Fix What Ails Ya

The ATL makes up for its constant musical rennaissance by being somewhat of a dead spot for professional sports--at least of late. The Braves saw their million year run as objects of dominance come to a crashing close, Mike Vick alternates athletic ascendancy with moments of purest trash, and the Hawks have fallen like stones ever since the Human Highlight Reel took his talents elsewhere.

Here at Lamar Blogom, we do not concern ourselves with the trivialities of baseball or football (and certainly not hockey or NASCAR). That leaves one possible topic of discussion; the STATlanta Hawks.
The Hawks represent an interesting paradox--nearly everyone on their roster is between the heights of 6'5" and 6'9", which includes the mean NBA height. (I think its somewhere around 6'6", just below 6'7".) The point is that their roster is composed entirely of the type of slasher/banger that so defines what is good and pure about NBA basketball. Unfortunately, the Hawks have found that with a roster with such a unique composition that competition in this NBA is damn near impossible. Three times in the last three years, they have floundered somewhere below mediocracy, with only small steps toward achieving that legitimacy that every organization strives for. Yes, even the Knicks.

Yes, they have screamed out the gate like a damn freight train this year, with Joe Johnson behaving like a latter day Kobe, Josh Smith getting his freak on (I recommend searching "Josh Smith putback" on YouTube and observing the majesty), and Speedy ClaxTron holding shit down from the point guard position. But we must ask ourselves how long they can keep up the kind of breakneck pace typically reserved for future NBA champions.

But, we came here to bury Caesar, not to praise him. So begins the season, now find out how it should continue.The Hawks need to completely revolutionize three spots on their roster: PG, PF, and C. They must cast down Shelden Williams, Zaza Pachulia, and relegate the ClaxTron to the bench where he belongs. The changes I am about to lay out are not easy, nor should the be construed as such. Rather, they are the type of high-risk, high-reward manuevers that Belkin et. al. should be engaging in right about now.



#1: Get Shaun Livingston.

I said this shit wasn't gonna be easy, and this is certainly the least easy of any of the suggestions I'm laying out. It is, however, the most significant. In acquiring Livingston, the Hawks would be getting themselves a dude who knows how to distribute, knows how to run, and knows how to be a physical freak. Dude is a 6'7" PG, which molds perfectly with the stringent characteristics required for future Hawkdom. To get him, it's probably gonna cost an unprotected 1st rounder and a valuable piece. They should do it at the drop of the hat--he would give their offense purpose and direction by his very existence on the floor. Also, he's 6'7". Ridiculous.

#2: Lay hands on J.R. Smith.
This facet of their plan will be significantly easier than part no. 1. Smith has a rep as a undisciplinable free spirit obsessed with his own stats and tossing down incredible dunks. In reality, most of this is probably true, but the Hawks should pair him up with the man who could very well be his brother in disguise. In the process, they'll fuck up anybody even moderately confused at the distinction between JSmoove and J.R. Also, they grab someone fairly deadly from 3, someone who flies out the building, and someone else who's 6'7". Start him alongside Shaun, Joe, Josh, and the Center to be Named Later or bring his bad self off the bench, he will bring another superathletic, young body to terrify the other team with.


#3: The Center Position
There's some debate circling about Lamar Blogom HQ about how exactly they should solve their woes at the 5 spot. The list is down to 5 candidates (appropriately):

1. Tyrus Thomas
2. Stromile Swift
3. Boris Diaw
4. Lamar Odom
5. Chris Wilcox

Each has their own special strengths and flaws. Of the set, Stro would be the easiest to come by. He, however, brings a rep for being a big softy and not praciticing hard enough to make a tangible difference in a game. If the Hawks can harness his multifarious talents, they would have a testament to the athleticism of the human body on their hands.

They could go in another direction, acquiring a toolsy amoeba-type like Diaw or Odom to hold down the middle. These two both have the skillset to distribute the ball, set screens, rebound, and occaisionally score their own selves when the time comes. I know Diaw used to be a Hawk. Bad on them, and they should try their damndest to wring him away from the Suns.

If they fail in all of these quests except the one for Swift, they may consider it a victory if they can harness his considerable talents into a being that bangs on the offensive end of the floor, swats on the defensive end, and generally is just a complete badass.

Fallow no longer

It is time to break Lamar's silence. In part caused by the general uninterestingness of the Lig this summer (is Bonzi Wells dead?) and in part due to increased workload now that school has rolled around, Lamar has been relatively reticent of late.

No longer.

Consider this the first post of a new era.
AI's denial by USA basketball has to rank either as the number one or two disaster of the summer. Agent Zero's injury/cut/subsequent explosion was bad, but not of the magnitude of the Answer being denied.

Dude busted his ass for Team USA in Athens and is repayed with a curt "Fuck you" when he asked, nay, begged, to be included in Colangelo's grand experiment on the international stage.
The Answer's snub reveals all that we should have seen coming. AI is the quintessence of Young, Black, and Fabulous. Even as he begins to decay, his conrows still hold the threat of unmitigated thuggery in its most primitive form. In short, he is still the most BAMF in the Association, perhaps more than dear Ronald because of his lack of explosion.

Latent energy is more potent than that exposed; his lack of explosion (save the "practice" speech) has dumbfounded a ruling class incapable of viewing Street as anything more than dealing crack and robbing old ladies.
Colangelo's Doctrine of Dominance runs counter to everything AI represents. He is not concerned with dominating the game with shock and awe--big dunks and the like. Rather, he is content to operate outside the normal boundaries of the law. Answer ignores the niche to which he should be regulated, drawing a healthy dose of hate from the right way contingent in process.
His transcendent ignorance is exactly what Team USA needed. It was filled by an essentially Right Way cast of characters--heady folk not as concerned with their stats as the functioning of the team as a whole. Their failure on a world stage is as much of an indictment of the Right Way as Athens was.

That's right, Athens.

Olympics 2004 proved what everyone should have already known. It proved that prejudice against prototypical Young Black Males is the most misguided sentiment of all time; Melo and Lebron barely tasted the floor, while Larry was content to watch his team struggle to adapt to the Right Way that he so cherished.

His inflexibility told us volumes about him and predicted his subsequent failure with the New York Knicks with stunning accuracy.
For all of importance on the world stage, Iverson also tells us about ourselves. He shows us the true nature of the underdog, the one we should all rally behind like so many moths to a flame. He shows us that no matter how big the heart, how big the fight in the dog, there will always be someone around to tell us to hate that dog because it makes them feel insecure in their White Anglo-Saxon Protestant manhood.

Iverson is everything that the Right Way folks tell us should be, but with a casing so repellent to their blinkered gaze as to make them blind to his glory.

I Never Though You'd Be A Junkie Because Heroin is so Passe

Since blaming Isiah Thomas for Knickerbocker woes has gone the way of bellbottoms, Starbury shoulders most of the abuse.

In the words of Tony Wilson: "You're just fucking wrong."

To put it bluntly, Starbury is perceived as a cancer; a shoot-first point guard in a world where that role is regulated to the trash heap designated for other Next Jordan candidates. That Starbs occupies the same space as Franchise is an experiment that is every bit as valid as the PHX.

The experiment was doomed to failure from its inception with the hiring of LB to coach the Knicks; as soon as Franchise was traded, Starbury correctly assessed that they needed to play one style only--run and gun.

His statement is a testament to an intelligence rarely attributed to ballers, especially those from the streets.

Zeke should not attempt to control this monster, as LB did, but rather let it run its course. Put five guards on the floor, don't be constricted by the social norms that dictate the way that basketball should be played.

It worked at Villanova, and we know the normal stuff sure as hell didn't work last year, so why not allow Starbury to control his own fate? Steph is not the one to blame for the NYK debacle, nor is Zeke.

Isiah has built a team designed to destroy, but to destroy in a very specific way. LB did not unlock the secret. Maybe Zeke can, but I have a feeling that the keyholder might be suiting up in #3 for them next Fall.

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.