how far have the mighty fallen?

feast your eyes on this iconic image of cwebb and kg before we move on.all done? fantastic.

basically that image is symbolic of the different paths that the two players chose, kg redefining the PF position and cwebb kind of trying to but not really doing as well as everyone thought he would.

no one will ever dispute certain things about webber: he's a phenomenal passer, he has awesome hands, and his knees have so thoroughly betrayed him that he looks like a particularly spry 50-year-old hobbling around the court.

as i type this, the lakes are squaring off against his new pistons on a national stage, and cwebb has 11 points/6 rebounds/5 assists at the half. pretty good numbers, especially considering he has two bad knees. he's around 50% from the field, but it's readily apparent that he is quite simply not the player he was in sactown's laker-killer heyday, nor is he even the player he was last year when the 76ers sold him as the solution to iverson's woes. we all know how that worked out.

webber is not a tragedy; he was a pretty special player before his knees betrayed him, although perhaps not all that he could be. his career was not done in by a tragic character flaw, instead done in by failing health and failing teams.

he was a great player in his prime, there is no doubting that. he could score in the post, had great court vision, and ran the floor very well on rick adleman's run-and-gun queens. he would have captured a championship in those years were it not for the meat-grinder shaq-and-kobe lakers of that time. but webber's career is somewhat defined by excuses like those.

in michigan as a member of the fab 5 he shot his own self in the foot, the infamous phantom timeout ending their shot at a national title and collegiate glory. he underachieved alongside juwan howard as part of the Twin Towers of the washington bullets, and toiled away on exciting kings teams while the lakers complacently ruled the roost. he failed to capture a championship, and will probably continue to fail unless the pistons pull off a heat-like miracle this summer, due to what can only be described as punishment by the gods of the hoop.

lord only knows what transgressions he committed to deserve such a fate.

The Answer Cometh

Fresh off denying Jerry Sloan his 1,000th, KG drops a bombshell I certainly didn't see coming.
For those too lazy to click through, here's what it is:

"Bring it on, I love 'The Answer," Garnett said Friday night. "We welcome A.I. with open arms. Where's Kevin McHale?"

Whoa.
I have to admit that I'm not entirely ready for this pairing to happen just yet. Simmons claims that KG is the ultimate second banana, whatever that means. He's never truly been a dominant scorer in the purest sense of the word. Also, he's never been a dominant big man, despite being arguably the best in the game.

His versatility is his ultimate downfall. KG resembles Lamar a lot in that regard; he is perhaps tortured by his ability to do so much, that he settles for less than the sum of his parts. For Garnett, this is less true than it is for Lamar, but the concept lurks just below the surface.

Were he to focus on any one aspect of his game, he might morph into a more dominant, more perfect player than he already is. However, it is that dangerous element of raw imperfection that lends KG's game its indisputable charm. He isn't shackled to the post like so many of his predecessors and prodecessors.Garnett isn't easily comparable to anyone in particular. If anything, he is the idealized image of what Fab5-era CWebb should have been. Minus the boneheaded timeout calls, the petulance, and plus some insane competitive fervor.

The Answer brings many of the same elements to the table. He is a non-traditional player in a very real sense of the word; upon NBA entry, he violated every conceivable rule of style and etiquette both on the court and off on his way to becoming the Best 6-Footer Ever (caps definitely necessary.)

Like KG, he brings an insatiable desire for victory onto the floor, as well as the skills and motivation to sacrifice every inch of his frail humanity to achieve that success.

However, he differs from Garnett in his desire to score the damn ball. While KG sometimes seems vaguely content to exist w/in the flow of the offense, AI Creates his own flow on the fly. Sometimes he realigns some inviolable tenets of The Right Way while doing so, but so be it. Maybe all Garnett needs to reach his own personal promised land is a little bit of hood flavor.