rock my world

the houston rockets have certainly had a long journey since they were last in serious contention for the nba title this late in the season. that's right SERIOUS CONTENTION. i ain't talking about the one (if that)-and-done rox of the stevie franchise era. i'm talking about serious, been bangin since my li'l n**** rob got killed for his barkleys, shit.

the rockets, although they may only be a five seed with no hope of catching any of the top 4 teams, let alone the other two texas teams. but while the top 3 are enmenshed in a serious battle like gandalf and the balrog falling through that mountain, the rockets just lay in the cut, waiting for the suns, spurs, and mavs to beat the ish out of each other in the first few rounds so they can come in with yao and tmac's sleepy-ass eye.

the thing about the rox is that they're not the team one might expect. yao and tmac are obviously both offensive LOADS to the point where tmac was once in best-player-in-the-league discussion with kobe and yao, if he stays healthy, is THE dominant post player in the nba. believe that. if you're about to quibble with either of those statements remember that tmac took the shitbag magic to the playoffs multiple times and once drove the pistons to the brink of elimination until tay prince busted out of his shell. also, shaq is decrepit at this point and the big german is not a post player per se, deigning to venture into that world of the large only when small bodies come his way.

the rockets are not a team defined by their superstars in those respects, as so many teams are. in some regards they are similar to an nfl squad in that they are their coach's team. jvg has to garner some love for coach of the year after he took this ragtag bunch of dudes and made them the best defensive team in the league. i would look up that stat, but i'm lay-z. they still play GOOD offense, just not at the juggernaught level one might expect given their two stars.

remember: offense wins games but defense wins championships. i'm not saying the rockets are about to win a title. (ALTHOUGH remember the 2003 pistons squad. and they had way less talent on offense.) they are capable of making some serious noise come playoff time.

odenomics

we can all agree on two things this march madness:

1. greg oden will be the first person selected in the draft.
2. kevin durant was sans doubt the best player in college basketball this year.

this is not a commentary on "will kevin durant or greg oden be a better pro" or some shit like that. in fact i don't even know what the hell this is. this post has been aborted once due to exhaustion so now i'll again take up the sword of bloggership and promise not to resheath it until i'm done with this current quest.

people are really really sold on oden as the number one pick. in fact, kevin durant would have had to become a kind of hybrid between pete maravich and david robinson with a little bit of kevin garnett and tracy mcgrady thrown in for teams to begin to fathom challenging oden's stranglehold on the top spot. hell, even when oden played one handed and was honestly pretty much JUST above average and not the OH SWEET JESUS THE BIG BLACK MAN IS COMING TO SWAT OUR BALLS force that many expected he would be in the pro game nobody batted an eyebrow even as durant was doing shit that amde you wonder just what the hell it is that they put in that new jersey water. dude has spider man powers and probably will make a generation of prospects WISH they grew up in a state contaminated with toxic waste, just so they could get a taste of the shit that gave kd those skills in that body.

well anyways tourney time rolls around and durant half shits the bed and is half screwed by tim floyd bending rick barnes over the scorers table and doing him like barnes is in on a child molestation charge. one would think that once oden's hand has healed, and now that he's shooting FTs with his right ffs, he'd finally stop acting like a bitch and start getting his grown man on. not to be.

the trouble with oden, and the thing that gives him silly potential, is that the man has no idea how to play the angles on a basketball court. i mean watch him, seriously watch him, and you will see a behemoth of a man struggle with a kwame-like fervor over how to get his ass in proper position to block shots. there's a reason he's been in foul trouble the whole damn shebangabang; and that reason is that even in the mockery that is college basketball you can't just blast off and expect results. the best shot blockers, of which andre kirilenko is a fab example, know how to get themselves into position to swat a shot and not get called for a foul. oden just does not understand how to do that.

another issue i have is that while he's good around the bucket, he takes way too many contested shots. good post players take few contested shots, choosing instead for a sick spinoff and slam. watch some shaq tapes from before he became a fat asshole and look at how often he leaves defenders looking silly or just plain outmanned because that man had superior post moves. or akeem olajuwon. either one of those two. or pretty much any great center. sure, i think oden will be a fine player, just maybe not the superstar people expect.

we could be seeing mj/sam bowie on the microscopic scale, but durant will be better in the league.

of course, keep in mind that this is coming from the man who thought bron would flame out.

meet the new boss (same as the old boss)

d'antoni hath spawned hisself an army. whether it's the gs warriors runnin with nelly like DRAMA I'M BACK or the crazed dungeon-family-exuberance of the melo-iverson nuggets or the raptors tryna front like they know whats up, there is a serious revolution, or i guess devolution technically happening in the league today.

everywhere you look teams trying to get smaller, quicker, better shooting. that ain't bad, in fact it's pretty dern sweet when you think about it. it makes the league on the whole more watchable; when even the shit teams are playing a breakneck speed and killing themselves just to stay alive.

take the warriors for example. what they have is a roster full of tweeners-- matt barnes, monta ellis (stuck between point and shooting guards), mickael pietrus, and basically a host of others my sloth is preventing me from looking up. but the point is that they survive in a way that same roster never could have 5 or 10 years ago. when shaq was still in full effect, and guys like akeem and the admiral were patrolling the paint, no way do you get away with "hey, andris biedrins is my center is that ok?" but in this new-old nba where clutching and grasping is illegal, and any contact is looked upon with an audible intake of breath and a whistle quicker than you can say "that's not really a foul but they will probably call it one anyways" those teams can and do succeed.

they are not the suns because no-one but the suns can be the suns. their talent is off the charts not only in terms of personnel but also in terms of coaching. i guess this will sound kind of like a love letter, but they are probably the most or second most talented team in the league depending on where you put the mavericks. i mean nash is nash, matrix is matrix, amare is a beastly god, and even diaw is sensational in his own french way. it is that collection of talent along with the roll-the-ball-out-and-see-what-steve-does style d'antoni is so comfortable adopting that makes the suns the team that gets me out of my seat, hootin and hollerin like a fool the most out of any team besides kobe. yes, i just said kobe was a team DEAL WIT IT. nash to amare on the screen roll is pure floetry, especially when amare brings the thunder. and no matter how predictable it is that he's going to flush it like "i make it rain on them hoes" i still got my hyphie (original spelling courtesy keak da sneak) shoes on.

but the newbies also bring it like nobodies business. basically the nuggets are the blackest team in the league, and also the best fighting team now that ivey joined their hallowed ranks. they're also seriously putting shit together too. peep iverson and melo both deferring to each other and stepping up simultaneously. if it continues to work, it could form the single most bizarre symbiosis this league has ever ever ever seen. the most comparable people are kobe and shaq, but that doesn't even do this shit justice. basically the 2nd and 3rd most talented pure scorers in the league are playing on the same squad. and this somehow works. FURIOS GEORGE REPPIN IT OLD SCHOOL.

nellyball ain't too shabby neither. he's even got bd, who's usually vd (yeah, punning in this bitch) to chances of winning shit, buying into his scheme. not knocking fools down with statistical output, but at the same time giving it all his creaky frame will allow him. with baron, it ain't about stats young gun. maybe he's starting to recognize that, but that's seriously good. we see him move from HMM I'M OVER HALF COURT TIME FOR A 3 LATE to cool down monta, we setting this bitch up, run a play before our very eyes and we should drop jaws in wonder. he's basically mirroring the evolution of the league with his play. before he was a 3 jacking dunk dropping swag machine, now he's, as i said before, a serious dude willing to put serious time into making this team shit work.

Why I Can't Root For the Lakers

this is a first, a guest post on lamar blogom. not talking about pmac's little chris bosh is a dinosaur comparison, although that was apt. this is a true blue honest to god guest post by Dennis Danziger, english teacher at palisades charter high school and publisher-editor of mad as hell club, which can be found online at www.madashellclub.net .

Here's the deal, not about Lamar in particular, but about the Lakers and the Laker fans and why I can't root for them even though I've lived here for 25 years and love bball.

Laker fans seem to care more about who's sitting courtside that who's playing on the court.

In moved here in the early 80s, I attended my first NBA Championship Game. Lakers vs. Sixers at the Forum. Kareem vs. Dr. J. Does it get any better than that?

I'm sitting about 20 rows behind the Laker bench, the game's on and I can't help but notice that lots of people, not two or three, but dozens are focused anywhere but on the court. They're looking left, looking right, not to see who's setting picks, but who's in the stands.

Then the buzz, "Where's Jack?" Oops. Jack wasn't in his seat, no where to be found, and people were actually concerned about that than they were that the Lakers were behind.

That's the moment I realized I could never root for the Lakers. The Clippers, sure, the Lakers never.

Eventually Jack settled into his courtside seat and the people around me relaxed and watched the game, when they weren't oogling and gossiping about Jack or Diane Cannon or the stars du'jour who had courtside or near courtside seats.

The other moment that solidified by anti-Laker feeling was a few years back. I remember when the Lakers had won back-to-back championships it seemed as if every third car was proudly waving a Laker flag. But the moment they lost, the car flags came down. Never to be seen again.

This sort of fan behavior would never happen in a real city like NYC, Boston, Chicago or DC.

what you know about mvp candidates?

clearly not as much as this man, averaging a cool 57.5 points over his last two games. lamar blogom was in full effect at friday's game, believe that.

(as a little post script to our presence there, i would like to submit a person for review as the biggest douchebag ever. he came at halftime and started chanting m-v-p immediately upon sitting down. he turned out to be tolerable because of kobe.)

at this point kobe cannot be quantified by normal means. i guess if i remembered mj in his prime i would call his performance jordan-esque, but i didn't so this is my baseline for "get on my back i'm taking you there" performances. at the end of friday's game with the lakers down nearing the end of the 4th i started to get a sinking feeling; it's usually at those points in games when kobe takes over, or tries to, and the lakes more often that not find themselves losers despite of kobe's attempts at heroics. his heroism usually means attempting damn near impossible shots and rimming them out, but on this occasion it manifested itself as several "forgot about dre" threes, including the tying one in zach randolph's fat face and another spinning away from a double team.

kobe is the last true scorer left in the game, with even the tireless iverson choosing to make nods towards deferring to his younger running mate as the season wears on. kobe is also a throwback to an earlier era, an era in which you did not like your opponents. in fact, you hated them with all your heart and would rather die than see anyone you were up against stride off the court flush with victory. kobe is unique in that he possesses the killer instinct most people only dream about; he will rip out your jugular if it means a shot at victory. and that desire to win can be misconstrued.

he is the utlimate alpha dog. if we accept kevin garnett as the ultimate second banana, always willing to defer, always seeking to make his team better, kobe cannot and will not accept the fact that anyone could ever ever ever be better than he is. that attitude probably doomed his relationship with shaq, but it also gives him a fighting chance in his post-shaq career. he is simply not content to fade into the twilight as a great scorer that cannot win a game of team basketball, even after he's proved himself as pretty much everything possible.

there are 3 banners hanging up in staples in large part because of him, and it is very possible that with a little luck and little personnel moving skill there could be a few more in the rafters before he hangs up his sneakers for good.

round and round and round we go

notes before we begin: i am aware of the mavs suns thrilla in big D that happened tonight, but i only caught the 2nd and 3rd quarters because i was busy getting boards and buckets for the pimentos of the palisades recreation league. PMAC who has long existed only in the shadowy background of lamar blogom as a co-contributor will be contributing a post i'm told is entitled "do the heisman that ho." we should all be excited.

well it started when mj posted up in his austin powers inspired red crushed velvet jacket and told the five media members of charlotte that bernie is his dawg, but that dawg ain't got no bite. or maybe it started when james dolan made the confusing (to say the least) decision to get all reup gang with isiah thomas' contract. i already dropped knowledge on that. well anyways the carousel spun on over to ill-waukee and found terry stotts sitting at his desk like "what do you want from me all my dudes are injured?" as you can probably tell, the carousel was having none of it.

anyways so they hired someone with an unpronouncable last name in which K is prominently involved. LOOKS LIKE WE GOT OURSELVES ANOTHER ONE. maybe this one will have the good sense not to piss me off by coaching duke and tossing gilbert off his roster.

(by the way how much you pay for the pay-per-view showing of gilly playing against the blue devils. i'm prepared to drop $200 if he lives up to expectations. i demand, however, that he play with the long beach state team and that snoop dogg and dick vitale are announcing. snoop would be doing play by play, and at least one time in the game, vitale would have to rep the LBC. just saying.)

actually i take back that the new coach k's name is unpronounceable it's Krystkowiak which ain't so bad as far as these things go. i'll still be saying his name with a scowl unless the bucks turn into some ill shit when everyone is back and healthy and running. the bucks have the potential to be a fine team in the eastern conference. if they can stay healthy, which is a big gotdamn if these days, they have the potential to be a sick squad on offense. there was a reason everyone and their bro (incl. i think me) was ripping the raps for their trade for tj ford, and that is that c villy is so silly when he's healthy.

but they do have to play some defense to win some b ball games. and while winning is sometimes not as high on the lamar blogom priority list as some might like, winning is essential for the bucks because they don't have a single player that makes watching them redeeming in its own right. i guess redd can be fun at times--when he's draining jumpers in front of at least 2 defenseless defenders to be totally specific--but they don't have someone like j.r. smith or j smoove or even shaun livingston--someone that can delight and confound within seconds of each other. every player on their roster is a model of self-actualization, which basically makes them the young spurs, without any defense or a dominating underrated post player. that's right, i said that shit.

in order to become watchable i suggest they do 1 of 3 things--

1. start playing defense
2. draft someone electrifying
3. play at a blindingly fast clip

really any one of those 3 would be fine. OUT.

hold your applause

as it turns out all it took to shut down the mavs streak and make dirk shit himself was just the GS warriors and baron davis on some "i'm back like spandex" shit. that alone should tell you something about what we here at lamar blogom (WE ARE NOW A DOTCOM, REKOGNIZE) value so much about the lower half of the nba.

it ain't that the lower half is better on some metaphysical level. actually fuck it, it is that the lower half is better on a metaphysical level. you heard it, i said it. as pmac, who's the spirit animal of lamar blogom said "fuck discipline, i'm tryna see bangtime." word to god on that. no-one in their right minds would rather watch some spurs-jazz play-executing bonanza than the suns and the warriors banging on each other in a serious point scoring contest.

there are those who would argue by gloryifying the pursuit of points (and bangtime) above all else, i'm ignoring a key aspect of the game; defense. they would also argue that i'm merely a novice at basketball appreciation or whatever the hell it is that they call it. those are the same people that will argue that ball is jazz, and that jazz>hip hop and everything else. these people are not to be trusted. any man that holds bruce bowen above josh smith is not a man to me. as in "i don't like you go away please now thank you."

anyways, so that was a totally different thing. back on topic. the point mainly is that sheeit happens in the regular season that makes people all irrational and goggly and sweaty under the collar, etc. don't believe me? check the eastern conference from last year. while the pistons were rolling up on the eastern conference, beating ass like everyone was redheaded step-children the miami heat were laying in the cut maybe popping their head out for short stretches. then, playoff time and they are not to be denied. as good as the pistons looked in the season, the cavs damn near broke their backs--and would have if lebron had half of a supporting cast-- and the heat jumped all over them like nobodies business.

well now we fast forward to a few days ago and we see the mavs absolutely tearing up assholes like it's shower time in prison and we think to ourselves "how are any motherfuckers even about to talk about this team can be beat?" but recognize that playoffs literally are a second season with some tangential relationships to the first. even those fade into the deep background after the first round, and then shit might as well have not even occurred when it comes time for the finals. ever heard of shaq?

you did what?

james dolan, you are retarded.

how you about to give an extension to sans doubt the league's worst gm? he got picutres of you with a dead girl and a live boy? seriously isiah is fucking retarded. i guess less this year but since because he's been trying to save his damn job. maybe it's nice of dolan to give the nice boy another chance to fix the situation that he messed up so memorably. at this point though please; big snacks is getting run on the court?

nvm that it's mind blowing that he even got his fat ass paid in the first place. DUDE HAD ONE GOOD GAME IN LIKE 1,000. why do people insist on looking at tiny sample sizes and trying to assume that that shit will happen on the regular? clearly that was a spectacular game, not the rule. people don't figure shit out suddenly like lightning bolts hitting them in the head. tim thomas ain't going to suddenly become motivated as shit, jerome james ain't about to drop the pig feets and start hitting the gym. shit, kwame brown ain't about to grow a damn brain even if you handed him an instruction manual like THIS IS HOW YOU PLAY BASKETBALL STOP ACTING RETARDED.

people who are bad for protracted stretches of time and then have one good game or one good series or one good playoffs are not suddenly this jesus figure that realized "oh, i've been doing this all wrong this whole time and now i know what to do, can somebody give me my damn cash please?"

EVER HEARD OF A CONTRACT YEAR BUCKO?

ironic that isiah puts together this virtuoso performance (which, news flash they're still five games under .500 are you stupid james dolan?) and hoodwinks his boss just like he got hoodwinked by just about everyone on his damn roster. memo to everyone in the league: you are in an abusive relationship with players who put together one good year or whatever. it's time to stop.

ERIC DAMPIER IS GETTING PAID MORE THAN CARON BUTLER. IT'S HONESTLY NOT THAT HARD TO REPLACE A BIG DUDE WHO CAN KIND OF BLOCK SHOTS AND REBOUND. literally go to any major college anywhere and you can find someone intimidating. like damp is somehow better than dj mbenga? bitches, get your shit together.

a study of the insanity that takes place during the month of march

what is it that the american people find so compelling about march madness? is it the endless shots of coach k glowering on the sidelines? the occaisional bob knight moment of danger? joakim noah acting a fool?

i would say that it's none of those three things. i would say, and this is pretty obvious to me, that the appeal of it lies in george mason, gonzaga, and vilanova. the zags first bust onto the scene with a floppy haired, floppy dicked rebel named daniel dickau. vilanova shocked the world by shooting 79%(!) in the title game against the hoyas. george mason got to the final four before it ran into joakim "i am the most annoying college player ever because i have a stupid haircut and run around the court looking like a moron but manage to be effective" noah and the FLA gators. (p.s. to that sentence--who would have figured that florida would be the first ever school to hold both the football and basketball titles simultaneously?)

all three of those teams are/were ridiculous underdogs because not only of the fact that they're tiny schools but also because they're a bunch of whiteys (i mainly mean gonzaga here) scrambling around the court shooting and passing and setting picks. that could be the reason why gonzaga is perennial underdogs despite making the tourney 9 of the last 9 years and even being pretty highly ranked in the days of the 'stache. at this point, don't even mention them as underdogs--they're perennial contenders who make the tourney every year and start a bunch of honkeys. whiteness shouldn't=scrappy underdogs.

the magic behind the madness is the possibility that one team, preferably from a mid-major, will have some sort of magical 3-draining run that takes them into the tasty 16 and beyond. basically cbs lives for the shots of reserves leaping around and locking arms and crucifying each other while their team hangs with a big dog. the tourney is the ultimate time for the size of the dog in the fight vs. size of fight in the dog theory to be put to the test. time and again we see a small scrappy team with some outside shooting touch hang around with the dukies or UNC or uconn, eventually snapping their back with a well placed run in the last 5 minutes of the 2nd half. the biggie makes a desperation comeback, one that always seems to fall a little short.

that's the magic--any team can beat anyone else. so sue me if that's the most obvious thing in the world.

the tourney is kind of like the american dream that way; work hard enough and you just might, just maybe might sneak into the promised land. find yourself dancing on a court that says final four in the center, the big scary black people trudging off like "you're on me like a white shadow."

oh you thought we was done?

man oh man i was 100% prepared to throw the lakers and heat to the curb as two of their top players both went down with shoulder injuries. little did i know that the glaring duo that used to set staples center on fire would once again don their worn costumes and engage once again as masked crusaders.

neither is what they once were--kobe has moved from immature kid to the mamba, capable of striking with instantaneous speed at 99% accuracy; and shaq is now the big delegator, comfortable with the fact that he's not the best in the building. curiously, both of their chief supporters, the men who have enabled them to become this way, are both out with severely messed up shoulders and possibly shelved for the rest of the season.

it would have been perfectly excusable for both teams to fade from playoff contention, or in the lakers case fall to the 8th seed, which is actually worse. but these two masters--one former and one currently resplendent--were not having a damn word of that. kobe hung with the suns until the final seconds, and shaq turned in a vintage performance against his old nemeses the deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetroit pistons. we're talking flabby, been sitting on his ass, rehabbing a bum knee shaq, not BIG SHAQ DIESEL A.K.A. THE BIG ARISTOTLE.

these two are stars of another era. yes, i know it was only 4 years ago that they were lighting shit up on the reg'lar, and i know that kobe is still a dominant scoring threat, but the two-star system of championship winning is supposedly on its way out. new nba and all that. shaq and kobe are a call-back to the era where a single man, by the force of his will and talent alone, could sling a team onto his back as if it were a load of bricks and carry that team until his knees collapsed from under him. iverson is another of that era, as are the entirety of the post-30 nyk knicks.

this stretch in which they both drag their moribund franchises will be interesting not only to see if shaq still has it, or if kobe can lead the lakes through the fiery west, but as the ultimate acid test: can one man still make a team superlative? are they done, or back like jordan, wearing the 4-5?

P.S. check out lamar blogom guesting on some real shit over at never mind the bats it's a good blog.

somebody pay gerald wallace his damn money

gerald wallace looks pharaonic when he has his mouth closed and is grimacing.
that he is a resident member of the nba-players-who-look-distinctly-like-other-things club (chris bosh is the president; he strongly resembles a raptor) is reason enough to pay gerald more than the midlevel that he's currently getting. add in the fact that at 24, he's been steadily improving and seems to finally be healthy, and that he has bounce out the building, and that he steals like it's watts circa 1993, and that he scores without a jumper. this is a bad, bad man.
if he doesn't get paid, and there's a good chance he won't, given that every team but his current one and the orlando magic is either over or close to the cap, this is going to be some serious scandal. he didn't get paid 2 summers ago, even though every gm in the league should have seen this monster struggling to break loose.
the one major thing besides the fact that he's injured a lot that's hurting is value is that he plays in charlotte, which is an nba wasteland. he does have good stats on a bad team, but this is a bad team that's going places. however, they're not there yet. they're probably one or two years and one free agent signing away from bursting onto the eastern conference scene like illmatic. reckognize that they have had no bad contracts, and one semi-bad draft pick unless morrison figures his shit out, then they're model nba citizens.
that ain't the point, but it kind of is. gerald can't get paid if he's got no exposure. i would draw parallels to hood mixtapes. people know that shit's bumping every block but since sony ain't exactly sending A&R riding through the hood like "what's up" no-one but the streets heard that sound.
that is simply not right. someone should pay this man his money. i hope its the suns, and they show the world what new-age james worthy looks like on the new-age showtime lakers.