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.

Will Losing Demarco Ruin the Cowboys?

Not the best title; I couldn't think of anything better.  Sorry; I know that the absolutely nobody reading this is really going to be disappointed in the title, and for that I refuse to apologize.  Demarco Murray is gone, and to the Philadelphia Eagles, no less; how much does it really end up hurting the Dallas Cowboys, though?  That's actually a harder question that it appears, depending on how you view Murray's 2014-2015 season.  Here's his stats:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://widgets.sports-reference.com/wg.fcgi?css=1&site=pfr&url=%2Fplayers%2FM%2FMurrDe00.htm&div=div_rushing_and_receiving"></script>

Since I'm pretty sure that didn't work, here's just a link to the site; not to be confused with the one to the past.  What, I'm not a web designer!  If I had the ability to customize the appearance and performance of the blog on my own, I wouldn't have to use blogger.

Look at the numbers, and then tell me this: what do you see in the previous three seasons that would lead you to believe that he was capable of having the type of season he just had?  The correct answer, by the way, should be absolutely nothing.  If, on top of that, you watched every one of those games - like I did - you would be even more hard pressed to believe it.  Not that Murray isn't a talented running back; he obviously is.  But I was never really that impressed with his performances in previous years: he was a little slow, didn't explode through the gaps like the more electrifying runners tended to do, and his lack of foot speed meant that some runs which might have ended in the zone specifically designated as "end", he would get caught by a safety and pulled down after 20 or thirty yards.  On the other hand, he was almost always injured - he may not have missed a lot of games because of the injuries, but he definitely didn't have the impact on the games that he might been able to have, had he been healthy.  But I never once said to myself, "I'm really excited that we have Demarco Murray; I think he could be the best running back in the NFL for at least one season."  What I usually thought was, "I wonder if we can package him with Miles Austin for somebody useful, before the rest of the league realizes that they're more likely to get struck by lightning in an airplane flying through shark-infested airspace, than actually have another full, productive season."  Turns out I was half-right about that; Austin is effectively done, but Murray might still have a shot.

That, to me, is the biggest question: how indicative was last year to Murray's future success?  Was it the first of many great years to come, preceded by a few injury riddled, growing-pain seasons?  Or was last year basically just Miles Austin's breakout 2009 season, after which he only ever had one more productive year (at the moment, at any rate).  Players who are injury prone are such usually due to a combination of bad luck and genetics, which I guess could also be considered a form of luck, since you can't really choose what type of arches you have under your feet; you just have to live with it and hope you don't roll your ankles too often.  That's why Greg Oden is out of the NBA, why Sam Bowie never panned out, and why Murray dropped so far in the draft back in 2011; and until the 2014-15 season, it was a legitimate concern.  It's noteworthy also that even in the midst of that season, the biggest concern was whether or not he would be able to stay healthy, because he had never before shown the ability to do so.  It's still a concern, in my opinion: you don't go from missing 4 games a year to never missing another game for the rest of your career, especially not when you're playing the most dangerous position in a violent sport.

Consider also that Dallas has one of the best offensive lines in the league; and while they may not yet have the experience that some other groups have, every time we needed a play throughout the year they came through with a big hole for Murray or protected Romo for enough time to create the play in the air.  There were multiple games were he had over 5 seconds to make crucial plays down the stretch of big games, and that is all due to the lineman.  The one, continuous image I have from every one of Murray's runs last year was the size of the holes that he was given; they were huge.  I'm not trying to completely disregard what Murray was able to do with the gaps the lineman opened up for him, but remember: before the season, absolutely no one  was picking Murray to have a big season.  He wasn't on anyone's radar, not even the fantasy football sites which at least might have predicted a statistical uptick.  If Murray had gone out with a torn ACL in preseason, no one would have been predicting doom for the season, the way I thought they were doomed when Sean Lee went down.  All of this underscores just how marvelous the season was for Murray, but it also highlights a point that no one seems to talk about anymore: we never talked about him before the season because he wasn't that great of a player.  He was a mediocre running back, just another Marion Barber, with slow feet and injury problems.  Another very important factor: look at the number of carries he had last season.  That is an insane amount; the Cowboys played like they were determined to run him into the ground.  Emmitt Smith never had that many targets per game; he was close a couple of years, between 1992 and 1995, but for the most part he was down around 18-25 carries + receptions a game.  So how much of Murray's success to we attribute to his massive workload?  Also, very hard to say.

Hey, guess what?  I have a long, incredibly over-thought comparison for just this situation, based off of one of my favorite teams of all time: the 2011 NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks.  The 2015 Cowboys and the 2011 Mavs actually have a lot in common, despite the fact that they play extremely different sports.  Lets start with the coaches: Rick Carlisle is one of the best coaches in the NBA, who has consistently demonstrated an uncanny ability to get more production from players than anyone would have expected (See Ellis, Monte).  The Cowboys, likewise, have...no, not Jason Garrett; Rod Marinelli.  Did you see what he did with what was supposed to be the worst defense in NFL history, simultaneously resurrecting the careers of 3 NFL players?  He can do no wrong; he is my old, angry, drill-sergeant hero.  On to the star of the team: an eccentrically brilliant superstar who had been maligned in recent years as too old to lead a team to a championship (a fair concern), and unfairly labeled as a "loser" who couldn't handle big game pressure.  Ladies and gentleman, I give you Tony Romo/Dirk Nowitzki!  Both feature a defense standout with the potential to be one of the best in the league, but who - due to injuries - has been overlooked in the recent season or two: Sean Lee, playing the role of Tyson Chandler.  (Though to be fair, its unclear whether Lee can ever have the same impact on a team in a leadership role that Chandler has demonstrated the ability to have).  Also, standing along-side the team leader is his veteran sidekick, the faithful old workhorse who always comes through when the team needs him, with big plays, big stops, and overall clutch performance: Jason Eugene Terry Witten.  Follow that up with a cast of over-acheiving role players, and it's a pretty inspiring comparison so far, right?  And I haven't even mentioned Dez Bryant, because that Mavericks team didn't ever have a second superstar of his caliber; of course, there are more positions on a football team, so there's bound to be more impact positions on the field than there are on a basketball court, so don't get too excited about it.

What the comparison hinges on, really, is the answer to the question: who is Demarco Murray?  I can only come up with two relevant possibilities, one which makes the coming season look rather plesant, but the other could be damning.  We'll start with hope, since there's always a surplus of it in the preseason: Demarco Murray is actually Caron Butler.  Most people forget this, since he went down in January with a knee injury that kept him sidelined for the rest of the year - including playoffs - but Caron Butler was the Mavs' second leading scorer that year, and a big reason why they were having such a great season.  When he went down, there were legitimate concerns that the Mavs wouldn't be able to replace his offense or his defense.  But Shawn Marion, the Matrix, stepped in and provided more than enough of both, while fitting seamlessly into the starting unit.  You can see where this is headed, right?  What was thought to be a major blow to the team turned out to be a minor hitch., because the rest of the players were dialed in to a system that had been perfectly suited to their talents and abilities.  Butler went down, his backup stepped in and filled the role admirably, and the Mavs went on the win the title.  Hopefully, losing Murray will be similar for the 2015 Cowboys: the infrastructure and surrounding talent is good enough that Darren McFadden and a draft pick will be able to step in to provide enough of what Murray gave us, that they'll be fine without him.  Although I don't think the team is good enough to win a Superbowl; I didn't last year, and they haven't gotten any better, so let's not get crazy about the predictions.  But, if everything works out this way, then they could have a shot at the NFC championship.  Maybe.

But there's also the chance that I have misdiagnosed the disease, and what I thought was a head cold turned out to the flu.  What if Murray is actually Jason Kidd?  Kidd never put up stats in 2011 anywhere near Murray's from last year, but if you remove Jason Kidd from that Mavs team, their entire offense sort of falls apart.  It was built off of his ability to run the team, and his pass-first attitude rubbed off on the entire team; you may have notice it happening to the Knicks in 2013 every time he stepped on the court...until his jump-shot died and Mike Woodson decided that he was a liability, and tanked him through the entire playoffs.  I'm just saying, if any Knicks fans were wondering what happened to all of the good feelings and ball-movement which seemed to abound during the regular season yet disappeared in May, that's why: Jason Kidd wasn't on the court anymore, and no one else knew how to pass the ball.  What if losing Murray has the same effect on the Cowboys?

By the way, I don't have an answer for that.  I hope that I'm right and the offensive line is good enough after another season to make up the difference with a lesser running back, but hope springs eternal in postseason and, for Cowboys fans, usually dies in December.

Sword of Vathir: Chapter 3

I'm about 90% done with writing the book, and I can't find the motivation to finish it.  I haven't done more than jot down a paragraph or two in the last month.  So, in a most likely futile effort to motivate myself again, I'm going to post chapter 3 to the blog that no one reads.  Enjoy it, cyberspace.

Elle was wholly disappointed; she had expected to feel much more...satisfied than she was.  After years of daydreaming, planning, preparations; almost the whole of her adolescent life spent entirely consumed by the passions to which she had just given vent.  And yet, she still felt...somewhat empty.  She still recalled every single second leading up to the climactic moment; slinking through corridors alone, heart racing with excitement as the adrenalin surged through her, creeping silently into the dark bedroom.  Even now the excitement of those events was embedded into her memory, and she found herself shaking at the recollection of them; the deed itself, however, seemed to pass away into the night - almost as if it hadn't happened at all.
Except that it had; the blood stains were mute evidence of that.  She had been warned that it might be this way, that afterwards she might feel disillusioned; that the disappointment was so common, it might as well be described as universal.  But not for me, she had thought.  I'll remember this moment forever; and yet now she found herself almost wishing that she could forget it.
She heard voices in the room to her right, and she stopped walking and pressed her back up against the wall.  As she crept closer to the doorway, Elle dropped quietly to her knees and waited; the night was black, empty, and chill.  There was no wind tonight, thank the gods - it was cold enough on winter nights without the biting of a northern wind - and no other sounds in the hallway this late, so she could hear them clearly enough; she crept up to the door and watched the sliver of sputtering candle light creep across the stone floors.
"Thomis, I said no!"
"You said that last time, as well; but by the end, I wager I'll have you saying 'yes' again."
"Last time was a mistake; my husband is due back in the morning-"
"All the more reason to cherish our moments together."
The candle light faded away, and the voices with them; Elle was all too sure of what the interrupted hiatus meant, but she was equally sure that they would no longer be interested in what was happening outside of their room.  At least, not for the next ten to fifteen minutes; or less, depending on Thomis' stamina.  Elle was inclined to think that it would actually be well short of ten minutes, probably nearer to three; regardless, that was more than enough time for her.  By then, she would be well out of earshot.
She continued on into the night, moving quickly on her soft, bare feet.  It took her another ten minutes to reach her own quarters; it felt like ten hours.  Every sound, every glimmer of moonlight through the window panes, seemed to harbor some unseen foe.  Elle traveled with her hand firmly grasping the knife that had been given to her, and which she now kept strapped to her upper thigh; she did not want to have to use it, but was well aware of what could happen if she was caught in such a compromising situation.  She was determined to prevent it.
Elle entered her quarters, closing the door as quickly as she could while also being mindful not to make any sound.  She dashed from the door to her chest of drawers, and flung it open; and stared in shock.
"What the hell?"
She had spent months preparing the exact items she would need for her trip north, and had stored them all in the bottom drawer, which was now completely empty.  No longer worried about being overheard, Elle tore through the other drawers, in the hopes that she might find something: the map that Robert had prepared for her, the coin purse, a small supply of food and water.  None; they were all missing.  She started to panic, when suddenly she remembered: she had packed them all that morning into a knapsack which she had then stored underneath her bed.  She ran to the bed and knelt down, nearly jumping underneath it in her haste to find the precious bag.
There it was: nestled up against the far wall.  She grabbed it with both hands and pulled it out, then wrapped her harms around it as she sat up against the straw-filled mattress, rocking it back and forth like it was a child.  After a few moments of heavy breathing, she was finally able to calm down; and then she began to laugh.  The disappointment she had been told to expect; but no one mentioned the possibility of her turning into some sort of a frantic, simple-minded idiot.
It was just the excess adrenaline, combined with the emotional shock she had just put herself through, which robbed her of her good sense for a moment.  She pulled the water-skin from the bag and drank fully half of it before returning it to her sack.  It was then, after Elle had calmed down and recovered her sanity, that she pulled the knife from the leather sheath tied to her leg, and examined it.  It was not a work of art, to be sure; it was a simple, unadorned weapon designed for utility, such as any common cutpurse might use.  But it was precious to her for other intensely personal reasons.  It was the first knife she stole after being orphaned, just over a decade ago; and it was now a gateway to all of her memories of this night.  She stared at the blood coating the blade, and remembered how his throat had whistled when she sliced it open.  The carpenter's saw she had used to sever the wretch's head off had been thrown out of the window, but the knife?  She would keep this always.  She wasn't even going to clean the blade; she would never use it again.  It was a priceless artifact now, the knife that killed the crown prince.
She threw the bag over her shoulder and climbed out the window, and down the rope ladder she had placed there earlier that night.  Awaiting Elle on the ground was a horse; she mounted, and rode away at a steady trot, still trying not to make too much noise.  In the West, the sun was beginning to rise; the gates out of the city will be opening just as she arrived, and she would be miles from the Black Hall when the bastard King came to wake his bastard son.

An Ironically Boring and Not-So-Brief History of Entertainment (part 2)

The original point I wanted to make when I began this post was to bemoan the lack of quality storytelling in a lot of the recent games I have played; while the mechanics and graphics have increased exponentially, I feel like the truly great stories that used to be told in days when they couldn't just rely on graphics and gameplay to push the narrative, are lost.  Which is a shame, because as I said before, video games have the potential to be the absolute pinnacle of entertainment.

Look at it this way: every form of storytelling that has come before was superseded by an advancement in the teller's ability to create an environment in which the listeners could immerse themselves.  Do you want to see a quick time line?  I think you do!!!  Keep in mind that I am not a legitimate historian and this may all just be a massive pile of triceratops droppings, through which you may or may not be willing to sift to find the (poison) berries.  Not a great reward for putting up with all of the shit, right?  So it's the perfect metaphor for my blog!

We'll start with the genesis of story-telling, which was - oddly enough - telling stories.  Simple, right?  This oral tradition was eventually overtaken by the written word after the invention of the printing press by an enterprising - albeit ex-communicated - German Johannes Gutenberg and his movable type, which for the first time allowed the masses to own books of their own.  It wasn't simply mass appeal that won the day for the written medium, though; it was the fact that reading allowed the hearer of the story to become the teller of the story as well, in their own minds.  Whereas they were previously tied to the vocal stylings of whatever itinerant storyteller happened to wander in and ply their trade, with a book they were able to use their imaginations to create every aspect of the tale - other than the actual events it detailed.

Books and the written word were eventually replaced though, with the advent of the Radio - which, from an actual story-telling standpoint was sort of a step backwards from my perspective.  What real difference was there between a radio broadcast and a story-teller sitting on a stool and doing his damnedest to earn an evenings meal?  Outside of the obvious commercial interruptions and the ability to reach a far greater audience, the differences were seemingly negligible.  But that wider audience, plus the added bonus that you no longer actually had to read, except when the oppressive, torture-happy Junior High School teachers demanded it, was enough to catapult the Radio into the upper echelon of the entertainment media pantheon.  But unlike it's predecessor's, its time on the throne was destined to be short-lived; not unlike the Baratheon-Lannister Dynasty.



Because flying into the scene with beating, leathery wings and fire bursting from it's gaping, razor-toothed maw came an invincible dragon bearing a silvery-haired goddess upon it's back to ascend the entertainment throne: television.  No longer was imagination even necessary for telling a story: every aspect of it could be controlled by those doing the telling, which meant that every one saw it the way that it was meant to be seen; and while the listeners were left to sit and discuss about the meaning and the intent of the story, no longer could there be any debate about concrete building blocks of the tale itself: what the main characters looked like, what their voices sounded like, and how they felt about the events which they were forced to endure.

Television then gave birth to a monstrous wyvern even more fearsome than its own legendary self, Film; and while occasionally - see the last 5 years or so of the television-al renaissance - the old beast launches into the air to remind us of how terrifyingly adept it can still be at devouring the attention spans of its entertained victims, Film still reigns supreme because of it's shorter time frame - allowing the viewers to experience the beginning and ending of the story in usually no more than 2 hours, every Peter Jackson epic notwithstanding - and it's monstrous budgets.  I should mention that I am perfectly aware that Film was invented before television, but after TV broadcasts became regular it dethroned Film for a few decades as King of the Reeled Mountain; and in the interests of simplicity (read: the titular laziness and semi-competence) I chose to ignore the historical timeline, so that I didn't have to write a gigantic exposition about how and why it occurred...instead simply trading it for a barely shorter one.  Hurrah!
   
Quick aside: it's interesting to me that the American Television Renaissance - which began with the Sopranos and 24, and hopefully hasn't ended with Mad Men and Breaking Bad (and my personal favorite, Justified, which is on its final season) - occurred not by trying to mimic film's ability to tell an entire story within a single time-frame but by embracing the differences between the two mediums and building longer, more complex stories in which the audience could drift like a crocodile in a Serengeti oasis.  Yes, that is an odd, mostly inapplicable simile; but I stand by it.  Because I like crocodiles.  Think about it: most of the great, influential, or popular TV shows from the 50's to the late 90's all had one thing in common: episodic narrative structure.  You knew going in that in this episode the hero would be faced with a problem, and he or she would figure it out by the end; sometimes it might take a second or third episode to reach a final resolution, but those were promotional stunt-aberrations which varied outside the comforting, pillowy norm.

But within the last fifteen years, television studios in the U.S. finally realized what most of their British and Japanese-Cartoon counterparts already knew: that audiences preferred seeing a single, complete story-line with a definitive beginning and ending, over watching the same group of people endlessly repeat similar shenanigans over the course of a decade or so before finally petering out into a charade of its younger self.  I think the hesitation to adopt the currently successful narrative style of season long story-telling was due mostly to the fear that it would be impossible to catch the interest of new viewers, who might be stumbling into the events in the middle of the season -and thus the story (although it should be noted that, from a strictly story-telling standpoint, that is often the most interesting place to start, in media res, which is one of the thousands of reasons why the original Star Wars trilogy was more entertaining than its abominable prequel trilogy); but the advent of digital medium, Netflix, Hulu, DVD's and - if we're all being honest with ourselves - digital piracy at one time or another, allows us to catch up at any time.


And if I could be permitted an aside to my honestly slightly-too-long original aside, is there anything worse than the corporate machine latching onto a term we sort of used sarcastically amongst ourselves and acting like they were in on the joke?  Like they did with "binge-watch."  It makes you feel like one of the first fans of a band that started out in relative obscurity - like, say Kings of Leon during their first three albums - only to look at all of their new fans with a sort of prideful disdain, as if they could never truly appreciate them the way that you currently do and thus they are inferior to you.  I'm not saying it's right, I'm just saying it happens.  (That's a great documentary and a very useful study into the decision making processes of most of the music industry, aside from unintentionally being an interesting commentary on just the sort of arrogant group-think I just mentioned).  Basically what I'm saying is, I hate seeing every network advertise it's new season of a show by saying anything like, "Time to binge!"  Shut up, marketing majors; and stop stealing our inside jokes.

Which brings me to my main point: the next step in the evolution of the story-telling industry would be a medium which allows the viewer to experience the events in the same manner as in television or film - a masterful concoction of visual and auditory narrative - while actually being able to control and determine the direction of the narrative.  What is that, if not video games?

Why then are they still the socially-awkward-cousin-who-keeps-audibly-slurping-the-excess-spit-from-the-back-of-his-retainer-back-down-his-throat-when-you're-trying-to-make-a-move-on-the-hot-girl-at-the-junior-high-rec-center-dance of the entertainment family (my god, am I abusing hyphens);  the Rodney Dangerfield of storytelling mediums (I don't really have to say it, do I?  If you don't know what I mean, just Google his name, I guarantee you'll figure it out in under ten seconds)?

I think the largest reason is that they are still relatively new, and the technology has only recently reached a state which allows them to be a visually immersive experience for the players.  I mean, the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past is one of the best games ever made, but no one was looking at those 16-bit sprites and saying: "Wow, Link looks just like a real person!"  Compare that to now, when the cut-scenes from most new-gen games look almost as real as an actual film of fully developed human beings.  But that is going to change within the next decade, as you'll see more and more games with high profile actors and story-tellers involved in the development process.  What might not ever change though, and is the biggest reason that video games are relegated to the kiddy-table, is that they just don't have the budget to compete with the major motion picture and television studios for the hiring of talent; and they might not ever have it.  Think about it: why would Steven Spielberg waste years helping to develop a video game that's going to pay him 1/10th what he could make shooting a movie in three months?  Sure, there have been a few exceptions; but they are just that: exceptions.  For the most part, the A-list names of Hollywood have been reluctant to tie themselves to a video game, and when they do you most certainly do not see them hitting the talk show circuit to promote their new game, like they would if it were a film or TV show.

Bow before...this thing.

That's the nature of the business, and I've resigned myself to it; but one thing which I refuse to accept, and which I'm sure is a determining factor in  causing the major entertainment outlets to withhold their support from the development of video games, is the fact that - for the most part - most of the stories they are telling these days just aren't that compelling.  My prime example of this is Dragon Age: Inquisition which received rave reviews from all of the critical outlets, for both its gameplay (deservedly) and storytelling (...less deservedly so). No, you know what?  I'm not even going to try to be polite about it: that story was disappointingly narrow in its scope and short-sighted in its execution.  If it hadn't been for the developers adding level requirements to complete the quests that made up the main story arc, it would have taken me about two hours to complete the entire thing.  There is little to no creativity in any of it; they even recycle the villain from the previous game.  "Oh, it turns out that Corypheus wasn't killed!"  Really?  Cause what it looks like is you decided to reuse a lame enemy who had little to no involvement in the previous game in an attempt to make it look like you had been trying to tell a single, connected narrative the entire time."

What's truly disappointing was that, for a while, the gameplay was great, and exploring the first unlockable area of the world into which you are dropped truly was entertaining, but at a certain point you remember that all quests in a Bioware game devolve into a very simple formula: go to a specific point on the map, maybe solve a tiny, piddling little puzzle, kill something, and watch a cut-scene (if its a Main quest) or just get an informational pop-up (for the side quests).  There were multiple, expansive areas of differing terrains, but ultimately what you were asked to do in each of them was exactly the same - only the backdrop had changed.  But to be honest, I would have been able to overlook all of that if the story had been as well-crafted as any of the Mass Effect games, or even Link to the Past - which may have been simple in it's overall narrative, but everything you did had a purpose and a direct impact on the rest of the story.  The only real impact that you can have in the course of Inquisition is to decide on the aesthetics of the Skyhold fortress into which you eventually move, and whether or not you want Templars or Mages walking around inside of it.  Within the context of the story, you really have almost no ability to determine the outcome.  You just go to an area, fight some sword-fodder, watch a cut-scene with Corypheus, fight a boss, and watch another cut-scene.  I was so disappointed in the story that I will probably never play the game again.

Contrast that to the story of a game like Final Fantasy VII, which is the sole reason I continue to play the game again and again.  Sure, the graphics are outdated, you have to read every bit of dialogue because they didn't have voice-actors (which, given the terrible history JRPG's have with them, might be notch under the 'W' column), and the grinding, repetitive nature of the combat itself - not to mention the perpetual annoyance that was the thankfully-long-dead random enemy encounter - I still happily suffer through all of it, because I enjoy engulfing myself in the narrative of Cloud Strife and his quest of revenge/biological determination/personal discovery.  Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross  are equally superlative in their ability to tell an engaging, thought provoking narrative which overwhelms their by-modern-standards-admittedly-deficient gameplay.

You won't be believe this, but I have an opinion/theory on what I consider to be the dearth of adequate storytelling in the current video game industry.  It's the open-world, sandbox structure.  So much time is spent developing an expansive, diverse, and interactive world that the story - the very reason for which you ventured into the sandbox in the first place - becomes secondary.  See, in allowing the player to roam wherever they would like within the world, most developers use the Quest structure to tell the stories, be they the Main story or side stories.  These quests must start in a specific spot and end in a specific spot, and they generally last no more than thirty minutes.  They also can't be allowed to impact the larger world structure very much, since it would require so many simultaneous changes to the coding of the game itself as to be basically unfeasible.  Thus it becomes very easy to lose sight of the narrative and drown the player in endless fetch quests, and purposeless battles.  A prime example of this is Saints Row IV: Re-elected, which fronts itself as a satire of the Action-RPG game and narrative structure - even directly commenting on the repetitive nature of most sandbox game side quests - and for the most part succeeds; but even the development team at Volition was caught in the very trap which they were trying to mock: every single "side-quest" devolves into a character telling you to go to some new race-point, or havoc-marker, or enter another rift.  After realizing that you aren't actually involved in a real story with the side quests, merely completing repetitive, seemingly-random chaotic events throughout the city with no real purpose or meaning, I lost most of my interest in completing them - until of course the game glitched and deleted all of the outfits and clothing that I had spent all of my cache purchasing, and I discovered that I would need more subsequent cache to replace them all.  Then it happened again, until now: I pretty much only buy certain items at once and then save them as a custom outfit; everything else gets randomly deleted for no goddamn reason.



Which is not to say that games which follow the Quest-based narrative structure can't be compelling: my favorite game ever is still the Witcher 2, which strictly adheres to it, and the Bioware game Jade Empire has one of the best stories I've encountered - including a masterfully crafted twist on par with the ending of the Usual Suspects.  Although neither game takes place in a true, completely open world: you start in one enclosed region and move on to the next.  Sometimes you are able to travel back to previous areas for more exploration - using the Dragonfly in Jade Empire - occasionally it turns out to never really be necessarry - but others, as in the case of the Witcher 2 you are confined to the current region until the story there has run its course.  But you know what?  I'll take a limited ability to roam between regions over a lazily constructed narrative.

And that's why Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments was my favorite game so far on the Xbox One - again, so far; because, while the gameplay itself was restrictive and devoid of the freedom which a sandbox game generally affords, it allowed the narratives to be presented in an engagingly precise manner.  Which meant, incidentally, that while you might not always have a wide array of choices before you, every one of the choices which you made had a definite purpose and a direct impact on the narrative; and isn't that what we're all looking for in a good story-telling?