Categories
architecture ecology urban

Architecture / Teddy Cruz's urban acupuncture

teddy cruz - tijuana river

Last night, I saw archi­tect Ted­dy Cruz deliv­er a fast-paced, idea-rich pre­sen­ta­tion at the San Fran­cis­co Art Insti­tute. In a lit­tle over an hour, he tore through a slide show cov­er­ing his recent work on the social, cul­tur­al, polit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic forces at work in com­mu­ni­ties along the US-Mex­i­co bor­der. The slide show itself was pret­ty impres­sive — a blend of research pho­tog­ra­phy, sim­ple Pow­er­Point ani­ma­tion, and pho­to col­lages (like the ones shown in this post, cour­tesy of UCSD, where Cruz teach­es) that looked some­what like maps but also some­what like actu­al pho­tos of urban density.I'd first heard of Cruz in the NYT Mag­a­zine fea­ture from last spring, Shan­ty­towns as a New Sub­ur­ban Ide­al. It details "Liv­ing Rooms at the Bor­der," his pro­posed project to turn a lot in the bor­der com­mu­ni­ty of San Ysidro into a mul­ti-use dwelling/community center/market. He dis­cuss­es it in more detail in "Urban acupunc­ture", an arti­cle he wrote for Res­i­den­tial Archi­tect Online:

Hous­ing and den­si­ty need to be seen not as an amount of units but as dwelling in rela­tion­ship to the larg­er infra­struc­ture of the city, which includes trans­porta­tion, eco­log­i­cal net­works, the pol­i­tics and eco­nom­ics of land use, and par­tic­u­lar cul­tur­al idio­syn­crasies of place … In a par­cel where exist­ing zon­ing allows only three units of hous­ing, the project pro­pos­es (through nego­ti­at­ed den­si­ty bonus­es and by shar­ing kitchens) 12 afford­able hous­ing units, a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter result­ing from the adap­tive reuse of an exist­ing 1927 church, offices for Casa Famil­iar in the church's new attic, and a gar­den under­pin­ning the community's non­con­form­ing micro-economies, such as street mar­kets and kiosks. In a place where cur­rent reg­u­la­tion allows only one use, we pro­pose five dif­fer­ent uses that sup­port each other.

Cruz dis­cuss­es his archi­tec­tur­al mis­sion in this arti­cle at the Amer­i­can Insti­tute of Architecture's site: Bor­der Post­card: Chron­i­cles from the Edge.

Categories
basketball kansas basketball

Kansas basketball / Post-Julian thoughts

Julian at the SIU game

Julian Wright is tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty of a life­time, and who can blame him? He brought enthu­si­asm and ener­gy to every game, con­tributed huge­ly in many of the big wins in the last cou­ple of years (cf. these dunks dur­ing the Flori­da game and this epic 33-point per­for­mance at MU), and showed enough skill and poten­tial to be very high­ly regard­ed by NBA scouts. Who wouldn't seize a chance to be finan­cial­ly secure, and to play in the NBA? The future is rarely cer­tain in these sit­u­a­tions, as these guys can attest. Best of luck to you, JuJu.The KU-sports-relat­ed Inter­net is (pre­dictably) thrash­ing around with the news, and the emo­tions range from hurt to hap­py, fatal­is­tic to opti­mistic. And who can blame them, real­ly? The last four years have been tough on Kansas bas­ket­ball, so tough that the men­tion of cer­tain names — Roy, Mic­ah, Pad­gett, Galin­do, Gid­dens, CJ, etc — can pro­voke pangs and spasms of hurt and guilt. I guess Julian gets added to the list now, though per­son­al­ly I think he's ready and I'm hap­py for him. Most of the com­menters at the end of this sto­ry feel oth­er­wise. Julian's depar­ture is com­pli­cat­ed, of course, by the fact that he pledged to stay fol­low­ing the loss to UCLA. This CBS reporter was real­ly peev­ed that Julian recon­sid­ered his prospects after the sea­son end­ed, which seems kin­da sil­ly to me. Did it real­ly take Julian's change of heart to com­mu­ni­cate to him that big-time col­lege sports are bit­ter­sweet, unpre­dictable, and per­pet­u­al­ly com­pro­mised by the twin prospects of major, life-chang­ing injuries and major, life-chang­ing paydays?Whatever hap­pens, I think that Julian will even­tu­al­ly have a good NBA career. Ryan Greene of kusports.com com­pares Julian to Shawn Mar­i­on, and I see the resem­blance as well. That said, he would be way bet­ter off with estab­lished, vet­er­an-heavy teams like Phoenix (who wouldn't?) or Chica­go, where he'd be able to learn and adjust out of the spot­light. Career-endan­ger­ing teams like Mem­phis, Atlanta or (once again) Sacra­men­to will give him too much respon­si­bil­i­ty too soon, though he may be able to sur­vive that either way. Long term, he's a West­ern Con­fer­ence play­er who will come off the bench, get his 12 and 8, con­tin­ue do all the lit­tle stuff that makes him great (deflect­ing pass­es, set­ting oth­er guys up, keep­ing offen­sive rebounds alive), and be a good team guy to boot.

The bright sides

Look­ing for­ward to next Novem­ber, here are three sce­nar­ios that reflect my think­ing on the remain­ing pos­si­bil­i­ties for ear­ly entries and (yikes, not again!) transfers.

  • With­out Wright: Actu­al­ly may be bet­ter. Like Drew Gooden's ear­ly exit, I actu­al­ly think there's quite a sig­nif­i­cant bright side here. Julian's ath­let­ic abil­i­ty and tal­ent require that he play a major role in the offense, which results in few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for the tal­ents of oth­er play­ers — Mario's dri­ves and shots, Sherron's shot and dri­ve, Rush's entire offen­sive arse­nal, Shady's sweet moves inside 12 feet. When Good­en left, Collison's McHale-like low-post pres­ence and Hinrich's Stock­ton-like abil­i­ty to make the right deci­sion on every fast break end­ed up pro­vid­ing a sys­tem more sta­ble than the one focused on Gooden's always ath­let­ic, some­times errat­ic pres­ence. With­out Julian at the 4, Shady starts and gets more time. This means that the line-up gets bulki­er with­out los­ing that much in the way of speed. They'll miss Julian's explo­sive­ness and shot-block­ing, but they gain Shady's sweet touch and bet­ter abil­i­ty to (more depend­ably) make plays while post­ing up. If Rush is still around (not like­ly, so see the bul­let point below), I tend to think that this line-up may even be more dan­ger­ous than if Wright had stuck around.
  • With­out Wright and Rush: Lots of re-jig­ger­ing, lots of uncer­tain­ty. Los­ing Rush is a much big­ger deal than los­ing Wright, obvi­ous­ly. He's the team's best on-the-ball defend­er; he became the go-to scor­er dur­ing the games in San Jose, and he can stroke it. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for him, he's not the explo­sive ath­lete that Julian is, and scouts are not eval­u­at­ing his drafta­bil­i­ty in the crys­tal-ball­ish terms of upside and poten­tial. His capac­i­ty is known, appar­ent­ly, and there­fore it has lim­its in the eyes of scouts. Does this mean he can't become, say, a Bruce Bowen type of play­er? Heck no. In fact, I think he'd fit in real­ly well with the type of team who would draft him in the 20's or so. And this is prob­a­bly what will hap­pen, so it all works out for the best, for him. If mon­ey and aca­d­e­mics (which are a major has­sle for him) were not issues, he's in a great posi­tion to thrive next sea­son. He fits into Self's sys­tem real­ly well; he real­ly began to shine at the end of the sea­son; anoth­er sea­son would real­ly give him a chance to refine his drib­ble-dri­ve and his out­side shot. But this is not an ide­al world, and bar­ring the entry of the entire UNC team or an injury that pre­vents him from com­pet­ing in the pre-draft camps, I sus­pect he's gone. Good luck to him.
    So. How do the Hawks replace Bran­don? Who becomes the stop­per? Who takes over the offense at the end of games? Who attracts the oth­er team's defend­ers when­ev­er he's on the floor? I'm not real­ly sure about any of this. A cou­ple of things are cer­tain, though: This will be a sea­soned, capa­ble team. They've been through a lot, beat­en Kevin Durant twice, won two Big 12 tour­na­ments, etc. More­over, they'll be with­out a super­star like Bran­don and Julian, and this — weird­ly — might make them much more like Self's Illi­nois teams — grit­ty, hun­gry, scrap­py and dan­ger­ous in the tournament.
  • With­out Wright, Rush, and Collins: !@$#%$#@*&. Almost too painful to con­sid­er. How many times did I text the words "Thank God for Sher­ron" dur­ing the Big 12 sea­son? How many times did he sin­gle-hand­ed­ly change the pace and momen­tum of a game with a vicious dri­ve to the bas­ket? He's not ready to jump to the League, but rumor has it that he wants to be clos­er to home. But would he real­ly want to sit out a year, play for a school in a mid-major con­fer­ence, give up a chance to play in a Final Four, give up a chance to play on nation­al tele­vi­sion for 15–20 or 20–25 games next year? I real­ly hope not. Man, that would hurt.
Categories
flickr visual

Photos / Bridge and Bay panoramas

Flickr photo

The weath­er has been get­ting nicer, so I've been jump­ing at any chance to ride my bike. Last Thurs­day morn­ing, I rode across the Gold­en Gate Bridge and up into the Marin Head­lands as the sun was com­ing up, and I stopped to take some pho­tos as it was peek­ing above the hori­zon. When I was going through the results, I real­ized that the indi­vid­ual pic­tures didn't real­ly do jus­tice to the moment, so I poked around the Inter­net look­ing for some­thing bet­ter than Photoshop's stitch­ing util­i­ty. Autos­titch to the res­cue! It's sim­ple, straight­for­ward, and it instan­ta­neous­ly pro­duces panora­mas with­out dis­cernible seams even with just a few pictures.

Flickr photo

(I was so intrigued by the above results that I decid­ed to try it with cell­phone pic­tures). Last Sat­ur­day, we had a pic­nic at Kir­by Cove, a lit­tle val­ley on the Marin side of the bridge. It was fog­gy and cold for the first hour or so, but then it start­ed to burn off and I took some pho­tos with my lit­tle cell phone cam­era. Once again, Autostich worked mag­ic on it. Here's to technology!

Categories
basketball kansas basketball reviews tip

March Madness / My bracket, with explanations

UPDATE 1: A cou­ple of changed picks; UPDATE 2: Some eerie resem­blances my brack­et and those of SI writ­ers; UPDATE 4: Sur­vey­ing the car­nage: Thoughts after the first two roundsHere's the brack­et that I made on the Mon­day after the seed­ings were announced.

my 2007 bracket - ideal version

UPDATE: Since Mon­day, I've been spend­ing a lot of time read­ing up on the teams I don't know/care about — in SI.com and its Tour­ney Blog, sta­tis­ti­cal ana­lyst Ken Pomeroy's blog, the NYT Brack­et blog, and the ever-unfriend­ly ESPN.com which must hide a lot of its use­ful stuff behind its sub­scrip­tion ser­vice, Insid­er. In any case, the more you read about the first round match-ups, the more con­fus­ing it all gets. I've seen many of the teams play at some point dur­ing the sea­son, but I'm total­ly in the dark on pret­ty much any team from the Pac 10 (even though I live in Cal­i­for­nia, I just real­ly can't even force myself to care about it) and almost all of the mid-majors. One brack­et change came out of this — I can't believe I'm say­ing this, but Duke seems less like­ly to get upset by VCU. Duke has been crit­i­cized a lot for being soft, slop­py, and gen­er­al­ly unin­spired, and they're com­ing off a sting­ing loss in the ACC Tour­na­ment. How could they not be hun­gry? They've got a bunch of tal­ent­ed play­ers, and it just seems real­ly unlike­ly that they won't be able to pull off a win against a VCU team that has only played one team in the tour­na­ment (Old Domin­ion). While I've only changed one out­come, my read­ing did pro­duce many doubts in my brack­et, which I detail below. (It also caused me to cre­ate three more ver­sions of my brack­et to account for the dif­fer­ent sce­nar­ios that the pun­dits high­light­ed — What if Ore­gon can't play defense? What if Oden explodes on the scene and dom­i­nates every­one? What if North Car­oli­na is as good as they appear to be in 3‑minute stretches?)

Some second thoughts

UPDATE 2: Inci­den­tal­ly, SI writer Grant Wahl's brack­et is almost exact­ly the same as mine. (Actu­al­ly, same with Seth Davis). Same Final Four; same final game; same out­come. The only big dif­fer­ences are that he has Texas beat­ing UNC (UPDATE 3: Now, so do I), and Creighton beat­ing Mem­phis, where­as I have both UNC and Mem­phis get­ting knocked out in the next round. (I also have more first-round upsets than him … Oral Roberts over Wash­ing­ton State, etc).UPDATE 4 (in the week fol­low­ing the first two rounds): After two straight years in which my brack­et burst into flames dur­ing the first week­end, I was just hap­py to emerge with 15 out of 16 teams still alive. Most­ly, I got burned by my late changes — Texas beat­ing UNC and Duke beat­ing VCU — and by the fash­ion­able upsets that I stub­born­ly decid­ed to stick with — Geor­gia Tech over UNLV, Creighton over Neva­da, and Oral Roberts over Wash­ing­ton State, each of which found their own ago­niz­ing way of dri­ving a spear through my heart. Crxp.As usu­al, there were a cou­ple of teams that I was total­ly, total­ly wrong about: (1) UNLV. Obvi­ous­ly, these guys can play. I dis­count­ed them because (a) who did they beat? and (b) the coach's son seemed to play an inor­di­nate­ly impor­tant role. Both seemed like big-time red flags. I ignored the fact that they were expe­ri­enced, and that they were clear­ly pissed off by their #7 seed. Who would have thought that the team that rose to the occa­sion would be com­posed of hard-nosed guys led by jour­ney­man coach Lon Kruger (UNLV), and not com­posed of McDonald's All-Amer­i­cans and led by the saint­ed Coach K? Seemed unlike­ly before it hap­pened, but oh how sweet it is in ret­ro­spect. (2) Texas. Dur­ing the two Kansas games, they were dan­ger­ous­ly weak at guard. Both games would like­ly have been blow-outs if Durant hadn't total­ly gone off in the first 15 min­utes of each. Abrams is a ter­ri­ble ball-han­dler who needs mul­ti­ple screens to get his shot going, and Augustin is com­plete­ly dom­i­nant one moment and out-of-con­trol the next. USC forced these guys to play a big­ger role by tak­ing away Durant's drib­ble; good call, Tim Floyd. (Didn't real­ly think I'd be say­ing those words any­time after 2002). On the oth­er bench, Rick Barnes made no dis­cernible adjust­ments. Again, not that sur­pris­ing, in retrospect.The next round looks most­ly bor­ing to me, though I guess half the games could be excit­ing — UNC-USC, if USC is able to hang on while UNC goes on its peri­od­ic runs, A&M‑Memphis should dis­play some good offen­sive fire­pow­er (unlike Pitt-UCLA, which almost cer­tain­ly will be a grind-it-out snore-fest), and KU-SIU which could be excit­ing if KU has a hard time run­ning its offense against the defense-mind­ed Salukis. Let's hope that it's not excit­ing in this way.

Categories
flickr

Online adventures / my Flickr hecklr

Egg and eagle
Fondue


Ear­li­er this week, I noticed that there had been a lot of activ­i­ty on my Flickr pho­tos. Some­one named "fur­gurl" had com­ment­ed rough­ly 50 times, and the com­ments them­selves were pret­ty unusu­al. Most were lengthy, not the stan­dard "OMG!" or "nice shot!" or what­ev­er. They were also all low­er-case, filled with mis­spellings and weird punc­tu­a­tion, and in almost every instance, pret­ty cru­el. Cru­el com­ments! On Flickr pho­tos! Weird, huh?The exam­ples above are the only halfway clever com­ments, and they were the only ones I kept. (Apolo­gies to Nathaniel, Adlai, and my mom's sausage fondue).The rest focussed on just a few themes: the absence of make-up ("try wear­ing eye-lin­er!" was a com­mon refrain when women were in the pic­ture), out-of-date cloth­ing ("was this pic­ture tak­en in the 70's?" or "who wears THAT?"), beards ("that one is clear­ly a mem­ber of the Tal­iban"), reced­ing hair­lines ("take some of the hair from your face and put it on your head!" appeared in a few places), hair in gen­er­al (peo­ple with curly hair were crit­i­cized for curl­ing their hair too much; I was often advised to wash my hair) and the over­all per­cep­tion that no one in any of the pic­tures had ever been on a date. Lots of them were unin­ten­tion­al­ly fun­ny in that (a) no ratio­nal per­son would have ever noticed what­ev­er "fur­gurl" was point­ing out, (b) the crit­i­cism often betrayed, let's say, a mis­placed fix­a­tion on super­fi­cial stuff, and © each includ­ed all the mak­ings for a sar­cas­tic com­ment except the sar­cas­tic tone, which actu­al­ly kind of made it even more funny.I didn't real­ly want to delete "furgurl's" com­ments. On the oth­er hand, I didn't want the heck­ling to go unan­swered. But the prob­lem was that "fur­gurl" had no Flickr pro­file, no pub­lic pho­tos, and didn't respond to the Flick­r­mail that I sent. I could han­dle anony­mous pub­lic cru­el­ty, real­ly, but only if the play­ing field was lev­el. She nev­er respond­ed to my mes­sage, so I took them down.Here's where it gets weird, though. When I Googled "fur­gurl," many of the results involved the same per­son, one Anne Bar­tee. (Behold, she has a web­site). When I clicked around the site, I found this, a let­ter she wrote to a hypnotherapist/advice colum­nist in the Tolu­can Times. In it, she describes her­self as an "inter­na­tion­al pop artist," and asks some provoca­tive questions:

I've been on TV and radio all over the world, and also in "Bill­board" mag­a­zine. Can you tell me if there is a link between "bad cul­ture" and pub­lic mis­per­cep­tion of what is tru­ly good? Rap and hip hop and sim­plis­tic drum and bass beats have dom­i­nat­ed music for far too long, encour­ag­ing the pub­lic to embrace yet low­er stan­dards. But sure­ly the pub­lic can­not believe that this is good music. I won­der; is this an exam­ple of the say­ing, "You can sell them garbage if you paint it gold?"

The tone, not to men­tion the rea­son­ing, sounds famil­iar. Here's a tip for all you hip-hop stars: Wash your hair! Try some eye­lin­er! And wear some fash­ion­able clothes once in a while, for cry­ing out loud! Anne, if you ever read and com­ment on this, I'm expect­ing your A‑game. Don't pull any punches.

Categories
ixd

ESPN.com / March (information) madness

To the edi­tors of ESPN.com,I vis­it your site every day, mul­ti­ple times a day. Today, I decid­ed that I've had enough. You need to stop. What­ev­er you're doing, just STOP. Years ago, ESPN.com was a use­ful col­lec­tion of online sports infor­ma­tion. It was rel­a­tive­ly easy to nav­i­gate, scan and read. Today, it is a dark, sprawl­ing infor­ma­tion apoc­a­lypse — the Blade Run­ner cityscape of web­sites. Remem­ber that ear­ly scene in Blade Run­ner, where Deckard is read­ing the news­pa­per while the ad blimp cir­cles over­head, repeat­ing the words: "A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies"? That's how I feel when I'm read­ing ESPN.com. The bar­rage of ads, news, tick­ers, scrolling con­tent wid­gets, opin­ion, com­men­tary, analy­sis, what­ev­er it is that Scoop Jack­son writes, and teasers for upcom­ing events on your cable net­work is an absolute mess, the kind of mess that makes CNBC seem Tufte-esque in comparison.

The ultimate dog's breakfast

Where did you go wrong? Years ago, you plas­tered that huge ban­ner ad across the top. This was annoy­ing, but plen­ty of sites (used to) do this and I learned to ignore it. Then there was ESPN Motion — or, as a friend refers to it "ESPN Suck-tion." It's a video play­er that peri­od­i­cal­ly demands that you stop read­ing to deal with a video ad or Sports­Cen­ter clip it has just begun broad­cast­ing. Over time, you added more and more flash­es and dis­trac­tions — anoth­er ban­ner ad above the con­tent, two lev­els of tab nav­i­ga­tion, mul­ti­ple areas of peri­od­i­cal­ly refresh­ing con­tent, and links in the mast­head (!). Final­ly, you mod­i­fied your pop-up ads so that they defy pop-up block­ing soft­ware (most of it, any­way). I have to ask: DO YOU REALIZE THAT THEY ONLY OTHER WEBSITES THAT DO THIS ARE SELLING EITHER PIRATED SOFTWARE OR PORN? Did you guys raid Asta­lav­ista to hire your cur­rent online prod­uct man­ag­er? Actu­al­ly, maybe it was MySpace or Col­lege­Hu­mor. To be fair to Col­lege­Hu­mor, though, it could teach ESPN some things about lay­out and navigation.Now, for any­one out there who wants to take the first step toward mak­ing ESPN read­able again, I sug­gest the following:

  1. Down­load and install Fire­fox.
  2. Install the Adblock add-on
  3. Restart Fire­fox, and sub­scribe to the first item in the Adblock list of filters
  4. Nav­i­gate to ESPN.com, observe that all ads have been removed. As the Sports­Cen­ter anchors would say, "Vic­to-ree!"

To the edi­tors of ESPN.com, I sim­ply request that you (a) kill the pop-up ads, (b) tear the home­page apart (and re-assem­ble it with the idea that it should facil­i­tate access to con­tent, rather than pre­vent it), © take a look at what the NYT has been up to in terms of inte­grat­ing tex­tu­al and mul­ti­me­dia con­tent, and (d) don't try to cram every con­ceiv­able prod­uct onto every page. Sim­ple, right?

Categories
basketball kansas basketball

Pre-post-season thoughts / Containing Kevin Durant

In a pre­vi­ous post, I sug­gest­ed that the Kansas defense must "con­tain" Kevin Durant, there­by imply­ing that Kevin Durant could, in fact, be con­tained. I said: "he's going to get 10–15 points no mat­ter what you do," and any­thing in excess of that was a mat­ter of the oppos­ing team's defense shut­ting him down. Against Kansas on Sat­ur­day, he rat­tled off 12 points in a row between the 17:41 and the 14:14 marks in the first half, and had 20 points just five min­utes lat­er. (Thanks to ESPN's play-by-play for this). And it wasn't like the Texas offense was get­ting him a lot of open looks: He was bury­ing every shot, no mat­ter who was guard­ing him and no mat­ter where he was on the court. 22 feet away, Julian Wright's hand in his face: Rat­tled in. Pulling up from 27 feet at the tail end of a fast break: Swish. Texas didn't even need to run an offense, they just need­ed to get him the ball and then wor­ry about get­ting back and play­ing defense. In the first half, this worked. In the sec­ond half, dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Two things changed (at least): Bran­don Rush was on Durant, rather than Julian Wright. It was hard to say whether Durant just cooled off, or whether Rush cooled him off, but the fact was that he missed 4 of 5 shots before going down with a twist­ed ankle. Sec­ond thing: Anoth­er play­er imme­di­ate­ly dou­ble-teamed Durant on the perime­ter when­ev­er he got the ball, and Texas failed to exploit this for easy low-post bas­kets. (Nice call by Coach Self. Not sure why he didn't go to this ear­li­er, but I'm just glad that it worked). At the same time, I can't believe Texas couldn't exploit this. I mean, teams must be doing this all the time. Why weren't they able to find Dami­an James for easy bas­kets under­neath, or Augustin on cuts to the bas­ket? (I share Bill Simmons's assess­ment of Texas coach Rick Barnes, by the way: "How can you not run more plays for Kevin Durant? Post him up and he has 27 dif­fer­ent ways to score. Curl him off picks and he makes 15-foot­ers like they're layups.") Speak­ing of bad coach­ing, I was mys­ti­fied that Texas didn't start foul­ing soon­er. Kansas wasn't even in the bonus until the 2:20 mark, and Texas didn't start foul­ing until the 1:18 mark when they were down by 8. Russ­Rob missed the front-end of a one-and-one, and Texas cut the lead to 6. Then, on con­sec­u­tive pos­ses­sions, Mario makes one of two; Russ­Rob makes one of two; Julian makes one of two. HEART ATTACK TIME. Instead of a 6‑point lead, it's a 3‑point lead, and Texas has a chance to tie. This is a huge, huge issue going into the post-sea­son, both for the Hawks chances and my own phys­i­cal and men­tal health.Incidentally, with this in mind, I deeply enjoyed a recent piece by Gene Wein­garten about FT shoot­ing: "If I took a year off and prac­ticed all day, every day, I could then defeat the NBA's best free-throw shoot­er in head-to-head com­pe­ti­tion" (via kot­tke).

Categories
basketball kansas basketball

Big Saturday / KU-UT thoughts and predictions

Watch­ing the Long­horns repeat­ed­ly (and ulti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful­ly) dri­ve a stake into the heart of Acie Law IV last night, I got to think­ing about Saturday's show­down between the Long­horns and the Hawks. (I also pen­ciled in A&M for the Final Four. Is there any team in the nation — oth­er than UCLA, I guess — that has such a per­fect blend of March-ready qual­i­ties — go-to guy, great defense, grit, gump­tion? Total­ly g'ed up). Any­way, here's the big stuff that KU has to address:Con­tain Kevin Durant. I know, I know. Obvi­ous. Duh. Every­one tries to do this. But I think Kansas has a chance to suc­ceed. Yes, he's going to get 10–15 points no mat­ter what you do. He'll be every­where — around the bas­ket, out on the perime­ter, get­ting put-backs, rolling off picks and tak­ing jumpers. The chal­lenge for the Hawks is to make sure he doesn't get 30–35, to lim­it the num­ber of open looks he gets on the perime­ter, and to make sure that he doesn't get any­where near a rhythm like he had against Texas Tech (37 points, 23 rebounds). Durant thrives when teams don't have some­one who can get in his face when he's away from the bas­ket. At 6'9", he's going to shoot over the kind of guy who will take away the dri­ve, but he's also fast and agile enough to go around most guys his size. All of that said, I think he's going to have prob­lems with KU's long, fast, and high­ly dis­rup­tive defend­ers — Julian Wright and Bran­don Rush. I think it's total­ly pos­si­ble for them to con­tain him, as long as they stay out of foul trou­ble. Dis­rupt the sup­ply chain. DJ Augustin kept them in the game last night when Durant went into a funk. In many games this year, I've seen him slice through defens­es, get to the bas­ket, and gen­er­al­ly cre­ate the kind of chaos that leads to easy put-backs for Durant. Mario Chalmers, Rus­sell Robin­son, and Sher­ron Collins have to keep him from dri­ving, and com­pli­cate his dis­tri­b­u­tion of the ball. Run them ragged, and don't get beat by AJ Abrams. Or any­one like him. Last year, the rel­a­tive­ly qui­et Abrams explod­ed for four three-point­ers dur­ing a first half run, sin­gle­hand­ed­ly demor­al­iz­ing the Hawks. The good news is that, this year, the Long­horn weapon­ry is far from secret. Abrams, Augustin and Durant play pret­ty much all game, every game. This is an oppor­tu­ni­ty for the rel­a­tive­ly deep Hawks to be relent­less in their defense — Maybe even press a lit­tle? C'mon, Coach. Gim­mick defens­es have stunned KU twice recent­ly (A&M, OU). Why not break one out once in a while? Mak­ing free throws. The mere thought that this game will come down to free throws makes my stom­ach hurt. The last five min­utes of the Okla­homa game was excru­ci­at­ing in that it almost turned into A&M, Part II. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, it's no secret that Kansas can't shoot free throws. They're going to get fouled late in the game; with any luck, Chalmers and Robin­son will con­trol the ball and hit their freebies.Lastly, Collins and Arthur must con­tribute, and Rush has to get his shots. It's pret­ty amaz­ing that the Hawks could get by OU with­out con­tri­bu­tions from any of these guys, but there's no way that a win ver­sus Texas is pos­si­ble with­out them.

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Kansas basketball / A late-season report card

After the loss to A&M, I jot­ted down some notes that I titled "Resolved & Unre­solved." In the sub­se­quent five games, there has been a migra­tion of some items from one list to the oth­er, most­ly in the direc­tion of res­o­lu­tion, which is nice. 

Resolved

  • Rota­tion. Coach Self seems like he's found the right starters, and his bench guys inject ener­gy almost every time. This was not the case last year, and even ear­li­er this year, when Kaun, Jack­son, Wright and Hawkins (last year) were in and out of his dog­house and the start­ing line­up. I'm not get­ting too excit­ed about this, because it's one of the more ele­men­tary require­ments for any deep advance­ment in the tournament.
  • Pace. Dur­ing Self's first year, it was clear that Miles, Lang­ford, and Simien all strug­gled with his insis­tence on cohe­sive half-court defense, which pre­vent­ed a lot of the sprint­ing out that char­ac­ter­ized Roy's offense (and prob­a­bly was a major part of why those guys came to KU). Lang­ford espe­cial­ly seemed to strug­gle when he wasn't get­ting mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties for (rel­a­tive­ly) easy tran­si­tion bas­kets. This year's team seems to have ful­ly embraced Self's approach, while also run­ning a pret­ty mean fast break when they get the opportunity.
  • Defense. It's Coach Self's call­ing card, and it ensures that KU is com­pet­i­tive in every game. There isn't a team in the coun­try right now who has a defin­i­tive answer to it; I say this with con­fi­dence because Flori­da is real­ly the only team that would appear to be dom­i­nant, and we all know what hap­pened there.
  • Bench. A new­ly resolved mat­ter, thanks to both Sher­ron Collins and Shady (whose huge rebounds late in the K‑State game allowed KU to steadi­ly pull away). Dar­nell Jack­son is always sol­id, and occa­sion­al­ly he is a total badass. Watch­ing him tear­ing shit off the glass and kick­ing it out to Russ­Rob is a com­fort­ing sight, espe­cial­ly when Kaun and Shady seem to have so much trou­ble lay­ing down the law in the paint.

Unresolved

  • The go-to guy. Yes, Collins has emerged as a major late-game threat. Is he a true go-to guy yet, though? I'm not sure. Coach Self gave him the ball in last pos­ses­sion of the A&M game, rather than Chalmers, Rush, or Wright, so clear­ly the staff believes that Collins can do it. He's got the mox­ie, not to men­tion the game, for mak­ing big plays late in the game, but the rea­son that I think that this is still unre­solved is that, usu­al­ly, when you've got a go-to guy, the rest of the team seems relaxed and com­fort­able, and this com­fort trans­lates into wins in close games. Thus far, I seen very lit­tle com­fort dur­ing close games (a la Mis­souri, Iowa State, A&M, Texas Tech). I start­ed to see more of it dur­ing K‑State, but it still took some luck — Rush's three-point play after Julian's ter­ri­ble no-look some­how skit­tered through four K‑State defend­ers — and some K‑State mis­takes in order for KU to escape with a win. Nev­er­the­less, this is get­ting bet­ter, no ques­tion. What needs to hap­pen: Kansas needs to win an A&M‑style game, a down-to-the-wire game in which the oth­er team keeps bring­ing it (like Flori­da), and in that game the go-to guy needs to exe­cute on every pos­ses­sion, like Acie Law of A&M did.
  • Post play. If this team didn't rely on scor­ing in the post, I'd say that Sasha Kaun has been pret­ty sol­id. He rarely makes a bad pass; he picks up the occa­sion­al stu­pid foul (but seems to be get­ting bet­ter in this regard); he estab­lish­es posi­tion well and draws defend­ers. Defen­sive­ly, he's rarely out of posi­tion. Lit­tle of this ever makes it on a stat sheet, and all of it con­tributes to open looks for oth­er play­ers on the offen­sive end, and few­er oppor­tu­ni­ties for the oppo­nent on the defen­sive end. So he's sol­id, except for the fact that he becomes offen­sive­ly inept at real­ly inop­por­tune times. It's hard to ignore the many, many occa­sions when he has failed to fin­ish the bun­nies; if he gets fouled, we all know what we're in for. Shady, on the oth­er hand, sim­ply needs to get hun­gry. All of the tools are there; they just need to be brought to bear with a lit­tle pas­sion. Not that I'm going to make any Rudy Gay com­par­isons. There's no way that Self would ever allow Shady to con­duct him­self with the non­cha­lance that Gay rou­tine­ly brought to UConn. What needs to hap­pen: Shady needs to show more of what he showed against K‑State; Kaun needs to con­vert his easy bas­kets; Jack­son needs to keep doing what he does.
  • Easy bas­kets. Free throws fall into this cat­e­go­ry; so do layups. I've nev­er seen a team blow so many open, close range buck­ets, or brick as many FTs. Jack­son and Kaun are approach­ing Richard Scott-lev­el incom­pe­tence in this regard, and even Chalmers and Russ­Rob (admit­ted­ly, my favorite of the cur­rent Hawks, esp. after he got in Carti­er Martin's face dur­ing the K‑State game) isn't 100% reli­able down the stretch. And Rush missed the two FT's after Huggy's T, which could have put KU up by 7. (Good thing Collins hit a three in the ensu­ing pos­ses­sion). Any­way, one virtue of Roy's teams is that they seem to get 10–15 easy bas­kets every game: fast break layups and dunks; post guys who get sprung open by a back screen; open jumpers for the big guys trail­ing the fast break. Self's teams must get few­er of these looks, which may be okay since they seem to have trou­ble con­vert­ing them any­way. What needs to hap­pen: It may be impos­si­ble for this team to become a good FT-shoot­ing team, but it's emi­nent­ly pos­si­ble for them to make layups, espe­cial­ly Kaun.
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Small worlds / Phil Collins, The World Won't Listen

Flickr photo


I met Phil Collins (the British artist, not the British pop star1) at a bar in Brook­lyn in the mid 90's. At the time, I didn't know him as "the British artist," I knew him only as my friend Tom's leg­endary boyfriend. I remem­ber lit­tle of the night, but I do remem­ber a hub­bub accom­pa­ny­ing Phil Collins's wan­der­ings around the bar; he seemed to cre­ate some kind of event wher­ev­er he went. At some point, he approached the table with two tall drinks, placed them in front of me, and said some­thing like "These are from an admir­er of yours." As it turned out, they were from an admir­er of his, and this admir­er per­ceived, shall we say, a lack of grat­i­tude when his drinks were giv­en away. There was a con­fronta­tion, as I recall, and Phil said some­thing like, "Well, I'm sor­ry, I nev­er turn down a drink, but you can't hon­est­ly expect me to drink [dis­be­liev­ing voice] rum & coke?" (Or what­ev­er the drinks were). All of which serves as back­ground to my reac­tion to Phil Collins's piece, The World Won't Lis­ten, at SFMOMA, which was pret­ty excel­lent. The premise is pret­ty sim­ple: He filmed young Turk­ish folks singing along to The Smiths best-of com­pi­la­tion "The World Won't Lis­ten." The effect, on the oth­er hand, is deep and res­o­nant. The Smiths' odes to teenager­dom — all vac­il­lat­ing emo­tions, frus­trat­ed inar­tic­u­la­tions, pierc­ing moments of under­stand­ing, sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty — take on a deep­er social dimen­sion through the voic­es of (in many of the cas­es) non-Eng­lish speak­ers. Add to this the fact that the singers are Mid­dle East­ern, and it becomes dif­fi­cult to avoid a polit­i­cal read­ing. Songs like "There Is A Light That Nev­er Goes Out" sounds less the over-dra­mat­ic nihilism of a West­ern teenag­er and more like a very real plea from a teenag­er caught in an increas­ing­ly fun­da­men­tal­ist world:

Take me out tonight­Be­cause I want to see peo­ple and IWant to see lifeDriv­ing in your carOh, please don't drop me home­Be­cause it's not my home, it's theirHome, and I'm wel­come no more 

Real­ly impressive.Cool: a web post­ing for the event that he filmed.1 Speak­ing of the British pop star, here's a clas­sic: The video for "Sus­su­dio" [YouTube]