Come Back, Baby Come Back

As you might presently yourself fully be aware of, my grammar sucks. Also, you might have noticed that nothing has happened around here lately. Well, it's OK, I'm here.

Thanks to those of you who showed genuine concern as to whether I was maimed, imprisoned, dead, or worse. You're very compassionate, kind-hearted and sincere, traits that will inevitably lead to a joyful existence on the heavenly half of the afterlife. Conversely, fuck off to those of you who showed anger and resentment at my lack of posting and/or site updates, as if I was in some way contractually obliged to do what you want, when you wanted it. May I remind you that this is a free website, with no adverts, greatly superior to every comparable website on the internet (particularly with regards to the colour scheme) run by a man who frankly you should spend a good 90 minutes of every day praising, rejoicing, and fellating. You'll get what you're given, as and when I choose to give it. You hell-destined bar stewards.

The actual answer to the age-old question of "where the hell were you?" is that I was on holiday. I went to the Costa Del Sol, in November, escaping the classic British grey of November time. So you can see why that was more fun than calculating Rob Kurz's salary for the remainder of the season.

Do you want to see my holiday photos? Ch'yeah you do! Here are some of my holiday photos!

The Sun. It was hot. I burnt.

My burn.

A fat woman whose arse seemed to have no seam. (Identity concealed, expertly.)

The mighty Grunkel television that kept us entertained with German versions of Remington Steele and soft core pornography all week long. No, I don't know why all Spanish television is German either.

A dog curling one out.

A dead fish.

Now that I've been sufficiently self-effacing and boring in equal measure, here are my thoughts on stuff, for all those who struggled to go a full week without my aggressive and misguided thoughts on stuff.

1: I didn't initially know who I liked the Denver/Detroit deal for most when it happened, if either. But in the week or so that I've spent lying on beaches not thinking about it, I've decided I like it for both teams. Detroit gets the better player and the best salary in Allen Iverson, which can never be a bad combination, while Denver switches up a core that was never going to work anyway, almost getting under the luxury tax in the process. (After Antonio McDyess's buyout, Denver is now no more than a small dollop over their eternal enemy, the luxury tax threshold. If they waft a pick Memphis's way, they should be able to dump Chucky Atkins, whose salary for next year is only $760,000 guaranteed, thus not affecting Memphis's 2009 cap space plan much. This move gets Denver under the tax, finally, and it need only cost them the pick that they got from Charlotte for Alexis Ajinca to do it. Also note that I'm just an ideas man, not a soothsayer. Houston would be sensible to do much the same with Steve Francis, who is entirely surplus to requirements in both Memphis and Houston, and whose salary is keeping the Rockets in the tax territory. But his expiring is tolerable for the Grizzlies with apt sweeteners. With those two deals, Memphis could gain two picks without changing their long or short term plans, while Houston and Denver save lots of money on players and picks that they don't need. To me, this makes sense. Does that mean it will happen? No. But, between now and February, I'd place a call. Boy, this bracket got a bit long.)

(Oh, by the way - the combined $34 million in expirings that Detroit can now offer up with Iverson and Rasheed Wallace makes that Kwame Brown deal look even worse. Whoops.)

2: I forgot to post my Houston and Phoenix previews before going away. If you want them, send an email. Enclose money.

3: I really can't stand Bob Ortegal. In the years that I've listened to him, I can't remember one single insightful or interesting comment. Now, history tells me that when you question a team's announcing duo, fans of that team will then try to kill you with words and insults, so I expect Dallas fans to now do much the same. But, seriously. Take a step back and reanalyse. He's awful. There's no chemistry, no humour, no insight and you know for a bloody fact that he's never watched a game that he hasn't commentated on. (For example, take Dallas's preseason game versus Chicago. Ortegal admits he's never seen Derrick Rose play before, concludes after two drives that Rose only goes to his left, and then spends the rest of the night finding excuses for every time Rose went right. That's so dumb, I should have said it.) There exists only a dull, repetitive retelling of what the replay he's "analysing" depicts. And any old bastard can do that. I just wanted to vent this.

4: The Bulls suck in a variety of ways, which is a shame. Good luck John. (By the way, last night I dreamt that Paxson unretired and filled the Bulls current backup point guard void, proof if it were needed that I didn't have any fleeting holiday romances. After having seen they signed Lindsey Hunter, I kind of wish it had come true.)

5: In keeping with this website's continued attempts to be better than everybody else, here's next year's free agents.

6: When it happened, I nearly wrote something in this blog about the Pau Gasol trade. In contrast to the opinions of everyone else in the world, I was keeping to leap in and defend the Grizzlies' end of the trade. But I didn't, because I couldn't be bothered. I've rued that laziness for a while, so let me go on the record now, despite it being a bit late since the secret of the awesomeness of Marc Gasol got out: Memphis did all right. When your mandate is to make a salary dump, and you wind up getting the second biggest expiring contract in the league, you're off to a good start. But in addition to that, the Grizzlies got good young talent that people don't acknowledge. As well as Kwame Brown's salary, the Grizzlies got back Javaris Crittenton (good young guard, with emphasis on the "young" - he's still only 20), and the rights to Marc Gasol (a starting calibre NBA centre, whether you knew of this in advance or not). The Grizzlies also two first round picks from the Lakers, one of which has become Darrell Arthur, their 20 year old starting power forward formerly thought to be a high lottery pick. They still have their other pick to come, along with almost double maximum cap room, while taking back not one bad contract or inconsequential player in the deal. That's a good return on a one-time-All-Star power forward, particularly when you only wanted to dump salary.

What we may have witnessed here is a win-win trade, where both teams get what they wanted and improved as a result. This should be the result of every trade, and we shouldn't try to find only one winner to the deal. The Lakers clearly benefitted greatly from the deal, but Memphis won too. Yes, such a conclusion is entirely possible.

There. The balance is redressed. Now take out the bits about Darrell Arthur, and pretend I wrote that in February.

Why John Freakin' Stockton Was So Freakin' Fantastic

A conversation with a friend about the awesomeness/awfulness of DeSagana Diop - and you can probably guess which side of the fence I am on regarding that - led to me to write about how great John Stockton is.

Come re-live that fun journey with me.



I try and keep an open mind on certain basketball philosophies. There are some players out there whose worth on the court is so mysterious that you really have to question their very presence on it, and yet, for whatever reason, they remain out there. A lot of them get regular rotation minutes. Some of them get regular rotation minutes on decent or good teams. And I always endeavour to understand why.

As an example, for many years, Jason Collins started on the New Jersey Nets. Not only did he start, but he would also play over twenty minutes a game (up to the tune of 31.8 in 2004/05). A quick glance at his statistics, though, makes you wonder why the hell this was. Collins has never shot over 43% in a season, which must be pretty dumbfoundingly difficult to do as a 7 footer, especially an athletic 7 footer with Jason Kidd as your point guard. (Even Michael Ruffin managed this once, and he did it armed with Bryce Drew leading the breaks. Bryce effing Drew.) Collins also has a rebounding average worse than Eddy Curry's, with a career average of a tumultuous 8.8 boards per 48 minutes. And worst of all was his PER, which last year was a can't-even-think-of-an-adjective-shit-enough-for-it 3.3. (Only this year, when it hit 3.1, did the Nets think "hmmm, maybe we could find a player with a more positive impact on the game if we try". Impressively, they did.)

I listened to arguments as to why Collins merited the court time that he got. On a good team, he would play more than half the game, despite seemingly not doing a single thing well. I watched closely and tried to figure out what it was that he was good at, and I listened to people paid to be flattering about him (i.e. Iain Eagle) try and polish this turd as shiny as it could get. I could see that Collins was a versatile defensive player, big and strong enough to defend the tough post players, but also fleet footed and agile enough to stay in front of the quicker tall forwards as they made their way to the basket. I also understood that he was Jesus Collins, Lord Of The Handoff (giggidy), and that while he couldn't grab any rebounds of his own, he cleared out the lane well enough while boxing out for guards to come in and sweep rebounds off of the floor. (See?!? Kidd owes all those rebounds to Collins! And his rebounding during tenures on previous teams were just lucky.) I also accepted the argument that maybe Nets head coach Lawrence Frank had a raging man-boner for him and just couldn't let it subside, for this argument is often applicable to NBA coaches. (See also: Chris Duhon with Jim Boylan, Lindsey Hunter with Flip Saunders, and Orien Greene with anybody to have ever coached him.)

I considered it all. And then I disregarded it all. This was because - and let's be honest here - Jason Collins was (is) a massive huge great big fat negative of a basketball player. There's no point in being a little things player if you can't do any of the big things well. And anyway, shouldn't "little things" players be able to shoot above 50% from the free throw line?

(Oh and by the way, how in the hell did Collins go from a near-80% shooter to below the Wallace Line in 4 short years? What changed? How do certain players - usually big men - manage to get so bad from the line so easily as they approach their prime years? See also: Magloire, Jamaal)

A similar situation occurs with DeSagana Diop. For whatever reason - and this has become much more prevalent since he was traded away - columnists and idiots alike would eulogise The Diop as if he were some kind of integral piece to the Mavericks championship puzzle, ignoring for a moment the fact that the Mavericks didn't actually have a championship puzzle (but that's a rant for another day). Indeed, Karate Diop is better than Jason Collins, which makes the situation slightly less deplorable. And Lasagna did give the Mavericks a skill with his rudimentary shot blocking that they otherwised lacked outside of the misshapen marvel that is Rick Dampier.

[Please feel free to look elsewhere while I burn through my own supply of extremely bad self devised DeSagana Diop nicknames. I'll get over it soon.]

But overall, DeSagana Diop was not, is not, and will probably never be a good basketball player. He used to be abhorrent, so his status as a reasonable to crappy backup centre is an improvement, yet this alone does not make him good.

This was the hard line stance that I took in our conversation, and prepared to back up my claim by using a piece of trivia that I last used in March 2006, about how Diop was on course to spend the most full seasons in the NBA of any player to average less than 2 points per game for his career (and "full seasons" is a key distinction there). However, to use this piece of trivia, I had to check that it was still true.

Sadly, it wasn't. A recent offensive explosion and the subsequent giddying heights of three points per game with the Mavericks this season have boosted Garnerchop to a career average of 2.1 points per game (or that's it was at the time of writing - if he's been on a scoring rampage since then, adjust accordingly), which undermined my premise and made me feel rather empty inside. How could I talk about Daisy Gardener being one of the worst offensive players of all time when he averages quite such a tremendous amount of points? I felt like such a twat.

Still, not one to be outdone, I rebounded (unlike Jason Collins), and offered up something new in my constant quest to win petty arguments with uninteresting trivia. While looking up Jop's career points average, I also happened to notice that his career high in points in a single game is a fantastic 10 points, achieved 4 times, 2 of which came this season. (Michael Ruffin has a career high of 14, for those keeping score at home, and you've probably noticed by now that I like to use The Muffin as my barometer when it comes to mentioning historically bad offensive players. His profile explains this in more depth.)

Those 4 explosive outings came in 409 career games. How can a man not score more than 10 points in 409 games? How is that possible? Wouldn't you do it by accident one day? At one point, wouldn't your teammates decide that enough is enough and conspire to give you enough touches to crack that elusive 11 point barrier? (And these things do happen, if your team is bad enough. See Mark Madsen's seven three point attempts in a single game in the most disgustingly shameless piece of tanking in NBA history.)

Seemingly, his teammates haven't ever thought of this. So if the Nets fall out of the playoff race this season, on purpose or otherwise, then we need to push this agenda forward. Let's get Diop to 20. In fact, 15 will do. Someone start a t-shirt campaign.



Anyway, this piece of fascinating Senegalese trivia led me on to another related one.

In 1504 career games, John Stockton never once grabbed at least 10 rebounds in a regular season game. Stockton also never had ten steals in a game either, meaning that ne never achieved a triple double, which is pretty astonishing for a man who averaged a double double over 19 seasons and 1504 games. (Note - he did once have a triple double in a playoff game, but it pisses on my chips a little to mention that, so pretend that it didn't happen.)

This discovery, which is surely a harder feat to not-achieve than Diop's points total, led me into an exploration of the man and the legend that was John Freakin' Stockton, and led me to compile this concise but considerable list of reasons quite why he was brilliant.


REASON NUMBER 1: John Freakin' Stockton played 1504 games in 19 NBA seasons, and for those doing the maths at home, this means that he only missed 22 games in his entire career. He had perfect attendance records in 17 of his 19 seasons, playing all 82 games in 16, all 50 games in the strike shortened 1998-99 season, a mere 78 in 1989-1990, and a pathetically dismal 64 games in 1997-1998. For the sake of reference, Marcus Camby has cracked the 64 game barrier only three times in 12 years, and has never played more than 72.

REASON NUMBER 2: John Freakin' Stockton played 1504 games and never grabbed 10 rebounds in a game. (The lesson here, as should be obvious - if you aggressively pursue rebounds, you'll shorten your career. So things are looking up for Jason Collins already.)

REASON NUMBER 3: John Freakin' Stockton just let it go.



Stockton played until he was 41 years old, and inevitably towards the end of his career he had a few years in which his performance slowly trailed off. But right up to and including his final season, Stockton continued to perform at a high level, starting for a Utah Jazz team that he led to a 47-35 record and the playoffs, all while averaging as-near-as-is 11 points, 8 assists and 2 steals a game. He also shot .483 that season, which is absolutely remarkable when you consider that this was 2003 that we are talking about, a season that did not favour shooting percentages.

But when faced with the decline of both his own skills and the Jazz's short term future, Stockton chose to walk away while he was still near the top of his game. This may seem like a normal or sensible thing to do, but recent precedent shows it to not be so normal after all.



So far in this 2007 season (including preseason and offseason), assorted stars of varying pedigree have either expressed an interest in returning to play one more season, or have actually done so. Allan Houston re-signed briefly with the New York Knicks before being waived in preseason in favour of Fred Jones. Chris Webber couldn't keep away and signed with the Golden State Warriors. Reggie Miller and the Boston Celtics had a brief two way flirtation before Reggie decided against un-retiring to play for only the second team of his NBA career. And Gary Payton's agent also contacted the Celtics, asking if they would return his love and affection and signing him for one more half season. (They didn't.)


Now forgive me for being a bit cynical here, as it's all I know. But why oh why might Payton want to do this?

Possible reasons:

a) He thinks he's still got it.
b) He's run out of money.
c) He wants to win an NBA title, and thinks he can get one with only the token gesture of suiting up every now and then.


If it's point A, then he's very, very wrong.

If it's point B, then he's going to have to make lifestyle changes to make the prorated veteran's minimum into an amount he can live comfortably off until his NBA pension is due.

And if it's point C, then he's pathetic.


Unfortunately, it's probably point C. And, in Gary Payton's case, it's an even more pathetic gesture than usual. For you see, Gary Payton has now achieved the almost-unachievable: he's now done this coattail riding act with three different teams. I can't think of any other instance in which that has happened, and frankly nor would I want to.

To make matters worse, Payton already has a ring from doing this, when he won with Miami back in 2005/06. So why's he hanging out desperately trying to win a ring, when he's already got one? Where's the pride in coattailing two of them, or does he feel ashamed by his first one and needs a second to restore pride? I can't see either scenario being all that profitable to his soul. And you know Gary Payton's got soul.


I don't have a problem with players that latch on with contending teams for less money than they could have gotten elsewhere, just to try and win a championship. That's not a problem with me. As any NBA "pundit" or "expert" will tell you - and I use that term very loosely - it's "all about" the rings. That is certainly the argument used to demean most players without them (or even those with them, if you're Kobe Bryant), and the alternative is to do what Reggie Miller did and stick around with a team that has no chance of winning the title just because you'll get more money that way. This is hardly a more dignified way to see out the end your career, even if it does lead to people praising you for your "loyalty", even if they misinterpret your loyalty to the chequebook as being your loyalty to a franchise.

Karl Malone, for example, played it just about right - he turned down the huge amounts of money and pleas of loyalty offered by Utah to go and spend two years for far less money trying to win a title with the L.A. Lakers. But once this bid failed, he took off. He did not go to another team elsewhere. Not again. Malone took his shot, missed, realised that his skills and health were on the way out, and threw in the towel once and for all. This was an impressive feat, especially given that he was within touching distance of one of the NBA's untouchable records - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's all time points scored record.

But this isn't really about the rings. Instead, it is about the good or great players just going away and not bothering us any more, in general.



When he retired as a player, Reggie Miller went on to become a TV personality. An annoying one. So did Jon Barry. So did Magic Johnson. So did Kendall Gill, Steve Smith, Greg Anthony, Mark Jackson, Scott Williams, and a good many other players. And almost universally, they are bad at it. There must be a reason why this is. Maybe it's stubbornness and the interference of their long-term memory on their cognitive capacity. But they just are bad at it, for whatever reason. Only a few shine in this broadcasters role, and most of those shine more for their entertainment value more than their actual ability to analyse.

Some former players go into coaching, irrespective of their abilities in this area. They can't live their lives as young up-and-coming basketball players any more, so they make sure that they are around to watch those of others develop. (It's either coaching, or a cameo in a Spike Lee movie.) Almost universally they are bad at this, too. For the most part, the better the player, the worse the coach or general manager they make. (There are some exceptions, such as Joe Dumars. But for every Joe Dumars, there's three or four Kevin McHale's.)

Worse still, some of the game's true all time greats hang around awkwardly at events such as All Star weekend, demonstrating their complete lack of touch with the modern NBA game, and occasionally making matters even worse by taking the court and proving that they aren't in any way the player that they used to be. It's deflating to watch, and should be made illegal. (There's potential for a second t-shirt campaign here.)



But John Stockton doesn't do any of this.

John Stockton just played until he shouldn't, and then took off. He didn't swan out, interfere with things that weren't his business to interfere with, or humiliate himself at All-Star weekends. He followed his career's path until he reached the end, and then he left.

And that's why he'll always be John Freakin' Stockton.