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Basketball

Tomorrow: The Future

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May 19, 2024
Basketball, NBA
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Today: the now. The Dallas Mavericks closed out the Oklahoma City Thunder, everybody’s favorite “look at this team!” team for the second decade in a row, in a sixth game on Saturday night to advance to the Western Conference Finals, where they’ll meet the winner of the ridiculous Denver Nuggets-Minnesota Timberwolves series, those teams entering a Game 7. 

With MVP candidate Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the now-underrated 2024 rookie do-everything big Chet Holmgren in tow and singing Aguilera to their hearts’[1] content, OKC dropped a 17-point lead. Melding at just the right time, Luka Doncic, Kyrie Irving and the rest of the Mavs had come into the series operating an offense which countered Harden-era Rockets isolations with Curry-led dictation in Golden State circa-2017 to great success.

Against a calling-all-cars Thunder defense, the Mavericks offensive plan fell apart, but Dallas kept pushing. Its stars shining, and role players inhabiting exactly their spaces, they put a mirror to the slightly younger, slightly-brighter Thunder. In so doing, they put away a new-era league darling, one that calls to the past while looking toward a different future.

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Where Is My Mind

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May 13, 2024
Basketball, Hockey, NBA, Sports
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There was no foreseeable way this would keep up, and indeed, the cracks are beginning to show. However: every other night in New York City, you can expect to catch a competitor. It’s been a decade since the Knicks and Rangers were so similarly relevant that they warranted the ice-to-hardwood changeover videos of Madison Square Garden to return. 

Last Tuesday, an exhaustingly frantic game down the stretch saw the Rangers blow the lead to the Carolina Hurricanes, favored in the series. Former number one overall pick Alexis Lafrenière, previously a scapegoat who just enjoyed his best season in the NHL, scored twice, but the night’s dough was only on the rise.

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All The Way

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April 20, 2024
Basketball, NBA
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“You’re doing it for your teammates, you’re doing it for the team, you’re doing it for the fans, and you’re doing it for yourself.” – Willis Reed

“We can’t deviate from the path. We all have to be on the same team, we all have to have the same mindset to continue to move forward together…To the fans: You make a difference for us. I just want to make that abundantly clear. Without you, the Knicks aren’t the Knicks.” – Jalen Brunson

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He Saw It All

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April 6, 2024
Basketball, College Basketball, NBA
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Tsar Gerard was working it out follicly when Rondo went down. He’d had death in the morning, but now it was time to relax. It was a Sunday in Riverdale, and I was a college student trying to get a decent haircut at a fair price. The Celtics-Heat matinee game was on the smallest digital television I had ever encountered to that point.

After my lettuce had been tended to, I stimmed in the presence of Jerry. “Ayo, you see this?” he said, mid-haircut, and I was already doubled over trying to figure out where the Boston Celtics would turn. Rajon Rondo’s injury looked bad – it ended up being a torn ACL that changed the trajectory of his career . When that announcement arrived, it felt like the end of those Celtics, even before the Worst Trade Ever (ft. the Brooklyn Nets). 

Fear not: Rondo played for another decade in the NBA before finally, officially announcing his retirement this week on the “All The Smoke” podcast. One of the greatest basketball minds ever has, at the end, admitted he is tired. Thinking through that much would wear anyone out.

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Please.

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April 6, 2024
America, Basketball, College Basketball
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“I don’t even know if I can say this, but: that call sucked, SVP.”

Andraya Carter spoke for all of us Friday night in breaking down the decisive moving screen foul that ended UConn’s NCAA Tournament run. After an incredible game in which both of Caitlin Clark and Paige Bueckers were pushed to their respective limits, the referees had the last say in what was what.

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Clippers, Ltd.

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March 28, 2024
America, Basketball, Politics, Sports
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Despite the fact that my book intake these days gravitates toward a rather mundane mix of Guy Who Explores Framing Options For Album Covers lit that overlooks pretty much everything else, I know a thriller when I read one: A handful of players emerge, a signalpoint event occurs, fingers point in all directions, some false protagonists turn heel, a surprise hero emerges and, ultimately, the denouement.

As another sport celebrates its weather-plagued opening day, the NBA’s regular season begins its mad dash toward the next step, itself a surprising behemoth with a dose of play-in confusion to those just tuning in come April, every team is getting a little tighter, every rotation moving a bit closer to the grease board than the free-for-all of 2K.

If the time put into their leading duo is starting to get to the Boston Celtics[1], it is increasingly starting to creep on just about everybody involved with the current iteration of the Los Angeles Clippers. A good thing going now means a clock is ticking. The train arrives at noon.

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More Than You Bargained For, Yeah

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December 20, 2023
Basketball, Sports
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Bobcats waive Ben Gordon after playoff eligibility ends - CBSSports.com

It’s endemic of having grown up around a team that had to fight for every positive the national light chose to shine, but when someone hits a weird enough record such that it matches Ben Gordon, I start to wonder. Rides in other people’s cars gave me sufficient exposure to the Ben Gordon Experience, before, during and after the period in which he was a Charlotte Bobcat. I liked watching him.

To see a player match something he did – we’re talking about Jalen Brunson going 9-for-9 from three, in on his way to scoring 50 points in leading the New York Knicks to a win over the Phoenix Suns last Friday night – brought a smile to my face, something that is fleeting in this year, as we turn to the next.

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Great Expectations

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November 2, 2023
Basketball, Sports
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(No, let’s not talk about the Clippers at this time. Thank you for your support and consideration.)

As we all knew years-plural ahead of time, Victor Wembenyama went number one overall in the first round of this year’s NBA draft. By providence, perhaps, the San Antonio Spurs drew the number one pick in a year when a generational center was available, just as they had in 1989 with David Robinson and in 1997 with Tim Duncan.

It was the inevitability that drove the madness: a little over two years ago, it was the Scoot and Vic show. Two seasons and one nationally-televised game pitting the G League Ignite development team against Big Vic’s Paris-based Metropolitans 92 later, and Victor was the clear-cut number one.

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(Approximately) 30 Thoughts On 30 NBA Teams, 2023-’24 Edition

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October 24, 2023
Basketball, NBA, Sports
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Welcome back. Depending on how you count the attempt at satire written in the midst of an early life crisis in 2014, and with apologies to the time in between the 2019-’20 season and 2020-’21 – spacing more questionable than the 2013-’14 Knicks, incidentally, but with a much more logical explanation – this is the tenth time we’ll be previewing every NBA team, so for those of you here from the jump, I must express some measure of appreciation.

A reminder, and a reintroduction: if you don’t know but you’ve been here this long, Robert Horry’s name is pronounced with a silent-H (‘Orry). His name is his name. He has more rings than Jordan, if that’s your thing, and he hit several of the most important shots in league history, with apologies only via volume in both directions to Kings fans and the Kyrie hive. 

Getting back to the point: you heard about him for years in the French leagues too, right? And even before that? Ah, so you saw what his wingspan could end up being? Not unlike the Burger King jingle that mutates each fortnight but remains an earsore in every iteration, the midseason tournament is coming for all of us: growth is the only mindset.

Watch your own fire burn as mine does. A model like yours? Nothing better. Just you wait and see:

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The Aces Between

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October 20, 2023
Basketball, WNBA
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Enough of it felt troubled, if not necessarily doomed, from the start, that this isn’t unexpected. A superteam! In New York! Even if the term became irrelevant almost as soon as it entered the public consciousness, we felt reasonably confident deeming what the New York Liberty were coming into the 2023 season as something like that. Granted, no less an authority on women than Derrick Rose has mentioned superteams before, regarding one of the men’s teams based in New York City; Oppenheimer had colitis, but at least he just wrote to his brother about it rather than to the New York press.

When the final possession of the WNBA season sputtered out, a reasonably well-drawn up ATO play from New York’s head coach Sandy Brondello that took just a beat or two too long before it went awry, and that was that. Once again, the Las Vegas Aces are the champions, the first repeat title winners since Lisa Leslie and the Los Angeles Sparks upended – whom else? – the New York Liberty, featuring – whom else? – current Aces head coach Becky Hammon.

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