what the hell is going on in cleveland?

I know that this isn't exactly the first of what is about to become a raging flood of "What's wrong with the LeBrons?" but I figured I would give it a shot anyways. Keep in mind that the term "struggling" is relative: they just lost a 3 game win streak by one point to a solid Bulls team featuring the best second-year guard of a stacked draft class after 'Bron was debatably fouled going to the bucket on the last play of the game. Sure, it's football out there and he really should have finished stronger than that over Joakim freaking Noah, but whatever, they lost.

What we're seeing with the Cavs is indicative of the direction of the league as a whole: they're being royally screwed by Mike Brown's insistence on playing two-and-a-half non-shooters on the floor together for most of the game. Varejao is a nice defensive player, Big Z needs some burn and can step out to around 17 feet without losing *too* much accuracy, Shaq is Shaq, and LeBron is the greatest of all time (and should always be on the court except when he needs to step out into Earth's yellow sun to recharge his energy), but playing three of them together is an open letter imploring the defense to pack three guys into the paint and dare Mo Williams to take the game over. Why is this problematic?

So far the Cavs have seen their FG% (.468 to .436) and PPG (100.3 to 93.5) drop off a cliff while seemingly doing nothing but improve their team in the offseason (Moon, Parker, and Shaq) and coming off a Coach of the Year season for Mike Brown. Although their defense has improved by about two points per game, this is a far cry from the Cavs team last year that beat opponents so viciously that LeBron could routinely sit out the fourth quarter of games and basically act like black Scalabrine. Anecdotally the answer seems pretty obvious: Shaq needs to go.

Unlike his first season in Miami, when the Big Fella opened driving lanes for Wade and flew around the basket like a man possessed (remember that he garnered serious MVP consideration at the time because he was trying so hard to stick it to Kobe and the Lakers for trading him and had gotten off his fat ass and actually conditioned during the offseason--does this come off as bitter?), he's been the cheeseburger in the Cavs' arteries so far this season. Why? Well, to begin with in Miami he played in the frontcourt alongside Udonis Haslem (everyone forgets this now but the Wade/Salvatore's superhuman effort in the '06 finals would have gone for shit if Haslem wasn't making Dirk pay every time he cheated onto Wade or Shaq), who defenses had to at least respect out to the midrange, and who had the athleticism to guard quicker 4s. Debatably: Z has the same range as Udonis but his natural position is closer to the basket, and if you've seen anything this season, you've seen how ridiculous and awful the Ilgauskas-Shaq pairing has been this season.

(Note to the league: pairing two immobile big men NO LONGER WORKS. There's a reason the Knicks were so execrable with Curry and Randolph on the court, and why Portland's ridiculous Oden/Pryzbilla experiment in the playoffs last year culminated in a first round exit.)

So: a whole lot of complaining so far. Here's what needs to get done: STOP TRYING TO LIVE IN THE 90s, MIKE. I know that Mike Brown just lost his offensive coordinator to a division rival, and grew as a coach in the Spurs system when they were destroying the league behind the twin towers of Robinson and Duncan, but show some freaking imagination, please. I'm 95% sure Mike Brown just saw Clueless and wants to talk about "that Alicia Silverstone" with the training staff. Brown should slide LeBron up to the 4, insert Moon into the starting lineup over Varejao, play Shaq and Z in alternating minutes, and insert Varejao when they're really desperate for some D/rebounding/insane Sideshow Bob-style flopping, and basically dare every other team in the league to cover LeBron with their 4. How many 4s can handle his quickness and athleticism? For my money the list starts and stops with KG two years ago, and maybe Odom or Chuck Hayes can funnel him into the center if he's feeling sprightly.

This has two benefits. First: it's going to make the opponent either decide to let LeBron shred them offensively and hope they can make some of it up by punishing him down low (unlikely since he's bigger than half the 4s in the league, and it's rarer and rarer that teams play a back-to-the-basket scorer at that position) or they throw up their hands and play the matchups by inserting two smaller forwards into the game. At this point, the Cavs would rejoice because it means that Shaq and LeBron can now totally control the glass AND because now the other team doesn't have two huge bodies to throw onto Shaq down low. Want to make the Big Fella happy? Let him play one on one the whole game while he's surrounded with shooters and a guard in a linebacker's body. That's the approach Phoenix took last season when Gentry took over, and that resulted in one of the greatest offenses of all time.

Now I'm betting the Cavs snap out of their relative funk in time to start putting together some wins now that Delonte's back (another "what's wrong with the Cavs?" theory is that Delonte handled much of the offense while Mo and Bron were on the bench and they missed his absence more than many realized), but I think that if they even want to sniff last season's ascendancy they're going to have to take some semi-radical steps towards the King's positional redefinition. Shit, if it worked for me in NBA 2k9, it's GOTTA work in real life.

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.

is shaq self-actualized?

yes, i do mean in the metaphysical, buddhist sense of the word self-actualized. i will try to stumble through a basic analysis of his relationship to the basic tenets of a philosophy i have a vague understanding of.

shaq as he exited college was a force to be reckoned with. never before had the league seen a big man of such size and power. power is i guess the operative word there. even at 7'0" kareem and wilt and bill russell weren't breaking backboards like it was nothing. shaq was just a plain big dude.

add that to the fact that he ran the floor excessively well for a big man and occasionally flashed some sick PG moves on the breakaway, and multiply by a pretty sick array of post moves and you have a big man that basically defined and destroyed the center position in the 90s and still today.

(if you don't believe me, just look at the fact that scott pollard of all people is still being payed to play basketball. also, the career of earvin "don't call me magic" johson for further proof.)

BUT, and this is a big but so it was capitalized, shaquille has never come home with an mvp award. the case could be (and has been) made that he has never even deserved an mvp award. even in 2001, where the case for his dominance was strongest, AI pulled a substandard sixers team on his narrow shoulders all the way to the finals. (in a continuation of the shaq-killed-the-center argument, they had todd macullogh.) how is it possible that the big man that defined a generation was not capable of putting together a season for the ages?

the easy response is that he's lay-z, and that covers most of it. whether it's spending the summer rapping or amatuer policing, shaq has never put off-season conditioning high on his priority list. basically the season was his chance to get back into shape. even then, he still took off a week or two to rehab a toe or ankle some would have gritted their teeth through. not to denigrate shaq's force of will in the paint, nor to take anything away from the fact that he has 4 championships to his name, but he has not ever been the one force on his team that opponents had to contend with.

in orlando there was penny, in LA there was kobe, and in miami, there is wade. all of those are superlative basketball players that were all making all-nba appearances while shaq was their running mate.

even as i'm saying this, i'm realizing that MJ never did shit in terms of championships without pippen, but let's just ignore that because mike was the most self-actualized player ever at all stages of his career.

shaq never lived up to his potential for dominance. sure. he's had good seasons, great ones on occasion, his most notable one in 2000 in his first year with the wizard of hollywood. and though he dominated games a great many times during his career, he never

1. led the league in rebounds
2. scored more than 30 ppg

i know that there's technically still time for him to do both, and he's still somehow averaging 20/9, but let's not kid ourselves. shaq o'neal is waaaaaaaaaaay on the downside of his career. every time i see him humbly stumbling around the court, basically staying afloat on his aura and some still pretty good post moves, i shed an inner tear reminiscing about what was and what could have been.

Pleasures abound

Tuesday was a special time in Lamar Blogom history; it was the first game ever attended with Lamar distinctly in mind. Of course, he decided to freak the joint up.

Someone who did the opposite of freak the joint up was Mamba. We've discussed him before, way back in June of 2006 A.D. What we did not discuss is his insane artistry and newfound efficiency. His knee surgery, which sidelined him for the first two games of this year and still probably continues to limit him even as he composes his unique art on the basketball court. While he usually paints masterpieces full of fluidity and graceful brushstrokes, it is as if he has been handed watercolors with which to replicate the Mona Lisa.

After he drove Shaq from the mix, the masses decried him as a traitorous snake in the grass. He remains a petulant force to be contended with--see Game 7 of last year's 1st round for example--but despite or perhaps because of his balance of maturity and childishness Mamba rises above the hapless flocks with his scoring genius.

His 2004 was of disastrous proportions, aided and abetted by the non-factor of Rudy Tomjonavich and his later illness-induced substitute Frank Hamblen. Reunited with the Wizard of Hollywood, Mamba saw his star rise anew, outshining even his former Shaq-fu-aided greatness. At times he seemed to transcend the sport itself as he glided about the hardwood, throwing in baskets from insane angles with approximately half the damn Staples Center in his grill.

Mamba's frenzied bloodlust crested in the month-long stretch in which he dropped 62 and 81 on the Mavs and Raps, respectively. Afterwards, perhaps fueled by his teammates' emergence as a force viable of the master's consideration, he receded slightly from the spotlight. Not to say that he did not still own the court like a lion tamer, but he allowed others to bask in his glorious glow as he gallivanted about on his holy quest.
Shaq-fu was the first of the legendary duo to recapture former glory without the other, but he did so at the hands of the Devil himself, Dwyane Wade. The referees aided and abetted Shaq in his quest for greatness. They did no such favor for his former teammate and nemesis, as he found himself robbed of a game-changing bucket in the waning moments of Game 1.

That is beside the point. The point is that even as Mamba finds himself limited by a bum knee and tough conference, he will reinvent himself and his teammates to rise above the unwashed horde in a quest for absolution. Perhaps it won't come this season, but as Andrew "Big Pussy" Bynum grows and matures along with Turiaf the Beast, his conflict will be resolved with a success so resounding as to shake the foundations of the sport to their core.

Coming at you like Adebisi

We shoulda seen it coming. Dude tosses down a slam to be reckoned with on Shaq-fu and then has the gall to trade elbows with Shaq on his way downcourt. This one play seems to arbit greatness more so than a single game, even more than a single playoff series. It seemed no accident that Bynum took his schooling, sprinted downcourt, and made Shaq-fu his little prison bitch.
Enter this season: the Lakes' two top centers go down with assorted injuries, leaving only the untest Bynum to man the middle. Conventional wisdom says the Lakes are in serious goddamn trouble. Of course, Bynum is destined for greatness.

The only things holding him back are foul-proneness and PhilJax' notorious fickleness when it comes to young players. Bynum is far from a grizzly vet; at this point in his life he might be too full of enthusiam to contribute to a winning effort on a consistent basis. But that enthusiasm that holds him back also drives him forward, making him the semi-unstoppable force that he now is. If he continues to mature (and calm down) he will become what the Bulls only imagined when they called the name Edward Curry way back when.
Dude has an impressive motor, especially at his size. He's 7'0" and seems to have no trouble jumping and rejumping to either board or block with the other bigs. Basically, he's Dennis Rodman in Shaq-fu's body, but without the requisite craziness of the former, or the mumbling monolithicness of the latter. His game is predicated more on the boyish pursuit of acceptance from his teammates than Rodman's Lust for Life or Shaq's big bully dominance.

Bynum's maturation may bring untold wonders, or it may drag him down into the depths of Currydom, destroying his boyish joy for the game of basketball along with its mellowing and seasoning effects. If he can find some way to convince PhilJax to play him more often, perhaps that enthusiasm will remain, though tempered by the dulcet tones of sweet experience.

P.S. Andrew is in serious need of a nickname. Comment with you ideas.

Raw Power

The culmination of the starting five will include a bench; it would be lame to finish this with only one person, no matter how special.

There is a percieved decline in the American center. The so-called "Heavyweights" are a dying breed--Shaq is their last outpost in the landscape of the NBA. But Shaq also killed the center. More on that later.

Right now, we're going to talk about the center, as well as the bench for this team of legends.

Center: Dwight Howard

Howard's game is about as cultured as Borat during his meeting with the Southern wine-tasting gentlemen. There's power to it, and a certain sincerity, but none of the polish that truly creates a gem.

As it is, he is the ultimate diamond in the rough. In this case though, he is not a shining star in a sea of mundanity. Rather, he must combat his own horselike uncoordination in a quest to meld a more perfect model of what a center should look like.

To take this analogy a little too far, he is like a piece of coal. Only with time and pressure will he evolve into the most valuable and unbreakable gem on the planet.

For a piece of coal though, he's pretty damn good.