The Rake Magazine

Category: Sports

  • Lakers Best in West, Celts Seize Control

    (Photo by Evan Gole/NBAE via Getty Images)

    For casual basketball fans who stop by only in the postseason to get their taste of the NBA, the Los Angeles Lakers made their four-outta-five domination of the defending champion (now ex-champion) San Antonio Spurs exceeding simple to understand. MVP Kobe Bryant played exceptional basketball, particularly on the offensive end and especially in the second half, when the aging, dinged up Spurs were most vulnerable. Kobe racked up 52 points (or an average of 10.4) in the first halves of the five games, and 94 (18.8) in the second halves. And yet Bryant has become so talented that this almost effortless 29.2 points per game licking he put on the Spurs probably enhanced the defensive reputation of his primary matchup, Bruce Bowen. Whereas Bowen was beaten, his replacements were embarrassed, casually demolished, unable to even slow Kobe down a little bit, let alone prevent him from proving that this matchup would decide the game in LA’s favor without plentiful reinforcements. Kobe’s hang times were longer, his dribble penetrations quicker and smoother, his competitive instinct just a tiny bit keener. Best of all for Laker fans, and for Kobe’s Laker teammates getting fitted for rings, his conference finals performance wasn’t spectacular but clinical, and serious as a heart attack.

    Who else on the Lakers had a really good series at both ends of the court? Certainly not the two long, quick, big men, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, nor point guard Derek Fisher. Role players Vlad Radmanovic and Jordan Farmar played better than expected, but neither one averaged double figures in points, or made the Spurs think twice about adjusting their priorities to try and stop them. No, take Kobe out of the equation and this is a 4-1 series the other way, even with Manu Gibobili hobbled.

    On the other hand, the Lakers are very long, very quick, and very deep, and defensively, although their focus wandered and their immaturity showed on occasion, their athletic talent and persistent energy frustrated the hell out of San Antonio. Their rotations were rapid and varied, and that speed and unpredictability coupled with their obscuring length effectively robbed more open looks away from the Spurs than either Phoenix or New Orleans had been able to manage in the first two rounds.

    It really would have been fun to see this series had Ginobili been at full capacity. In the normal course of events, the likes of Gasol/Odom/Vlad Rad/Turiaf/etc would have thwarted some of Manu’s patented kamikaze penetration. And Ginobili’s ankle woes likewise would have thwarted some of that penetration even against an ordinary team. But put the two together–the Lakers’ interior D and Ginobili’s lack of mobility to cut and twist in traffic–and that aspect of the Spurs offense was effectively eliminated. It thus became all about how many treys San Antonio could sink. And while that is an important part of the Spurs’ attack, it can’t be the meat *and* the potatoes of what they do.

    Before we turn to the Celts and Pistons, a few words about the horrible officiating at the end of Game Four, and the equally horrible reactions by the players and commentators.

    First of all, I understand it is the final seconds of a crucial playoff game. I understand that Bones Barry didn’t "sell the call" by leaping up with a shot attempt into the body of Derek Fisher as Fisher leapt toward him. And I agree that both of these can be mitigating factors that keeps the whistle out of the officials’ mouths– *if* the play and the infraction are a borderline call. But this was a foul, flat out, and to argue that it wasn’t is to engage in stupidity or delusion. Derek Fisher jumped into Barry, landed with his hands and elbows on Barry’s neck hard enough to buckle his knees and torso and knock him off balance as he tried to dribble his way clear to attempt the shot. Does anyone disagree with that? If you don’t call that, then where do you draw the line?

    The NBA has a code of honor that you don’t whine to or about the refs on a make-or-break play. The problem with having pretty much nothing but former players doing postgame commentary–Reggie Miller, Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith–is that they don’t think rationally because they are following the code. Ditto Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who obviously didn’t want the controversy distracting his team’s preparation for Game Five, and obviously instructed his players not to utter a peep of protest or rebuttal over the accuracy of the non-call. Consequently, the three commentators–who looked stricken, as if they were at a funeral, immediately after the game, knowing they’d have to render a judgment on something upon which their heads and hearts disagreed with their eyes–came around to blaming Barry, or patronizing him for "not being in that situation much before." Miller said it was "a good non-call," Barkley actually said that because the Lakers had outplayed the Spurs so thoroughly, the refs were reluctant to award potentially game-winning free throws to San Antonio. Smith at least acknowledged it was a foul, but essentially agreed with Miller.

    I actually wrote a long item about this after the game, but it got eaten by the computer and I went to bed. But the gist of my sentiment, then and now, is that the refs swallowed their whistles three times in the final 90 seconds or so, an incompetent display that sets a very bad precedent. First, Tony Parker should have gotten a free throw as Lamar Odom ran through him as they tumbled out of bounds after Odom’s goaltended on Parker’s layup–that should have been a potential three point play. Second, the Lakers should have gotten a new 24 second clock after their jumper grazed the front iron on the next possession. This would have forced the Spurs to foul to get the ball back, sending the Lakers to the line for two shots. Third, Barry was obviously fouled while he was trying to get in position to shoot, meaning that, with LA over the limit, it was a two-shot foul (this is what the league office ultimately ruled the next day). Add it up and the Spurs should have had three foul shots, the Lakers two. Of course if Parker hits his free throw and/or the Lakes hit their free throws, who knows how that would have affected the final Barry possession. Bottom line, it was a tainted win for the Lakers, who were clearly the better team in this series, and deserved an unblemished demonstration of that.

    On to the Celts and the Pistons. Once again, I’m late to the instant commentary party (I’ll probably try to rectify that by posting three pointers for games during the Finals), and know that you don’t need to hear me repeat kudos for the monster Game Five effort delivered by Kendrick Perkins, or to note Ray Allen’s return to accuracy on his jumper. So I’ll be a little counterintuitive and instead remind everyone how vital it is to have players delivering consistently strong performances this far into the postseason. That’s another reason why Kobe was so obviously the MVP of the Lakers-Spurs series. In the Celts-Pistons matchup, barring any earthshaking, melodramatic development in the next game or two, the hands-down MVP should Kevin Garnett if Boston wins, and Rip Hamilton if Detroit triumphs.

    Both KG and Rip play with all-star teammates in lineups that are renowned for spreading the scoring around to at least three players, and yet both are leading their respective teams in scoring by at least 6 points per game. The reason for this is consistency. While Allen or Perkins or even Paul Pierce for Boston, and Billups or McDyess or ‘Sheed for Detroit have all had significant dropoffs in production during at least one of the five games that have been played thus far, Garnett and Hamilton keep delivering double-digit totals, while putting up gaudy or at least respectable numbers in other fa
    cets of the game such as rebounding, assists, blocks or steals. Each player’s opposing coach has burned a lot of brain cells trying to figure out how to deter this high level of production, to no avail. That’s impressive, and yet too easily overlooked as we anoint heroes on a game-to-game basis.

    That said, there are some fascinating subplots involved as we head into Game Six in Detroit tonight: Will Lindsay Hunter’s on-ball defense continue to checkmate the Celts’ backup point guards to the degree that Rondo plays nearly the entire game again? And will the Celts finally counter by giving Pierce more play-making and ball-handling responsibilities while Rondo gets a blow? Given the stakes involved–two veteran teams with windows closing on shots at a ring, trying to avoid plummeting from highly successful regular seasons (the two best records in the NBA) to not even reaching the Finals–and the intensity of the suffocating defense each team plays–are the incidences of technicals, flagrants, and controversial non-calls going to continue to rise, and if so, which team keeps its cool? Is Ray Allen back for good this time? Will Flip Saunders continue to ride his veteran starters even if Stuckey is outplaying Billups and Maxiell keeps proving he deserves more burn? Should PJ Brown and Kurt Thomas announce that they won’t sign with anybody until February and then again pick the playoff-bound team that is most complementary with what they bring to the table?

    My answers: Yes, no, yes, Detroit in Game Six, nearly back but not all the way, yes, and emphatically yes.

    I don’t see Detroit winning two straight–remember, the Celts, like the Lakers, have never been behind in a series during this postseason–but I wouldn’t bet against them at home.

  • I Can't Believe I Watched the Whole Thing: That's Why They Play Nine, You Communists, Part Two

    AP Photo/Orlin Wagner

    As I sat staring vacantly at the TV in the ninth inning of last night’s Kansas City-Minnesota game, I had another of my brief, increasingly pathetic revelations. My God, I said to my dog, This really is my life.

    Which is something I find myself saying to my dog with alarming frequency of late.

    I’d been sitting there for almost three hours. The sound on the television was muted and I was listening to some mournful Armenian blowing narcotic tendrils of fog through an instrument called a duduk. I’d eaten entirely too much candy, almost all of it the sort of novelty garbage that is created expressly for abject convenience store consumers like myself –DOTS Elements, for instance (Fire/Cinnamon, Water/Green Tea, Earth/Pomegranate, Air/Wintergreen). Or Twizzlers Rainbow Twists. Or Life Savers Fruit Splosions Gummies ("Made with real fruit juice"). Good stuff, all of it, but probably best savored in moderation.

    There was really no good reason for me to still be sitting on the couch as the game went into the ninth inning. The Royals had an 8-3 lead and seemed well on their way to ending a nine-game losing streak. It had been a pretty miserable game all around, and somebody who had anything whatsoever else to do with their evening would have turned off the television (or at the very least turned the channel) after Delmon Young made two errors and the Royals scored three runs in the bottom of the fourth. Livan Hernandez was getting rocked, and would leave after the sixth, having surrendered thirteen hits and eight runs (six of them earned).

    I can’t even pretend that I was still watching with anything approaching hope or expectation. No, the sad truth is that I was simply (or not so simply) unable to move. I think it’s safe to say that I was in a sugar-induced stupor, and I was aware that I could no longer feel my right arm and that I was chanting –as I so often chant when I am watching a baseball game in a sort of empirical blackout– "Hey batta, batta, batta. Hey, batta, batta."

    On some level, then, I was also apparently aware that the Twins were batting in the ninth inning, and so I watched with zero enthusiasm or even real interest as Michael Cuddyer went down swinging for the first out against KC reliever Ramon Ramirez. I watched as Jason Kubel singled and the beleaguered Delmon Young whiffed for the second out.

    What in the world would I do with the rest of my night? I wondered.

    Kubel made his way to second on a wild pitch, and Mike Lamb singled, scoring Kubel. It was still 8-4, Royals, but at least, I thought, the Twins were going to go down swinging. Bully for them.

    Brendon Harris singled, moving Lamb to second, and then Carlos Gomez chopped one through the infeld, scoring Lamb. 8-5, Royals. Nice little two-out rally, I thought.

    Joel Peralta was brought in to relieve Ramirez. Ron Gardenhire countered by sending up Craig Monroe to pinch hit for Alexi Casilla. Monroe took three balls and then managed to work the count full. And then he somehow managed to turn on a pitch and hit it over the left field fence to tie the game.

    And then Denys Reyes and Jesse Crain somehow managed to get through the bottom of the ninth without allowing a run.

    And then Justin Morneau somehow managed to hit Peralta’s first pitch of the tenth for another homer, and the Twins were somehow, suddenly, up 9-8.

    And then Joe Nathan, fresh off his first blown save of the season, somehow managed to retire the Royals in order in the bottom of the inning and the Twins had another win.

    And then I’ll be damned if I didn’t eat some more candy and immediately wonder, What in the world will I do with the rest of my night?

    And then it occurred to me (baseball and sleeplessness having once again conspired to kindle my spiritual lunacy), Perhaps I might finally get around to baptizing my dog.

  • The Three Pointer: The Pistons Square the Series

    Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images

    Eastern Conference Finals, Game #4: Boston 75, Detroit 94

    Series record: Tied 2-2

    1. The "Little 3"

    I’m not the first one to unimaginatively pervert the "Big 3" sobriquet for tonight’s no-show troika of Celtic stars, and the way they are playing, I certainly won’t be the last. Among Boston’s starting five, the two role players stepped up fine, especially Kendrick Perkins. But the stars were all dim bulbs, collectively shooting 11-38 FG and refusing to take control of what remarkably, all things considered, was a winnable game until about 3 minutes left to play.

    Begin with Paul Pierce, the man whose guidance of the offense in the half-court is what ultimately swung the Celtic series versus Cleveland. Tonight Pierce had his shot blocked as many times as it went in the hoop, making just 3-14 FG while getting housed three time. Worse than that, though, was that he doled one measly assist compared to four turnovers. Yes, his defense on Tayshaun Prince was stout, and yes he got to the line 11 times and sank ten of them. But in the half-court sets, Pierce, who has become the floor general and go-to creator, never really made anything happen via either the pass or the jumper.

    On to Kevin Garnett, who had an embarrassing night first getting his shot blocked from behind by Jason Maxiell on a breakaway, then getting shown up on two straight defensive sets, the first on a spin move and layup for ‘Sheed Wallace, quickly followed by a Stuckey alley oop lob to Maxiell over KG’s leaping fingers. Now with the exception of the ‘Sheed spin, a charitably inclined individual could say Garnett was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But there is no excuse or justification for Garnett’s disappearance in the first quarter. During the regular season and the first three games of these finals, KG has owned ‘Sheed and the Pistons from about 16 feet on in, averaging 24 points and converting well over half his shots. So tonight the Pistons come roaring out with a 10-0 run and Detroit’s matchup nightmare is MIA. The other nine starters on the floor had all attempted at least one field goal before Garnett deigned to clank a jumper with the score already 16-4 Detroit and the first quarter more than half over with 5:19 to play. His second shot was the breakaway dunk attempt swatted away by Maxiell with 2:22 to play. He sat about a minute later with his team down 20-12.

    During that entire first quarter, in other words, Garnett followed through on a post-up move exactly once. That is ridiculous and typical of the self-effacement that crops up enough to stain his reputation. He finished with decent numbers, given the context of the Celtics offense: 6-16 FG, 16 pts, 10 rebounds, 3 assists (vs. 3 turnovers) and two steals. But when your team is up 2-1 on the road with a chance to essentially make your winning inevitable and your desperate, talented opponent races to a lead, and you are the best mismatch for your ballclub, you make yourself available and then you succeed or fail on that availability. You don’t shoot 0-2 FG with one of the shots being a breakout in transition.

    Which leaves us with Ray Allen. I am sick and tired of color commentator Mark Jackson (and to a lesser extent his colleagues Breen and Van Gundy) detailing every imagined flaw in Rajon Rondo’s game, especially on offense, while Allen gets a free ride for a stretch of abysmally cold outside shooting that has gone beyond a slump and is entering Nick Anderson or John Starks territory for historic, career-footnoting ineptitude. Less than 6 weeks ago, Allen ranked with Peja Stokjaovic and Steve Nash as one of the NBA’s best outside shooters. Tonight he once again failed to hit a single jumper, going 2-8 FG in four seconds less than 35 minutes, with both buckets being layups. He missed three treys and turned down about 15 other open looks. Compared to the way Allen is shooting, Rondo is Pete Maravich.

    I know that none of this is Allen’s "fault," in that he’s been lax or malicious or brought this on by any karmic retribution that would make sense. He’s been forthright and classy about his woes. He’s moved the ball relatively well and has been mostly automatic from the free throw line. But it is getting to the point where patience is appearing to be less and less of a virtue. Allen has already had his breakthrough game to end the doldrums when he shot 9-16 FG in the Celts’ Game Two loss–then promptly went back to abject clanking in the next two games. Tonight’s fourth quarter had to be a bad dream for him: Not only couldn’t he buy a basket, he missed two crunchtime free throws (!) and had Rip Hamilton toy with him on two crucial crunchtime buckets en route to Rip’s 10 4th quarter points and game line of 8-10 FGs. It might be time to experiment with Rondo on Hamilton and either Cassell or Eddie House guarding Billups at the point, at least for brief stretches. That’s two tough matchups on the defensive end, but maybe a little more offense–some shots that go in, in part because they are attempted by someone not worrying about being an albatross every time they pull the trigger. The Celtics as a team shot 31% tonight, and Allen’s 2-8 didn’t elevate that putrid accuracy. I understand that the Celtics don’t win the NBA Finals against the likes of LA or SA without Allen being on his marksman-like game. But that doesn’t mean you can’t rattle the mix–Tony Allen, even?–for four or five minutes stretches, just to see if you can stir a change.

    2. A Night For Large Role Players

    As in large guys who are role players, but also guys who play large roles. The consensus among those who saw tonight’s tilt would be that Antonio McDyess was the player of the game, and not just because he scored more points (21) and grabbed more rebounds (16) than anybody else. Although he continues to be deadly from midrange, McDyess was perhaps most valuable as the team’s emotional leader. With Rip and ‘Sheed bedeviled by fouls, Billups obviously not right in his hamstring, and Prince experiencing shooting woes, McDyess became the regulator, the one to keep things on a consistent keel that blended both passion and self-control. He came up huge. Ditto Maxiell, who in additon to his signature block and nifty alley oop played staunch half-court D and was a perfect 6-6 FG in 20:28 off the bench. And over on the other sideline, Kendrick Perkins was probably Boston’s best player tonight, ensuring that nobody got anything easily in the paint and warring for defensive boards and putbacks while stoking the desire in what seemed a curiously blase, or perhaps just disspirited, Celtics ballclub. After a horrible series against the Cavs, it has been enjoyable to watch Perkins’s series-long revival vs. Detroit.

    3. Quick Observations

    If I’ve got a rooting interest in either team, it is Boston, who I picked to win in 7 and who stars one of my favorite players in Garnett. But without the refs blowing their whistles, the Celts lose by 30 tonight, as Hamilton (8-10 FG) and ‘Sheed (6-9 FG) were both limited by foul trouble while the Celts lived at the line, registering more than half of their first 53 points via free throws. That said, the refs are getting wise to Hamilton’s arm-locking manuvers and push-offs to get open, and ‘Sheed still commits some really obvious and circumstantially dunderheaded infractions, like 4th foul showing hard on the pick and roll with more than 7 minutes to play in the third.

    Flip Saunders and Mark Jackson seem to want to agree that Chauncey is more rusty than dinged up, but the rest of us don’t have to buy that bullshit. Billups has always moved like a cat, he a bunched-up and spring player with a great first step. That stuff is nowhere to be seen in this series. Instead
    we see Billups missing badly on his jumper (3-12 tonight) and walking with a hitch during breaks in the action.

    I understand that Lindsay Hunter’s on-ball defense is preventing Eddie House from getting much burn, but have the Celts forgotten that Pierce was frequently bringing the ball up in Game Seven of the Cleveland series? For that matter, KG and Ray Allen also have pretty good handles. It sure would have been interesting to see if House’s microwave act from way outside could have made up that perpetual 5-10 point margin that existed from midway through the first until about 4-5 minutes left in the game. Boston was 1-9 from trey territory tonight, and that was Posey in the corner off a KG double team. I mean, if Sam Cassell is going to chuck a trey with 16 seconds on the shot clock in the fourth quarter and the Celts down 6 without nobody under the hoop for a rebound, is there any justification for keeping House under wraps?

     

  • What Fresh Hell Is This?

    Sidney Ponson?

    Come on, seriously: Sidney Ponson?

    You have to be kidding me.

    Truly, there is very, very little that could give me more displeasure than seeing that fat Aruban hump toss a complete game gem in the Metrodome.

    My displeasure wouldn’t be much diminished even if he had been wearing a Minnesota uniform.

    (Here’s an aside from the Department of Incredulity: You all surely know that Sir Sidney Ponson was knighted in 2003 by Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. Still, though, that fact continues to boggle my mind, and I must confess that I didn’t even know that the Netherlands had a Queen, let alone a Queen named Beatrix. A year after being knighted, of course, Ponson slugged an Aruban judge and spent eleven days in jail. Five years later he should have been out of baseball and working in an Aruban Arby’s; but, no, there he was, the human grease trap, once again making a hazardous waste dump of the pitching mound and throwing a complete game against the Minnesota Twins, the team for which, in 2007, he posted a 2-5 record with a 6.93 ERA. Sometimes baseball sucks so much it can make you throw up your microwave burritos.)

    As for the Twins, well, fellow fans, things aren’t exactly looking cheery for the local nine of late.

    You all want to get your panties in a bunch about Delmon Young? Come on. We’ve got a whole lot of big problems that are a whole lot bigger than Delmon Young. Has he been a disappointment? Sure, but why pick on the new kid when there are so many of the old kids (Michael Cuddyer and Jason Kubel, for starters) deserving of your ire? The bottom of the order is –just as I feared– even worse than last year’s bottom of the order.

    It seems like every day there’s another mangled or broken thumb or finger, and there are an awful lot of guys on that pitching staff of late who would look right at home in a Sid Ponson mask (the 2004-2007 model).

    For years we’ve been spoon fed a party line that insisted the Twins played the game the right way. Something about that always struck me as 80% unreconstituted horseshit, but I’ll be damned if this current outfit hasn’t gone and kicked in the additional 20% and made me almost miss Tom Kelly. The defense and the bullpen –regarded as the strength of the team throughout the Gardenhire era– have been mostly brutal, and night after night we’ve been subjected to fundamental lapses that would give even a Legion coach fits.

    Right now this team is next to last in the AL in homeruns, first in homeruns allowed, 12th in OBP, last in walks, and next to last in fielding percentage. They have a leadoff hitter who’s fifth in the league in strikeouts, ahead of Richie Sexson. All of those numbers would sure as hell seem to be a recipe for disaster.

    Yet somehow the Twins are hanging in there at .500 and holding on to second place in the Central. If they’re going to maintain even a .500 pace, however, they for damn sure are going to have to stumble across some good news that’s a whole lot better than the bad news they’ve been running into on an almost daily basis.

  • Guts and Small Ball

    AP Photo by Jim Mone

    Francisco Liriano was almost as disappointing as Nelson Liriano. There has been a disquieting wave of injuries—to Michael Cuddyer, Kevin Slowey, Adam Everett, Scott Baker, Nick Punto, and, most depressingly, to Pat Neshek.

    The offense has been erratic; the power and team on base percentage alarming. Up and down the lineup the new additions—and there are scads of new additions—have been underperforming at the plate. The bullpen has been as shaky as it’s been in years, and seems ill equipped to absorb the Neshek blow.

    On paper, certainly, the Twins appear to be a team with all sorts of concerns, and so far almost any close scrutiny of the stats would seem to bear that out.

    And yet—at this point, at least—every team should have such concerns.

    The question, of course, is how the hell are the Twins doing it? How the hell do they even hang with a team like the Red Sox, let alone take three-of-four from the most powerful, most multi-dimensionally talented team in the universe? How has a team that has allowed more runs than it has scored, and that is thirteenth out of fourteen AL teams in both homeruns and OBP, managed to grind its way to twenty wins and first place in the Central?

    That’s a damn good question, and I’m not sure I have an answer for you. It might well be a fluke. The Twins have handled the Central so far (at a 13-8 clip), and they’ve been pretty dominant at home (14-7). Where things get a bit worrisome is in the team’s numbers with runners in scoring position (.311 BA, .371 OBP, and .452 SLG) and runners in scoring position with two outs (.315, .376, and .420). In a freakish season (or in the case of a freakishly good hitter), an individual might sustain those sorts of numbers over 162 games, but you pretty much expect that they’ll eventually level out for the team and be more reflective of their overall performance, which so far hasn’t been terrific, to say the least. A small ball team in today’s American League pretty much has to have a dominant pitching staff. They certainly can’t expect to lead the league in homers allowed and live to drink champagne in the post season.

    The Minnesota pitching staff, from the starters to the bullpen, has been gutsy. It’s been crafty. It’s battled and pitched in and out of jams and, on the nights the Twins have won, generally been just good enough. There hasn’t, though, been the domination we came to expect from Johan Santana every five days, and, in recent years, from the back end of the pen. Joe Nathan has been (mostly) his usual stout self, but with Neshek sidelined there’s a level of pressure—and right now it sort of still feels like desperation—that we’re unaccustomed to feeling in the late innings. Is anyone yet feeling entirely comfortable with any of our seventh- and eighth-inning options? If we’re going to have to start extending guys like Rincon, Reyes, and Crain (all of whom have battled arm problems) what kind of trouble are we potentially looking at or asking for?

    I fully realize that at this point that’s just typical neurosis, but given what’s transpired thus far it also sort of feels like unpardonable gratitude, so like everybody else I’ll just wait and see and hope.

    The division has obviously been a bit of a mystery in the early going, and everybody seems to be battling some problem or another. I’ve said previously that I think the Detroit Tigers are facing a constellation of problems that are going to bedevil them the rest of the way, and I still believe that. They obviously have the potential to put up outrageous offensive numbers, but they’ve been up and down, and their starting pitching has been putting them in a hole night after night; if I’m not mistaken, twelve of their sixteen wins have been come-from-behind affairs, and that shit will wear on even the best offense.

    The White Sox? Can’t stand them, and I expect them to be as erratic as their manager all season (if Ozzie doesn’t get fired).

    The team that’s been lurking in the weeds for the first six weeks—and, actually, they’ve just started lumbering ashore and shaking off the milfoil—is the Cleveland Indians. As exciting and unexpected as the Twins’ performance has been, am I alone in feeling more than a little bit queasy about the fact that, even after taking three-of-four from Boston, our local nine still finds itself with just a game-and-a-half cushion?

    Finally, for all of us Jason Kubel fans—and there must be at least a couple dozen of us out here—is it time to shut up and accept that our pet project is entering Rich Becker territory? I suspect we may have no choice if Craig Monroe continues to energize the team with his offense and take away Kubel’s at bats. And after watching Monroe the last week I’m prepared to admit that I was probably wrong about him, provided, of course, that he continues to prove me wrong. Which, since I really am a fan, would make me nothing but happy.

  • NBA Second Round Update Thread

     

     Celtics-Cavs Update: Squared series after 88-77 Cavs win last night.

     It is always so easy to blame the coach, but I don’t see how Rivers avoids castigation here. He has decided that veterans new to the team are more reliable than the guys who got him 66 wins. Last night PJ Brown had a stellar game flashing out for that sideline pop shot, and he wasn’t too shabby on defense either. But having PJ on the floor enabled Mike Brown to keep Joe Smith on Brown and Varejao on KG, meaning, as Levi astutely pointed out in the comments below, he was the go-to guy in the low block at crunchtime. Bad idea.

    But the killer for the Celts is this Sam Cassell fixation. It gets a little wearisome listening to folks blaming Rondo for all the shots he has taken (Magic Johnson, with his predictably stupid, star-centered analysis, hammered this point) without noticing that Rondo made half of his 14 attempts in 33:47 and was a minus -5 while the Celts as a team made 38.6% in 48 minutes and were a minus -11. Cassell, by the way, was 0-5 FG and minus -6 in just 14:13, while Boobie Gibson ran circles around him–a mismatch so blatantly obvious I was hollering for it in the stuff I wrote before the game.

    Levi is also right that Ray Allen is co-goat in that he is not being aggressive at all in terms of looking for his shot, and with Rivers stupidly leaving Eddie House on the bench in favor of Cassell, the Celts only have a midrange game versus the Cavs.

    Last but certainly not least, how good is Lebron James in the postseason? As his encore for dismantling the Pistons last year, he’s pretty much single-handedly winning this second-round. He had 21 points last night–nobody else on the floor had more than 15. He had 13 assists–nobody else on the floor had more than 4. And during the 3:43 he sat at the end of the first half, Paul Pierce shot 2-4 FG. Pierce also scored two buckets in the brief time Pavlovic was on him when the Cavs went small, meaning that the vast majority of Pierce’s misses in a 6-17 FG night came with LeBron on him. Got that? The leader in points and assists by a huge margin and the shutdown defender on the other team’s top scorer. Bravo.

     

    "And we’re baaaaaack!" as the Jimmy Fallon character Joey Mack used to say on SNL.

    With a game on every night, the dilemma has been to put something up that isn’t immediately dated. At the risk of disrupting some really insightful comment threads that occur when I let things languish, my solution is to update my content as we go along (for example, I’ll only post about the Eastern Conference on this first go-round then come back and add the West after today’s games) and then post every two or three days. So let’s get to it.

    Detroit-Orlando: An unmagical bore

    There is a glaring difference between the caliber of play in the two conferences in this second round, with the intensity and ability of the two Western series utterly compelling, while the East is clearly least, a maddening array of missed opportunities, a pair of skirrmishes of strategic ineptitude and dysfunctional execution. And the Pistons-Magic matchup has thus far been worst of all.

    With 7:42 left to play in the third quarter Saturday, the Magic were up by 15, 63-48, to a team obviously missing the injured Chauncey Billups at both ends of the court. The Pistons proceeded to go on a 28-7 run that had them up by 6, 76-70, with 8:40 to go. During that 10:58 of action, Orlando went 2-17 from the field. Clueless Jameer Nelson led the squad in shots during that woeful stint, making one of five and missing two free throws. Nelson’s missed free throw with 44 seconds to play also spelled the difference between a loss and overtime in the 90-89 defeat. True, Nelson generally had his way with Rodney Stuckey, but when Detroit subbed in defensive specialist Lindsay Hunter, why did Nelson keep chucking?

    Nelson is just one of many goats here. Fresh off his being named to the All-NBA First Team as center, Dwight Howard was horrible, shooting 0-9 from the field in the final 43 minutes of the game, a period that saw him grab 6 offensive rebounds without converting a single one into any points–three missed putbacks and misfired jumpers by Nelson (twice) and Keyon Dooling ensued. Meanwhile, SVG clung to a crunchtime matchup of Dooling on Rip Hamilton, against all evidence that it could succeed. This was manna from heaven for matchup maven Flip Saunders, who posted Rip up on Dooling about a half-dozen plays in a row. Yes, Hamilton missed a couple of j’s over Dooling, but Van Gundy’s refusal to utilize the double team and to leave Dooling–who is four inches shorter than Rip and had four fouls at that point–out to dry was idiotic, especially after Hamilton fouled Dooling out (the frustrated Drooling picked up a T as he exited) and hit those free throws down the stretch.

    Understand that this was a game Orlando had in its hands. All they needed to do was play fundamentally sound defense and move the ball on offense. Instead, they let Detroit beat them in transition off the turnovers (something that simply hasn’t happened as often in the Utah-LA and SA-NO series, where transition D is a priority), refused to run any plays into the post for their lone All Star, let Jameer Nelson imagine himself as the catalyst of the offense rather than a fourth option in the half-court, and had Hedo Turkoglu burn all kinds of time off the clock so that when his terrible scoop shot off the drive barely grazed the front iron at the end, Orlando couldn’t even desperately foul in time to save the game for another possession.

    If I were Detroit, I’d leave Billups on the shelf for the next two games (if it comes to that) against the Magic, give him time to fully heal. Because either the Celts or the Cavs are a significant step up from Orlando, and the Western champion will be at least a step up from there. Put simply, Detroit doesn’t need Billups to close this out–in fact Hunter got better as the game went along, a nice little dividend for the Pistons if the gritty vet can find a rhythm with these extra minutes–but if he isn’t mostly healthy in the matchups after Orlando, the Piston have little or no shot to advance.

    Celtics-Cavs: Still Waiting on LeBron

    Oh how the national network audience wanted to canonize LeBron James last night, declare him fully back in all his glory after his putrid 8-42 FG flop in the first two games of the Boston-Cleveland series. And one could convincingly argue that LBJ delivered, stuffing the stat sheet for 21 points, 8 assists (half of them dazzling), 3 blocks (all of them dazzling), 4 steals, the snuffing of Paul Pierce on defense (Pierce had more turnovers than field goals) and a game-best plus +29 in 40:15 of play. What more could anyone possibly want or expect out of the 23-year old superstar?

    Scoring off dribble penetration, that’s what. The Cavs would be up 2-1 instead of the other way around if LeBron had been able to finish at the rim in Game One, and they won’t win this series if he can’t get to the cup and either convert the layups or the free throws the rest of the way. The only blemish in James’s game Saturday night was his 2-11 bricklaying from inside the arc, giving him a horrendous 10-43 FG total on non-3-pointers in the first three games. That’s 23.3% shooting on two-pointers for arguably the best penetrator in the NBA.

    Fortunately, LeBron has gotten to the FT line 35 times in the three contests thus far, and made 25, or 71.4%. What that number tells you is that the Celts, much like the Wizards in the previous series, are determined to make LeBron "earn it at the line." That’s code for "beat the shit out of him."

    Yeah, I’ve heard all the old-timers talk about how the game isn’t as tough as it used to be, that the flagrant foul rules have sissified things and that back in the day–when men were men and wore shorts so tight they got hernias when they saw a pretty girl in the stands–players could administer a proper beatdown in the
    paint without worrying about those nanny refs butting in.

    Well, like most occasions in any arena where old-timers are talking about their prime, it’s about four parts bullshit (due to exaggeration) and one part truth. I’m old enough to give the old-timers a run for their fading memories, starting watching hoops in 1959 at age 6, and I can tell you that there is more gratituous pounding and takedowns now than there ever was. First of all, the athletes are bigger, quicker, jump higher, and head to the hole more fearlessly, meaning the potential for injury is greater. Second, all the contemporary players have heard and bought in to the bullshit about how the vintage NBA was tougher. It wasn’t.

    Yeah, maybe you had more burly white guys slugging each other with elbows–call it joustling with a vengeance–down in the low block. But the infamous Kevin McHale takedown of Kurt Rambis back in the 80s is so widely remembered precisely because it was relatively rare and particularly violent. You didn’t see guys clotheslined and cross body-blocked nearly as often as you do today–and, to reiterate, when it did happen, they weren’t moving nearly as fast, jumping as high, and being finished off nearly as thoroughly. How many of you old-timers remember Dr. J getting clocked the way LeBron has gotten clocked in the past couple of years? Or what about other erstwhile high-flyers like Elgin Baylor, or even Michael Jordan? The Pistons had a deserved reputation as Bad Boys, but watch them try to intimidate the Bulls and compare it to the way the Wizards went after LeBron in the first round this year. They are very very comparable, and yet Washington’s Brendan Haywood can actually call LBJ a crybaby, even as his punk-ass gets schooled by Ilgauskas for most of the series. The old timers are spooling out self-aggrandizing nonsense and the young’uns full of testosterone are gobbling it up and turning hoops into something as stupid as hockey.

    Unfortunately, that’s what it has come to. It turns out that yesterday I was switching channels between baseball, hoops and hockey, and saw the end of the Red Wings-Stars hockey game. The goalie cheap-shoted a Stars skater right at the end of the game, the player retaliated with a swung-stick spear into the goalie’s chest, where all the padding is, and the goalie went down like he’s been tasered. After seeing the replays it was clearly all an act. So later in the day I’m watching LeBron drive and James Posey–a player I like and respect–cheap shots him with a hand across the neck off the drive. It was properly ruled a flagrant foul, but James, like Detroit goalie Chris Osgood, played it to the hilt, going down and grimacing like crazy, rolling in agony. So what we’ve got now is alternately more cheap shots–just off the top of my head I can think of Jason Kidd’s takedown of a Hornet player, Marvin Williams horse-collaring Rondo, Raja Bell doing his thing on Manu Ginobili, the Stevenson clothesline and the Haywood push on LeBron, and I’m not even counting Boozer knocking out Landry’s tooth because that really was accidental–and more ostentatious acting, of the sort made famous by the flopping Spurs. These two things beget each other, and it is time to call bullshit on the whole thing, increase the penalties for flagrants, institute a foul for flopping, and tell the senile braggarts that they really didn’t eat nails and the daughters of their opponents for breakfast.

    But back to LeBron: I think the punishment has had an effect. I think the Wizards did rough him up and that the Celts are doing the same thing. And when you get called a crybaby anyway, maybe the best course of action is to zip it to the open man and find your long-range jumper rather than put up with all the abuse. In any event, I repeat, the Cavs don’t win without LeBron scoring enough off the dribble to collapse the Celtic D for Z’s short pops, Szczerbiak’s long-range catch-and-shoots (and if Mike Brown doesn’t bench him every time Wally puts the ball on the floor with a defender on him, I’ll start believing all the terrible things people say about his coaching), and Ben Wallace’s wide open layups and putbacks on the weak side followups.

    As for the Celts, I’m delighted to report that KG is having a monster series. His aggressiveness toward the hoop sealed the deal in crunchtime of Game One and he alone came out ready to play in Game Three. Meanwhile, what has happened to Ray Allen? Paul Pierce understandably has his hands full, but if Allen can’t make the likes of Szczerbiak or Boobie Gibson pay on the offensive end, Doc Rivers might as well go with Eddie House to spread the floor.

    Bottom line, this is still anybody’s series. I thought the energy that Ben Wallace, Delonte West and Joe Smith brought to the floor in Game Three was as important as LeBron’s regal peformance in securing the victory, and think that every time Rivers relies on Sam Cassell to get things rolling he is gambling mightily. Mike Brown needs to make Boobie Gibson a permanent matchup for Cassell, then instruct him to never leave his feet when guarding Cassell and to put down the throttle every time he has the ball with Cassell on him. If the Cavs win Game Four, we’re going to get pounded by that home/road split for the Celts until we all turn the sound down. BTW, Boston doesn’t have to win one damn road game to capture the trophy, so let’s give that a rest, eh.

    Besides, just watching the way these series have unfolded, does anyone seriously think the eventual champ is coming out of the East?

    First Road Win Captures the Second Round in the West

    As I was saying about ugly takedowns…

    Actually, I honestly don’t think Ronnie Turiaf was trying to pound Price; at least not as blatantly as has occurred a dozen other plays in this postseason. It was just an unfortunate landing that had Price’s arms unable to protect his head from splitting open on the floor. It deserved to be a flagrant, of course, but I think if Price gets his hands down and there isn’t blood everywhere, Turiaf stays on the court instead of getting booted. On the other hand, Turiaf obviously hit Price hard enough to spin him; that and bumping against other players going down is why Price could break or brace his fall. And after calling for tougher penalties on flagrants, I can’t really rebut Turiaf getting tossed. But all things being relative, the actual hit Turiaf laid on him doesn’t even rank in the top ten goon moves for this postseason.

    As for the game, well, the issue here is how long do you or should you ride your stud superstar when he clearly isn’t the best option for your ballclub? This is what I knew would happen to the Wizards when Arenas came back–Agent Zero has enormous ability and an even bigger ego, and his desire to make an impact screwed up the pecking order that has served Washington well in his absence. And you could see it coming a mile away–I called it in the Cavs-Wiz series preview.

    Now Kobe Bryant is a different story. The flare-up of his back obviously rendered him into an ordinary athlete, but what makes Kobe Kobe isn’t just athleticism, it is great court vision, his wiley ways when he has the rock, his insatiable competitiveness, and ability to come up big in the clutch. So if I’m Phil Jackson, yeah, I probably call Kobe’s number in the huddle during the crunchtime timeouts–but I stipulate to him that if others are open, check those options too. I leave Kobe at his rightful place atop the pecking order, but plant the seed that the way to win when your back is ailing and the brutal Jazz won’t let you get a clean look even if you are healthy and quick is to find the open man and let him take the shot. Which is exactly what happened on the drive and kick out to Lamar Odom for that tying trey near the end of regulation, a perfectly called and executed play.

    But too often, Kobe tried to do it on his own. Odom bailed him out once with a great follow after Kobe blew the layup, and Derek Fisher was the hero of the dozen-point comeback in the final few minutes of regulation, yet Kobe kept trying to summon
    all the physical gifts normally at his disposal, long past the time when everyone watching knew he couldn’t. Hey, the refs even bailed him out on that Kirilenko "foul" right in front of the Jazz bench.

    No, the Jazz deserved to win this game, and if they designated the game’s number 1, 2, and 3 stars to come out and take a bow like in hockey, the top guy would be Deron Williams, who has pretty much demonstrated that nobody but Fisher can guard him effectively on the Lakers–LA fans will be throwing things at their TV sets the next time Jordan Farmar is assigned to Williams. In a contest loaded with tremendous crunchtime shots, none was better than Williams moving to his right after nearly losing the ball at half court and then launching over a looming Pau Gasol. You also have to give a curtain call to Mehmet Okur, whose reputation for coming up big when it matters most was burnished a little further today with his step-back treys and that immensely important offensive rebound he pulled down.

    But do the Lakers win this game is Kobe is healthy? Yes, I think so. You can’t keep Kyle Korver on the floor as often, for example, and AK-47 doesn’t get to swoop behind Kobe for that block off penetration–how often does a healthy Kobe lack the quickness to get his shot blocked cleanly from behind? For that matter, how often does Kobe get his shot blocked five times in a single game? But it isn’t Kobe’s injury that should have Laker fans kicking themselves; it is Kobe’s refusal to do what was best for the team. If you are beseiged by back spasms for the last three quarters plus overtime, do you really want to jack up 33 shots, especially when Odom and Gasol combined for 21-34 FG? Odom in particularly looked ready to take over a few times (he would have been the third guy called out to take a bow afterward), and having him get the chance to secure a 3-1 lead heading back to LA would have been a boon for the Lakers regardless of how it turned out today.

    Instead, Kobe overreached. Even the fact that he got 10 assists isn’t all good news, since it was half of the Lakers total in 53 minutes of action, demonstrating how little anyone else was allowed to create. The ostensible point guards Fisher and Farmar had *zero* assists in a combined 37:08, and only two turnovers combined, meaning their role in igniting the offense was minimal. Now, Fisher got in early foul trouble guarding Williams and Farmar was waaay overmatched–he was minus -19 in a scoreless 18:43–but the Lakers’ forte is ball movement. All five of their starters can sling the rock. So why is it that only Kobe, Gasol (4) and Luke Walton (3) had more than 2 assists, while every member of the Jazz starting five posted at least three, led by Williams’s game-high 14 dimes? Ball movement leads to high percentage shots and forced fouls by the opposition. Well, the Jazz shot 52.6% from the field and went to the line 45 times. The Lakers shot 47.4% from the field and went to the line 25 times. Kobe and Gasol combined for 49 FGA and 12 FTA.

    I still think the Lakers are going to win this series, provided Kobe’s back improves enough for him to play without martyrdom in Game Five. But Williams and Okur have both proven to be tough matchups. Odom can’t guard both Okur and Boozer, unfortunately, which means Gasol has to step up–his defense remains one of the Lakers’ few obvious weaknesses going forward. Of course Turiaf may get suspended for his takedown of Price, further complicating things. In the backcourt, I’d think about Walton playing some point on Williams. In any case, this series is better contested than I envisioned when I called it for LA in 5 or 6 at the onset.

    Did anyone really expect the Spurs to roll over and let the Hornets run them off the court in San Antonio? Tonight’s thrashing was surprising only in how little resistance New Orleans provided, and demonstrated a few things that are obvious enough to be conventional wisdom by now. One is that Bruce Bowen was always a better matchup on Peja than on Chris Paul. Just because Bowen had some success on Steve Nash in the past doesn’t mean he could stay with CP3. Paul is quicker and a better dribbler under seige. Nash excels at dishing in the open court on the fly; take away that space for him to survey the terrain and his effectiveness diminishes much more than it does for Paul under the same circumstances. You pressure Paul when he has the ball and it is far more likely he breaks you down, and then contently chooses between shooting the open jumper or drawing opponents and feeding the bounce pass or alley oop into the paint. Nash is probably a better shooter when he’s being contested (he’s three inches taller than Paul), but Paul is better at getting uncontested, especially when it is an older, rugged-but-slower guy like Bowen doing the checking. By contrast, Bowen’s in-your-jersey approach really bedevils Peja, who was magnificent not only on the catch-and-shoot during the two games in New Orleans, but in running the floor, taking people off the dribble, and crashing the offensive boards. Now that Bowen is putting the clamps on Peja, Paul and Parker are both running wild, and thus essentially cancelling each other out, a situation that very much favors San Antonio.

    Which brings us to the power forwards. After a simply stupendous first three games against a Spurs team that plays postseason defense as intelligently as any franchise in 40 years, David West was due for a bad game and perhaps not coincidentally it came on a night when Tim Duncan seemed to shake off the aches and illness that have plagued him the past week. The two don’t guard each other much, of course, but each anchors the low post offense for their team, and to the extent they successfully draw the opponents’ attention, the wider the lane gets for their teammates on penetration, and the easier the putbacks for the big men on the weak side. West is a deadly midrange shooter and a joy to watch spinning off his baseline shoulder for left-handed shots in the low left block. I’ll bet tonight is his lone stinker of the series, particularly if he can keep his temper totally under control, which apparently was no mean feat this evening.

    For Duncan, well, what can you say? He looked old and slow in the two tilts over in the Big Easy, but particularly tonight Popovich seemed to bring him out a little further away from the low block and toward the sideline, so that the inevitable double-teams created more ball-swings to the weak side, creating more running for the opponents, and many many more open treys in the corner and at the top of the key for the Bowens, Finleys, Ginobilis and Udokas of the world. The Spurs weren’t exactly marksmen on all those wide open looks–they shot 8-26 from beyond the arc–but they both wore the Hornets down with all that chasing, and also generated a helter-skelter chaos that deprived New Orleans of defensive rhythm. Right about the time the Hornets were instinctively flying toward the perimeter, Duncan decided to spin to the hoop (he was an efficient 10-13 FG) or Parker penetrated the open lanes (8-12 FG). New Orleans was working harder and less effectively.

    The final indignity was Duncan (twice) and then Ginobili drawing three fouls on defensive stopper Tyson Chandler in the first 3-plus minutes of the third quartrer. Suddenly with 8:39 to play in the third, Chandler had five fouls and the Hornets were down 19. It was right around then that New Orleans mentally threw in the towel, along with everyone but the most Hornets-addled fan watching at home. Byron Scott emptied his bench shortly after the 4th quarter and the older, slower Spurs had their garbage time to relax and ready themselves for Game Five.

    It should be a tremendous game. Even after San Antonio won Game Three, the fight staged by the Hornets–they pushed the Spurs to the brink a few times in the third and fourth quarters–had me rethinking my pick of the Spurs in 6 or 7. But San Antonio kept refining and came out in Game Four playing that incredibly well-spaced and unselfish ball movement offense that de
    stroyed the Suns in Game Three of their first round series. Can San Antonio impose their enormous will on the Hornets on the road? Paul and West both seemed a little pissed and twitchy tonight, an ire that could go either way in their motivation for Game Five. When the Spurs are annoying, they are almost always winning. On the other hand, Chris Paul and David West are bona fide NBA stars, right now, despite their youth, and Tyson Chandler should be in the conversation with Dwight Howard (and some would say Yao Ming) for who is the best center in the NBA. Yeah, I know Chandler didn’t even attempt a field goal tonight. But he is the chip Byron Scott has to play to avoid the disastrous double-team schemes on Duncan that the Spurs have clearly parsed out. And that matchup, perhaps more than any other, will detemine how this series is decided.

  • That's Why They Play Nine, You Communists: Meet Your First Place Minnesota Twins

    AP Photo/Hannah Foslien

    I’m not a fair weather fan. Honest to God, I’m not.

    Seriously.

    I’m not.

    This season, however, I am trying very hard not to let the game eat me alive. I’m also trying very hard not to allow the game to eat up so damn much of my time. It’s a hard habit to break, though, and so far it’s been a rough balancing act. I was in New York for a week –the Yankees were out of town, but I did get out to Shea to see the Mets– and I had promised myself that while I was out of town I would limit myself to a brief perusal of the boxscores each morning. No Baseball Tonight. No channel surfing. No sitting in front of a computer tracking the Twins on the internet.

    I didn’t do so well on that last one, but it really could have been a whole lot worse.

    I was at Shea the night Morneau hit his grand slam to put the Twins up 5-0 at Texas. They flashed that bright bit of news on the scoreboard. It seemed like fifteen minutes later I looked up there again and saw that the score was suddenly 5-5.

    I should have kept that night in mind on Sunday afternoon, when I turned off the game after the first inning –with Boof and the Twins down 6-0– and headed off to the May Day festivities at Powderhorn Park. Throughout the afternoon, whenever I saw somebody wearing any sort of sports apparel (rare, this), I’d ask them if they’d heard a score for the Twins game. I got a lot of blank stares and shrugs. Eventually I encountered an old fellow sitting on a blanket, wearing a Twins cap, and listening to a transistor radio.

    "Do you have a Twins score for me?" I asked.

    The guy scowled. "They were getting killed," he said. "I turned it off."

    It was a beautiful day to be outside, even without baseball, and even though I was surrounded by thousands of communists and hippies (just kidding, comrades; like millions of other people, if I could really believe in the things I think I believe in I could be one of you, just as long as you didn’t ask me to ride around on one of those Dr. Seuss bikes or forsake Mountain Dew and Twizzlers).

    At any rate, it was wonderful to come home, call up the ESPN page on the computer, and discover that the Twins had come back to knock off the Tigers.

    And if you’re paying enough attention that you’re paying attention to me and my blather (which means, obviously, that you’re paying way too much attention), then you know that our local nine has now won five straight at home and moved into first place in the Central, a division that is suddenly –at least through the season’s first month– locked up in a pleasant and almost inexplicable parity scrum.

    I like this Twins team. Right from the get-go I thought they were going to be fun to watch for the long haul, won-loss column be damned. And they haven’t disappointed me so far. Do they look or feel like a first-place team to me? No, honestly, I can’t say that they do. Not yet, at any rate. But neither do any of the other teams in the Central at the moment.

    This is crazy, I’m sure, but I’m ready to write off the Tigers. A month isn’t a large enough sample size, I know, but this is a team with some serious problems, a blockbuster roster with a severe identity crisis. They seem to have a different problem every night, and I don’t think that bodes well for either them or for Jim Leyland’s sanity. Only three teams in the AL have scored more runs than Detroit, but only one (Texas) has given up more runs –the Tigers have surrendered 174 runs, 44 more than the Twins. And all those runs Detroit has scored have come in bursts; they’ve also been shutout four times, and scored just one run on four other occasions (true to their schizoid nature, they’ve also scored ten or more runs four times). The starting pitching has been miserable. The bullpen is worse than it’s looked –even though it looked plenty shaky against the Twins. The defense is sketchy, and has been made even worse by Leyland’s insistence on playing guys out of position.

    There have been plenty of encouraging things about the Twins performance thus far, but this is by far the most encouraging number to me, particularly given the insane unbalanced schedule: they’re now 12-6 against the Central. Detroit is an astounding 4-12, and everyone else is hanging around .500.

    I’ve also been encouraged by the starting pitching, the Liriano debacle notwithstanding. Livan has been Livan; living large and dangerous, and fun to watch when he’s spotting his fastball [sic] and working in that outrageous 60-mph shazam special. I know I made the Ramon Ortiz comparison early on, but the difference here is that even when Hernandez has been mediocre in his career he’s always been a freakishly healthy innings eater.

    Most surprising to me has been the poise of Bonser, Scott Baker, and Nick "The Milkman’s Mauer" Blackburn. You saw it from Bonser on Sunday; after getting nicked and knocked around in the first –and throwing, what? 48 pitches?– he managed to gut out five more shutout innings (without walking anybody) and get the game to the bullpen. Baker and Blackburn have done the same thing time and again. Even at their worst they’ve all pitched; they just keep making adjustments and mixing their pitches and grinding, and it was a huge thing for the offense to come back on Sunday and hold up their end of the deal. For the most part the entire rotation has been performing like crafty veterans, and that was a whole hell of a lot more than anybody expected back in March.

    The starting pitching may yet be the serious concern we all thought it would be –particularly if injuries become even more of a factor– but right now the more obvious worry is the offense, and that seems to me to be one thing the Twins could reasonably address. I worry about an American League team with an on base percentage of .310 and a slugging percentage of .374, and a team with the second fewest runs scored in the league. I worry about a team whose one and two hitters are tied for the team lead in strikeouts.

    Carlos Gomez is worth the price of admission. He’s serious fun to watch, and, at 22, promises to be even more fun to watch in the years to come. When he gets on base he might already be one of the most exciting players ever to wear a Twins uniform. Despite being a pretty crummy bunter, he’s on a pace to obliterate the team record for bunt hits in a season. But, fun and exciting as he is, Gomez is not a leadoff hitter. A guy with 26 strikeouts, three walks, and a .297 OBP is not a leadoff hitter, particularly when he’s generally being followed by a guy –Brendan Harris– with 26 strikeouts, six walks, and a .315 OBP. This is just basic baseball logic, and you’d think it would be more widely accepted by now.

    What do you think the over and under is on Gomez’s 2008 OBP? I’d be delighted –and surprised– if he cracks .325.

    This is the third year in a row I’ve harped about this, and maybe the problem here is that it just makes too much logical sense, but Joe Mauer should be leading off for the Twins. Every night. I know he just seems to be getting comfortable in the three hole, but tough shit. That sort of thing is hogwash anyway. If a guy can really hit, he can hit anywhere in the lineup. Mauer now has a .396 OBP; he doesn’t strikeout much, has pretty good wheels, is one of the most fundamentally solid baserunners on the club, and he’s not yet –and may never be– a consistent middle-of-the-order run producer. What he would be, though, is a damn good leadoff hitter. He already leads the team in runs scored batting in the two and three spots.

    So, dammit, move him up. Start there, move Gomez down to ninth, and he’ll still have Mauer batting behind him every time he’s on base and wreaking havoc. Go ahead and bat Harris second if you want –I can’t think of anybody else, other than Mauer, wh
    o’s suited for that slot– and why not toss Jason Kubel into the three hole and see if he can get some better pitches to hit (and learn to be a lot more selective)?

    Watching the Chicago series last week, I was a little bit astonished by how incredulous Dick Bremer and Bert Blyleven were by the fact that Nick Swisher, with his .220 batting average, was leading off for the White Sox. They couldn’t believe it. How long, they wondered, would Ozzie Guillen persist in this folly? Never once did they mention Swisher’s walk totals, runs scored, or on base percentage (23, 20, and .354 as of this moment).

    It amazes me that so many apparently serious fans of the game –and so many people within baseball organizations (including managers)– still don’t seem to get it.

    Why not try to assemble a fucking batting order that actually makes baseball sense and is designed to maximize production?

    Why the hell not?

    What do you have to lose besides games?

  • Wolves 2007-08 Season Recap, Part 1

    Note: I know I said I’d have a Wolves recap for you Monday, but with all the playoff ball consuming my time (not to mention other writing projects–my editors know what they are) I now realize I’m never going to get this done unless I break it into parts.

    So, here’s Part 1, which deals with what I wanted to hear from Kevin McHale at his season-ending press conference last week. (Please bear with the changes in typeface that may crop up because I cut and pasted some of the press conference transcription.) At least one other part will be an evaluation of each player on the roster: Both how I regard him and how I believe the Wolves’ front office regards him. Anyway, thanks for your patience. I’m also willing to kick around the playoffs, if anybody is interested, and will probably in the next couple of days set up an open thread with a bevy of impressions to get things rolling and see what happens. 

    When Timberwolves personnel veep Kevin McHale did his by-now traditional meeting with the media the day after the 2007-08 season to discuss the State of the Ballclub, his mood was decidedly more upbeat and the number of reporters he was addressing was much smaller than in recent years past. Part of the reason (for both) was that there was no buzz McHale was going to step down. The other part (again, for both) was that the bar of expectations had been set so low, especially for the immediate past and future of this ballclub.

    McHale sought to change that some with his dramatic proclamation that, barring significant injuries, the 2008-09 Wolves should improve by some 20 games, flirting with .500, if not a bottom-rung playoff spot in the ultra-competitive Western Conference. And how was this going to occur? Essentially by standing pat and letting the existing personnel get more familiar with each other.

    McHale said this two or three different ways, but just to be clear, I asked him, "Beyond the seasoning of existing personnel, what does this team need?" This is what he said:

    "It needs to come together and play. Everybody says ‘We’ve got to go and get somebody from the outside,’ [but] those guys have got to go in there and grow together as a team, establish themselves a little bit—Al has established himself—kind of, underneath that how are we going to play, our style of play, becomes more dedicated defensively in getting back; our transition defense needs a big step up. Defensively we have got to get tougher. So most of the growth I see is internally. Now in the draft we’ll get a good player in the draft, but with way it is set up we’ll get a 19, 20, 21 year old kid; if you are hanging your hopes on that coming into a man’s league….I would say that, overall, I would just say basically a little more shooting around Al, because he is going to get double-teamed and you have got to have court-spacers. But I thought Foye, when you had Foye and used Foye to enter the ball on the strong side and when you left him he made shots; that is a big part of it. Because I think Bassy was out trying [to distribute], not shooting a lot. Again I think shooting. But to me the biggest jump we are going to make is that group in there staying together and being confident."

    Asked point blank what *besides* seasoning is needed, McHale repeatedly invoked seasoning.

    There are two fundamental problems with this. Minnesota does not have a legitimate NBA center on its current roster capable of starting for a playoff contender. The other fundamental problem is that the Wolves have a glut of swingmen. You could argue–I do argue–that unless Randy Foye dramatically improves his court vision and attitude and Corey Brewer dramatic improves his strength and sinew, the team’s last three top draft picks are all best suited to play the off-guard position. And yet McHale specifically cites the two aspects of the game in which off-guards are thought to be most adept–transition defense and outside shooting–as the two largest areas where this ballclub needs to improve. 

    I understand where McHale is coming from. He’s not going to say this team needs a hardy, defensive oriented big man, because unless he’s going to reach for a player based on position more than talent in the draft, or overpay in free agency, there doesn’t look to be any way to address that weakness. By contrast, talking about the need for shooting and transition defense sets the to-do agenda for his swingman glut heading into next season. I’d have more sympathy for his hands being tied if he wasn’t the one spooling out the rope.

     

    But make no mistake: Minnesota will never be a viable playoff contender without a staunch big men to take the defensive pressure off the team’s two best players, Al Jefferson and Ryan Gomes. A steady diet of postseason games has reminded me what it takes to be an elite NBA team: A bonafide superstar, a demi-star, knowledgeable role players, and capable team defense. It is possible–not quite probable–that Jefferson is a budding superstar. Gomes is certainly a knowledgeable role player who can find a niche on most any ballclub. But put them on the court together at center and power forward and you cannot defend in a playoff-worthy manner.

     

    The numbers at 82games.com show that the Wolves allow a whopping 12.1 points per 48 minutes more when Jefferson is on the court (116 points per 48) than when he is off it (103.9 points per game). One reason for this is because opposing centers have an eFG% (which factors in three-pointers, not generally applicable to centers and power forwards) of 56.3%. By contrast, the power forwards Jefferson guarded had an eFG% of 40.3%. Unfortunately, the sample size for Jefferson at the 4 is woefully small, so we don’t know if that excellent D on eFG% would hold up; but we do know his inept defense in the pivot, where he played exponentially more minutes, overwhelms that performance. And we know that even a scorer as gifted as Big Al isn’t going to lead his team to many victories if that team is ceding 116 points per game.

     

    On to Ryan Gomes. Whereas Jefferson had a huge disparity between his minutes at center and those at power forward, Gomes, because he went to small forward not only when a center was slotted in beside Jefferson, but when Craig Smith or Antoine Walker entered the game, is shown to have played 26% of his team’s minutes at small forward and 34% of the Wolves’ time at power forward (meaning he was on the court approximately 60% of the time). Thus, his stats between the two positions are a little more reliable in comparison to each other. And again according to 82games.com, Gomes yielded an eFG% of 48.6% to the small forwards he guarded versus 54.7% to the power forwards he guarded. (His own eFG% was better at power forward–49.7% versus 48.5% at the 3–but not enough to overcome the disparity of his less effective D in the low block.)

     

    Fortunately, McHale understands this. When I asked him at last week’s press conference: "Are you comfortable, long term with Jefferson at center and Gomes at the 4?" here is what he said.

    "Well I don’t think, I think that Al is a 4-5, not a 5-4, and that Ryan is a power 3-4. Ryan gets more shots at the 4 because he can move around and all those big guys have that paint fixation. But he rebounds better at the 3, posts up better at the 3. They give you flexibility and that is a good thing. Do I want to see that 4-5 combination for 48 minutes? No. I would like to have another big guy for when Al plays the 4. Al has got to get better defensively. Randy Foye has got to get better defensively, Rashad McCants has got to get better defensively, Ryan Gomes, all those guys have to get better defensively. I like the versatility that they give you and again that is why I like bigger players that can do different things. To me Gomes may have scored more at that 4 spot, but to me he punished teams more when he was offensively rebounding and going into the post at the 3. I like that style of play. But he can play both."

     

    When I pointed out that the vast bulk of minutes wound up with Al playing center and Gomes playing power forward, McHale acknowledged: "For 25-30 games, yeah. And I thought we fell into that. They are both two-position players which are really good to have. [But] you don’t like Ryan Gomes, who works really hard, against Rasheed Wallace. What you really like him playing 4 is against Luis Scola who is sitting in the paint. But what I like is you can make one substitution and go huge or one substitution and go small."

     

    Compounding the problem is the fact that the Wolves play horrible perimeter defense, and have for as long as I can remember. It wasn’t quite as deadly when Kevin Garnett was the superstar in residence, and totally committed to the defensive end. (KG’s willpower slipped the last two seasons he was in Minnesota. I thought it was age until I saw him this season in Boston, reborn as a panther capable of hounding anyone from the three point arc to the low block.)

     

    The third and final question I asked McHale was: "For some reason perimeter defense has been a chronic defect of this franchise. Why has that happened?" His reply was: "It bothers me too. It bothered me for twelve years. For me it goes back to 7th grade basketball: If you can’t keep your man in front of you, I’m going to take you out. Don’t let him cut in front of you and keep your rear end between him and the rim. That’s as tricky as I like to make it and sometimes I think we scheme up so much we got so many schemes going on that we lose sight of that. We have got to get better at that, at containing the ball. The good teams in our league defensively contain the ball. They may have holes in other areas but they contain the ball…That is a definite, huge area of concern that we have got to work on."

    To me, that in a nutshell is why the Wolves only won 22 games this season: They played an undersized lineup where the center and power forward couldn;t effectively defend their counterpart, and they allowed perimeter players to penetrate into the paint almost at will.

  • Three Weeks, from Which We Can Conclude Virtually Nothing, So I Will Talk Instead about Vivisection

    AP Photo/Jim Mone

    I love baseball stats, love them as least as much or more than the next woman. And like so many others, the explosion of the statistical analysis of baseball was what drew me deeper into the grip of the game at a moment in my life when I was just starting to pull away.

    Maybe it doesn’t happen the same way for everyone, but in my case there was a period of vulnerability after I stopped thinking of baseball as a game I could play, and before I learned to think of it as a game I could simply enjoy. This would have been the late ’70s and early ’80s. There was not yet cable television in my hometown, and beyond the Sporting News and Baseball Digest there wasn’t much in the way of baseball literature available at the local newstand/bookstore. We could watch the Game of the Week, listen to Twins broadcasts on WCCO, and drive up to the occasional game in the Cities. But for most of my early life pretty much everything I knew about Major League players laboring beyond Minnesota I learned from Topps baseball cards and from watching whatever teams I was exposed to in the post-season.

    For a few precarious years there in my adolescence I barely followed the game. I guess I could blame Jim Dandy and Black Oak Arkansas, who came to my hometown and played Riverside Arena in the late ’70s. I could blame Ted Nugent (same story), or Blue Oyster Cult (again, same story). Eventually, I suppose, I could blame The Ramones and The Clash and dozens of other bands that helped salve my crushed dreams of being a professional baseball player. I could blame all the garfong I smoked and all the Special Export (the Green Death!) I drank while parked in the darkness along Toke Road just outside town.

    I could blame adolescence and hormones and Calvin Griffith and the Metrodome and Paul Thormodsgard and Glenn Borgmann and Craig Kusick and Terry Felton and the 1981 strike and all those mediocre Twins teams in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

    By the time I moved to Minneapolis in 1981, however, I had discovered Bill James, a guy with a gift for contextualizing all those statistics in the Baseball Encyclopedia and cooking up stats of his own that made the game seem as intricate and difficult and complex and wondrous and just plain fun as it had ever seemed to me as a 15-year-old struggling with the realization that the skills necessary to succeed at the sport were light years beyond my own abilities.

    I learned about James from a geek at the local public library, and through him I received dog-eared, hand-me-down copies of some of James’ earliest, self-produced Abstracts. By the time Ballantine started publishing the annual Bill James Baseball Abstract in 1982, I –who had been a sub-indifferent math student in high school– was a full-on stats geek.

    For years, in fact, I was a junkie. At a time when all of my friends were going to college or playing in bands, I was working in a series of parking lots and ramps, where I had ample time to pore over numbers, fiddle around with statistical formulas, and listen to games on the radio. Two years running I chucked everything and went to Florida for spring training. In 1987 I got a job at Tinker Field in Orlando, then the spring home of the Twins.

    Perhaps I was born for ruination, but there is no doubt in my mind that baseball accelerated the process. It was fun, though, at least for the most part. And the stuff I learned from James, and from the people who popped up in his wake (I’m thinking of John Thorn and Pete Palmer’s 1984 collaboration, The Hidden Game of Baseball, and Earnshaw Cook’s pioneering book from the sixties, Percentage Baseball, which I learned of from James), made the game a lot more interesting, and gave the off-season an obsessive focus that probably wasn’t entirely healthy.

    Eventually, of course, pretty much every serious baseball fan got indoctrinated into the Sabermetric army, and the stuff got increasingly complicated or –even worse– rarefied. It started to worm itself into even popular discussion of the sport, into the mass media, and into television analysis. James and a legion of his proteges became baseball celebrities (James is now a senior advisor in the employ of the Red Sox, and one of his most talented disciples, Rob Neyer, is a columnist for ESPN.com).

    I still love James (he has a terrific new book just out, by the way, Bill James Gold Mine 2008), but I also think it’s time to admit that I’ve become something of a heretic. I used to know the basic formula for James’ Run Created stat off the top of my head; I don’t anymore. With the explosion of baseball punditry made possible by the internet, and the mind boggling proliferation of baseball bloggers, the statistical vivisection of the game has become wearisome. There’s only so much of the stuff a guy can digest before it starts to get in the way of simply watching a game for the sheer pleasure of witnessing marvelous athletes playing the most difficult sport in the world.

    And here’s my essential problem with the now incessant barrage of baseball statistics: while the best of the new (and relatively new) stats can provide a remarkably accurate view of the big picture (given a large enough sample size), and are excellent hindsight tools as barometers of past performance and its bearing on future expectations, they can never adequately address the snapshot quality of any individual game. Because in any individual game, or any series of individual games, all sorts of unexpected shit still happens on a regular basis. Great players can kill teams for sustained stretches almost as brutally as lousy players, and the brutality can be all the more painful as a result of the expectations. Minor players, shit players, footnotes, reclamation projects, and journeymen can do astonishing things that are, in the context of expectations, as thrilling as a monster game from a superstar. Season to season and game to game, aberrations are a big part of what makes the sport so consistently gratifying.

    My other problem is this: Bill James was not only a terrifically entertaining writer; he was also –and this was crucial– consistently challenging and possessed of a playful mind and a wide-ranging curiosity about all sorts of stuff that he was more than willing to admit was technically and practically useless. There was always a sense –and there is still a sense– that he was working very hard to make his egghead nonsense fun. He was funny. He was attuned to the peripheral delights of baseball, the ugly guys and fat guys, the regular affronts and abominations, whether they be inexcusable uniforms, terrible ballparks, or particularly brutal lines in the boxscore.

    James was the best. He still is the best, even if he has a lot to answer for. And, sorry, but after thirty years of poking around in the shit he spawned, I see very little but a legion of pale, earnest imitators, attic bachelors and basement barons who have long since lost sight of the forest for the trees. Or the trees for the forest. I can’t quite decide which.

    And after all those years, and all that rooting around (and just plain rooting, the numbers be damned), I feel like I’m now in a position to draw my own conclusions about players and teams based on –and, yes, thanks to people like James– what I’ve learned and what I know and what I see. My father, who knew nothing about any of the new-fangled statistics, could watch a handful of games and zero in on exactly the sorts of players that analysis and stats now confirm for u
    s are valuable. And he considered them great players for –at least generally speaking– precisely those reasons that the statistics validate them as such.

    He’s gone now, but if we sat down over a couple days and ran down all the statistical categories that are around today, I believe he would agree with me that there are only a handful –OBP (on base percentage), OPS (on base percentage plus slugging), and WHIP (walks plus hits divided by innings pitched), for instance– that contribute a damn thing to the appreciation of watching a game or critiquing a ballclub, no matter how much they might contribute to a player’s leverage in an arbitration hearing or salary negotiation.

    Pathetically, I suppose, the one most valuable thing I’ve learned from watching thousands of baseball games is that the team that scores more runs than it allows wins; the team that does that most often wins the most games; and four runs is the magic number: the team that scores four or more runs wins the overwhelming majority of its games. And sometimes the good teams (at least on paper), the expected teams, are the clubs that pull off that trick. But often enough –just often enough to keep things interesting, and more often than the stats slaves are perhaps willing to admit– they’re not.

    And sometimes a guy like Roger Maris hits 61 homers, or a guy like Norm Cash hits .361. Or a team like the ’87 Twins win the World Series.

    Even when you can’t understand a damn thing about it –and perhaps especially then– baseball is a beautiful game.

  • Saturday Playoff Thread and Sunday Playoff Series Picks

    AP Photo/The Plain Dealer, Joshua Gunter

    The obvious pundit’s take on yesterday’s playoff games was that the big guys stepped up, especially LeBron, Duncan, and CP3. Here are some of the dominant impressions I came away with after plastering myself to the rocking chair and catching all of two games and the majority of two others.

    Cleveland 93, Washington 86

    Two things the Wizards should have feared–that Deshawn Stevenson’s asinine comment about LeBron being "overrated" would give him a dollop more motivation, and that Gilbert Arenas would abandon his teammates and try and match LeBron bucket for bucket in crunchtime– came to pass. That stupendous first half dunk where LeBron not only climbed the ladder but got out a special, heretofore unknown stepstool and put it on top of the ladder to reach Boobie Gibson’s too-high feed will be shown in any five-minute recap of his career. but it was the two hoops he made with the score knotted at 84 with 2:38 to play–blowing past Stevenson for a layup and then a little runner just inside the foul line–that truly demonstrates his championship-bound DNA. Arenas, meanwhile, shot 0-4 in that final 2:38 and had no desire to dish it off to one of his two very capable teammates, Antawn Jamison and, even better, Caron Butler, the guy who average 20.3 ppg for the season yet managed to squeeze off only 10 FGA yesterday, making half of them. The fact that Arenas fouled out in 27:47 doesn’t speak well for his mobility either–all the more reason to be realistic about what he can bring to the table in this series. BTW, Stevenson was 1-9 FG–isn’t that always the way with guys who talk louder than they walk in hopes of elevating themselves through pressure. Or perhaps it just doomed egotism.

    Two more quick thoughts: The Cavs, supposedly the one-man team, had an assist-to-turnover ratio of 24/8, while the Wiz, who should be distributing the rock among their plethora of scorers, went 16/13 and shot 40.2%. The matchup that really killed Washington was Z Ilgauskas (22-11-4 and a game-best plus +22 in 37:15) over Brendan Haywood (15-10-0 and five fouls in a game-worst minus -19 in 29:59).

    San Antonio 117, Phoenix 115 (2OT)

    How can anyone not regard NBA hoops as the greatest sportswatching pasttime after this classic? The Fundamental for 3 to bump it into a second overtime?!

    Okay, that’s the only blatantly obvious highlight in a bouquet of big, big plays that I’ll rhapsodize about. If you saw it, you know, and if you didn’t, there are buzz-oriented recaps available elsewhere. Odds are you can find these following pearls of wisdom repeated elsewhere too, but these are the things that stuck in my head from the latest chapter in this amazing Spurs-Suns saga.

    The Shaq trade was as much addition by subtraction as through the presence of Baby Huey Aristotle himself. I don’t know how much Amare Stoudamire actively disliked Shawn Marion as a human being, but ever since the Matrix went to Miami, Stoudamire has been unstoppable on the pick and roll, deadly pulling up for jumpers at the charity stripe, and, here’s the real dividend, invested in team play enough to become an average defender. Now I’ll grant you that Tim Duncan clearly dislikes having Shaq on his back in the low block, but let’s also be clear how little Shaq had to do with Phoenix being up 43-27 in the first 17 minutes–he had zero points, one rebound and three fouls in about 5 minutes of play. No, it was Nash-to-Amare (5 dimes and 10 pts, respectively) and the space that threat opened up for Barbosa (9 pts) and Diaw (8 pts) that built that lead, abetted by a bunch of Spur turnovers and horrible performances at both ends of the court by Finley and Parker.

    I don’t care how often Shaq can get inside Duncan’s head (he scored 40 points anyway); he nonexistant pick-and-roll shows and abject inability to otherwise deter penetration by Ginobili and Parker cost the Suns a game they should have won. I say this as a longtime defender and admirer of Shaq. Compounding the misery for Suns fans was the presence of Kurt Thomas, doing for San Antonio exactly what Phoenix craved: Low post defense and rugged box-outs on the boards. Put Kurt Thomas on the Suns and leave both Shaq and the Matrix in Miami so Amare could run free and Phoenix might just have won this game (I qualify it only because I’m not sure the Spurs ever lose a game they *need* to have).

    I love the way the Spurs play basketball. But–and I know I am late to the party on this–I have come to detest the way they blatantly whine about every single call. Yesterday’s snit-fit was their worst display yet–no mean feat about these cry-babies. Duncan literally jumped up and down and stamped his feet on one call. Yeah, I know there was a play where he was whistled for a foul on a jumper where he obviously didn’t touch the shooter. But when he went ballistic, Bennett Salvatore literally give it a second thought, because, like the boy who cried wolf, Duncan is going to bitch whether it was a phantom foul or there’s blood on the floor. And now, increasingly, Tony Parker and the flopping Ginobili are escalating their aggravated martrydom stances. The Spurs franchise should be apprised of how much this constant bullshit detracts from the classy performance their team displays when the clock is ticking.

    Which brings me to the commentators. Mark Jackson’s pro-Shaq bias was flagrantly on display on the two quick whistles his man received. The first found Shaq swinging one of his formidable forearms aside the noggin of Oberto–Jackson claimed it should have been a non-call. TOn the second, an obvious foul where Shaq tried to draw a charge but was clearly standing inside the circle, Jackson literally said "that ain’t right" because he doesn’t agree with the circle rule! Then there was the time Shaq was whistled for a foul on Kurt Thomas and Jackson derisively called Thomas a notorious flopper–flash to the replay, showing Shaq with his forearm on Thomas’s neck, pushing Thomas’s head below Shaq’s waist.

    Now sometimes Jeff Van Gundy enabled his partner’s idiocy–demerits there. But I don’t remember JVG being so pleasantly loosey-goosey before, the opposite of his anal coaching style. When Jackson tried to give him shit about using the word "acquiesce" (that’s right, don’t get too uppity Mark), Van Gundy disbelievingly replied that he wasn’t going to dumb himself down during the broadcast. Then there was Van Gundy’s caustic rip on the 6th Man Award and his statement that he’d "rip Michael Finley’s head off" for not sliding over in rotation earlier on a three-point play in the paint. More to the point, Van Gundy was loaded with compelling insights. He identified San Antonio’s hack-a-Skinner strategy in fouling Brian Skinner, in order to squeeze another possession or two out of the end of the first half, a manuver that indeed paid off handsomely for the Spurs. And he pointed out the deeper level of defensive strategy–how San Antonio would be successful if Grant Hill was shooting a two-pointer, even if Hill hit the shot; the point being to have Finley play D in a manner that forces Hill, and not Amare, Nash or Shaq, to beat you.

    Final quick thoughts:

    One negative of the Shaq deal and the Amare emergence is less emphasis on Steve Nash distributing off the dribble. Nearly every single shot Nash hit yesterday was a crucial bucket–the guy was just brilliant–and it would behoove the Suns to let him freelance with the ball a little more frequently to throw another option into the mix–because Bruce Bowen ain’t what he used to be on defense.

    Raja Bell, on the other hand, had a superb defensive game for the first three quarters and then, like the rest of the Suns, couldn’t stop San Antonio’s penetration.

    Another tremendous coaching performance from Pops. He was dead-on when he noted that the Spurs "seemed in
    a hurry" on offense in the first half, and that Duncan trey was clearly a designed play–that takes some stones. [*Update: There are now some reports that the play wasn’t designed. The Spurs freelanced the Duncan trey!] Phoenix was 21-1 when leading heading into the final period. Thanks to Pops and the usual crunchtime crew–we didn’t even bother noting Ginobili’s game-winner until now–the Suns are 21-2 and feeling that snake bite.

    New Orleans 104, Dallas 92

    Dallas was doomed the day Mark Cuban decided Jason Kidd was worth Dasagna Diop *and* Devin Harris, never mind the two #1 picks. Without those two guys, it is much harder for the Mavs to post up and much harder to penetrate. The most revealing stat in yesterday’s game was that Dallas shot 19-56, just 34%, from *inside* the three-point arc. The extent to which the Mavs have entrusted their offense to Kidd can be seen in the fact that the other four starters *combined* for just four assists, and three of those were from Jerry Stackhouse.

    That Dirk Nowitzki and Josh Howard had one dime between them, while Erick Dampier put up just five shots, indicates imbalances all over the place. On the other side, David West had four blocks, Chris Paul four steals, Tyson Chandler as many offensive boards, 7, as any Dallas player had on the defensive board. As I said in my preview, New Orleans is longer, quicker, and the patently better team. Now Jason Terry and Stackhouse aren’t going to combine for 5-16 FG every game, and Nowitzki and Kidd are proud veterans who have seen much better days and know their window is closing with this franchise, which should make for some ferocious contests the rest of the way. But the future is in New Orleans’ court.

     

    Utah 93, Houston 82

    The outcome of this one was predictable, even if I pig-headedly predicted it the other way. Without their center (Yao) and point guard (Alston), Houston’s bench is perilously thin and green, and the Jazz took advantage. None of the Jazz starters were better than plus +5 nor Houston’s worse than minus -6, but Chuck Hayes was minus -17 in 15:36 and Carl Landry (a particular favorite of mine) was minus -12 in 11:09. By contrast, Matt Harpring was plus +19 and Kyle Korver plus +17 off the bench for Utah.

    This was a gritty game, full of sweat and elbows. Luis Scola made me feel really smart about my ROY pick by battling Carlos Boozer to a draw, and Shane Battier worked the seams and Utah’s fixation on Tracy McGrady to get a game-high 22 points with an ultra efficient 7-7 FG. But Bobby Jackson was out of his league thrust in against Deron Williams, shooting 3-15 FG and doling out just 3 assists. T-Mac was the de facto point guard for the Rockets and he concentrated on the task a tad too diligently, passing up makeable shots to "get everyone involved," especially in the first three periods. If McGrady can only muster 20 points on 21 attempts (he sank 7), the Rockets are toast unless Landry and Hayes grow up in a hurry or Alston makes a miraculous recovery that has him at full strength by Game Two.

    Houston actually led briefly in the third quarter, but I thought the game turned on a pair of treys Korver buried to turn a 2-point Jazz lead into eight during the last three minutes of the third. After that, Utah just wore the Rockets out. Few teams are better at that the one coached by Jerry Sloan. If the Rockets don’t get off the mat in the next contest, there won’t be any more basketball in Houston this postseason.

     

    Here are today’s playoff picks:

     

    Toronto (6) vs. Orlando (3)

    Pivotal points: Both teams like the long ball and the Raps are actually a little better at it, making this a potentially volatile series. Can Toronto exploit its distinct advantage at point guard (Calderon/Ford over Nelson/Arroyo) to compensate for its lack of an answer for Dwight Howard down low? How does Toronto, a team that looks so good on paper (balanced scoring, better than 2/1 assist/turnover ratio teamwide) finish only .500—a dozen games below the Magic?

    My guesses: The Magic play classic inside-outside basketball with Howard in the paint and Turkoglu and Lewis using their length to get off treys outside. Toronto can make this a series if Chris Bosh hits enough midrange J’s to bring Howard outside his defensive comfort zone, if Howard is frequently fouled and clanks at the line, and if Toronto’s bevy of long-range chuckers get reasonably warm. That will be worth a couple of games.


    My pick:     Orlando in 6.

    Philadelphia (7) vs. Detroit (2)

    Pivotal points: Is Philly just happy to be here or capable of overachieving on the momentum of its remarkable second-half push to the postseason? Conversely, will the Pistons be subconsciously taking a team who finished 19 games behind them for granted while they look ahead to Orlando and Boston? Does Flip Saunders continue to play 10 guys or shorten his bench?

    My guesses: Tayshaun Prince is Andre Iguodala’s bad dream, Chauncey Billups is one of the few point guards Andre Miller can’t post up, and Samuel Dalembert’s shot-blocking is wasted on a ballclub that excels at Saunders’ midrange, low-turnover offense. So how did Philly split four games with the Pistons this year? Dunno. But the playoffs are a different animal.

    My pick: Detroit in 4.

    Denver (8)
    vs. Los Angeles Lakers (1)

    Pivotal points: Will a team sporting Marcus Camby and Anthony Carter among its starting five ever decide to play team defense? Who matches up with Kobe Bryant? Will the Lakers play their controlled, triangle-offense game, or get suckered into a shootout?

    My guesses: Melo and AI put up gaudy individual numbers next to their team L’s as they have done much of the season. By default, the main Kobe-checkers are the chuckleheaded JR Smith and the offensively challenged Yakhouba Diawara (with a little bit of AC and maybe even Linus Kleiza also thrown into the breach), all to no avail. The Nugs will win once when the score is over a combined 240, but this colossal waste of talent won’t see the second round.

    My pick: Lakers in 5 or 6.

    Atlanta (8) vs. Boston (1)

    Pivotal points: Will Josh Smith, a poor man’s Kevin Garnett, make the most of his time in the spotlight opposite KG? Has Ray Allen been napping as third wheel to conserve energy for the postseason, or will Joe Johnson abuse him on defense? Will the Hawks be able to break 100 in this series?

    My guesses: There will be at least one monster blowout and at least one improbable Atlanta victory, maybe even in the first two games at the Garden. Expect a great series from Rajon Rondo who will outplay the more heralded Mike Bibby at both ends of the court. Johnson will go off, but so will Paul Pierce, who will make life worse for Marvin Williams, increasingly known as the guy taken ahead of Chris Paul and Deron Williams.

    My pick: Boston in 5.