
Too bad I wasn’t alone in not seeing Nate Robinson—Jason Richardson failed to see him just before getting his eyes gouged out by him. Things went south almost immediately, as the Knicks rattled off 15 straight points to close out the half. I’d love to get worked up with outrage and spew forth vitriol over this latest embarrassment. And sure, at one point we trailed by 30 to the Knicks, but I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to go on a rampage, you need to have a target. And who am I going to blame for this? Jermareo Davidson for not getting a triple-double? Jared Dudley for not going for 20-and-10? Matt Carroll for not willing the team to victory like Kevin Garnett? I mean, look who we were playing out there.
The Knicks weren’t exactly spellbinding either. In fact, as I looked around at the faces on the crowd, everyone seemed slightly uncomfortable and embarrassed to be there, watching this dreck. It looked like 15,000 people who’d simultaneously been watching porn flicks just had their mothers barge in. David Lee hustled beautifully but only scored 4 points (I finally figured out what Lee looks like, by the way: he looks like what would happen if you combined BOTH guys from the movie Superbad into one person). Quentin Richardson had 17 and 6, but continues to play like the sole representative of an unnamed third team on the court (emphasized by his decision to wear jet black headbands, sleeves, and pads, which match nothing on his uniform). In general, it wasn’t just a bad game, but a sad game.
Saddest of all is that we could have used a win before going to Boston tonight, because I’d bet a front-row seat at MSG that we’re not winning this one. If you’ll recall, not only did we win against them last time, but Raymond Felton made the ill-advised decision of getting in Kevin Garnett’s face at the end. Garnett’s already bloodthirsty on a normal day, so ticking him off is kind of like ticking off Hannibal Lecter. We don’t want this kind of heat...
As for the Knicks game, I shelled out 120 bones for the affair, which in NYC translates to “nosebleeds.” I was pretty disappointed with the quality of the seating, to say the least. For $120, I expect to be close enough to get splashed when Zach Randolph throws a water bottle at one of his teammates. Instead, I was so high up that the only object visible was Jamal Crawford’s shoulder bandage. Funniest of all was when Earl Boykins matched up with Nate Robinson—it just looked like a ball dribbling by itself.
Too bad I wasn’t alone in not seeing Nate Robinson—Jason Richardson failed to see him just before getting his eyes gouged out by him. Things went south almost immediately, as the Knicks rattled off 15 straight points to close out the half. I’d love to get worked up with outrage and spew forth vitriol over this latest embarrassment. And sure, at one point we trailed by 30 to the Knicks, but I’m a firm believer that if you’re going to go on a rampage, you need to have a target. And who am I going to blame for this? Jermareo Davidson for not getting a triple-double? Jared Dudley for not going for 20-and-10? Matt Carroll for not willing the team to victory like Kevin Garnett? I mean, look who we were playing out there.
The Knicks weren’t exactly spellbinding either. In fact, as I looked around at the faces on the crowd, everyone seemed slightly uncomfortable and embarrassed to be there, watching this dreck. It looked like 15,000 people who’d simultaneously been watching porn flicks just had their mothers barge in. David Lee hustled beautifully but only scored 4 points (I finally figured out what Lee looks like, by the way: he looks like what would happen if you combined BOTH guys from the movie Superbad into one person). Quentin Richardson had 17 and 6, but continues to play like the sole representative of an unnamed third team on the court (emphasized by his decision to wear jet black headbands, sleeves, and pads, which match nothing on his uniform). In general, it wasn’t just a bad game, but a sad game.
Saddest of all is that we could have used a win before going to Boston tonight, because I’d bet a front-row seat at MSG that we’re not winning this one. If you’ll recall, not only did we win against them last time, but Raymond Felton made the ill-advised decision of getting in Kevin Garnett’s face at the end. Garnett’s already bloodthirsty on a normal day, so ticking him off is kind of like ticking off Hannibal Lecter. We don’t want this kind of heat...
Monday, February 25, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 2/25
Call it the “Dime Magazine Cover Jinx.” The very night I got the latest issue of Dime, which promised an in-depth article about Gerald Wallace on the cover, Crash got clocked by a Mikki Moore elbow and knocked more unconscious than Trent Green. Opening the magazine, I became uncomfortable straight away when the article began with a quote from Arthur Ashe. These comically earnest attempts to hold up athletes as transcendent, Christ-like figures are never a good idea, and unless the subject is Mohammed Ali, authors should avoid it (especially if they’re later going to write that their subjects also like NASCAR and enjoy sandwiches from Chik-Fil-A). Yep, bad karma was everywhere, and I probably didn’t help things by dissing Moore the last time we played Sacramento. Sure enough, early in the third quarter, Mikki landed a shot to Gerald’s jaw that was better than anything in the entire Klitschko-Ibragimov bout.
Now Crash will be out for two weeks with a 3rd degree concussion (apparently, they’re measured like burns), and the hole he leaves in the lineup looms larger than Hillary Clinton’s Dunkin’ Donuts bill. Against the Kings, the Bobcats rallied to send the game to OT—thanks largely to a gonzo-ridiculous 3-poitner by Jason Richardson with 20 seconds left—but faltered pitifully in the extra frame, because we lacked Wallace’s scoring ingenuity. We had a 114-112 lead with 2:40 to go, and—I feel like I’ve written this before—POSSESSION OF THE BALL, and we proceeded to commit--in rapid succession--a shot-clock violation, two missed free throws, a missed layup, and a-(sigh)-nother missed free-throw. And yet we STILL had a chance with 3 seconds left and trailing by 1. But Raymond Felton missed a baseline jumper for the win, and Sack-Town (the Bay Area, and Back Down), went back to California, a state where they allegedly know how to party.
Anyway, apart from the Wallace injury, which was just plain tragic, there were some quirky aspects to this one. The strangest of all was Kevin Martin’s stat line of 15 points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field (and 13-of-15 from the foul line). There was also Francisco Garcia’s extraordinary 6-of-8 three-point shooting. Meanwhile, Ron Artest—who wouldn’t recognize ordinary if it threw a cup of beer on him—finished with 20 points, 9 boards, 4 steals, and 2 blocks. Finally, replacing Mike Bibby (although let’s face it, there’s no such thing as “replacing” a guy like Bibby), was Beno Udrih, with 17 points, 6 boards, 8 assists, a block (?), and, um, 6 personal fouls—weird…
One of the Sacramento announcers called Udrih the “Tasmanian Slovenian,” although I’m not sure if that actually works as a nickname. If you wanted to label him as a sort of whirling-dervish type, wouldn’t he have to be called the “Slovenian Devil”? After all, it’s the “Devil”-part of “Tasmanian Devil” that lets you know someone’s crazy and out-of-control; otherwise, the person is merely from Tasmania and not necessarily crazy (unless you’re prejudiced against Tasmanians). A “Tasmanian-Slovenian” would technically just be a guy who lives in Slovenia and has Tasmanian ethnicity, similar to an African-American here in the U.S.
Whatever. These are the things I try to concentrate on amidst the rubble that is the 07-08 season. The next night brought no respite from this barrage of hopelessness either, as we lost even more decisively to Washington. These were the same Wizards, mind you, that were coming off a loss to a Cavaliers team that essentially started LeBron James and 4 D-Leaguers. And Damon Jones, who ended up as the second-highest scorer of the game with 27 points. Actually, this was probably the worst thing that could have happened to us, because it meant Antawn Jamison would be pissed. Indeed, Jamison went for 22 points, 9 rebounds (almost every one of which seemed to be a Felton layup that rimmed out), 5 assists, and 2 steals. The Wizards were brutally efficient, finishing with just 7 turnovers and a staggering 22 offensive boards, good for 28 second-chance points.
Jesus, did Jeff McInnis play for Washington too? I thought I heard one of the Wizards announcers say it…Yep, he sure did: in 1998-99 he was with them. Huh. Traded for the immortal Isaac Austin (how could I have forgotten that blockbuster?). Having McInnis on your team is the equivalent of dating an older slutty girl, because you have to listen to all these other TV announcers talking about when they “had” him, no doubt smirking at the fact that he’s now your problem. Anyway, McInnis put in another 31 minutes, while Earl Boykins continues to play in the mid-teens. And speaking of PT, I know his 25 points were great and all, but why did J-Rich only play 39 minutes? Without Wallace, shouldn’t Richardson be on the court for basically the whole game?
In honor of the Razzies, my nominee for this game would have to be Nazr Mohammed. Besides owning a large share of responsibility for the appalling difference in rebounds, Mohammed went 1-of-9 from the field for 5 points and 2 turnovers. The worst supporting actor would be Ryan Hollins, who played 3 minutes and got a technical foul for taunting. It was just a bad, bad game. If this game were a hip-hop song, it would fall somewhere between “Ice, Ice Baby” and one of those Smash Williams “raps” at Dillon pep rallies.
I don’t know how much more I can stand of this. Like Axl Rose, I ain’t got time for the pain. Screw it, I’m done with basketball. I think I’m going to get back into comic books—cancel my subscription to Dime and replace it with Wizard Magazine or something. At least comic book characters never die or get seriously injured. Wonder what Captain America’s up to these days…This sports stuff is just too…real for me. My wife accuses me of being spacey and antisocial, but I think I actually need to withdraw further from reality—maybe I’ll play some World of Warcraft or D&D online and get into random arguments with strangers over who has more hit points and whatnot.
But it’ll have to be after Wednesday, because next up is the Knicks, and I’ll actually be in person for this one at the Garden. Oh yeah, Knicks-Bobcats, baby—I can hardly wait. If anyone’s going to be at MSG, let me know and maybe we can try and meet up. I’m guessing we shouldn’t have much trouble finding each other…
Now Crash will be out for two weeks with a 3rd degree concussion (apparently, they’re measured like burns), and the hole he leaves in the lineup looms larger than Hillary Clinton’s Dunkin’ Donuts bill. Against the Kings, the Bobcats rallied to send the game to OT—thanks largely to a gonzo-ridiculous 3-poitner by Jason Richardson with 20 seconds left—but faltered pitifully in the extra frame, because we lacked Wallace’s scoring ingenuity. We had a 114-112 lead with 2:40 to go, and—I feel like I’ve written this before—POSSESSION OF THE BALL, and we proceeded to commit--in rapid succession--a shot-clock violation, two missed free throws, a missed layup, and a-(sigh)-nother missed free-throw. And yet we STILL had a chance with 3 seconds left and trailing by 1. But Raymond Felton missed a baseline jumper for the win, and Sack-Town (the Bay Area, and Back Down), went back to California, a state where they allegedly know how to party.
Anyway, apart from the Wallace injury, which was just plain tragic, there were some quirky aspects to this one. The strangest of all was Kevin Martin’s stat line of 15 points on 1-of-8 shooting from the field (and 13-of-15 from the foul line). There was also Francisco Garcia’s extraordinary 6-of-8 three-point shooting. Meanwhile, Ron Artest—who wouldn’t recognize ordinary if it threw a cup of beer on him—finished with 20 points, 9 boards, 4 steals, and 2 blocks. Finally, replacing Mike Bibby (although let’s face it, there’s no such thing as “replacing” a guy like Bibby), was Beno Udrih, with 17 points, 6 boards, 8 assists, a block (?), and, um, 6 personal fouls—weird…
One of the Sacramento announcers called Udrih the “Tasmanian Slovenian,” although I’m not sure if that actually works as a nickname. If you wanted to label him as a sort of whirling-dervish type, wouldn’t he have to be called the “Slovenian Devil”? After all, it’s the “Devil”-part of “Tasmanian Devil” that lets you know someone’s crazy and out-of-control; otherwise, the person is merely from Tasmania and not necessarily crazy (unless you’re prejudiced against Tasmanians). A “Tasmanian-Slovenian” would technically just be a guy who lives in Slovenia and has Tasmanian ethnicity, similar to an African-American here in the U.S.
Whatever. These are the things I try to concentrate on amidst the rubble that is the 07-08 season. The next night brought no respite from this barrage of hopelessness either, as we lost even more decisively to Washington. These were the same Wizards, mind you, that were coming off a loss to a Cavaliers team that essentially started LeBron James and 4 D-Leaguers. And Damon Jones, who ended up as the second-highest scorer of the game with 27 points. Actually, this was probably the worst thing that could have happened to us, because it meant Antawn Jamison would be pissed. Indeed, Jamison went for 22 points, 9 rebounds (almost every one of which seemed to be a Felton layup that rimmed out), 5 assists, and 2 steals. The Wizards were brutally efficient, finishing with just 7 turnovers and a staggering 22 offensive boards, good for 28 second-chance points.
Jesus, did Jeff McInnis play for Washington too? I thought I heard one of the Wizards announcers say it…Yep, he sure did: in 1998-99 he was with them. Huh. Traded for the immortal Isaac Austin (how could I have forgotten that blockbuster?). Having McInnis on your team is the equivalent of dating an older slutty girl, because you have to listen to all these other TV announcers talking about when they “had” him, no doubt smirking at the fact that he’s now your problem. Anyway, McInnis put in another 31 minutes, while Earl Boykins continues to play in the mid-teens. And speaking of PT, I know his 25 points were great and all, but why did J-Rich only play 39 minutes? Without Wallace, shouldn’t Richardson be on the court for basically the whole game?
In honor of the Razzies, my nominee for this game would have to be Nazr Mohammed. Besides owning a large share of responsibility for the appalling difference in rebounds, Mohammed went 1-of-9 from the field for 5 points and 2 turnovers. The worst supporting actor would be Ryan Hollins, who played 3 minutes and got a technical foul for taunting. It was just a bad, bad game. If this game were a hip-hop song, it would fall somewhere between “Ice, Ice Baby” and one of those Smash Williams “raps” at Dillon pep rallies.
I don’t know how much more I can stand of this. Like Axl Rose, I ain’t got time for the pain. Screw it, I’m done with basketball. I think I’m going to get back into comic books—cancel my subscription to Dime and replace it with Wizard Magazine or something. At least comic book characters never die or get seriously injured. Wonder what Captain America’s up to these days…This sports stuff is just too…real for me. My wife accuses me of being spacey and antisocial, but I think I actually need to withdraw further from reality—maybe I’ll play some World of Warcraft or D&D online and get into random arguments with strangers over who has more hit points and whatnot.
But it’ll have to be after Wednesday, because next up is the Knicks, and I’ll actually be in person for this one at the Garden. Oh yeah, Knicks-Bobcats, baby—I can hardly wait. If anyone’s going to be at MSG, let me know and maybe we can try and meet up. I’m guessing we shouldn’t have much trouble finding each other…
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 2/20
"I thought we had a whole lot of All-Star (break) rust," Coach Sam Vincent said after the Bobcats managed to pull off the rare feat of holding the opposition to 85 points and still getting blown out. I really don’t know how one can chalk this up to “All-Star rust,” considering we had no involvement with the All-Star game whatsoever. We didn’t even have any Rookie-Sophomore Game participants this year. So we ought to just call it “Sitting-Around-On-The-Couch-And-Playing-Lots-of-Halo-3-Break Rust,” because Emeka Okafor, Jason Richardson, and Gerald Wallace combined to shoot 5-of-29 in a loss to San Antonio that was more rambling and incoherent than Michael Jordan’s latest ESPN: The Magazine interview. Based on our collective 28% shooting, we’re also not going to be a threat to send anyone to the All-Star H-O-R-S-E competition either, if the NBA ever creates one.
Tim Duncan, against whom Okafor normally plays fairly decently, shot just 2-of-12 himself, but he was a key component anyway in the Spurs win. “(Duncan’s) defense at the rim and that sort of thing is always important to us,” Coach Gregg Popovich noted (5 blocks, 5 assists, 15 boards, and a steal was presumably the “sort of thing” Popovich was talking about). Duncan also held former teammate Nazr Mohammed to a paltry 5-of-13 shooting and a measly 6 boards. Mohammed was our biggest bench contributor, but possibly I only mean that literally and not figuratively, because Vincent somehow thought it was a good idea to give Jeff McInnis 33 minutes of “run.”
Tell me we’re showcasing McInnis for a trade, Coach, please? Just do that and all my pain will go away! Apparently, Memphis’s Kyle Lowry is on the trading block. You know Lowry only makes about a mil? We could give the Grizzlies McInnis (or, more accurately, McInnis’s expiring contract) plus either Jermareo Davidson or Ryan Hollins and it’d be nearly even. And here’s a really scary thought: we trade them Othella Harrington ('s expiring contract) for Lowry and they’d actually owe US a million. Welcome to the wacky world of bad contracts! I know these are stupid and—with any other team—borderline insulting trade proposals, but considering the shrewd deals Grizzlies have been pulling lately, I thought it was worth mentioning. Boy oh boy. 33 minutes...Four points...No assists. This guy should be the 5th PG option for the Sacramento Kings, behind Beno Udrih, Anthony Johnson, Tyronn Lue, and Quincy Douby. Instead, he gets 33 minutes for us.
Anyway, besides the decision to play Jeff McInnis for 33 minutes, the Spurs relied heavily on Manu Ginobli (18 points, including 9-of-11 FT shooting), and they also got random contributions from Michael Finley (14 points) and Ime Udoka (12 points). Because of his first name, I’m sort of hoping that Udoka someday develops a reputation as a selfish prima donna and gets traded to the Knicks—the headline writers for The Daily News and The New York Post would have a field day with that one. The Spurs also defended their way through a memorably muddled first half for everyone involved, and they leveraged our cold stretch before halftime to take the lead for good.
“Cold stretch”—like we were ever hot. Gerald Wallace was a total ghost, as was Jason Richardson. Raymond Felton attacked the hoop with his usual gusto, but he frequently failed to finish on the Spurs’ bigs. 21 Spurs turnovers (the first 11 on steals) and their own poor shooting were the only reasons the game was ever competitive. Their 54 rebounds to our 33—sorry, 38 (I can’t seem to get that number out of my head)—was one of the many reasons it eventually wasn’t…
Tim Duncan, against whom Okafor normally plays fairly decently, shot just 2-of-12 himself, but he was a key component anyway in the Spurs win. “(Duncan’s) defense at the rim and that sort of thing is always important to us,” Coach Gregg Popovich noted (5 blocks, 5 assists, 15 boards, and a steal was presumably the “sort of thing” Popovich was talking about). Duncan also held former teammate Nazr Mohammed to a paltry 5-of-13 shooting and a measly 6 boards. Mohammed was our biggest bench contributor, but possibly I only mean that literally and not figuratively, because Vincent somehow thought it was a good idea to give Jeff McInnis 33 minutes of “run.”
Tell me we’re showcasing McInnis for a trade, Coach, please? Just do that and all my pain will go away! Apparently, Memphis’s Kyle Lowry is on the trading block. You know Lowry only makes about a mil? We could give the Grizzlies McInnis (or, more accurately, McInnis’s expiring contract) plus either Jermareo Davidson or Ryan Hollins and it’d be nearly even. And here’s a really scary thought: we trade them Othella Harrington ('s expiring contract) for Lowry and they’d actually owe US a million. Welcome to the wacky world of bad contracts! I know these are stupid and—with any other team—borderline insulting trade proposals, but considering the shrewd deals Grizzlies have been pulling lately, I thought it was worth mentioning. Boy oh boy. 33 minutes...Four points...No assists. This guy should be the 5th PG option for the Sacramento Kings, behind Beno Udrih, Anthony Johnson, Tyronn Lue, and Quincy Douby. Instead, he gets 33 minutes for us.
Anyway, besides the decision to play Jeff McInnis for 33 minutes, the Spurs relied heavily on Manu Ginobli (18 points, including 9-of-11 FT shooting), and they also got random contributions from Michael Finley (14 points) and Ime Udoka (12 points). Because of his first name, I’m sort of hoping that Udoka someday develops a reputation as a selfish prima donna and gets traded to the Knicks—the headline writers for The Daily News and The New York Post would have a field day with that one. The Spurs also defended their way through a memorably muddled first half for everyone involved, and they leveraged our cold stretch before halftime to take the lead for good.
“Cold stretch”—like we were ever hot. Gerald Wallace was a total ghost, as was Jason Richardson. Raymond Felton attacked the hoop with his usual gusto, but he frequently failed to finish on the Spurs’ bigs. 21 Spurs turnovers (the first 11 on steals) and their own poor shooting were the only reasons the game was ever competitive. Their 54 rebounds to our 33—sorry, 38 (I can’t seem to get that number out of my head)—was one of the many reasons it eventually wasn’t…
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Bobcats Thoughts, 2/14
Here’s a crazy headline for you, pulled from today’s Charlotte Observer: “FT Shooting Leads to Win.” Before last night, I’d have lumped that with “UN Solves Crisis” as two headlines I’d be least likely to see in my lifetime. But it’s true; we hit 22-of-28 foul shots to break a losing streak I’ve long since lost count of. And in fact, ESPN.com posted a similarly impossible-to-believe headline of its own from last night’s OT-win over Atlanta: “McInnis Hits Hook as Cats Rally.” Superb foul shooting? A game-winning shot from Jeff McInnis? I feel like I’m writing science-fiction; I ought to put this column on pulp paper and entitle it “Weird Tales” or something in wavy font.
“I went in and made my little floater,” McInnis modestly explained afterward. Actually, McInnis has been making little floaters all year—the kind you find in toilets, so it was good to see him make a positive contribution for once. McInnis is still about as useful as tonsils when it comes to defense, as Atlanta’s PGs proved by combining for 55 points and just 5 assists in a dribble-penetration free-for-all; and I have no idea why Earl Boykins played just 5 minutes, but hey, let McInnis have his floater. We didn’t have Gerald Wallace, we twice came back from 14 points down, and we were trailing by 10 with just 9 minutes left, so I’m not complaining.
I’m also happy for Raymond Felton, who followed up a 29-point, 8-assist game against LA with a 22-point, 7-assist performance last night—in 52 minutes. The guy is obviously in “kitchen-sink” mode right now trying to produce wins. And without Wallace to distract opponents, not to mention Jason Richardson scoring just 10 and 19 over the last two games, Raymond is getting covered more than Beatles songs. It’s not like he’s feeding off of the crowd, either. Against LA, the crowd was pro-Kobe; against Atlanta, the crowd was pro-staying home. Bobcats Arena was so dead last night that I could have studied for mid-terms in there. Felton has been getting some creative assistance from Nazr Mohammed (22 and 11 vs. LA) and Emeka Okafor (20 and 21 vs. Atlanta), but that’s about it.
Perhaps the Lakers game on Monday was a turning point. Though we lost—and pretty handily—we at least showed some spunk against a team that’s got everything going for it, getting to within 3 with about 6 minutes to play. I also can’t be too critical when it comes to losing to LA because—and I’m shamed to admit this—I have NO IDEA what the Triangle Offense is. Seriously, I really don’t know. Why do I have such a problem understanding it? After all, it’s not like a triangle is a particularly complex shape—heck, it’s only got three sides. But you might as well call it the “Bermuda Triangle Offense," because it’s totally mysterious to me. Pao Gasol appears to have it down, though. He must have been studying it during those times when most people are normally shaving and combing their hair. His 26 boards, 6 points, and 6 assists—to go with Kobe’s 31—made us look like the Flint Tropics.
Remember that old line from the 40s or 50s about the Yankees: “rooting for them is like rooting for US Steel”? Rooting for the Bobcats is the exact opposite. It’s like rooting for Charlie Brown or Ziggy. We already dropped two to lowly Atlanta this year, for crying out loud, and they weren’t even close. The first two times were earlier in the season, when I was naïve enough to be disappointed. This time I fully expected a trouncing, because—as the Atlanta announcers duly noted—physically, every one of our starting 5 is on the wrong end of a complete mismatch with their starters. But Josh Smith got into foul trouble early (eventually fouling out), as did Al Horford and Marvin Williams, to negate the size advantage. This facilitated Okafor’s 20-20, as well as illuminated one of his more underrated skills: staying out of foul trouble while maintaining his high-caliber defense. Next thing you know, we’d stolen an OT-win and get to go to All-Star Break on a high note. McInnis hit his floater, we stopped their last-gasp effort, and the crowd went…back home.
“I went in and made my little floater,” McInnis modestly explained afterward. Actually, McInnis has been making little floaters all year—the kind you find in toilets, so it was good to see him make a positive contribution for once. McInnis is still about as useful as tonsils when it comes to defense, as Atlanta’s PGs proved by combining for 55 points and just 5 assists in a dribble-penetration free-for-all; and I have no idea why Earl Boykins played just 5 minutes, but hey, let McInnis have his floater. We didn’t have Gerald Wallace, we twice came back from 14 points down, and we were trailing by 10 with just 9 minutes left, so I’m not complaining.
I’m also happy for Raymond Felton, who followed up a 29-point, 8-assist game against LA with a 22-point, 7-assist performance last night—in 52 minutes. The guy is obviously in “kitchen-sink” mode right now trying to produce wins. And without Wallace to distract opponents, not to mention Jason Richardson scoring just 10 and 19 over the last two games, Raymond is getting covered more than Beatles songs. It’s not like he’s feeding off of the crowd, either. Against LA, the crowd was pro-Kobe; against Atlanta, the crowd was pro-staying home. Bobcats Arena was so dead last night that I could have studied for mid-terms in there. Felton has been getting some creative assistance from Nazr Mohammed (22 and 11 vs. LA) and Emeka Okafor (20 and 21 vs. Atlanta), but that’s about it.
Perhaps the Lakers game on Monday was a turning point. Though we lost—and pretty handily—we at least showed some spunk against a team that’s got everything going for it, getting to within 3 with about 6 minutes to play. I also can’t be too critical when it comes to losing to LA because—and I’m shamed to admit this—I have NO IDEA what the Triangle Offense is. Seriously, I really don’t know. Why do I have such a problem understanding it? After all, it’s not like a triangle is a particularly complex shape—heck, it’s only got three sides. But you might as well call it the “Bermuda Triangle Offense," because it’s totally mysterious to me. Pao Gasol appears to have it down, though. He must have been studying it during those times when most people are normally shaving and combing their hair. His 26 boards, 6 points, and 6 assists—to go with Kobe’s 31—made us look like the Flint Tropics.
Remember that old line from the 40s or 50s about the Yankees: “rooting for them is like rooting for US Steel”? Rooting for the Bobcats is the exact opposite. It’s like rooting for Charlie Brown or Ziggy. We already dropped two to lowly Atlanta this year, for crying out loud, and they weren’t even close. The first two times were earlier in the season, when I was naïve enough to be disappointed. This time I fully expected a trouncing, because—as the Atlanta announcers duly noted—physically, every one of our starting 5 is on the wrong end of a complete mismatch with their starters. But Josh Smith got into foul trouble early (eventually fouling out), as did Al Horford and Marvin Williams, to negate the size advantage. This facilitated Okafor’s 20-20, as well as illuminated one of his more underrated skills: staying out of foul trouble while maintaining his high-caliber defense. Next thing you know, we’d stolen an OT-win and get to go to All-Star Break on a high note. McInnis hit his floater, we stopped their last-gasp effort, and the crowd went…back home.
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