CRISTAL ANNIVERSARY

because traditional anniversary gifts only go up to 60 years, i had to create my own special gift to give all ten of you loyal readers. guess what? IT'S A BLOG POST!

you can drop the balloons now.

for the 100th post spectacular (yes there are 100 according to blogger, and no i have not done the research myself) i had it in my head to do a kind of greatest hits, in which i would pull top-flight and also really awful quotes and predictions from the previous 99 posts (which admittedly include one post that's entirely video and one post that's entirely pictures of chris bosh next to raptors--which also doubles as the only post made by the ethereal pmac.) HOWEVER, that would be a lot of work, and something that i want somebody else to do for me. so: anyone that wants to dig through the lamar blogom back catalogue and find some gems and disasters is welcome to do so. and i will post your findings giving you full or no credit.

also, as we reach the 100th post i'd like to place a call out for tee designs. if you have any skill at all with drawing things or know somebody that does, drop me a line of some kind and we'll talk.

and as a third item, tomorrow will begin the semi-official countdown to october 30th during which i will profile every single national basketball association team. even the celtics again! rejoice.

the most lamar blogom nba players, with accompanying paragraphs:

10. eddie griffin

now that he's gone he's cemented this spot possibly for posterity. his aura and ability will be missed sorely in the association. i wanted desperately to see him succeed at basketball. to see eddie griffin rollicking down the lane on a steve nash- or jason kidd- or even chris paul-led break would have been a joy to see, especially considering that in doing so he would have beaten a lifetime of serious psychological problems. yeah, i know he was on the nets. and i wish he was on my hometown lakers so i could have insane fights with the people bashing him which would result in me never talking to the troubled eddie griffin bashers.

9. leandro barbosa

he is a one-stop shop for all your scoring needs. blessed with a deadly outside shot and intense quickness, he is one of my favorite players to watch--provided he's not playing against the hometown lakers. whenever anything happens and he is on the court, he can affect the game just with his speed. if there is a defensive rebound, you can count on him being the first one down the floor with his vaguely hunched-over gait. the way he scores, in such a naturalistic way based ONLY on his speed and shooting ability as opposed to the virtuosity of kobe bean or melo anthony or agent zero is a pretty sight to behold. even though he can't make the suns run like his white running mate can, he can score in bunches. (except when kobe is locking him down.)

8. stephon marbury

WELL he didn't used to be one of the most lamar blogom players. but as has probably been said in countless teen movies: one summer can definitely change everything. let me take that bacl; i have written one fairly angry post defending him in the wake of some neophytes attending a summer camp at northwestern bashing him. but when he starts doing borderline crazy interviews during which he almost answers his cell phone, he has a spot on my list. combine that with $15 shoes THAT HE WEARS ON THE COURT and a newfound win-or-die attitude: "i shoot to win because i shoot to win," that should result in at least a 45-win team when combined with z-bo and some other offensive threats. i look forward to how his newfound freewheeling attitude will translate to the court. will he become the best pg in the nba, like he once claimed?

7. josh smith

j-smoove is seriously awesome. he has bounce for literally days. athleticism for weeks. and also he's really cool to play with in nba 2k7. if you think that doesn't translate into somebody being more lamar blogom, you just don't know lamar blogom. he's really really really hard to see play because let's face it: the hawks just are not on national tv. and also he plays the lakers maybe twice per year so it's not like he's even on local tv. so my pretty much only exposure to j-smoove is through the xbox 360. but he's so awesome to play with in video form that i have a perhaps unhealthily high idea of his abilities. also: he was the starting pf on the first lamar blogom team. well, the only lamar blogom team. so there's that.

6. dwight howard

now if you thought j-smoove had bounce, you have not seen this manchild in action. he can jump more than any 7-footer that i have seen play live basketball, with the possibly exception of ryan hollins who can apparently dunk off of two feet from the damn free throw line. there's sometime rawly appealing about his game. he does not have a wee bit of polish. literally if he was any skinnier he would be a total bust along the lines of stromile swift. shit, he might be the utopian vision of what stro swift could have been with like 100 extra pounds of pure horse muscle. i think that i'm actually going to hate him once he acquires some subtlety to the way he plays basketball. or maybe it could be a kind of fatherly affection; i've seen my little baby all growed up and now he's dominating fools both with his power and with his technique.

5. baron davis

there is literally nothing on the basketball court that he cannot do. he can score it inside and out, dunk on andrei kirilenko with a vengeance that leaves beatrix kiddo looking like a limp-wristed teenybopper fawning over john mayer. his bullet-fedora'd championing of the high octane warriors through the playoff made him a personal hero of mine and a large percentage of nba fans. i also love him for his limitations. his physical health is in constant doubt every time he puts sneaker to hardwood. shit, he couldn't even practice during the playoff run. but when he's on the court and not crippling himself with a propensity for 3 chucking he can ball, straight up and down. even if he's not really a pure point, he can score among the best of them and also handle a team fairly competently. nellieball freaks unite.

4. steve nash

goddamn. even though i resent him every time he plays against the lakers, which is quite a lot, he is a maestro on the basketball court. to this day, one of my favorite performances of all time is his absolute dismantling of the cavs on national television. literally every time he ran down the court--no longer brushing his traditional bangs out of his eyes--something fairly magical was about to happen. whether he would shake amare free for a sickening, back breaking dunk or finding matrix in the corner for a wide-open 3, he did so with an artistic flair. he has a freewheeling style with no fear of turning over the rock and so makes passes that don't even seem remotely logical when they are first generated. however, upon their completion, they are some of the most beautiful things you will see on the basketball court.

3. gilbert AgentZero arenas

agent zero is stephon marbury and baron davis combined and taken to dizzying heights. everything that i've said about them applies doubly to the erstwhile hibachi. he makes outlandish predictions, storms away from game winning shots midflight scowling at the opposing bench, and takes money from his teammates in perhaps unreasonable shooting contests. even during a "serious" event like the 3-point shootout, he's still playing the clown and shooting threes with one damn hand. he's a gifted scorer that can even kind of distribute the rock on occasion if he wants to as evidenced by his teammates' scoring averages. he's probably the second best scorer in the league behind the second player on the list:

2. kobe bean bryant

what can i say about kobe that hasn't already been said about zeus? he's a god among men, can throw lightning bolts, and has a history of troubling sexual behavior. zeus turned himself into a goose, kobe banged a white girl in a colorado hotel. he was the subject of the first ever lamar blogom post, which actually came before the official inception of lamar blogom. in essence, he could be described as responsible for the creation of this blog. i long for the day when he can be paired with a player that will accentuate his talents and bring him once again to the glory that is the larry o'brien trophy. he might never reach those hallowed halls again, but lord willin by the time he retires he will have at least 2 mvps, a few more finals appearances, and the recognition of everyone as one of the top 3 most gifted scorers ever to play basketball.

1. lamar odom

well, he's the namesake. so maybe he should be disqualified. but that's not how i roll. he literally embodies everything about this blog. he is multitalented: he can score it, pass it, rebound it, and--judging by his earlier career--smoke it too. i love him because he has never been on a true winner. i love him because he might never have that opportunity. and i love him because he has the potential to be a truly good player. he was on pace to become an all-star in the incredibly crowded western conference forward rotation. then he messed up his shoulder and the lakers season went into the toilet. people forget this, but he could have made the lakers into a semi-special team could he and every other injured player stayed healthy. there's always next season.

bonus feature: chocolate thunder

Can't get up like you need Viagra

K-Mart is something of a polarizing presence in the NBA. On the one hand, he is a player whose sucess is predicated on bland hustle and ridiculous bounce. On the other, he was suspended for the playoffs as a result of badmouthing George Karl and the rest of the Nugs in the press.

What no-one can dispute is that he's about to miss the rest of the season with a continuation of knee problems. As anyone who has ever played basketball knows, the knee is key to basic functionality on the court. It is even more key for someone whose value is predicated on the fact that he can jump out the damn gym.
KMart is an interesting player for both systems in which he has played in his career. On the Nets, JKidd uncaged his shit like an animal. KMart is at his best when he acts as a conduit for a more creative force. Most players of his type (explosive bangers with few other basketball skills) are merely paintbrushes for the maestros that they should be playing next to. He was the perfect brush for Kidd's creative style--he's a moderately fast player with bounce out the building.

His lack of other skills are incidental: Kidd has such a catalogue of moves and deceptions, but lacks the ability to score. Perhaps because he feels he should embody the purest of pure points that he so disdains developing a reputable J, but the fact is that his jumper is merely adequate for professional ball. Sure he can make the occaisional 3 or two, but he never takes the game over on the offensive like his Canadian counterpart.It is Kidd's non-presence on the scoring end of the offense that makes KMart such a valuable counterpoint to his oblique attack. Martin was the exlamation point to Kidd's run-on sentence. Kidd is unique in the regard that he had only one means of punctuation available to him both times he went to the Finals. KMart and RJ provide only exclamation points as resolution to Kidd's creations. By contrast, Steve Nash has an arsenal of punctuation at his disposal and finds himself continually short of the perfect story. He can construct a hell of a sentence, but his attack seems sometimes to meander, to lack the incisiveness that so defined the New Jersey championship runs.

KMart was somewhat of a different type player in Mile High. Rather than serving as a piece of creation for a maestro, he was now expected to help define a team with his supreme athleticism. As we have established, he is the type best served to be the subjects of creation, not its master. Martin was hopelessly overmatched in his role, but still managed to bang out some semi-impressive shit. Andre Miller is no Jason Kidd, but his amateur scribblings found an excellent instrument in Martin.

The occaisonal flying slams were interrupted by periods of seemingly unending boredom. Although he's capable of some basic hustle plays (rebounds, diving for loose balls, looking worn out,) KMart was not near the contributor, nor the max-type player that the Nuggets envisioned. Melo's emergence has done nothing to help his case. No longer the top option on offense, KMart was instead forced to contribute on defense only. It wasn't as if he was the greatest #1 option, but he had his damn pride, right?

From thence the explosion came. From thence his knee decided to quit. From thence, the Nuggets are totally fucked.

NBA Eve

On the eve of the NBA season, we witness the passing of a legend. As tragic as his demise is, I have no frame of reference other than that provided by the occasionally good Sports Guy.

The man's death is tragic; no-one has meant more (sports-related) to a city probably ever. The only one who comes close is Larry Bird. Notice how all of these are in Boston.

Is that because Boston is so depressing that only sports give it meaning?

Or is it that Bill Simmons is the only column I read that deals with this shit?

We report, you decide.

* * *

City-wide days of mourning aside, a truly joyous time is about to happen on earth. Kicking off in Miami and LA, the season starts with two tantalizing matchups. Both match Conference Finalists against their first round opponents and both involve seriously talented 2-guards.

That's where the similarities end. Miami should be (in Lamar's estimation) the most hated champion in recent memory, whereas Phoenix will be (hopefully) the most loved in the near future. The Lakers and Bulls are both former products of that 90s-Early 00s star-centric system that placed a premium on acquiring one or two players with limitless talent and surrounding them with semi-crappy but cheap players.

If anything, the Suns take the Jordan Mandate to an extreme unrelated to it and yet ultimately so. Their #1 superstar is a formerly floppy-haired Canuck obsessed with the possibility that he can be defined not by supernatural gifts of his own, but rather that he gathers his worth from making the mundane abilities of his teammates somehow transcendent of the basketball norm.

The Suns revolve around Nash, but at the same time control him. He is Frankenstein, he creates the monster, but ultimately the monster makes its master the slave.

Because the Suns revolve so much around a singular star, one might say that they fit the Jordan Mandate perfectly, but that ignores the essential reality of Sunsiness.

Sunsiness means that they are more than the sum of their parts. They assemble a whole that functions together as a whole, but to which one part is so integral that without it the entirety of the system would collapse.

Nash is not only the defining factor of the Suns factory, but he is also the one most victimized by its existence as a seamless entity. Nash is defined by the Suns system--run and shoot, shoot and run--and struggles not to overcome it. He is nothing more than a worker in the Suns farm, and yet he owns the farm himself.

Microfracture is the new Tommy John

Amare Stoudemire is the Phoenix Suns. Correction on that: he was and will be the Phoenix Suns.

Quiet simply, he is the second most important and influential big man ever to play in the NBA. Correction: he could be.

If Amare comes back like Jordan, it will be to punctuate a Suns attack that had increasingly become a run-on sentence. There were no periods save the occasional Marion throwdown, but even then his dunks were more of a semicolon. Shooting 3s is terrific and wonderful and great, but what once seperated the Suns from their Supersonic brethren was their ability to halt their attack so that the beast that occupied the middle could take some time out to demolish the rim.

Amare's return could mark the Suns' reclamation from the world of the circus freakshow. Steve Nash's performance in the Playoffs was gutty and spectacular and blah blah blah. His performance carried a bemused smirk as he dribbled around Lakers and Clippers and Mavericks en route to open 3s and layups, but he seemed always on the verge of collapse. Twice he carried his team to Game 7and twice they succeded. However, without Amare, Nash was forced to be a working man's hero, a role he does not embrace.
Amare's return means that Nash can return to the princely duties to which he is more accustomed. No more must he stain his manicured fingernails with grease and sweat as he operates the heavy machinery necessary to win basketball games.

The Dead Zone

As we enter the eye of the NBA storm--and I am pushed to the sidelines by a fractured toe--I would like to delve into my ultimate starting five. And since its my blog, I fucking well will.


PG: Gilbert Arenas

Gilbert has been a maelstrom of controversy, at least early in this offseason. However, by inviting this controversy on himself he teaches us something about ourselves.

He was arrested not for pot, not for heroin, and not for soliciting hookers the night before the Super Bowl, but for sticking up for his teammate. That may have taken the form of standing in the middle of the road and shouting something about being Gilbert Arenas, but that makes his quest no less valid or valorous.

Let us not also forget that ill J he busted in LeBron's face to send the game into OT. His shot was at once not and highly predictable; we knew he was gonna drop some insane shit, and we knew he was gonna tie the game, but how you gonna shoot a J from 10 feet outside the 3 point arc?

If you're Gilbert Arenas, that's how.

SG: Kobe Bean Bryant

81 points. Eighty-one points. Eighty points plus one point.

No matter how you say it, one thing is certain. It was the best offensive display of all time. Yeah yeah, Wilt dropped the century, which probably will never be repeated. But at this point 100 is like .400 or the Triple Crown--it was done in a different era against different competition.

Kobe was the most dominant force in the league last year. The sportswriters ignored him for a floppy-haired whiteboy they felt guilty for handing it to a year ago.

Weird.

TO BE CONTINUED

In Which the NBA Finals are Discussed

The Finals are a foregone conclusion. The Mavericks are running over the Heat like they should be, and anybody who thought the Heat had a chance didn't watch one of two things. Either they ignored the 2004 Monster of Loch Angeles that fell short against the New Wave-y Pistons squad, or the Heat team that looked like borderline garbage against the Bulls.

The Bulls a fine basketball team, don't get me wrong, but they're a team chock full of All-Americans who will do little until a transcendent star is thrust into their midst. Maybe that star is Hinrich, maybe not.

The Mavs will be champions, like it or not, and we will see if the rest of the league tries to copy
their formula. If they do, they will be missing the essential point: there is no formula. Time and again the Mavs have beaten squads that set themselves on one way of winning. The Spurs were gobbled up by the speed of the Mavericks, as well as their twin 7-footers, who hung on Duncan at every turn.

The Suns too were destroyed by the Mavs, by speed as well, although it was their own that did them in. The Mavericks played the waiting game, running with the Suns on the fast break until gradually Snash lost control of his Extraordinary Machine and it whirled off into the night, perhaps to be seen next year.
Hopefully, teams will take the Mavericks lesson and run with it. Really, the message doesn't even belong to its purveyor; the entire Playoffs has been nothing if not a manifesto on the success of different systems.

They have been so exciting not because of the quality of teams, though that has helped, but because of the diversity with which each attacks the Fundamental Question:
How do we win basketball games?