Phoenix Suns team preview

this is going to be hard, since pmac is perhaps the world's biggest suns fan. but let me say that until the suns acquire a LOT more depth--and stop relying so much on their top 7--there is not an nba championship on their horizon. understand that saying that is drawing a little piece out of my soul; the suns were part of the kindling that combined to create the fire that is my passion for the association. steve nash was a revelation to all of us when he first stepped on the court for PHX and continues to be whenever he tosses a wraparound pass that hits STAT in the breadbasket.

before we get too carried away with how awesome the suns are--and they're awesome and cool and fun and i love watching them--they didn't do shit to improve themselves this offseason. sure, grant hill and alando tucker are nice players but how many games will hill play? 30? 40? 50? unless he seriously bucks a trend and keeps his knees and ankles healthy for the entire season, then the suns will again be in the position of relying on very few players to produce a lot. their rotation shakes down to: amare, diaw, marion, nash, raja, leandrinho, hill, and maybe some combination of tucker, skinner, or dj strawberry if he pulls his shit together.

basically their championship hopes rest on the fact that MAYBE marcus banks finds the ability to spell nash for long stretches of time and MAYBE alando tucker turns into someone that can play 25 minutes a game to rest hill for the playoffs and MAYBE diaw regains his 2005-6 form and can give them a viable option off the bench for their front court and MAYBE they avoid the injury bug for another season. now that's a lot of maybes, and even if everything falls into place for them and d'antoni can work a 9-man rotation without stepping on anyone's toes and maintaining effectiveness for the entire season then they have a shot.

i almost feel like they would be better off sacrificing some wins for greater playoff aptitude. if they can bring everyone into the playoffs rested and healthy, wouldn't they be better off winning only 50 games and coming in as the fourth seed? nobody in the pacific division will even smell 50 wins unless kobe discovers the technology necessary to clone himself so he can play all five spots on the floor or boom dizzle stays healthy long enough for the warriors to run and gun their way there. that being said, why not sacrifice a few games so the chief characters have the legs for the ones that count?

the spurs operate on a similar principle; they always start slow because they regulate minutes and pop is willing to work deep deep into his bench even if it is not playing particularly well. it costs them some regular season games to be sure, but those banners hang forever and they do not list regular season record on them.

my thinking is the suns cop 60 wins again, run into a buzzsaw spurs team in the western conference finals and make the series close and entertaining, but ultimately fall short again. at some point, either sarver is going to have to pay the luxury tax or steve kerr will have to do some seriously shady trades to pull them over the hump. as it is, they need about 1-2 more quality players and d'antoni has to commit to playing them even at the expense of a few wins in december.

your playoffs stink

my nba fandom is seriously in the at-risk category. if my fandom were a species it would be: endangered.

the warriors getting bounced was bad enough, although i can kind of rest easier at night knowing that they were done in by a team captained by the kind of hard-nosed visionary that deserves to have won more than zero championships in his career. i'm even willing to look the other way as every single replay showed carlos boozer shoving warriors in the back as he went for rebounds.

THAT'S OK BY ME.

as long as the players themselves are deciding the series, shit i can tolerate the disney-movie-villainy that the jazz call playoff basketball. the warriors WERE like an all-black disney movie, with matt barnes being the prodigy that nellie must save from himself. etc. i'm pretty disappointed in myself that i never saw the parallel sooner but c'est la vie.

on the other hand, the suns were done in by stupidity in the league office. yes, i'm aware that leaving the bench mandates a one-game suspension but jesus h: it's the playoffs. if anything, suspend them for the first game of the regular season or fine the shit out of them but don't take amare stoudemire out of the biggest series of the playoffs. STAT could have saved us from this hellish fate: four teams we can't help but rooting against battling it out for eventual supremacy.

i guess i have to root for the jazz and cavs, but in all probability we're looking at detroit and san antonio taking turns hosting the nba finals. just shoot me.

you think i got all these rings by smiling?

i'm here to say one thing and one thing only: y'all got it all wrong.

in all of our pants-creaming excitement about the basketball devolution, we forgot some shit. what we forgot, and i include myself in this "we" catergory, is that a team full of real hard dudes can shut down some flashy shit just by looking at people wrong. take the second round (no really, i insist).

a couple of really genuinely fun teams to watch, well 1.5 if you're like me and you only enjoy the suns because you always have and it feels wrong to root against them, are getting manhandled but two teams that are full of the type of people that PLAYOFF BASKETBALL are made out of. the warriors and the suns may have captured some of the essence of those showtime lakers, and the warriors even have a black point guard, but neither one of those teams has the balls to duplicate the success of those bygone years.

actually i should retract my statement: the warriors are crazy enough to do whatever they want on the basketball court (except shoot free throws. my theory is that they're bored at the line because they can't dunk it so they miss on purpose to piss off david stern.) but the suns are seriously some snitchin bitches.

note to the suns: this is fucking playoff basketball. you can't be bitching and moaning every time bowen throws an elbow. i never thought i would be defending the spurs, but the suns better just man up and lay the smack down if they even hope to get by these guys. the spurs have some serious old man muscles along with a ton of playoff acumen, and what that translates to so far is a willingness to do WHATEVER it takes to win. if whatever it takes is kneeing nash in the groin, so be it, they'll do it. even though nash has somewhat toughened his image, i just don't see anyone on the suns but raja bell willing to honestly kill someone just to get at a loose ball. and even in raja, that happens only rarely. maybe that lack of intensity helps them get through the regular season, but to win in the playoffs you need to be kind of mentally unbalanced.

nash keeps it too regular for them to be taken seriously.

no fun league

seriously it's time to change the abbreviated name of the nba to the nfl. (no fun league get it? i'm so clever.)

these playoffs, with the noted and notable exception of the warriors--who i fear may be going down in flames after this latest near miss against utah-- are boooooooooring. even the normally exciting suns seem to have a going through the paces feel to them. maybe it's the new "intense" steve nash, but there just isn't the same positive energy around the suns that there used to be. banning diaw to the bench probably affected their feng shui in more ways then d'antoni could have ever suspected, but their pick and roll game is just not doing it for me.

i do have some excuse; they played my favorite team in the league during the first round and are playing a spurs team that is incredibly adept at shifting gears into whatever they feel like. honestly the suns are like a nervous student driver and the spurs have their own gas and brake pedal. this is ridiculous. suns: get out and run for chrissakes before i ball up socks and start chucking them at the tv at random intervals.

the entire point of the suns before this season was that they didn't obsess over execution on offense. they flowed freely and enabled nash to make some insanely lucid and acrobatic decisions passing the ball, which in turn allowed STAT+matrix+et. al. to finish shit at the rim HARD. now, we see them running picks and rolls and the spurs defend them by the book and nash gets his jumpers and there isn't any more thunder. keep in mind as i'm writing this that EVERYTHING I'M SAYING COULD BE A CREDIT TO THE SPURS.

seriously, maybe i'm missing them ole suns just because the spurs have them tied up in the trunk of the car and are going over speed bumps. as i mentioned above the spurs are adept at making people play by their style, so this is perhaps all about that. i sure hope so, and i hope the suns and warriors both advance so we can have the most entertaining nba finals ever. (yeah, the east sucks so i'm pretending it doesn't exist until lebron has at least 1 more awesome game.)

you bring out the worst in me

it's not exactly uncommon for a blogger to be a suns nut-rider. i am no exception to that rule. for like 90% of the season (the other 10% being when they play my lakers [LOS ANGELES STAND UP]) i am a huge suns fan. shit, pmac who is the spirit animal of this here blog has been a fan of the suns since the starbury dark ages. i'm saying we roll deep, and i'm saying we remember when, and i have some cred to go along with it.

the suns are a bit of a paradox in that they're generally credited with bringing forth from some primordial soup the vision of an nba where a team can be a team, where it isn't stevie franchise trying to physically pound the life out of the basketball for 20 seconds and then jacking up an ill-advised 3, where a foppish whitey can be league mvp because shit the dude can ball. however, the suns are really a throwback to an era called the 1980s, an era where everyone did coke, miami vice was the biggest show on tv, and magic johnson slept with every woman in hollywood. now, we have perscription drugs, csi:, and don imus saying nappy headed hoes. whatever.

as i guess is my point in the previous paragraph, the suns are not a complex team. they don't try to run the princeton offense, nor do they tango with the triangle. instead, it's a steady diet of picks, rolls, pops, drives, dishes, threes, dunks, etc. etc. ad infinitum. these plays aren't exactly rocket science folks. (or ROCKETS science. pun patrol is on duty.) the way they seem to win is by exploiting the worst tendencies of the teams they are playing against. take the deconstruction currently playing on my tv (sorry TNT, ain't no drama here. go back to the closer.) the lakers couldn't hit water if they fell out of a boat. which believe you me, they are doing. and the suns exploit this tendency by tossing all kinds of people at a kobe bryant resolutely opposed to driving to the basket. it's not that he isn't distributing, it's that nobody on his team can make an open jumper.

the suns also know that a lot of the lakers are--to be charitable--rockheads. observe as nash's eyes light up from HALF COURT. you read that right ladies and gentlemen. and he hits marion streaking to the basket as kwame and lamar look on dumbfounded. maybe pregame bongrips are bad ideas.

it's not that the suns don't have bad tendencies themselves, but they are so efficient at striking where the opposition is weakest that opponents are hard-pressed to seek out weaknesses of the suns. its awfully hard to punch a boxer that's beating the shit out of you.

***

and, just because, tyrus thomas killing it.

re-up gang

looks like we got a rematch like "LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE."

second most entertaining of last year's first round series is back like jordan, and the other ain't even got a shot at happening. in case there's wonder in your eyes the former is lakers-suns and the second is cavs-wiz. it might be true that cavs-wiz has a shot at reocurring due to seeding but come on; ain't like gilly is about to drop any more 50-foot bombs to send shit into overtime. unless he decides to cop 3s from the bench, which believe me he could do. pesky out-of-bounds rules.

but the suns and lakes. two opposite teams that are yet very very similar.

the lakers are KOBEKOBEKOBEKOBE as well all know. they run shit through him, if he ain't working they ain't working, period. the suns are a well-oiled machine on offense, basically scoring at will with a variety of talented performers capable of scoring in a variety of ways. also, their team is athletic enough to be talented on the defensive end; when the game slows down they can reasonably expect to stop teams on a few possessions. at least in theory.

the suns are w/o doubt the better bball team BUT HERE'S THE THING: the lakers could steal the show. they almost did it last year but fell juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust short of the ultimate prize. yeah i know the suns have amare now but the lakes seem to have some sort of crazy mystery tonic for which the suns have yet to develop an antidote. if the lakes can be patient on the offensive end and knock down their shots, there is very little reason why they can't stretch an admittedly godlike suns team to seven games or even knock em down before that. remember that in last years series it took a subliminal performance by tim thomas even to stretch the series to seven games.

yes the lakers will have to play damn near perfect ball, ball they haven't shown they're capable of playing in a long while, but it's a possibility. phil jackson is a gotdamn genius and there is no way he's going to let his team go softly into the night. we talkin about ending the season with a bang, not with a whimper, t.s. eliot be damned.

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.

come and gone

i had the idea that i would do a rundown of what some possible rumors and their implications were pre-deadline, but was so anemic that any discussion of like vague possibilities was simply not a thing i could summon the courage to commit electronic media. instead of getting coverage about the might-as-well-have-not-existed trading deadline, you'll be hearing about why i love the phx suns.

here it is:

when phoenix traded starbury to nyk at the beginning of isiah's tenure, many people had the idea that his departure would do two things:

1. elevate new york to a collection of playground heroes capable of doing serious damage once they reached the playoffs.
2. relegate phoenix to lottery hell, an inescapable fate.

we now know that the exact opposite is true, especially after phoenix "overpaid" for steve nash. who then promptly became someone that should be counted among the all-time great point guards. yeah, maybe he shouldn't have won the mvp 2 years running, but his reinvigoration of the previously moribund nba cannot and should not be ignored.

my love, and peter's love, for the suns could be described as unconditional. even when they were slaying my lakers in a brutal 7-game indictment of kobe bryant's supporting cast and i felt as though each passing moment was a twisting of the knife, i reveled in their incredible floor spacing and passing ability. in that series at least, they made basketball look like a serious art form. they didn't have STAT, but painted a masterpiece in spite of, or perhaps because of his absence.

now that he's returned, nash is seriously even better than in his previous two campaigns. they still run fools off the court non-stop, but now there is someone to get me out of my seat. every game they play is a shout-fest as one sun or another receives a pinpoint pass from the canadian commie and throws in through the hoop with reckless abandon. when nash brings the ball up the court, we know that something incredible is bound to happen.

we know with all of our hearts that he will will will find someone slashing to the basket or someone spotting up, toes just north of the three point line, or he will take it himself, defying the laws that say white boys shouldn't be able to take it in where the big men lay.

basically the entire team is a slap in the face of those who say you can't win in the playoffs with a run-and-gun style, those that say a team that is fundamentally international in nature can't compete with our own home-grown american boys, and all those that proclaim the nba is a league of individuals. the mavs might be a supreme collection of individual talent wrapped up in the premise of team ball, but the suns are the direct apothesis of the 90s-era player-as-team dogma.

HIBACHI!

Happy Kwanzaa and New Years from Lamar Blogom, which has finished its holiday hiatus (finally) and will be back on a semi-regular posting schedule. Among my resolutions is at least 3 quality posts a week, with an option for a fourth depending on homework load.

Anyways.

We've discussed AgentZero 6 times, this one the most in depth of them all. He is quite simply far and away the most singular and awesome player in the NBA. His game could be easily pigeonholed into that of a shoot-first, pass- (and ask questions-)later PG that Mamba of all people accused of being sans conscious.
Gilbert's game could be described as a more perfect extension of the steez originated by the Answer. He has that same sort of funky-freshness and feel-good little man aura about him, along with an insatiable urge to get the fuck to the bucket, but he also cops some serious juevos AI lacks when it comes to shots outside the 3-point line.

Here's something else important: GILBERT'S IN HIS 5TH YEAR!

As Peter, my spiritual cowriter, points out--he's only beginning to flash some serious scoring ability. Last season could be described as the one where he exploded onto our oily stage, and 06-07 is just a confirmation of his gunnerly goodness. Dude got snubbed twice last year: once at the ASG, and once by the Olympic team. He basically vowed revenge on the entire league (and specifically the Suns and Blazers, against whom he pledged to average 50 ppg) and backed his shit up--averaging over 30 since he was left off the All-Star team, and scored 54 against the Suns in his only outing opposite McMillan or D'Antoni.

Gilbert's dagger against the Bucks is only an extension of what all of us here at Lamar hope will become the type of legend we tell to our grand kids while we bounce their asses on our knees and try to ignore the arthritis. If you watch the ESPNews feed, you are not only treated to the announcer yelling "HIBACHI" like it's the only word he knows in the damn language, but also a brutal scowl Gil flashes for approx. 1 second after dropping the Bucks to their knees. Then the man is nothing but smiles as he walks towards his bench and the signature jersey toss.

His game is the purest form of gunnership. By that I mean that he has that sort of star quality where the defense matters only as an incidental. Gil has to work harder than maybe Kobe or TMac does, but he's different than they are in that he plays the game of basketball as if it's totally incidental to whatever else he's doing that night.

Perhaps another reason we find Gilbert so appealing is that he has a little bit of child left in him. Sure he has his occasional bouts of petulance involving a lot of assists and not too much scoring, followed by the opposite, but he also has the sort of sublime quality of figuring out the game as he goes along. This in direct opposition to his Division-mate Dwyane Wade, who seemingly has the game on lock every time he steps onto the floor. Not to say that Gilbert doesn't have more than his share of swagger (and outright cockiness), but his confidence comes and goes. When it is there, he heats up like the Hibachi Grill that he so espouses. When it's not, dude could be a Frigidaire for how he trots around the court.

AgentZero is also childish in his actions outside the court.

(I should clarify that when I say childish I don't mean immature and shits himself. What I do mean is that he has some serious child-savior vibes happening around him, including his innocence w/r/t traditional means of playing basketball.)

Rather than spend time with teammates out on the town, Gilbert chooses to stay in his hotel room and order things from infomercials. Now tell me that there isn't some part of every one of us that wants to just sit around and buy supersharp knives and other errata. In fact, that same proclivity for infomercial ordering has probably manifested itself in what was for a long time his trademark shout of Hibachi.

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.

Two seasons too late, but...

The Dungeon Family literally is the Phoenix Suns.

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 Dirty (Half) Dozen

Where would a ridiculous team with no basis in reality be without a bench?

Nowhere, that's where.

So for today's column, I give my fantasy soldiers some reserves with which to galavant into battle.


G: Eddie House

Thug sets the world alight like no other when his J drops. He wasn't a world beater in the playoffs, but he's a monster on the way there.

Maybe the Suns needed to work harder to get him open shots, maybe they needed to run him off of screens more, maybe they needed to have him on the floor more often, but something didn't work.

That's why he's on the bench.

G/F: Andre Iguodala

The other AI, a defensive wizard with mad hops and a penchant for throwing down dunks that would make Shawn Kemp say "Damn!"

He deserves a spot on this squad if for nothing other than his hammer blows to the rim, but when you add in the ability to lock down on opposing shooting guards and small forwards, you have a guaranteed spot and a seven year contract.


F: Chris Wilcox

We'll call him the Professor. I think he needs a sweet nickname. Plus, Chris Wilcox just seems like a name for which that nickname is suited.

Nicks aside, he runs the floor, rebounds, blocks, dunks things, and generally creates havock. That type of person is good to have around, especially if he's just coming out of his shell.

His improvement might not be Dwight Howard-esque, but he might develop into a dead man's Amare Stoudemire. Even if he never learns to play defense properly, who wouldn't love to have a supersized dude nicknamed the Professor flying around?


F: Udonis Haslem

If there's one thing I love, it's undersized power forwards. If there are two things I love, they are undersized power forwards named Udonis.

He was the unsung hero of Game 6 of the NBA Finals; the Heat wouldn't have had a chance without his retarded 15-foot Js that looked they were never going to fall.

Udon also doubles as the only member of the Heat I would not glare at if I passed him on the street. Dwyane can't even spell his name right and now he's Finals MVP? Come on.


G: Mickael Pietrus

On the squad for his defensive wizardry if nothing else. As a huge bonus, if he ever figures out how to play offense, we have a latter-day Kobe on our hands.

That's a lie, but if you know someone who started as only being good at defense and then evolved into a threat on the offensive end, please let me know and I will change it.

G: Marquis Daniels

You may remember good 'Quis as the only Maverick to show up for Game 6. You may also remember him as the subject of Avery Johnson's curious decision to bench the most productive scorer on the floor.

He made White Chocolate and Dwyane Wade look like the bitches they deserve to look like on a nightly basis.

Then, he was traded for Austin Croshere.

There is no good explanation for someone with sick driving and some point guard skills should be shipped off for a do-nothing whiteboy who has his run of glory 8 years ago in college.

G: Bobby Jackson

Maybe I missed something. Did Bobby Jackson kill someone's dog?

For some reason, he went from ridiculously talented backup to shitkicker that no-one would touch. I can detect no reason other than pet slaughter to justify his free fall from grace.

He's a steady hand backing up the point, one who can stroke the occasional 3, pass the ball to the open man, and penetrate the paint when necessary.

A good 12th man unless he kills another cat.

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.

The Sun Switches Horizons

Basketball and life are cyclical.

Since 1999, the Lakers and Spurs have dominated the universe with the exception of the 2004 anomaly. The East has been dominated by subpar teams of late-- even the Heat last year were broken for a champion. It was only due to injuries or chaos that any Eastern team has risen to the ultimate pedestal of late, but dominance is swinging back across the center of the country.

With the infusion of 'Mek, G Walls, 'Bron, Bosh, Villanueva, Dwight, and even Public Enemy Number 1, the East's underdog status is in danger of disappearing for the next decade. The West's collapse is imminent, unless sustained by the creative forces that summoned both PHX and DAL.

With Colangelo's departure that invention is looking less and less imminent. The East is embracing a new age of basketball player, while the West attempts to replicate that success with entire teams.

One of those two is sustainable. I guess we'll find out.

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?

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.