Category: Basketball

More on this later – I think I love the deal that brings Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway to the Knicks for Antonio McDyess, Charlie Ward and other suspects to the point of changing my opinion of Isiah Thomas as a GM, but I haven’t looked at the financial and draft pick aspects of the trade – but I refer you to basketball-reference.com’s list of “Most Similar Player” to Marbury, by age:
Similar Players (By Age)
19. Cliff Robinson
20. Gilbert Arenas
21. Isiah Thomas
22. Isiah Thomas
23. Isiah Thomas
24. Isiah Thomas
25. Isiah Thomas

Further to my point of yesterday about blocked shots, there’s some debate about their value. Doug Turnbull assesses the value of a block at a full 2 points per block – thus, he values a man who scores 10 points per game and blocks 4 shots per game the same as an 18-a-game scorer. John Hollinger, in the Basketball Prospectus, values a block as about the same as the negative value of a missed field goal, which he values at around 0.72 points (the figure varies by certain measurements pegged to league averages).
Who’s right? Well, sophisticated analysis of basketball statistics is still in its adolescence, if not its infancy. Wait and see.

One of my recent interests has been simulated basketball on WhatIfSports.com, a site Bill Simmons got me interested in (on the baseball side) in its infancy some two years ago (my username is crank, for those of you who are denizens of the site). In typically backwards fashion, renewing my interest in basketball’s statistical past has revived my interest to some extent in the current game, but that’s a topic for another post.
One of the great imponderables in NBA history – with which the “WIS” site has to struggle, since it includes players going back to the Fifties – is the tabulation of blocked shots prior to 1973-74, when the league started counting them. There are few more frustrating unknown statistics in professional sports than Bill Russell’s blocked shots; Russell’s statistics (despite adequate scoring and assists averages and great rebounding numbers) are otherwise not really impressive enough to equal his reputation, but if we had shot-blocking numbers, there would be something closer to a quantifiable way to measure his defensive greatness. WIS pegs him around 5-6 blocked shots per game; I’ve heard people who saw him play quote figures as high as 10. That’s probably Old Fogeyism talking, but then, there were an awful lot of missed shots in those days, and Russell was on the court for 44-46 minutes a night.
Anyway, one thing I noticed that was unique and repeated in several sources without an explanation of where it came from was the ABA’s single season blocked shots record: 422 by Artis Gilmore in his rookie season in Kentucky in 1971-72, an average of just over 5 a game — one of only two seasons of 400 blocks (the other is the NBA record of 456 by Mark Eaton in 1984-85) in the recorded history of professional basketball and almost 150 above Gilmore’s next highest total. What’s unusual is that basketball-reference.com has nearly no record for anybody else’s blocked shots but Gilmore’s for 1971-72. Yet, the NBA’s official website cites the figure in Gilmore’s bio; so does Gilmore’s own personal website; so does ESPN.com.
If anyone knows the true story of how they came up with this figure, I’d love to hear it.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Now, I don’t get to watch a whole lot of basketball these days, but I caught a good deal of Saturday night’s Knicks-Pacers game, and it seemed to me that the loss pretty well symbolized the Knicks in the post-Ewing era, with the team busting out for a 24-0 run in the third quarter and still managing enough inconsistency to blow the game at the end. The run was largely feuled by some hot shooting by Keith Van Horn (who finished the game 5-14 from the field), some gritty play by Kurt Thomas, and most of all by outstanding play at both ends of the court by Dikembe Mutombo, who promptly had to take a breather to rest a strained groin.
It’s no accident that a good stretch by a broken-down big man made such a difference, even fleetingly. Ever since Father Time caught up with Patrick Ewing, the Knicks have been treading water, lacking an identity without a big presence in the middle; the Sprewell-Houston era featured some memorable victories, especially the trip to the finals that was accomplished with minimal assistance from Ewing, but without a dependable point guard or big man, you need something on the order of Jordan and Pippen to win, and instead the Knicks had Sprewell — always an inconsistent offensive presence — and Houston, a born second banana and not one of Pippen’s quality. And year after year, the team never seems to bring in any new talent. Until the Knicks can get that signature star who takes the team away from being built around a center who hasn’t been there for years, they’ll keep on playing like an amputee who favors his missing leg.

Newsweek has an unflattering portrait of Kobe Bryant, although really a lot of the stuff in here — about how he’s focused, driven and a loner — doesn’t seem that bad, really; I suspect they’re stretching to explain how such a squeaky-clean guy winds up accused of rape.
The article faults Kobe for putting himself in an ambiguous situation by failing to follow standard NBA practices for having casual sex with groupies:
[T]here are also rules of conduct off the court, and players usually swap the do�s and don�ts over dinner after a game. Rule No. 1: Let your crew approach the woman first, to size her up. One baller makes his bodyguards spell out in plain language to potential one-night-stands what the night�s activities will entail. If she hesitates, she�s turned away. Rule No. 2: Give nice parting gifts. One NBA star is known to travel with a treasure chest of diamond tennis bracelets to hand to conquests in appreciation.
This entire scene is appalling, obviously, but at least it does ensure that everyone involved is up front on what they’re getting into.

WATFO, as Bill Simmons would say (and undoubtedly will say, about this news): Vin Baker admits that he is an alcoholic. (Link via Boston Sports Blog).
Good luck to Baker getting his life and maybe even his game straightened out — he’s a guy who came far from Hartford College to the big time, and has fallen an awful long way since signing a big contract. A cautionary tale, this one, about long-term multi-million dollar deals for young men who haven’t learned how to cope with pressure.
UPDATE: A commenter corrects me – Baker went to the University of Hartford. My bad.

The latest from the Onion.

Now, I don’t follow the NBA half as much as I used to, and I’ve never been a Latrell Sprewell fan, but trading him for Keith Van Horn seems like . . . well, it seems like exactly the same sort of mistake the Mets would make, the same sort the Knicks as well have been making for a decade, always bringing in forwards who are injured, past their prime, unathletic, overpaid, or some combination of the four. Van Horn has missed 20 or more games 3 times in 5 years; his numbers tell you how infrequently he gets physical (he averaged fewer than 3 trips to the line per game the last two years), he’s shot above 45% only once in his career, averaged 1.38 turnovers/asssist for his career (he’s no Larry Bird), and he’s not even a guy who compensates by being a prime time 3-point shooter. Unless I’m missing something, neither is he a guy who does a lot that doesn’t show up in the box scores. And he’s got 3 years and $43 million left on his contract, an extra year and extra $17 million above Sprewell’s deal.

Aren’t Karl Malone and Gary Payton going to feel like idiots if Kobe Bryant winds up under indictment and unavailable to play much of this season?

The NBA Finals were so exciting, even Bill Simmons, who wrote a whole column hyping the Nets-Spurs matchup (Page 2 headlined the piece “A series you can’t afford to miss”), announced after Game 4 that “this series has been a disappointment in every sense of the word.”
Now, I didn’t get to see a whole lot of the series myself, but this paragraph from Bill’s preview didn’t really gibe with my experience as a basketball fan:
The best lesson from this series, especially if New Jersey wins: Fast breaks matter. Wait a second, you’re telling me that it’s easier to score in transition — when you have numbers, when the other team is running backward — then when your opponent has a chance to set up its defense? What a wacky concept!!!!!
As I think the series bore out, this is backward: fast breaks are a by-product of winning basketball, not a cause. It’s like big innings in baseball — while it’s true that some teams are more cut out for them than others, the fact is that you don’t decide, “let’s have a lot of big innings”; you build for success, and the big innings come. Fast breaks are like that; you can try to push the ball as a philosophy, but the things you need to do well to get fast breaks are more important than the decision to have them.

Bob Ryan of the Boston Globe has been suspended a month without pay for saying on a shout show that he wanted to “smack” Jason Kidd’s wife, who he finds annoying; this seems a bit harsh, but the remark really was in exceptionally poor taste, given Kidd’s arrest for hitting his wife a few years ago.

Bill Simmons argues that it’s time to break up Kobe & Shaq. One quibble: Simmons says that “[u]nlike other NBA dynasties, these guys always seem vulnerable . . .” Maybe they seem invulnerable in retrospect, but I always though Jordan’s Bulls could be taken, and they often escaped serieses with the Knicks, in particular, by the skin of their teeth. Remember: this team had a committee of mediocre point guards and another committee of mediocre centers; after Horace Grant left, they had a power forward who scored 5 points a game and was clinically insane, plus Scottie Pippen was never exactly Mister Big Game. The Bulls’ advantages, of course, each time outweighed those flaws, but you can’t tell me they were never in trouble.

Mike Francesa, on Mike & The Mad Dog yesterday, on the best candidate for a high seed getting upset: “Marquette, by Holy Cross.” Francesa calls Ralph Willard’s Crusaders “a pain in the butt to play.”
GO CROSS GO!

If you ask Bill Simmons, it’s never too late to bash Rick Pitino.

John Hollinger of Sports Illustrated has an incisive analysis of a problem that has bugged me for a while: how to measure, statistically, good team defense in the NBA. I’m not sure his solution is 100% successful, but it’s a decided improvement on the existing alternatives.

Jack McCallum had some good suggestions for NBA All-Star weekend. Of course, you heard similar, but better ideas from Bill Simmons first.

Yes, of course prep sensation O.J. Mayo has his own website. Doesn’t every seventh grader have a jazzy website extolling his virtues these days? All that’s missing is Sir Robin’s minstrels.

Is Michael Jordan really retiring this time?

Rasheed Wallace, smoking pot? Shocking, truly shocking. What is this world coming to?

More mascot news: the Denver Nugget has been arrested! Do you think this guy lists his occupation as “Nugget”?

I haven’t linked to him that much, actually, but of course you can’t start the basketball season without reading Bill Simmons’ previews. The Eastern Conference Preview is here, the Western Conference Preview is here (Simmons always does the East first so he can save his Finals prediction for the second column). Simmons on Joe Johnson of the Suns: “I watched him in Boston for 50 games. Intently. And he doesn’t have it. I can spot three things in life — toupees, fake breasts and NBA players who drift during games. And he’s a drifter. Considering that the Suns need him to make The Leap, that doesn’t bode too well for their playoff hopes.”

And the same goes double for the Knicks. Yuck.

The Knicks have really killed my enthusiasm for the NBA.

Kiki Vandeweghe . . . Xavier McDaniel . . . Charles Smith . . . Larry Johnson . . . Clarance Weatherspoon . . . Antonio McDyess. The Knicks really have a knack for getting scoring forwards who are past their prime and physically damaged goods. Even Camby was in brittle condition when they got him. Ewing is gone – when will they learn to get off the treadmill and start developing their own young players?

More on the Dele saga: his brother was found comatose and arrested. Did they read him his rights?

ESPN has more on the Bison Dele story.

French authorities are searching for Bison Dele, the emotionally troubled center formerly known as Brian Williams (no relation to the NBC anchor); Dele and his girlfriend haven’t been heard from since early July and were last seen aboard his sailboat, the “Hakuna Matata,” whcih has resurfaced without a trace of the two or of the boat’s skipper. The authorities are apparently searching for Dele’s brother for questioning and suspect foul play.

From an email I wrote when the Knicks traded for Latrell Sprewell in January 1999. Obviously, I was wrong.
What would possess the Knicks to trade John Starks and Chris Mills for Latrell Sprewell? Let’s review.
Improve the offense? Sprewell’s career shooting % is .436, so he won’t help the team’s famous lack of shooting accuracy, and his career 3-point % is 20 points lower than Starks’. Plus he plays the same position as the team’s best young player, Allan Houston.
Play the point? Sprewell is a notorious ballhog; that’s why Tim Hardaway hated him. Adding Sprewell will mean fewer shots for Houston and LJ — the last thing the Knicks need — and maybe fewer for Ewing, which could get Sprewell booted from the players’ union.
Play small forward? In a league where the 3s routinely run 6’10” and over, a 6’5″ small forward, next to LJ or Camby at the power forward, will mean a frontcourt that is overmatched on D and can’t rebound. No rebounds, no rings.
Come off the bench? Spree is accustomed to 40 minutes a game, and we know how well he responds to orders from his coach.
Intangibles? Starks is a playoff veteran — the career leader in 3 point shots in the playoffs — while Sprewell has appeared in 3 playoff games and his teams have routinely underacheived. In the NBA, playoff experience matters more than talent. The Knicks have already lost one playoff series and risked another because they couldn’t keep their cool against Miami; we know how well Sprewell controls his anger, and he has a running feud with Tim Hardaway.
Guard Jordan? One of Sprewell’s big plusses is that he is one of the few shooting guards big and athletic enough to go toe-to toe with Jordan for 40 minutes. Now, if only the Knicks could find people to guard Isaiah Thomas and Larry Bird . . .
Put fans in the seats? Don’t get me started. People might have forgiven Sprewell if he had just apologized and taken his puishment like a man, but the Alice-in-Wonderland lawsuits against the NBA, the Warriors, and his own agent have not helped his cause.
Salary cap? I don’t understand the new cap rules, but while dumping Mills is a plus I have to think that Sprewell makes more money than Starks, so this can’t be it.
They’re not losing anything in Mills, and Sprewell really is a younger, better version of Starks, but this deal just doesn’t make any sense at all from the perspective of assembling a winning team and can’t be excused on business grounds.