There have been a lot of great developments so far during NBA Playoffs: Week 1.
Deron Williams proved to be even more amazing than we thought. The Spurs stole home court from the Mavs. Josh Smith has devoured four souls. Dwyane Wade learned new and more vengeful ways to hate his teammates. Joakim Noah went to war with the city of Cleveland. Gerald Wallace suffered 14 undiagnosed concussions. And J-Rich had the best game of his career.
Still, the best development of this postseason thus far has not happened on the court or even within Joakim’s scrunchy — it has happened in Photoshop.
Doc Funk has been dropping masterfully captioned photos after each game, and every batch is better than the last. LOLz for dayz. So to help spread awareness and revisit some of the awesome, I’m planning to do a little “best of” recap each Friday until the trophy is handed out by posting my fav five (don’t call it that) of the week.
Obviously, when a 21-year-old, nationally emerging superstar who just became the youngest scoring champ in league history goes up against Kobe Bryant in his first-ever Playoff series, that is going to be the story line.
It’s a shootout. Durant vs. Kobe. Young vs. Old. The Durantula vs. The Mamba.
And that’s all fine. The NBA is rightfully a superstar league and all but the most bitter, delusional NBA dorks amongst us will even tell you that that is the main reason we watch. We watch to see Flash do Flash stuff. We want to see Nash do Nash things. We want to see LeBron do stuff we have never seen in our lives.
But that isn’t what this series is about. It’s all about the defense, as boring as that might be. Oklahoma City is the 9th best defensive team in the NBA and that, more so than anything else, is what helped them go from an embarrassing 23-win season in 2008-09 to the 50-win season that has turned them into the darlings of the league.
Meanwhile, the Lakers are even better. They are the 4th best defensive team — and that’s after you account for the fact that they spent much of the regular season not trying all that hard. As long as Jay Bilas has been dropping uncomfortable references to the “length” of grown men on national TV, it has been a punchline and a quality that has enticed way too many GMs to gamble in the Draft on players who were, literally, long on athleticism but, figuratively, short on talent. (Looking at you, Tyrus Thomas.)
But that’s a big reason why this Laker team is so hard to score on. Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom and Ron Artest and even Kobe Bryant have such long arms and take up so much physical room on the court that when three or four of those guys are out there at the same time, it is almost impossible to find space to operate — let alone open up a passing lane. They close up all the seams just by standing around, so when you add in the fact that they can all play great defense when motivated, every possession becomes a challenge. (This is all part of my belief that the NBA should widen the court, but that’s another talk for another day.)
Very few teams can maintain a proper commitment to their offensive systems in the face of that constant challenge. Twenty-four seconds is not a long time, so when you try to execute a play and fail and then go down to the other end and get torched by Kobe and then come back to execute offensively again and fail … and rinse … and repeat … rinse … repeat … it kills your confidence. Before long, players start freelancing, and a capable offense turns from effective ball-sharing into just a bunch of guys taking turns shooting.
Once that happens, kiss the baby. You’ve probably lost. The Lakers are simply too good on both ends to consistently lose to teams that can’t stick to a game plan. Too much talent. Too much Pau. Too much Kobe.
Make no mistake, though — OKC will shut down a team, too. The little known secret (among national pundits anyway) is that the Thunder have a pretty mediocre offense. People see Durant and Russell Westbrook and Jeff Green and James Harden and Serge Ibaka and think “look at all these young athletes flying around making highlight reels and running and gunning.” But that really aint it. Sure, they make SportsCenter for their spectacular plays and they can get out on the break, but, as KG says, the defense is the backbone. They get out and run because they force turnovers (7th best in the NBA at that) and because they force their opponents to miss shots (4th best in the NBA at that).
They’re great in the open court. But in the half court, they often struggle unless Durant is bailing them out with his individual amazingness. Westbrook and Green take a lot of bad shots, Harden can’t create a ton of offense for himself and their post presence is … well, there really isn’t much of one.
They won 50 games on consistent, often suffocating defense. (Getting so many young players to play this way is why Scott Brooks is the runaway Coach of the Year in my eyes. It’s not even remotely close.)
And a big defensive moment for the Thunder — as well as for Kevin Durant’s career — may have come last night in the fourth quarter. After guarding other players for the whole game, KD switched over to check Kobe. It was a fantastic move for OKC, culminating in a horrid 2/10 shooting fourth quarter for Bryant and one perhaps-game-changing block as Durant swatted away a Mamba jumpshot. Kenny Smith highlighted the rejection as the biggest play of the game on Inside the NBA.
But more than helping his team win one game in a series that the Thunder will still almost certainly lose, Kevin Durant’s willingness to guard Kobe in crunch time shows us a lot. About his mentality. About his ability. About his willingness to win. About his understanding of how to win. And about how his limitless potential may have, paradoxically, just become even more limitless.
Here we have OKC’s offensive leader looking over at one of the most difficult covers in NBA history — and also looking over and seeing his excellent defensive teammate Thabo Sefolosha on the bench, not to mention Harden and Green who are no slouches themselves — and saying “Nah, guys … I got this. If Kobe’s going to beat us, he’s going to have to go through me to do it.”
Feel free to call the cliché police on me, but that’s what great players do.
That’s what Kobe did last year when Melo was lighting up the Lakers. That’s what LeBron does. That’s what MJ used to do on the reg (although having Scottie around gave him quite the luxury in that regard).
It’s nearly impossible for a human being to expend enough energy to play Bruce Bowen-level defense for 40 minutes in a Playoff game while they are also carrying the offense. Casual fans like to just call less-defensive-oriented players like Carmelo and Dirk lazy. But the fact is that it is just almost impossible to go all out on every play on both ends. Offense, in this league, at this level, against this competition, is incredibly taxing just by itself.
There is a reason that the most consistently great defenders on an every-play basis are specialists. There is a reason that even Ron Artest’s never-as-good-as-publicized offensive repertoire, when combined with his all-world shut-down ability, convinced so many GMs to salivate over paying a clearly chemically imbalanced man with unhinged, violent tendencies millions of dollars to play for their teams.
What is possible, however, is to carry the team offensively for three quarters while playing good, smart defense and then turning it on in the last quarter to go after it with all your energy for the final 8 minutes on both ends. Or, as is more often the case in practice, picking your spots to really turn it on defensively whenever your team really needs its no matter how much time remains in the game.
Carmelo started to do this last year in the Playoffs and, at 25-years-old, finally showed the world that he can really be a two-way player. It was great to watch and, hopefully, debunked any arguments that may have still existed about his greatness. Well, Kevin Durant, your NBA scoring champ, ladies and gentlemen, just did that exact same thing last night.
He is 21.
Here’s some post-game video of Durant discussing his assignment. Also, League Pass heads know that Durant playing defense isn’t altogether new. He did it a lot this year. This is just his coming-out party to tell the world “Oh … what … yall didn’t know I was an athletic freak with a condor wingspan? Lemme show yall then.” Check this video of my favorite defensive play he made this year. Ya know, the time Kevin Durant blocked a shot while only wearing one sneaker.
Analysts love their easy, recycled metaphors, so the most popular column and conversation topic about the Lakers over the past few weeks has naturally been whether or not they can “flip the switch.” See, the were not an exceedingly successful team during the home stretch of the regular season. Overall, they went 11-9 in their final 20 games and an unimpressive 15-15 in their last 30 road games.
So a lot of people have looked at these results and concluded that this Lakers roster might be full of skilled front-runners uninterested in the rigors of the regular season, unwilling to show up for non-marquee games and, perhaps, simply unable to treat professional basketball games before the postseason as anything more than glorified practice. This, of course, is dangerous behavior. Bad habits ingrained during the season tend to transfer into the Playoffs, and the league is so good these days that — particularly in the West — every team can get hot for a week and catch a sleeping giant … well … sleeping.
Many of those who think the Lakers can still sleep-walk their way to the Finals on talent alone cite previous Laker squads as reasons that this year’s team will be fine. The Shaq/Kobe teams notoriously didn’t show up for long stretches of the regular season. For Diesel, it was often just a way to get into shape.
But, say the devil’s advocates, these teams didn’t turn it on in April or May. They got serious in February and March and put on their executioner masks right after the All-Star break, using the final third of the season as a tune-up for the more-important games when the quest for the trophy began.
This year’s team didn’t do that. They kicked off the year great and looked like the proverbial, unbeatable Philistine all the way up until February, at which time some serious injuries and some serious lethargy started to make them look decidedly above-average. Sure, above-average is a commendable thing to be in this League — the Bucks, Blazers, Bobcats and Thunder all had very successful seasons being exactly that — but when you’re supposed to be the unassailable juggernaut of the Association, that’s not where you want to be. It’s not where you want to be at all, in fact.
Then again, it was obvious to anyone who watched LA’s complete undressing of OKC in Game 1 today that the words “average” and “Lakers” don’t belong in the same sentence. They flat out kicked the Thunder’s ass while making Kevin Durant look like a scoring champ in name only.
They flipped the switch, Mega Maid-style. And it looks like Thunder Nation will soon experience death by suffocation in an oxygen-less world where passing lanes close before the ball is ever thrown, collapsing defenders cut off all drives to the hoop, unstoppable penetrators create easy buckets and dagger jumpers fall from the sky like acid rain.
Now, Lakers fans just have to hope that that switch can’t be flipped back from “suck” to “blow.”
Don’t worry … The Thunder are still looking for a game plan.
Everybody knows that Manu is both one of the best players in the League and perhaps the best international guard to ever grace the NBA. He’s also one of the most fun guys to watch and the main reason that I have always been baffled that anyone could ever consider the Spurs boring. Timmy is the Big Fundamental and does everything with perfect precision, but has little in the way of flair or personality, so I get why some people would fail to enjoy his even-keeled brilliance.
But Manu?
He plays a brand of basketball that inspires joy joy feelings in all those around him and Kobe, according to Chris Ballard in his book The Art of a Beautiful Game, likes to repeatedly characterize as “balls to the wall.” Usually, Manu’s greatness comes with the rock in his hands. But this year, dude’s defense has been on full display.
Last night, par examplar, he unleashed this Yeti-like-force block on KG, who now has two huge reasons to be thoroughly embarrassed: the blowout his Celtics suffered at the hands of the old, boring Spurs and being swatted this badly by a slow, white, geeky, balding chump. (via Real Cavs Fans)
And this wasn’t the first time this year Manu has publicly de-scrotumed a future Hall of Famer named Kevin. Here we see Mr. Durant also get got by the Argentine. (Video via Project Spurs … Click through to see KD’s PG-rated response to the block … And my sincere apologies for the Sean Elliot commentary.)
Is that all?
Nope.
Here’s Manu standing on his head to prevent a lay-up attempt by his Eastern Conference SG doppelgänger. If you can’t stand the Heat, Dwyane, better get out of the kitchen.
I was fortunate enough to join Dave and Audley the other day on The NBA Breakdown radio show to chat about the home stretch of the regular season and how we expect the Playoffs to unfold. We talk John Salmons and the Bucks, the Bulls, some Thunder, the Boston old-age home, the sad state of the Pacers, a Bargnani and Bosh front court, free agency 2010 and then get into my real areas of expertise: beards and nicknames. (Although I inexplicably think that The Mayor played for Creighton at some point. For shame, me. For shame.)
In the back on my mind, I’ve secretly been hoping that there is indeed a backroom pact made by LeBron, Flash and Chris Bosh to take less money all sign with the same team to form a Super Franchise that would win the next six NBA tittles. It’s probably unlikely and no matter how much at least LeBron and Dwyane are guaranteed to make in endorsements, my cynicism can’t really allow me to expect two guys who could make close to $20 million per year to “settle” for closer to $10 million.
One thing — in addition to LeBron and Wade’s well-publicized friendship, the fact that all three played on the 2008 Redeem Team in Beijing and all three being signed to Nike — that does make a pie-in-the-sky Voltron-like reality still seem so possible, however, is Creative Artists Agency.
Here’s the background:
For 35 years, Creative Artists Agency has represented many of Hollywood’s top power brokers. Steven Spielberg. Tom Cruise. George Clooney. Will Smith. Tom Hanks. Brad Pitt. Julia Roberts. Nicole Kidman. Bruce Springsteen. The list goes on and on.
As you may have noticed, three of those names (Clooney, Pitt, Roberts) were among those who joined forces to enjoy the ensemble cast success of Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve and Ocean’s Thirteen, which combined to take in more than $1 billion in box office receipts worldwide.
I think you know where this is going:
James, Wade and Bosh, of course, are the names on the tongues of every NBA executive these days. All three will be free agents this summer, the headliners of what promises to be the deepest and most heralded free-agent class in league history. That all three are represented by the same agency only adds to the drama and intrigue. It stands to reason that CAA – an agency which wasn’t doing much sports business as recently as five years ago – will now have some influence on how the NBA’s power structure shifts for the future.
The piece goes on to discuss what happened when Tim Duncan and Grant Hill were both being repped by the same guy when they were free agents in 2000. Timmy has some interesting quotes as do several others.
The excitement around Shannon Brown’s inclusion in the dunk contest arose from his several fantastic slams on bigger players this season, and his disappointing performance on Saturday shocked many. But the dunks that made Brown’s reputation have very little to do what happens in a dunk contest. In games, his throwdowns over and on defenders are about reorienting time and space to fit his needs. A contest dunk is about defying expectations of what can be done, but it also depends on near-limitless imagination from the dunker. To put it another way, in games, the dunking Brown is thrown into an ever-shrinking box with one small opening and told to crawl out of it. On Saturday, he had to define the dimensions of the box and throw every other competitor inside it. One task is fit for a human overcoming difficult obstacles — the other is about his transformation into godhood.
A lot of this has been said before, but he says it better than most with the conclusion essentially being: Minus trampolines, we’ve seen almost everything that can be done while dunking, and we’ve now seen it sooooo many times that it’s hard to make it exciting — both in a dunk contest and in a game.
Noam Schiller waxes prolific on my boy — and his Israeli compatriot — Omri Casspi.
Regardless of how Casspi’s career unravels from this point forward, he will always be the first one who made it. And all words and all the articles and all the TV pieces that have aired in the American media since that night late in June – and some of them are really really good – can’t even begin to describe the impact this has had in Israel. Kings games have become a matter of national importance – except nobody cares if they win or lose. David Thorpe’s rookie rankings are monitored on a weekly basis by every major sports website in the country. Tyreke Evans is on Casspi’s team, and is having one of the most impressive rookie seasons in recent memory, and yet if you watch a Kings game on an Israeli feed, the only thing you’ll hear the commentators saying is “WHY WON’T HE PASS?!”. Kevin Martin is public enemy number one, and this is for a country surrounded by people who want to kill us. New Casspi interviews and analysis pieces are published by the hour, and nobody is sick of it, because all they want is more and more information of how their promised son is doing in the scary outside world.
This year’s Trade Value column from Bill Simmons. Speaks for itself. His Durant facts are particularly interesting. Not sure why he needs to continually scheme up new ways to not like Kobe though. Overall, it’s what you would expect from a Simmons NBA column and this was probably my favorite line:
The Zombies could absolutely win a title some day with Durant as their No. 1 and Westbrook as No. 3. They just need a No. 2. Not to be confused with the No. 2 that Clay Bennett took on Seattle.
The headline of this Brett Pollakoff piece pretty much explains itself. And more than likely, this stuff is probably already further along than you think.
The NBA has been recording events like the All-Star game and the Finals in 3-D since 2007, but until now, has only been able to showcase them in a movie theater setting. As with most new technologies, the obstacles to getting them to market are based in price, as well as the ability to get televisions capable of handling the broadcasts to market. Additionally, the glasses required to view the 3-D programming are expensive — currently estimated to cost around $100 per pair to produce.
Brett was able to watch a preview and was pretty impressed:
There was a demonstration of the 3-D technology at this event, where highlights from the 2009 All-Star weekend were shown on what looked like your standard HD screen of about 42 inches in size. If watching sports in HD is the equivalent of feeling like you’re viewing the proceedings through the window of a luxury suite in the arena, then seeing things in 3-D is like having a courtside seat.
They really did this just right: the 3-D isn’t at all gimmicky like what we’ve come to expect from movies, where everything possible is done to overuse the 3-D effect by having things needlessly appear to be flying out of the screen right into your face. Instead, the front of the screen is used as the beginning point for the action, and everything appears to go deeper into the television, with the depth of the experience being accented like never before. If they had players or the ball flying out at you it would detract from the actual game itself; the way they have seemed to decide to do things makes the technology the ultimate enhancement.
I have nothing to add. Just your run-of-the-mill web cam karaoke post for you, featuring a future scoring champ, the guy he’s hoping can be his Scottie Pippen and a guy who might give Baron Davis a run for his money in NBA Beard-Off 2010. (via @Jose3030)
