Have you ever watched Community? It's a good show. Today, I find myself inspired by an early episode, specifically "Remedial Chaos Theory" -- the 3rd episode of the show's 3rd season. As a refresher, for those who aren't familiar: due to a damaged apartment door, it's determined that somebody has to walk down to get the pizza delivery. To decide which of the seven characters present gets the pizza, a die is rolled, and six different timelines are created. SPOILER ALERT: There are only six faces on a die. There are seven people. In a seventh "bonus" reality, they realize that one of their number is conning the group. Alas. In honor of the episode, I decided to create seven different timelines for the NBA trade deadline. Rather than trading seven different players, I decided to use one alone. The events had to be mutually exclusive, after all. Who? That was the easiest part, after a well timed tweet from Adrian Wojnarowski concerning Josh Smith. It had involved six teams. Milwaukee, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, and (of course) the possibility of staying with Atlanta. One more team was needed, and in a ironic twist of fate, that last team was none other than the one I'd abandoned a week ago; my former Phoenix Suns. And thus, the table's set.

Here are the NBA's seven mutually exclusive Smith-based timelines. Continue reading →

Aaron and I had the following conversation on November 2nd. The Lakers were 0-2 (going on 0-3) as we had the conversation. Mike Brown hadn't been fired. While Nash's leg was already broken, we didn't know that when we were talking (recall that didn't come out until a few days after the Portland game Nash was injured in). Whatever the case, so much was going on with the Lakers, and I didn't know what to make of the stories that kept pouring in. I especially didn't know what to make of this particular conversation. So I didn't seize the moment, as Aaron suggested.

To my astonishment, it's January 25th (nearly three months after this conversation!) and I've had to make only minor edits, all for grammar/spelling, semantic clarification, cussin', and brevity. I can't make you believe we really had this conversation. All I can do is present it for your amusement (and horror, considering how disturbingly prophetic some sections of the conversation are in retrospect). Also, I am revealing to the world that I thought the Clippers would win about 43 games and the Warriors would get 35 wins, so... yeah. Nostradamus I am not. But the rest? That's gravy! Get that oil, son! GET THAT OIL!

• • •

Alex: A thought for your consideration: The Lakers are not conceivably an unstoppable team, because even in their best iteration, they are eminently and fundamentally flawed. That said, they could be scary good. Still, I'd like to see that actually happen, instead of just taking for granted that they'll get there. I mean, plenty of teams could be scary good (remember the Knicks!)... but health can do a lot to that "could" in a hurry, as can redundancy and uncreative coaching.

Aaron: Fair. This is my thought: I think the Lakers could be pretty great, and I see why the consensus is there. But making the leap from "could" to "will" requires a lot of factors to turn up in their favor, and not all are guaranteed to do so. In my assessment:

• Dwight Howard has to get healthy. His defense looks atrocious and the back problem looms hard, because he can't seem to move laterally anymore or cover as wide an area of the court.

• Pau Gasol needs to be able to defend perimeter guys in at least a remotely passable manner, as they're going to face good perimeter big men in every round of the playoffs. Frankly, if Pau continues to allow 8-8 on midrange to any half-decent big man he guards, they're going to be awful.

• Steve Nash needs to be able to play ~30+ minutes per game in the playoffs. This is essential, and an underrated necessity for them. The backup options are so unbelievably bad that anything less leaves them with this gaping flesh wound for 10-15 minutes of the game, and leaves them too vulnerable offensively to respond. It's this huge internal hole the starters will always have to dig out of

• They need to be in good health and not at all exhausted come playoff time — these are old guys and this is not a given, and exhaustion will sap an old man game more than anything, heh.

• And finally, in a 7-game series? They need Steve Nash's performance variance either at a very low level around an average mean or at a very high level that errs on the high side.

Now, the thing with these? They all could happen, and even if only 2 or 3 happen, they'll still be a decent team. (Aaron Note: Yeah, nobody really could've seen NONE of them happening coming.) But the other thing is that it's an extraordinarily large assumption to just assume they'll all happen without a hitch. It's basically as big an inherent assumption as a Spurs fan saying: "Yeah, by the playoffs Tiago Splitter will be producing double-doubles nightly, we'll trade Blair/Neal for Anderson Varejao, Tim Duncan will only play 24 MPG of 25-15 ball in the regular season but 40 MPG in the playoffs, Tony Parker will average 30 points per game without breaking a sweat, and Kawhi Leonard will be the 2nd-best SF in the league by May." But one of the sets of team assumptions is today's "conventional wisdom", while the other is (rightfully) completely insane. Continue reading →

Everyone seems to be doing it, right? We've reached the rough halfway point of the 2013 season and I -- Editor in Chief, Viscount of Nottinghamshire, Aaron McGuire (the Man in Esquire) -- have decided to kick off our mid-year award picks. Armed with just the acronyms of the NBA's six mainstay awards, I quickly discovered that I had absolutely no idea what any of those acronyms meant. After briefly considering looking them up, I decided instead to make up awards off the top of my head and hope they roughly matched actual awards that existed. They're close, right? Tell me they're close. TELL ME THEY'RE CLOSE.

MVP -- Most Valuable Pelican
The much-ballyhooed MVP award is awarded yearly to the most valuable Pelican in the entire league. The process of choosing this award was made significantly easier when the Hornets changed their name to the Pelicans. Thanks, New Orleans!
	1. Greivis Vasquez 2. Anthony Davis 3. Eric Gordon 4. Ryan Anderson 5. Brian Roberts	Aaron McGuire: I'm tempted to go with Anthony Davis, because he's their best player so far and their most important big. But I can't. He's missed too many games. So I'll go with a pick I never would've seen coming a year ago -- their steady hand at the point, Greivis Vasquez. The man has accumulated the 2nd most assists in the NBA to date and he's producing markedly more efficient offense than he ever has in his life. He's played in every game, with virtually no depth behind him, which mitigates the difference in quality between him and Davis. He's doing phenomenal work, here.
	1. Anthony Davis 2. Ryan Anderson 3. Eric Gordon 4. Greivis Vasquez 5. Brian Roberts	Alex Dewey: Anthony Davis. Brian Roberts is the narrative pick, Greivis Vasquez is the "relative to expectations" pick, Ryan Anderson is the most productive (whatever that means), Eric Gordon is the "best player on the best team", and Anthony Davis is the best player. So Anthony Davis. Bonus points to Austin Rivers and Roger Mason Jr. for causing opposing coaches to burn their eyes out (or have a mysterious illness just before the game), which gives an opening for Monty to dominate the coaching battle.
	1. Ryan Anderson 2. Greivis Vasquez 3. Eric Gordon 4. Anthony Davis 5. Robin Lopez	Adam Koscielak: If not for the injuries, it would've been between Eric Gordon and Anthony Davis. But I'll have to say Ryan Anderson. The man brings them a stable presence from deep, rebounds well enough, and spreads the floor enough to make Robin Lopez look competent every once in a while. Making Robin Lopez look good for even a second warrants an award, I think.

Hit the jump for more awards, including ROTY, 6MOTY, COTY, DPOY, and MIP.

Continue reading →

"I never forget a face, but in your case, I'll make an exception."

Let's try something. Let's try forgetting everything we ever knew about basketball. Let's... look, you saw The Matrix, right? But "the Matrix" is replaced with "your present conception of basketball". Free your mind. Ain't no such things as halfway crooks. Go all the way. Forget everything. Okay, take a deep breath. If you've done it right, it's all gone. Everything's forgotten about the game. "Basketball" now looks like a curious misspelling of "baseball".

That's how fully I've bought into this hypothetical.

The first thing we find in our quest to discover the meaning of "Basketball" is a bunch of random box scores sprawling across the Internet, and an unaccountable sense that these things form a self-consistent system to try to understand. We all individually forgot, but the Internet remembered! ... But not enough to tell us the rules of basketball. (This is already getting really convoluted. Bear with me, okay?) We're all alone in the universe, and nothing can change that. Except for this hypothetical we've decided to undertake, together. Come a little closer and we can discuss the implications of this hypothetical further. It's cold outside, after all. Put on the samovar, Natascha.  Continue reading →

“Fool that I am, that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself.”

Yesterday afternoon, we were treated to some unexpected league-changing news. From the mouth of Adrian Wojnarowski himself, word filtered down that the Brothers Maloof had finalized a deal to sell the Sacramento Kings to a Seattle-led ownership group. Most response involved some manner of shock, jubilation, and confusion. After all, it was just earlier this week that the Maloofs' Virginia Beach flirtation ended -- nobody expected them to bite on a new deal so quickly after that fell through. Jubilation is obvious -- the sad tale of the wayward Sonics is one that just about every NBA fan has been fed ad nauseam over the past several years, and the prospect of a revitalized Sonics is neat. And confusion? Again: where did it come from? Where was the lead up?

There are a lot of different considerations that bear mention when news of this magnitude shocks us. How are divisions going to realign to fit the new Sonics? How done is done -- will the Maloofs really follow through on it, or is this going to be yet another in their string of failed business decisions? And what kind of a trade is it to give up a franchise with a promising young core for a franchise that desperately needs a housecleaning? These will be answered in time, along with questions we haven't even thought to ask yet. And they may renege, it's true -- we aren't exactly talking about George W. Bush, here. No deciders. The Maloofs are notorious for their waffling, and we're already starting to see signs that this may just be their latest cowardly attempt to siphon more money from Sacramento's ownership groups.

But there was a curious lack of focus on what was actually getting left behind. Lots of thought about the future, the villains, et cetera -- almost no talk of what was to be lost. Today, I'd like to go over that history a bit. Let's remember the Sacramento Kings, and why they mattered. Continue reading →

One pet peeve I have when discussing basketball is when people don't treat the game like the game that it is. I don't mean people that take it too seriously. I mean people that completely ignore the role of competition and the act of competing in a game of opposing players and teams with both fitting and clashing intentions. After all, it's this continuous collection of games-within-the-game that compels nearly every rational decision made in the games. The fact that basketball is a highly symmetric game with two teams, a finite amount of time, and definite outcomes (win or loss) seems to me about the first or second fact implicit in any discussion. All too often, we lose that thread in the hodgepodge of personalities, mental feats, and the impressive physical execution. It's a game, though! You have to play the game to win the game. And that game isn't "Can I get my buckets?" or "Can I fit the template of your designated Right Way, focusing on grit and hustle?" It's a game, and the game is basketball.

Enter Kobe. Segue, Denver. That intro comes about because of this strange Laker season in which everyone has mentally diagnosed an unsolvable problem with the Lakers, solved another one, and caused several new problems with short-sighted solutions. The "hypotheticals" game-within-the-game is a whole lot of fun, but as designated practitioner of the Right Way, it's probably time for all the fun to end. No more narratives for me, folks. Simple living, easy thoughts. Kobe has such a unique footprint on any game he's a part of, one that has grown ever more stark and dichotomous through all the recent roster turnover (forced and unforced). And yet, we get bogged down in all the ephemera to try to figure out what the heck that footprint actually is, because Kobe has set us up to think in terms of "Are you, or are you not, a winner?" And there are so many questions, in this world of winners.

• Is Kobe actually having an MVP-caliber season?
• Is Steve Nash a pale ghost of his old self this season that can't guard paper with glue or is he just as brilliant as ever?
• Is Kobe actually a huge minus defender now?
• If he is... is it even possible to build a contender around him, no matter how good he might be on one end?
• Is Dwight Howard ever going to be the top center in the league again? 

All of these are interesting questions, to a point. But I've reached it. Me, I simply can't find them interesting anymore. Continue reading →

"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

H.P. Lovecraft, "The Call of Cthulhu"

Greetings, my fellow Small Marketeers! Small Market Mondays is back! Today I'll be subbing in for Other Alex, who is currently lecturing about the evils of big markets at several prominent small-market universities. I'm told they're receiving him well, which is right and proper considering it's the gospel truth. Now, I'm a little bit different from Other Alex. Not in our approach, for we are both supreme craftsman with an eye to the hustle of scrappers and the grift of hustlers. No, we differ only in our ideologies, and even then, only slightly. But let's talk about it. See, whereas Other Alex wants as life mission to call attention to the wonders of basketball, the miracles of chessboxing, and the pleasurable communal experience of being a small market fan, I yearn for more, brothers and sisters.

I yearn for more than is coded in the San Antonio passes and their gradual, graceful struggle with age. I yearn for more than Marc Gasol's passing or Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and his amazing length to block centers at the rim. I crave for more than Kevin Durant's sparkling offensive efficiency and always remembering to thank his teammates. I crave more than Boris Diaw and Ricky Rubio playing the passing equivalent of Starcraft against one another with the other 8 players to the scent of puppy breath and cinnamon crepes with Andorra at stake. I need more.

Unfortunately, unlike many sports fans content to fill in the void with large-market spectacle and crowd-sourced, manufactured large-market hype and debacle for the sake of itself, I must look inward, for more, and it is terrifying what I find. There are more things than are dreamt of in your philosophies, Horatio, but bless you sincerely for trying! Have you ever seen a shog'goth? Continue reading →

Everyone of them knew that as time went by they'd 
Get a little bit older and a little bit slower but...

"Revolution #9" The Beatles

Ultimately this season has been a cautionary tale for the Lakers so far on what it actually means to get older. We don't know just what the season has in store for the Lakers, and later in this piece we're going to take a long look at their schedule. But given that there have been so many unbelievable twists and turns, I decided it might be nice to get this moment, possibly the Lakers' nadir as a franchise, in amber (you know, like from that episode of House), for posterity. Okay, so it's December 14th, and I've gone through about four stages of feelings with the Lakers this season, as a Spurs fan and as a basketball fan in general.

1. Abject Sports Horror - "They did it again! How did they do it! ..." I have used the ellipsis to omit several unpublishable 8000-word rants. The Los Angeles Lakers had acquired Dwight Howard and Steve Nash. Their starting five looked legendary. Not much to say.

2. Schadenfreude - 1-4, they fired Mike Brown, and didn't hire Phil Jackson. Kobe made public comments. Hack-A-Howard worked. Twice. Glorious swoon.

3. Abject Sports Horror 2: Electric Boogaloo - Fun fact: I hadn't at all considered the idea that a bad season might be more horrifying than a good season. For all the fear I had of what the Lakers could do, I hadn't realized how awful a flop would actually be. Not in some big picture "It's fun to hate the Lakers and the league suffers when they aren't a dynasty" sense. I mean in the small-picture. "Wait, I like Steve Nash! I might root against him, but he make the game a lot more fun for everyone, myself included! I also like Kobe, Gasol, and Dwight, as players! It's fascinating to watch each of the four and they are all amazing players." The schadenfreude wears off. You start to laugh at Kobe's vintage season being wasted... but then you think about it for five seconds and realize that Kobe is having a vintage season that's being completely wasted. Dwight Howard can't make a weakside play to save his life. Pau Gasol looks about 48 years old. Steve Nash looks about 38, which is 10 years old than he's ever looked. Four generational talents. Four wasted seasons. Steve Nash might never play another full season. Quite distressing.

4. Overriding Curiosity - We have to lower our expectations for this team, if not in terms of potential than in terms of record. Every loss will not be made up in March. A recalibration is inevitable. Even those of us (Aaron and myself included) who had huge questions about age and the bench need to recalibrate: Aaron did his thesis on aging and I was in close contact with him, he was absolutely concerned about the Lakers entering the season. And even before that, I've long held to Bill James' principle that aging happens much more quickly than any of us are generally willing to admit. But neither of us saw this. Hence our recalibration, in which an impulse akin to leadership emerges, and I start to wonder just what the heck this team would look like at full strength again. The Spurs and Celtics from the last couple of years and the 2011 Mavericks were pretty long in the tooth, after all, and those teams were a lot of fun to watch (okay, not the Celtics, but they've had their moments). Heck, the previous iteration of the Lakers (Bynum-Odom-Gasol-Kobe) was pretty darn old and that team's offense was awesome at times. The Lakers could still be scary.

Okay, thanks for indulging me. Now, let's move from what the Lakers have done to what the Lakers can do, in terms of what that would mean for their remaining schedule.

Continue reading →

Marcin Gortat recently had a fascinating talk with Przeglad Sportowy's Marcin Harasimowicz after his game against the Los Angeles Lakers. The interview is in Polish, but worry not, there's no Google Translate needed. Because you have me, a bilingual Pole on a mission to share the latest updates in the life of everyone's favorite Polish Gazelle-Hammering Machine. Additionally, the portal reports Gortat rejected an extension for the 2014-15 season, and might be traded, as the Magic, Mavs, Bulls and Celtics are interested in his services. Yikes. Gortat's comments are worth noting for anyone following the Suns franchise and its solid Polish center.

Here's the interview (full interview and my reaction after the jump). All credit to Przeglad Sportowy and Marcin Harasimowicz, of course.

• • •

A lot has changed in the Suns since last season.
Marcin Gortat: Unfortunately, in my case – for worse. I'm certainly not the player I was last season, I need to find my place in the new order. I'm still capable of helping this team, and regularly recording a double double, but  when the ball sticks to one person on offence, it's hard to find a good rhythm.

Last season you've scored a lot of points off of Steve Nash pick and rolls. The team doesn't play that way anymore.
MG: That's true, but I can score in various situations. Finishing pick and rolls, in transition, from midrange, around the rim. There are a lot of options. Unfortunately, my two strongest plays – the pick and roll and post-ups have been taken away from me. It's not easy, we have a lot of plays that don't include me. And my chemistry with Goran Dragic hasn't been quite equal to what I had with Steve. These are things that we need to work on.

Coach Alvin Gentry told me that the main post option was Luis Scola. You, on the other hand, are number one on defense.
MG: Unfortunately... I've been doing the dirty work all my life, and now I have to come back to that. I will fight for what's mine. I'll try to prove to the coach that I can play an important role in the offence. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm even an option for Gentry. He doesn't even take me into consideration. The situation is critical. We're playing the same thing we've been playing last year, but the truth is we have a completely different set of players. I don't think it really works.  I can't get frustrated now though, I have to stay positive. Continue reading →

As our summer mainstay, Aaron was writing a 370-part series discussing almost every notable player who was -- as of last season -- getting minutes in the NBA. As the summer dies down and the leaves turn, this quixotic quest of a series has happily reached the last third. But it's certainly not done yet! Today we continue with Gary Neal, Jose Calderon, and Bismack Biyombo. Continue reading →