Today is a proud day for Phoenix Suns fans. The day we acquired Shaquille O'Neal: February 6, 2003. It's 2003, right? Tell me it's 2003, TELL ME IT'S 2003. IT HAS TO BE 2003.
Like everyone else, yes, I thought this rumor had to be bullshit the first instant I heard it. It made no sense at all, for the various salary, playing style, and age reasons that are immediately obvious to anyone who follows the league. Before it became a reality, in the blissful hours when I could tell myself that it must be one of the many ludicrous rumors that float to no effect on the turbulent waters of any professional sport, I contemplated giving up fandom forever if it should in fact come to pass. One can only take so much abuse from one's favorite team, and the Suns have dealt plenty out (though usually not in the form of rank front-office incompetence; rather, we're always just good enough to lose crushingly in the playoffs to the eventual champion).
But of course that's a ridiculous notion. I could no more abandon the Suns to the predations of the Lakers and the Spurs than I could abandon my son to wolverines. So I'm putting a brave face on, removing all scepticism from my ever-doubting brain, staring at a picture of Steve Kerr's manly, manly features, and constructing the best-case scenario for this move.
Shawn Marion is a whiny bitch. That has been established at this point. A dude who cannot be on happy on the single team best-suited to using his talents (maybe Goldent State could do so as well), even when he is the highest-paid player on that team despite being the third-best, is a whiny bitch. So I can definitely enjoy the fact that he has whined and bitched his way onto a much crappier team that is coached by the league's biggest disciplinarian and on which he is still not the number one option. Maybe he'll just be thrilled with being No. 2...until the Heat draft Michael Beasley over the summer and he has to move down a notch again.
Furthermore, Shawn Marion is almost 30, and while that isn't terribly old, dudes who are short for their position and have no especially refined basketball skills like shooting, dribbling, or passing do not tend to age well as their athleticism evaporates. His production is down only slightly this year overall, but it was extremely distressing to see him have a few seemingly low-effort games like this one recently. At any rate, it's better to move a player like that one year before he falls to pieces rather than one year after.
As for the Suns now, I see some logic in their current construction. No, Shaq will not be able to keep up with the fast break most of the time. But Kurt Thomas was old and slow, and he didn't hurt us in that respect either. Amare at the 4 is still faster than all of his competition, and all the other elite power forwards in the west (Gasol, Boozer, Nowitzki, West) suck on defense. So between him, Nash, Hill, and Barbosa, we should still be able run the break just fine.
In the half court, Amare rarely posts up down low anyway, so he and Shaq should stay out of each other's way. Shaq is still a force in the middle, and the Suns have the three-point shooters in Nash, Bell, and Barbosa (two on the floor at all times) to destroy any team that doubles, far more so than Miami has had at any point in Shaq's tenure there. Steve, of course, should be adept at offering entry passes. And Amare, on Shaq's plays, ought to be able to play off of him perfectly: diving through the lane for dunks (Shaq is great at finding cutters), spotting up at the foul line for his excellent midrange jumper (just think of all the free-throw line shots that Haslem has taken over the past few years in Miami), and crashing the offensive boards for more dunks. I can't think of a power forward better suited to working with Shaq on offense. That all makes for a great halfcourt offense, assuming that Shaq's turnovers, which are a WAY up this year, can be managed now that he's getting good entry passes and has superb finishers on the other end of his passes.
On defense, the Suns go from undersized to sized, or possibly oversized. Shaq and Amare are both large for their positions, as are Diaw, Hill, and Nash. True, Shaq has been getting burned on defense lately, but the Suns don't need him to provide strong help like Miami did; Amare can handle that. And anyway, you wouldn't guess it, but Shaq has blocked 4.7% of the shots lofted while he's on the court this year, which is...exactly his career average. Man-to-man, he's unpostable, still. Perhaps he can be driven around, but you still have to figure we match up better down low now than we did before. And on missed shots, he should be a great rebound and outlet man with his passing skills.
If all that were to work out, this trade would be great for the Suns. In reality, Shaq will probably miss lots of games and barely reach 30 minutes in the ones he does suit up for because of his ridiculous fouling of late. And then he'll whine about not getting enough touches and the team not playing a style that suits his skills. And then we'll pay him $20 million when he's 38. $20 million that could feed poor children in Africa...and I mean that literally: sending the urchins of Zimbabwe 20 million one-dollar bills to be stewed and eaten daily would probably be a better use of that money in 2010. Shit.
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBA. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 6, 2008
Friday, November 2, 2007
Phoenix 106, Sonics 99
While last night's game was a lot closer and more tense than it needed to be, I came away feeling pretty good about it overall. Amare contributed more than it seemed like he did, Shawn played an efficient game, Steve was excellent in everything but his way-too-high turnover total, Barbosa and Diaw were solid, and we got more out of Marcus Banks in 14 minutes than we did all of last season (and at a critical point, too!). Obviously, Marcus won't be shooting 4/5 on threes in every game, but he doesn't need to in order to be useful.
The best sign was actually this: no one played more than 34 minutes in the game, even though it was close until the very end. My theory is that the reason the Spurs perform so much better in the second half of every season and the playoffs is that they limit all of their players to the low thirties in minutes per game. Thus, by the end of the season, they're much fresher than the competition each night, and in the playoffs they start to play everyone 35-40 minutes and become much better than their regular season performance would lead you to believe. Mike D'Antoni is a smart guy, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's noticed this tactic and is going to adopt it himself. The only problem, of course, is that we aren't all that deep, but I still think that it's worth the potential sacrifice of a few regular season wins.
As for the bad, well, Raja didn't play very well on offense, but I doubt that he's lost his shot completely. We missed more free throws and committed more turnovers than normal, but I expect those things to fix themselves as well. More worrisome was giving up so such a good game to Chris Wilcox in the post. I'm much more bothered by getting abused down low than by Kevin Durant, who was awesome but not that awesome; he didn't get many free throws with all those unblockable jumpers, and he committed 6 TOs. Still, he looks like a fantastic player.
By far the biggest worry, though, is Grant Hill going 1-7 on threes. They were wide open, too, with the Sonics clearly conceding that shot and not even running out to challenge most of the attempts. He still played a decent game because he made almost all of his twos, but that's not gonna happen every night. He needs to get up to at least 35% on threes to become maximally effective for the Suns, and that could be tough given his career 25.1% rate. On the other hand, he probably wasn't shooting wide open three pointers during the other parts of his career like Suns perimeter players get, so maybe there's hope, at least if he concentrates on the corners like Bruce Bowen.
If Hill can hit the threes and D'Antoni can keep the minutes down, I think we can be right back up at the top. Then there's my other dream: the Sonics buy out Kurt Thomas around mideseason because, really, they have no use for him whatsoever...and he comes back to play for the Suns on the cheap. He's not gonna get the chance to shoot as many wide open 15-footers anywhere else, and he'd be sure to get some playing time as our only other credible center. It's probably not going to happen at all, but hey, I can hope.
The best sign was actually this: no one played more than 34 minutes in the game, even though it was close until the very end. My theory is that the reason the Spurs perform so much better in the second half of every season and the playoffs is that they limit all of their players to the low thirties in minutes per game. Thus, by the end of the season, they're much fresher than the competition each night, and in the playoffs they start to play everyone 35-40 minutes and become much better than their regular season performance would lead you to believe. Mike D'Antoni is a smart guy, so I wouldn't be surprised if he's noticed this tactic and is going to adopt it himself. The only problem, of course, is that we aren't all that deep, but I still think that it's worth the potential sacrifice of a few regular season wins.
As for the bad, well, Raja didn't play very well on offense, but I doubt that he's lost his shot completely. We missed more free throws and committed more turnovers than normal, but I expect those things to fix themselves as well. More worrisome was giving up so such a good game to Chris Wilcox in the post. I'm much more bothered by getting abused down low than by Kevin Durant, who was awesome but not that awesome; he didn't get many free throws with all those unblockable jumpers, and he committed 6 TOs. Still, he looks like a fantastic player.
By far the biggest worry, though, is Grant Hill going 1-7 on threes. They were wide open, too, with the Sonics clearly conceding that shot and not even running out to challenge most of the attempts. He still played a decent game because he made almost all of his twos, but that's not gonna happen every night. He needs to get up to at least 35% on threes to become maximally effective for the Suns, and that could be tough given his career 25.1% rate. On the other hand, he probably wasn't shooting wide open three pointers during the other parts of his career like Suns perimeter players get, so maybe there's hope, at least if he concentrates on the corners like Bruce Bowen.
If Hill can hit the threes and D'Antoni can keep the minutes down, I think we can be right back up at the top. Then there's my other dream: the Sonics buy out Kurt Thomas around mideseason because, really, they have no use for him whatsoever...and he comes back to play for the Suns on the cheap. He's not gonna get the chance to shoot as many wide open 15-footers anywhere else, and he'd be sure to get some playing time as our only other credible center. It's probably not going to happen at all, but hey, I can hope.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
My Twelve Most Hated San Antonio Spurs: Nos. 9 and 8
Ninth Most Hated Spur: Michael Finley
This one hurts, because Mike used to be my boy. When you're a fan of a sports team, you develop serious man crushes very easily on any young prospects who show early promise for your club, especially when those guys exceed expectations. In his first year after being drafted 21st by the Suns, Michael Finley was awesome. Finally, the Suns had an athletic wing player, which hadn't really been the case since I'd become a fan of basketball. He could dunk like crazy (he was the first guy whom I saw successfully dunk on Dikembe Mutombo - back when Mutombo was still an otherworldly shotblocking god who stuffed it right back in Shawn Kemp's face every time Kemp tried to dunk on him). Finley even hit a game-winning jumper in a crazy early-season game against the Lakers; the Suns were down 10 with a minute left, but they hit three quick 3s, forced a jump ball at midcourt with about three seconds left, tipped it to Finley, and let him run down the floor and hit a pull-up from elbow with no time left in like the eighth game of his career. I was fucking psyched (even though the Suns plummeted from the elite in the West that year).
The next year, we traded him to Dallas in the Jason Kidd deal, which hurt, but it still seemed worth it. He went on to be a minor star and the third wheel of Dallas's big three in the early Oughts. He signed a huge contract, got cut via the amnesty rule after the last collective bargaining agreement, and had a real chance to do something meaningful with his life. But instead of following his boy Steve and coming home to Phoenix, he did the unthinkable: signing for cheap with the one team that both of his former clubs detested above all. I realize that you gotta do what you gotta do, Mike, but so do I. And I gotta hate you, you son of a bitch.
Finley has developed into one more in a long, long succession of perimeter guys who nail open 3s to torment the Suns, including John Paxson, Mario Elie, Sam Cassell, Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Brent Barry, Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (until later in this list). Strangely, a number of these guys later played for the Suns, but never at length or effectively. At any rate, I hate all of them, because there's really nothing worse in basketball than watching your team dash around and scrap like mad to get a key stop, only for one of these dicks to hit a three that just strangles your chances.
Eighth Most Hated Spur: Brent Barry
Nowadays, Brent Barry and Michael Finley are pretty much the same player, except that Brent Barry is white and ugly (see above). I also used to kind of like Barry when he played for the Sonics, but that all changed when he joined the Spurs. Now, his every 3 pains me like an eyefull of bees and his awkward gangliness turns my stomach like a mouthful of poop. Add to that his impenitent scruffiness, which is less Brett-Favre manly and more child-molester shady, and the fact that his insufferable brother always seems to be announcing his games and blathering about how funny it is that they have the same parents, and the man becomes equivalent to a massive federal subsidy for hatred.
Oh, he was also the first and only affirmative action dunk contest winner. "Oh, hey, you're white and you kind of did that dunk that Michael Jordan already did in this contest ten years ago. Take a charity trophy for your earthbound race." Watch this clip and tell me: Is it any wonder that the terrorists thought they could defeat us after we crowned a dunk champion this goofy looking? How are we to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies when we once concluded that this man, out of all our many peoples, could perfect something as awesome as the dunk? Blood is on your hands, Brent Barry.
"Well I am just SO put out."
This one hurts, because Mike used to be my boy. When you're a fan of a sports team, you develop serious man crushes very easily on any young prospects who show early promise for your club, especially when those guys exceed expectations. In his first year after being drafted 21st by the Suns, Michael Finley was awesome. Finally, the Suns had an athletic wing player, which hadn't really been the case since I'd become a fan of basketball. He could dunk like crazy (he was the first guy whom I saw successfully dunk on Dikembe Mutombo - back when Mutombo was still an otherworldly shotblocking god who stuffed it right back in Shawn Kemp's face every time Kemp tried to dunk on him). Finley even hit a game-winning jumper in a crazy early-season game against the Lakers; the Suns were down 10 with a minute left, but they hit three quick 3s, forced a jump ball at midcourt with about three seconds left, tipped it to Finley, and let him run down the floor and hit a pull-up from elbow with no time left in like the eighth game of his career. I was fucking psyched (even though the Suns plummeted from the elite in the West that year).
The next year, we traded him to Dallas in the Jason Kidd deal, which hurt, but it still seemed worth it. He went on to be a minor star and the third wheel of Dallas's big three in the early Oughts. He signed a huge contract, got cut via the amnesty rule after the last collective bargaining agreement, and had a real chance to do something meaningful with his life. But instead of following his boy Steve and coming home to Phoenix, he did the unthinkable: signing for cheap with the one team that both of his former clubs detested above all. I realize that you gotta do what you gotta do, Mike, but so do I. And I gotta hate you, you son of a bitch.
Finley has developed into one more in a long, long succession of perimeter guys who nail open 3s to torment the Suns, including John Paxson, Mario Elie, Sam Cassell, Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Brent Barry, Manu Ginobili, Bruce Bowen, and He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named (until later in this list). Strangely, a number of these guys later played for the Suns, but never at length or effectively. At any rate, I hate all of them, because there's really nothing worse in basketball than watching your team dash around and scrap like mad to get a key stop, only for one of these dicks to hit a three that just strangles your chances.
Eighth Most Hated Spur: Brent Barry
Nowadays, Brent Barry and Michael Finley are pretty much the same player, except that Brent Barry is white and ugly (see above). I also used to kind of like Barry when he played for the Sonics, but that all changed when he joined the Spurs. Now, his every 3 pains me like an eyefull of bees and his awkward gangliness turns my stomach like a mouthful of poop. Add to that his impenitent scruffiness, which is less Brett-Favre manly and more child-molester shady, and the fact that his insufferable brother always seems to be announcing his games and blathering about how funny it is that they have the same parents, and the man becomes equivalent to a massive federal subsidy for hatred.Oh, he was also the first and only affirmative action dunk contest winner. "Oh, hey, you're white and you kind of did that dunk that Michael Jordan already did in this contest ten years ago. Take a charity trophy for your earthbound race." Watch this clip and tell me: Is it any wonder that the terrorists thought they could defeat us after we crowned a dunk champion this goofy looking? How are we to strike fear in the hearts of our enemies when we once concluded that this man, out of all our many peoples, could perfect something as awesome as the dunk? Blood is on your hands, Brent Barry.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
My Twelve Most Hated San Antonio Spurs: Nos. 11 and 10
Elventh Most Hated Spur: Beno Udrih
Oh, poor you.
"Hey there, cowboy."
This motherfucker wants me to pronounce the "h" in his name like a "k." Fuck no. I'll pronounce a "c" like a "ch" or a "j" like a "y," maybe even a "w" like a "v," but the h-to-k thing is just too preposterous. Retransliterate your bizarre language in some even slightly sensible fashion, asshole.
In addition to his curious disregard for the sonic values of letters, Beno suffers from being one of the league's more boring players. He's short and white, he used to have a really dumb bowl haircut, and he has moles on his face. His game consists almost entirely of shooting left-handed 18-foot jumpers, and that would probably be really annoying except that he stopped making them last year, thankfully. If he had continued to be as good as he was in his first two years, I'd probably hate him a lot more.
Since I don't really have much else to say about Beno, I'd like to shame the entire city of San Antonio with this:
Anyone remember that? That was the Spurs logo in the 90s, and I must say that time has not diminished the potent repulsiveness of its design one bit. As I recall, they had this lovely mixture of colors, particularly the manly pairing of pink and teal, all over their home floor at the time. I bet David Robinson would've grabbed at least two more rebounds per game over his career if he hadn't been exposed to such eye-rending graphic design so frequently. In researching this color scheme, I discovered that these colors are rich in disease-awareness symbolism: pink for breast cancer, teal for polycystic ovarian syndrome, and orange for leukemia, three diseases that, strangely enough, I've often wished that the Spurs would contract. May this logo turn out to be a portent of things to come!
Tenth Most Hated Spur: Eva Longoria
Already the most irritating of the housewives desperate, the-former-and-probably-soon-to-be-again Miss Longoria made a strong case for first-ballot induction into the Could You Possibly Hate Me Any More? Hall of Fame by dating and then marrying the NBA's girliest (at least, since Rick Fox retired) and nearly most annoying player. Shockingly, she appeared in the stands for virtually every singly nationally televised Spurs game, and ESPN/ABC made the even more shocking decision to aim at least seven cameras at her at all times.
Mr. and Mrs. Longoria really took things to another level of irritation with their wedding. Like countless other idiots, they got married on 7/7/07, apparently because primitive peoples once attributed divine powers of luckiness to the number 7 or something. I am forced to assume that, should they birth a child on a 2/3 some year, they will ritually sacrifice the poor wretch to the great demon N'Kothra -- Scourge of the Living, Progenitor of Self-infatuated Celebrities -- upon on altar constructed from the bones of kittens, lest the numerological horror of the event should bring ruin on their house. (Bonus prediction: couples married on July 7th, 2007 will actually prove to be more likely to get divorced, owing to the exceeding shallowness that their choice of wedding date reflects).
Of course, we should've known that Eva and Tony would do something like that and make sure that every celeb mag knew about it the instant they announced their engagment by calling in to Ryan Seacrest's show. I can't believe that David Stern didn't fine Tony for making the league look like a bunch of tools like that. You can bet that Roger Goodell would have.
Just in case you aren't sure whether you, too, should hate Eva Longoria, I submit to you this quote: "I've lost a lot of jobs because I was too pretty. And everybody's like, 'Oh, poor you.' But seriously, you don't get the good roles when you're beautiful." That makes so much sense, because big-time actresses like Julia Roberts, Angelina Jolie, and Reese Witherspoon are so ugly, and because this is what you look like without makeup:
Oh, poor you.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
My Twelve Most Hated San Antonio Spurs
John Hollinger is fond of saying that, despite the fact that they've been dominating the league for the better part of a decade, no one really hates the Spurs because they're so nice and professional. John Hollinger has clearly never spoken to a fan of the Phoenix Suns. Besides, I'd call them whiny, insufferably arrogant, and unscrupulously devious before I'd go for nice and professional; while none of the Spurs ever seem to get caught firing off guns in barfights or sexually assaulting groupies like their colleagues do, there are many other ways of being a dick.
Last night, as I read Hollinger's scouting report on Tim Duncan, my body was literally wracked with spasms of hatred. That's right: my animus towards that bastard actually manifested itself physically. It occured to me that this phenomenon needed to be recorded, carefully analyzed, and digested in all its particulars for the benefit of future vituperologists, not to mention for the sake of streamlining my Spur-hating process for maximum efficiency. The Spurs, after all, have reached that illustrious threshhold of detestability from which a team or athlete can never be removed. Some teams, such as the Lakers of the early part of this decade, earn the hatred of an hour; once they cease to dominate, one no longer gets all that worked up about them (though I certainly hated the Lakers fully in their day). For me, the Spurs have joined the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, and the Texas Longhorns (places I won't be moving: Texas) as teams that I will despise forever, even if they finish dead last every season from now until the day I die.
So in preparation for the upcoming NBA season, I'm cataloguing the twelve Spurs whom I hate the most. You will note that this number is sufficient to cover the entire active roster. I think the experience will be illuminating. When Bruce Bowen sticks his leg in between an opponent's to cause a turnover that leads to one of those soul-dessicating Tony Parker teardrop shots, which player is most responsible for the bile rising in my throat? Now I will know.
First off, some dishonorable mentions. I hate these guys, but not in enough detail to warrant a finely wrought thesis on the subject.
Last night, as I read Hollinger's scouting report on Tim Duncan, my body was literally wracked with spasms of hatred. That's right: my animus towards that bastard actually manifested itself physically. It occured to me that this phenomenon needed to be recorded, carefully analyzed, and digested in all its particulars for the benefit of future vituperologists, not to mention for the sake of streamlining my Spur-hating process for maximum efficiency. The Spurs, after all, have reached that illustrious threshhold of detestability from which a team or athlete can never be removed. Some teams, such as the Lakers of the early part of this decade, earn the hatred of an hour; once they cease to dominate, one no longer gets all that worked up about them (though I certainly hated the Lakers fully in their day). For me, the Spurs have joined the Dallas Cowboys, the New York Yankees, and the Texas Longhorns (places I won't be moving: Texas) as teams that I will despise forever, even if they finish dead last every season from now until the day I die.
So in preparation for the upcoming NBA season, I'm cataloguing the twelve Spurs whom I hate the most. You will note that this number is sufficient to cover the entire active roster. I think the experience will be illuminating. When Bruce Bowen sticks his leg in between an opponent's to cause a turnover that leads to one of those soul-dessicating Tony Parker teardrop shots, which player is most responsible for the bile rising in my throat? Now I will know.
First off, some dishonorable mentions. I hate these guys, but not in enough detail to warrant a finely wrought thesis on the subject.
- Ian Mahinmi: What an infuriating name. It seems like it almost rhymes, but that turns out to be a tease, and it asks us to end one syllable with an "n" before starting the next one with an "m", which is positively rude. I'd hate this guy a lot more if it weren't a near 100% certainty that he's going to suck completely.
- Sean Elliott: Sean Elliott is said to be a nice guy, and he was very brave to come back from a kidney transplant to play in the league once more...and that's precisely the problem. Thanks to him, people feel obligated to have pity for someone associated with the San Antonio Spurs, causing intense cognitive dissonance and probably a few nervous breakdowns. Also, he was a pretty lame announcer without anything particularly interesting to say.
- Ime Udoka: "Hey, looks like Bruce Bowen's finally getting old, inching closer and closer to the welcoming grave. He'll probably stop being good pretty soon, and then we won't have to watch his sickeningly ugly form of play in service of the world's most evil basketball team." Every NBA fan in America has been having these thoughts for a year or two. Now the Spurs go and sign Udoka, who's pretty much the exact same guy except five years younger. No, it's cool, go ahead and smash my other testicle, too; it's not like I wanted it.
- David Robinson: Truth be told, I have surprisingly little beef with Mr. Robinson. Maybe it's because, per the Hollinger theory, he actually is incredibly nice, and he lacks Sean Elliott's cloying human interest story value to boot. Still, he did us all a massive disservice by getting injured in '96-'97, causing the Spurs to suck for just one season and giving them the draft pick that became Tim Duncan, one of the ten or fifteen greatest players of all time. Why couldn't you have just soldiered on as usual that year, David, making the Spurs into fringe contenders who would never quite get over the hump for a few years more? That was pretty uncool, and definitely not what Jesus would've done.
Alright, finally: the Spur whom I hate twelfth most:
Has anyone ever liked the unathletic, tall white guy who shoots threes and gets beaten on defense like a rented mule with a "Please beat me!" sign on its back? No. I asked everyone who's ever bothered to think about the question, and we all agreed that the answer is no. Even if that guy is good, like Dirk Nowitzki, or kind of a little bit good, like Troy Murphy, no one likes him. If that guy also happens to be the palest New Hampshirean in captivity, it's that much worse; how could you not resent a guy that physically unappealing for going into one of the professions most likely to cause images of his grotesque whiteness to be broadcast all over the globe, with nary a sleeve or a pant leg to obscure the awfulness? Matt Bonner playing basketball professionally is like a lawyer going to work for the mafia: yeah, the money's good, and your actions aren't in and of themselves immoral, but what about all the innocent people out there suffering because of them anyway? Sometimes, you've got to let your own interests be superceded by the greater good. For Matt Bonner, that meant giving up his mediocre NBA career for, most likely, a job as the Walmart employee who restocks the really high shelves. Unfortunately, he wasn't man enough to do it. I hope he's learned how to cram some of his hundred-dollar bills into his ears to drown out the screams of all the misbegotten babies who happen to look at the TV screen at the wrong time. It'd be tough for him to live with himself otherwise.
More to come.
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