NBA Finals - Green is Good

Had to interrupt my sabbatical for a shout out to my favorite current NBA player and his new crew, who are at the moment on the verge of winning an NBA title. Over, I might add, the heavily hyped and pre-series favorites Los Angeles Lakers.

Y'all know by now what I think of Kobe Bryant, possibly the most overhyped superstar in the history of the NBA. Bryant is a frighteningly talented offensive force, a self-made one-man band who is known for his focus and determination, but as I've said here before, his leadership qualities are severely lacking. Kobe wants us all to think he's changed his spots, he's become a leader, a team player, that he's been more involved with off-court team activities. And when he was awarded the league MVP this year, he invited his teammates to stand on the floor with him in a move that sports commentators positively gushed about. Around these parts, there was a lot of gagging.

Kobe, you might remember, was the guy who bitched about his team, his team's management and owner over the summer and begged them to trade him -- or at least trade their young players for someone who could help him. To be fair, Paul Pierce of the Celtics bitched about his team too, asking to be traded in the off season, but Pierce didn't chase away the best center in the NBA, when he apparently still had another title in his large hands.

Kobe knows how to yell at his teammates but he has no idea how to be a true on-the-court leader. Pierce, certainly less of a talent than Kobe, is proving to be the best leader of this series.

Nobody was even sure if Kobe would show up for the season, but he did arrive and wouldn't you know it, those kids weren't half bad and then boom! the NBA gods dropped Pau Gasol into the Lakers lap in exchange for a piece of paper with a date on it. Suddenly, the Lakers are the team to beat. They earned the top spot in the West and then pretty much sailed through the playoffs right into the NBA finals, where they were considered heavy favorites -- 9 out of 10 of espn.com's experts picked the Lakers to win the series, even though they didn't have home court advantage and the Celtics had beaten the Lakers in both meetings during the regular season.

Ooops.

The C's held court in Boston, winning the first two games fairly easily -- though not without drama. It was clear the plan was to stop Kobe from beating them, to put the ball in the hands of his young supporting cast, which hasn't really been up to the big-stage pressure. But then neither has Kobe, really. Four games into the series and he still looks confused.

Except early in Game 4 when the Lakers were building a 24-point lead, have the Lakers looked to be as good a "team" as the Celtics. And even that went all to hell when the C's climbed back by crushing L.A. in the third quarter and then completing the historic comeback in the fourth and putting them on the brink of an NBA title.

If you were watching the entire series, you would see that the Lakers have only been able to solve the Celtics' defense during short bursts, the most important at the end of the game two (that furious comeback that fell short) and then at the end of game three, which they won. Game 4 seemed like a sea change in the series. Whoa, not so fast.

Even as they were building that big lead, I thought the Celtics weren't giving the same defensive effort and they were missing a lot of easy shots, shots they would normally make and have been making. The Lakers won the first quarter 35-14 but the C's took the third 31-15 -- the fourth time in the four games where they've won the third quarter, a quarter the Zen Master has always stressed as being all-important to winning NBA games.

The Lakers only have two true superstars (Kobe + 1/2 Gasol and 1/2 Lamar Odom). While both are excellent players, they are not in the same league as Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. Even more impressive to me is how KG, the heart of all those Minnesota teams he played on, has easily slid into the second/third banana role in Boston. They are superstars playing like role players. I mean Allen played the whole game and had nine boards. Every time they get a defensive start, they fist pump in the way other teams do when they get a three or a dunk.

Defense has been the difference. The C's have cut the Lakers' scoring by 10, 20 points a game off their average (of course, scoring often drops off in the half-court nature of the playoffs but you get my point) and they've neutralized Kobe who hasn't had a decent shooting night against them all season -- he must have nightmares about getting suffocated by green jerseys. I think Doc seems to have taken a page out of Larry Brown’s playbook from the 2004 playoffs, when the Pistons basically keyed on Kobe, hoping to make him have to make more decisions with the ball and therefore, use more of the shot clock.

Kobe has been forced to give up his beloved rock, and he may indeed be bitching to and about his teammates about why they haven't been taking advantage, but Kobe isn't a playmaker in the strict sense of the word. He's a shooting guard who looks to score first, only giving up the ball if he doesn't have a look or a near-look or a sort-of look. Most of the time, when a player like that passes to an open man, it's in the flurry of competition and not often in the best place or way or situation for said role player to get off his best shot. That's asking a lot of your teammates, especially on the sport's biggest stage.

The rap on Gasol all those years in Memphis was that he was soft. I think y'all can see that now, not to mention his defense is pretty ordinary for a 7-footer with a wingspan like that. Odom is a guy who fills up the stat sheet but his impact on the game is not as great as it could be (or is perceived to be). He loses focus, is easily confused and after that tremendous start, disappeared in the second half. Seriously, one minute he was driving to the hoop, making big play after big play, digging the flow and the next, POOF! he was gone, gone, gone.

I think Doc Rivers is out-coaching the Zen Master in this series. Going with the smaller lineup may have been obvious with the C's down by 20 points, but putting in Eddie House was a brave move. Even the ABC commentators were saying Rondo wasn't taking advantage of his open looks -- which was Philip's strategy, to have Kobe roam off of Rondo, to give him those short jumpers, figuring he wouldn't make enough of them to make a difference. Even though his scrappy defense was helping his team, they needed a guy who would take what the Lakers were giving them -- or in civilian terms, to shoot the damn ball. And when House came in, he hit two huge freaking shots, making Doc look like a genius.

Seriously though, I'm beginning to think Phil Jackson is overrated. How is it that he has Sasha grab-and-bitch Vujacic on Allen in the fourth quarter with the entire series in the balance? Anyone can tell by watching Vujacic play that he's a jerk of mammoth proportions and his penchant for playing dirty is hardly good defense.

Goes to show all that extra-curricular nonsense doesn't substitute for moving your feet and staying in front of your man. Remember Vujacic was the guy who earlier in the game, fell to the floor while holding onto Allen and when he didn't get the call, used his legs to hold Allen down directly in front of referee Steve Javie. It's the most obvious foul call of the series (which is saying a lot) and Vujacic looked at Javie like he just asked him on a date.

I'm thinking this game, this series, ought to put to rest now and forever, the comparisons between Kobe and MJ. It's unfair to Kobe anyway -- they aren't the same kind of players and never were. But then nobody will ever be like Jordan, so maybe it's doing him a favor. Still, I don't see MJ blowing a 24-point lead in a crucial game 4 at home.

I think it also puts into sharper focus the idea that Kobe is some bigger-than-life factor at the end of close games. All of these games have been within the Lakers' grasp in the fourth quarter and Kobe, who one of the ABC announcers called the NBA's best closer, has only been a factor in one of them. If it's true, then when is Kobe going to get it done. I mean if he's not doing it (and didn't in his last NBA Finals appearance) when it really counts? If all Kobe needs is teammates who can keep his team close into the waning moments of the game so he can take over and lead them to victory, then the only person Kobe should be bitching at is the guy looking back at him in the mirror each morning.

Because to be fair, the Lakers have been in all of these games and the Closer has been out closed out.

Sure, the Lakers could still make history and win, but I think everyone can see by now, including the participants, who the better team is in this series. I'll give you a hint: they wear green.

See ya soon, sports fans....

The Kid Goes to Beantown?

Moon Over a Pug
Whew! What a day in sports. The genius succumbs to Leukemia, a big loss for sports fans who appreciate guys who can use big words and know what they mean. R.I.P., coach.

Then the MLB trading deadline creeps up -- they showed how many minutes and hours were left in a counter along the bottom of the screen during ESPN's Baseball Tonight earlier -- and now this big shocker -- Kevin Garnett appears headed to Boston after spending his entire career in Minnesota.

KG, the Kid in Beantown. To play alongside Paul Pierce and recent acquisition Ray Allen. You gotta be kidding me. But if reports are true and the trade gets consummated in the next couple of days, the balance of power in the already shaky East, is about to change.

And there's going to be one pissed off shooting guard somewhere in LaLa Land.

Garnett has been loyal (to a fault, some say) to his peeps in 'Sota and has never come out and asked for a trade, no matter how bleak life seemed for a club that just could not get passed the first round of the playoffs. The one time they did was losing to eventually NBA title runners-up Lakers.

And Boston wasn't his first choice for a new address. He wanted to go to a team that could win, preferably in a warmer climate (those below-zero Lake Wobegon winters gettin' to ya, Kev?) and for awhile it looked like that would be Phoenix, playing alongside his new good buddy, Steve Nash.

But former Celtics teammates Kevin McHale and Danny Ainge (now GMs for the Wolves and Celtics, respectively) got together for one more assist and score. The deal, which would net Minnesota young comer Al Jefferson, is about the best the Wolves could hope for with what's on the market and available. And it frees them up to fill out their roster with draft picks, through free agency and trades. More important, perhaps, it allows this team to move on in a way that helps their future and doesn't disrespect the contribution of the NBA's classiest man, to a franchise that picked a young diamond in the rough straight out of high school and found if not silver trophies, than a heart of pure gold.

I love this deal for Boston, too. Allen, Pierce and KG make a nice nucleus and in the talent-poor East, it has to anoint the Celtics as the team to beat. Suddenly, Boston is a basketball town again. Danny Ainge saves his job and maybe Kevin McHale saves a franchise.

Are you starting to feel it? Me too. I can't wait for training camp.

Draft Madness, The Day Before

Healdsburg at Night
Tomorrow's NBA draft is looking like a can't miss for drama and intrigue with even the no-brainer nos. 1 and 2 picks looking like a toss up at this point. I wouldn't blame Blazers GM Kevin Pritchard for taking Kevin Durant at number one, instead of the consensus pick of Greg Oden.

The reason why everybody thinks Oden should go first is that the history of the NBA has proven two things pretty conclusively. The first is that a dominant big man (on offense or defense or both) is essential to a championship run. Think Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Shaquille O'Neal and Tim Duncan, for starters. The second is that dominant big men are about as rare as a Kobe Bryant assist. (Throw out rules one and two if Michael Jordan is on your team).

The theory goes that if you can land a 7-footer who has a pulse and doesn’t trip over his own size-20 kicks, you’re way ahead of the game. If he happens to have soft hands and quick feet, then you’re in very elite company. It is widely believed that Greg Oden is such a player, even though he spent exactly one year in college and only played about half the season because of a thumb injury.

He's got the whole package for sure. He's agile, can score with his back to the basket and is an adept defender and shot blocker. He seems motivated and smart and with a little time in the weight room and some good old-fashioned NBA experience, he's got the goods to be the dominant big man everybody thinks he could be.

So if you've got the number one pick, you're supposed to say screw what your team needs, just take the big fella and build around him. If you were to do that, they say, everything else will take care of itself. It's hard to argue with success. Harder still to argue against Oden when you take a gander at this still-filling out frame and hear him say things about winning and teamwork and oh, that irresistible lopsided smile. Truly, he is a can't miss, sure thing NBA number one pick. Whew. Game over, right?

Well .... let's back up a second, shall we?

The Portland Trailblazers were the surprise recipients of the number one big during the draft lottery drawing earlier this month. I say surprise because the NBA is I believe the only league where the worst team doesn’t automatically get to pick first in the ensuring draft. This is to prevent said worst team from tanking games at the end of the season to assure itself the number one pick. The Trailblazers, it should be duly noted, suck so getting the first pick isn’t exactly going to make them title contenders. Not yet, anyway. Still, they had a five percent shot at getting the top pick and wouldn’t you know it, the ping pong balls came out upper Northwest.

The Blazers finished fourth in the Western Conference’s Northwest Division with a record of 32-50. Presently their roster looks like this:

F-C: LaMarcus Aldridge
G: Dan Dickau
G: Jarrett Jack
F: Raef LaFrentz
F-G: Darius Miles
C: Joel Przybilla
F: Zach Randolph
G: Sergio Rodriguez
G: Brandon Roy
G-F: Martell Webster

Free Agents:
C: Jamaal Magloire
F: Travis Outlaw
F: Ime Udoka


Aldridge, Jack and Brandon Roy are serious ballers and make for a very tidy core for the Blazers. If the Blazers decide to hang onto sometime knucklehead Randolph, then Oden might not be the ideal fit for them. Sure, they could use another rebounder what with Randolph having to shoulder the burden (23 points, 10 boards last season) but what the Blazers really need is a true scorer. A guy who can take the load off Randolph offensively and who can make the most out of a team that is loaded with ball-handlers and distributors.

So, when do you pass up on a sure-thing big man with the number one pick?

When the second pick in the draft is every bit as promising as the first.

At 6-foot-9, former Texas phenom Kevin Durant is not a true big man but he plays a big, big game. Inside, outside, upside your head, he’s the type of player who makes defenses seem invisible.

Definitely skinny for a guy who weights 225 pounds but I swear he could be like Magic if he had the hops of M.J. Stir that in with your bowl of Wheatina for a second.

College statistics should be tempered due to the wide range of competition (or lack thereof) but Durant’s numbers cannot be ignored, especially since Texas opponents had only one game plan from the get go last year: stop Kevin Durant. Man child still went for 25.8 points and 11.1 rebounds as a freshman.

We’re talking 47.3 percent from the field, 40.4 percent from beyond the arc and nearly two blocks a game besides. I like Durant in part because he sounds like a kid who gives a shit and because he wears no. 35 to honor his AAU coach who died at that age. And he’s from Washington, D.C., where I spent a good part of my misspent youth. It’s all good.

I imagine there will be an outcry of mammoth proportions if the Blazers go against conventional wisdom and select Durant but I won’t be part of that chorus.

I truly believe you cannot go wrong with either pick but if I’m the Blazers, I’m leaning toward the wing man as the best fit for my team. One thing that makes the choice a lot tougher is who is picking second in the draft. That would be Seattle, as in the Seattle Sonics, as in the one team that if Portland happens to pick wrong will not only haunt them for years but haunt them for years in their own freaking backyard.

Who could blame Pritchard if he O.D.’s on Alka-Seltzer before tomorrow night’s draft?

The Sonics, ironically or not, are in a very similar position as the Blazers. They have a decent core of young players and a chance to vaunt up in the title-in-waiting line by virtue of this here draft.

They finished 31-51, one spot behind the Blazers, wouldn’t ya know, and yeah, they’re getting a worse pick. Go figure. They can’t feel half as bad as Celtics and Grizzlies fans, however. Seattle’s roster:

G: Ray Allen
C-F: Nick Collison
F: Mickael Gelabale
C: Johan Petro
G: Luke Ridnour
G: Earl Watson
F: Chris Wilcox
G: Damien Wilkins

They have a key free agent in Rashard Lewis who they would like to re-sign and there is interest in slick point guard Ridnour (Atlanta may offer one of its two first-round picks for him), but there’s little question that Oden is the best fit for them.

I’d really like to see what sharpshooter Ray Allen will do with a dominant big man to ease his scoring load. He’s as good a passer as scorer although he doesn’t get credit for this and Oden showed he could pass out of the post in college.

Either way you can see why Kobe is so intent on getting out of the West. Which returns us to the Lakers bit to trade for KG so Kobe can have a future HOF at his side.
At this point, the deal is pretty much dead. Wolves GM Kevin McHale says he doesn’t want to trade KG within his own conference. That’s why rumors this morning have KG going to the Suns instead. I know, I know, the Suns are in the same conference as the Lakers. What gives?

Who the fuck knows? But I’ll give you S.O.L.’s theory. McHale, as you probably know, is the former Celtics big man who along with Larry Bird and Robert Parrish made up the imposing front line of the title-contending (and twice champion) Boston teams of the 1980s. If there was one truth those guys, it was how much they hated the Lakers. Hate might not even be a strong enough word, such was their rivalry.

I wonder if McHale, of the lunch pail, blue collar worker bee, rip your eyes out school of basketball, has ever truly gotten over it. And let’s face it, Boston nemesis Magic Johnson is a part owner of the Lakers so anything McHale does to help L.A. might just be too much for him to stomach, even if in the long run it means making his team better. (And who knows for sure if it will?)

McHale is considering the Suns deal because, if as rumored Atlanta is in the mix, Minnesota would receive two more first-round picks to go with it’s number 7. Three picks in the first round is a Godsend for a team that needs an influx of young talent and who won’t get a thing for its superstar if he stays for another season and becomes a free agent. As for trading a guy like KG for draft picks, it’s no knock on The Kid in a draft that’s pretty strong from, say, one to 15 or so -- and really, is there that many guys you could bring in right now who would generate the same kind of excitement as their beloved KG? Why not try a bunch of unknown rookies and throw them out on the floor and let them play their butts off and win the fans' hearts, just as KG once did?

If McHale chooses wisely, the Wolves would have, say, Al Horford, Yi Jianlian and perhaps Nick Young or Acie Law, or maybe Joakim Noah and Yi Jianlian. Not a bad group to start off the post KG years, I would think.

As for KG to the Suns? Wow. Who wouldn’t want to see that for a guy who is widely believed to be the classiest guy in the league. But what would Phoenix have to give up to get their prize? Word is that would be Amare Stoudemire, the 24-year-old all-NBA big man supreme. I love KG. LOVE HIM. Seriously, KG, will you marry me? Sorry, I digress but come on, what’s not to love about The Kid? Grace, class, smarts, game. The whole package. But I don’t trade Amare for KG. I just don’t. Amare is younger and he’s mature for his age and as good as he is, we haven’t even begun to see his potential yet. No way, no how.

Would I trade Shawn Marion instead, as the other rumor barks out there? As much as I’d hate to give up the soul of the Suns, I’d say you couldn’t not make that deal.

Whether either will happen is a coin flip right now but a lot of NBA experts feel certain that KG will be moving on draft day.

Where and for what remains to be seen. More after the draft. Stay tuned, sports fans.