Those Magic Changes

As the ’00s (the “oughts”, right?) near their end, I anticipate a host of popular journalism reviewing the best of the decade in a variety of fields: business, music, film, politics. Sadly, these were not ten great years for innovation or domination. The Big Three car companies in the U.S. gave us nothing good, and now face bankruptcy. Microsoft still can’t make a satisfying version of Windows. Besides teeny boppers and Idol champs, have any great musical heroes or new genres of songsters emerged? Hip-hop lost its roots as a genre fueled by exhorting prophets, and now, apparently, seems merely a marketing tool for the hard liquor industry. Besides Barack Obama and Junichiro Koizumi, there were no political leaders who inspired us or threw fresh ideas into the pot. Arnold Schwarzenegger has run his state into fiscal hell. (Unfortunately for California, the federal bankruptcy code only covers towns, not states.) In the prior decade, we had Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, Mike Harris, Newt Gingrich, Mohammed Khatami, Boris Yeltsin, and even the Texas-era George W. Bush, who introduced useful reforms on school accountability.

Basketball is no more or less susceptible to whitewater rapids trips down the chasm of greatness. The ’80s gave us Bird, Johnson, McHale, Thomas, Worthy, Wilkins, Drexler, Barkley, Jordan, Olajuwon, Stockton, Malone, Ewing, Dumars, Pippen, Robinson. [I am fudging a bit on Bird and Magic, given that they debuted in the fall of ’79.] The Nineties, though… well, can you name five Hall of Fame-level players drafted in that decade? O’Neal, Garnett, Bryant, Duncan for sure. Maybe Payton, Kidd, Nash, Allen, Iverson, Billups, Pierce, or Nowitzki, but maybe not. Bonfires of raw ridiculousness like Webber, Mourning, McGrady, Hardaway, and Hill saw their careers curtailed by injury.

(Compare this to the babies of the Oughts, full of probable all-timers: Gasol, Yao, Ginobili, James, Wade, Anthony, Howard, Paul, Roy, Durant, Rose. Others like Parker, Arenas, Stoudemire, Bosh, D.Williams, and even Blake Griffin might get there if they raise their game in coming years.)

As a result of the dearth of quality talent among Nineties-vintage stars,this past decade was simply not an exciting time for pro basketball. Shaquille O’Neal and Tim Duncan won eight championships in the nine seasons after Michael Jordan left the Bulls, and their Finals foes were never very intimidating.

Instinctually, it seems that the team of the decade was the San Antonio Spurs, the only team to win 50 games in each of all ten seasons. Three of those ended with a title. The Spurs actually presaged their dominance in the abbreviated 1998-99 season, as Duncan and Robinson obliterated their competition on their way to a championship.

The Shaq-&-Kobe-powered Lakers reached 50 wins in each of the first five years of the decade, and then Bryant plus Gasol and Odom did it again in 2007-08 and 2008-09. They also made the playoffs in ’06 and ’07, as Bryant led a team of laggards including Kwame Brown and Smush Parker to the first round. The Lakers reached (and won) six conference finals, and won four of the six NBA Finals they played in. Had Shaquille O’Neal not left the team in 2004, the Lakers probably would have amassed five or six total championships.

Various Western teams threatened the dominance of L.A. and San Antonio. Phoenix reached 50 wins with Jason Kidd in ’00 and ’01, then had four hot years in the middle of the decade with Steve Nash, but never reached the NBA Finals, due to untimely injuries, bad luck, and general nincompoop-ism. Sacramento won 50 games in each season from 2000-01 to 2004-05, but quickly fell off a cliff after trading Chris Webber and discarding the rest of their core. Utah won 50 games with the fading Stockton-Malone system in ’00 and ’01, and more recently won 50 in each of the last three seasons with Boozer, Williams, and Kirilenko. However, the Lakers and Spurs easily repelled Utah in the postseason following each of those latter campaigns. Houston won 50 games with their Yao-McGrady teams in each of ’05, ’07, ’08, and ’09, but could not go far in the playoffs, usually because Yao or McGrady or both were injured.

Actually, the second team that maintained greatness throughout the decade (besides the Spurs) was not LAL, but DAL. This past April, Dallas reached 50 victories for, incredibly, the ninth consecutive season. In those nine seasons, they made the playoffs nine times, reached two conference finals, reached one NBA Finals, and rocked to the best record in the league in ’07. For critics who call Dirk Nowitzki soft, that is an amazing record of achievement.

In the East, there’s not much greatness to be found. Orlando was okay with Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady, then good-to-great with Dwight Howard. New Jersey somehow won two conference titles with only 52 and 49 wins, then hovered in the forty-something win range during four more years until Jason Kidd left. Boston was, frankly, quite sucky with Paul Pierce (averaging only 37.8 wins in the eight seasons before Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen moved there), then had two great years.

Two teams really stand out as attaining some level of sustained excellence in this decade: first, and most obviously, Detroit attained 50 wins for seven consecutive years from 2001-02 to 2007-08. Detroit made the playoffs in every year of this decade but 2000-01 (a Grant Hill-led team squeaked into the playoffs in ’00 with a 42-40 record). The Pistons made two NBA Finals and won one, losing Game 7 in their effort to repeat. That’s really quite stunning for a team lacking a super-duper star. What’s more, they accomplished this under three different coaches!

Second, the Miami Heat had a desultory series of moments, reaching the playoffs with very different looks: first, the Mourning-Hardaway-Brown-Mashburn squad that achieved so much success in the late ‘90s; then a brand-new team of Bruce Bowen, Brian Grant, Eddie Jones, and Anthony Mason plugged in around Hardaway; then the jolly rogues of Dwyane Wade, Caron Butler, Lamar Odom, Udonis Haslem, Grant and Jones; then the golden aspirants of Wade, Haslem, Jones, Shaquille O’Neal, and Mourning; then the previous quintet minus Jones and with Gary Payton, Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, and James Posey; and finally, in 2009, a stripped-down bunch with Wade, Haslem, and a buttload of rookies. Ultimately, Miami reached the playoffs in seven of ten seasons, and secured a championship at its highest point.

Anyway, raw data showing the win totals for every NBA team in every season of this decade (1999-2000 through 2008-2009) can be viewed at this Google Docs spreadsheet. Any errors are mine; I constructed the spreadsheet by hand from data on basketball-reference.com.

What numerical conclusions can we draw? The teams with the greatest variance in performance were Sacramento, Cleveland, Miami, and Minnesota, which had some spectacular seasons (with Webber, James, Wade, and Garnett, respectively) and some horrendous seasons without them. Memphis’s variance is slightly below that, which surprises me, given that the Grizz had seven 20-win seasons and three playoff seasons. I would have expected them to have, numerically, the greatest win variance of any team.

The most consistent teams in terms of variance are the Spurs (consistently great), the Bobcats (consistently putrid), then Philadelphia (always mediocre), Dallas (consistently great), and Milwaukee (also always mediocre, making the 2001 Eastern Conference Finals the blandest big-time playoff series ever).

The most successful teams over the decade are the Spurs (57.6 wins on average), the Mavs (54.8 wins), the Lakers (53.0), the Pistons (49.7), and the Suns (49.1). No other team comes particularly close to the Suns’ mark. The worst teams are the Bobcats (natch) with 28.8 wins, Atlanta, Memphis, the Clippers, and Chicago. How embarrassing for the Bulls: after dominating the ‘90s, they were in the league’s bottom five the following decade. Even top-five draft picks in 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, and 2008 (not to mention the 7th pick in 2003) could not vault them to one single fifty-win season.

It is easy to predict the best teams of the coming decade. Miami with Dwyane Wade, Orlando with Dwight Howard, Portland with Brandon Roy, and Chicago with Derrick Rose will be awesome. Chris Paul, LeBron James, and Kevin Durant will be on that list, but we must first wait to learn whether they will stay with their current small-market teams. The L.A. Lakers will likely do very well in the first part of the decade, but may suffer some privations when Kobe Bryant eventually quits. Boston has one or two strong seasons left, but will then crumble to dust when its aging stars leave or retire. Same for the Spurs; like Rajon Rondo, Tony Parker is no Isiah.

Check jordanpushedoff.com in June of 2019 for an evaluation of these predictions!

Gog and Magog

The potential clinching game of the NBA Finals is tonight. Yet why is this the headline on ESPN's NBA homepage? Weren't these guys finished weeks or months ago? Note that to find content about the Magic and Lakers, one needs to click the link just below "The Taking of Pelham 123". Funny enough, that movie was originally released in 1974, shortly after Shaquille O'Neal's birth.

So long, Magic Dynasty

Magic fans will likely be hurting from Thursday night's collapse for years. For the Magic, there is no "wait til next year" because their best scorer, Hedo Turkoglu, will be wearing another team's colors come next season.

Turkoglu has a player option for the 2009-10 season for $7.36 million, but recent reports indicate that he will opt out of his contract. And let's be honest: he'd have to be crazy not to do so. Turk has shown his mettle these playoffs, solidifying his place in the game as one of the game's best clutch shooters. The playoffs have also given Turkoglu to showcase his other talents -- his ability to get off his own shot from anywhere on the court; his ball handling skills (the Magic's offense flows through him on most of the Magic's half-court sets); and even his hitherto unknown defensive talents (that block on Kobe in Game 2 will have Kobe seething for months). Make no mistake: This is Superman's team, but when the Magic need to score, the ball will be in Turkoglu's hands.

The Magic just can't afford to re-sign Turkoglu at market price. The Magic's GM, Otis Smith, assured this two years ago when they inked Rashard Lewis to a 6-year $113 million max contract. I'm sure that it's not lost on Turkoglu (or on Dwight Howard) that one-dimensional, inconsistent Rashard Lewis makes significantly more than anyone on the team. But egos aside, with Dwight Howard on the books for $15.1 million next season and Lewis set to make $18 million next season, the Magic don't have space for a third player making near-max money. (Magic management have already indicated that they are loath to pay the luxury tax. )

Look for Turkoglu in a Raptors uniform next season. In addition to GM Bryan Colangelo's European fetish, the Raptors are badly in need of someone who can create his own shot and someone who can handle the ball. Turkoglu does both.

Still Just A Rat In A Cage

This is hardly an Orlando Magic blog – far from it. I revealed long ago that my sympathies belong with the Pistons (and my somnolent co-bloggers are fans of the Celtics and Raptors). But the Magic’s presence in these Finals has provided a stready stream of megajoules to my blogging circuitry. There is just so much to say about them.

I have to admit that I love this VitaminWater commercial featuring Dwight Howard.



The production costs for this 30-second spot were likely far below the cost to animate the “Most Valuable Puppets” or to shoot Chuck and Dwyane “eating the head!” in a Chinese restaurant. The producers simply sat Howard down, gave him a couple changes of clothes, and asked him to recite a few goofy lines. (Here is a video of the outtakes from filming, which suggests to me that there wasn’t much of a script.) Total filming time, including lighting and set design, was probably no more than a couple hours.

The music also adds much to this spot, adding a purpose and nobility to the absurd content of his ravings. I like how the strings slowly build to a crescendo, upon which we learn that Dwight “definitely gets his vitamins.”

As a postscript, what’s up with the use of “Glaceau” as the parent brand of VitaminWater? This is a Coca-Cola product, as are Dasani, Sprite, Schweppes, Thums Up, Nestea, Odwalla, Minute Maid, Powerade, A&W, Fanta, Fresca, Dr Pepper, Canada Dry... Incidentally, the inattention of federal regulators to antitrust/competition law during the entire Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush era gave us monstrous creatures like Exxon-Mobil, Chevron-Texaco, Time Warner-Turner, Citicorp-Travellers, Pfizer-Wyeth, and Pepsi-Quaker Oats. In the beverage space, Coca-Cola seems to control every non-alcoholic drink known to man. This cannot be wise.

Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, Men Have Named You

Q: What do Hedo Turkoglu, Rafer Alston, Dwight Howard, Mickael Pietrus, Tony Battie, and J.J. Redick have in common? (in contradistinction to their teammates Nelson, Lewis, Lee, and Gortat?) Answer below.

A: None of them has a tattoo!

Straight, No Chaser

Towards the end of overtime in last night's Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Lakers took the ball with about 27 seconds left and a 3-point lead. ABC's Jeff Van Gundy (or was it Mark Jackson?) argued that Orlando should foul immediately. I thought this was bad advice. If you foul an 80% free-throw shooter, then there's a 64% chance that he'll make both shots and you'll be down by 5 points, and a 32% chance that he'll make only 1 shot and you'll be down by 4 points. There's only a 4% chance that he'll miss both shots and you'll have a chance to tie the game! My advice would be to try for a defensive stop and get the ball back. Granted, as Van Gundy observed, if the Lakers simply held the ball for 24 seconds, they would leave Orlando with only 3 seconds remaining to put a shot together. But they probably would not do that; rather, they would try for a score to augment their lead. This gives Orlando opportunity to either get a steal or a stop well before 24 seconds elapsed. It might not work, but the probability of success would probably be over 4 percent.

In the event, Orlando adopted perhaps a compromise strategy between my advice and Van Gundy's: they trapped the Lakers on the inbound pass (which was in the backcourt) and tried to effect either a steal or an 8-second violation. When this failed and the Lakers successfully advanced the ball across the half-court line, Orlando immediately fouled with 22 seconds left. They smartly chose to foul Lamar Odom, who is only a 62.3% free throw shooter (thus, a 14% chance that he would miss both, but an 86% chance that he would make at least one shot and make it a two-possession game). In the event, Odom made two free throws, Redick and Lewis missed three-pointers, and the ballgame ended as Jack Nicholson rose to congratulate the Magic's stars. A Coach Bhel would have handled things differently.

One Long Sleepless Night

What I find most amazing about Orlando’s success is that it comes despite a series of terrible decisions by the general manager, Otis Smith. Firstly, he tried to hire University of Florida basketball coach Billy Donovan as his new coach in 2007, before Donovan changed his mind five days after signing his contract. If you have an MVP-caliber player on your roster, your next coaching hire should represent an affirmative answer to the question, “Could I imagine this coach leading us to victory in the NBA Finals?” While Donovan won two championships as a college coach, the list of college coaches with NO pro experience who have succeeded in the big leagues is nil, to the best of my knowledge. Smith was rescued from his enormous blunder when Donovan took a hike and Stan Van Gundy agreed to coach Orlando. Van Gundy had already proved he could manage a team of raging adults when he took a young Butler-Odom-Wade-Jones-Haslem-Grant team to the second round of the playoffs in 2004 and took a team of Shaquille O’Neal plus Wade, Jones, and Haslem to a couple smiles of fortune away from the NBA Finals against the Pistons the next year. All parties are better off with the eventual coaching allocation.


Orlando, under previous general manager John Weisbrod, had a great summer in 2004, hauling two good draft picks in Nelson and Howard, and signing Hedo Turkoglu as a free agent. When Smith took over in June 2005, though, the general tenor of team management turned awful (or offal?). Orlando’s 2005 draft pick, Spanish center Fran Vázquez, refused to leave Europe despite earlier americophilic statements, and 2006’s draft pick, college yeoman J.J. Redick, proved to be a small and jittery shooter in the pros. In place of Vazquez, Orlando could have taken Danny Granger, Nate Robinson, Jason Maxiell, Linas Kleiza, David Lee, Monta Ellis … or if a center Smith coveted, Andray Blatche and Ronny Turiaf were available. In Redick’s stead, Orlando could have chosen athletic off-guards like Ronnie Brewer or Thabo Sefolosha. A host of point guards, including guys now manning contenders including Rajon Rondo, Jordan Farmar, Shannon Brown, and Kyle Lowry, were available in '06 as well; it would have been nice to have a feisty backup when Jameer Nelson was injured in February 2009.

Smith had a fine 2007, picking up Rashard Lewis and Marcin Gortat as free agents. However, he blundered quite a bit in trading Trevor Ariza, a skilled wing defender, to the Lakers for Brian Cook and Maurice Evans, neither of whom provide any of the oomph that T.A. does. To be sure, Ariza never showed any aptitude for three-point shooting or steals in the early part of his career, and he has burnished those skills in Los Angeles through extensive and patient practice. Still, Ariza was too athletic to discard so quickly. The 2008-09 period also worked out well for Smith, as described here: he drafted Courtney Lee and signed Mickael Pietrus and Anthony Johnson; later, he acquired Rafer Alston by trade when Nelson injured his shoulder.

I think this story illustrates that blunders in roster management are easily fixable. If Ariza were still on the roster, Smith would not have had reason or financial room to sign Pietrus; if a young PG like Farmar were understudying Nelson when the latter got injured, Farmar would have been thrust into the starting role, which frankly would not have got them to the Finals. (And acquiring Brian Cook later helped Smith acquire Alston.) It would have been nice if Fran Vazquez decided to play Stateside, but Marcin Gortat ably fills his role. But, but! — not all general managers are able to cleanse their errors. Whether out of misguided loyalty, unreasonable optimism, or a refusal to recognize one’s own poor judgment, many GMs choose to stick with their bad moves for far longer than is justified.

Kobe's Shameless Self-Promotion

This was Kobe's comment after yesterday's Lakers win:

"I rank this right up there with some of the biggest road wins we've had since I've been a Laker. Because in the past, we always had guys that had a lot of experience. Robert Horry, Rick Fox, Ron Harper, they've all been through this before. For our guys, this is brand new."

To me, this comment reveals that Kobe is very much aware that he is badly losing "the best baller in the world" debate to LeBron James. Part of the rationale for the emerging consensus on Lebron's supriority is that LeBron's and Kobe's teams have similar records but Kobe is doing it with another superstar (Pau Gasol), a borderline all-star (Lamar Odom), a future all-star (Andrew Bynum) and a strong bench, whereas LeBron is doing it with guys who have no business being on a championship contender.

By contrasting his current team with the Lakers' past teams, Kobe is trying to make his current roster look weaker than it is. If one accepts Kobe's premise that his supporting cast isn't that great because they have less experience than some of his past teams, then the inexorable conclusion is that Kobe must be doing something pretty special to have them winning so many playoff games. But alas, Kobe, we see right through you: Your supporting cast is the envy of the entire NBA, so please don't undervalue their skills.

The Lovers, The Dreamers, and Me

If you find yourself asking “Is that guy white or black?” (see: Shane Battier, Blake Griffin, Jason Kidd, Delonte West, Aaron Williams, Deron Williams, Mike Bibby, Jordan Farmar), the answer is almost always “he’s half and half.” Why is this complicated or surprising? Hey, it's 2009. Yet I hear this question all the time on internet discussions and, especially, in casual conversation from some close to me. Apparently "part this, part that" is not a psychologically salient category for many people: every human object of inquiry must be deemed one or the other. Of course, even Americans who phenotypically appear undeniably of either European or African descent probably have a little bit of ancestry from the other group.

(Being half one thing and half another, I hope I, Bhel, am insulated from charges that I am an obsessive racialist by dint of making these observations.)

Oompa Loompa, Doompadee Doo

ESPN’s television broadcast the morning of the final Bulls-Celtics game listed the results of a website poll whereby web readers could pick from among four predictions for the game: Bulls in regulation, Bulls in overtime, Celtics in regulation, Celtics in overtime. I don’t recall the precise numbers, and the poll does not seem to be available any longer online, but something like 30% of respondents predicted the Bulls to win in OT and 21% predicted the Celtics in OT. So more than half of poll-takers thought Game 7 would go to overtime! (In the event, Boston won 109-99, in regulation time.)

Now, the raw proportion of all NBA games across the land, across years that go to OT is probably no more than 5%. To the extent you know that two teams are evenly matched (and Chicago and Boston minus Garnett certainly are), you are probably on relatively safer ground to predict that the game will go to overtime. But I would think that for these even-steven Bulls and Celtics, the most prudently correct answer to the question “Will the next game go to overtime?” is surely “No”. So over half of poll-takers got it wrong, no?


At first glance, this looks to me like an example of the representativeness bias, whereby, e.g., if you ask a poll respondent, “Who would you more likely find in a library: (i) a woman, or (ii) a middle-aged woman environmentalist with glasses?” many respondents will choose the latter because it sounds more quintessentially library-esque. But, of course, back in the real world, maybe 55% of library patrons are women, while about 3% are middle-aged bespectacled tree-huggettes. People don’t handle probabilities well. An overtime game between the Bulls and Celtics feels more emblematic of that series, so people feel, however wrongly, that it will recur.

Perhaps my point is weakened because 4 of the first 6 Bulls-Celtics games actually did in fact go to OT, so out of that sample, it’s actually safe to predict extra minutes. But sometimes crazy shit goes down, just by fluke. It’s hard to believe that I should update my probabilistic expectation of overtime from 5% to 50%. What do the numbers say? Consider the following Bayesian probability formula:

Such an updating would require that the proportion of Bulls-Celtics games out of all the overtime games played in 2008-09 is roughly ten times the proportion of Bulls-Celtics games out of all the NBA games played this season. So let’s consider some data. (I obtained all these numbers from the wonderful basketball-reference.com.) In 2008-09, there were 1230 regular-season games and 45 first-round playoff games, for a total of 1275 games, of which 70 regular-season and 4 playoff, or 5.804%, were overtime games. Out of all those 1275 games, the Bulls and Celtics played 3 regular-season games and 7 playoff games, for a total of 10 games, which was 0.784% of the 1275 games. Out of the 74 overtime games, 4, or 5.405%, were Bulls-Celtics games. So, the answer to my equational riddle up above is 5.405% * 5.804% / 0.784%, which equals 40.0%. Hmmm, maybe I was too quick to criticize the masses. 40% is pretty close to 50%, so predicting an overtime game based on the available data is not such a stretch. What if we make the analysis more precise by truncating the data set just prior to May 2nd, the date of Bulls-Celts game 7? This would put us in the position of a Bayesian observer filling out that ESPN poll just after game 6. This only deletes two games from our data set — Bulls-Celts game 7 and Heat-Hawks game 7. Now the correct Bayesian probability of overtime is 44.4% ! Wow! My initial supercilious dismissal of the silly plebes was way off. It seems that ESPN web users internalized the available observations quite well. 44.4% is still not high enough to predict that Game 7 will go to OT, but it's dang close.

Meanwhile, the Atlanta-Miami series also seems to be indicative that the teams are evenly matched, but in a wildly different way. If Atlanta had won three games by huge margins and Miami had won three squeakers, then we might say that Atlanta is a better team and Miami has been touched by kind luck. But actually, the first six games were all settled by double-figure margins, and no game saw a lead change after the first quarter. We might say that the two teams are mediocre at best, and equally likely to suffer horrible mental holidays.

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UPDATE JUNE 17TH: I just became aware of this June 10th blog post from Northwestern University professor of economics Jeff Ely. Check out the two Youtube animated graphs, showing the how the distribution of score differentials changes in the last 60 seconds of an NBA game, averaged over 12 years of data. Absolutely amazing stuff. The basic gist is that tie outcomes after 48 minutes are far, far more likely than 1-point victories or 2-point victories. You should also read the comments, which provide some speculative explanations for that data. I don't think this new information contradicts anything in my original post above.

Into The Woods

Well, one of the Western Conference semifinal matchups is set, as both Houston and Los Angeles have finished off their foes. I lament Houston's lack of full strength. Los Angeles is hideously talented and athletic with Bynum, Odom, Ariza, Bryant, Gasol, and even quiet sojourners like Shannon Brown. Houston is very good, but consider that they have a four-time Defensive Player of the Year and a two-time NBA scoring champion sitting injured on their bench. Who will make key scores in crunch time for Houston? Who will contain the Lakers' tree trunks in the paint? Yao Ming is too stiff to effectively play Gasol and Bynum one-on-one without fouling his way to early departure. A contest between the strong and true Rockets and the extant Lakers would be awesome. As things stand, I predict the Lakers in five.

Thy Tears Are Womanish

Back in the last month of 2008, we gaped aghast when TNT’s Inside the NBA spent the whole evening ragging on Kenny Smith after he commented approvingly on Terrell Owens’s buff body. It was amusing once, but for several hours? Ernie Johnson, who really should police juvenile hijinks on his show, was actually quite glad to toss in purportedly hilarious gibes of his own.

Last night’s (April 22nd) edition of Inside the NBA moved from subjugated fear of man-love to an hour’s worth of penis worship. Charles Barkley began the show by relating an anecdote about a job he held as a teenager, hammering tar off of pipes on hot summer days down in Alabama. Kenny giggled and labelled Barkley a “pipe beater”, and for the next sixty minutes, Ernie and Kenny used every opportunity to utter a ‘pipe’-related phrase, including “Pipe down”, “piping hot”, “down the pipe”, and “pipe dream”. Smith also subtly hinted at old wives’ tales about masturbation, including blindness and hairy hands. Seriously, I’m not joking; watch the video!

How much homophobia / homoeroticism is acceptable on this show? At this rate, will Johnson, Smith, and Barkley be comparing the size and aromatic quality of their excrement next week?

How Do You Sleep?

Who voted Robin Lopez second on his or her Rookie of the Year ballot? My strong hunch is that the voter meant Brook Lopez, but had a cerebral malfunction. That's almost as bad as the elderly Jewish voters in Florida who meant to vote for Gore but somehow marked their ballots for noted philo-semite Pat Buchanan.

Hasenfeffer Incorporated

Well, congratulations to Cavs coach Mike Brown for winning Coach of the Year. But does this look like an NBA championship squad? From left, we have a Simpsons character, the hero of an after-school special, a Phil Collins lover, LeBron James, a would-be rapper, a leprechaun, and a 1980s-era pro wrestling villain. I'm just saying.

Kept In A Jar By The Door

Back in November, we bellyached about an advertisement near our home in Chicago wherein an image of Carmelo Anthony commanded us to drink a blue sports beverage. Why would Anthony consent to the use of his likeness without any charisma-enhancing performative oomph? Even more disturbing is a latter-day series of TV ads where a still photo of Chris Paul, twinned with an obviously not-Paul voice, endorses Right Guard deodorant.

We couldn’t find on Youtube the ad where a hopelessly smitten Chris Paul fan smothers his armpits into his buddy’s face. Right Guard’s website features a sadly static interactive exhibit where web visitors can learn a few factoids about Chris Paul, including his avid bowling habit. Isn’t that why Wikipedia was invented? In any case, the common feature of all of these advertising efforts is the absence of any active participation from Chris Paul himself (in addition to the rather odious presentation of Chris Paul's ’pits as something worth aspiring to). The association of a star athlete with, say, property insurance or underwear is always tenuous; the endorsement is a bit more convincing if the athlete feels like showing up for half a day of filming. (In the case of Dwyane Wade and his German mobile phone masters, how did he find the time to film all those spots with Barkley? Presumably they filmed them all at once last summer, but that must have taken at least three days with all the costume and scenery changes. That’s actually rather impressive for a guy defending against a bitter divorce and playing for Olympic gold.)

Anyway, Chris Paul needs a better agent.

In Which I Buck Your Wisdom

Other writers will preview the 2009 NBA Playoffs with greater care, but I wish to note the great burden that many of this year’s postseason teams surely feel: “Oh no, not this again.” Carmelo Anthony and his Nuggets have appeared in the playoffs in each of the 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 seasons — and lost in the first round each year. The same goes for Yao Ming’s Rockets, although they missed the 2006 playoffs due to myriad injuries. Dallas lost in the first round in three of those years (2004, ’07, ’08). Chicago lost in the first round in ’05 and ’06, before winning one series in ’07 and crashing into the lottery in ’08.

These vernal weeks are filled with teams that surely wish to prove they belong with serious squads and did not merely “fake” their way to 50 wins. Some teams finally find the right mix for a deep playoff run after several years of futility, as the Minnesota Timberwolves finally did in ’04. But, like the Raptors of 2000-2001-2002 or the Grizzlies of 2004-2005-2006, some teams realize that their core stars are just not championship-caliber, and they feel compelled to churn their roster and start over.

Of Denver, Houston, Dallas, and Chicago, I believe that the Mavericks have the greatest chance of making the conference finals or the NBA Finals. Needless to say, Chicago will probably lose in the first round against Boston, even if Kevin Garnett cannot play. Houston and its hard-working center, sadly, will probably lose again, playing Portland on the road and without a top-level point guard. Even if Houston got past the Blazers, the Lakers would likely eat them up; Houston lacks the size to defend Gasol, Bynum, and Odom. Meanwhile, I don’t have a lot of confidence in Denver. They did secure the second seed in the Western Conference, but they actually had as many wins as the third and fourth seed, and only six more than the eighth seed. Their putative leader, Carmelo Anthony, has never shown the defensive leadership or offensive explosiveness required for playoff laurels. And do you really trust Chris Andersen, Kenyon Martin, and JR Smith to keep their heads cool for six weeks of piercing intensity? That leaves Dallas, which fields a former MVP, a former MVP runner-up, and seven guys with NBA Finals experience (eight if you count their coach). The Mavs won nine of their last thirteen games, capped by a rollicking come-from-behind victory against Houston on the season’s denoument. I like the Dallas Mavericks to defeat the Spurs in the first round and the Denver-New Orleans winner in the second round. Of course, I still think the Lakers will beat Cleveland in the Finals, like every other pundit.

Worst NBA Snub Ever

Christian Laettner instead of Isiah Thomas on the 1992 Dream Team.
Seriously, what the hell was that about?!

Ain't Never Caught A Rabbit

I’ve noticed lately that for the first time in a while, the best offensive players are also the best defensive players. Most of the current fad of selections for Defensive Player of the Year or All-NBA Defensive Team include some combination of Bryant, James, Howard, Wade, or Paul, who are also the top five contenders for MVP on most analysts’ ballots. Paul leads the league in steals, and Wade is second in steals and ranks 16th in blocks, amazingly enough. Howard leads the league in rebounds and blocks, and Bryant and James have become on-the-ball bad-asses.

The correlation between defensive and offensive dominance seems to flow in cycles in this league. In the early part of this decade, the perennial best defensive players were Bruce Bowen, Ben Wallace, Doug Christie, Andrei Kirilenko, Ron Artest, and Dikembe Mutombo, who are not known for being dominating offensive forces. (Yes, Duncan, Bryant, and Garnett also showed up with regularity on the All-Defensive Team lists, but the league’s top scorers like McGrady, Iverson, Carter, and Nowitzki were nowhere near those votes.) Back in the ‘80s, the top defensive players were Paul Pressey, Sidney Moncrief, Mark Eaton, Bobby Jones, Michael Cooper, and Dennis Johnson, who were not synonymous with the league’s top scorers like King, Wilkins, English, Dantley, Gervin. (To his credit, Larry Bird made second team All-Defense three times.) In the ‘90s, top scorers and team leaders like Michael Jordan, David Robinson, Shaquille O’Neal, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, and Hakeem Olajuwon all routinely showed up on All-Defensive lists. On the other hand, other top scorers like Charles Barkley, Reggie Miller, Mitch Ritchmond, and Clyde Drexler were not defensive standouts, but then they also were not seen as offensive juggernauts who could will a team to victory in a tight playoff series. (Remember how many times the Pacers failed in the conference finals!)

We may very well be in a Golden Age of NBA awesomeness. These playoffs should be great. LeBron vs. Dwyane in the second round? LeBron vs. Dwight in the conference finals? Bryant vs. Paul in the conference finals? All are very plausible, given the likely seedings.

Papa Don't Preach

In our last two posts, we considered horrible and decent NBA executive performance over the last year. Now let us consider the truly best performances by executives in 2008-09. Last summer, the Cavaliers’ Danny Ferry traded Damon Jones and Joe Smith for Mo Williams, who has helped Cleveland to the best record in the league, 20 wins better than their 2007-08 performance, as of this writing. Ferry also signed Smith again several months later! He also drafted NCAA champion Darnell Jackson, who has cracked the rotation lately and sucked in lots of boards in limited minutes. Ferry’s moves were not as extensive as those of John Paxson, say, but a frenzy of activity does not always indicate intelligence. The greatest decisions are often actions eschewed. There were some rumors that Cleveland might seek to acquire Shaquille O’Neal this past February, but Ferry wisely showed restraint; the Cavs are simply not a dump-it-into-the-big-guy team, and O’Neal would likely whine upon realizing that. More generally, many critics wanted Ferry to trade Wally Sczcerbiak for a serious gamer (with a long contract) who could help the team win this season, but Ferry is taking a long-term view; he knows he will need flexibility to make the team better in 2010 and beyond, both to convince LeBron James to re-sign, and then to improve the roster around him. GRADE: A-

Miami Heat President Pat Riley’s first move of the voting year was his decision to demote himself from the coaching position and hire assistant Erik Spoelstra, who is young, smart, hard-working, well-liked by his players, and the first Asian-American head coach in the NBA. In June, Riley used high first-round and second-round picks to draft Michael Beasley and Mario Chalmers; he also signed free agents James Jones and Jamaal Magloire. Beasley and Chalmers have played well for rookies, though perhaps not quite at the level you might expect of a college player of the year and a Final Four MOP. Jones and Magloire have been injured most of the year and have delivered little. Later, in his biggest move of the year, Riley traded Shawn Marion, who was severely underperforming given his past achievement, for Jermaine O’Neal and Jamario Moon. This has been a decent move for the Heat; Moon mostly duplicates what Marion was doing (wing defense, rebounding, and general scrappiness) and O’Neal, when healthy, adds an imposing defensive presence in the paint. O’Neal’s contract runs through June 2010, whereas Marion’s contract ends in June 2009, but the extra financial commitment will do little to impede roster flexibility, as the Heat probably were not planning to sign any free agents this summer (Carlos Boozer’s injury history poses too great a risk). Miami is 14-14 since the trade, which is just about exactly the rate of success they were enjoying before the trade, when their record stood at 28-24. Recently, Riley plucked Luther Head off waivers; Head filled up some space as a backup guard in March, but has sat thus far in April. GRADE: A-

Donnie Walsh of the Knicks made several hits in 2008-09. First, he relieved Isiah Thomas of coaching duties and hired Mike D’Antoni, who averaged 58 victories during the previous four seasons with Phoenix, as his new coach. D’Antoni’s shot-happy “system” promised to win over Knicks fans hardened by too much futility, and his Italian-American identity probably couldn’t hurt in the New York area. Next, he drafted Danilo Gallinari, whose performance can only be deemed incomplete, given his back problems. Some players drafted lower than Gallinari, including Brook Lopez, Jason Thompson, Anthony Randolph, and Marreese Speights, have shown serious flashes of greatness; on the other hand, Gallinari hit a few big three-pointers for the Knicks during his short burst of health this winter. Walsh then cut a ton of 2009-10 and 2010-11 salary by dumping Zach Randolph on the Clippers for Cuttino Mobley (who promptly retired) and Tim Thomas (whom Walsh later traded for Larry Hughes, who like Thomas has a contract that expires in 2010). Walsh also traded Jamal Crawford for Al Harrington, turning a 2011 expiring contract into a 2010 expiring, while keeping an able athlete on the floor. Walsh traded Malik Rose for Chris Wilcox, which had little financial implication (both contracts expire in June ’09) but gave the Knicks a chance to test out Wilcox’s talents for two months. Finally, Walsh successfully kept Stephon Marbury, whom new Coach D'Antoni deemed a needless nuisance, away from the team for most of the season and managed to get rid of him (forcing Marbury to take a bit of a haircut on his salary) late in the season, depriving his new team, the Celtics, of more than a couple months of his services pre-playoffs. Walsh deserves credit for setting an exciting new direction for the team and cutting salary in advance of the 2010 free-agent market, though he has otherwise he has done little to improve the team’s on-court performance. The Knicks will miss the playoffs again this year for the fifth consecutive season, and the seventh time in the last eight. After Isiah Thomas's reign, Walsh's actions truly look like Total Quality Management. GRADE: A-

Orlando GM Otis Smith didn’t do a lot, but his few moves were indispensable for the team. First, he drafted college senior Courtney Lee, who has shown poised defense and adequately drilled 3-pointers to keep defenses honest. Lee beat out three other veterans — Mickael Pietrus (an athletic wing player whom Smith smartly signed as a free agent from Golden State last summer for only $5 MM annually), J.J. Redick, and Keith Bogans — for the starting spot. Later, when Jameer Nelson suffered a season-ending shoulder injury, Smith quickly and effectively scrambled to replace Nelson at PG, using the few tradeable assets on his squad. First, Smith traded Keith Bogans, who was effectively the team’s fourth option at SG, for Tyronn Lue so that the team could have a proper backup point guard as long as Anthony Johnson needed to start. Later, he traded Brian Cook and Adonal Foyle, plus a future draft pick, for Rafer Alston, who immediately walked into O-town and began running the ship like Capt. Chesley Sullenberger. Even better, Foyle later returned to Orlando in March ’09 after Memphis (which acquired Foyle in the complicated three-way deal) waived him. And Lue might seem superfluous now, but Johnson is old, and it never hurts to have a third-string point guard with an NBA championship ring. This summer, the team will have a problem with two starting point guards in Nelson and Alston. Presumably Smith will trade one of them, but that’s a problem for the summer. For now, Orlando is a serious contender for the NBA championship, something only three other teams can say. GRADE: A

In Denver, General Manager Mark Warkentien pulled off the fantastic Iverson-for-Billups trade that we extolled a few months ago, following the exile of Marcus Camby to the Clippers. Camby’s exit, in addition to saving the team a whole bunch of money, has allowed the younger Nene Hilario to thrive as Denver’s starting center, earning mention as a Most Improved Player candidate. Warkentien also pulled off some quieter but awesome moves, including the signing of Chris Andersen, the signing of Dahntay Jones, and the acquisition of Renaldo Balkman, who all have been defensive beasts off the bench, adding a combined total of slightly over $3 MM annually to Denver’s payroll. Today, after all these additions and subtractions, Denver is poised to grab the second playoff seed in the Western Conference, and could finally break the Carmelo Anthony-George Karl streak of four consecutive first-round playoff losses. GRADE: A

In Oklahoma City, Sam Presti chose Russell Westbrook at the fourth position in the draft, thus finding an able distributor to pass the ball to Kevin Durant well into the ‘Teens. He acquired Joe Smith and Desmond Mason for Luke Ridnour and Adrian Griffin, added some inside heft by luring Nenad Krstic back to the NBA from Russia, and acquired Thabo Sefolosha for a 2009 first-round draft pick. Sefolosha has been a defensive beast in the last six weeks, highlighted by a March in which he delivered 10 points, 5 rebounds, 2 steals, and 1.5 blocks per game from the shooting guard position. Presti nearly pulled off a huge heist by acquiring Tyson Chandler for some veterans with expiring contracts, but chose to cancel the deal due to concerns over an old foot injury. This already looks prudent and prescient, as Chandler played only 12 games after that trade, and has since missed 13 with an ankle problem. Most importantly, Presti hired assistant Scott Brooks to be the new head coach; Brooks then made the sensible decision of moving Kevin Durant to a frontcourt position, after former coach P.J. Carlesimo insisted on making him a guard. After starting the season 1-10 under Carlesimo, the Thunder went 2-13 in December, 7-7 in January, 3-9 in February, and 7-8 in March. It’s not the ’86 Celtics, but it appears that Brooks’s moves are paying off. Presti’s moves in the last 12 months have positioned his team to be a playoff contender for the next 10 years. GRADE: A+

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Ultimately we had a tough time deciding among Ferry, Riley, Walsh, Smith, Warkentien, and Presti, but if we had a vote, we would deliver the NBA Executive of the Year Award out to Sam Presti for his patient, long-term planning. We can’t wait to see what he does next.

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UPDATE May 3rd: Denver's Warkentien won the award with 9 of 30 votes. We consider this a fine choice, as we had him second on our ballot. Surprisingly, Oklahoma City's Presti only received one vote!

I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

Welcome back to our weekend series on the NBA Executive of the Year Award for 2008-09. Last time we considered the worst performances; tomorrow we will consider the best. Today, we consider the notable jobs that fall somewhere in the middle.

Losing teams made a lot of lateral decisions that are hard to evaluate right now. For example, in Minnesota, team president Kevin McHale drafted O.J. Mayo and turned him (along with some veterans who weren’t in the Wolves’ plans) into Mike Miller, Jason Collins, Brian Cardinal, and Kevin Love. He also traded Rashad McCants and Calvin Booth for Shelden Williams and Bobby Brown. Meanwhile, in Memphis, GM Chris Wallace drafted NCAA champion Darrell Arthur and nabbed Mayo from Minnesota in the aforementioned trade. He finally dispersed his glut of young point guards, sending Javaris Crittendon to Washington for a draft pick and sending Kyle Lowry to Houston for a draft pick and Mike Wilks. However, none of these moves were particularly impactful. Memphis is still one of the worst teams in the league; unlike Dwyane Wade in 2003-04, the “combo” guard Mayo has not shown his squad how to win. Minnesota similarly did little this year. Love looks like a star, but Minnesota still sucks. GRADE for both: C+

John Paxson of the Bulls selected Derrick Rose first in the draft, refusing to imbibe the honeyed vapors of Michael Beasley or O.J. Mayo, whose amazing scoring skills helped them appear more “NBA-ready” at the time. Rose, who leads all rookies in assists and ranks second in points per game and minutes played, has validated Paxson’s gamble. Paxson also made the curious decision to hire Vinny Del Negro, who had never coached basketball at any level. The Bulls have played .500 ball in VDN’s first season, which probably is a bit poorer than a more skillful coach could have steered the team, which features six former NCAA Final Four stars. Later, in February, Paxson traded Nocioni and Drew Gooden for Brad Miller and John Salmons. Salmons has been rock-solid for the Bulls; his March included 21 points per game, nearly 5 rebounds, and 50% field goal percentage, and the Bulls went 9-7 in that month. Paxson traded Larry Hughes for Tim Thomas, Jerome James, and Anthony Roberson, although this trade did not help the Bulls much on the court or on the P/L sheet; all three of the new contracts, which sum to about the amount of Hughes’s contract ($13 MM), expire in 2010, just as Hughes’s deal does. Perhaps the disaggregation of the $13 MM into more “modular” assets gives the Bulls more flexibility for future trades. Finally, Paxson jettisoned Thabo Sefolosha for a draft pick. This last one didn’t make much sense to me. With the loss of Hughes and Sefolosha, the Bulls only have three rotation guards: Rose, Hinrich, and Gordon. Gordon likely won’t be re-signed after this spring, and Hinrich probably should be traded so he can properly play a starting PG role elsewhere. Possibly, John Salmons could be a starting SG with Luol Deng on the floor to play SF, but that still leaves only two decent guards on the team. Sefolosha was, and could continue to be, a solid bench contributor, but now he is playing le beau jeu in Oklahoma. So all in all, Paxson’s moves have brought mixed fortune to the team. I really think owner Jerry Reinsdorf needs to bring in a general manager with fresh ideas. Derrick Rose, Noah, and Tyrus Thomas are nice building blocks, but Chicago needs to ready the franchise to pull in a top-rate free agent such as Chris Bosh or Dwyane Wade next summer. GRADE: B-

Since June 2008, New Jersey’s Rod Thorn selected Brook Lopez in the draft, then moved Richard Jefferson for Yi Jianlian and Bobby Simmons. He also signed free agents Jarvis Hayes and Eduardo Najera, who have been mostly inconsequential to the team. Lopez has been awesome, a steal at the tenth position in the first round. Had Thorn pulled off the rumored trade of Vince Carter for young talent or draft picks, he might be a contender for this award, but we simply cannot put Thorn near the top of the list, given the poor performance of Yi, whom some thought could become a Nowitzki-like freak. GRADE: B-

In San Antonio, team president RC Buford drafted unheralded guard George Hill and signed Roger Mason Jr. and, more recently, Drew Gooden. Mason in particular has been a solid contributor as a middling starting guard with a penchant for hitting big shots in the clutch. Mason’s presence has helped to forestall complete disaster while Parker and Ginobili missed significant time to injury, but Spurs management has failed to add another big-time player to the team since drafting Tony Parker in 2001 and adding Manu Ginobili (drafted in 1999) to the team in 2002. The 2007 decision to trade Luis Scola to Houston has never made much sense to me. And touted Europeans Tiago Splitter and Ian Mahinmi are either still in Europe, or stuck on the Spurs’ bench. Granted, this is a referendum on 2008-09 actions only, but we long for a San Antonio general manager who could hit a home run instead of just being excited by a double. Four championships are hard to denigrate, but the Spurs sure could have used more help last season or this one. GRADE: B

In Portland, Kevin Pritchard drafted Nicolas Batum and Jerryd Bayless, which were perfectly respectable picks given Portland’s relatively wide-open pecking order at SF and PG. Pritchard also coaxed 2007 draft pick Rudy Fernandez (who dazzled with the Spanish team in Beijing) to join the Blazers after a year with his club team in Barcelona. These were fine moves, and the presence of strong role players has probably helped Portland make the transition from playoff also-ran to nearly a championship contender. The Blazers’ case helps to highlight that good executive performance need not bring your team out of the cellar or launch it to a championship, but can consist of taking the little steps to go from good to great. In any case, this evaluation is attenuated somewhat by Blazer management’s obnoxious email to the rest of the league regarding the team’s perceived rights vis-a-vis Blazers player Darius Miles, which letter we considered and analyzed in this January post. So all in all, I give Pritchard a GRADE of B for these moves.

Yet, I wonder what the Blazers could be if, counterfactually, they had drafted even more smartly. So far Pritchard has scored several good moves: In 2007 traded Zach Randolph for Channing Frye and (the soon-to-depart) Steve Francis; in 2006 he drafted Brandon Roy, LaMarcus Aldridge, and Sergio Rodriguez; and in 2007 he drafted Rudy Fernandez. His choice of Greg Oden over Kevin Durant looks increasingly poor, though. Imagine the Blazers with Joel Przybilla sucking in rebounds at an insane rate and bodying up to opposing centers as their full-time center, and Kevin Durant pouring in points as their starting 3. And how can we forget the previous regime’s decision to trade out of the #3 position in the 2005 NBA Draft when Chris Paul and Deron Williams were on the board? Their eventual booty from that draft, Martell Webster, is not all that good, and only played about 5 minutes this whole season. CP3 would surely be an upgrade over Steve Blake. But of course, the draft is a crapshoot, and the jackpots of Roy and Aldridge are better than most teams ever do in a three-year period.

Houston General Manager Daryl Morey had a pretty good year — first drafting Joey Dorsey, and then acquiring Ron Artest, Von Wafer, and Brent Barry before the season began. He then lured Dikembe Mutombo out of retirement, and then, observing that Aaron Brooks was ready for a starter’s role at the PG position, he revivified the team’s PG play by trading Rafer Alston for Kyle Lowry and Brian Cook. I believe, though, that Morey’s year is notable more for what he did not do: he could have traded Tracy McGrady while his value was still high (before he bowed out of yet another season, this time with microfracture knee surgery). Morey may deeply regret his excessive patience with T-Mac. Morey also organized a “sports analytics” conference in March ’09 at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. We nerds at JPO adore any attempt to impose rigor on the fuzzy realm of basketball “analysis”, so he gets some extra bonus marks therefor. GRADE: B+

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Next time, we will consider the absolute best executive performances of 2008-09 and announce our choice for NBA Executive of the Year.