Gary Payton? Is that you?

When you're ready, fella. I'll even buy you the trunks.

Where Are They Now, 2009; Part 39

Each of these takes about 90 minutes to write. We're now on entry number 39. That means that I've spent roughly 60 hours over these past 6 weeks writing updates on the careers of assorted insignificant basketball players. That's kind of impressive, and kind of pathetic. Oh well. Only 30 hours left.

- Smush Parker started the season in the D-League, averaging 17.3 points, 4.5 rebounds, 7.5 assists and an almighty 5.1 turnovers per game for the Rio Grande Valley Vipers. He then pissed off to China, where he may have become literally the only American import whose numbers went down in the CBA. Parker averages 13.3 points, 4.9 rebounds, 4.0 assists and 3.2 steals for Guandong, numbers that are pretty unimpressive in purely relative terms. Luckily for Smush, I don't know his Chinese turnover numbers.

- I don't know what Cherokee Parks does now, but his sister Corey is no longer the bass player for seminal hard rock band Nashville Pussy, and hasn't been for about 8 years. Another really useful update for you here. Be grateful.

- Marlon Parmer spent some time earlier this season playing backup point guard for the Colorado 14ers, averaging 8.0 points and 3.6 assists, but was waived in January and has not signed elsewhere since.

- Ruben Patterson hasn't had a great couple of years. After a career year with the Bucks in the final year of his big contract, all Ruben could manage for the 2007/08 season was an unguaranteed minimum salary contract with the Clippers. He was then waived before the contract guarantee date, and didn't catch on with a playoff team. Patterson then joined the Nuggets for preseason this year, but never really had a legitimate shot at making the team, as the cost-cutting Nuggets didn't really want any of their five signings (despite having two open roster spots) because it would mean spending money to keep them. Patterson was subsequently waived, and hasn't signed elsewhere since, after a rumoured move to Spain didn't come off. Will he catch on with a playoff team for this deadline? Who knows. The Celtics, amongst others, could use him. But they won't have roster space once the deal for Stephon Marbury goes down, and for all of Marbury's faults, he's not the registered sex offender that Patterson is. You can't fault a team if they find that to be a severe detriment to signing him. So I'd guess that Ruben goes unsigned, again.

- Andre Patterson averaged 4.2 points and 2.7 rebounds in 10 games for the Reno Bighorns, got waived, then joined up with The Arse, where he currently averages 2.1 points and 2.8 rebounds in 11 games. In those combined 21 games, he has 74 points, 58 rebounds and 47 fouls. Not great.

- Rickey Paulding is with EWE Oldenburg, a German basketball team that also fosters elderley sheep. Paulding averages 14.1 points and 5.0 rebounds in the EuroChallenge for Oldenburg, who are still going strong in the competition, as well as 15.2 points and 4.5 rebounds in German league play. He leads the team in scoring in both competitions.

- Gary Payton is now appearing on NBA TV, where I am informed that he is cringeworthily bad. However, I've never seen him, and thus should not pass judgement. Not that this usually stops me.

- Anthony Peeler last played in December 2005 for Akasvayu Girona in Spain. He is now an assistant coach for Virginia Union University. Did you know that Anthony Peeler collects hats? Me neither, until just now. This is the kind of vital information that I'm committed to bringing you.

- Nikola Pekovic, Timberwolves draft pick this past summer, is with Panathinaikos in Greece. Pecker is averaging 12.1 points and 3.7 rebounds in 17.5 minutes a game in the Euroleague, alongside 11.5 points and 3.3 rebounds in 15.4 minutes per game in the Greek league. Great scoring rate, particularly for a 6'11 player, but work a bit harder on the boards, sir. I read somewhere sometime that the Timberwolves plan on bringing in Peckerwood in the summer of 2010, which in theory gives them a nie young big rotation of Pekovic, Al Jefferson and Kevin Love. But God only knows how that's going to work out on defense.

- Ben Pepper - who never left Oceania, apart from a very brief stint in the ABA at the turn of the century - is currently unsigned, and was for the whole of the past NBL (Australian league) season. I'm assuming he's retired, but can't find any proof of this.

- Finally, Kosta Perovic is averaging 11.2 points and 5.0 rebounds in 19.5 minutes per game for Valeniva in the Eurocup. That's quite good, and a hell of a lot more than Perovic showed with the Warriors last year.

(This entry took less than an hour. Nice. That gives me plenty of time to do other things. I'm now off to precariously balance some big things on top of some smaller things.)

Where Are They Now? Part 29

Gary Payton says he's done. I hope he's right.

Anthony Peeler played briefly in Spain after his NBA career ended, but that was three years ago now.

Ben Pepper is in his native Australia, playing for the Townsville Crocodiles. I am not sure that he's ever left Australia in the 9 years since he was drafted.

Wesley Person is D-U-N done.

Brent Petway is playing for the Idaho Stampede of the D-League, where he averages 7.2 points, 3.8 rebounds, and 1.5 blocks a game.

Tim Pickett averages a whopping 21.2 points and 5.1 rebounds for a not partciularly good Italian team called Aget Imola.

Kevinn Pinkney is playing for Angelica Biella in Italy. If you've been paying really close attention and have a fantastic memory, you will remember that others plays for that team include Keith Langford, Brandon Hunter and B.J. Elder. So, something for everybody there. Pinkney averages roughly 13 points and 7 rebounds a game, while he also remains unable to spell his own name.

J.R. Pinnock averages just less than 15 points and 4 fouls a game (not a typo) for Kolossus in Greece, alongside Curtis Stinson, also known as "50 Cent".

Kevin Pittsnogle is playing for the Albuquerque Thudnerbirds of the D-League, for whom he averages 15.7 points and 6.2 rebounds. But, more importantly, this is what Kevin Pittsnogle wore to his own wedding. This is the kind of information that you need to know. It also bears mentioning that someone out there is now know as Mrs Pittsnogle.

Zoran Planinic is in his second year playing for Tau Vitoria in Spain. He averages 10.1 points, 3.2 rebounds and 3.0 assists a game.

Pavel Podkolzin, who you could flatteringly describe as "a mis-step", is back in Russia playing alongside Lee Nailon for Lokomotiv Novosybirsk. I have no dull stats here, so just assume he's still crap.

Olden Polynice seems to have finally accepted that retirement is the best move for his 44 year old arse.

Kobe Bryant

Today is the day on which it hath been decreed by someone called Matt that NBA fans the world over are to loudly vociferate their rampant and slightly homosexual man-love for Kobe Bryant. Whether or not you like Kobe has been deemed irrelevant - today, we talk about him nicely, for today is the day that the Lakers face Toronto, the team which Bryant obfuscated and subjugated on the way to his Jalen Rose-induced 81 point outing.

(Sorry, I'm just playing with an online thesaurus. I'm also on a bet to try and get "imbibe" (to drink) in this post. And I can't shave Drew Gooden's beard off until it's done.)

You may expect at this point to be swamped with the kind of Kobe-related trivial bollocks (the unsuccessful follow-up to Trival Pursuit) that defines this website. Perhaps you would expect a list of anagrams of Kobe Bryant's name. Or perhaps you would want to see a list of Kobe Bryant lookalikes. Perhaps you would prefer to see an archive of photographs of all the women that Kobe has obfuscated over the years. (By the way, I'm trusting that that word really does mean "dominated".) Perhaps you want to see video clips of him playing, offered up in lieu of any actual written analysis. Or perhaps you just want to see pictures of him looking a bit gay.

Well, as L.A. Clippers fans used to say, you'll ne'er be disappointed if you have only pitiful expectations to begin with. So here are those things.



1) Toby Banker; Bye, rat knob; Nobby taker; Botany Berk; Try-on kebab. (Yeah, they're all crap, what do I care.)

2)

3)

4)


5) ....Oh Christ, there's millions.



Yet, in addition to all of that anti-climactic petulance, today is a day for celebrating the more basketball related facets of basketball, something rarely done around here. (And something never done without wildly overzealous amounts of parentheses.)

This does, however, present a problem. With so many people blogging about the same subject on the same day, it's going to be difficult to find anything unique enough to say. This is a problem that I struggle with a lot, as evidence by the title of this post.

What approach can I take? What can I say that hasn't been said? What angle article will not have been taken? Maybe I could do some comparisons. Is Kobe the best player in the game today? Is he the best thing since Michael Jordan's sliced bread? Will he win another ring without Shaq? Did he rape her? Will he ever win an MVP award?

No. I shan't. These questions have all been done to death. And they're also not very exciting. I need something insightful.

(Answers to those questions, in order: not quite, so far, probably, innocent until proven guilty, don't know or care.)

So, in place of actual thought, effort, graft or insight, I'll turn to the thing that I know best, and what appeals most to the captivated audience of 5 people: My earliest NBA memories.



For those unaware and yet interested enough to have read this far, I am an Englishman. And, like so many of my Englishman peers, I live in England. If you've never been to England, it may or may not come as a shock to you that the sport of basketball here is about as widespread and savoured as the ebola virus, and despite the NBA's unsubtle efforts to liberally daub our nation's fine capital in basketball's highest calibre custard, the sport remains a distinct afterthought, having to compete with Argentinian soccer and The World's Strongest Man for early hours TV coverage. Britain and basketball go together about as well as America with dieting, Damon Jones with humility, Gary Payton with an understanding of the ravages of time, and the French with steely resolve. And your country's basketball outlook would be the same if your national team shamefully boasted the powerhouse high/low post threat of Robert Archibald and Andy Betts.

(Mind you, if Steve Nash and Michael Olowokandi switched their allegiances, we could have one hell of a running game. Just as long as Olowokandi, Betts and Archibald weren't involved.)

In recent times, though, multi-toothed overrated starlet Luol Deng has decided that he wants to be English more than he wants to be Sudanese or American. This decision, which I would imagine to have been about as simple as deciding whether to deliberately contract rabies or not, has led to a renewed interest from all 15 basketball fans left in this country. With Deng obtaining a British passport, with the potential addition of Ben Gordon, and with the British nations combining to form the first ever British basketball team, the sport has a new zest for life over here, as evidenced by the fact that we we now get one game a week (often live, sometimes taped delayed) played at 1am on Tuesday nights/Wednesday mornings. Woohoo!

This wasn't always the case, however. As the incoherent ramblings on the profiles of Austin Croshere and Pat Garrity allude to, our NBA coverage used to be even more limited than this. A Saturday morning magazine show existed in the early to mid 90's, but then disappeared, and for a while there was nothing but tumbleweed. Then, in 1999, a different channel started runnning a half-hour Saturday afternoon magazine show, cleverly called NBA '99, and presented by the lovely Beverley Turner.


In 1999, I was 15 years old. What does a 15 year old boy does at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, particularly when he lives in the middle of nowhere?

He sits indoors, and channel hops looking for the attractive ladies. Obviously.

This is what I did. I doubt I was alone. (Well, I was alone while I was watching it, but what I mean is I'm sure other people did this too. Maybe.)

What I didn't realise, having never played basketball in school or otherwise, was that I actually quite liked the sport. It only took about 20 minutes for me to realise that I wasn't watching the show for Beverley Turner any more, but for the sport itself. (And that's no slight on Beverley Turner, who we can clearly see is basically perfect.) From there, I became an avid watcher of the sport, recording every magazine show and imbibing (hooray!) every last morsel of NBA coverage that was thrown our way. These morsels were few and far between, but each was savoured more than the last, and I'm not ashamed of the fact that I can remember entire pieces of Kevin Harlan's commentary from the Knicks versus Pacers Eastern Conference Finals series of that season. Which explains my Marcus Camby love.

A new NBA fan was born, and a pathetically keen one at that. It took only the purchase of a copy of Total NBA '96 for the Playstaton to cement a powerful life-long lust towards the art of watching men in shorts run around sweating. (And by "purchase", I mean "borrow from an acquiaintance to whom you have no intention of ever given it back". I still have it.)

Yet only the half-hour weekend magazine show offered any actual coverage. Total NBA '96 could only teach a man so much - its rather antiquated game engine based a player's scoring ability off of their previous season's shooting percentages, which made from great fun halfcourt shootouts between Olden Polynice and Eric Mobley, both of whom went 1-1 on threes the previous season. These were also pre-internet days, if only in this household, and so my entire NBA knowledge stemmed from what I could collate from 3 minute highlight montages of games.

For some bizarre reason, such highlight montages seemed to focus on the usually white bench players. Or at least, that's how I remember them. Despite hiring former Olympic sprinter Derek Redmond as Beverley's co-presenter, purely to meet an ethnic minorities quota, the coverage then focused on the flair plays of not particularly good white guys, such as Croshere and Garrity, or Jason Williams and Vlade Divac. (Except those two were brilliant, obviously.) This trend continued to see out the whole of the 1999 NBA season, and was odd and yet brilliant. (Oh and for all doubters out there, you know Pat Garrity's got flair.)


In 2000, however, the show underwent a couple of changes. Gone was the original title, as the show was now called NBA 2000, the producers mercifully refusing to go for the 2K abbreviation. Also gone was Derek Redmond, as he was no longer needed to fill a black person quota due to the show's inclusion of Michael Olowokandi as a presenter. (I'm not making this up.) While Beverley Turner would hold down all the in-studio work, the three players in the league at that time with English connections - however tenuous - would host their own little pieces to camera, with varying degrees of success. Steve Nash (before he was good) would have a brief segment on record holders throughout the history of the game, Olowokandi (before he was crap) would have a little slot describing some of the rules of the game for those who did not understand, and John Amaechi (before he was gay) had short interviews with Beverley about multiple uninteresting subjects.

If you're wondering why all this is relevant to Kobe Bryant, you'll now find out.

Kobe started getting his own little airtime toward the end of the series, too, in which he chose his own personal favourite starting 5, one per week, and then talked about them to camera for a bit. It was, to those of us whose NBA knowledge was limited to Polynice's three point range and White Chocolate's inevitable superstardom, our first introduction to Kobe Bryant. Kobe chose himself as a sixth man for his list, seemingly leaned on by producers to do so, and immediately following this were some highlights of Kobe's play and highlights of a recent Lakers game.

I liked him.

And there, over 1700 convoluted words in, we finally arrive at my point - I like Kobe Bryant.



I don't need to fake liking him for today, for I already do like him. I know that, as a non-Laker NBA fan, I should dislike him for so many reasons. I know that he's an arrogant little git. I know that I should dislike him for being outrageously good. I know that I should dislike him because of all his endless dick-riders who talk about how fantastic he is at all times, despite this not being his fault. As a Bulls fan, I know that I should dislike him for that whole anti-climactic trade talk surrounding him to open this season, despite that also not being his fault. I should hate him for the fact that he's a massive bastard, and for his constant overexposure to which we are subjected every minute of every day. (Assuming you have dull days, that is.) And, if I were to be as stubbornly intolerant as some of my peers, I'd hate him for the consensual sex outside of marriage that led to an unsubstantiated rape accusation. (Seriously. Some people are still powerfully into that thing. Gotta let that go, you know?)

But I don't hate him. I kind of like him. And I can't explain that.



As an Englishman, you are trained from a young age that supporting the underdog is an enjoyable and infinitely more worthwhile experience. It is a mindset first installed into young minds during Second World War lessons at secondary school, and one that is carried over to the world of tennis, where we turn up at Wimbledon in all our pomp and regalia and then we lose.

This is the reason why I support the Chicago Bulls - having gotten into the NBA in 1999, when Chicago was staple gunned to the foot of the Eastern Conference standings, they seemed like the logical team to support. For those not aware of how this logic works; if you support a team that isn't any good, it's hard to be upset when they lose, because they're supposed to lose anyway. But, if they win, bonus! False hope rules! (Note: The L.A. Clippers were actually worse that year. But, unlike the Bulls, I'd never heard of them. Nor was I entirely sure what haircare products had to do with basketball team names.)

So where does my liking of Bryant stem from, given that it flies in the face of my national identity as a futility chaser? I couldn't say.

Maybe it stems from a lifelong desire to be deliberately obtuse and contrarian.

Maybe I'm totally lusting and gay after him. (NOTE - unlikely, because I'm straight. Thought I should clarify this.)

Maybe his eloquence and surprisingly good humour during his guest spots on NBA 2000 sold him to me.

Maybe I'm just won over by how extremely good the man is.


To be honest, I don't know.

Whatever reason it is, Kobe Bryant has achieved something in this country that has only previously been achieved by Shaquille O'Neal and Michael Jordan. Non-NBA fans - of which there are about 55 million - have heard of Kobe Bryant. (The rape trial helps with this, but play along anyway.) They might not know anything about him, and most of them may spell his name like Kobe Karl's by mistake. Yet they have heard of him. When discussing today's Kobe Celebration Day with a female friend not even remotely interested in basketball, she re-affirmed this point by telling me that she knew who Kobe Bryant was before I'd even asked if she knew of him.

(She then followed up this statement with the seminal sentence, "oh there's that other one, isn't there? Shawn O'Shearer?". Good times. Sorry, Shaq.)

So when you watch Kobe be his brilliant self, and whether this makes your heart a-flutter or your anger arise, remember that you are arguably watching the best basketball player that you will ever watch. Even when he annoys you, be grateful that he makes you care enough to be annoyed by him. Where you want to place him in the all-time hierarchy is an unwinnable debate, so choose your own stance on the issue. But, wherever you place him, you know he's up there. So savour it.

Not just today, but every time he plays, and every play he makes. Because he really is special.




And for the love of God, can someone PLEASE show me where to watch the 81 point game? I still haven't seen it.

30 teams in 56 or so days: Miami

Players acquired via free agency or trade:

Mark Blount (acquired from Minnesota)
Ricky Davis (acquired from Minnesota)
Smush Parker (signed, 2 years, $4,680,000)
Joel Anthony, Brian Chase, Devin Green, Penny Hardaway, Alexander Johnson, Jeremy Richardson and Marcus Slaughter (all signed to the minimum salary with assorted levels of partial guarantees. If you include holdovers Earl Barron and Chris Quinn, you have 8 players on the bubble, 4 of whom are going to have to be cut.)



Players acquired via draft:

First round: Daequan Cook (21st overall, acquired in draft night deal)
Second round: None



Players retained:

Earl Barron (re-signed, unguaranteed qualifying offer)



Players departed:

Michael Doleac (traded to Minnesota)
Wayne Simien (traded to Minnesota)
Antoine Walker (traded to Minnesota)
Eddie Jones (signed with Miami)
Jason Kapono (signed with Toronto)
Gary Payton (put to sleep)
James Posey (signed with Boston)



Bobbins:

It seems fitting to "do" Miami next, given that they are a team recently in the news. If you are like me, and you're the kind of person that tends to get so excited when a transaction is made that a little bit of wee seeps out, then you probably secreted when you learnt of the recent Miami/Minnesota trade. That move saw Miami trades Antoine Walker, Wayne
Simien, Michael Doleac, a first-round pick and cash to Minnesota for Ricky Davis and Mark Blount, which potentially salvaged a crappy offseason for Miami.

Despite previous protestations about how the team would never be a taxpayer, last year's capitulation at the hands of the incomparably superior Chicago Bulls awakened Riley, Pfund and that lot to the fact that their team just isn't that good any more. The Heat had committed themselves financially to a core that had a championship window of exactly one year. They capitalised on that, winning the title in that one year of 2006, but they did so at a cost. The fallout from that left them with one young superstar and a heap of overpaid elderly codswallop. Codswallop, by the way, is a much underused word, especially in the NBA world. It means "nonsense", "rubbish", "crap", and stuff to that effect. I have two big aims for the world of basketball this year - firstly to get a complete scrub to the All Star game by mass manipulation of the online ballot (who this will be has not been decided upon yet, it depends on who is on the ballot), and also to get the word codswallop started on its long journey towards every day usage in the NBA world. Today, this day, this place, this paragraph, marks the start of that journey. Pay heed.

This elderley supporting case was enough to get it done in 2006, but last year the Heat showed their age. Starting point guard Jason Williams may only be 31, but he was exposed as a weakness last year - while the heart and head were willing, the knees were not. His backup, Gary Payton, was perhaps the worst rotation player in basketball last year. His main rival for that title was team mate Antoine Walker, while veteran centres Alonzo Mourning and Michael Doleac did not do much to offset the loss of Shaquille O'Neal, who had the worst season of his professional career as 35 year olds tend to do.

Needing to spend, and with permission granted from whoever it is that pays the bills, Miami then tried to get a bit of everybody. With starter Jason Kapono snapped up by Toronto within about 18 seconds of the free agency period starting, Miami let him leave unchallenged, rightly unwilling to pay that price tag. However, despite continuing to negotiate with James Posey, the Heat weren't able to convince him to stay either, as he signed with Boston. And with Eddie Jones having already signed with Dallas, Miami was left in the rather awkward position of not having any wing players that could make an outside shot, and also with the frankly scary possibility of having Antoine Walker start at small forward next year.

In addition to looking for a wing player or two that didn't suck, Miami was also seeking to upgrade their piss weak point guard position, and add a veteran big for insurance. These three seperate chases led them to pursue all manner of free agents and trade possibilities, from such diverse names as Maurice Williams, Charlie Bell, Mickael Pietrus, Allan Houston, P.J. Brown, Sasha Pavlovic, Ime Udoka, Mike Bibby, Juan Carlos Navarro, Ron Artest, Jannero Pargo, Rafer Alston, Corey Maggette, Steve Francis, Matt Barnes, Morris Peterson, Steve Blake, Gerald Wallace, Sarunas Jasikevicius, James Singleton and Vitaly freakin' Potapenko - basically, everybody. Only one of those moves went anywhere, when Miami signed Bell to an offer sheet, that Milwaukee swiftly matched.

The anti-climactic feeling of it all hit home when Miami announced their first two prominent free agency signings as being Smush Parker and Penny Hardaway, two players that are, frankly, a bit crap. The signings also summed up the bipolar nature of Pat Riley's offseason pursuits: after harping on for ages and ages about wanting a young and athletic lineup (the signings of players such as Parker, Marcus Slaughter, Alexander Johnson and Jeremy Richardsonhelp here), Riley also can't seem to resist trying to sign every old bastard that used to be any good (Jones, Hardaway, Houston), which seemed directly contradictory to the young athletes thing. But, oh well, whatever.

After the Bell thing went wrong, nothing much happened. The Heat continued to pursue all kinds of trades and free agency possibilties, to no avail. They rounded out their roster with more young athletes, and went to camp still working the phones but accepting the fact that nothing may come of it. And when Shaq's inevitable injury turned up and Dwyane Wade added in one of his own, the Heat were staring down a lottery spot.

Then just this past week, it got interesting, as Miami was finally able to do something. And the trade they made was a good one. They landed two of their probable top 9 players in Davis and Blount while only giving up spare parts to do so. Losing Antoine Walker is a case of addition by subtraction, Davis gives them a useful scorer and athlete at the wing position which Miami had sought all offseason, and Blount gives them a center whose limited face-up game is still useful when playing alongside Dwyane Wade, even if he does have a massive inability to catch.

All it really cost Miami was an extra year of Blount's big salary over Antoine's, and a first round pick that won't be high in an ideal world anyway. It's a trade that has put Miami back into the playoff picture, although they still aren't even nearly as good as their fans would like you to believe.

But who's to say that they've finished yet?



Next season:

In my Bobcats post, I talked about how I had decided upon my 8 Eastern seeds for the playoffs. Miami wasn't one of them at the time. Now, they are.

It's still a flawed team, with the worst point guard rotation around, and with the very overrated Udonis Haslem still starting at point guard. The team is still dependent on how much Shaq is willing to give a shit, and Miami is also still largely a two man team dependent on Shaq's health (and his continued descent towards mediocrity).

But that can be enough. The Cleveland Cavaliers, after all, are the epitomy of a one man team, and they amde the NBA Finals. They used a helluva lot of luck to get there, as their playoff matchups opened up wonderfully for them. But you can only beat who is in front of you, and that's what Cleveland did.

Miami is far from the best team in the East these days, let alone in the NBA overall. Their supporting cast to the two stars is rather poor, and the Shaq/Wade duo are not exactly the best examples of durability. But if various circumstances all come good at the same time, Miami has themselves a team that can make inroads in the East. If they can scrape into the playoffs and maintain good health all around at the most crucial time, then they won't be an easy matchup for whoever they play. Everyone said much the same last year, but they forgot two key things:

a) The Heat were never healthy.
b) Nor were they even nearly good enough.

This offseason, they've improved. They've cut out most of the crap, and added some talent. It's a better team than it was.

But it's not a title team. Not even close.