Archive

Basketball

Then, And Now

By
July 7, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment
Image result for kawhi leonard sunglasses

Courtesy Associated Press

Not that you were especially curious about my opinion, but being that we’re all curious about everyone’s opinions – only to the extent that we can then espouse upon our own, I suspect – let me be clear about what has happened over the past week: no, I have no idea what’s going on in the NBA, other than that players are doing whatever the hell they want, which is good for fans from an objectivity standpoint and bad for fans from a “We want a title at all costs!” standpoint[1].

Read More

On Chasing Waterfalls

By
June 28, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment
Image result for red rover game vintage

“Rover, Red Rover” – Arthur Leipzig

Free agency in professional sports, in its ideal form, is the best and most prominent example of the free market at work that exists in this country. A worker earns their keep; their employer either decides that they are or are not worth the trouble, and then there are suitors everywhere lining up to give that person their just deserts. It’s deceptively simple.

Yet – and that word does a percentage of the salary cap’s worth of lifting here – it is much more deceptive than simple. The salary cap itself is one measure of inequality-via-equality; were LeBron James ever paid as much as he deserved in his career, he would likely be rivaling Gaius Appuleius Diocles at this point. Alas, at least in salary-capped leagues[1], the reality is thus: make what you can of what you have, and be judicious with your forecasts. A tornado doesn’t have to spring up to be destructive; if it gets you to move, it’s done enough of its job.

Read More

The Six, in Six

By
June 14, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment

AP Photo/Tony Avelar

It all seemed so futile, right up until it didn’t. When the Golden State Warriors signed DeMarcus Cousins to a one-year, well-below-market value contract in the summer of 2018, it was as if the embarrassment of riches had itself become embarrassed. It is nice to have nice things; it is rude to flaunt those nice things so rabidly that the idea of not having any of it becomes offensive.

When Kawhi Leonard, the Board Man, decided it was his time to fell another dynastic squad, however, there was little that Golden State could do about it. Through an unreplicable series of transactions, the Toronto Raptors were able to beat the Warriors at their own game. On Thursday night, in the final NBA game ever at Oracle Arena, the Raptors became the world champions, bringing a title to the homeland of the sport’s inventor.

Read More

Board Man Gets Paid

By
June 7, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
1 Comment

https://gph.is/g/aQ5j65a

“Oh, I’m about to get buckets on you.”

Here, more or less in his own words, is a play-by-play account of Game 3 of the NBA Finals from Kawhi Leonard, who led the Toronto Raptors to a 123-109 victory over a severely shorthanded Golden State Warriors squad. What follows is in chronological order of plays in which Leonard was directly involved and successful[1], courtesy of basketball-reference.com.

Read More

To The North

By
May 30, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment
Image result for toronto painting

Rock’N The City – Ylli Haruni

You’re talking yourself into this, huh? You listened to Drake’s entire discography (again) after the Eastern Conference Finals, and now you think the Raptors could do this thing, the thing only LeBron James and co. have accomplished over the past five years – and even then, only once in four tries. It will take a distinctly 2016 Cavs-esque effort, and perhaps some of the similar circumstances, for the Toronto Raptors to fell the Golden State Warriors.

Finally, after months of three-game road trips, Kia commercials and the proliferation of the phrase “load management,” we have arrived. The NBA Finals begin tonight, pitting two teams on different trajectories in a truly international showdown.

Read More

“Look at the owl on me”

By
May 14, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
1 Comment

Jesse D. Garrabrant/Getty Images

In the grand scheme of these playoffs, it is a singular moment that, taken to any other end, wouldn’t have mattered. The capital-A Adult Jimmy Butler shot just preceding it had tied the game at 90 apiece, meaning it would have gone to overtime anyway. Like the Damian Lillard shot against Oklahoma City before it – but also, so very unlike the Damian Lillard shot against Oklahoma City before it – the fortune of the shooter’s team would, at the very least, have been no worse in the moment after had he missed.

When Kawhi’s moonshot clinked-clanked-clunked-and-clinked-again before dropping in, sealing the Toronto Raptors’ 92-90 victory and sending the representatives of the lone Canadian outpost in the NBA to the Eastern Conference Finals, the basketball world stopped, if only for a brief respite. Now, with that ball through the hoop and the Raptors on to a date with the Milwaukee Bucks, as many questions have arisen as were answered.

Read More

Rocky Mountain Way

By
May 1, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment

Via @Yugobasket on Twitter

Just when you think you have a pretty good understanding of the landscape, it shifts. You see the same things, but you see them in a different way, like removing the filter of designer shades [or your last Instagram post]. It isn’t negative; it still works. Maybe it works better than you originally suspected? It always seems worthwhile to shuffle back and forth for a bit just to make sure.

It was going to take someone like Nikola Jokić to prove that what he is currently doing could, in fact, be done. In the NBA in 2019, it is illogical at best, and malpractice at worst, to assume that a big man of most vintages could orchestrate an entire offense, such that passes from the elbows cease being a novelty or the in-between to something better on their way to becoming essential.

In a way that roughly approximates the annual appreciation of Al Horford’s defense, Nikola Jokić has been sensational for the Denver Nuggets in these playoffs. The implications of that adjective are exactly what I mean – you, the viewer, can feel Jokić’s impact on games just as his own teammates, and the typically-confused opposition, feel it.

Read More

When Letting Westbrook Be Westbrook Goes Wrong

By
April 23, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment

Joe Murphy/NBAE via Getty Images

We all saw it, and we knew what it was when it happened. With a little over nine minutes remaining in the third quarter of Game 2 of the first round playoff series between the Portland Trail Blazers and the Oklahoma City Thunder, two plays in succession told us everything we needed to know. A team expected to, at the very least, physically challenge the Golden State Warriors has once again fallen flat in the playoffs, its back prone against the 3-1 deficit it faces, neither of its stars producing at the levels we’ve come to expect.

Down three, Russell Westbrook shoves his way into what he believes with all of his heart, an organ I have come to believe is ablaze within his chest at all times, is a foul against Damian Lillard. Dame waves off the non-foul and subsequent possession – in which Westbrook drops himself out before bricking a three-pointer – in order to literally hype himself up before, you guessed it, knocking down a three-pointer in a seemingly-disinterested Westbrook’s face from just in front of the gigantic Blazers logo at center court. At that point, you knew what was coming, against the dying of the light.

Read More

Harden of Eden

By
March 29, 2019
Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment

The Garden of Eden, Erastus Salisbury Field (1860)

At one point, it seems, humans were much better off. In our innocence and, eventually, naïveté, we inherited a large swath of flora, fit for our use and designed to provide eternal happiness. It was here where we were whole, and it was here where we decided to channel our desire to the one thing we could not have. We’ve been suffering ever since, to our great delight.

Edinnu was the Assyrian root, via Sumerian, that ended up giving the Garden of Eden its modern-day name, courtesy of the Aramaic root, meaning “to be fruitful, plentiful.” We could’ve had it all, indeed.

I realize this can be a lot to handle, and I’m not asking you to internalize it all at once. This is the same effect that defenders likely have when facing James Harden, and, similarly, that stupefied state renders fans senseless when they watch him.

Read More

Standing On The Verge Of Getting It Way Off

By
March 8, 2019
America, Basketball, NBA, Sports
Leave a comment
Image result for twisted metal ice cream truck

Courtesy Sony Computer Entertainment

The idea that Magic Johnson had, I’m guessing, was simply that adding the best player in basketball – whatever that means – to a 35-win team might just be able to push the door open on a Western Conference playoff picture that it has not entered since 2013.

In a vacuum, this makes sense, being that LeBron James had led his various, sometimes-oddball teams to the NBA Finals in each of the prior eight seasons. For what Zach Lowe refers to as “the junior varsity conference,” LeBron was the final boss, and the Finals boss, for longer than erstwhile running mates Kyrie Irving and Isaiah Thomas have been in the league.

In hindsight, what has happened was, or could have been, plain to see. LeBron had interests beyond basketball; the Lakers had interests beyond developing (admittedly big name!) young talent; LaVar Ball had interests beyond Lonzo Ball. These things happen.

Read More