Richard Jefferson, the 40th Greatest Player Ever

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EDITOR'S NOTE: The following is a fictional tale. It marks the return of "John", Alex Dewey's alternate reality San Antonio ballboy. This story is set after the recent Golden State win over San Antonio's backups.

I was wandering the halls aimlessly when Richard Jefferson stopped me in the halls to explain something. "John, here's a doozy."

"What is it, RJ? I'm busy," I said. I wasn't even being sincere, I was just being a jerk so he'd hurry up. RJ had a tendency to could go on interminably. Without my terse influence checking him at every turn, that is. "Hurry up, RJ!"

"Frig, okay, so one time they got together this panel of Hall of Famers and league observers to choose the 50 best players of all time."

I had heard of this. "Yep. 50 greatest players of the last 50 years? Yeah, I know all about that. James Worthy was there, but I think someone got snubbed, right? Something like that."

"No, not that one," Richard said, and I immediately grew skeptical. "No, that one was in... like, 1996. I'm talking about 2009, when I was with the Bucks."

"Oh. I don't remember that. So what?"

"I was ranked, like, #40, John." Continue reading →

Prognostirank, 2013: The Second-Round Sepulchre, #10 to #6

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For a background of and explanation of Prognostirank's purpose, click here. In a nutshell? It's a reverse-order ranking of all teams left in the playoffs, prognosticating on their playoff prospects and ranking them from worst to best. We then rate -- on a scale of 1 to 5 bullets -- our confidence in each prediction. Five bullets indicate a "very confident" prediction, one bullet indicates a "substantially wavering" prediction. Today's post outlines teams #10 to #5 -- or, the last two first round exits and the first three second round exits. See part one for first round ousters.

• • •

TEAM #10: GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS (Western 6th seed: 47-35, SRS of 1.32)

  • Series prediction: Warriors LOSE in the first round. ( • • • )
  • Three most likely end results: 3-4 ( • • • • ), 7-6; 4-2 then 3-4 ( • • • ), 5-6; 4-2 then 1-4 ( • • )

I struggled with this one quite a lot. Probably more than I should've. All things considered, the Nuggets should pulverize the Warriors. They're faster, better, smarter, stronger. They're deeper, and they've got ample personnel to take care of Golden State's biggest weakness; that is to say, an at-rim sieve by the name of David Lee, who's consistently a step slow and weak to contest. With Lee in the game for 35-40 minutes, it's hard for me to really visualize how the Warriors intend to stop the Nuggets from scoring 70 points in the paint per game. And if the Nuggets get that done, it's hard to see how the Warriors keep them off the line enough to guarantee the win. If there's one thing that kills the Warriors, it's that -- their interior defense is simply not up to par when facing off against a team like the Nuggets that drives the ball straight into their heart. Simply not.

That said? The Warriors have a few advantages of their own, mainly centered around Stephen Curry. While Ty Lawson ended the year balky and injured -- as did Tony Parker, Steve Nash, and virtually every point guard in the West's playoff picture not named "Russell Westbrook" -- Stephen Curry ended the year on a crazy hot streak. Curry shot 51% from three over his final 4 regular season games, and he's been doing it on vastly increased shot volume. Broadening the sample size... over the final month of the regular season (17 games), Curry shot an average of TEN THREES A GAME. That isn't a typo. The man shot 47% over those 17 games on ten threes a night. That's incredible. To put it in perspective... the 2003 Minnesota Timberwolves, the Garnett-led team that won 51 games and finished with the 4th seed in the West, shot 10 threes a game. As a team. Stephen Curry, by himself, shot as many threes per game over the past month as everyone on the 2003 Minnesota Timberwolves combined. And he made 47% on them. The man is insane.

Outside of Andre Iguodala's defensive masterwork, the Nuggets are a relatively poor team when you get out to the perimeter -- whether shooting it or defending it. The key to the series, for the Nuggets, is simply going to be keeping the ball out of Stephen Curry's hands. If they want to make this a short series, they'll need to force Curry pass out of traps coming up the floor and to shut down all passing lanes to the Golden State superstar. He'll get his points regardless, but they need to keep his three point shooting under wraps. If Curry is allowed to shoot 10-12 threes a night, the Warriors have an excellent shot of winning the series outright --  Curry shot over 60% on threes against Denver this season despite Iguodala's defense, mostly because Iguodala's more important as a roaming defensive presence than as a lock-in guy in the Denver scheme. If Curry's presence forces Iguodala to function more as a shut-down player than he has in Denver's system traditionally, that could give the Warriors an opening for the upset. More likely, their porous interior defense dooms them in the end -- but I still feel like they'll give Denver a hell of a push.

DEWEY'S TAKE: One game over .500 this calendar year (26-25), a negative point differential against the Western Conference, and the best single season a three-point shooter has ever had. Deep bench, towel waves, bronze icons in the golden light of Oracle Arena, the Warriors are middling (occasionally stagnant) on offense and middling on defense over the course of the season, and don't have a center. On any given night two or three offensive savants plus a rookie or veteran stepping up. Effortful, relatively futile defense, pull-up jumpers in transition. Their coach is a minister and a showman and a legendary floor general. They also have Richard Jefferson as a comically irrelevant player and veteran presence. They send their tiniest player through a golden gate of big men to get some space to shoot an insensibly high-arcing 3 from the top of the key. One of the most fun and watchable teams ever when they're on.

Continue reading →

Prognostirank, 2013: First-Round Fishermen, #16 to #11

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For a background of and explanation of Prognostirank's purpose, click here. In a nutshell? It's a reverse-order ranking of all teams left in the playoffs, prognosticating on their playoff prospects and ranking them from worst to best. We then rate -- on a scale of 1 to 5 bullets -- our confidence in each prediction. Five bullets indicate a "very confident" prediction, one bullet indicates a "substantially wavering" prediction. Today's post outlines teams #16 to #11 -- or, the six teams most likely to bow out early.

• • •

TEAM #16: MILWAUKEE BUCKS (Eastern 8th seed: 38-44, SRS of -1.82)

  • Series prediction: Bucks LOSE in the first round. ( • • • • • )
  • Three most likely end results: 1-4 ( • • • • • ), 0-4 ( • • • ), 2-4 ( • • )

All things considered, the Milwaukee Bucks are not a very good team. They're the only playoff team that ended the year with a losing record, and their final point differential was actually worse than three teams that miss the playoffs. While they made a mid-season trade with the intent of bolstering their rotation, there's been virtually zero evidence that the Redick trade has improved their team and ample evidence they made a slight miscalculation in sending out Tobias Harris. Live and learn, I suppose. To make matters worse, they happen to be matched up against the best team in the NBA. The question with the Bucks is less "can they beat the Heat?" and more "can they take a few games from the Heat?" Popular opinion says no -- I'd say they've got a fighting chance at snagging a game or two, and possibly pushing it to seven. It's not incredibly likely, but it wouldn't be some kind of game-changing shocker either.

A few reasons for that. First, the turnovers -- for all of Milwaukee's numerous faults (poor shooting, confused offensive playbook, lack of free throws), they've always been particularly good at taking care of the ball. That's what happens when three of your players are legitimate NBA ballhandlers and your bigs don't tend to fumble, I suppose. While that doesn't exactly scream "upset potential", it DOES scream "they can win a home game", if you consider Miami's occasional over-reliance on ballhawking on the defensive end. Second, you've got the talents of John Henson and Larry Sanders, two bigs who have traditionally had relative success against Miami's defense, particularly when matched onto the smaller Shane Battier. Finally? Sheer statistical randomness. If Ellis or Jennings have a game or two where they get unreasonably hot and start draining guarded three point shots, the Heat are going to have a bit more trouble sweeping this team away.

All that said, this isn't exactly rocket science. I just outlined reasons that the Milwaukee offense could (and should) rally to win a game against the Heat -- I didn't outline reasons they could win the series. Barring a massive upset the likes of which the NBA hasn't seen in eons, this is a 4-5 game series. The Bucks have no particular defensive scheme that handles the Heat's multifaceted offense, and they're absolutely screwed if the Heat actually come out to play every night. If the Bucks push this series to six games -- getting their requisite 6 home games -- it'll be a big upset. Sorry, Milwaukee -- you're the first team gone.

DEWEY'S TAKE: A tremendous collection of talent, loosely tied together. Unintentional feeding factory for every other team, in terms of prospects. Have - at any given time - seven players that will be part of an NBA championship in the next five years, none of them with the Bucks. Trade machine stimulant, perennial 38-win team, alternately likable and mechanically unworkable, except in stretches. Richard Jefferson's Inferno.

Continue reading →

The Outlet 3.17: A Prelude to Prognostirank (plus: The Games That Mattered)

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Remember how we had that one series, a long time ago, where we'd entreat our writers to scribe short vignettes on the previous night's games? We've consistently discovered there's no way for us to do that every night, but with the capsules done and Aaron back in the saddle as a more active managing editor, we're hoping that we can bring the feature back as a weekly Wednesday post. Sometimes Thursday, like today. As always, the vignettes may not always be tactful, tacit, or terse -- they'll always be under a thousand words, though, and generally attempt to work through a question, an observation, or a feeling. Today's short pieces are as follows.

  • GENERAL: A Prelude to Prognostirank (by Aaron McGuire)
  • GENERAL: The Stephen Jackson Story (by Alex Dewey)

Read on after the jump. Continue reading →

A Requiem for the Living

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As Kobe Bryant took his fateful final step and hobbled off the court with a grimace and a quieted crowd, visions of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid loomed over the proceedings. Because, let's face it -- they never had a chance. You know the apocryphal story of the two old western outlaws. Everyone does. And most people know the film, too, where the two friends gamble with fate all throughout the duration. They endure close call after close call, openly debating whether to hang up their guns or keep searching for a final heist to end it all. They go straight, then they don't. You CAN'T just go straight after what they did. You think you can evade that world, but you simply can't. The film fools some into thinking they'll find their eternal idylls, but that was never in the cards. Never is, really.

In the end, it was never some incredible feat that had them knocking on death's door. It was the tiniest mistake. The most imperceptible setback could ruin them -- and it did. What finally brought them down was the most innocuous heist of all time, and a detail they simply couldn't have seen coming. A small child recognizes the brand on their mule, and the Bolivian police force isn't about to let the two men go. They go out in a blaze of glory, shining brightest before their shortened last breath. The outlaws spent the whole movie fleeing from the stark inevitability of consequence. But that mistakes the moral of the movie -- the two were cornered from the moment they started the grind.

For a variety of self-evident and not-so-self-evident reasons, Bryant's injury brought me back to that film's conclusion. That same feeling of disturbing inevitability fell over the proceedings, despite the nature of the pain. Not a single doctor blames Bryant's insane minutes total, or the irresponsibility of keeping Bryant in the game after his numerous contusions and scary falls. But SOMETHING was going to happen. A 34-year-old player simply can't play 48 minutes a game to close a season. There was going to be a break, a strain, a pop. And it wasn't going to be pretty. Degradation by aging is inevitability -- by cheating it, you evoke Death's wrath and risk a more sudden and overwhelming pain than you'd have experienced if you simply tamped it down over time.

But Bryant doesn't seem the type who simply sees fit to fade away. Not to me. He's the Butch Cassidy player. If everyone goes out, they'll go out -- Bryant will go out in a blaze of flaming glory, challenging Death to a tête-à-tête on his field of battle. "Just TRY and strike me down. Just TRY and injure me. I'll come back. I'll keep fighting." And so it has been -- Kobe Bryant has cheated Death. He's put off his career's closing act as long as he possibly can, putting up the best offensive season of his career at an age where the superstars cease to be super. And when he returns from this injury, he'll continue to do so, for a time.

Bryant's career is mortal. It's quite the depressing reminder -- everything ends. Continue reading →

Fallout: Phil Vegas #3 -- Phil Jackson Saves Goodsprings

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philvegas catchup #2

"Alright, Starr. I'll play your little game. Call me Phil Jackson, savior of Los Angeles."

"What?"

"I mean, Goodsprings. Sorry. Got caught in the moment there."

"Alright. Well, that's cool, didn't actually expect you to say that. Here's the situation. My caravan was attacked by the Powder Gangers. I fought back, but they killed my two associates and chased me around for a while. I was able to snipe two of them, but I ran out of ammo and had to hide out in this town. I'm 90% sure they're going to send someone to attack me at some point. Now, the people here have been really nice to me. I don't want the Powder Gangers to destroy their town. But I also don't want to die, and if I leave the town, I'll probably die. So I'm caught in a conundrum."

"If I help you eliminate these guys, will you tell me how to get to Las Vegas?"

"If you mean New Vegas, I mean..." Ringo paused, made to say something, then smiled. "Sure, I guess."

"It's a deal. What do I need to do?"

"Well, we need to round up a few people. Get Sunny Smiles in on the game, she's good at fighting. Try to get the barkeep in on it. Maybe the general store guy can provide us some armor, and maybe Doc Mitchell can provide us some chems. You never know, right? Anyway. You and Smiles come and see me when the Powder Gangers approach the town. I know they will. We'll kick their butts." Jackson nodded, and headed out towards the town. Continue reading →

Fallout: Phil Vegas #2 -- "Howdy, I'm Easy Pete"

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philvegas catchup #1

"Please, mister, you have to save her!"

"Nah, that's alright. Go rescue her yourself. Waste not, want not."

"What?"

Exactly. Phil Jackson parted from Barton Thorn, leaving the young man frustrated and annoyed. Jackson walked towards the main road, but stopped at an odd sight -- here, in the middle of the desert, he saw a beat-up rusted out refrigerator with a corpse inside. He leaned down to get a closer look and started cackling. The dessicated corpse was dressed in a semi-familiar archaeologist's outfit, with the tell-tale vest and the tell-tale hat. It was -- by all appearances -- Indiana Jones.

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You know, when you think about it, this is exactly what would happen to anyone stupid enough to think that a lead-lined refrigerator would save them from a nuclear blast. Phil pondered. I mean, really -- the lead might protect you from a bit of the post-explosion radiation, but lead isn't some magical shield that keeps the explosion out. Why did Spielberg inspire kids to do that, anyway? Maybe this was Indiana Jones. But maybe this was some random kid pretending to be Indiana Jones, actions telegraphed by his favorite stupid movie. God. What a crock. Phil shook his head and made to leave, but he stopped for a moment. He'd always wanted to be Indiana Jones...

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"This is the greatest moment of my life." Continue reading →

The Outlet 3.16: Forgettable Jazz (also: The Worst Outlet Ever Written)

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Remember how we had that one series, a long time ago, where we'd entreat our writers to scribe short vignettes on the previous night's games? We've consistently discovered there's no way for us to do that every night, but with the capsules done and Aaron back in the saddle as a more active managing editor, we're hoping that we can bring the feature back as a weekly Wednesday post. Sometimes Thursday, like today. As always, the vignettes may not always be tactful, tacit, or terse -- they'll always be under a thousand words, though, and generally attempt to work through a question, an observation, or a feeling. Today's short pieces are as follows.

  • UTA vs OKC: The Forgettable Utah Jazz (by Jacob Harmon)
  • POR vs LAL: The Worst Outlet Ever Written (by Alex Dewey)

And yes, this does mean that the next episode of Fallout: Phil Vegas comes Friday. Alas. Read on after the jump. Continue reading →

The Outlet 3.15: the NBA's Bizarre Gems (also: Selective Empathy for Mr. Rose)

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Remember how we had that one series, a long time ago, where we'd entreat our writers to scribe short vignettes on the previous night's games? We've consistently discovered there's no way for us to do that every night, but with the capsules done and Aaron back in the saddle as a more active managing editor, we're hoping that we can bring the feature back as a weekly Wednesday post. Sometimes Thursday, like today. As always, the vignettes may not always be tactful, tacit, or terse -- they'll always be under a thousand words, though, and generally attempt to work through a question, an observation, or a feeling. Today's short pieces are as follows.

  • IND vs CLE: The Bizarre Diamond in the Roughest of Roughs (by Aaron McGuire)
  • GENERAL: Derrick Rose and Selective Empathy (by Adam Koscielak)

Read on after the jump. Continue reading →

Fallout: Phil Vegas #1 -- A Run of Bad Luck

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... What seemed like a simple delivery job has taken a turn for the worse. ...

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"Guess who's wakin' up over here."

Phil Jackson blinked twice -- his hands were tied. He was kneeling in a graveyard on a dry, dark night. His head was pounding and his mouth was parched. Sore all over, like he'd been thrown around by a tornado for the last seventeen years. The pronounced aches of an old center's age were replaced by the more pressing aches of a man beaten to hell. He looked up, the blur in his vision fading. The confusion got worse. There was a young man in a strange suit with two weapon-clad bodyguards at his sides. The man looked at him. "Time to cash out." Phil blinked again. Is that a young Craig Sager? Before he could vocalize the thought, one of the armed guards jeered at the younger Sager. "Would you get it over with?"

"Maybe Khans kill people without lookin' em in the face, but I ain't a fink. Dig?" Phil stared blankly. OK. He's definitely talking like Craig Sager. "You've made your last delivery, kid." The man took out a silver poker chip, acting as though it would mean something to Jackson, then pocketed it. "Sorry you got twisted up in this scene. From where you're kneeling, must seem like an 18 carat run of bad luck. Truth is, the game was rigged from the start." The man who resembled Craig Sager whipped out a gun -- it had a picture of the Virgin Mary engraved into the handle. Wait, for real? Craig Sager... kills people? With a stupidly ostentatious pistol? Is THAT where he gets the money for those suits? Everything makes sense. The man pointed the gun at Phil's head. Phil opened his mouth -- partly in speech, partly in shock.

"Wait... Craig, really?" BANG. Phil Jackson's world went dark. Continue reading →