In the summer of 2016, the L.A. Lakers, armed with cap room, tried to make a free agency splash. They signed centre Timofey Mozgov from the Cleveland Cavaliers to a four year, $64 million contract, and followed it up with signing Luol Deng from the Miami Heat to a four year, $72 million deal. They then almost immediately changed plans. Both players got out to slow starts and then never really sped up; in their first seasons, Mozgov averaged only 7.4 points, 4.9 rebounds and 0.6 blocks in 54 games (52 starts), while Deng averaged 7.6 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.3 assists in 56 games (49 starts). Designed to be veteran help alongside D’Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, Brandon Ingram and Jordan Clarkson, the pair both struggled to get going throughout and recorded career-worst years. The Lakers shifted their direction pretty much immediately after this. They revamped the structure and personnel of their front office, and opted to up their standards when it came to the players they were pursuing. In the midst of an uncharacteristically long playoff-less streak, the team decided, explicitly, to target only the game’s very best in free agency. No more Mozgovs. It worked this summer when they signed LeBron James as a free agent. But to do so again next year may require freeing themselves of Deng’s contract. Earning $18 million this season and $18.81 million next, Deng’s contract vastly outweighs his performance. Indeed, as of last season, there was no performance. After starting him in the first game of the season but playing him for only 13 minutes, the Lakers had another quick rethink and benched Deng for the young forward quartet of Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Julius Randle and (until the trade deadline) Larry Nance Jr. Despite being ostensibly in good health, Deng never […]
Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo is the current league leader in assists, with a whopping 13.4 per game. He is likely to remain the league’s assist leader for the indefinite future. Two time MVP Steve Nash is second on this season’s list, yet he is a considerable distance behind Rondo, averaging 10.8 assists per game. This gap will not be overcome. To put it into some context, assume for a moment that Nash and Rondo both play every game remaining in their respective regular seasons, and that Nash assumes his 10.8apg pace throughout. If Nash passes for exactly 10.8 apg over Phoenix’s remaining 43 games, Rondo need average only 9.3 assists per game for the remainder of the season to stay ahead of him. That’s still a lot, but not for Rondo. (As an aside, when was the last time had 10 times more assists than fouls? Because that’s where Steve Nash is at right now.) Rondo’s 13.4 apg average, should it sustain, would be the 8th highest total of all time. Only 7 times has it been bettered – 5 of those times by all time assist leader John Stockton – and never by more than 1.1apg. It is perhaps therefore understandable that Rondo, notorious over-passer than he is, is unashamedly going for the record. On a team filled with scorers other than him, and in such proximity to the record, he might as well. He has both the talent and the mindset. However, he still needs huge assists from others. While it is not the intent of this author to debate Rondo’s playmaking nor shot selection skills, it is worth noting quite how much goes into obtaining even one assist. This is particularly the case when you are playing at home. In last night’s game against Orlando, Rondo […]
I feel obligated to write something about the Bulls/Celtics playoff series. It has been untold drama, brilliant excitement, and well worth the fortnight of 7am finishes. It’s been better than Megan Fox’s shadow, worse than De Niro’s moustache in Cop Land, and awesome to a fault. And I feel inclined to write something that describes it all. But the truth is, I don’t want to. I don’t think I can. The series has been so unilaterally brilliant, so unrivalled in its drama and so and flawlessly flawed in its execution, that I’m not capable of writing the words to accurately describe it. I don’t think anyone is. It’s as though someone decided the Coach Carter series of films should rival Police Academy, wrote six of the most implausibly cheesy scripts ever written, and nailed them all on the first take in front of an audience of millions. The drama, for lack of a better word, is perfect. Disregard game three for a minute. (The Bulls forgot to turn up to that one, so it’s best we pretend that it didn’t happen.) Over the other five games, the other 275 minutes, and the 1,000 or so possessions, the difference between the two team’s aggregate score is one freaking point. There have been seven overtimes in four games, and one game that was decided in the final second of regulation. Never before has there even been more than two overtime games in a series. And yet we’re at four already, with one still to play. It is almost unfathomable how close these two teams are. It will never happen again. It doesn’t matter now about the peculiar series of events that made it this way; what we have now, quite possibly, are the two most evenly-matched teams in the sport’s history. All […]
In the unlikely event that you hadn’t noticed, defence wins championships. In the six games of this NBA Finals series, the Celtics ran about two perimeter isolation plays, not including ones at the end of quarters. They didn’t need to run any. The offence took care of itself from running only the simplest stuff. All they had to do was push the ball off of Laker misses and turnovers, occasionally post up Kevin Garnett, have the shooters run to the wings on the break, and keep setting screens. As well as let Ray Allen shoot open threes. The defence is what won it. L.A.’s offence was contained with relative ease. The only times the Lakers could get the ball in the paint in the last three games were on entry passes to Pau Gasol, and Pau’s options from there were limited to the extra-pass, the re-feed, or staggering to the rim like a drunk teenage girl. They became nothing more than a turnover, a shot-clock waster, and a back-rimmer respectively as Boston routinely denied the Lakers every option possible from their multi-option playbook. Kobe Bryant could not get to the rim. The best player on the planet at contorting his body and knifing his way through holes that the defence did not know they that had left, suddenly found a defence that hadn’t left any. All but a handful of Bryant’s points came from contested jump shots, a resource which dries up eventually, no matter how good you are at plundering it. Whenever the Lakers attempted to make the skip, extra or entry passes that Boston made so routinely, a turnover ensued, as a Celtic defender always managed to get a hand in the way. Not a single thing came easy. And that’s how it should be. The Lakers defence […]
By unpopular demand, I won’t talk about baseball. Instead, I’ll talk about basketball. I shall retread the observations of the hundreds of other writers who are covering the subject, while adding no unique spin. It’s how we roll around here. 1) There’s no reason why Lamar Odom shouldn’t be able to defend Kevin Garnett better than he does. None whatsoever. He has the length to bother his jump shots as well as anyone can bother them, the athleticism to prevent any easy drives to the basket, and the reasonable man-to-man post defence to cope with the rare times that Garnett plays back to the basket. But he doesn’t do it that well. And not only does he struggle at it, but he doesn’t do it much at all, as Pau Gasol seems to end up with the assignment a lot of the time. This doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Also, this is somewhere where Andrew Bynum would come in handy. 2) Something that also doesn’t make a lot of sense is Vlad Rad starting and playing as much as he is. I understand the Lakers’ need for shooting and spacing. I do. But Radmanovic is bad in all other aspects of the game. (His rebounding numbers in this series have been quite good, but try and think of a single Radmanovic rebound. You can’t – they were all gimmies that his replacement could have gotten, too.) And when you’re matched up against a team that starts Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Garnett at the 2-3-4 spots, you’re left with the unattractive prospect of having Radmanovic guarding one of those three, particularly when Kobe Bryant spends so much time on Rajon Rondo. And Radmanovic just can’t do that. Leave him in as a token starter if you must, but […]
Atlanta Hawks Players acquired via free agency or trade: None Players acquired via draft: First round: Al Horford (3rd overall), Acie Law IV (11th overall) Players retained: None Players departed: Royal Ivey (unsigned), Slava Medvedenko (unsigned), Esteban Batista (unsigned) Bobbins: The Hawks got lucky, I think they would admit that. The Joe Johnson trade of 2005 left the Hawks owing two first-round picks to Phoenix. One of these had already been conveyed, and was used to select Rajon Rondo last year, whom Phoenix then stupidly sold to Boston. The other pick was still outstanding headed into this summer, and was only top three protected, meaning that Atlanta had to win a top three spot in the lottery. They did this, despite only having the fourth-worst record and thus only the fourth-most chances of moving up (I say “only”, but that’s enough to make it a statistical improbability). For that, they should be thankful – had they not done so, they would have had a mediocre roster, with only an MLE and the #11 pick to work with to improve it. And that would not have been fun. Ironically, the three teams with worse records than Atlanta – Milwaukee, Boston, Memphis – all failed to move up, thus proving the worthlessness of statistical probability in the face of blind luck. (Incidentally, the #11 pick itself was also subject to changes in the lottery – the pick was Indiana’s as a part of the Al Harrington deal last summer, and had top ten protection on it. Had Indiana moved up in the lottery, Atlanta would not have gotten it, and had Indiana moved up into Atlanta’s place moving Atlanta out of the top three, Atlanta would have had no first-rounder at all this year. Which would have […]
