Free Ballin’

Do you remember way back in the day, when Baron Davis and Corey Maggette signed huge contracts, with the Clippers and Warriors?  Oh yeah, that was last summer.  It’s something to think about, on this first day of free agency, how quickly free agents can become albatrosses.

I wonder what percentage of free agent signings work out.  There’s no stat for free agent f_ck-up, but maybe there should be.  [Until I think of something better, FAFU will do.]  I think there would have to have different grades.  There are FAFUs like, “we thought this guy was going to be really good, but it turns out he’s crap.”  Some years back, you might have refered to these as Joe Klein contracts, but it’s a new era.  I think  these days you might go with “Szczerbiak contract.”  Or maybe a Dunleavy.  That’s a FAFU – Grade I.  Then there are guys who range from decent to pretty good, who are paid to be stars, like Kirk Hinrich or Kenyon Martin.  Those are FAFU – Grade IIs.  And then you have the Richard Jefferson contracts, the really good players who are overpaid enough that they’re a problem unless you’re playing for a championship.  Jefferson is a great deal for the Spurs, because he just might put them over the top.  But on the Nets and Bucks, his contract was a killer.  That’s a FAFU – Grade III.

• I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me. #
• I received my first birthday card, today – 10 days early, from a dental practice I've never heard of. Obviously, word is getting around. #

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• I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me. #
• I received my first birthday card, today – 10 days early, from a dental practice I've never heard of. Obviously, word is getting around. #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

I just read an annoying article by Bob Young.  Discussing the pros and cons of moving Amare Stoudemire, Young confidently states of the power-forward’s health prospects:  “A surgically repaired knee may work fine right now, but it’s still a surgically repaired knee. It’s never quite the same.”  It always irks me when basketball writers ominously refer to players’ limbs as “surgically repaired,” as though Scotch Tape and Robitussin were employed to set bones and repair torn ligaments.  Injuries are unique, and so are their prognoses.

Tim Hardaway tore his ACL, lost a step, and never returned to All-Star form.  DeJuan Blair has no ACLs and he was selected in the first round of the NBA Draft – you just never know.  Has Young done ample research on the long-term risks of microfracture surgery, and consulted orthopedic surgeons who might shed some light on Amare’s prognosis?  No way.  He does nothing to indicate that he has, or that he has a clue.  All that we can know, without more information, is that Amare is still an ultra-quick high-flying force of nature, and Bob Young is a hack.

I missed this a few weeks back, from Chad Ford’s draft news:

• We’ve been trying to get to the bottom of DeJuan Blair’s situation for the past few weeks. We’ve heard from a number of teams that they’ve had concerns about his knees and it’s only come to light in recent days that those concerns have to do with the fact that doctors can’t seem to find his ACLs in the MRIs they’ve taken. There are a lot of different takes on what this means, and I won’t bore you with them here.

He doesn’t want to bore us with the details?  You don’t wish to tell your readers how doctors explain how a player without ACLs can grab 12 rebounds a game in Division I basketball?  What a load of condescending crap.  Where the hell is Will Carroll when you need him?

[Chad Ford annoys me enough already, following his good reporting with awful analysis: "This isn't a rumor, just a suggestion.  What if Team X sent their best player to Team Y for Y's garbage aging veteran?  Doesn't this make sense for both teams?"]

Someday, Ford is going to report, “Unfortunately, the dazzling Slovakian point-guard was unable to provide a urine sample, during his physical.  It seems the father of six lacked the proper equipment.  Doctors have a variety of theories, but I won’t bore you with the details.  Needless to say, this could impact his draft status, and his marriage.”

• I wonder, what's the $ value of being a good team? Small market SAS pays $14m for their 4th best player? Contending worth a lot of dough? #
• Anyone know how teams make money in the NBA? Is everything split except tix and local TV contracts? #
• Lucky me. Just saw 12th night in central park, their first performance without rain. #

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ESPN’s rumor mill linked to the story.  The next day David Kahn said it was BS.  I’m hoping it isn’t.  Mark Jackson has been itching to coach for a long time and I’m sure he would be…great, yeah, just dandy, and how nice for a NYC guy…OK, I don’t care.  But I’m hoping and praying for this as much as anyone—anything to get Jackson out of  the broadcasting business.

I’ve read so much about the great television commentary chemistry between best buddies Jeff Van Gundy and Mark Jackson, and nothing about the fact that Jackson is terrible.  He’s just an awful commentator.  The plodding monotone delivery might not so unbearable if he didn’t call games like he used to play defense: slowly, passively, telegraphing every movement, lacking the ability to change direction.  He’s worse than Bill Walton, because at least Bill Walton sucks uniquely.  Jackson makes only the most obvious comments, which normally have something to do with Kobe just being Kobe because that’s what Kobe does, because he’s a superstar, because he’s the best player in the world, just being Kobe, doing what he does.  The ever-steady flow of platitudes is only occasionaly interupted by him saying you have to keep your hands up on defense.  (That’s literally everything he knows about playing defense.)  So here’s hoping Jackson knocks em dead in the interview.  Make it happen, Mark.

I’m for the 3s, myself.  This trade is fun and Toronto’s half is amusing.  I won’t get into salaries because…I don’t feel it.  Suffice to say, they have comparably bad contracts: too big, too long.  So what’s worth discussing?

Toronto gets Evans: I find this amusing because it’s a deal to help facilitate Andrea Bargnani’s development.  I haven’t seen much of Bargnani and don’t feel like I can opine on his upside, but it does actually seem like he might become a real scorer.  However, he also must be the worst inch-for-inch rebounder in the game.  Evans, on the other hand, is as good a rebounder as anyone in the NBA.  And he can’t do anything else.  I really love mix-n-match trades.

Philly gets Kapono: This deal is entirely about Elton Brand.  I was totally in favor of the Brand signing, and though it doesn’t look good, so far, I think it could still work out.

I didn’t see a lot of the 76ers with Brand, but then, nobody else did either.  The guy played 29 games before his injury, but from all accounts he seemed like an awful fit for the team.  Bill Simmons even named him the least valuable player in the NBA (his contract being a major factor.)  Eh, I think it’s just way too early to call the move a failure.

As for the fit, it’s on the team to create a roster around the qualities of their franchise player, and to get a coach whose system compliments him.  And yet, I’m not suggesting that the roster is unsuited to compliment Brand’s talents.  29 games and a coach who has almost been fired almost every year of his coaching career?  You have to give it a chance to work.  And, well, they will, because Brand is signed for a long, long time.

One thing I’m curious about was hearing that a major conflict was that the 76ers had a lot of runners and jumpers (without jumpers) and Brand was strictly a half-court guy.  This surprised me because Brand used to be plenty capable of running and jumping.  Hell, you have to be pretty damn athletic to block so many shots at his height.  The only other guys (I can think of) his height who block so many shots are super-freaky athletes Josh Smith and Andrei Kirilenko.  But hey, Simmons has a good eye, and he’s had Clippers season tickets for a while, so maybe he’s right; maybe Brand can’t run like he used to.  Or maybe Bill’s just used to seeing him coached by Mike Dunleavy.

Anyway, I still think Brand could work out well.  New coach Eddie Jordan should help, nicely.  In DC, Jordan had a few very talented scorers who weren’t all that into passing or playing defense, and not much else.  With those pieces he eked out a winning record; now he has some serious talent, and I think he’s a solid choice to figure out how to put the pieces together.

Oh, Kapono.  He got traded, right?  He’s there to shoot, what else?  He can shoot the lights out, pass, and nothing else.  But creating space for Brand and pulling up for transition three pointers is really all he has to do to contribute.

People are too concerned about the accuracy of their sports predictions.  Predicting what you feel most likely to occur is a perfectly reasonable thing to do if you’re a necessarily disinterested party, like a journalist, or have a stake in the outcome, like degenerate gamblers.  But otherwise, the only benefit of being right is say, “Ah ha! I was right!”  I won’t deny there’s a certain pleasure in being right for its own sake, but there are greater pleasures, and rooting against the Lakers is one of them.

It doesn’t mean I’m rooting for something entirely implausible; there are plenty of reasons that the Magic could beat the Lakers.  Kobe could choose to have surgery on that poor injured finger of his, tonight, and miss the rest of the Finals, for example.  More likely, Pau Gasol could play like cotton candy; Odom could disappear for a few games; the Lakers could shoot poorly from 3; the Magic could shoot well enough (often enough) to give Howard some space, so he could get more touches in or near the paint; Orlando’s defense could improve to regular season level.  No, it’s not a yoga stretch to see Orlando winning (though winning in 6 is, but whatever,) but yeah, it’s more likely the Lakers will win.

But there are so many reasons to root against the Lakers.  I won’t go into them all here, because I have to run, but Kobe being less likable than Barry Bonds (though not Roger Clemens) is enough.  Add the nauseating adoration showered upon Phil Jackson, from every television commentator and most sports writers, and Dwight Howard dressing up like Shonuff, and there’s really no question who should win the NBA Championship in a good and just world.  It’s been a crappy year for the world; it would be nice for the Lakers to lose…er, for the Magic to win.

Bill Simmons posted a great email exchange he had with Malcolm Gladwell, in which they discuss the NBA’s deeply flawed (league-damaging) draft.  Both make good (though imperfect) suggestions for how to improve it—I’ll write about how to fix NBA draft, in the near future—but at one point, Simmons, noting how the draft could be used to revitalize former contenders, uses the Phoenix Suns as an example:

“Look at poor Phoenix, which won 46 games in 2008-09 and barely missed the playoffs. If the Suns had the same odds as everyone else to land Blake Griffin in June, and they did, wouldn’t this be good for the league? They’d be an instant contender again!”

Here, Simmons mistakes the Suns for a team worthy of sympathy.  I’ve posted about this before, but below is a concise summary of why the Suns deserve no sympathy whatsoever for their slide from contention.

Immediately after signing Steve Nash, in 2004, new owner Robert Sarver became the stingiest owner in the league.  Consider the 2004 to 2007 stretch.

2004: Drafted Luol Deng 7th overall, but didn’t want to pay his rookie-scale $2.2 million contract, so they traded him to the Bulls for their second round pick (Jackson Vroman) a future first round-pick, and…cash.

2005: Drafted Nate Robinson ($900K) 21st overall and traded him in the package for Kurt Thomas, to replace the injured Amare Stoudemire. (We’ll come back to this.)

2006: Drafted Rajon Rondo ($1.1M) 21st overall, but used him to dump Brian Grant’s salary, trading them for Cleveland’s 2007 first-round pick (via Boston) and…cash.

Six picks after Rondo, they drafted Sergio Rodríguez ($900 thousand) and traded him to the Trailblazers for…cash.

2007: Used the first round-pick, acquired in Rondo deal, to draft Rudy Fernandez ($1M), but used him to dump James Jones’ $2.9 million salary, trading them to the Trailblazers for…cash.

A few weeks later, the Suns dumped Kurt Thomas’ salary by trading him and TWO FIRST-ROUND PICKS to the Sonics, for a FUTURE CONDITIONAL SECOND-ROUND PICK.

2008: Fittingly, Thomas helped the Spurs whup the Suns in the First Round, in 5 games.

To summarize, poor Phoenix had an owner worth $550 million who wouldn’t put a few more bucks into a contending team to put them over the top. By the time Steve Kerr hypnotized Sarver into spending some dough (trading for Shaq) the Suns’ window had already closed.

Look, at least Clippers fans know their team is going to disappoint them, year after year.  The 7-seconds-or-less Suns, on the other hand, flirting with greatness, were ultimately just a big tease.