Dreaming about Mark Madsen

Do you ever stop and think about that time that Mark Madsen shot seven three pointers in an overtime game, when Minnesota and Memphis had the most blatant tank-off that history has ever seen? No, nor did I. That is, not until this morning, when I woke up thinking about it.

(For those unaware of what the hell I'm talking about, here's a box score.)

It's not an entirely normal thing to wake up thinking about, even for the most hardcore Madsen fans amongst us. (For we are all Mark Madsen fans. Obviously.) But some part of this must have ruffled my feathers, stoned my crows and enraged my loins, because this was all that i could think about for about 3 minutes after waking up.

It is now a permanent blot on the NBA landscape. The situation Minnesotas found themselves in - not good enough to make the playoffs, not bad enough to suck mightily without trying to - left them deliberately trying to lose games. It needn't have done, but General Manager extraordinaire Kevin McHale had already pissed away Minnesota's first rounder that season, as it was owed to the L.A. Clippers along with Sam Cassell in exchange for the mesmeric insignificance of Lionel Chalmers, along with Marko Jaric and his bevvy of minge. The pick, however, had top ten protection, and so in order to be able to keep it, Minnesota had to lose with a bit more regularly and finesse than they were doing up until that point.

They did this with aplomb, telling Kevin Garnett to stop playing (or so we thought), playing their better players for merely token minutes, and letting their worse players do whatever the hell they want, in what then-head coach Dwane Casey called "letting them have some fun" (read: "playing really badly so that we lose".)

The fact that they met an equally tanking Memphis team, who were tanking for a different reason, was an unfortunate coincidence. Memphis had comfortably made the playoffs, but was trying to lose for a different reason - they were residing in the fifth spot, with the Clippers in sixth. Whoever finished 5th would face the 60-22 Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the playoffs, without homecourt advantage, but whoever finished 6th would face Denver with homecourt advantage. After *accidentally* losing four of their last five games, the Clippers secured the worst (and, thus, the best) seed, in spite of Memphis's valiant efforts on the final day.

(The Clippers then beat Denver comfortably. The Grizzlies were swept by Dallas even more comfortably. Memphis were right not to want it.)

The whole exchange highlighted two key flaws in the NBA's system - the new playoff system and the protection of draft picks. The playoff system has been somewhat resolved, as the possibility of a team finishing lower down the seedings than a team with an inferior record has been decreased with the new decision to grant division winners no less than a top four seed, as opposed to a guaranteed top three seed. But the other situation remains intact, with lottery teams able to lose at will to either retain traded picks, or better their lottery chances. And it remains a travesty based around a communist idea of parity.

(The draft lottery isn't a million miles away from what Stalin was trying to do. Remember that.)



At this point, this post would benefit greatly from a well thought out and heavily critiqued suggestion for a better way of going about these things, so that such a deplorable situation won't ever happen again. (The concept of teams deliberately trying to lose is still prevalent - Miami, for example, has told Dwyane Wade to stop playing, and Memphis recently gifted away Pau Gasol just to take them out of purgatory.) However, as mentioned at the top, this post had a mere three minutes of thought, and so I haven't got one.

Any scenario in which teams are deliberately losing, though, is a gaping flaw in the otherwise well-constructed NBA machine. Therefore, it gives me something to bitch about. And so, I did. Quietly. To myself. For about three minutes.



Coincidentally (and it really was), a report came out on this very day (note: this note was not published on the day that it was written, which was the 18th) on the subject of Minnesota's recent tanking.

Responding to claims that his team tanked it down the stretch in recent years to improve draft position, Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor fired a barb at Kevin Garnett on Tuesday, as reported by Yahoo.com.

Taylor pointed out that Garnett, who was traded to the Celtics this offseason, took himself out of the lineup late last season and missed the last five games with a sore right quadriceps.

“It was more like, I’d say, K.G. tanked it,” Taylor told the Pioneer Press. “I think the other guys still wanted to play, but (the loss of Garnett) sure changed the team and didn’t make us as (good).”

While the quote may have been taken out of context, or Taylor had not necessarily said what he meant, it does sure as shit look like he is trying to pass the blame onto this entire situation onto Garnett's shoulders. This hardly seems entirely fair, given the Madsen situation that inspired this post. But it DID lead to me googling Glen Taylor's name, and thus seeing for the first time a picture of his grin.


I thought I should share that with you.

Wow, NBA fans are really spectacularly crap.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to a non-league football match. Football is a sport that we have in this country, which involves people kicking a ball with their foot (hence the name). It's a tremendous sport of flair, innovation and foul language, which unites the whole entire world in its single minded appreciation of how wonderful the beautiful game is.

(There is an American variant out there called "soccer", but it is marred by terrible broadcasting, stupid gimmicks, and a seriously shite standard of play. It is not recommended.)

The game was between Tonbridge Angels and Oxford United, an F.A. Trophy first round match. Oxford United were at home, which meant for us Angels fans a day trip out to a 12,000 seater stadium. For those unaware, Oxford United were good, back in the day. Then they went bankrupt. A man named Kassam saved them, bailed out the finances, and built them a big stadium. But it hasn't done the team much good, and they have since fallen out of the Football League (and also fallen out with Kassam, although they are stuck with the stadium named after him). They're also now flat broke again.

Despite the team not befitting the stadium that houses them, the importance of the event and size of the stadium made it a highly entertaining day out for us visitors. The official attendance for the game was 1547, and if you don't know what having 1547 people in a stadium that seats 12,000 looks like, then either watch the Florida Marlins at home, or look at the picture below:




Of the 1547 people to attend, about 220 were Tonbridge Angels fans who had travelled a helluva long way to support their team. These 220 people gave great voice, and showed the world (or at least, the rest of the world that was there) quite what being a sports fan is about.

Chants were everywhere. The songs were not particularly intelligent, and a lot of them were not politically correct. But dammit, was it fun. Songs included "Tommy Warrinow's Blue And Red Army", "Your Support Is Fucking Shit", "Did you sleep in until half time?", "CRAAAAAAAACK!!!" (toward the Oxford goalkeeper Billy Turley, who once failed a drugs test), "Who needs Mourinho, we've got Tom Warri-low", "Someone nicked your other stand" (in reference to the way that Oxford's stadium has, bizarrely, only three sides), and the mighty "who are we? TONBRIDGE!" chant that aired regularly.

That selection is merely tip-of-the-iceberg type stuff. Songs were being invented on the fly, with about 50 invented in all. The Oxford supporters in the other two stands eventually chimed in, and a call-and-response got going, with the Tonbridge faithful ridiculing the dismal turnout of the Oxford fans which such seminal smashes as "We Forgot You Were Here" and the aforementioned slightly rude one about their support, while Oxford fans responded in kind with jibes at Tonbridge's amateur status.

It was all good natured fun, brought to you by people who actually care about the teams on show. They care so much that they willingly travelled for hours to get to the place, just to stand around outside in the frankly arctic weather, in a largely desolute stadium in the city's ugly industrial suburbs, drinking Bovril out of a paper cup, and shouting for sustinence. The health and safety man may keep ordering you to sit down, but you don't, because you're enthused and genuinely interested in the action. He eventually relents, not wanting to piss on your strawberries. The old man alongside you with mild tourettes screams enthusiastically at any mildly interesting piece of action (usually random shouts of "Hey! Ho!"), and the ambitiously dressed middle aged woman to his right hisses the word "shit!" in a really sinister way every time your team loses possession. At stoppages in play, you chant out your players names, daring them to signal acknowledgement of your chant. And when they do, you woop with joy. You cheer, wail, antagonise, ridicule, toot air horns, throw your apparel with pride, and just generally make your own entertainment, while always fixated on the action.



You don't get any of that in the NBA.

Instead, you get arena music. *BOOM BOOM* "Defense!!!!!", and the like.

You get signs telling you when to make noise, and 'entertainment' ushered onto and off the court with military precision every time play stops for more than 10 seconds.

You get an experience, but you don't get to enjoy yourself. You do what you're told, and you're told to do everything.

There's a reason that Golden State Warriors fans managed to put on such a spectacular showing during their first round playoff matchup against Dallas last year - it's because they gave a shit. And they didn't care who knew it.

The NBA isn't faaaaaaan-tastic until people start being fans. This means passion. And passion doesn't generally involve sitting down, clapping appropriately.

Forget the family experience that the NBA looks for when selling tickets. Let's start stocking these arenas with people who will actually want to be there, and who will follow the action without prompting. Instead of banks of seats filled with people sitting down eating, let's have people up and cheering, singing, bringing atmosphere into a place that's supposed to ooze it from every turnstile. Let's not have 46 minutes of gentle appreciation and two minutes of giving a toss.

If you don't think this is possible in a game of basketball, watch the Euroleague some time.

(And don't sell alcohol at the venues, either. Lest we forget what happened three years ago.)

(By the way, I've never been to an NBA game. This ignorance may or may not be painfully obvious in the above. I hope not.)

30 teams in as many days as it takes: Dallas

Players acquired via free agency or trade:

Brandon Bass (two year minimum)
Trenton Hassell (acquired from Minnesota)
Eddie Jones (two year, full BAE)



Players acquired via draft:

First round: None
Second round: Nick Fazekas (34th overall), Reyshawn Terry (44th overall, unsigned), Reinaldas Seibutis (50th overall, unsigned)



Players retained:

Jerry Stackhouse (re-signed, 3 years, $22,376,250, I think)
Devean George (opted out, re-signed, 1 year, $2,369,111)
Devin Harris (signed a wildly oversized 5 year extension)
DeSagana Diop (exercised team option)



Players departed:

Greg Buckner (traded to Minnesota)
Austin Croshere (signed with Golden State)
Kevin Willis (unsigned)
Pops Mensah-Bonsu (waived, signed in Italy)



Bobbins:

The Mavericks have one of the worst young cores in the NBA. With only Devin Harris, Juan Jose Barea and Maurice Ager as the only returning players under the age of 26, and with only one of those playes able to crack any NBA team's rotation, Dallas enjoys (if that's the word) almost nothing in the way of prospects. There's Josh Howard of course, but he's 27 now, and while DeSagana Diop is still only 25, you're an optimist and an idiot if you think there's some skills in there that he's merely kept hidden for 6 years.

(Incidentally, did you know that Mavericks training camp signee Jamal Sampson is only 24 years old, despite being around for what feels like a million years, and that commonly accepted youngster Diduer Ilunga Mbenga is about to turn 27? Me neither. These things are worth noting. That is, they are worth nothing if you're really bitterly pathetic like me. If you are, hooray! We should hang out.)

Dallas tried to add to this somewhat this summer. Without a first round draft pick, they picked Nick Fazekas high in the second, thus once again insuring that they have a tall white forward who takes 85% outside jumpshots and who doesn't move well on defense. It's a recent trend that began with Keith Van Horn, was last year handled marvellously by Austin Croshere, who now passes the mantle onto Fazekas.

Fazekas figures not to play much, though, after the unheralded signing of Brandon Bass seems to have given the Mavericks a backup power forward worth a damn. After two years of bland nothingness with the Hornets, Bass was allowed to leave unchallenged when Dallas picked him up. Since then, despite it only being preseason, Bass has shown signs of being a capable player, and being only 22 he can join (or rather, "be") Dallas young core.

But then, who gives a shit about a young core when you've just won 67 games the season before? To add young talent is nice, but all Dallas really needed to do was to keep the core that they had, maybe add one or two pieces, and try all over again. They did this, adding some perimeter defense in Eddie Jones and Trenton Hassell, while bringing back Devean George and Jerry Stackhouse for some more depth. The Mavericks can boast now one of the NBA's deeper teams, and they still rock the core that resulted in the 5th best record in NBA history last year (it was something like that, at least. I forgot what it was exactly).

They didn't blow it up, and under no circumstances should they have done. Watch as they now decimate the roster in a trade for Kobe.



Next year:

Much has been made of the Mavericks historic capitulation to the Warriors in round one of the playoffs last year, which set all kinds of trends that I can't rememeber. But what a lot of people tend to overlook was the sheer bad luck of it all. If any other team claims that eighth seed, Dallas polishes them off with no problem at all. Yet Golden State offered up by far and away the biggest matchup problem of them all, and it's them who Dallas drew.

The Mavericks did not help themselves by somewhat wilting under pressure, and Avery Johnson by his own admission did not make the correct adjustments.

None of this, however, means that the right way for the Mavericks to go is to start thinking "yes, what we need right now is the sub-30% clutch shooting of Kobe Bryant", or "we can never with win Dirk, let's trade him".

They have a formula, and it's one that works. It worked last year to the tune of 67 wins, and while regular seasons don't account for anything in the playoffs (as Golden State showed), it does serve to prove that this Mavericks team can beat all comers. All, that is, but one.

To solve Golden State (and believe me when I tell you that I realise how stupid it is to imply that a team's season rests on one matchup versus one solitary mediocre opponent), Dallas doesn't need to revamp their roster, but make some adjustments and not get rattled. They didn't, and so they lost. But were that situation to happen again, that's all it takes to avoid that drama again.

Dallas is arguably the best team in the league. The Spurs have the title and claim that crown, but Dallas is up there. They should once again finish with the best regular season record and win the Western Conference.

This year, they just need a better stroke of luck, and a dose of fortitude. If that happens, they may win the title. They're one of very few teams that are good enough.