Remember Milk

I hated the appointment of Steve Kerr as the Phoenix Suns General Manager. Hated it. I freaking loved Steve Kerr as a player even if I did miss his best years, but I didn't like his writing much, thought he was a poor announcer, and he ruined my entire NBA Live 2006 experience with his insistence that Kirk Hinrich was in some way like Steve Nash. (They're both white and keep their dribble alive when circling the baseline! IDENTICAL!!!) Why would a man whose take on the NBA was limited to the games he was commentating on suddenly be qualified to run an NBA franchise, short as he seemed on experience, the CBA know-how, and the depth of knowledge base that was surely required for such a position? How much can you learn about the prognosis of thousands of potential NBA basketball players worldwide when sitting alongside Marv Albert? I hated the entire idea.

Similarly, I hated the Shaquille O'Neal trade when it happened. Hated it hated it hated it. The Phoenix Suns' style of play under Mike D'Antoni wasn't really getting anywhere, but was the answer really to trade for a player who commits your team to a life of halfcourt play, yet who isn't effective enough any more to build an offense around? And why would a team that had recently gifted away Rajon Rondo and Rudy Fernandez for immediate financial savings now be so willing to take on the huge contract of a declining player, commiting them for the foreseeable future to the salary tax that they had been so desperately trying to avoid? It was all the eggs in one basket, and the basket wasn't worth it.

However, as I am wont to do, I have since backtracked on both opinions. Acquiring Shaq has not affected the Suns's ability to acquire talent, as I feared it might. No longer are they selling first round picks, and they have made good free agency pickups, such as Matt Barnes and Grant Hill, even though they seem to be getting highly favourable discounts to do so. Despite the Jason Richardson trade seeing the Suns take on slightly less money than they gave out, and their dogged insistence on running with the NBA's bare minimum number of players at all times, the Suns haven't made drastic roster changes just to get under the luxury tax, like other teams have. They have found their payroll limit (just above the tax threshold) and kept it there. Phoenix may have about $4 million of their MLE unspent, but at least they aren't foolishly dumping Leandro Barbosa just to save a few million. In purely relative terms, this is progress.

To this end, Kerr has made some decent roster moves. Signing Hill for the Bi Annual Exception and Barnes for the minimum salary are absolute steals at their price, and Kerr did well to pick up the strangely overlooked Louis Amundson (who's always been able to do exactly what he's doing now, yet who Sacramento and Philadelphia let slip through their fingers). Kerr was also smart enough to insist upon Jared Dudley, a decent young role player who doesn't understand beards, in the Richardson trade with Charlotte. It bears repeating that the trade worked financially even with Sean Singletary in and Jared Dudley out of it, a variant which would have seen the Suns save a significant chunk of money in the process, an added bonus for a franchise always looking to save money. Yet Dudley was included anyway, seemingly at Kerr's insistence, and the trade as a whole saw one of the league's weakest starting shooting guards upgraded dramatically for little more of a cost than an expensive, replacable backup (Boris Diaw). Kerr also made what I still believe a solid draft pick with Robin Lopez at number 15, who has been some kind of shit thus far, but whom I still blindly feel will turn out all right. (Stick with Lopez, Suns fans. He can play. He just sort of.....hasn't.) Admittedly, I have absolutely no bloody idea quite what the Suns see in Goran Dragic, whose only redeemable skill so far seems to be his rebounding, something that isn't exactly vital from your point guard. But even that might pay off in time. You never know. Dragic won't shoot 29% and foul this much forever. You just have to stay ignorantly confident in the face of his special-kind-of-bad performances so far.

This doesn't mean, though, that the moves have worked. They haven't. After being roundly shat on by Boston last night, Phoenix sit with a 23-16 record, and in that same place that they had so wanted to avoid - good enough to be good, but not good enough to be good enough.

Futher still, the Suns' future prospects are not good. The younger players of Lopez, Amundson, Dudley and Alando Tucker are all decent, but there's not a starter amongst them, and there may never be. Phoenix's financial situation still shows no hope of providing flexibility any time soon, yet the team's competitive nature means they'll never get a high first round pick. Most disturbingly of all, their supposed young superstar, 26 year old Amare Stoudemire, seems to be regressing, unwilling or unable to overcome his problems with defense, rebounding, fouls or petulance. We're seven years in now, and despite all the physical tools, Amare has never learnt - or never tried - to be the defender that he could be. Without this, the Suns are treading water.

Perhaps trading Amare is the answer. Getting a highly talented defensive player for the power forward position (someone in the role of Emeka Okafor) completely redefines the Suns interior defense, their biggest weakness, and even though it leaves the team with a starting frontcourt featuring two players with absolutely no offense to respect outside of the lane (thereby making it even harder than it's already become for Steve Nash to get to the rim), the Suns have the makings of a potentially good defensive system. But maybe the scapegoat shoudn't be placed on the shoulders of one of the league's best offensive big men, or onto the General Manager who put together one of the stronger 8 man rotations in the league today. Perhaps it should go on the man who can't get much out of them.

The current Suns are a slower and less efficient version of their former selves, on both ends. The 2008 Phoenix Suns were 2nd in the league in offensive efficiency and 16th in defensive efficiency, transformed now into a team with the 4th best offense and the 26th best defense. And it's not all due to the loss of Raja Bell. Terry Porter, a supposedly defensive minded coach, can't seem to coach defense.

As Brent Barry once said, you can't make chicken salad out of chicken shit. Two of the best defensive teams in the league - Cleveland and Boston - boast former Defensive Player Of The Years in Ben Wallace and Kevin Garnett, respectively. The two also host between them a variety of other decent defensive players, such as Anderson Varejao, Kendrick Perkins, LeBron James and Rajon Rondo, all of whom combine to create a system that can both mask and enhance the defensive (li-)abilities of some of their team mates.

Phoenix don't have this. They don't have any of it, really. Steve Nash takes a ton of charges, but can't keep anyone in front of him. Jason Richardson often has a distinct strength advantage, but he struggles with the quicker guards. Grant Hill can't run backwards as well as he used to. Amare Stoudemire doesn't try as hard on that end of the floor, and watches the ball almost as much as he does on offense. Shaquille O'Neal is still a reasonably feared interior defensive player, but only if he doesn't have to move. You can't make much out of these ingredients. These aren't the makings of a decent defensive unit. There's no lockdown perimeter defender, no anchor in the middle, or enough disruption of the passing lanes. There's not even enough rebounding, as the Suns have only the league's 12th best rebounding differential. Distinctly average. As was their defense.

Maybe Barry is right. The Suns are in no way chicken shit, but they haven't the personel with either the players or the coaches to put together the defensive unit needed to get the team over the hump, one that they still can't see the top of. Trading for Shaquille O'Neal helped, as have many of the recent pickups, but it hasn't been enough. And what certainly hasn't helped the defense is changing coaches.

Perhaps they should change up the personel again. Perhaps the Nash era is reaching a logical conclusion. Perhaps trading Amare really is the answer. Perhaps they could put together a package for Andrei Kirilenko, or someone of that nature, giving them someone who can vastly improve their defense, while also not preventing a return to their running game. Perhaps they could replace Terry Porter, or all of the coaching staff, and find a team of coaches committed yet able to create a defensive scheme that will compliment and support the roster's natural offensive talent. Perhaps they'll just stop playing Goran Tragic.

In the mean time, they could start pushing the ball again and play to their strengths.

Burn!

The (Supposed) First Ever WNBA Brawl

Look at them, all trying to be like men and shit! Bless!



Giggidy.

Also, because it's not worthy of its own blog post, here is a picture, via whomever, of Baron Davis and Steve Nash on a tandem bicycle, wearing clothing best described as "totally gay".



No, I don't know why either.

ICouldTakeStephenJacksonInAFight.com: just one of many NBA blogs to pad out its content with links to videos and pictures because it saves my spindly old woman's fingers from having to do any actual creative work.

Baron Davis < Steve Nash < Jessica Alba < Me

You may or may not have heard of the website IBeatYou.com. Perhaps not. I hadn't heard of it until the day I heard about it, either. Nonetheless, there it is, and the premise seems rather simple yet rather awesome - people challenge people to do things. Pointless yet fun things.

One such challenge is The Stare-out challenge, in which competitors are challenged to see how long they can go without blinking. I think we have all played this game at some point in our lives.

Years of playing the Command And Conquer computer game series during my slightly angst-ridden teenage years have accidentally yet beautifully made me into a legend at this rather pointless game. My school years saw random students - who had heard of my reputation in this field - challenge me in the corridor to a spontaneous game, with no preparation on my part, and I won every time. It kind of had that Houdini "I dare you to punch me at any time and I'll be able to take it" feel to it, except that I didn't at any time die from these stare-outs. Not yet, anyway.

This ability was forgotten about as I finally encountered the world of maturity. But while it was forgotten about, it wasn't gone. Roughly a year ago, I found myself one evening with nothing to do [readers note: it's something of a life theme], and decided to time myself to see how long I could go for.

I managed 8 minutes and 46 seconds, without so much as a warm-up. I only stopped for two reasons:

1: I was starting to lose sight in both eyes.
2: Youtube cap their videos at ten minutes. [Readers note: the video is no longer on Youtube, so don't even look.]



I felt proud. I felt like I had achieved something. I hadn't, but I felt like it anyway.

Then, two days ago, I learn of the ibeatyou challenge. It now feels as though I have found my destiny. My life has a purpose, one that it never had before.

Celebrities have partaken in this game, too. The lovely Jessica Alba set out her stall early, and then Steve Nash had his own slightly scary-looking attempt to beat her.






Baron Davis also had a go, but his effort was frankly shite. (His technique is all wrong. Don't hold your eyes shut like that. All it does is making the gradual dying of the pupil even more obvious, and thus even less tolerable. Rookie mistake. This is a champion talking, by the way.)




For reasons I have never figured out (it probably has something to do with the centuries-old technology on which it relies), Youtube videos have never worked on my computer. To watch them, I have always had to steal them and watch them at a later date. (Keepvid.com = a godsend.) This obstacle means that it is damn hard for me to find who the current leader is. As far as I can tell, only one entry so far tops 10 minutes.

If I can do almost 9 minutes without a warm-up, a practice, or with any sense of competition, do you really think I can't go for 15 when I've got the sweet smell of success within my grasp, and the potential adoration of literally dozens of people?

"The hell I can't."




So this is it. An imaginary gauntlet has been thrown down, and imaginary lines in make-believe sand have been made. I will win Jessica Alba's heart, earn Steve Nash's respect, and help Boom Dizzle correct the major flaws in his amateurish stare-out approach. I might even get my own Wikipedia entry, who knows.

Balls to the impending blindness. This is why we have eyes.

Expect updates on this.

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.