An official retraction, but one with none of the sadness of being proved wrong

Peep the new sidebar if there is any confusion about how Lamar feels about the above man. Whether or not his influence on the NBA is disastrous as Simmons suggests one thing is certain. This New NBA thing still has some kinks to work out.

The NBA draft is the perfect vessel to re-energize the movement that swept us up in its revolutionary fervor prior to the handjob PE #1 received from the referees. There are no standouts in this crop. Rather, there are none apparent on first analysis; Chris Paul was an unexpected Franchise out of last year's draft.

The 2006 Draft is not one that carries a savior on the wings of its arrival. Instead, it will serve to cement the emerging image of a league not dominated by two star teams filled with players designed not to mess up, but controlled by teams with a mix of players ultimately adapted to that coach's system.
In every draft, there are diamonds. In some front offices, someone to find them(s).

What once was decided now no longer is

In all of this chatter about the "New NBA," especially that which Simmons has been doing, an essential fact has been ignored: the NBA referees are still dick-suckingly awful.

Basketball is a nearly impossible sport to officiate; the number of bodies flowing around the ball, as well as the subjective nature of many rules, mean that even if refs have a good angle, they might not make the right call. In a sport where split-second judgements are the norm, the refs should be the best of the best. No below-average official should officiate a single game of the NBA Playoffs, and especially not the NBA Finals.

Bad referees are an unavoidable point of the game. Forget players, try and figure out whether or not the ref will do a good job tonight. The point is that it is almost impossible for any referee to call a game consistently fair to both sides. One fan base or another will always be up in arms over a percieved gangbang by the whistlemen.

That being said, Game 5 was an egregious example of how not to referee an NBA Finals game.

The call Bennet Salvatore made for Dwyane Wade was exactly everything it should not have been: it was late, it was a bad angle, there was no contact, and it's the motherfucking NBA Finals.

That such a call was made is a testament to Wade's star power. In short, he has arrived at his destination; only a select few inspire 50 foot whistles with the mere miss of a shot.


True, Wade may be celebrating with a bottle of champaigne if the Heat prevail tonight, but he will be a false god. Those who look upon this championship must do so with the same asterisk that adorns all others before it: Referees were involved.

In Which the NBA Finals are Discussed

The Finals are a foregone conclusion. The Mavericks are running over the Heat like they should be, and anybody who thought the Heat had a chance didn't watch one of two things. Either they ignored the 2004 Monster of Loch Angeles that fell short against the New Wave-y Pistons squad, or the Heat team that looked like borderline garbage against the Bulls.

The Bulls a fine basketball team, don't get me wrong, but they're a team chock full of All-Americans who will do little until a transcendent star is thrust into their midst. Maybe that star is Hinrich, maybe not.

The Mavs will be champions, like it or not, and we will see if the rest of the league tries to copy
their formula. If they do, they will be missing the essential point: there is no formula. Time and again the Mavs have beaten squads that set themselves on one way of winning. The Spurs were gobbled up by the speed of the Mavericks, as well as their twin 7-footers, who hung on Duncan at every turn.

The Suns too were destroyed by the Mavs, by speed as well, although it was their own that did them in. The Mavericks played the waiting game, running with the Suns on the fast break until gradually Snash lost control of his Extraordinary Machine and it whirled off into the night, perhaps to be seen next year.
Hopefully, teams will take the Mavericks lesson and run with it. Really, the message doesn't even belong to its purveyor; the entire Playoffs has been nothing if not a manifesto on the success of different systems.

They have been so exciting not because of the quality of teams, though that has helped, but because of the diversity with which each attacks the Fundamental Question:
How do we win basketball games?

In Which the Quandary of Darko is Discussed

Darko is perhaps one of the biggest quandaries of the 2003, or any draft. See my post yesterday for why he didn't fit in with the Pistons, but it's debatable whether or not any of the players drafted before or after him would've added a damn thing to that mix.

The Pistons' starting 5 was and is a mortal lock every single year. It is very probable that had anyone--aside from LBJ--been drafted to that team, they would have spent the majority of two years languishing on the bench. 'Melo, Dwyane, and Bosh are all very good players, players that would start for any team in the league... Now.

Had the Piston's picked any of them, we would still be reading stories about how they're flourishing in practice, or waiting for their chance to shine.

By drafting Darko, Joe Dumars sealed his fate as a disappointment for the Pistons. With a coach that hates rookies and foreigners, it is highly retarded to pick someone in the draft who is both. It's avoidable to pick rookies in the draft: Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh were both veterans of sorts.

However, someone as raw as Darko was doomed to languish, forever lost, on the Piston's bench simply because Larry Brown rocks it like the Know-Nothing Party. Now that Darko has found his place on the Magic, he has a chance to establish himself as another premier player emerging from that draft of yore.

If Darko does pull the sword from the stone and takes his place at the Round Table of King James, the Magic will wield a frontcourt the likes of which the world has never seen. Dwight Howard is still immature, and look what he does on the daily.

If the Magic get their hands on Rudy Gay, watch the fuck out.

In Which the Relative Goodness or Badness of Each and Every NBA Player is Discussed

If a basketball player has made it to the NBA, he has proved something. Namely, he has proved that he has at least one skill that is applicable to basketball at the highest level.

So many teams make the mistake of correctly evaluating that a player is good (i.e. he belongs in the league) but do not understand the basis of his goodness. There are so many cases in point that it's downright hard to count them all, so we'll look at one man: Timothy Mark Thomas.

Drafted with the 7th pick of the 1997 draft, Thomas was drafted by the New Jersey Nets, who then flipped him to the Philadelphia 76ers. Based on what we know about draft order, 7th is very high (it is, in fact, Top 10). Because of that, we can assume that Thomas was oozing with potential. Now that we've established his potential, we must look at how it has been misused.

Long thought of as a "low-effort" guy, it is very possible that Tim Thomas never found the right system for himself. Even within the freewheeling Bucks offenses Thomas felt constricted and not used correctly.

He was then dealt to the Knicks, who spun him to the Bulls. The Bulls, who saw him as an overpaid basket case with an expiring contract, promptly mothballed him; he was instructed to stop showing up.

One of those organizations is a well-run one (Hint: it's not the Knicks).

That well-run organization ignored the meritous play of Thomas, by basically admitting that he had no use to them whatsoever. This is true-- Tim Thomas is a completely awful player. For the Bulls.

The Bulls granted him his release and he signed with the Suns, where he single-handedly carried them past the Lakers and into the Conference Finals. (Yes, he did carry the Suns past the Lakers, observe the 7/8 3-point performance in Game 1.) We can therefore assume that Thomas is a great player. For the Suns.

Very rarely is such a dichotomy observed in a single player within the scope of a single season.

(The only other that leaps to mind is Desagna Diop, who went from 1st round bust for the Cavs to dominant defensive force for the Mavs. Lesson: big Africans have their uses, always.)

However, the dichotomy wasn't a dichotomy so much as it was a realization of talent that was always there and recognized, but that had never been tapped by a team and system sufficiently equipped to tap it. Only in rare cases may a player flourish in any and all systems. For the vast majority of players, success is roughly equal to how intelligent the team is in their usage and role. Darko could not give the Pistons anything from his role as Left Out, but he can contribute shot blocking and outside scoring to the Magic, a team willing to overlook some of his flaws and love him for what he is: a big European who can stroke the J.

In Which the Possible Return of the Reign Man is Discussed in What Might be Considered a Cursory Manner

Before you read any of this, peep this:



Shawn Kemp at his best was barely controlled violence. During any one of those dunks, a temporal anomaly that would have resulted in the universe collapsing in on itself due to the sheer force being unleashed on the rim and ball could have occurred.

When GP lobbed one up for Kemp to slam, there was no question of blocking his path to the hoop. Nor was there any question of doing anything but watching in admiration as an athlete unrivaled in his brutality destroyed previous paradigms of athleticism on his way to attempt destruction of a wayward backboard.

It is worth noting that the lockout destroyed the Reign Man's reign. After the L came back, he was a shadow of his former self. A really fat shadow.

Now that he's been out of basketball for 3 years, entered rehab in 2001 and been arrested on coke/weed possession in April 2005, perhaps it is time for the Interregnum to end.

As Kemp astutely noted in an ESPN.com article (http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2471906),

"It used to be where the bigger guys were inside," Kemp said. "Now most of the
bigger guys are on the outside, shooting jumpers. The game's not the same. It actually favors me a little bit since I was more of a speed guy on the outside anyway."

This is not to suggest that a career renaissance for Kemp is in order. In fact, it is possibly the opposite. His successor has appeared in the L in the form of Amare Stoudemire, a young big who also benefits from a superlative point guard.

Kemp also noted in the article that he was a well rested 36-year-old, a fact that can only add to his chances for a comeback. If he comes back with the Nuggets, don't discount the chance that rims around the league could soon be feeling the reign's wrath.

In Which the Finals and Their Ramifications for the Future of the League are Examined and Discussed

The Finals are set: Mavericks v. Heat in a showdown to determine who best defines the changing Lig and the face of basketball itself.

If that sounds extreme, thats because it is. The Mavs are see above; they bite steez like there's no tomorrow in an effort to out-steez whoever's steezing in the first place. Case in point, the Suns series.

The Suns came in after playing back to back grueling series, winning them both on the strength of their insane running game and ability to lure non-running teams into running with them. Both coaches preceding the Lil General either had the wrong personnel or no idea how to use them, but the result was the same: a Game 7 loss.

Enter the Mavs. They have the ability to play either game, the run and gun or slow it down, with efficiency not seen in the history. In effect, they fly in the face of theorists who claim that only by forcing the other team to adapt to your style of play will you have any success in the Playoffs.

Versus the Griz, the Mavs bludgeoned their opponents into submission, using a big lineup to punish the Memphis Boyz into a sweep.

Against the Spurs, the Mavs forced the big, immobile bigs out onto the break where they were vulnerable and took San Antonio out of their game like they was the Suns.

Beating the Suns took a final steez-bite; the Mavs were able to put out a small lineup and run along with the Suns.

The Heat are a different animal entirely.

Rather than bite their way to the Finals, they played through a relatively weak conference and a Piston team that had trouble firing on all cylinders (pun definitely intended, no matter how stupid it is). Peep their opponents: Bulls, Nets, Pistons.

The Bulls are basically a glorified All-American squad, replete with college players that lit shit up in the NCAA. Even against that paltry competition, the Heat barely managed to sneak by with the series win.

Their squad is semi-broken. DWade, Shaq, 'Toine, and no-one else of note. Gary Payton is along for the ride on his second Championship Express team in 3 years, but he's more of a former famous person than an actual key cog in the functioning of the team. Actually, he is a key cog that has no business being a key cog on a Championship contender.

It is a testament to the strength of Diesel and his buddy that they can carry this vintage squad all the way to the 'Ship. However, like an antique rifle, you can only fire it so many times before it blows up.

In Which Another Laker is Compared to Tragic Characters During His Deconstruction

Kwame Brown is not, in fact, a stud.

He is the antithesis of a stud: a stiff. Well, not really. He does display studliness from time to time. He also displays the fact that he is probably mentally lacking.

Even though he was the subject of a "We Got Kwame!" email from me to my dad, Kwame has been nothing but a confused morass of wasted and realized potential since day 1. This may sound like the Odom post, but unlike Odom, Kwame's skillset doesn't pull him in all different directions; instead they make him an occasionally gifted low-post scorer who more often than not has no idea what he's doing on either end of the floor.

He is governed not by his own potential, but rather by a character flaw that will be his undoing. Namely, he is an idiot.

In case you didn't notice, that makes Kwame the perfect subject of a Shakespearean tragedy. Whether or not he bites Macbeth's steez and kills all the folks ahead of him to advance is irrelevant. Ultimately, his stupidity will be his undoing.

Kwame's tragedy is a microcosm of the Lakers' failings and success. They advanced to the playoffs and almost knocked off the Suns on the power of their star-- Kobe. And yet once on the break of catastophic victory, they slid back into the murky morass that was the regular season. The Lakers hold, and Kwame is a hero. They didn't hold.

Their failings are as much their fault as Kwame's. You can only depend on a dude whose life compares easily to a classic tragedy for low post scoring for so long. Still, a transformation from tragedy to fable would not be an unwelcome one; the prodigal son returns, only to find he never left in the first place.

In Which the Player For Which This Blog is Named is Deconstructed In His Entirety, and then Compared to a Superhero

The man, the legend, the Lamar.

Drafted by the Clippers some years ago, Lamar entered the L full of youthfulness and Tremendous Upside Potential. Odom either has or has not realized his potential, sometimes both at once.

If that seems confusing, it should be. His game is the most unique in the L; he doesn't fit into any of the typical molds, instead content to stretch himself across all of them. He has the game of an All-Star in several categories, even flashing some shotblocking prowess in the 1st round series against the Suns.

His skill set yanks him in all different directions, settling on a confused morass of lefty drives and no-look passes over a cohesive game. It is his confusion that makes him the most and least perfect counterpoint to KB24.

Lamar is like the Green Lantern in the old Justice League cartoons--no-one is exactly sure what he does, but he seems to do it pretty well, so they all leave him alone. Like the Lantern, he doesn't light the world on fire with any of his skills, but is somehow indispensable to the functioning of the team.

If Lantern got subtracted from the Lig, they would be missing something indefinable but definitely present. On the Lakers, Lamar is similar, but his value is ultimately definable: he is the second best player on the team. Would the team miss his passing? No.

Scoring? No.

Rebounding? Not especially.

But combine the three and you have the true measure of the man.

In Which Kobe Bryant's Relationship to Michael Jordan and the Next Jordan Phenomenon in General Are Thoroughly Examined and Discussed

Ah yes, his Airness.

Michael Jordan has the uncanny ability to spawn donzens of prodigy, all of which missed the damn point. The point is not in his dunkiness, nor is it in his shotmaking, nor is it in his success as a player. Many, many players have been very successful individually or been able to dunk in spectacular fashion.

A non-comprehensive list includes:

Ron Harper

Harold Miner

Steve Francis

Jerry Stackhouse

Penny Hardaway

Grant Hill

Tracy McGrady

Vince Carter

Kobe Bryant

Lebron James

Wow, you may say to yourself, that's a pretty fucking distinguished list. As a quick aside, the players on that list have on main thing in common, besides dunkiness; a history of knee and back problems. Check the number of players on that list that have those problems.

4 players have avoided those career cripplers: Kobe, LeBron, Franchise, and Miner.

Let's head down that non-injury list in reverse order. Career stats courtesy of www.bullz-eye.com and www.basketball-reference.com.

MJ

30.1 ppg, 6.2 rpg, 5.3 apg, 2.4 spg, 0.8 bpg, .497 FG%, .327 3P%, .835 FT%

Harold Miner

Career stats: 9.0 ppg, 2.2 rpg, 1.2 apg, 0.4 spg, 0.1 bpg, .460 FG%, .310 3P%, .785 FT%

Before we discuss this man's career, I will recount an anectode.

I was searching for a picture of Miner's and was confused when I didn't find any on Google. I later realized that I had been typing his name as "Minor," simply because I had no idea it was spelled differently. That's illustrative.

Miner was a big dunker our of USC, drafter by the Heat at #12 in 1992. The first to recieve NJ hype, he quickly sucked tremendously. He did have the same dunkiness as advertised (2-time Slam Dunk Champion) but he didn't have enough skillsiness. Miner probably avoided the NJ knee/back problems because of the sympathy of the Basketball Gods (picture it as the Greek pantheon). The Gods didn't want to make someone that sucked that hard suffer unduly through his lengthy retirement. Nice of them.

Steve Francis

19.0 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 6.3 apg, 1.5 spg, 0.4 bpg, .430 FG%, .340 3P%, .797 FT%

Here Franchise, as he is bizzarrely known, is shown displaying his dunkiness. His dunkiness never has and never will be question, what has been in question is his assistiness. Franchise seems to have a desperate rath against basketballs, pounding them into the ground for up to 20 seconds before grudgingly launching his shot a the basket. Alas, his quest to deflate every basketball in the league has been a series of failures: not once has a ball burst under his repetitive pounding.

His skillz as a player are legit, but he's too small to play the 2, and has none of the necessary passing skills (or perhaps willingness) to play the 1. He's now joined a kindred spirit in Stephon Marbury, a move that will seal his fate as a dunky guard who will never truly carry a team on his own. Has absolutely none of the required Jordan storyline.

Lebron James

26.5 ppg, 6.6 rpg, 6.6 apg, 1.8 spg, 0.7 bpg, .458 FG%, .330 3P%, .746 FT%

Upon leaving high school in 2003, Lebron reignited the NJ debate and set the world aflame like a teenage Prometheus. He has dunkiness, he has skillsiness, and he has some of the "I don't want this coach"iness that MJ displayed with Doug Collins in his youth.

Now that LBJ has his guy, Mike Brown, in town, he's under pressure to make MVPs happen. Finishing a confusing 4th in balloting this season after destroying the league like no-one other than Kobe, LBJ has the best chance of anyone to fulfill the NJ prophecy. Although he is straight up atrocious on D, his offensive skillsiness is awesome, and he has a willingness to pass the ball. A lot.

Should he ever have a second banana worthy of carrying his jock (sorry Larry Hughes, you aren't the guy), LBJ could make significant strides towards mashing MJ and Magic.

Kobe Bryant

23.9 ppg, 5.1 rpg, 4.5 apg, 1.5 spg, 0.6 bpg, .451 FG%, .336 3P%, .834 FT%

At first glance, his statistics are not so spectac. In fact, Franchise is superior in 2 of the 3 major categories.

Anyone who would argue Franchise as the superior player is fucking retarded.

Glad I got that out of the way. Kobe is not the NJ. He is the FK, the first Kobe. He definitely has the dunkiness, the success, and the Philsiness of MJ, but he went and fucked up the narrative. It's supposed to go that the player moves from selfish gunner to good teamate after he gets his defining second banana, then wins all of his championships with that player. Kobe went and did the opposite, even though his narrative is still in effect: he had Shaq Diesel in town to 3-peat and then ran him out 2 years and one Finals loss later.

Then came Kobe's gunner phase, which probably culminated with his 35(!) point per game season this past year, and peaked with his 81(!) and 62(!) point games against the Raptors and Mavericks(!), respectively. You may notice a lot of (!) in that last sentence. That's because what Kobe did was out of this world.

Playoffs Kobe morphed into a mid-career MJ, sharing the ball with his teammates and letting them handle some of the load on the offensive end. The Lakers blew a 3-1 series lead to Phoenix in the first round, but the blame for that collapse has to fall largely on the shoulders of his teammates. The series exposed the Laker's susceptibility to missing shots within 5 inches of the basket, led by such luminaries as Kwame Brown.

Which Kobe we will see next season depends on the job Mitch Kupchak (or hopefully Kiki Vanderweghe) does in the offseason. If Kupcherweghe acquires a shooted and someone not clinically retarded to play the post, the Lakers could see passy Kobe. If Kupcherweghe fails in that quest, shooty Kobe will once again destroy the league and give opposing coaches nightmares.