The NBA Dribbled Out

WHAT A NIGHT FOR THE NBA!

Anyone that claims NBA basketball in March should take a back seat to the NCAA Tourney Madness, wasn’t watching tonight’s action. Two games went down to the wire, and one of them featured a comeback that shocked most everyone while keeping the icy cold finger of woe firmly on the foreheads of Cleveland basketball fans. Then there was the defensive battle in Memphis, where Oklahoma City, fresh off their disappointing home loss to the Nuggets last night, matched the Grizzlies defensive intensity, as neither team seemed willing to relent. 

The Memphis-Oklahoma City game was sent to overtime after a pump fake gave Jerryd Bayless enough room to launch a three and tie the score at 83 with less than 3 seconds left. After Durant lost the ball out of bounds on the ensuing possession, the teams got set to play an extra five. 

The bruising battle in Memphis was playing second fiddle to the game in Cleveland, until the delayed Cleveland-Miami game ended and most League Pass subscribers switched to this Western elite matchup that would go a long way towards determining the seeding for this year’s Western Conference playoff run. After Bayless tied the score with his late three and it went to overtime, it was just as hard to drop buckets; defense was the rule, rather than the exception in this one. Anyone that’s watched Memphis this year, knows that’s a game they can win. 

In overtime, both teams matched buckets with Memphis coming out on top as they continually flustered Durant into a 11-for-28 shooting night. A floater in the lane for Durant cut the Memphis lead to one with just under a minute to play. A miss from a harried Gasol under pressure from the shot clock led to a running scoop shot for Westbrook on the other end that gave the Thunder the lead, 89-88, with just 13 seconds remaining (also, Durant traveled before Russell’s shot, but the refs missed it). It set the stage for Marc Gasol’s heroics.

The Grizzlies cleared out the left side and let Zach Randolph go to work in isolation. Nick Collison had been giving Randolph fits for most of the game, and while Collison was given a bit of leeway from the referees in terms of bodying him up, Randolph still got a decent shot off from about 7 feet on the left baseline. The shot bounced off the front and then back of the rim before falling off. But the ever-present Spainard, Marc Gasol, tipped the ball in with just 0.8 seconds remaining. When he was asked what happened on his game-winning shot during the interview after the game, Gasol responded: “I just tapped it in, shit.” The ensuing lob from Westbrook fell fall short and the Grizzlies stayed a half game in front of the Clippers for the third seed in the West, and just three games back of the Thunder.

Wow. 

But while the game in Memphis was an exciting one, it was just the dessert for the entrée from earlier in the night. In Cleveland, Miami fell behind by 27 points with only 7:44 remaining in the third quarter, and everyone was sounding the alarm that the Heat’s continued winning streak was about to end. But Miami stormed back as only they know how. Down 40-67, their deficit seemed insurmountable until they started to get stops and their three’s started to drop. They closed the third quarter on a 28-10 run, punctuated by multiple three-pointers from Battier and Allen plus some timely offensive rebounding from Bosh. The Heat had cut the Cavaliers lead to 9 before the start of the fourth, 77-68. 

Pretty much everyone—including Cavaliers fans—knew their team was in trouble. The Heat eventually closed the Cavaliers out at Quicken Loans Arena in the fourth, outscoring them 30-18, as LeBron was 3-for-5 from long range and recorded his fourth triple-double of the season with 25 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists. After his third straight triplet, he did this little move, which I don’t know the history of (maybe a reader can tell me who he’s mimicking or when this started because I can’t remember seeing it before the Boston game on Monday).

[A reader wrote to tell me about this Sun-Sentinel Q & A with Ira Winderman, where he explains the genesis of the press-down move: ”It’s his tribute to former journeyman point guard Nick Van Exel, who used to do it when he made big shots. LeBron has been doing it for weeks now, amid his increased proficiency with his mid-range jumper, including Monday’s game-winner with 10.5 seconds left in Boston.”]

LeBron didn’t shoot particularly well, just 8-for-22 on the game, but he nailed the buckets when the team needed them the most.

That Napoleon Dynamite dvde, clad in a homemade t-shirt that read: “We Miss You” on the back and “LeBron 2014” on the front, found his way to the court in the fourth after sneaking by security, but I don’t want to talk about that anymore. 

Perhaps my favorite part of the game was watching Shaun Livingston lead the Cavaliers in the first half to their large lead. The guy almost lost his leg a few year’s back, and it was a joy to watch him—not just compete—but excel on his way to 14 points (6-for-11 shooting) and 6 dimes. Glad you’re back and playing well Shaun. 

The Heat won their 24th straight game, and now they’re only 9 games away from tying the 1971-72 Los Angeles Lakers who won 33-straight on their way to a title that season (Jerry West AND Wilt were on that team, but Elgin retired earlier that season). After what I saw tonight, it seems impossible to stop the Heat when they give a shit. Sometimes they don’t give a shit, which is why I think they’ll fall short of equaling the Lakers. They seem to play down to their level of competition like against the Cavaliers and it’s that apathy that will cost them in the end; pretty soon the deficit will be too large, and they’ll lose. But when they want to, the Heat amp up the defense switching and trapping so fast it’s hard to imagine they’re playing so quickly on the perimeter without a big man down low. And of course ‘Bron, Wade and Bosh then start eviscerating opposting defenses while Battier, Chalmers and Allen line up behind the arc. The Heat are pretty good, is what I’m saying, and I don’t think there’s a team in the league that can take them in a 7-game series if they stay healthy through June. But hot damn, what a night to be an NBA fan. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about knees, recently. I partially tore my MCL snowboarding a couple weeks ago, and after 10 days of pain and an inability to fully extend the knee, I consulted a pricy orthopedic surgeon that knows my girlfriend’s family. He’s old school, and just did a series of tests that didn’t require an MRI or an X-Ray (knowing I couldn’t afford them). He said I didn’t tear the ACL, which is a plus since that would require surgery and I’m uninsured and unemployed. The MCL was torn though (and possibly the meniscus, which would require surgery too, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one), and that means I’m unable to play basketball or do any lateral movement for the next month. No problem, since after the diagnosis, I’ve felt a lot better and I can walk around normally, instead of the limping I’d been doing worried I’d exacerbate the injury if I planted on the leg firmly. 

I bring all this up because ‘Melo’s knee just got drained, and he claims—as well as Knicks team physician Lisa Callahan—that there’s no ligament damage, and it’s probably related to a hamstring. That’s what the New York Daily News is reporting anyway, and Marc Berman goes off on a rant about ‘Melo’s inability to suit up in their last two away games of their disastrous West Coast trip over the last week and a half when they went 1-4, after squeaking by an awful Jazz squad without Chandler, Melo or Amar’e (and with Kurt Thomas on a hobbled foot) last night. 

Berman brings up Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade, both of whom had their knees drained, Wade’s was last year during their playoff run and Kobe was in 2010; neither player missed much time, and—like Anthony—both said the draining helped a lot; although, Kobe went to Germany that summer and he’s been playing with a burst of quickness he’d lost after the Lakers’ back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010. 

Whether Anthony is indeed OK remains to be seen, but with the Eastern Conference bunched together from the 2 seed down to the 8 seed, after Miami’s domination over the last two months, the Knicks need him to be fully capable of leading them to a top 3 seed and home court advantage in the playoffs. If there’s a serious problem going on, which is what led to the fluid pooling behind his knee, then the Knicks will likely fail to advance past the first round of the playoffs for the 13th consecutive year, and the animosity some still feel towards Anthony and his soft-looking face with that perpetual smirk will ratchet up to another level. He wanted to play in New York, after all, so don’t feel sorry for Carmelo Anthony even if his knee really is messed up. If the Knicks don’t follow through on their early season heroics, the fans and the media will be admonishing him for his pretender status as a top five player.

After Anthony ruled himself out again before New York’s game in Salt Lake City on Monday night, he said “The attitude ain’t helping.” I’m not sure who he’s referring to—whether it’s the fans or the media or even himself—but he’s right. If he understood how New Yorkers felt, they love an underdog—whether it’s Jeremy Lin or John Starks—and he’s no underdog, he’d realize that playing despite the uncertainty surrounding the knee would have been cherished by fans disillusioned by the current funk of the team. Part of overcoming the stigma that’s attached itself to him since he moped his way out of Denver is playing hurt, and he better be in uniform Wednesday night when Orlando comes to town or it’ll be another strike against him from a city that doesn’t give a crap about long term knee damage. 

I empathize with ‘Melo since messing with your knees is a death toll for a basketball player, and it’s scary to think your knee might not be the same ever again. But I’m not a New York Knick, and I’ll never even sniff a hundred million dollars in my lifetime, so I have the luxury to take my time and feel a bit sorry for myself (although only for so long). Now is the time for Carmelo go to work, and show the New York faithful, not just what kind of player they have, but what kind of man. 

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to take some Advil and ice my knee again, it’s locking up on me. I’ve been a bit of a baby about this, but I did find a way to dance at my buddy’s wedding.

[Pic via AP]

The Derrick Rose not playing saga is now making the rounds because of course it is. Most of it stems from the ESPN Chicago report that “Rose’s doctor has cleared him to play,” which, again, of course he has. There was this more recent Chicago Tribune article where Tom Thibodeau supported everything Rose has done because of course he’d support his star player getting fully healthy before returning. Sam Smith, a guy that continues to have the ear of Bulls chairmen, Jerry Reinsdorf, and the Chicago basketball illuminati, wrote at Bulls.com about how having a son  changed Derrick Rose and allowed him the distance needed to understand that “basketball isn’t everything.” Which, yeah. Perhaps the best piece of writing on the subject was Dylan Murphy providing an overview of the entire will he or won’t he conundrum for Hardwood Paroxysm. While Murphy’s piece doesn’t really tell us much that’s new, it at least provides a nice bit of humor at all the mutterings out of Chicago about Rose’s conspicuous absence in the NBA’s stretch run. 

The biggest issue, and why I’ve taken the time out of my night to bring all this up, is that nobody really knows how Derrick Rose’s knee feels except Derrick Rose. Not the Bulls doctors, nor any outside experts he’s consulted; certainly not the fans who are reacting emotionally, and so far no player—or teammate—has come out and said he needs to return.

In the Smith article, he mentions that Rose has spoken with Adrian Peterson about his own surgery and the recovery period. Peterson, according to friend’s of Rose, told Smith that “given the movements and leaping required in basketball he wouldn’t have been able to return as fast for basketball.“ That’s an adroit synopsis of the differences between sports, and I’m glad Rose got to hear it from Peterson himself, since that’s who a lot of people are using as an example for why Rose is somehow neglecting to get on the court fast enough,

Dylan Murphy’s piece also brings up Iman Shumpert, who has become more lauded for his swaggy tresses, than as the dependable defense-first guard the Knicks can use in crunch time. Shump, as Murphy points out, suffered the same fate as Rose on the same day, and he makes the comparison that if Rose did come back, he’d be Iman Shumpert. Not sure it would go down quite that way, but, again, what’s the rush?

That’s my primary beef with any Chicago fans foolish enough to question Rose’s lack-of-expedience getting back on the court. Why the hell should he before he’s truly comfortable? The Bulls are pretty much guaranteed a playoff berth in the shitty Eastern Conference as long as they don’t suffer a cataclysmic breakdown over the next month, and the best Rose could do is maybe win them a couple games they’ll lose without him. It won’t decide the Eastern Conference, and it would mean bringing him back before he’s ready—both mentally and physically. About the only argument I can agree with is that it takes time to get back into the flow of regular season NBA ball—let alone the playoffs—but Rose has been practicing with the team for a while now, going 5-on-5, so he’s probably already ingratiated himself with the team enough so the window needed to get back on the same page with his teammates isn’t as wide a discrepancy as it would be for someone like say, Tony Parker. 

Let’s all take a collective breath, exhale, then stop thinking about this nonsense, and just let Rose’s return wash over us like a nice hot shower on a cold winter day. There’s really nothing else for us to do. 

Here’s the full video of the flagrant 2 foul assigned to J.R. Smith last night during New York’s disastrous 92-63 shellacking by the Warriors. Originally, it was a flagrant 1, but for all flagrant fouls referees are now given the opportunity to review the play and can change their original assessment. After reviewing the play, Joey Crawford change it to a flagrant 2, and Smith was done for the night, but not before he went up to Crawford and attempted to explain (calmly, I might add) he was going after the ball and trying to prevent a possible and 1 finish by Barnes. It obviously didn’t deter the flagrant 2 ejection, but it was important because it goes towards refuting the idea the foul was an emotional response to a game that had turned into a blow out. 

During the broadcast, I was streaming from the Bay area’s Comcast affiliate, so Bob Fitzgerald and Jim Barnett were calling the game from Oracle Arena. I don’t know which one of them uttered the line, but one of them said, (and I’m paraphrasing here, since I can’t find that telecast in its entirety on YouTube) that JR fouled Barnes with malice. 

The Oracle crowds are known— not just for the basketball IQ—but for their loud and sometimes rambunctious cheering. But to utter the word “malice” in a situation like the one last night—where yes, the Knicks were frustrated, but the foul on Barnes wasn’t a preamble to a slugfest that could spill over into the stands—seemed like an attempt to cover for Crawford’s designating the foul a Flagrant 2. Like the refs upped it to a Flagrant 2 because they were worried about losing control of the game and the players involved, not because it was actually, as the NBA stipulates: “an unnecessary and excessive contact committed by a player against an opponent.”

The Knicks were frustrated at getting blown out and not being able to buy a bucket in the second and third quarters, but was the atmosphere so tense it was necessary to nip in the bud any physical play the Knicks might have employed to slow down Golden State and get back into the game? Is this what Stu Jackson and Stern have ordered their referee’s to do?

I tweeted at a writer that covers the Warriors to get an idea of what the stadium was like when the foul occured. I’ll let you know if he gets back to me. It was mid-way through the third quarter when the Knicks were down 24, but it didn’t seem intentional or even very hard—unless you think Smith deliberately knocked Barnes with his elbow, which is hard to determine without having a portal into Smith’s brain like Cusack did Malkovich—but all the same, the foul looked innoucuous to me. Maybe it was a little hard, but I’d rather it was hard and there was no continuation then to be soft and Barnes gets a bucket plus a chance for a three point play. 

I wanted to write about the idea that the NBA is a lot less rough and tumble than the 80’s & 90’s when handchecking was legal, and the Pistons/Knicks/Heat all employed physical play to varying levels of success, but that’s as tired a trope as there is, and even though I appreciate hard-nosed defense more, the average fan does not. You probably don’t know this, but a lot of people bitched about the Pistons back in the late 80’s and in a lot of ways they were right: the Pistons deliberately and willfully sought to intimidate opponents with borderline illegal and cheap fouls and tough defense that didn’t allow anyone an easy lay-up. 

All this went flashing from neutrotransimitter to neurotransmitter in my brain last night as I watched J.R. Smith convene with a perplexed Mike Woodson before getting ejected. The surprised look on Smith and Woodson’s face told it all: It was weird, and I don’t like what it may foretell about the league going forward. The NBA is a man’s league; that’s why I don’t paricularly enjoy college basketball, where the crowds are more racuous and the players appear to care more, but they’re not fully-grown men. So, while it might be fun to think about a college basketball player’s potential as they’re lighting it up in March, I prefer the moment when that potential is realized, or more accurately, isn’t. The NBA game needs to continue to be about men battling for position while also taking and receiving hard fouls. There’s no Popovich quip about getting “nasty,” if you’re playing in a tamer league where soft play is rewarded. Hard fouls are how you know the players give a crap, and you’re watching the best in not just the country, but the world. When that’s all gone, what do we have left? 

[UPDATE: Beckley Mason disagrees with me, and we’ve been going back and forth on this after I tweeted him about it. He seems to think any reduction in head shots is good for the game, so any rules to reduce head trauma should be embraced. My problem with the codification of this idea is the Smith foul from last night. He didn’t intend to glance part of his foul off Barnes’ head, but it happened. He didn’t deserve to be tossed for it. It’s a fine line, and once it’s implemented into the rule books it’ll be akin to the no leaving the bench rule that disqualified Amar’e in that Suns-Spurs series from 2007. That ruling meant the end of the Suns’—very real—title chances, and if someone gets accidentally hit in the head in the course of a hard—but legal—foul in the playoffs, a rigid rule implementation could mean the same thing. Rule changes like this make the NBA’s decisions even more murkier, and referee’s especially so; what we really need is more transparency in flagrant 1 & 2 calls so the conspiracy theorists aren’t given more ammo.]

They are a study in contrasts: one white, large, deceptively quick and seemingly grounded both on the hardwood, and in basketball basics; the other is black, bearded, highly efficient while also being a maestro with the ball in his hands and capable of forays to the rim that have the most cynical of NBA twitterers stunned in delight. But Marc Gasol and James Harden are also a bit similar, even if it’s not apparent on the surface. External differences mask what they’ve been, and what they should be going forward: stars.

Both are incredibly efficient at their respective positions: center and guard.

Both have been component parts of excellent playoff teams that have gone to at least the second round: ‘11 Grizz; ‘11 & ‘12 Thunder.

Both possess the talent to be more than just cogs for their teams. 

Harden finally got his chance when Sam Presti decided he wasn’t worth max money with subsequent luxury taxes and dealt him to a highly relieved Daryl Morey, who promptly locked him up for the long term—finally achieving a Houston team with a bona fide star (albeit—one for the tight jean crowd). Harden rewarded Morey’s move by dropping 37 points with 12 assists while continuing his usual efficient shooting (14/25 from the floor) in his first game for the Rockets. 

But it’s Marc Gasol who is, perhaps permanently, stuck as an offensive also-ran. Maybe it’s by his own design, and Gasol believes he’ll never be able to withstand the pressure, not to mention the pounding, that comes with being the “man” on an NBA team; maybe he’s more comfortable deferring to Z-Bo like Harden did in OKC with Russ/Durant; maybe the Grizzlies other starters like Z-Bo, Rudy Gay and Mike Conley Jr. are all more skilled offensive options; maybe there’s something about Gasol’s attitude I don’t know (he seems to play hard and really give a shit from where I’m sitting). What I do know is he’s an extremely skilled big man, perhaps the most skilled big man in the league, capable of hitting the elbow shot, posting up, facing his man, defending, rebounding and passing out of double teams or to a cutting teammate. But the Grizzlies offense doesn’t utilize him nearly enough. Sort of like what we’re going to find out when Harden starts in the the all-star game this year for Houston and crushes it for whomever is lucky enough to draft him for their fantasy team.  

If you look at Centers and Center/Forwards since the 2008-09 season (when Gasol was a rookie) ranked by usage percentage (an estimated percentage of team plays run by the player when on the court), and position/height (Center, Forward-Center; minimum of 6’9”), Gasol’s 19.1% from last year is 27th on the list. Ranked ahead of him on that list are offensive forces of gargantuan efficiency like Brook Lopez, JaVale McGee, Nazr Mohammad, Spencer Hawes and Eddy Curry (Curry’s numbers are from his lone game this year). Yeah, those superstars. For a comparison on his own team, Zach Randolph has never been under a usage percentage of 20 in his entire 9-year career. Eddy Curry, through all his weight struggles, has only been under a 20% usage once in his career (in ‘08-‘09 when he played 12 minutes over 3 games and still had a higher usage percentage than Gasol’s career high. That’s absurd.

The only reasoning is the Grizzlies are blessed with superior offensive players, or players that are more effective with the ball in their hands. Except, when you look at the PER, eFG% tFG%, ORtg (offensive rating), OWS (offensive win share) on last year’s team, Gasol is the highest in all cases for guys that play significant minutes. Yet his usage rate of 19.1, a career-high, was just the 8th-best on the team last year, behind starters Randolph & Rudy Gay, plus bench guys like Marreese Speights & Jeremy Pargo (Speights replaced Randolph when he went down with the knee injury). 

In Houston, Harden’s getting his chance to show what we all knew before the Thunder traded him: he can score at a superstar’s level with magical drives and finishes at the bucket, a preternatural ability to draw fouls, and efficient long-range shooting. 

I just wonder when I’ll get to see that in Memphis with Marc Gasol, the best center on the planet that can’t get a measly 1 in 5 plays called for him. Maybe instead of just feeding Gasol early in the 1st half, Memphis makes him the focal point of their offense? Maybe  they won’t finish 20th in points scored and 21st in offensive efficiency like they did last year? 

Maybe I’m crazy, but why isn’t Marc Gasol touching the ball every single time Memphis comes down on offense? Do I have to wait unti he’s with another team like Harden?