Category: basketball

The sweet sci­ence. (Oh wait, that's box­ing). The world game. (Is that soc­cer?) America's game. (Hmm, maybe that's base­ball). Round ball?

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basketball kansas basketball

March Madness / Zapruder analysis of Mario's shot

A cou­ple of days ago, I was watch­ing Mario's three-point­er for like the 150th time, and I decid­ed to do it JFK/Zaprud­er style. Click. Sher­ron blows by Der­rick Rose. Click. Click. Click. Sher­ron begins to fall. Click. The ball emerges in Mario's hands, he takes a big jump-step toward the top of the key, jumps, fades. Der­rick Rose leaps. Ball leaves Mario's hand. Arc-ing, arc-ing. Swish. (Rewind). Swish. (Rewind). Swish. I felt like Kevin Cost­ner in JFK: Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left. Back, and to the left.

An obscured leaping figure

As I stepped through the swish mul­ti­ple times, I saw some­thing I hadn't seen before, a sort of puff of smoke on the grassy knoll. There's a leap­ing fig­ure behind the back­board, at the very far end of the Kansas bench. Just after Mario's shot goes through, the play­ers on the bench appear to be in dis­be­lief, but a black clad fig­ure at the end of the bench sud­den­ly springs up, spin­ning, arms flail­ing. I think that this was pret­ty close to my reac­tion as well.

Ballard celebratesThis is clos­est I could come to a shot of the bench at that moment Mario's shot goes through the net. It's unclear who it is from this pho­to, but it's almost cer­tain­ly the same guy you can see onscreen, jump­ing and celebrating.


You can kin­da see a black blur behind the back­board in this YouTube clip, but it's much more clear­ly viewed in high-def­i­n­i­tion about two feet from your TV screen.Fast-forward to the post-game cel­e­bra­tion, and it becomes clear that the fig­ure is none oth­er than for­mer Kansas back­up point guard and cur­rent video assis­tant, Brett Bal­lard. Awe­some. I was always a Bal­lard fan because he's a Kansas kid, from Hutchi­son. [Here's a nice Kansan pro­file of Bal­lard.] Now he'll always be the visu­al record of my own reac­tion to Mario's shot.

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basketball kansas basketball

Kansas basketball / A dadgum classic

Sur­re­al. That's the word that keeps com­ing to mind. Kansas trailed by nine points with two min­utes left, and yet some­how man­aged to win. Chalmers's shot. Collins's steal. Roy Williams — "Bene­dict Williams" to many Jay­hawk fans — wear­ing a Jay­hawk stick­er. Is it pos­si­ble that all of that *real­ly* hap­pened? Watch the last few min­utes of the game again, and you'll begin to see how many lit­tle things went KU's way. There were big things, of course — Calipari's lack of faith in his bench, Joey Dorsey's fouls, CDR's clankers from the line — but there were also those momen­tary mis­takes that add up: a ter­ri­ble tran­si­tion deci­sion by Mem­phis, ques­tion­able judg­ment when Cali­pari doesn't call time­out after a made free throw to ensure that his team fouls, and the sim­ple bad luck of Der­rick Rose's first free throw that hit every part of the rim and then bounced out with 10 sec­onds left.Still, Kansas need­ed a mir­a­cle to sim­ply pull even.

Mario's shot
Pho­to: Streeter Lecka

Luke Winn of Sports Illus­trat­ed real­ly nails the last few sec­onds in his Tour­ney Blog: "The ball took what Collins said seemed 'like five sec­onds' in the air, per­fect­ly rotat­ing, and Bran­don Rush, who had posi­tioned him­self near the bas­ket in the event of a tip, looked up at the net and 'saw it splash right in there.' … 'It will prob­a­bly be,' said Self, 'the biggest shot ever made in Kansas history.'"

The bench reacts to Mario's shot
The bench reacts to Mario's shot. Pho­to: Jeff Haynes

The Kansas City Star's Jason Whit­lock com­ment­ed on the sto­ries behind the sto­ry: "That's how you win it all, exor­cise the demons and bap­tize a new era of great­ness. You do it with an unfor­get­table ral­ly, a stun­ning three-point­er and with your most famous and infa­mous coach­ing alum sit­ting in the sta­di­um, cheer­ing you on and sport­ing a Jay­hawk sticker."

Baby Jay all the way
Pho­to: Jed Jacobsohn

The Star's Joe Pos­nan­s­ki on Memphis's seem­ing­ly insur­mount­able lead, and Mario's shot: "When you're young, you live in the moment. That's how it's sup­posed to be. Chalmers was not feel­ing the pres­sure of his­to­ry when he fired the shot. He nev­er could have made it then. Kansas was trail­ing by nine points with bare­ly 2 min­utes left. Mem­phis had tak­en all the inten­si­ty and will and feroc­i­ty that Kansas had to give, and then the Tigers pulled away. Up nine with about 2 min­utes left? Over."

Self & Sherron
Sher­ron & Bill Self. Pho­to: Streeter Lecka

Collins's con­tri­bu­tion was huge, despite his turnovers. He was in Der­rick Rose's face all night, and his pace and fear­less­ness cre­at­ed the two biggest moments of the game — the steal with just under a minute left, and the pass to Mario with 5 sec­onds left. Dana O'Neil's arti­cle on ESPN real­ly cap­tures it well (title: "With­out Collins, there is no Chalmers."). Der­rick Rose com­ment­ed on Sherron's play dur­ing Memphis's post-game press con­fer­ence: "He did what he sup­posed to do as a point guard — con­trol the team, push the ball up the court and make tough plays at the end. He just con­trolled the game.â€Self was char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly mod­est after the game, "The out­side pub­lic may view peo­ple that win a cham­pi­onship dif­fer­ent­ly, but coach­es know you don't get smarter because a hard shot goes in or doesn't go in. I'm proud of our guys, hap­py for every­body involved, but I don't see it that way.â€I'm not sure what it will take for the talk­ing heads to give him some respect, hon­est­ly. In ESPN's pre-game show, the for­mer coach­es (Vitale, Dig­ger, and Knight) lav­ished praise on Mem­phis coach John Cali­pari. Vitale threw around all the usu­al hyper­bole ("genius," "inno­va­tor," as I recall), and even Knight com­pli­ment­ed Cal's inven­tive­ness as a coach. After the game, the mood was fune­re­al around the ESPN desk, as if they them­selves had lost the game. Why? There are some com­pelling con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries bounc­ing around the com­ments on the Lawrence Jour­nal-World site, e.g. "[Sup­port­ing] Kansas pro­motes [KU's] recruit­ing and keeps Kansas a Cadil­lac pro­gram. In turn, that steers recruits away from schools where the talk­ing heads have loy­al­ties and rela­tion­ships with coach­es that give them the access they require in the major media mar­kets they need to pump up their Q rat­ings and mar­ket share rat­ings." Hmm.Finally, the NYT's Pete Thamel post­ed some engag­ing com­men­tary on The Quad, the NYT's col­lege sports blog. He describes the scene in the Mem­phis lock­er room afterward:

There are only two lock­er rooms I'd ever seen where the play­ers were this dev­as­tat­ed. One was the U.S.C. lock­er room after Matt Leinart and the Tro­jans lost the nation­al title to Texas in the Rose Bowl. I remem­ber Leinart sit­ting alone on a bench, eat­ing a turkey sand­wich and a choco­late chip cook­ie and drink­ing a Gatorade. It was kind of sur­re­al that his whole senior year had come down to that.The oth­er was the Okla­homa lock­er room after the Soon­ers lost to Boise State in what many con­sid­er the great­est fin­ish to a col­lege foot­ball game. That would be the Ian John­son, Stat­ue of Lib­er­ty, hook-and-lad­der game. The most bizarre scene from that lock­er room was Okla­homa Coach Bob Stoops just stand­ing by him­self, star­ing off into the ether. It's rare to see a head coach alone any­where, any­time. But Stoops could have been on Plu­to, and no one at that sec­ond was going to visit. 

Final­ly, today's Kansas City Star front page. Nice! I had the 1988 ver­sion on my bed­room wall for about 10 years, until it basi­cal­ly turned into dust. 

Kansas City Star front page


Categories
basketball kansas basketball

March Madness / Final Four shit

If words are win­dows to the soul, this blog has become a mas­sive vista onto my sports obses­sions and, specif­i­cal­ly, Kansas bas­ket­ball. Soon enough it'll all be over, the fever dream will end, the sun will rise, and I'll be back to the old stuff. Until then, I want to post one more thing, to com­mem­o­rate the Jay­hawks' run to San Antonio.

Kansas Jayhawk Final Four 2008 t-shirt - I could give a shit about CarolinaI designed a t‑shirt that expressed my feel­ings with regard to the Heels, which — in a real­ly weird coin­ci­dence — echo Ol Roy's sen­ti­ments c. 2003.


For many Kansas fans, Roy's angry words ring true — truer, even — today. Sure, Roy may have claimed to have "giv­en a shit" at that moment, but he changed his tune a week lat­er. Jay­hawk fans prob­a­bly still couldn't give a shit, to say the least. Now, we can declare this to the world. [Buy it now now now from Zaz­zle].

A day that will live in infamy

In case anyone's won­der­ing what the heck the shirt is all about, let's take a quick trip down YouTube lane. The year was 2003; the time was 10 min­utes after KU's nation­al final loss to Syra­cuse; the place was the tun­nel out­side the Kansas lock­er room The "shit" part clear­ly wasn't pre-med­i­tat­ed, yet it was per­fect­ly timed, putting a bit­ter excla­ma­tion point on a ring­ing rebuke. Of course, the most shock­ing part of it all was that it came from the man who had — to that point — cor­nered the mar­ket in "dadgums" and "dog­gones:" Ol Roy, the kind coun­try cousin of col­lege bas­ket­ball. In more ways than one, that inter­view was the end of an era, and in ret­ro­spect, Roy's aw-shucks-ing and dadgum-ing seems a lit­tle sil­ly, but it sure worked well for a while. Now, well. Times have changed.

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basketball

March Madness / Where have you gone, Bobby Hurley?

Despite being stocked with recruit­ing rich­es, Duke is going home ear­ly and it's not too sur­pris­ing why: streaky offense, untime­ly turnovers, killed on the boards, noth­ing in the post, the list goes on. But what's dif­fer­ent about this team? Why isn't Coach K's for­mu­la work­ing anymore? 

Wojo and Coach K share a moment"Promise me you'll nev­er leave." Pho­to: Replay pho­tos.

Coach K has always recruit­ed play­ers with rad­i­cal­ly invert­ed ratios of tal­ent to like­abil­i­ty — incred­i­bly gift­ed, fun­da­men­tal­ly sound play­ers who always come across as arro­gant and enti­tled. His play­ers are not only good ath­letes, they're (gen­er­al­ly) clean-cut, team-ori­ent­ed guys who care more about win­ning than stats, and usu­al­ly, come March, they're mow­ing teams down with a sin­gle-mind­ed dri­ve to the Final Four.At least part of the prob­lem seems to be that this par­tic­u­lar mod­el (coach­es and play­ers alike) just isn't built for, nor is it capa­ble of adapt­ing to, the kinds of com­pe­ti­tion it sees in the tour­na­ment. David­son doesn't have a reli­able post pres­ence, and they're still around because (a) they've got a guy who can light it up, and (b) they had oth­er guys who leapt into the breach when that guy wasn't get­ting it done. With Duke, it's par­tial­ly a func­tion of the play­ers just not get­ting it done, but it also seems like the coach­ing staff isn't address­ing at least one fair­ly obvi­ous problem.

Someone needs to tell him the truth

Who is going to tell Coach K that point guard Greg Paulus is killing the team with ter­ri­ble tran­si­tion deci­sions, ill-advised threes and real­ly bad defen­sive gam­bles? Not Wojo. After all, he *was* Paulus eight years ago. Not Chris Collins. He was Paulus ten years ago. When you include Quin Sny­der, Tom­my Amak­er, Jeff Capel, and the unat­tain­able mod­el — Bob­by Hur­ley — in the con­ver­sa­tion, it becomes clear that Coach K has basi­cal­ly recruit­ed the same guy again and again. Or per­haps he has just always been try­ing to recruit Bob­by Hur­ley. Unfor­tu­nate­ly for Duke, Paulus is no Bob­by Hur­ley. He's not even close.Maybe you can be the next one; here's a DVD called Mike Krzyzews­ki: Duke Bas­ket­ball — Devel­op­men­tal Drills for Point Guards.

Fellow Duke haters, our cup runneth over

When Duke is strug­gling, there's a dis­tur­bance in the Force across col­lege bas­ket­ball uni­verse, and it rip­ples through the sport­ing press. On Sun­day, The New York Times — which gen­er­al­ly reserves its biased report­ing to Demo­cat­ic pol­i­tics, the local teams and the Big East — pub­lished an fair­ly obvi­ous­ly gloat­ing analy­sis of Duke's loss on Sun­day. Most sports jour­nal­ists would ignore — or even crit­i­cize — the pos­tur­ing of play­ers dur­ing post-game press con­fer­ence, but this arti­cle uses post-game trash talk as the plat­form for game analysis. 

When told that the Moun­taineers had just beat­en a team with eight McDonald's all-Amer­i­cans, Alexan­der seemed star­tled. He arched his eye­brows and asked in a seri­ous tone, "Who?"Nearly every Blue Dev­il who played Sat­ur­day was a high school all-Amer­i­can. West Vir­ginia has none. So after embar­rass­ing the Blue Dev­ils on the court by scor­ing 22 points in a 73–67 vic­to­ry, Alexan­der and his under­recruit­ed and under­hyped team­mates spent much of the postgame inter­views in the lock­er room mock­ing the Duke mystique. 

There are at least two things real­ly wrong with these para­graphs. First of all, Joe Alexan­der knows who Duke's All-Amer­i­cans are. They prob­a­bly whooped his butt in AAU games and took all the big prizes on the sum­mer camp cir­cuit. (I stand cor­rect­ed. Appar­ent­ly, Alexan­der grew up in Asia). By beat­ing Duke in the tour­na­ment, Alexan­der earned some recog­ni­tion — good for him — but why spend it on school­yard taunts? Sec­ond­ly, West Vir­ginia in no way "embar­rassed" Duke. The game was tight, both teams bat­tled. An embar­rass­ment could take many forms, but this game wasn't one.

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, the Blue Dev­ils found out that their blue-blood his­to­ry, recruit­ing pedi­gree and ESPN-fueled aura mean lit­tle in the N.C.A.A. tournament.

I high­ly doubt that Duke's seem­ing night­ly pres­ence on ESPN has done any­thing to make oth­er teams fear them. If any­thing, it makes them a big­ger tar­get, and it gave every­one in the coun­try a chance to wit­ness their inep­ti­tude against North Car­oli­na twice this year.A much more sound analy­sis of the game can be found at The X's and O's of coach­ing, describ­ing the var­i­ous ways in which Hug­gy Bear's offense exploit­ed the propen­si­ty of Duke defend­ers to overcommit.

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basketball kansas basketball

Basketball / It's bracket time

2008 NCAA tournament bracketYou prob­a­bly can't tell, but I've been wor­ry­ing over my picks for the last cou­ple of days.


My patented approach = tossed out the window

I've filled out 20+ brack­ets in my life, and each year I take basi­cal­ly the same tack: At least one #1 seed goes down rel­a­tive­ly ear­ly; every Big 12 team rep­re­sents. This most­ly works, but it gets com­pli­cat­ed because I also gen­er­al­ly want Duke to flame out ear­ly (and with the great­est pos­si­ble degree of humil­i­a­tion), and I expect the Pac 10 teams to eat shit as well. His­to­ry has not been kind to this approach. Did I men­tion that I usu­al­ly send Kansas to the Final Four at least as well? So yes, I usu­al­ly lose what­ev­er pool I've entered.

Instead, I predict that history will be made in a couple of ways

Of course, I still have Duke flam­ing out and Kansas win­ning, but I've twist­ed a cou­ple of the oth­er valves in my strat­e­gy engine:

  1. All 4 #1 seeds make the Final Four. In every case, I couldn't imag­ine any one of them los­ing. North Car­oli­na is play­ing in their home state all the way through. Mem­phis is good, and they're mad, and I don't think they're going to have to face Texas, so who are they going to lose to? Pitts­burgh? Bob Knight thinks so, but I'm not so sure. Kansas is also good, and they're focused, and I just hope that Bill Self has them ready to go. UCLA is the only team that, to me, seems vul­ner­a­ble, if only because K‑Love's back may be hurt. Then again, Ben How­land is a wily bas­tard, and I wouldn't put it past him to use a very minor injury to start mess­ing with the minds of future oppo­nents, a la Bill Belichick.
  2. The Pac 10 per­forms. I dare you to look into the sea­sons that each of the teams played. They played good teams, and they per­formed pret­ty well. I've got USC in the Elite Eight. Crazy? Maybe. But they fin­ished the sea­son pret­ty strong, even though Waz­zu obvi­ous­ly had their num­ber. Which is why I have Waz­zu advanc­ing before los­ing a tight one to UNC.
  3. The Big 12 fiz­zles. K‑State is reel­ing, and I've got them los­ing to USC. Okla­homa looked awful quite a few times this year; I wouldn't be at all sur­prised to see St. Joe's stick it to them. I've got Texas los­ing to Stan­ford, only because I have a hard time see­ing Damion James sin­gle-hand­ed­ly deal­ing with the Lopez bros. On the oth­er hand, I do have Bay­lor and A&M win­ning in the first round, and I've got Kansas win­ning it all. So it's a minor fizzle.

Remem­ber: You heard it here first. Prob­a­bly not.

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basketball kansas basketball

Basketball / Jayhawks, predictions, bracketometry

Man, this year is going to be good, not only because the teams are good, but because there are good sto­ries out there. I tell myself that I don't care about sto­ry­lines, but at some point, I absorb them. I repeat them. They become part of my con­ver­sa­tions. All the extra­ne­ous detail from those play­er mini-pro­files being pro­duced by CBS will become cement itself in my mem­o­ry; like Mateen Cleaves' from 2000 tour­na­ment: his sto­ried high school career in Michi­gan, his drunk­en dri­ving, the tough love of father-fig­ure/­coach Tom Izzo. Why do I remem­ber this? Why do I care? Who knows? As Dick Vitale would say: It's March Mad­ness, baby!

Let's start at the top

Mem­phis is the rarely defeat­ed team with killer ath­letes and a dick­head for a coach; North Car­oli­na has play­er of the year Tyler Hans­bor­ough and the elec­tri­fy­ing "Car­oli­na break" (for­mer­ly known as the Kansas break), but it's also got some glar­ing incon­sis­ten­cies; UCLA has good bal­ance, a great coach, good defense, and a stone killer in fresh­man Kevin Love; Kansas has expe­ri­ence, Dar­nell Jack­son, and a recent his­to­ry of flame­outs [cf. Buck­nell, Bradley] to overcome. 

Mid-major blah blah blah

As usu­al, there are also a host of mid-major teams with chips on their shoul­ders. But­ler had Flori­da on the ropes last year; this year, they have to trav­el to Birm­ing­ham as a #7 seed to play South Alaba­ma (a #10 seed); if they win, they earn the right to play anoth­er fired-up south­east­ern team, Ten­nessee. And Gon­za­ga (#7) has to trav­el three time zones to play a team that's dri­ving three hours with­in its home state, David­son (#10). It appears that the tour­na­ment com­mit­tee is no longer amused by fun­da­men­tal­ly sound, deeply expe­ri­enced, sin­gu­lar­ly focused mid-major teams tak­ing down high seeds in the ear­ly rounds. An inter­est­ing development.

Mid-major dis disclaimer

By diss­ing mid-majors, you think I'm play­ing with fire, but I'm not. Oh, no. I've already been burned. Twice. There's noth­ing left to burn. I'm a black­ened husk. It began in 2006; I wrote a long email about "the myth of mid-majors" to my friends. Then, I trav­eled to Austin, where I watched the the Jay­hawks mail in a first-round game against Buck­nell. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, some­one for­got to tell Buck­nell that they were sup­posed to climb inside the enve­lope and dis­ap­pear. To the delight of the entire bar from which I watched, they held off the Jay­hawks and advanced. The next year, it was Bradley. I was in a hotel in Albu­querque. Alone. Ago­niz­ing.

Kansas & UNC earn a right to stay close to home

Both teams get to stay local, but each gets test­ed by an inter­est­ing foe. UNC doesn't leave the state until they trav­el to San Anto­nio for the Final Four, but they need to beat Ten­nessee — a team that beat Mem­phis, a team with a legit­i­mate claim to a #1 seed — before they get to San Anto­nio. Kansas tours the Mid­west, head­ing to Oma­ha, then Detroit, but they need to beat George­town — a con­sis­tent, grit­ty team that is well-suit­ed to stick it to the incon­sis­tent Jay­hawks — before cut­ting down the region­al nets. Seems fair, mostly.But does this obsess­ing over geog­ra­phy real­ly mat­ter? I don't know. On a pure­ly philo­soph­i­cal lev­el, the cham­pi­on has to win six games, peri­od. Geor­gia won four games in three days to take the SEC tour­na­ment; they'd won a total of four games in two-plus months of con­fer­ence play. The Fab 5 advanced to the Final Four through Atlanta and Lex­ing­ton in 1992, Phoenix and Seat­tle in 1993.

On a historical note

Last year, Kansas got shipped two time zones west­ward and played what amount­ed to an away game against UCLA. I was there, sur­round­ed by cologne-wear­ing, hair-gelled, Steve-Lavin-look-alike douchebags who roared with every impos­si­ble fade­away prayer hit by Arron Affla­lo (not mis­spelled), and every brass-balled pull-up j by Dar­ren Col­li­son. It has tak­en me some time to admit that UCLA may have been the bet­ter team, a fact that wasn't made any more com­fort­ing by Bill Walton's pod-rhap­sody about the beau­ty of UCLA's win [mp3]. The tour­na­ment committee's cal­cu­lus: Kansas wasn't a clear #1 seed, so they need­ed to trav­el across the coun­try to beat UCLA in their back yard in order to prove they belong in the Final Four. Which brings me to this year's Mem­phis team.

This year, Memphis gets sent through the fire

Don't you get the feel­ing that the tour­na­ment com­mit­tee smells blood with Mem­phis? The Tigers were ranked #1 for a lot of the year, and they lost just ONE game all year. Except. Except they have the mis­for­tune of play­ing in a weak con­fer­ence, and their one loss hap­pened to come at home against a team that got its ass hand­ed to them by Texas. For this, they get sent to Hous­ton for the South region­al final, where they may in fact meet up with Texas. (Is there any way that the crowd won't be heav­i­ly pro-Horn?) The tour­na­ment com­mit­tee is clear­ly say­ing: Show us what you've got, Der­rick Rose and Joey Dorsey. Show up what you got, John Cali­pari! [Here it is again. John Cheney threat­ens to kill John Cali­pari. Thank you, YouTube]. Who knows? Maybe it's a sort of karmic pay­back for Dorsey refer­ring to him­self as Goliath, with Greg Oden as David dur­ing last year's tour­na­ment. Dude, if you're Goliath, then sur­vive this rock-sling­ing gauntlet.

Rick Barnes can recruit, but can the dude coach?

Two things I noticed about Barnes dur­ing the Big 12 final: (1) The guy either can't con­sis­tent­ly set up a decent play off a dead ball, or his play­ers just can't exe­cute one. I find it hard to believe that DJ Augustin, one of the most tal­ent­ed play­ers I've seen in a long time, can't exe­cute a play. So I'm left with the impres­sion that Barnes is just a bad game-plan­ner. Too many times, his team came out of a time­out with some crap play that result­ed in a bad shot or turnover. Augustin can often bail Barnes out by hit­ting lots of bad shots, but how far can this take them, real­ly? (2) Even worse, Barnes rides his stars, and they suf­fer against deep­er teams. Augustin played all 40 min­utes in the Big 12 tour­na­ment final and he aver­aged 39+ for the sea­son. He fin­ished with 20 points, scor­ing only 2 in the sec­ond half and miss­ing all nine shots that he took. AJ Abrams is no help; he can spot up and drain threes, but he's my size and needs to run off a bunch of screens to get an open shot, and there­fore he does lit­tle to ease the bur­den on Augustin. 

Ol Roy on the horizon for the Jayhawks

While I love all of this, I'm also focused on the prospects of my team. To para­phrase a once-great Kansan, I could (most­ly) give a shit about sto­ry­lines. As a Kansas fan, I'm pri­mar­i­ly wor­ried about Port­land State break­ing new ground as a #16 seed. Let's take care of that one. Then I'm wor­ried about UNLV; then Clem­son; then George­town. Then: Ol Roy?In the Final Four, there's the poten­tial for some great, great match-ups, which I'll detail in anoth­er post. Too much needs to hap­pen between now and then.

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basketball kansas basketball

Basketball / Tale of two teams

Baron!The Bay Area: Where Baron hap­pens. Pho­to: Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images

Liv­ing in the Bay Area, I've watched Baron Davis and Don Nel­son breathe life into the corpse of the Gold­en State War­riors by play­ing fast, loose, undis­ci­plined, unpre­dictable bas­ket­ball. When they're click­ing, the War­riors are invig­o­rat­ing and life-affirm­ing. Nel­lie doesn't bur­den the team with struc­ture — they don't real­ly run an "offense" or play "defense" in the tra­di­tion­al sens­es — instead, they rely on the play­ers' abil­i­ties to impro­vise, pull their oppo­nents out of their own struc­tures, and wear them down with run­ning and gunning. 

Playground electicity

When the War­riors are good, they're like the best play­ground bas­ket­ball team you could ever imag­ine. What makes them all the more excit­ing is that their ros­ter lacks key tra­di­tion­al dimen­sions asso­ci­at­ed with suc­cess­ful teams. They com­pete with­out the tra­di­tion­al man-moun­tain in the low-post to take on Shaq, Yao, Dun­can, or Pau; instead, Andris Biedrins, who has very lit­tle in the way of a J and doesn't ever try to play fac­ing the bas­ket, uses his quick­ness and hops to rebound, fol­low, and gen­er­al­ly sur­prise oppo­nents with his abil­i­ty to keep War­rior pos­ses­sions alive. (Check out where The Wages of Wins ranked Biedrins for the 2006–2007 sea­son) Spoil­er: He's #1 on the team, with 11.7 to Baron's 9.7. On the guard front, Baron and Stephen Jack­son and Mon­ta Ellis don't real­ly run an offense as much as they weave through defens­es in per­pet­u­al one-on-fives, dri­ving to the rim, dish­ing to team­mates. Baron has a (admit­ted­ly deserved) rep­u­ta­tion as a shoot-first point guard, but he defers to oth­ers when they're hot and his team­mates seem to feed off his ener­gy. Mon­ta, more of a two-guard than a point, some­how can't shoot the three, but he can blow by just about any­one and he's one of the bet­ter fin­ish­ers in the league right now. 6'9" Al Har­ring­ton is more reli­able from behind the arc than he is with his back to the bas­ket; Wages of Wins doesn't think much of him, but it's hard to deny the prob­lems that he cre­ates for defens­es when he's in the game. Stephen Jack­son — Stack Jack, as Baron calls him — is the glue; when he's in the game, every­one is bet­ter. Seri­ous­ly, who wouldn't want to play with him? He's got everyone's back.

DarnellDar­nell can't do it alone. Pho­to: Nick Krug, Lawrence Journal-World.

Con­trast the War­riors with the oth­er team that I fol­low, the Kansas Jay­hawks. Where the War­riors are dan­ger­ous, inscrutable, fierce com­peti­tors who save their best for big games, the Jay­hawks have been the oppo­site: soft, pre­dictable, vul­ner­a­ble when the game is on the line. Where the War­riors have at least three guys who thrive in pres­sure sit­u­a­tions — Baron, Stack Jack, and Har­ring­ton — the Jay­hawks have eight guys who could start on any team in Amer­i­ca, but not one who wants to take over a game. Last week, I trekked to Ora­cle with Justin, Mara, and Lynne (Lynne? Blog?), and we watched the War­riors wear down the Celtics and, in the final moments, dri­ve a dag­ger into their hearts. Three days lat­er, I watched the Jay­hawks wilt in the final moments against a very, very fired up Okla­homa State team. Part of the prob­lem is that Kansas sim­ply doesn't have reli­able offen­sive weapons; anoth­er part is that teams love beat­ing the Hawks, and each Jay­hawk oppo­nent is play­ing its biggest game of the sea­son. Col­lege bas­ket­ball is dif­fer­ent in that regard. Mes­sage boards don't rejoice each time the Lak­ers lose a game, but oh how peo­ple love to see teams like Kansas (Google: "kansas" + "choke"), Duke (Google: "duke" + "choke"), and Ken­tucky (Google: "ken­tucky" + "choke") lose. Which is fine. If peo­ple didn't real­ly react this way, the wins wouldn't be as much fun.The root of the Hawks' prob­lem is offen­sive, though. The War­riors are stocked with guys who can cre­ate their own shot, but Kansas has to rely on Mario Chalmers and Sher­ron Collins (and, to some extent, Rus­sell Robin­son) to break down defens­es and spring Bran­don Rush on the perime­ter or Dar­rell Arthur inside. Like the War­riors, the Hawks don't run a struc­tured offense with inter­change­able parts; they rely on ath­leti­cism. This lack of dimen­sion is eas­i­ly exploit­ed by teams who effec­tive­ly pres­sure the Hawks' guards, and who run big guys out to trap the ball at the three-point line. Add to this mix the fact that Kansas guards can­not seem to defend oppos­ing guards, and there's no ques­tion that they've got some big prob­lems to solve before mid-March.

Categories
basketball cinema

Classic NBA / Red hot and rollin

If you're 35-ish and you've fol­lowed bas­ket­ball, you prob­a­bly recall the virtues of the pre-David Stern NBA, the sim­pler times when cor­po­rate logos were inci­den­tal, local heroes more acces­si­ble, and the entire sport more tru­ly fan-friend­ly. Stern always talks about fan-friend­li­ness, but his NBA is a Prod­uct and the "friend­li­ness" seems as pro­duced as two-for-one chalu­pa night. Back in the day, a young Kansas City Kings fan could attend Kings prac­tices at a local high school (for free), and after­ward min­gle with play­ers like Ernie Grun­feld, Phil Ford, and Otis Bird­song. It goes with­out say­ing that most fans would take that over a free chalu­pa any night. Red Hot and Rollin recap­tures the sim­plic­i­ty and beau­ty of those times. Edit­ed by Matt Love, it com­piles a vari­ety of rec­ol­lec­tions of the Rip-City-era Port­land Trail­blaz­ers, and includes a DVD of a tru­ly amaz­ing doc­u­ment of the time — Don Zavin's Fast Break. Zavin's film is astound­ing in many regards. Pri­mar­i­ly, it's a bit­ter­sweet med­i­ta­tion on a lost NBA — the League before each play­er became a cor­po­ra­tion unto him­self, and before the entire visu­al expe­ri­ence of watch­ing an NBA became NASCAR-ized with lay­er upon lay­er of cor­po­rate logos. More­over, it's pos­si­ble that there is no team in the his­to­ry of the NBA that is as anti­thet­i­cal to Stern's NBA than the Blaz­ers of 1976–77: a small mar­ket team with­out a mar­ketable super­star, led by a veg­e­tar­i­an, Marx­ist, long-haired, Abe-Lin­coln-beard-wear­ing cen­ter who stut­tered when he was ner­vous. The form of the film could be called "ston­er verite." With a sound­track that is basi­cal­ly an extend­ed tabla jam, it's a doc­u­men­tary in the tra­di­tion of, say, End­less Sum­mer with the cru­cial dif­fer­ence is that it's unbur­dened by End­less Sum­mer's lin­ear nar­ra­tive and omni­scient nar­ra­tion. I won't give it all away, but it wan­ders through some amaz­ing­ly inti­mate glimpses into the Blaz­ers' ecsta­t­ic run to the NBA title, for instance … 

Walton rides up the coastThis is for­mer Blaz­ers star Bill Wal­ton on a clas­sic Fal­con rac­er. After the Blaz­ers won the NBA cham­pi­onship, Wal­ton took a bike trip up the Ore­gon coast, and scenes from this trip are inter­spersed through­out the movie. Again, could any­one imag­ine ANY cur­rent NBA star going on a bike trip alone dur­ing the off-sea­son? Where are the entourages and Escalades and hot­ties? It's also sort of amaz­ing to see an NBA super­star engag­ing in an activ­i­ty that non-super­stars find enjoy­able. Where are the strip clubs and casi­nos, the hand­guns and hot tubs? (You can't real­ly see in this pho­to, but the bike's col­or is Falcon's tell-tale pow­der blue. Awe­some.)


Doctor Jack pantsYes, this is Dr. Jack Ram­say, and yes, his pants appear to be some kind of psy­che­del­ic red-white-and-blue crazy quilt. Look out, Lar­ry Brown.


Walton is mobbedThis is actu­al­ly the third time in the movie that Bill Wal­ton end­ed up in a mosh-pit of fans. The fact that this would nev­er, EVER hap­pen today is part of what's so bit­ter­sweet about Fast Break.


Some relat­ed stuff: A clas­sic Time fea­ture of Wal­ton as a UCLA senior from 1974 called "Basketball's Veg­e­tar­i­an Tiger," a nice review by TrueHoop's Hen­ry Abbott (a Blaz­er fan) that includes a quick inter­view with some­one who worked on Fast Break, and of course, you've got to see this one: Walton's epic dunk over Kareem in the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals. [YouTube]

Categories
basketball san francisco visual

Warriors / Drama, elevation, a posterization, terrible officiating

The War­riors play­off ride is over, the Jazz's ride will come to an end some­time in the next week or so, but Baron's dunk over Kir­ilenko will live on FOREVER. Let's just sit back and appre­ci­ate it for a minute. (It's much bet­ter live).

the rise-upBaron ele­vates and ele­vates; he begins his leap before Kir­ilenko and is still going up as Kir­ilenko descends. Mind-bend­ing. To his cred­it, Kir­ilenko said after the game that it was an awe­some dunk and that "at least I got to be on the poster." Also to Kirilenko's cred­it, he didn't foul Baron; if any­thing, it was an offen­sive foul. More on the stu­pid NBA offi­ci­at­ing later.

 

stomach shotAs impres­sive as the dunk itself was Baron's stom­ach flash after he land­ed. Not real­ly sure where this came from. The ele­men­tary school play­ground? An And1 mix­tape? Wher­ev­er it came from, it was a stroke of genius in that par­tic­u­lar set­ting — Fri­day night, Oak­land Col­i­se­um, West­ern Con­fer­ence Semi-final blowout. You could prac­ti­cal­ly feel the Bay Area ele­vate that moment.

 

the dust-offAgain, haven't seen this before, out­side of a play­ground game in the Pan­han­dle, but Stephen Jack­son appeared to be dust­ing some­thing off Baron's shoul­ders. The remains of the rim? Some mag­ic dust from David Blaine?

Inci­den­tal­ly, the best pic­ture of all was not tak­en off my TV, but by an AP pho­tog­ra­ph­er from the oth­er end of the court. It cap­tures Baron as he descends from the dunk.

I really did believe

Like every­one in the NBA uni­verse has already said, the War­riors were huge­ly fun to watch this post-sea­son, and it was sad to see them go. It would have been nice to see more scrap­py, inspired Matt Barnes moments; more Stephen Jack­son dag­gers; more Baron Davis PERIOD. I've always liked Baron, but this post-sea­son he had it all work­ing: his fast-break vision, his high-arc­ing three-point bombs, his cross-over, his abil­i­ty to get in the lane and dish out to open shoot­ers. (More of Baron's finest career moments on YouTube.) It was nice to see Mon­ta get his game back in games 4 and 5, and Biedrins had some real­ly strong moments, by which I mean some ridicu­lous dunks and a few improb­a­ble free throw conversions.

Yes, the Jazz deserved it

At the same time, I admired Utah by the end of the series. Jer­ry Sloan is an ass­hole, but he proved in this series that he is an ass­hole who knows what to do with tal­ent­ed play­ers. The 3‑D guard play (Deron Williams, Dee Brown and Derek Fish­er) was unex­pect­ed­ly sol­id and impres­sive. Memo and Booz­er were Sports­Cen­ter fix­tures through­out the sea­son, but I was sur­prised at how eas­i­ly Memo was tak­en out of his game by the quick­er War­riors. I was sim­i­lar­ly amazed at how great Booz­er has become. The guy rose to the occa­sion, took lots of big shots, fre­quent­ly changed the momen­tum of the game and was by any mea­sure a badass among badass­es. To say those things about a for­mer Duke play­er requires a lot of pride-swal­low­ing on my part.In con­trast to the uneven, streaky War­riors, every Jazz play­er was tena­cious and grit­ty while exhibit­ing a pro­fes­sion­al­ism and char­ac­ter that has been miss­ing from the West­ern Con­fer­ence play­offs this year. Why are so many play­ers, espe­cial­ly War­riors, con­tin­u­al­ly try­ing to draw charges? Play defense. Draw the charge when it comes to you, but don't try to sub­sti­tute actu­al defense with step­ping in front of a play­er as they go to the bas­ket. Stephen Jack­son! Dude! You were huge in the Dal­las series, but against Utah you took your­self out of the game by try­ing to take charges and then get­ting pissed that the refs didn't call them! You know this: the refs are not going to give you those calls when the only thing you're doing is try­ing to draw them. Same goes for Barnes and Har­ring­ton. UPDATE: Hen­ry Abbott of True­Hoop has some thoughts on this very sub­ject:

There are a lot of fouls called on play­ers defend­ing against the dri­ve. What occurs to me more and more is that it's smart to do the whole "draw the charge" flop onto the butt, and only in part because you might draw the charge. A big­ger rea­son is that if your hands are up, and you're jump­ing, and there's con­tact, you have NO chance of get­ting the call, and it's like­ly a foul on you.

An inter­est­ing point; per­haps it's all part of an effort to enable slash­ing and to com­pli­cate phys­i­cal defen­sive play. On the oth­er hand, super­stars seem to get calls even if the defense seems to be legit. Baron obvi­ous­ly drew a lot of charges and hacks, which I think is evi­dence of a huger prob­lem: THE F%@$$%$ING CONSPIRATORIAL OFFICIATING. 

What the f%$#@%$?

It real­ly seems like the ref­er­ees go into each game with an agen­da. Like, the Jazz got every call in game one. Why? Did they want to even things up from the pre­vi­ous series when it seemed like there were some quick whis­tles on Josh Howard? The lop­sid­ed­ness of the calls make you won­der things like that. I mean, even Stephen Jack­son had some legit beefs that night! Then in Game 5, Baron got pret­ty much every call. He lit­er­al­ly ran over Deron Williams a cou­ple of times, no whis­tles. When Williams would so much as touch him, whis­tle. Did the NBA want to pro­long the series? Did they want to give Baron the super­star foul exemp­tion? UPDATE: And don't even get me start­ed on the role of the NBA front office in all this. If the sus­pen­sions of Diaw and Stoudemire end up cost­ing the Suns the series, I'm going to … protest. Some­how. How can the NBA be so bad at inter­pret­ing their own rules? Every sport in the world func­tions effec­tive­ly by imple­ment­ing the spir­it of its rules, not the let­ter. Why go by the let­ter in this case? Stoudemire and Diaw didn't esca­late any­thing; they didn't incite fur­ther may­hem; what gives?In spite of it all, great play­ers make great play­offs. Thanks War­riors, and go Suns.

Categories
basketball

Gamers / That's not even your blood

SI's Jack McCal­lum just pub­lished an arti­cle about the Suns-Spurs series that includes an intrigu­ing peek into the mind of Robert Horry. As every NBA fan knows, Horry's blood runs cold dur­ing the play­offs, evi­denced by his pen­chant for hit­ting dag­ger-like three-point bombs and his nick­name, "Big Shot Rob." (NBA.com has a page ded­i­cat­ed to Horry's big shots, includ­ing com­men­tary and video). But what's he real­ly like? McCallum's insight into this comes from the Game 1 col­li­sion between Steve Nash and Tony Parker. 

An air of civil­i­ty sur­round­ed Game 1, an atmos­phere that grew out of the mutu­al respect the fran­chis­es have for each oth­er. There were Dun­can and Suns vet­er­an Kurt Thomas sumo wrestling for posi­tion down low, then pat­ting each oth­er on the back dur­ing a break in play. There was Nash, unaware that he was soon to suf­fer a TKO, bend­ing down in con­cern as Park­er lay on the court after their col­li­sion, a kinder response than Park­er got from team­mate Robert Hor­ry, who said, "Get up, that's not even your blood."

Fun­ny, that's exact­ly what I was think­ing when I saw Park­er writhing around. One thing is clear: Nash and Hor­ry are both gamers. [Thx, Hen­ry]