Killer Crossover
The other day, as I was viewing some back footage for a scouting report, I came across a commentator who referred to a spin move as “killer.” A killer spin move? Hmm. As all fans who came of age before, say, 2000 know, that is not the true killer maneuver. Mirror, mirror on the wall, what’s the best killer of them all?
The killer crossover.
Let’s review some of the great NBA crossovers from the last few decades in all their glory. Fasten your seatbelt, though: we’re going to examine crossovers from all sorts of angles and some of them aren’t pretty. You’ve been warned.
The coach crossover
Let’s run a quick poll: how many of you know that Lenny Wilkens is only the third individual ever inducted to the NBA Hall of Fame as both a player and a coach? Pretty impressive, no? How about this other fact: Wilkens was named as one of the NBA’s 50 greatest players and 10 greatest coaches in 1998 for the NBA’s 50th anniversary.
Blazing trails!
Even more relationship lessons from the NBA
After an outpouring of support and comments following HT’s last post about relationship lessons from the NBA, we here at HT determined that a follow-up article was in order. After all, the greats have always repeated: Magic Johnson, Isaiah Thomas, MJ, and now LeBron James. We’re shifting to some slightly more controversial topics, so be forewarned: this isn’t your goody-two-shoes, Tim-Duncan list. We’re ranging over some of the stranger relationships in the NBA as we glean insights into how we live and relate to one another as fellow human beings.
![I love you, too! [sniff, sniff]](https://hooptherapy.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/i-love-this-game.jpg)
I love you, too! [sniffle, sniffle]
Relationship lessons, as taught by the NBA
This past weekend, both the sister of one of my best friends and a former colleague married their respective long-term boyfriends. As I celebrated their weddings, I, of course, faced the logical question: what does the NBA teach us about marriage? Quite a bit, actually, and I don’t mean that 100% facetiously. So let’s see what our friends in the NBA have to say.
Hand signals…of love.
No Kidding! Jason’s quadruple double
An era has passed: Grant Hill and Jason Kidd have both retired. For those of us who came of age in the early – late 1990s, these 1994-95 joint Rookies of the Year epitomized the future of the NBA. Sadly, Hill’s career was dampened by major, life-threatening injuries. On the other hand, Kidd flourished into the best big point guard since Magic Johnson.
As Kidd takes over the coaching reins in Brooklyn, I pause to ponder his career and legacy. Sure, basketball fans know about his accomplishments in dishing assists and almost single-handedly willing—yes, willing—the then-New Jersey Nets into the NBA Finals in back-to-back years. Some fans would argue that Kidd has been one of the most underrated players in the last 15 years and that he should have won an MVP title.
I won’t enter the fray here, but I will list one of Kidd’s accomplishments that few people know and even fewer have attained. Jason Kidd notched a quadruple-double. Let me repeat: a quadruple-double. Don’t believe me? Let’s check the stats.
Did I do that?
Canada Day comes early, eh?
After a long day of travelling yesterday to Toronto—which caused me to miss the NBA Draft—I opened up the Globe and Mail this morning and was shocked to read the news that has been rattling the Canadian and NBA blogosphere:
“With the first pick of the 2013 NBA Draft, the Cleveland Cavaliers select…” Pause and gesture to the crowd. “Anthony Bennett of Toronto, Canada and the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.”
Shouts, screams, and a disappointed Nerlens Noel flash on the screen. Irony of ironies, as I had no idea that Bennett was in the running for first overall and my trip was not designed to coincide with his selection.
Thank you, Mr. Stern. / Merci, M. Stern.
Two LeBrons Don’t Make a Right
Para español, continúa al fondo.
First and foremost, let me say that I think LeBron James is the best player in the NBA right now. The Miami Heat would be a good but not stellar team without him. Dwyane Wade had Shaq during his mid-2000s run and Chris Bosh is, frankly, redundant. But LeBron’s play during the NBA Finals raises a handful of questions about his hunger for the top.
Let’s examine the NBA Finals briefly. First, each team had an NBA First Team player: Tim Duncan for the Spurs and LeBron James for the Heat. Each team had its “big three.” Each team had a team philosophy, although I would argue that the Spurs’ roots enabled them to be more flexible over time.
However, for long periods of play, fans were asking the question, where is LeBron? And this is where we see that two LeBrons don’t make a right.
I should probably start playing now, right?
Back in Black
Out of its own ashes comes the phoenix—although not this year, as Phoenix has been wallowing in its ashes for some time. However, HT is now entering a new phase after months of rebuilding and relearning the pick-and-roll. We’ve studied game footage late into the night. We’ve worked on our typing and on our joke delivery. We’ve experimented with open mics at jazz nightclubs and putting banners on propellor planes. And boy, are we ready.
This edition of the NBA Finals has featured a seesawing push-me-pull-you between the Miami Heat and the San Antonio Spurs. We could turn this into another analysis of LeBron James’ many talents, ranging from his post-up game to his spectacular blocks to his violin skills.
†Don’t call the Cleveland Orchestra just yet
The Nets: Putin Russia back in Order
As Mason so clearly demonstrated in his recent post, the New Jersey Nets are the primordial slime of a league that is trying its best to alienate its non-owner stakeholders (i.e., the 99%). I could put #Occupy_NBA or something similar, but I won’t. I should put #Occupy_NJ_Nets, since their atrocious performance begs for intervention more than Wall Street. A new, major development has occurred that threatens to give the NJ Nets a positive image—well, at least here in the US.
Picture an autocratic society in which citizens fear the regime, where “special” takes on a new meaning—connections to wealth, jobs, a Mercedes—and sleaze reigns. Picture cynicism so massive that the leadership feels confident in merely shuffling the top positions around with a mere semblance of an election. Picture a society with food so bad that elites go to the UK to shop and eat at restaurants.
In fairness, that last point is couched within the greater wealth that said elite possesses and tries to shelter in the UK. However, the point remains: picture a society, fractured, with deep structural issues and a bleak future. Welcome to Russia.
Добро пожаловать в Россию
Locked Out of Reality
NBA players are lazy. You’ve heard that before, right?
Bad time for a nap, bud.
That’s an issue for another post, but in the middle of an increasingly nasty lockout that threatens to wipe out an entire season, we might as well be frank about the situation.
Right now, the NBA owners are the lazy ones. Let me explain.
Love Hertz: The Danger of High Frequency Ball
Hey there, casual basketball fan. Quick: estimate the amount of time it would take you (yes, you) to score 320 points if you were left completely undefended on a basketball court. It’s no simple exercise, is it?
Now, estimate how long it would take the 1990-1991 opening night versions of the Denver Nuggets and Golden State Warriors to score 320 total points.
Time’s up: 48 minutes.
That’s right, a point every nine seconds. The final score was 162-158, and they didn’t need overtime. And they did it with relatively poor combined three-point shooting (six-for-seventeen).
No time for halftime.
November 2, 1990
It was the opening night of the season that would make Michael Jordan a first-time NBA champion. It was also three months to the day since Iraq had invaded Kuwait, at least partly a result of Saddam Hussein’s frustration with Kuwaiti overproduction of oil and subsequent oil price declines.
Saddam Hussein probably didn’t care much about basketball, but overproduction was the word that night back in the United States, as the Nuggets and Warriors ran up and down the court filling a box score with statistical absurdities.
Fast breaks are for the Kurds!
NBA 2K12: A review…
…of its claim to authoritativeness.
(For stars and rating, read on.)
Julius “Dr. J” Erving. Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Larry Bird. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Michael Jordan. These faces and more stare out in carefully wrought pixels as they move lithely around computer-generated opponents and complete signature moves. Ahh, the power of 2K12, the newest in a vaunted line of basketball video games, which hits stores today.
NBA 2K12: a new height in sports gaming. At HT, we have (non-) exclusive access to parts of the game that any fan who has visited the NBA 2K12 site has seen. How dare we make the claim, then, that this is a review? Simple: this is a review of the claim that the game makes, viz., that NBA 2K12 will solve, finally, the question of which team is the greatest. A large claim and one that, I daresay, a reader will agree makes HT’s claim seem less preposterous. How can a game make a claim of such import? Let us enter the game and review its pretension fully.
His Airness—the greatest of all time?
The Bro’s Bowl: Rick Fox v. Doug Christie
From popular movements for world peace, we move now to legendary violence and earth-shattering brawls of the titans! Well, a slapfight of the titans, anyways.
Rick Fox and Doug Christie. Not your father’s heavyweights, eh?
How much is Keon Clark (background) loving this? Over. And. Over.
Throughout the peak of the Kings-Lakers rivalry of the early 2000s, these two were never more than the fourth option on their respective teams, but somehow their ongoing personal rivalry came to summarize much of the team-level conflict – they hated each other, weren’t going home without making that clear, and never really settled it definitively.
There isn’t enough video of the post-ejection fight in the Staples Center locker room tunnel to declare a winner, and more importantly, we at HT have adopted the philosophy of Metta World Peace, so we’re going to resort to calling this one by what’s measurable, judging the winner based not on violent capability, but rather on widely-respected qualities of well-rounded citizens of our fine country. Mr. Peace would be proud.
The end of an NBA career tends to bifurcate players into two groups: those who fatten slowly and leave their legacy at that, and those who have unfinished business, quite literally. Christie and Fox both landed in the latter, with money yet to be made via fame and fashion, and starting directly after The Punch, we evaluate their respective claims to shame.
First, the rules, as agreed upon by the judges:
- Best of five match, with categories to be decided at random.
- Substance bans will be enforced, with special attention paid to Axe sprays and hair gels.
- In the event of a tied match, Robert Horry will be the deciding factor.
- Appealing the judges’ decisions is not worth the time.
And so it begins…
The Artest formerly known as…
What is in a name?
A rose by any other
Name would smell as sweet.
Mr. Shakespeare would, I hope, forgive me for manipulating a famous line from Romeo and Juliet into a haiku. The question, though, remains the same: what is in a name? Ron Artest’s recent name change raises this question afresh and places it alongside weighty (international) news matters, such as the fate of the Palestinian state, the euro (€) crisis, and what Lady Gaga’s latest hairstyle will be. (Note to readers: we will generally refer to the former Ron Artest as “Mr. Artest” in order to facilitate a flowing prose.)
Metta World Peace. Say that ten times fast. You thought I spoke lightly about international, eh? The former Mr. Artest is reaching for the heights of history with his new name as he attempts to inspire others to fraternity (in the gender-neutral sisterhood-brotherhood sense). According to the Los Angeles Times, “Metta is a Buddhist term that means loving kindness and friendliness toward others.” Indeed, Buddhism has been known (anecdotally) to reform people: the great Maurya king Ashoka (अशोक), whose lion symbol the Republic of India now proudly uses, supposedly converted to Buddhism after a horrific war. Let’s dig deeper into the name change and all the implications therein.
The new paragon of peace?!
The Order of Things
Like no other professional sports league, the NBA has been dominated by major market teams. The Celtics, Lakers, and Bulls account for nearly two-thirds of all NBA championships. Three teams, 63% market share.
This was never as evident, at least during my lifetime, as it was during the 1990s, when the Chicago Bulls laid waste to the hopes and dreams of millions of fans of the little guys. Year after year, if Michael Jordan was playing, the Bulls were going home with the trophy. Why bother?
We up, bro?...Yeah, we're up.
They were steamrollers, the keepers of the The System while the Lakers and Celtics cleaned up the mess from their arms race of the prior decade.
The Bulls were the Illuminati and the World Bank and Goldman Sachs and NAFTA distilled into a 12-man roster, and it made for a generally oppressive but ultimately stable and predictable Eastern Conference.
But in 1998, Jordan retired, Scottie Pippen was traded to the Rockets, Dennis Rodman was released, and a void formed at the top. When power structures become uncertain, the unexpected is certain, and with the hegemonic Bulls removed from the picture, the conference’s trod-upon franchises sensed opportunity.
The last shot of the Bulls era. A haze was already descending on the east.
Reward the Big Fella
Para español, continúa al fondo.
A recent piece of hate mail came across the buzzing desks here at HoopTherapy regarding our alleged discrimination against players at the 5. Okay, not really, though any type of press would be welcome. At any rate, a bit of cogitation on the backend here at HT reveals that the eloquence of “Damp Behind the Ears” far outweighs any passing compliment to the centers and power forwards who lift heavily in the paint.
In order to rectify this imbalance, we’ll feed the rock to the big fellas to let them go to the rim and slam-jam-bam, baby, to borrow from Dick Vitale. Think of this as HT’s equivalent of the big-and-tall section at Macy’s.
We didn’t buy your cologne, but we’re saluting you now!
Party like it’s 1999
I was not dreaming when I wrote this
Hence it shall not go astray
And when I woke up this morning
I knew it would not be CBA day.
Prince, I trust, will indulge my remix. Ah, the CBA, the thing that ties us, the NBA fans, to the owners and to the players. No, I refer not to the effectively defunct Continental Basketball Association, which Isaiah Thomas and his partners ran into the ground, but rather to the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the legal document that solidifies the business relationship between owners and players. As of right now, the NBA faces a lockout, the likes of which has not been seen since the start of the tumultuous era following the Bulls’ dominance in the 1990s.
Sports bloggers report that the players’ union has decided to not vote. Allegations fly between both sides claiming greed, victimization, and duplicity. Various sports commentators have made arguments for and against.†
However, while browsing the current “literature” available on the internet, there appears to be a paucity of reminiscences about 1999 and the last lockout. Hence, I invoke Prince again to lead us to those halcyon days pre-Y2K.
Let's party, baby
And This One Time…
It’s easy to name NBA stars, but your top ten list is probably composed of those who have posted statistical absurdities for a large majority of their careers. LeBron, Iverson, Garnett, Nash, Nowitzki – their names carry weight as greats because of their unfailing consistency and their relentless rise to the top year after year.
But tautologically, not all NBA players can be among the greatest. Despite conspicuous height, many will never be recognized by name in public, and are left hoping for a freak season or game that will make a memory for the fans. This post acknowledges them.
If they were baseball players, their outlier performances would have drawn accusations of steroid use, and if they were hockey players, we’d never have heard of them in the first place.
*But no one in the NBA uses steroids.
We’re dealing with basketball players, though, so we find a middle ground – we praise them at their peak, and then call them washed up when they can’t repeat the feat. As Vonnegut would say, “so it goes.”
The Physics of the Knicks: A Graduate Text
The New York Knicks. Classic, historic, original. Recently disgraceful. Possibly educational?
Online education is without a doubt the way of the future, and you, reader, have found your way into it. HoopTherapy presents an online case-study course in modern physics, peer-reviewed, oft-cited, and confirmed as the internet’s most reliable source on the interwoven world of sport and universal forces.
Equal and opposite forces.
Read more…
Happy LeBronukkah
Today is the first anniversary of the Miami Heat’s free agent signing of LeBron James, a day the Heat received much more than they ever expected, and a day forever to be known as LeBronukkah.
Surely you remember that LeBron kept the world waiting until literally the eighth night of free agency (see, LeBronukkah is just too perfect) last July before announcing that he would be playing basketball in Miami the upcoming season. His decision, every bit his right to make, but made publicly in a forced-spectacle TV special, was attacked by critics worldwide as insensitively and immaturely executed.
Needless to say, if you pay any attention to sports news, you know LeBron didn’t win a championship this year, and it thrilled most of the world. So what do we know about LeBron that we didn’t last year? Maybe not much. His game still alternates between passive subservience and the aggressive, attacking style of a demon at large, a style that we’ve never seen before in any player, let alone one nearly as big as Karl Malone. Yet his ego is still insatiable, he whines on the court, and he carries just enough hipster gear to deserve caption treatment.
Death Cab just speaks to me.
I had minimal plans for the pun, but Hanukkah might actually be a sound theme for this article, at least as far as weakly-formed sports blog articles go. Here’s a quick refresher on Hanukkah from an admitted non-historian: when the Jews reclaimed the temple in Jerusalem from earlier conquerors, they found ritual olive oil largely defiled, with only a small amount remaining for use. The oil that was left should have only been enough to light the temple menorah for a single night, yet it lasted a full eight nights, a miracle that is still celebrated in the Jewish calendar in modern times.
Let’s go back to the NBA, where the LeBron story could connect in any number of ways:
- LeBron can be a greater jerk than we ever could have imagined, and he proved it last year.
- LeBron has far more game than we believe he does, and he’s proven it, but no one’s paying attention.
- LeBron’s self-righteous fire will simply outlast his critics, and he’ll prove it over time.
A mixed group of positions to take, right? Keep reading…
The Producers (Made in Germany)
Dirk Nowitzki is all the rage right now, and deservedly so. After 13 prolific seasons with the Dallas Mavericks, he’s just finished a remarkable post-season run with a cohort of players even older and more ragged than he, and has completely overturned his prior reputation as a bit too wavering in important moments.
But nicht so schnell! This isn’t one of those fanblogs where we just talk about how great some guy is. No, we’re going farther here, and rightly so, because too much time has passed since Dirk’s fellow German Detlef Schrempf received proper fanfare. Schrempf actually began playing in Dallas, where Nowitzki has spent his entire career, but the comparisons can be extended beyond that.
Don't forget!
I’ve been a purveyor of gross generalizations in the past, but when Germany enters the conversation, cliches clutter my mind, so it was hard to choose the right direction to go with this topic.
War and violence? It’s a bit tired as a German association, and war is far too lightly exploited as a parallel to sports. War is hell. Sports inspire blogging. Big difference.
David Hasselhoff? He’s American. Seriously, look it up. Beer? Meh. Sausages? Doesn’t quite ring true for tall, lanky basketball players. I think we can do better. So with proper respect to the land where I once Autobahn’d a rental Mercedes to the speed of sound (the sound was the chassis groaning), let’s talk about Dirk Nowitzki and Detlef Schrempf in terms of notable German inventions.
Sell Your Sole: The Rise of the NBA Shoe Commercial
In June 2001, I went to New York City with my church youth group. My friends and I were in an obsessive basketball phase that inexplicably drew us to NBA centers who just had something indescribably funny about them, and although Dikembe Mutombo was our primary fascination due to the ongoing NBA Finals, imagine our reaction when we found a pair of Ewing sneakers of unbelievable size (19? one-size-fits-tall?) in a trash can in Brooklyn. Patrick Ewing had left the New York Knicks the previous summer, but we missed the trash can metaphor, focusing rather on the sheer magnitude of our discovery.
Stay out of the lane, chump.
It’s typical of my generation to overemphasize shoes. NBA teams have to think about uniform design, and individual players might catch heat for questionable fashion choices off the court, but for playground ballers like you and I, the defining mark is the shoe.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Nike and others played the vanguard in a revolution that transformed the basketball shoe market from utilitarian white sneakers to hundreds of models of flashy, colorful kicks with price tags familiar only to US defense contractors. Naturally, the vanguard swayed the people with massive propaganda campaigns, often featuring NBA stars. A comprehensive list would take years of our lives (not a bad thing), but I’m going to try to just hit the highlights.
Still, pardon me for creating the longest and most media-heavy post in the short history of HoopTherapy, but I think it’s worth your time. You may want to get close to your volume control, because the sound level varies quite a bit between these clips…
We love France, or “Est-ce que vous jouez à basket?”
Today, as Rafael Nadal celebrates his record-equalling sixth French Open title—Michael Jordan fans take note of the significance of six—we pause to take note of the great contributions the French have made to le basketball, loosely translated here as “basketball.” Unfortunately, French-bashing is a prevalent part of Anglo-American popular humor (or humour). Several great players have emerged from France or from francophone countries, and we salute their efforts.
Allons-y à basket!
George Shinn: Ultimate Buzzkill
The Charlotte Hornets are my favorite NBA team. Present tense. I know the Hornets play in New Orleans now and Charlotte received an expansion team. I don’t care. I’m still coming off the high of first-round playoff upsets in 2001 and 2002, when a soon-to-be-relocated franchise donned headbands and played with abandon before ultimately succumbing to the reality of the peaks and troughs of its playing style.
The trough is the end of the story, though – for the full effect, we have to start on the way to the peak, in the 1988-89 season, when I was a yet-unjaded 2-year-old concerned more with dump trucks than Kelly Tripucka. Had I been conscious of things like professional basketball, I would have noticed that there was something special about this team.
Sting protection.
Damp Behind the Ears
I thank God Shammgod for every day that I have never been a fan of a team with Erick Dampier at center.
Dampier is 6 feet 11 inches tall but has only averaged double-digit rebounds once in his career. Sure, he’s never averaged more than 32 minutes per game in a season either, but let’s be honest: a player with that size would be given all the minutes he wanted, provided he was doing something right. It’s possible that having more turnovers than assists in 13 out of 14 seasons keeps a ceiling on his playing time.
He’s played two of the worst games I can find in online-searchable NBA history (6 turnovers, 0 points, fouled out against Atlanta in 2005 and 6 turnovers, 1 point, fouled out versus Utah in 2002). Matched up against Amar’e Stoudemire in a 2005 second round playoff game, he was outscored 40-0. There is no sport where a 40-0 deficit is anything better than a slaughter.
Call that two points.
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