Monthly Archives: February 2012

Since I spent way more time than I’d like to admit watching the weekend’s All-Star festivities, I’d be remiss if I didn’t write something about them.  Here are some scattered jottings about where the weekend left me as a hoops fan:

* Kevin Durant and LeBron James are the two most exciting players in the world today.  I cheer for Derrick Rose and Kobe Bryant–when I’m not watching Wolves, of course–but KD & LBJ are doing things we haven’t seen before.  At least I haven’t.  LeBron turned the ball over on the last play, but before that was doing his “Game 5 versus Detroit” routine.  It wasn’t his fault that his team was down nearly 20 in the 4th Quarter.  Durant was awesome throughout.  His ball-handling seems to improve every year, and his shooting has always been stellar.

* Kobe isn’t as good as he thinks he is.  It’s kind of sad to watch, if you’ve cheered for him over the last decade.  He could be a key piece of a contender, but not the do-it-all guy that he used to be.  Until he’s playing next to a clear STUD (somebody like Dwight Howard or Deron Williams, to name two realistic names) he’ll be doing this dance where he pretends like he has to take bad shots and that it’s all about winning.  Ric Bucher (and yes, probably me) will make some excuses for him.  But he and his team won’t be relevant while he considers himself an A1 Superstar MVP Candidate.  He’s not that player anymore.

* Derrick Rose is a different cat.  There’s Kobe and CP3, who are competitive to an awkward degree.  Then there’s Derrick Rose, who seemingly doesn’t enjoy ANYTHING, but only thinks about winning.  He has a bad back and his own coach was not going to let him run wild out there, tonight.  But if he’s healthy for the playoffs, you can bet he’ll be ready to avenge that loss to the Heat last year.  That conference finals may be the best the NBA has seen since the epic Kings-Lakers bout of 2002.

* The Thunder would be crazy to trade Russell Westbrook.  Remember all those times San Antonio (allegedly) almost traded Tony Parker?  Instead, they kept him along with the other core pieces.  Every year, they’ve been a contender and they’ve won 3 titles with Tony on board.  Hell, they might win this year’s title with Tony leading the way.  If the Thunder keep Westbrook and Durant (both just extended contracts and seem to want to stay there forever) they’re a lock for contending every one of the next ten years (assuming the health of those two) and probably a lock for title(s).

* TNT is awesome.  Shaq isn’t a good analyst, but he’s getting better and his sense of humor is starting to click on the set.  To his credit, his super-long playing career allows him to drop anecdotes from the early 90’s up to the present.  His playing experience adds something to that crew.  Charles was on fire all weekend.  Ever since his DUI, he’s been losing weight and gaining focus.  When he’s into it, Chuck’s analysis and jokes are unrivaled by TV guys.

(Perhaps you’ve already seen and read The Danny Ainge Anniversary Party, written by Bill Simmons and published this morning on Grantland.  In it he uses biting sarcasm and his usual wit to make an absolute mockery of Danny Ainge and the current state of the Celtics.  If you haven’t read it and you’ve got 20 minutes to spare, give it a read.  This is Simmons at his best, pulling no punches.  Since the C’s are falling apart faster than some expected (except me, of course) I had to share this link with friend and PDW reader, Brian J.  Brian is an avid Wolves fan, but his loyalties split to a degree when KG departed for the greener pastures of the Boston Garden.  He joined in celebration with many others in ‘Sota when Garnett and Company won the 2008 title.  In any case, that’s enough background and I’ll give Brian the floor.  He wrote about 1,500 words more than I expected in response to a short email.  I think what comes through in his email is a sentiment probably shared by Celtics fans across New England and Minnesota alike. With his permission, I’m posting in here. -Andy G)

Read this over lunch – indeed, pretty painful to read, but also kind of cathartic to read someone else expressing a lot of your frustrations with C’s management.

Lots of things I agree with, particularly the way this year’s team has been assembled/treated. Beyond the C’s big four, they might have the worst 5-12 players in the league, and Danny Ainge has to take the blame for that. Ainge’s thought process in acquiring Wilcox and Dooling to play key supporting roles this year is unfathomable to me. At what point in the last 5 years did anybody think either of them could be key contributors on a contending team? There has been way too much turnover on this team to build any sort of chemistry or stability, and their stars are no longer good enough to make that not matter. Every year Ainge is plugging in new players and messing with the roster. For a supposed contender, the C’s have had a ridiculous amount of turnover in their supporting roles. Some have been better than others I guess – Delonte West was a good addition, but they couldn’t even hold on to him.

Ainge absolutely fucked up the team with the indefensible Kendrick Perkins trade. There was no real good reason for it (per Simmons, C’s were 41-14 at the time) other than Ainge wanted to make some kind of awkward transition to being younger while still supposedly contending for a title. You can’t do that. Simmons’ “Sam Presti” nails it when he tells Danny he’s stuck between trying to rebuild and trying to contend. Only on extremely rare occasions can I recall teams ever managing to contend for a title (legitimately being in the championship discussion, not just making the playoffs) and simultaneously adding solid young pieces for the future without compromising their contender status. The Spurs are the team that most obviously comes to mind, but even though they’ve managed to have a stellar regular season record, it’s debatable the extent to which they have been truly a championship contender the past couple of years. Other than that, it’s hard enough to rebuild a middling-playoff contender without completely bottoming out at some point to clear cap space and acquire lottery draft picks. But Ainge for some reason thought the C’s could do something like that by trading Perk for Jeff Green. I get that he felt they needed defensive help on the wing to spell Paul Pierce, especially after Marquis Daniels went down (I wonder if that trade ever gets made if Marquis is healthy), but he could have gone out and gotten someone capable enough without destroying the chemistry and Ubuntu the C’s had going (honestly, does Green even bring that much to the table? Is he really that much better than, say, Ryan Gomes? Or Wilson Chandler? Jeff Green type players are a dime a dozen). That absolutely wrecked the magical sense of togetherness of that team.

Look, everybody knows that the NBA is a business – that cliche gets repeated over and over again whenever trade rumors circulate. But the C’s had somehow managed to create this sense that their team was something more, that it had transcended the business aspect of the game and reached some purer form of team-ness, where things like loyalty and brotherhood mattered. Those guys killed themselves for each other. Sure they had their fights, but at the end of the day they went to war together and had each others’ backs. Other teams and fans hated them, partly for the reputation for nastiness they developed, but also partly, I’m convinced, for the sense of internal cohesion they radiated, which other teams could never hope to attain. 

Danny Ainge ruined all of that when he traded Perkins, and he continues to destroy whatever sense of Ubuntu might have remained by ruthlessly shopping his guys publicly. I understand that management has other responsibilities and that includes looking for ways to improve the team, but I disagree that it needs to be done at such a public level. This same issue came up with  Kobe calling out the Lakers for all the Gasol stuff. Here was Mitch Kupchak’s response the other day: “As general manager of the Lakers, I have a responsibility to ownership, our fans and the players on this team to actively pursue opportunities to improve the team for this season and seasons to come,” Kupchak said in the statement. “To say publicly that we would not do this would serve no purpose and put us at a competitive disadvantage. Taking such a course of action at this time would be a disservice to ownership, the team and our many fans.” That seems like a load of bullshit to me. The first sentence is true enough, but I don’t see how keeping that private does a disservice to the team or puts them at a competitive disadvantage. On the contrary, making it publicly known that you are shopping one of your stars seems to be the action that would put you at a competitive disadvantage – obviously if teams and their fans know that the Lakers are trying to move Gasol, that significantly impacts the value they are going to get for him. I don’t see why it wouldn’t serve everybody better to keep that stuff quiet. Obviously certain things will work their way into the public regardless, but it seems like the prudent course of action would be to keep quiet, from an official standpoint, and let those things die out as rumors. 

At any rate, I couldn’t agree more with Simmons that Ainge is responsible for destroying what was really a rare sense of togetherness on that Celtics team. But it is hard to take his laments about loyalty and Ubuntu seriously when he turns around and spends half the column making up similarly crazy trades that would violate those same principles. Some of his trade ideas are so horribly ill conceived that I’m almost afraid Ainge might consider them. Take proposal (b) in his first footnote, for example. For the C’s this would basically be trading Rondo for Evan Turner and Nikola Vucevic…WTF?! How does it in anyway benefit the C’s to trade their most valuable asset for Evan freaking Turner. Am I missing something here? And yet Simmons says he’d do any of these trades. Later on he discusses trading KG (huge expiring contract) for Lamar Odom and Shawn Marion – also a terrible idea, nothing but a lateral move at best. Odom is averaging under 8 points a game since he left the Lakers, and Marion is getting darn near washed up. Both these guys are already into their 30s, and wouldn’t bring the C’s anywhere near contender status. All that move would do is ensure several more years of frustration watching old former stars try to contend for a low playoff seed, without really being able to start over. That is a perfect example of not knowing whether you want to try one more year contending for a title, or really start over – because that move would guarantee you get neither of those things.

Even though the final lineup he proposes sounds intriguing – Gasol, Odom, Pierce, Marion, and Mo Williams starring – I really doubt whether that team gets you any further than the current iteration of the Celtics. They certainly wouldn’t win it this year, and even if that core stayed together for next year you are looking at another team of guys frighteningly close to their mid-30s (which isn’t working right now, turns out). Plus you still have the issue with some really shitty players off the bench – “Presti” tries to sneak in the names of Wilcox and Avery Bradley as if those could be key rotation guys on a contender.

I’ve wanted these C’s to make one last run at it this year, but unfortunately Ainge has made that seem like a long-shot. It’s painful to watch them play on nights when injuries (or Rondo chucking the ball at referees) means big minutes for JaJuan Johnson and E’Twuan Moore. I still can’t bring myself to call for blowing it up just yet. I’d like KG to be able to retire as a Celtic and not have to switch teams one more meaningless time. He puts so much of himself into his team and the game, that it makes me depressed to think about him having to adjust to another team in the twilight of his career. Loyalty matters to KG – it did in Minneapolis, and it does now in Boston. He’s the guy who taught me how much loyalty can mean even in this business-driven league by giving his all to the T-Wolves even when the management had effectively abandoned him. I’d like to see Danny Ainge and the C’s organization show him a little bit of that same respect. He’s earned it.

Until next time.

Brian

What a struggle.

For three and a half quarters of tonight’s Wolves-Jazz game, the Target Center crowd mixed groans with boos as Ricky Rubio and Kevin Love tried to one-up each other with ugly missed shots and turnovers.  Love was manhandled all night by Utah’s beastly power forward, Paul Millsap, leaving many wondering if he were sick, and me wondering if perhaps he just had too much fun last night (and invited his teammates with him?)  I haven’t read the official word on whether he had the flu, but something was wrong.

But even as the woes of the team’s best players continued, the Wolves hung around in this one, just enough to prevent the crowd from emptying early.  Instead of giving up, J.J. Barea (who played a WRETCHED first half of this game) turned up his game and started knocking down treys (5-6 from downtown for the game).  Nikola Pekovic caught fire for a short stretch in the third quarter and finished with 15 and 12.  And perhaps most importantly, rookie Derrick Williams stepped up during winning time.  He scored 9 points in the final 5:20 of the game; the exact stretch of time that saw the Wolves erase an 89-80 Jazz advantage and steal what seemed like an impossible win.  Two of D-Thrill’s buckets came from key offensive rebounds.  He was beasting.

But even with Barea’s shooting touch and Williams’ heroics, this game was still in doubt.  When Paul Millsap finally let up on the (probably) ailing Love, Big Al Jefferson took the wheel.  Isolated outside the right block, one-on-one against his old buddy (or his “son”–didn’t he call Kevin that once?) Jefferson buried a jumper to tie the game at 98 with 7 seconds left.  But all this did was up the excitement and bring fans further into the moment.  Of course Luke Ridnour answered the call by dropping in a rainbow floater as the backboard lit up red.

It’s a weird feeling to be pissed off for 90 percent of the game, and then rejoice as the buzzer sounds.  Fans high fived their way to the streets.  Even if you (or I, at least) don’t like Luke Ridnour playing shooting guard, he’s the kind of guy you feel happy for when he takes a turn as game hero.

Other jottings:

* A problem area in this game was off-the-ball defense.  The Wolves played some 2-3 zone, and allowed big men (Millsap, Favors) to slide behind the low man for slip pass dunks.  In man defense, Barea and Webster were back-cut on consecutive possessions.  Josh Howard was cutting in front of his defender ALL. NIGHT. LONG.  Wes Johnson was a victim of some of this cutting.  I’m sure he wasn’t alone, but I don’t have the game tape to be sure.  Howard moves without the ball.  He had a hell of a nice game, before fouling out.  Perhaps he’s healthy again?  Or motivated?  He had a fairly-conspicuous fall from grace after leaving the Mavs.  Even though I don’t think Utah is going anywhere far this year, perhaps Howard will be a relevant NBA baller again.  This was the best I’ve seen him look in years and I don’t think it was ONLY due to Wolves’ mistakes.

* Pat and I keep throwing out trade idea posts, most of which surround Derrick Williams.  This isn’t because we don’t like him (far from it) but simply because he’s got a positional problem on this roster with Kevin Love on it, and Pekovic emerging as the permanently-starting center.  Games like this one make me reconsider ditching a nice young player on the rookie scale.  Oklahoma City brings James Harden off the bench, and that seems to be going okay for them.  I don’t know.  I’m sure we’ll continue to virtual trade Williams around the league, if nothing else for our own kicks.  The only thing I’ll add is that he should get bigger minutes if he’s going to stay.  He has tendencies in his game that need game reps to improve.  Even with those warts, his skill set, athleticism, and motor can lead to big moments like his crunchtime heroics of tonight’s game.

* So, back to .500, and the Wolves have now matched last year’s win total of 17.  What better time than the All-Star Break to enjoy this accomplishment?  The Pups don’t play again for six days, when they travel to Staples Center and rematch with the Clippers (recall Love’s buzzer-beating heroics the last time they matched up in LA.)  Saturday night will feature D-Thrill (and certainly Rubio as a passer) in the Dunk Contest, and K-Love in the three-point contest.  Between now and then, Love can work on getting his stroke back to its usual excellence and start burying more treys in games.  If tonight was any indicator, he could probably use some rest, too.  He continues to lead the NBA in minutes per game.

Enjoy the break, I’m sure we’ll come up with some post ideas between now and the 28th.

Season Record: 17-17