just what, exactly, is going on with the bobcats?

there is a certain segment of the NBA landscape that is very challenging for me to wrap my mind around. i would include in this list:

1. bobcats
2. hawks
3. warriors
4. lakers
5. knicks

these are all teams with no shortage in the talent dept. all of them have probably better than NBA-average talent, especially the knicks, who are creatures of nothing but talent. all of those teams have a habit of smacking down (or at least contending with) the top squads in the NBA, but severe trouble hanging with teams on their level/inferior.

i guess it's a young team's disease: to play to the level of talent that you are facing. partly it may have to do with discipline. none of those teams have coaches with reps as stern-faced giants who give little quarter to screwing around. isiah thomas replaced a notorious disciplinarian with himself, and his hands-off style has led to somewhat more success. phil jackson is the greatest coach ever, bar none, and the fact that the lakes are on or near a 50-win pace is astonishing to say the least, but he doesn't drill spacing, etc. into the heads of his charges. don nelson is a terrific offensive mind obsessed with a helter-skelter running attack and often lackluster defense. bernie bickerstaff and mike woodson are by most accounts non-descript, with maybe a slight bent towards running.

their lack of discipline means that they lose focus against weaker teams, focusing instead on the girls lining the court or whatever else holds their fancy. but discipline doesn't come and go ephemerally, it's either there or it isn't. that's what makes their success against elite teams so baffling.

the answer lies in NBA 2k7, or madden, or halo, or whatever. when you play video games with your friends, blowing them out of the water is highly unsportsmanlike. if you consistently blow your friends out, they will no longer want to play with you. but, if you keep games close and let 'em win a few, it keeps the games competitive and fun.

that is what affects those teams today. they're all something of video game creations; the knicks and lakers most especially. all of those teams are fun to play with in video games, and all of them have the level-of-competition mentality required to be any fun at all to play with. it's no coincidence that as the squads tend towards the older, they start maturing more and blowing the weaker teams out of the water.

consider the 40-year-old man. his friendgroup is set, unlikely to be undone by such trivial passtimes as ps3 or xbox360. he has little concern for complete destruction in a virtual world. contrasted with the teen, already probably socially self-concious. the last thing he needs is to lose a homey over a blowout in madden. there you go.

dispatches from laker games

lamar blogom had its second laker outing as a blog, this time with the actual writer (me) and the nominal one who serves mainly as a spiritual guide (peter.) lakers lost, could have won but for bad free throw shooting, took it right down to the wire and blew a big lead at the end.
lamar kept it real in a serious way. he looks about 85% back, but with every loping stride down the court, every rebound pulled down, every surreal dunk/layup in the lane, reminds me of why i picked his ass as the logo in the first place. dude can seriously ball, and he seems to be just coming into his own as a player and as an integral part of the triangle offense. i don't know how high his ceiling is, but from my place about 12 rows back it looked pretty high.
some random notes:

• francisco elson and fabricio oberto remind me of bubbles and his white homey from the wire. just a couple of crackheads.
• elson's legs are skinny to the point that i was seriously worried that if someone crossed him up, he would have to be hospitalized.
• andrew bynum's arms are really really long.
• i know you know this, and i know i've said it, but kobe is a damn assassin when he gets the ball in the clutch. bang bang, right in bowen's face.
• kobe is more efficient now; started the game 10/15. he lets the offense start up and move the lakes until the last 5 minutes or so, then he turns into the MAMBA.
• everyone on the spurs roster is a bitch. keep that in mind.
  

the Lamar Blogom Midseason Awards

i'm going to keep this relatively simple.

most valuable player- kobe bryant.
pushing the lakes to 50-win pace despite have a shit supporting cast and being without his number 2. for nearly half the season so far. his numbers are down from the god-like heights that they were at last season, but that's part of the reason that the lakes are playing so far above their own heads. the knock against kb24 has always been that he doesn't involve his supporting players enough (shaq would have been a supporting player in this line of reasoning.) now, he's doing it and everyone seems to be giving dirk nowitzki love. dirk is great, but he has the best supporting cast in the entire league and doesn't do much but score.

most improved player-monta ellis.
shoot first pgs, as a rule, do not make the transition from high school to the pros. hell, they don't even make the transition from high school to college. credit monta for shitting all over that nugget of common wisdom. he's proved to be an electric presence off the warriors bench, even filling in for the oft-injured baron davis when he goes down. gives leandro barbosa serious competition for the best quick guard in the league title. expect him to wrest it away one of these years.

biggest balls- gilbert arenas.
whether its draining 3s from past 38 feet or not watching potential game-winners as they streak towards the basket, with every game he cements his status as the best combo guard ever. take that, jamal crawford!

once and future king- amare stoudemire.
came back like jordan, wearing the 1. it's not to play games with you, it's to aim at you. if this is 80-90%, i shudder to think what the suns will be like when STAT is fully back and primed for explosion. although he doesn't yet have the leaping ability that made him what he was 2 years back, he cannot and will not be ignored when he gets the rock down low. makes dwight howard look like a pussy bitch.

fucking play me!- darko milicic.
i know that per-40 numbers aren't entirely accurate, and i know that he has some trouble with fouls. but the guy's 40 minutes numbers are 13.1 points, 9.1 rebounds, and 3.1 blocked shots. what, oh what, will it take for us to see the serbian gangster unleashed upon the league? just let him stay on the court, even if he does look lost on occasion. i know this has been said before, but free darko.

coach of the year-phil jackson.
it seems contradictory to give coach of the year to the head of a team that i just accused of being entirely kobe's creation. well, give credit where credit is due. he managed to make an 11-man (occasionally) rotation out of what would be scrap parts on most teams. the fact of the matter is that when the lakes are entirely healthy they could go 12-deep. not that those 12 players are some kind of special bench force that's full of super-secret talent. phil knows what lineups work well together and takes care to put those players on the floor with each other. that's pretty much what a good coach does.

executive of the year- jerry west.
i already told you.

ruler's back

lamar came back gunning today, and though the lakers lost to the bobcats, his future looks bright. we already knew that, but there you go. not a bad game for 1st one post-injury.

the lamar blogom all-stars

no, not like the ones i layed down in the offseason. these awards are based purely on who's the best (as i amorphously decide it) in both conferences. i'll lay down a sentence or two for each dude. basic rules:

1. they have to be in that conference for which they are selected.
2. 2 guards, 2 forwards, 1 center.

let the selections begin.

WEST.
pg: steve nash- sneaky 'nuck posting career numbers after 2 straight mvp awards. obvious.
sg: kobe bryant- possible g.o.a.t. in his prime elevating the worst supporting cast in the league to 50-win pace.
f: dirk nowitzki- big german who keeps on refining and improving every single season. pretty hard to guard.
f: kevin garnett- the most intense player in the league, rumored to be able to kill people using only his eyes.
c: amare stoudemire- maybe not playing as well as tim duncan, but the mofo plays for the best team in the conference, is ridic bangtime, and is only about 80% back. STAT.

EAST.
pg: gilbert arenas- non-stop daggerman from further than 38 feet out. goofy as hell.
sg: dwyane wade- (and it pains me to say this but) he's basically dragging the heat along on some man-sized shoulders. i put him just below kobe in the sg rankings. i will now shoot myself repeatedly.
sf: lebron james- actually tailing off a little this season. rampant speculation that he may be shaqing it until the playoffs. best shape that up or the cavs might never sniff glory.
pf: chris bosh- crafty lefty that looks like a velociraptor and plays w/somewhat less ferocity. still awesome.
c: dwight howard- this gives the east 4 players drafted since 2003, and 5 in this millenium. it is for that reason that the east will become the dominant conference sooner rather than later.

sometimes you just have to shake your head and chuckle

ladies and gents, we are experiencing one of the greatest basketball seasons of all time. no, i don't mean the superlative suns or marauding mavericks (alliteration: out of control). what i do mean is the cellar-dwelling grizz.

let's examine their situation for a quick second. before the draft, they had a roster that was maybe going somewhere, maybe stuck in neutral for the next few seasons. then, and here's where the genius of the logo starts, they trade shane battier for rudy gay + stromile swift. battier is a well known glue guy, one who puts up solid #s and provides hustle and all that weak shit. contrasted w/gay--who has the chance to become a truly thrilling and dynamic player--shane battier is approximately a doodie on the shoe of a dancing monkey. stro swift ain't all that, but whatever, he can dunk.

this trade had two immediate effects: it took some toughness out of the grizz organization and added a dynamic that will doubtlessly have a huge positive return down the road. sure, they suffered in the short term. their success last year was largely predicated on lockdown D, of which they lost the key to when battier departed. it's also worth noting that bobby jackson left the team, subtracting offense and some decent defense. he's shoot-first and injury-prone, but he's solid.

now that we've established that they sucked the defensive soul of a team that was severely reliant on that same D to carry them, we can also see that jerry west added one player who has tremendous potential to contribute and one player who can run the floor and block shots.

perhaps because of the subtraction of battier, or maybe the early absence of pau, the grizz started quite slowly. like as in worst team in the league slowly. pau comes back and it's kind of better, not much, so logo fires fratello. don't get me wrong, fratello is a fine coach and doubtlessly a terrific person to relate to, but he was not the man to lead them to the promised land. they bring in tony barone, who is italian, to push the tempo.

what does this do in terms of overall effectiveness? almost nothing. BUT, it makes the players happier because they get to get out and run, which means big stats. and big stats mean big contracts/vesting options/whatever. however, this doesn't make their disgruntled spanish mountain man any happier, so he requests a trade.

NORMALLY THIS WOULD BE A BAD THING. no team wants to trade their young star, esp. because he seems to be just coming into his own. but, and there's always a but when jerry west is involved, this gives them the perfect excuse for the grizz to flip him for some good bulls. now doesn't that sound appetizing.

factor in that they will still have a really terrible record, and then factor in the talent level in this year's draft.

now, picture with me something truly amazing. the grizz could be moving along with
PG: stoudamire
SG: jones
SF: battier
PF: pau
C: tsakalidas or whatever

OR, they probably will be entering next year with a lineup resembling
PG: stoudamire
SG: ben gordon
SF: luol deng
PF: hakim warrick (developed+ready to kill)
C: greg "motherfucking" oden

now picture that with rudy gay coming off the bench.

it was only the grizz but...

to be perfectly honest, what i saw of the nuggets game was a happy coincidence that resulted from a stats studying session finished early. it is bizarre that a jewish-american princess would have NBATV on her 1,000,000 inch plasma screen tv, but both of those things happened. i tuned in just in time for the nuggets to get their swerve on in a serious way (about midway through the first.)
to me, that was a perfect example of how the nuggets SHOULD function. they basically hopped into passing lanes and ran the grizzlies clean off the floor. i would say that that is a fairly repeatable model for success, but one that requires that they have freakish athletes capable of lane-hopping and floor-running. fortunately, the nuggets are gifted with an extremely athletic team. (perhaps most athletic in the nba?)
but once the game moved along into the 2nd quarter, all the pratfalls of the nuggs approach were on full display. they didn't steal and j.r. smith shot far too many 3s, leading to far too many fast breaks, leading to far too many made baskets, leading to no fast breaks/easy finishes for denver, leading to more j.r. smith 3s. it's a vicious cycle.
ALL THIS BEING SAID: i wouldn't count the game as meaning too goddamn much. after all, it was their first game ever together, and the natural tendency is to create tension/chemistry where none has had the opportunity to grow. i know it was just the grizz, and i know the nuggets will not become the suns, but maybe they can repeat their 38-point 1st quarter once a game. for me, that will be enough.

hear the roar

if you're not excited about melo and AI finally sharing the floor together tonight, get your head checked.

unfortunately it's on NBA tv and not the truly national stage i hoped and prayed for. that means, you guessed it, that i will be confined to highlights and press recaps to try to comprehend whatever is about to spring forth. lord help me while i wait.

but i still get to see the kobe-led lakers take on the new-look warriors. so expect some kind of accounting on both of those tomorrow.

Heaven ain't no chocolate teacup

That title was just kind of one of those things that I said until there didn't seem to be an option to title this anything else. At least of the words appear in the dictionary, even if that same dictionary warns against their conjoined use.

The reason this post is entitled as it is (esp. w/r/t "Heaven" being included) is because it's time to seriously contemplate what I really seriously find attractive in a basketball team and a basketball game.

i guess the main point that attracts me most to the game is its unique combination of beauty and power. in no other sport (besides perhaps football, but i'll cover that later) can a spinning reverse layup be appreciated in the same stratosphere as a thunderous dunk layed down by a big ol' dude. i get all up in arms when kobe or gilbert slices to the hole and lays in a ball no-one thought had any chance of smelling the rim into the hole, but what really gets me superhyphy is when STAT (amare) spins off some chump and posterizes his ass in front of thousands. not to say that kobe ain't perfectly capable of that same posterization (see his twin hammers on duncan for proof of that,) but the point is that it's totally unthinkable that those two plays (the layup representing the beauty and the dunk representing the beast) exist in the same sport as each other, much less theoretically w/in seconds.

i guess i have to go back and contradict myself a little bit here. it is totally thinkable that those two displays of grace and power respectively exist alongside each other, becuase they both accomplish the same purpose; to put points on the board; but it's also worth noting that those two are unique entities almost unrelated except for their ultimate goal. you get the point.

my thesis is that there is a special kind of relationship happening in basketball that makes it so ill. football does have it w/r/t the dichotomy btwn a wide reciever twisting and turning to pull down a miracle reception and big ol' 300 pounders spilling sweat blood and tears in an attempt to atomize fellow big ol' 300 pounders.

BUT (and this is a big but so i capitalized it) football is essentially decided by those big huge men. sure we see recievers and quarterbacks make their own special kind of balletic composition, but football wouldn't be shit w/o the doughboys in the trenches. believe that.

the unique thing about basketball is that the power and the quicks don't need each other to win. (just try blocking a d-line with a collection of wideouts and see how that works out.) but in basketball, we need only reference the suns circa 05-06 to observe a team totally devoid of the rugged spirit that made the 03-04 pistons champs. not to say that the 05-06 suns did not have power, and also to acknowlege that any kind of attempt to dichotomize is an exercise in pure foolishness, but also to note that the suns were totally wrapped up in not punishing people the way punishing people is necessary in all other sports (except for baseball which trends a long long long way towards the pure beauty spectrum.)

that's why i love this game i guess. more reports of this kind to come.

Fear not the moustache

Adam 'Moustache' Morrison entered the NBA to great fanfare; he was the next Larry Bird, the great white hope for a generation tuckered out from watching the Y,B,+F ride around in their Bentley coupes. Hell, he even entered it on a team in need of what he supposedly provided; a top-notch pure scorer unafraid to shoot early and often and unafraid to create his own shots. The Bobcats are not exactly laden down with an excess of star-quality talent for Moustache to take shots away from. I love them with all my heart, even included Gerald Wallace on my All-Lamar team over the summer.

But, Moustache has been something less than advertised. Rather than providing some steady production to the Bobcats' lineup, he provides only a willigness to take shots. For every performance in which he drops 30 like it's absolutely nothing, he's left standing in despair 2 others, wondering why his shots won't drop.
I have heralded him as the White Glenn Robinson, but he has done nothing but show flashes of the awesome streak-shooting that could turn this prophecy true. It could turn out that he is the White Antoine Walker, forever doomed to toss up lines of 8/20 and to look like an oversized (and desperately un-cute) infant.

Ironically, the Bobcats had the solution to their shooting woes in-pocket throughout the entire Morrison saga. Matt Carroll ain't no household name, but he does do what the Bobcats need the most: knock down wide open jump-shots when he is passed the rock. But, the main problem with Carroll is that he is not a star and never-ever-in-a-million-years will be a star. I assume with that assumption that whiteboys with a pretty good stroke from outside that look and play pretty much like a taller Steve Kerr will not suddenly become vogue.
Morrison has the potential, which I know is kind of a filthy word to certain old-guard broadcasters and coaches, to become a star in the league. A star completely opposite his defense-minded counterpart on their roster.

EDIT: As soon as I finished writing this, I saw that the Bobcats beat the Pistons (again), with Moustache contributing 16 from the bench on 6/15 shooting. He was what I thought he was I guess.

"My swag was phenomenal"

Gilbert explains just what happened after his sick buzzer beater against the Bucks.

Hustlenomics

Observe the wonderment before you read on.

Now that we've gotten our brief moment of wonderment at the Italian Stallion out of the way, we can move onto the real true subject of this post.
Let it never be said that Lamar Blogom didn't tip its cap to the hustlaz on the block. By that I mean all the real bangers floating around the league, the Patron Saint of which would have to be either Charles Oakley or the entire Bad Boys Pistons roster sans Isiah.

For all of my enamorment with the flashy O, some solid rebounding and general bad-dude stuntin gets my juices flowing almost as much. In most cases, shit goes overrecognized by announcers and sports columnists, and occasionally general managers (see Rose, Malik), but I would be completely in the wrong to dismiss hustlin' as a Right-Way-only facet of the most beautiful game.
Hustling, as a rule, creates the anti-stars sports writers slurp up like milk when they feel particularly vengeful towards the YB+F folks that create their profession. Feel like the star's mistreating you? Go talk to the grimy hustle dude at the end of the bench who sees the floor only to clean the glass. There's a reason that they're described as workmanlike; they're basically overpaid janitors.

But here I am blasting the very same people I promised to glorify with this shit. Let the beatification begin now.

I said earlier that hustling typically creates anti-stars who then become stars in their own right because they aren't paid a hundred million dollars, but then they get silly multi-year contracts for big bucks when their entire use in the first place was that they were cheap. I say that because it's like 90% true. However, the notable exceptions do exist.
Emeka Okafor and Dwight Howard are the most noticeable of these exceptions, at least in the current NBA. In both cases, neither is overburdened with especially silky post moves on which to fall back on (Chris Bosh). In both cases, they aren't such physical specimens that they become unguardable at least in part to their sheer physical size or strength (Shaq-fu). In both cases, they score a majority of their points on plays where they make a concerted effort to get the ball in a position where they can scratch their way to success.

In Howard's situation, the lack of a polished post game can be at least partially attributed to his overall rawness; he's basically a colt out on the court. I guess some of his success is indeed due to his physique, but a lot of it happens simply because he wants it more than the next dude. A great part of watching his development into a truly unstoppable force is watching those unsanded corners evolve into the smooth curves of one truly in tune with his given position. Now that I'm saying this I realize that he will probably become a nemesis when he sheds his youthfulness.

Okafor, on the other hand, has no excuse as readily available as Howard's youth and lack of college experience. Dude was a 4-year senior who played big minutes in the big time well before he crossed some state lines into Charlotte. Despite his experience in a great program and starring in the Big Dance, Okafor was all hustle (baby.) Typically those types of players crash and burn if they're expected to shoulder any kind of load at all on an NBA team, regardless of location or status.
But Okafor once again beat the odds. He's generally recognized as a franchise-type defensive player, and maybe-kinda-sorta getting there on offense. But, watch a Bobcats game (hard, I know) and you will see a man totally defined by his will to live. A truly low-rent version of Okafor is available in Los Angeles, who goes by the name of Ronny Turiaf, although he might fit more in the Dennis-Rodman-mold than the Charles-Oakley-type.

Nowitzness

It's hard, but not entirely impossible, to believe that in this blog's 50 post existence, Dirk has been mentioned a grand total of 0 times.

The Mavs acquired Nowitzki in what will be remembered as right up there with Vlade-Kobe in terms of utilizing the rape stick. Tractor Traylor (for whom they acquire Nowitz) is a fine, compelling player who happens to resemble a bowling ball, but he is most certainly not a future hall of famer, nor is he the greatest (debatably) international player ever. Nowitz is all two of those things.

Nowitz' game upon entering the league was basically the same as Vladimir Radmanovich's is now. He hung around the 3 point line shooting J's, only wandering into the key as an incidental; maybe to finish on fast breaks or grab a stray rebound.Unlike Radmanovich, Dirk kept improving, and improving, and improving. The bookon Dirk circa 03-04 was that he could be contained with a smaller defender (a la Bruce Bowen) who could get in his face on the outside J and keep his increasingly excellent driving game in check.

But, as is the story with Dirk, he stepped his game up and developed an efficient back to the basket game. At this point, he's basically unguardable when his jumper is falling, and the Mavericks are a terrific team for it.

HIBACHI!

Happy Kwanzaa and New Years from Lamar Blogom, which has finished its holiday hiatus (finally) and will be back on a semi-regular posting schedule. Among my resolutions is at least 3 quality posts a week, with an option for a fourth depending on homework load.

Anyways.

We've discussed AgentZero 6 times, this one the most in depth of them all. He is quite simply far and away the most singular and awesome player in the NBA. His game could be easily pigeonholed into that of a shoot-first, pass- (and ask questions-)later PG that Mamba of all people accused of being sans conscious.
Gilbert's game could be described as a more perfect extension of the steez originated by the Answer. He has that same sort of funky-freshness and feel-good little man aura about him, along with an insatiable urge to get the fuck to the bucket, but he also cops some serious juevos AI lacks when it comes to shots outside the 3-point line.

Here's something else important: GILBERT'S IN HIS 5TH YEAR!

As Peter, my spiritual cowriter, points out--he's only beginning to flash some serious scoring ability. Last season could be described as the one where he exploded onto our oily stage, and 06-07 is just a confirmation of his gunnerly goodness. Dude got snubbed twice last year: once at the ASG, and once by the Olympic team. He basically vowed revenge on the entire league (and specifically the Suns and Blazers, against whom he pledged to average 50 ppg) and backed his shit up--averaging over 30 since he was left off the All-Star team, and scored 54 against the Suns in his only outing opposite McMillan or D'Antoni.

Gilbert's dagger against the Bucks is only an extension of what all of us here at Lamar hope will become the type of legend we tell to our grand kids while we bounce their asses on our knees and try to ignore the arthritis. If you watch the ESPNews feed, you are not only treated to the announcer yelling "HIBACHI" like it's the only word he knows in the damn language, but also a brutal scowl Gil flashes for approx. 1 second after dropping the Bucks to their knees. Then the man is nothing but smiles as he walks towards his bench and the signature jersey toss.

His game is the purest form of gunnership. By that I mean that he has that sort of star quality where the defense matters only as an incidental. Gil has to work harder than maybe Kobe or TMac does, but he's different than they are in that he plays the game of basketball as if it's totally incidental to whatever else he's doing that night.

Perhaps another reason we find Gilbert so appealing is that he has a little bit of child left in him. Sure he has his occasional bouts of petulance involving a lot of assists and not too much scoring, followed by the opposite, but he also has the sort of sublime quality of figuring out the game as he goes along. This in direct opposition to his Division-mate Dwyane Wade, who seemingly has the game on lock every time he steps onto the floor. Not to say that Gilbert doesn't have more than his share of swagger (and outright cockiness), but his confidence comes and goes. When it is there, he heats up like the Hibachi Grill that he so espouses. When it's not, dude could be a Frigidaire for how he trots around the court.

AgentZero is also childish in his actions outside the court.

(I should clarify that when I say childish I don't mean immature and shits himself. What I do mean is that he has some serious child-savior vibes happening around him, including his innocence w/r/t traditional means of playing basketball.)

Rather than spend time with teammates out on the town, Gilbert chooses to stay in his hotel room and order things from infomercials. Now tell me that there isn't some part of every one of us that wants to just sit around and buy supersharp knives and other errata. In fact, that same proclivity for infomercial ordering has probably manifested itself in what was for a long time his trademark shout of Hibachi.