Even Doctors Eventually Need to be Replaced

Whatever you want to think about Doc Rivers' coaching ability, or debatable lack thereof, let me simply say this: if you remove his best 3 year run as the coach of the Celtics, during which he won an NBA Title in 2007-2008, lost in the 2008-2009 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals, and then lost in the 2009-2010 Eastern Conference Finals, his record as a coach would be 537-466, good for a career winning percentage of 53.54%, which is thoroughly average.  The worst part of that resume?  He has only ever coached a team to a Conference Finals twice.

I can't help but consider all of the above information when I watch what is happening with the Los Angeles Clippers this year: not only does Rivers seem to lack any sort of direction for what he wants to do on the court, he has absolutely no excuse for it because he's the one that built this team.  I don't need to run over the litany of roster issues and lineup mismanagement which are crippling the team's season, because they are numerous and readily apparent to anyone that watches the team play...at least, anyone that isn't getting paid millions of dollars specifically for his supposed ability to recognize and repair just these sort of issues.  If only the Clippers had a position in their organization that could perform this vital function; oh that's right they already do, and its called Head Coach, the position which Rivers currently fills.

Winning in the NBA is hard, no one discounts that; and no one expected the Clippers to be an overnight success, but...compare his inability to make sense of the talent which he has on hand, let alone find an effective use for it, with what is happening in San Antonio right now, or Dallas - where two of the actual best coaches in the NBA reside.

The Road to 70 Wins

The Warriros are not going to win 72 games this year; they might win 70, but I would be surprised to see them better 69 wins – which is not a slight against this team, because they have so far been historically great and probably will continue to be.  Saying a team is going to win over 67 games means that they are already a historically great team, because only 9 teams have ever ascended above 67, and only 17 have ever won more than 65.  Only 2 teams – 1997-98 Chicago Bulls and 1971-27 LA Lakers - have ever won 69 games, and only 1 has ever bested 70 wins. 

As Dennis Rodman explained after that record season in 1996, “Most teams can’t handle the pressure of having to go out and win 72 games…”  And he is absolutely right.  No other team has even really come close – not even what was essentially the same Bulls team the very next year could manage 70 wins, ultimately failing due to injuries and fatigue.

November is not the time of year when the PRESSURE to win 70 games becomes apparent: that really comes in February, after you’ve played 60 games in the last 4 months and the season starts to grind along, and you’ve got another game against the Brooklyn Nets that you’re probably going to win…and then you come out flat, and somehow lose a game that you really should have won.  The mental strength that it takes to come prepared for just the extra 3 games that are the difference between 69 wins and 72 is unfathomably rare – as evidenced by the fact that only one team has ever done it, and even they couldn’t completely replicate it the following year; which, by the way, was after they got off to the best start which they had ever had as a franchise, which should also be a relevant consideration in the current discussion.

The NBA season is really long, especially if you are actually playing in the games rather than simply watching them.  It is a repetitive grind, a gigantic millstone of monotony constantly spinning and crushing your concentration and your focus down to a powder, and out of all of the great teams in the league’s history, only the 1996 Chicago Bulls – led by a pissed-as-hell Jordan who was determined to regain his status as the best player in the entire world, and forced the rest of the team to maintain that same level of focus – ever overcame it that natural inclination to just take a night off every once in a while.

Which, again, is not saying that the Warriors are mentally weak; what it is saying is that we don’t know yet whether anyone on the Warriors is maniacally competitive enough to still feel like they have something to prove in April, after building a 10 game lead with three weeks left in the season.  That’s ultimately what drove the Bulls to win 72 games: Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen decided that they wanted to win 70 games, and bent the entire season to do that.

Even then, they got just lucky enough to accomplish it, as the 1996-1997 season demonstrated, in which  they started the season even stronger than they had the previous year, but after suffering injuries to multiple contributors – including DennIs Rodman, Tony Kucoc, and Bill Wennington – their frontcourt was so decimated that they had to sign Brian Williams in the middle of the season, a player to whom no other team in the league felt like paying actual money to play basketball, until the Bulls were forced to do so.  That team still won 69 games, but really only because they made the conscious choice to try and win 70 games in consecutive seasons. 

Which is the final reason why the Warrirors won’t really challenge the record: because they are too smart of a team and organization to risk injury for the sake of what is really a meaningless achievement.  Say for the sake of argument, that they are sitting at 72-9 on the last night of the season, and have the top seed throughout the playoffs well-wrapped up, essentially having nothing substantial to play for that night…there’s no way in hell, even as a fan of the team, you want them playing Steph, Klay, and Dray in that game, and risk an injury that keeps them either out or ineffective for the most integral part of what could be another championship season.  Scottie Pippen injured his foot during that 1997 push to re-achieve 70 wins, which cost him effectiveness in the playoffs, half of the 1997-1998 season, and half a step for the rest of his career.  Do you really want to risk forfeiting a shot at repeating as Champion, just to win the last meaningless game of the regular season? 

 And the Warriors want to repeat, not finish with 70 or more wins; and then they want to put themselves in as favorable a position as possible to be the first team in over a decade to win three straight championships.  Continuing the hypothetical train of thought, assuming that they manage to achieve that extremely lofty goal, they would then be looking to do what no team since Bill Russel has done: win 4 straight.  If they want to pick an achievement to surpass Jordan’s Bulls, that’s the one they should be eyeing, not a single-season record which does, after all, not guarantee a championship.

There’s Something About Curry

Steph Curry is probably the best player in basketball right now; Kevin Durant and Lebron James might be better rebounders, more versatile defenders, and have more traditional scoring opportunities…but neither one of them can affect a game quite like Steph Curry.  That fascinates me: two players who are at the peak of their abilities, who are physical specimens and monsters in the game – no, not Monstars – have been overtaken by what looks like a skinny little kid flinging up shots with what seems, at least on the surface, like reckless abandon, who then laughs with glee as they somehow go in.  There is something absolutely magnetic about watching Curry play basketball that forces you to watch him every second he’s on the floor – even when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands – because something incredible and at times even unbelievable could happen at any moment. 

                You might think that this is because he has already done so many incredible things on the floor, that we have been Pavlovian-ly trained to expect wondrous things to just sort of…happen when he touches the ball; that the attraction of watching him play basketball is simply a natural, logical conclusion that, as he has amazed us previously, so too will he amaze us once again.  You would be wrong.  It has happened already, when he was playing for small, unheralded Davidson University – because none of the blue-chip programs would take him – when the entire country fell in love with him; and before you insist that this occurred because of his stellar play during the NCAA tournament, I should remind you that he was already a mainstay in the highlight reels on all of the nightly sports review – “worldwide leaders” or otherwise.  There was already something positively electric about watching Steph Curry play basketball, even then: it was not as refined then, certainly, it had not become the surreal hurricane of confident expectation – the state in which one sits perched upon the edge of one’s own seat, the anticipation nearly seeping out of every pore to drip down onto the end-table and spoil one’s nachos – but it was already there.  My younger brother watched him play one non-tournament college basketball game and declared to me: “That kid is going to be a hell of a basketball player in the NBA.”  It was not then a foregone conclusion that Steph Curry would even be drafted into the NBA, let alone become a foundational player for a franchise; the Minnesota twins drafted two other point guards in front of him, one of whom - Johnny Flynn - has been a fantastic bust, the other of whom - Ricky Rubio - is a good point guard, but is not even the best player on his own team. Absolutely no one predicted that Curry would become a white-hot inferno of delicious appeal and consistent amazement.  He was too skinny, the pundits assured us, he had poor shot selection, couldn’t play defense, was too short, they all said; not maliciously, certainly, but with the sort of melancholy with which the professional evaluators of basketball talent are wont to dash the lifelong hopes of young college students.

They were wrong, of course; not even the experts are really any good at deciphering talent, because basketball is probably the most difficult sport to forecast.  During Curry’s first season in the NBA, my younger brother and I watched a Warriors games, during which he turned to me and once again proclaimed: “Steph Curry is going to be the best basketball player in the NBA.” 

 All right, fine, that’s not entirely accurate; what he said was “In four years Steph Curry might be the best point guard in the NBA;” but my version sounds better.  Here’s the best part about that prediction: Curry didn’t really even have that great of a game when my brother made it; he just saw something that attracted him to Curry’s abilities, which made him feel totally confident in making that prediction.  I, of course, disagreed with him...because I am an idiot, and I was drinking all the expert Kool-Aid which assured us that he would never be more than a remixed Keven Martin.  

I was wrong; that’s not a sentence I enjoy typing, especially in regards to basketball.  Steph Curry is not only the best player in basketball, he’s also the most insanely, completely, ubiquitously loved player in basketball.  Everyone enjoys watching Steph Curry play basketball; even Clippers fans have nothing but nice things to say about him.  Cavaliers fans might curse Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala, Kelly Olynek and Kyrie Irving’s Dodgy Kneecap, but they never go so far as to disparage the Baby Faced Assassin: because even the people whose championship dreams have been dashed to pieces upon the bay of Golden State, still love the rock upon which their 2015 season died.  Lebron James was never this beloved, neither was Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan; no one since Michael Jordan has been this universally loved. 

It’s not Curry’s perfect form on his jump-shot – so pure and consistent that a volcanic eruption could not alter its inevitable course – which allows him to hit some of the most ridiculous below-the-rim shots we’ve ever seen; or the quickness of his release, which Sports Science insists is the quickest in the NBA at 0.4 seconds from hip-to-tip.  It’s more than just his superlative ball-handling ability; and it is superlative, by the way.  Do you remember last year when there was a debate among some – not me – about whether Steph or Kyrie was the better ball-handler?  It was never a debate in my mind: Curry was quite visibly the better of the twain; which was in no way disparaging to Mr. Irving, but it did mean that he was only the second or third best ball-handler in the world, because Chris Paul really does need to be in that particular discussion somewhere.  Whether he’s 1, 2 or 3 I really don’t know; I just know that he’s in there, and Steph is ahead of Kyrie. 

It’s not necessarily that Curry looks better while dribbling, because that's a pretty subjective method by which to rank one's ability, and besides which in some ways he might not: Kyrie certainly has just as visibly appealing of a dribbling style.  It looks flashy, fancy, fascinating, some-other-adjective-that-starts-with-F, and it is incredibly effective: he uses it equally well to create space for jumps shots and incredible layups…but Curry is just better at creating the space.  His dribbles might not look any better, but they just are, because he creates so much more space with each dribble; and he creates all of that space because he covers more ground with every move.  That is the secret to effective ball-handling: a crossover that travels a greater distance from one side to the other will always be more effective than one with a smaller range of motion, even if the speed at which the ball moves is exactly the same.  The idea is to get your defender moving in the wrong direction, to shift his weight in such a way that he leaves a direct line open for you to attack, and it is so much harder to create that action when your own feet aren’t moving.  Steph Curry is the best at creating that space: that’s why he can get his shot up off of any dribble, at any time, from anywhere on the court.

But it’s even more than all of that: the appeal which draws Curry to us, and in turn us to him, is a nebulous thing which defies rational constructs and the simple, fundamental precision which makes him such a terrifying basketball player.  Kobe Bryant was the best basketball player of his generation, whose dedication to the precise intricacies of basketball excellence allowed him to excel at every facet of the game; but he was also hated by half of the world for his apparent arrogance, legal/societal issues, and also the fact that he played on the Lakers, whom we all hated as a matter of course.  Wake up, eat breakfast, brush your teeth, hate the Lakers, ho-hum...  Tim Duncan, the only player who can reasonably be argued was a greater player in their generation than Kobe, also excelled at the fundamentals – hence his famous gamer-tag The Big Fundamental – but he was overlooked and ignored, because his excellence seemed so boring to some.  But no one – literally no one – hates Steph: because he is the living embodiment of Basketball Charisma in our generation.

The best way to describe this is through the medium of the NBA All-Star Weekend Slam Dunk contest.  Every few years, a contestant comes along who just sort of…well, blows the doors of the gym off like he was dropping a nuclear bomb through the net, rather than a leather-covered chunk of rubber which has been pumped full of air.  Think about Zach Lavine last year, and Blake Griffin before him.  Remember when Dwight Howard won the contest with that cape?  He won a slam dunk contest with a shot that was technically a lay-up!  But it didn’t matter, because for some un-quantifiable reason, when he “dunked” that ball, it just…mattered more than when anyone else did it.  It felt almost important, significant in some way outside of the context in which it occurred – which, for the record, was tens-of-thousands of slightly tipsy folks paying money to watch a very large man drop a child’s toy through a metal ring – and so every single dunk attempt raised the anticipation of every individual spectator, who both transferred and received a small percentage of that magnetism to and from those standing on either side of him.  It’s the same phenomenon by which a group of intelligent, compassionate, and rational people can become the chaotic vortex of anger and hate which we generally call a “mob,” except now directed towards a positive end.

It turns out that charisma and emotion are contagious, and certain people are more communicable than others.  Steph Curry transmits more of it than anyone since Michael Jordan; before him, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the twin pillars of excitement, and they were preceded by the superlative Dr. J, Julius Irving.  It’s the same phenomenon which turned Pete Maravich into the Pistol, and is the reason why Adidas still sells shorts which have been stitched  with his name, and why I still watch Youtube videos in terrible quality of a man who had retired before I was even born: because for some reason, Pistol Pete playing basketball transmitted more joy to those watching it than anyone not already named in this paragraph.  

Steph Curry is the best player in the NBA right now, but he’s so much more: he is the living conduit through which all of the joy of a perfectly swished jump shot, is transmitted to those of us watching it.  He is everyone’s favorite player, even if you don’t really like his team; he is the Baby-Faced Assassin, the new generation’s NBA John Wayne.  He is the Living Embodiment of the Literal Definition of Awesome...and he’s just getting started.

Kevin Love Killed Cleveland: My thoughts about the 2015 NBA Finals

     My initial thought is that David Blatt did a terrible job coaching that team in the finals, but no one really talked about it because Lebron was putting up such fantastic numbers in games which were, for the most part, relatively close; sure he shot somewhere around 35% for the series and played unfathomably passively for most of Game 6, but who (except for me) is going to care about that?  Blatt made two huge mistakes throughout this series, one which was pervasive and a second which was mostly evident only in Game 6.  The first mistake: refusing to play Shawn Marion; didn't even give the Matrix a chance.  He started nearly every game last season for the Mavericks, and played damn well for them, and at his best is the exact sort of player that Cleveland needed: offensive versatility and defensive toughness that can guard multiple positions on the wings.  He may have an ugly looking shot, but corner three goes in for him at above a league-average rate - at least it still was last year - and you may recall how many of those exact shots were missed by the rotating cast of inept Cleveland shooters.  Not only that, but he's an extremely smart offensive player, and very unselfish; not unlike the Finals MVP Andre Iguodala.  He also could have allowed an additional couple of minutes of rest for Lebron at the 3 and the 4, which would have meant that the best player on the court wouldn't have been absolutely exhausted at the end of games which were often very close; and Lebron with an extra inch of lift on a jump-shot here or there would have been the difference in a couple of eventual Cleveland losses.  I could understand not using him if he was playing as poorly as J.R. Smith did throughout most of the series, but to not even try him out when you're down to a 7 1/2 man rotation (again, J.R. Smith was reeeaally bad)?  That doesn't make any sense, unless he had some injury which they never reported, which would be understandable.  Otherwise it's just bad coaching.
     My other point of serious concern with David Blatt is Cleveland's total lack of offensive fluidity all year, but especially in the playoffs.  He never seemed to know where his team's best shots were coming from, nor especially how to build lineups to accentuate their strengths; and that was never more evident than in Game 6.  All year long, their offense had pretty much been what Miami's offense had been throughout 2011: give the ball to one of their two superstar ball handlers, and then stand around and wait for them to do something.  It worked throughout the regular season, and even though it was occasionally a problem it worked overall for them in the playoffs too against overmatched defenses.  But it's not going to work against the best defense in the league, and once Kyrie Irving went down late in Game 1, everything changed...and nothing did, depending on how you look at it.  Instead of being able to take possessions off while Kyrie dribbled it around and created shots, Lebron had to do everything himself; but it was essentially the same offense: give it to the superstar and wait.  It nearly worked only because Lebron presents an almost unsolvable match-up when he plays aggressively in the post: small forwards can't guard him under there because he's too strong, but you can't put a big man on him either because he'll just pull the ball out and run past the big, straight to an open layup.  If he had resigned himself entirely to post-ups, he probably would have shot around 50% for the series; he got himself into trouble, though, talking fall-away jumpers from mid and long range against a fantastic defense player in Andre Iguodala, but he still was a beast through the first 5 games down in the paint.  Then came Game 6.
     You may have watched the Game and thought early on, like so many people, "Why is Lebron passing the ball so much; why does he look so passive in a do-or-die game?"  My theory, also like many others', was that he was trying to conserve energy for a fourth quarter push; but it was Jeff Van Gundy, I think it was, who pointed out what the real problem was: with Timofey Mozgov on the floor, Lebron didn't have the space in the post he really needed to be aggressive on that left block he loves so much, without risking a double team from whomever was guarding the big Russian center - and that was usually either Draymond Green or Andre Iguodala, both of whom are All-NBA caliber defenders, and one of whom was usually already guarding Lebron.  So rather than risk that, he was driving to the basket - but not getting enough contact for calls - shooting long jump-shots, or passing it off.  That was not Lebron's fault: he was trying to maximize his team's chances to take smart shots by not forcing up his own over difficult double teams.  That fault lies with David Blatt, who refused to make the necessary adjustment and take Mozgov out until it was too late.  Yes, he was great for Cleveland on defense, but by the second half it was pretty clear that the defensive end of the ball was their second biggest problem: their most crucial issue was that, up against a really good defense, the team didn't know how to run an offensive set because it had never had to do so all year; the only viable solution to which was to give the ball to your best player and create the best environment for him to dominate.  By leaving Mozgov on the floor, especially at the start of the 4th quarter and down 13 points, you stifled your already anemic offense by not allowing the Best Player in the Game to get his best shots.  I thought for sure that at that point, at least, they would try changing it up and forcing it into the post for James to go to work, try to go on an offensive run, but David Blatt was so afraid to make any changes to a rotation which was admittedly devastated by injuries, that it lost them Game 6 - at the very least.
     Which brings me to a point on which not too many people would agree with me, but I'm still right and they're not: Kyrie Irving's unjury in this series didn't hurt them as much as you would initially think; but not being able to play Kevin Love killed them.
     Allow me to explain.  You remember that offense I mentioned that Cleveland mostly ran when Irving and James were both on the floor?  They ran it the entirety of Game 1 and still lost in overtime.  Not only that, but Kyrie would not really be adding shots to the team; he would be taking away shots from Lebron.  See, the majority of his shots came off the dribble from his own penetration, or from set plays designed to get him looks; which, you may have noticed, is exactly how Lebron generates his own shots.  They, in essence, share the exact same shot attempts; everyone else on the team was essentially getting shots off of either a Lebron James or Kyrie irving isolation.  So when Irving went down, it didn't really mean that Cav's offense was going to change; it just meant that Lebron's usage rate was going to sky-rocket.  And if you want to know what happens when a usage rate gets that high in the NBA, just ask Russel Westbrook after this season, or Allen Iverson after basically his entire career: your field goal percentage will plummet.  It's the nature of the NBA beast, where defenses and defenders are too good and too smart to allow a single player to beat them by shooting 40 times a game: they force you to rely on teammates, and if that doesn't work you aren't going to win.
     Which is where Kevin Love's injury killed Cleveland.  You know what happens if he was able to play, but Irving wasn't?  Lebron could have posted as much as he wanted to in Game 6 without fear of those dreaded Dramond Green/Andre Iguodala double teams.  You know why?  Because Kevin Love has range, but he's so much more than just a stretch 4 or 5.  He would have given given you an even better post threat than Mozgov if you wanted to punish Golden State for going small, but when you wanted to post Lebron he could have stepped out to the corner and waited for one of two things to happen: Lebron to score in the post on an overwhelmed defender, or Lebron would have passed it to him in the corner for an open 3.  That single dynamic would have changed the way that the Warriors were able to defend as a team, and might have been enough to swing the series; not to mention the fact that Kevin Love's rebounding is just as good as Tristan Thompsan's, so you don't lose anything there, but his outlet passes might be the best in the league - another wrinkle that adds dimensions to an offense sorely in need of variety.  Kyrie - as great of a player as he is - does not really provide any new offensive threats, he just presents a separate threat that's pretty much the same as Lebron, only shorter.  I maintain that if Irving had been healthy, and Blatt didn't expand his bench anymore than he actually did, the Warriors still win the series in 6 or 7.  Without Irving, but using Marion, I still think the Warriors win in 6 or 7; and even if both Kyrie and Kevin Love are healthy and playing, the Warriors still take Game 7 at home because Love was never more than an afterthought when both Lebron and Irving were playing.  But you put Kevin Love in the lineup, with the versatility he brings to your offense, and all other things remaining the same, and the Cavs might have been able to win it in 7.  If Love can play, and Blatt gives the Matrix some minutes, I think Cleveland could have won that series.  But what do I know; that's just my humble - but nonetheless correct - opinion.

Free Blake Griffin? and Imprison Jamaal Crawford

Okay, this is going to sound stupid at first, so bear with me; and yeah,it might absolutely be an over-reaction to a couple of great games by Blake Griffin against a team that really can't match up against him...but is it possible that he doesn't really need Chris Paul anymore?  He's a capable enough point forward, and the way he led the Clippers through those first two games in Houston, even considering the second half collapse in game 2, has been - and I hate using this word in this context, but screw it - a goddamn Revelation.  He was aggressive, you could see that he felt the weight of the team's future on his shoulders, and he acquit himself more than admirably.  He looked like one of the best three players in the NBA, he looked like a taller, more athletic version of Charles Barkley in the open floor but an even better passer.  Barkley could transform a teams offense all by himself as well, but that was generally by dominating the post and forcing double teams, and then kicking the ball out to open shooters or KJ diving for the rim.  But what Blake Griffin showed was not just the ability to be the center of an efficient, potent offense, but the orchestrater of that offense, which was not really something that Barkley was ever comfortable doing.  I'm not trying to pull the "this old guy was great but he never did anything like this!" routine which I hate so very much for so very many reasons; I'm simply saying I haven't seen a real power forward run an offense quit like that since maybe Sir Charles.  They are completely different players, and Barkley was so destructive backing someone down in the post - Griffin is still working on his footwork down there - but he's shown the ability to completely dominate a game with two extremely serious MVP candidates on the other team (Dwight in 2010 and Harden now) with a nothing but spare parts on his own bench.  It was impressive, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
     Which is why I'm so confused about how he's come out in game 3.  The Blake Griffin that we saw in the first two games is gone; he's back to being the after-thought in the Clipper's offense, as basically everyone not named Chris Paul ignores him and does their own thing.  It worked that game, but what about other games, when the momentum swings and the long-range shots stop falling, who do you really want in an isolation situation: Jamaal Crawford or Blake Griffin?  Based on game 2, I'm taking the latter - I'm also going to discuss Iso Jamaal a little later.  But I'm staying on Blake for now.  I'm serious about the Chris Paul thing, though; Chris Paul is still the best pure point guard in the NBA, and he seems to be the only one really concentrating on getting Griffin the ball and letting him work; but as long as he's on the team, the Clippers are his team, and he is running the offense.  That's who he is, and that's what makes him great.  I don't blame Chris Paul for their dynamic, but the fact remains that CP3 is the alpha on that team, and Griffin is the beta,  You can see it in the way Blake plays when Paul is on the floor: gone is the calm, collected,  supremely confident destroyer of worlds who never forced a shot because he knew that he was getting the ball back whenever he wanted.  He was replaced with the tentative Blake who sometimes forced the issue because Chris Paul just passed him the ball, he needs to make this one count.  You see what I'm saying?  Maybe you don't.
     So here's an example I saw in my favorite team's history: in 2006 the Dallas Mavericks let Steve Nash walk because Mark Cuban didn't think that he was worth $50 million; so he spent $72 million on Eric Dampier.  Not his best off-season (some of you are thinking, "who is Eric Dampier?" Exactly.  Think a 7 footer with the upper body of Glen Davis, the lower body of Andre Kirilenko, and the hands of Kwame Brown).  But you know what happened as a result?  A budding superstar from Germany turned into Dirk Nowitzki, MVP, one of the greatest offensive forces in NBA history, and eventual Finals MVP.  He might never have become the Dirk that destroyed Miami's first finals run had Steve Nash stayed in town, because as long as Nash was around Dirk never had to grow: but through some heartbreaking losses while having to carry a team that maybe he wasn't quite ready yet to carry, he learned how; and once the Mavs were able to put the right team around him, he showed the entire world just how well he had learned it.  My point is that I think Blake Griffin is approaching the same point in his career, if he isn't there already.  His play last season when Chris Paul was out, as well as the first two games against Houston, have proved that he's capable of not only running an offense while being the main scoring threat within it, but thriving in that role.  And yeah, Chris Paul was the guy taking - and hitting, mind you - the last shot to beat the Spurs, but that's kind of my point: at what point does that shot become Blake's?  If he's going to maximize his potential, doesn't that decision eventually need to go through him?  Even if he misses, it will help him learn how to make the next one.  That won't happen with Chris Paul on the team, first because as long as CP3 is there he doesn't need to be the one taking it; and second because he will always defer to Chris Paul, even if in a season or two he really shouldn't be doing so any longer.  I've always felt that something about the Clippers' offense felt a little...I don't know, off; like it was a new jacket that you bought before trying it on, and now you find out it's a little bit too tight across the shoulders, but dammit it cost you $50 and you're going to freaking wear it.  Maybe that's what the issue is: Blake Griffin needs to be the centerpiece, but is content being Chris Paul's sidekick.  Ditching Paul would definitely be worse for the Clippers, but it might be better for Blake; and in the long run that might be better for the Clippers, the League, Everybody.  I don't know, it's just a thought.
     Now, back to Jamaal Crawford: I hate watching him play basketball.  I have always hated watching him play basketball.  The worst day of my life as a secondary fan of the Trail Blazers (meaning that the Mavs were my favorite team, but Portland was my alternate) was when Brandon Roy revealed that he was going to have to retire since, you know, he had no cartilage left in either knee.  The second worst day of my life was when that same team signed Jamaal Crawford to try and replace him.  You know who Crawford is?  He's the guy that shows up to play pickup ball, gets onto your team, and does nothing but demand the ball when he doesn't have it, and blindly shoots it when he does.  You're going to lose every single game until that dude starts hitting his shots, no matter how impressive they look once they start going in, because that's how he plays.  The thing of it is, you aren't going to be happy once the shots start going in: you just get more frustrated because even if he's hitting them, they're still terrible shots and stupid basketball plays.  Every one else on the team stops moving on offensive, cause the ball rarely only leaves his hands when he's shooting it over double and triple teams,  he's not going to pass it, so why bother?
     That's who Jamaal Crawford has always been; every second he's on the floor, he's killing your offense, whether or not his shots go in: no one else is going to play with any effort, because Crawford is just going to iso and shoot, iso and shoot, iso and shoot.  Sure, one in ten games he catches fire and looks like an all-star; the problem is that there is no "heat-check" shot with Crawford: there are just "shots."  They would all qualify as a heat-check for anyone else, and you know what the most consistent thing about every heat check is?  Low shooting percentage.  Crawford hurts you more than he helps you, until the stars align and he starts making those stupid shots.  But that isn't going to make his teammates forgive him.  There were two specific moments I noticed in the second half of Game 2, when the Clippers' offense was smothered by Jamaal Crawford's poor decision making: the first was, after making a difficult layup instead of passing it off to a wide open teammate, Crawford crashed to the ground, and immediately sat up with hands extended, looking for teammates to help him up.  Except that not one of them did; there were plenty of them around, but he had to get up himself.  The other moment that made me chortle with genuine glee was in the last two minutes of the game, when the Clippers started making a run to get back in the game, Jamaal Crawford dribbled out an entire shot clock at the top of the key and then shot a contested three from well behind the three point line.  He missed the shot; what I loved about the possession was that with about 6 seconds left on the shot clock, Doc Rivers had come all the way up sidelines and was standing in the middle of the court, on the wrong side of the half-court line, screaming at his team.  It looked like he was about one popped nerve away from running out onto the court and taking the ball out of Crawford's hands himself.  It was amazing.  (I tried really hard to find clips of this on youtube, but failed; seriously, I typed three completely different searches and scanned through the first 15 videos for each one.  You'll have to find someone who DVRed the game and hasn't deleted it yet for sentimental reasons, so they'd probably be a Rockets fan; in which case I wouldn't advise associating with them any further than that).
    So that's really all I got: free Blake (maybe) and cut bait on Crawford.  Either way, just don't let the Grizzlies or Cavs win this year and I at least will be marginally content.

My NBA Hall of Fame for Haters...Hatees? Its the Players I've Hated the Most; not every title can be clever!

So, obviously I was way off about the Mavericks; but on the plus side, I now have a new NBA basketball player to hate passionately!  This august club was currently inhabited by only three other players from the 25 years I've been watching NBA basketball games, and the ten years I've actually understood it.

Where is he posing for this, in a sauna?  Who
poses in a sauna?  Oh that's right, douchebags.

I think this is Photoshop; I want it so badly to be
photoshopped because I want to believe that Rick Fox
is the type of guy who would Photoshop himself into a
picture of the Hawaiian Pacific; also because if it's
real, he makes Hawaii look really lame and I used
to want to go there eventually/

The first was Rick G.D. Fox; not just because he looked like a douche, played like a douche, and was absolutely a douche, but because he once mugged Uncle Cliffie while the Lakers were getting clobbered by a relatively-no-talent Phoenix team.  (I've tried to find a clip from this game; it's not on YouTube.  Which is probably more disappointing to me than it is to you, because watching it again would remind me of just how much I should still despise Rick S.O.B. Fox).

Look its 2-Pac!  X-Pac?  The 1-2-3 Kid?
This picture alone should be
reason enough to hate him.

     The second player to earn his illustrious spot in this mighty pantheon of hate was and will forever be Matt Barnes, for the 2007 Mavericks-Warriors series.  I hated that series, and hate having to hear about it every year the playoffs roll around again (and of course they conveniently forget to mention that the 2011 Spurs, as the 1 Seed, lost to the 8th seeded Memphis Grizzlies in 5 games; because such a wonderful, superlative, and all around perfect organization as the Spurs could never be guilty of such a massive cock-up).  But the only player on the 2007 Warriors squad I ever truly hated, and still do this very day, was Matt F'ing Barnes.  I love seeing him every season on a team that's not quite good enough to win a title as he keeps trying to chase a ring; and you can tell they aren't quite good enough to win a title because they were willing to employ Matt Barnes, and even to play him significant minutes in meaningful basketball games.  If you're looking for a reason for why the Clippers as presently constituted will never win the chip, you need only to glance at their starting lineup to realize: "How the hell is Matt Barnes a starter?"  My little brother once said that he would happily pay the $10,000 and suffer the inevitable ban from the American Airlines Center just for the opportunity to sit court-side and start a new Malice at the Palace with Matt Barnes by throwing a full cup of "beverage" full into his stupid face.  But you know what?  This one wouldn't even get a catchy little nickname, because everyone hates Matt Barnes.  It would just be referred to as the day Matt Barnes got beer on his face.
     The third player whom I hate with the burning passion of a thousand matchsticks is Lamar Odom.

What's in the bag?  Probably all of the money he
stole from Mark Cuban; he keeps it in cash so
that the banks can't track it and Chloe "the
Fat" Kardashian can't get her meaty hands
on it.

 That dude sucks; he can shampoo my crotch.  I actually even used to like him, before he took five million dollars from the Mavericks to show up out of shape, be unwilling to play, and became an all-around waste of candy-eating space.  I hate him so much I'm alternately glad that he's been drummed out of the league, but also pissed at not being able to laugh at watching him fail to play basketball on a semi-nightly basis.  Screw that guy.

True Rondo Stat: if you google Rajon Rondo right now and
check out the image results, you'll have to go through exactly 81 images before you'll find one of him smiling.

     And my new favorite hate-crush, is of course: Rajon Mother-Freaking Rondo (that's exactly what I call him in 2K15, where of course the computer GM doesn't have the brains to jettison him after 3 seasons like the real Mavs did after only half of one; okay, its a PG-13 version of what I call him).  He's basically the same as Lamar Odom in that he has taken people's money to purposely not give a single shi*t about the people paying him said money.  I hope he never plays another significant minute of basketball in the rest of his putrid career, goes bankrupt after his second year of involuntary retirement - cause not even the worst teams in the league are dumb enough by then to waste the roster spot on him - and so he has to join onto Randy Whittman's staff as an assistant-to-an-assistant coach.

At least he still has a career in the professional Connect Four League to which he can look forward.  Wait, they don't have one of those?  Whoops...

So who do you hate for no good reason?  And no, I will not accept me as an answer; that should just be a given by now.

The 2015 Mavs: the Team that Just Wouldn't Die

     Dirk hit a pretty large milestone last night, becoming only the seventh player with 20,000 points, 10,000 rebounds and 1,000 blocks; which means that he is certainly one of the greatest big men to play in the NBA.  He also became the only player in NBA history with all of the above accumulated stats, plus 1,0000 made three pointers; which means that he's probably the most offensively versatile big man ever.  I hate the label that all of the commentators seem to give him, though: "the best shooting big man to play in the NBA."  Yeah, no sh*t.  Who's his only real competition, Patrick Ewing?  His shots may have gone in, but they looked ugly and no one wanted him to shoot them in the first place: they always wanted Ewing to be a bruising, aggressively physical offensive presence.  He always wanted to be a finesse player, which is why he finger-rolled that layup out of the rim in the 1993 series against the Bulls, instead of dunking it like a normal seven-foot tall center.
     But let's be honest, shall we?  Calling someone the "best shooting big man" is sort of like calling someone "the best rebounding point guard" or "the best female NASCAR driver," or "the best SNL cast member between Eddie Murphy and Chris Farley": its a back-handed compliment.  I would submit that Dirk is not just a huge man with a good-for-his size jump-shot; he is, in fact, a great shooter, one of the best in the history of the NBA, regardless of height.  How many 50-40-90 seasons (an entire season shooting 50% from the field, 40% from the 3-point line, and 90% from the free throw line) does Kobe have?  I'll give you a hint: it rhymes with "Hero" and starts with a letter that every other transplanted British colony pronounces "zed".
   Obviously, Dirk Nowitzki is not a better overall basketball player than Kobe Bryant, but if you wanted to argue that he was a better shooter, there would be some stats to back it up.  My point is, basically, stop belittling how good the man has been and recognize him as one of the best shooters in the history of the game, period; no "big man" qualifiers or asterisks.  But this has been mostly a down year for him, as age and the heavy burden of carrying a mostly-successful-but-still-too-often-somehow-incompetent franchise for the majority of his career begin to finally show in his production.  Which is even sadder when you consider that for the three previous seasons, he may still have been putting up MVP-ish numbers, if the Mavericks had bothered to pass him the ball ever.  Seriously, Vince Carter averaged more shots coming off the bench last season than one of the best players in the NBA, and still the best player on the team.  That no longer seems to be the case, but that's okay: we all have to prepare for the day when our favorite player on our favorite team can no longer shoulder the heavy burden of leading an NBA team, but that doesn't mean we are actually ready to let go (isn't that right, Lakers fans?).

     Which has left the Mavericks in a bit of a quandary this season, what with Monte Ellis and Rajon Rondo meshing about as well as Dale and Brennon; we can only hope that their partnering ends as well as the duo in the movie's did.  And even though the season is nearly over, and the Mavs seem destined for another year finishing in the bottom of the conference, followed by an ignominious first round exit (hello 2007-10!),  I can't seem to give up on this team yet.  I've wanted to; by Pete Maravich's floppy socks, how I've wanted to.  After Friday's loss to Memphis, and the embarrassing loss to the Suns two days later, I was essentially willing to write the season off as another example of why, although you might still be able to make the playoffs every year, you will probably never win a title bringing in 12 new players every season; and by the end of the first half of Tuesday's match-up with the defending Champion San Antonio Spurs, I couldn't help but feel slightly vindicated: while I was sad to see my favorite team losing in such a horrible fashion, I also enjoy being right - especially about basketball.  Then the third quarter happened, and well, I couldn't give up on them quite yet.  That's how the entire season has felt for me, by the way.  Every time I watch them have a terrible game, I can't help but think: "well, they look like a great team on paper but I guess the pieces just don't fit," they've come back within another game or two with a victory that reminds that the 1995 Houston Rockets won their second of back-back NBA titles while not being able to secure one of the top 4 spots in the conference.
    I don't think this Mavs team is going to win the Championship; there are too many warning signs that suggest otherwise.  But I do think the team has the potential, if a few things break the right way: if Monte pulls out of his slump, and Dirk plays strong in the playoffs like he has always done, and especially if Rajon Rondo turns into ROOONDOOOO!!!!!!  You never know, stranger things have happened; and that's what we watch sports for in the first place.  So I'm back in; I'm not giving up on this team again all season, at least not until they get knocked out of the playoffs...then again, they play the Spurs in San Antonio on Friday, and Oklahoma City, Houston, and Golden State next week, so...I mean, I haven't given up on them right now; that should count for something, right?  Yeah, you're right, probably not.