Background

“T.J. Ford is a lock to lead the league in assists once he gets his minutes in Indiana!”

“Mike Dunleavy’s first good season totally wasn’t a fluke!”

Hell, the Pacers don’t even have enough talent to take that joke into the fourth round of a made up draft of a made up fantasy league.  Brandon Rush is going to be a good rotation player.  Some people think Roy Hibbert is hot stuff, but I haven’t seen enough him (didn’t get much run in the games I saw,) to have an opinion.  Almost everyone else on the team hurts them either by sucking or by being overpaid.

Chicago: NBA stars consistently take the ball into the paint and finish or they shoot the lights out.  There are the rare exceptions, but for the most part, if a guy can’t do one of those two things, he’s not going to be a star.  Can you see Tyrus Thomas developing a highly effective post game?  Or a good-enough handle to penetrate from the perimeter?  Can you see him becoming a great shooter?  Neither can I.  He’s not going to be a star, no matter how young he is or how high he jumps.  His upside is as a third option on a good team.  Fortunately for the Bulls, Derrick Rose is a star, and Luol Deng is a fairly good second option, and John Salmons is a high-quality third option.

I didn’t like the Bulls last year; I like them this year.  Last year they had only three players who could regularly create their own scoring opportunities: Rose, Ben Gordon, and Salmons.  And of those three, only Rose even tried to pass the ball.  Ben Gordon is a good player, sort of, kind of, but he was a bad fit.  Spreading his 16 shots around the roster will help Deng get his mojo back and might help Thomas find his bearings.

Milwaukee: Signing Michael Redd in 2005 was sentimental.  They should have let Cleveland sign him to play with LeBron.  Instead, they took a course that made it virtually impossible to build a contender during the length of his contract.  I wrote “virtually impossible” because a miracle (hitting the lotto jackpot) gave them a shot to making it work and they screwed that up, too.  Almost every move they’ve made since signing Redd has been awful.  Not bad, awful.

Oh yes, but they did draft that Brandon Jennings character.  I saw him tonight for the first time, facing Dallas.  My take?  He was totally out of control half the time and clearly barely knows what he’s doing out there; and he was still one of the best players on the floor.  I wouldn’t bet against him.

Unfortunately, Jennings was an obvious choice in the 10^th spot for a team with garbage pointguards.  So it’s not like choosing Jennings was a coup, or an indication that the Bucks are going to do smart things, going forward.  However, I did like Ilyasova, tonight.  And I love signing young players to small multi-year contracts ($7M over 3 years.)  Who knows?  History says it’s a fluke smart move.  We’ll see.

Cleveland: They will win the Central Division and in the playoffs they will beat anyone but Boston or Orlando in 5 games or less.  Is this news to anyone?  Maybe it is.  It was pretty absurd hearing all of the commentary on problems in Cleveland in the first week of the season.  I liked and still like the Shaq move.  He makes around 60% of his shots.  Isn’t that a nice addition to a team that has the best scorer in the game and no one else who can be counted on, game in and game out, to put points on the board?  What Shaq can’t do is practically irrelevant; nearing his 38^th birthday, he’s still one of the most dominant post scorer’s in the game.  Fouls are the one concern with Shaq, but mostly it’s just a question of whether he’ll be a force for 30 minutes a game, or only 20 minutes a game.

Detroit: I don’t think Joe Dumars is somehow less smart than he used to be; I think he’s having a midlife crisis.  I didn’t immediately hate the Billups/Iverson trade like so many others did; I thought it was weird and risky, but not insane.  It didn’t pan out, but he got a ton of salary cap space to reinvent the Pistons.  And he did, spending almost 30% of Detroit’s cap space on two players (Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva) who don’t rebound, defend much, or pass.  That they can’t/won’t pass the ball is particularly problematic, since Rodney Stuckey doesn’t do it either, and Richard Hamilton’s effectiveness is almost entirely dependent on ball movement.  I see this team looking a lot like Denver did with  Iverson, Carmelo Anthony, J.R. Smith, and Linas Kleiza—but less talented.  And when it didn’t pan out for Denver, they still had Anthony to build around.  When this Detroit squad doesn’t work, what are they going to do?

3/15 – I took Portland public transportation to the last stop, east, and then set up at the Flying J truckstop with a sign that said,  “Chicago”.  I got something of a late start because…because.  I was up late not partying on a Saturday night.  Actually, I stupidly decided to leave a birthday party mad early despite the certain tone I detected in a pretty girl’s, “Oh, you’re leaving?”  I felt really dumb leaving and then staying up late working, anyway, but…whatever.

Anyway, I had been waiting for a ride for at least an hour when a fellow vagabond passed me and stopped to introduce himself.  Cy was friendly, probably had 10 or 12 years on me, and ample hitchhiking experience.  I probably had 10 or 12 more teeth on him, and I have ample showering experience.  Cy does not. I don’t know if he smelled awful (it was very windy and I was fighting a headcold), but he was so dirty; he looked as though he had just emerged from a mine shaft.  That his hoodie and baseball cap obscured his face couldn’t have helped him get rides, either.  And though he wasn’t my size, he certainly wasn’t small–maybe’s 6’2″ with an average build.

We weren’t competing for rides, though.  Rather, he asked me, “You mind if I run a sign, down a-ways?”  I had no idea what that meant.  For rides?  “No, you know, for money, for food and stuff.” I certainly didn’t mind, of course, and said it was very thoughtful for him to ask, thinking it highly unlikely people would drive by and give a hitchhiker money.  But within five minutes of Cy’s departure, a couple stopped for me and held out a few dollars.  So strange.  I said, “Oh, no thank you.  I’m not looking for money, just a ride,” and suggested they go down a bit and help Cy out.

I think there are some people who would call me a jackass for not taking the money, but there is a distinction, for me, between hitchhiking and begging.  I don’t know if it’s a meaningful difference but…I don’t know.  I’m willing to accept rides from people and their hospitality, but somehow taking money crosses a line.  It’s not even a pride thing; it just feels disingenuous.  I had enough money in my pocket to get a meal, and if they were going to give money away, they should give it to someone who didn’t.  Or maybe it’s just arrogance; I don’t know.

Maybe I should have taken the money, though, because it was the last thing I was offered for quite some time.  No rides.  Though frustrated, and rather cold, it wasn’t that bad.  I was listening to Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Lincoln bio, and that was a great way to pass the time.

During those hours, Cy passed by again and laughed, “Look at the bright side, only 1,900 miles to go!”.  A nice kid came by, too.  He was out with his mother for some Taco Bell excitement, and wanted to know what I was doing–note the comment.

I got a ride eventually: a stocky hippie with long auburn hair and sparse tufts on chin and cheeks.  He had grouped some for thin braids and they fell across his face on occasion as we talked.  He taught 7th grade, various subjects, and coached them in football.  He was from Salt Lake City originally and, therefore, a huge Jazz fan.    While he smoked a J–”Do you mind?  After all, it is Oregon”–we talked about the Jazz (pleased that I too considered Deron Williams the 2nd best PG in the league), and he told me about Mormonism and growing up in SLC.  It was a  pleasant ride, but brief.  He dropped me off 80 miles down the road, in the City of the Dalles, OR.

He got me to a pretty good spot, an entrance to I-84 E with civilization-lite at the top of the entrance ramp.  I held up my CHICAGO sign for 30 minutes under cloudy skies and for 30 minutes in light rain.  The rain picked up as the sun dipped and I retreated to the nearby McDonald’s, for their internet, to find a couch to surf for the night.  No luck there, only three couchsurfers around, and none of them responded to my last-minute couch request.  [Not immediately, I should add.  True couchsurfers, they all got in touch with me in the next few days, apologizing for not being available.  Very classy.]

At last, I was forced to go with a motel for the evening.  There were only three within walking distance, and I talked one down 25%, but it was still painfully expensive.  But I was only down for a minute, until I realized that I had couchsurfed the previous 74 days.  Being the recipient of all that kindness and hospitality, since Dec. 29th, I can hardly complain.  Actually, I could—I’m from NYC, after all—but I won’t.

Google maps says it’s 2,064 miles from Portland to Milwaukee, and takes about 30 hours.  How long does it take, hitchhiking?  I have no earthly idea.  The furthest I’ve hitchhiked in one day was about 400 miles, from Bonners Ferry, ID to Seattle.  Now, Bonners Ferry is in the middle of nowhere, near the Canadian border, and definitely not a hot spot for truckers.  I had to catch lots of little rides until I met up with a steel worker on the way to Lake Moses, WA.  Since I’m taking an arterial route to Wisconsin, however, I feel confident I’ll be able to manage 401 miles, a day.  Of course, as I wish to arrive in Milwaukee no later than Monday morning, I’ll need to take it up a notch or ten.  Frankly, I really have no idea how this is going to work, but it’s OK; half the fun of this trip is not knowing what’s going to happen tomorrow.  I’ll keep you informed by Twitter and update the blog if I encounter wifi.

- Michael Mandlin

NJ Gets: a huge roundhouse to the chin in losing Richard Jefferson; huge cap-relief for the all-important free-agent class of 2010; two interesting players with significant upside and downside potential.

Milwaukee Gets: a versatile all-star in his prime

I call this a win-win—seriously. I don’t know if I’d say that if I were a Nets fan. You can never really put yourself in the shoes of fans of teams that you don’t follow, and I can see this one being tough to take for Nets fans. NJ loses a lot of talent here. Jefferson has developed into a very good second-option scorer and defender, and since he’s made considerable strides in his shooting and ball-handling, he has virtually no weaknesses. The only thing keeping him from being a superstar is that he doesn’t quite have the ability to create his own scoring opportunities on that level. Still, he’s a bona fide allstar, and fits perfectly into the Bucks lineup. Essentially, Jefferson will provide the athletic defending scoring swingman the Bucks thought they had acquired a few years ago by signing Bobby Simmons.

However Nets fans, this one might work, seriously. Jefferson actually has one acute flaw: he’s not quite good enough to play up to his enormous contract. There are always a few of those guys around the league, really good players who are overpaid just enough to be part of the problem and not the solution—unless your team is playing for a championship that year. The Nets are not. As I’ve previously written, NBA teams should be moving in one of two directions at all times: building towards contention or rebuilding. The Nets had been stagnant for a few years, but this season they’ve swiftly and efficiently shifted into rebuilding mode, and as good as Jefferson is, his contract was in the way.

That’s the tough part for Nets fans to swallow; but aside from financial relief in 2010 (free agents LeBron or Wade in Brooklyn? How cool would that be?) the Nets also get back two very interesting players in Bobby Simmons and Yi Van Winkle. (Grandpa Yi? Yi Ole’ Man River?) I can’t say much about Simmons. I haven’t seen a lot of him—I tend to be busy when the Clippers or Bucks play—but in his Clippers days, he was reputed to be a solid defending wing, and the stats say he has (or had) a sweet touch from three-point range. The Bucks paid him a salary that indicates they expected a star-turn he never made. He was (merely) solid his first year, but then injured his foot and was out the entire ’06-’07 season. This season he only played 21 minutes a game in Milwaukee’s SF logjam and lost his three-point shot. His future? I don’t know. He just turned 28, and if he regains his shot he might be a solid, if overpaid, player for the Nets for the next two seasons.

As for Yi… I have nothing to add to the plethora of Agegate (Old-Mangate?) coverage. It sounds like he might become a nice player; he might not. Scouting reports from last year’s draft suggested he had huge potential. Or he may be 40 years old. Who knows? But he’s cheap, and the Nets will have a few years to develop him and see if he’ll be part of their future. So yeah, believe it or not, I like this for the Nets too.

¡Qué cojones! A win-win for everyone.