I've always thought of the Bobcats as the most ridiculous and arbitrary team in the entire league. Their logo haunts my mind - I just picture a kid trying to draw a ferocious cat but after the outline realizes he has only two depressingly drab crayons to shade it with. And all of this haunting happens before we even touch how funny the word "Bobcats" really is. It's especially awkward to enunciate quickly. It was a team destined for tongue-twisters and hilarious sentences like "Welcome to the Bobcats' sports network" or "In short, despite Kobe Bryant scoring 58 points, coach Bernie Bickerstaff's Bobcats beat Kobe's scrub Lakers in triple overtime, thanks to D by Crash and caroms by Emeka Okafor." Strangely, that last sentence is an accurate summary of the game we're going to be covering today. Weird.

• • •

INTRODUCING... THE CHARLOTTE BOBCATS!

The Bobcats joined the league in the summer of 2004. The Bobcats didn't have much to be proud of their first two seasons: They won just 44 total games (.268) and suffered countless hilarious buzzer-beaters. But in their third season they went hard*, with a core of Raymond Felton, Gerald Wallace, and Emeka Okafor, all good players. And on December 29, 2006 - in Charlotte's Time Warner Cable Arena (est. 2004), the Bobcats took down Kobe Bryant and the Lakers in triple overtime, despite Bryant's incredible 58-point night (on an insane 45 fg attempts) and despite Luke Walton's six 360 dunks (okay, only four). In a couple of seasons seemingly filled with one ridiculously swag performance after the other, Kobe Bryant - his powers at their zenith and his teammates' at their collective nadir - produced another great one. But locking arms and weathering a storm they could not stop, the Bobcats finally won when Kob-Icarus flew too high and fouled enough times to disqualify himself according to the rules of flightsketball, and the Bobcats won by 9.

*The Bobcats actually fought to a quite-solid 33 wins in 2006-2007, actually splitting their season series with each of the eventual conference finalists (Cavs, Jazz, Spurs, Pistons).

INTRODUCING... JUST A REGULAR SEASON GAME! AND KOBE!

Yes, title, thanks for the clarification. Let's be clear: it was just a regular season game: the first half (beyond the Crash-Kobe duel) was actually exceedingly dull. But something about Gerald Wallace and Kobe fighting for every inch of space brought the best out of every Bobcat. Felton, Wallace, and Okafor all were showstoppers in this game, seriously. Matt Carroll even had a solid shooting game with a swag 27-8 on 16 shots off the bench. But it was the trio of stars that did most of the work: Felton made the kinds of great point guard decisions that leave a defense guessing constantly. Wallace was in his franchise-player, do-everything-on-both-sides mode. Wallace had so much intelligence and tenacity as a defender that he bears almost no fault at all for Kobe's performance, and in fact, Wallace made a number of crucial defensive stops on Bryant twice at the end of regulation. And then there was Emeka Okafor, doing everything a center should as an inside presence.

But this was Kobe's game, a masterwork singular to anyone but Kobe in the lean years. 58 points on 45 shots, getting to the line only 12 times. What's more, far from being a shooting exposition or a "no-center fiasco" for the Bobcats, Kobe earned his points in so many different ways, having (by my count) 32 distinct moves in the game: 1 for each field goal (23!), 4 more moves that led to free throws and 5 more moves that didn't quite stay down in the finish. Everything, everything, everything: Ball handling, fadeaways, threes, dribble penetration (often leading to those galloping slow-motion dimes to the perimeter), dribbling around the perimeter, layups, pump fakes, spin moves, transition passing, finishes of every variety, and everything you'd expect from positions one through three, if you get me. It's strange to say (as it often is with these incredible games) but Kobe easily could have had 10 more points and 5 more assists (58-5-4 was his line) if he had more competent teammates and a couple more bounces had gone his way. He got a league average 4-11 from 3, and most of the 3's were pretty decent, you know? Could have been 7-11 without much extra luck. And while his 81 point game is on another level entirely, it's not a huge leap from a luckier version of this game and a less competent defense to 81 points. Same skillset, a little bit more luck, and he drops 70 in this game easily. Gerald Wallace and Emeka Okafor are both decent defenders (Crash, for my money, is all-world) and Crash was guarding him man-to-man for most of the game (Bickerstaff inexplicably avoided this matchup for a few stretches, and Kobe punished him). Switch them out for the scrappy, likable Raptors Matt Bonner (he...would front against little indie musicians in charity games), Chris Bosh (horrible man D, decent help), and Morris Peterson (Crash he is not), and you might've given him the extra momentum for 81 points. He may be a volume shooter and selfish, Kobe is remarkably efficient and versatile. And everything he did in this game fit within the flow of the offense and the game. Kobe's teammates literally could barely do a thing when he left the court, and it wasn't (as it often seemed in 2010 playoffs) because he froze out rhythm guys. Kobe was the offense, and he was quite a good offense.

INTRODUCING... A SERIES OF FORGETTABLE BOBCATS PLAYERS THAT OUGHT NOT BE FORGOTTEN!

The title is wrong. Emeka Okafor got 22-25 with 4 blocks. Extremely impressive, one of his better games, but it's Emeka Okafor. So I will inevitably forget it. Instead, I'd like to say something about Raymond Felton. Ray plays impressively in this game, getting 15 solid dimes and a not-so-bad 22 points on 24 shots. With no end of clutch, Ray finds Emeka Okafor on pick and rolls again and again in the OT sessions after Crash fouls out. Throughout the game, Felton finds Wallace on alley-oops and waits for cross-court passes and off-ball cuts to and from Wallace. Basically if you had to pair any point guard with Gerald Wallace, you could do worse than Ray. The Blazers obviously thought the same thing, trading for both in 2011. It's fitting that the point guard Felton was traded to Rip City for - the asymptotically aging veteran Andre Miller - is probably the model ceiling as a player for Felton: Always look to penetrate, be able to kick out, use two-man plays (like P&R and give-and-go) that give you a lot of alternate passing/reset options, have passable midrange shooting, a couple decent moves in the post, get to the line, and get about 8-9 assists per game. 16-5-9 on 47% is an Andre Miller season and Felton is just a bit short of that at 26 years old, but he could plausibly make one more leap in his career. Granted, there are some things he can't change: Felton doesn't quite have Miller's size for the high alley-oops and post-ups that make Dre such a valuable starter at 35. And Andre Miller is legitimately one of the more attentive basketball minds of his generation. But Felton can shoot the trey at something like league average (.340-.400 for a season seems reasonable), while Miller is one of the worst guards from distance in the league (right at the Mendoza line). No, Felton isn't quite as efficient, doesn't get the same amazing assist totals, and doesn't rebound quite as well as Miller. Felton's sort of an "85% mirror" to Andre Miller. Literally about 85% in height, craftiness, most every relevant statistical category, and salary in an ideal meritocracy, and he could get to 90% if he followed Miller's example. But he's good, and he's made all his teams better.

Felton was a solid point guard in this game. But Crash - like Kobe - did everything for his team. Sure, Wallace isn't the transcendent offensive player Kobe is, but he's one of the most competent, complete players in all facets of the game. In his prime? Star quality. Name a basketball skill that you'd want from a versatile wing or an undersized power forward, and Crash has something to offer (besides outside shooting). Punishing post moves (back or front to the basket), great star passes out of double teams (finding open perimeter and midrange shooters throughout the halfcourt), great movement off the ball, leaping ability, blocks, steals, running the floor, any role in transition, rebounding, and surreally good perimeter defense. He...can complete alley-oops with abandon. Crash is clutch as hell in general and in this game, even getting stops on Kobe not once but TWICE at the end of regulation and getting the game-tying 3-point play right beforehand.* He really is a franchise player and one of the best two-way players in the game. And you know what? He does it all, and like the best franchise players (though, sure, he's not an MVP), Crash raises the level of play and effort of anyone that sees him. Pippen, LeBron, or Iguodala are his best comparables. Tough, slightly oversized wings (Crash is the largest of the four) that have a unique athleticism that allows them to dominate on both ends.

*Unfortunately, our helpful youtube uploader mamba9381 neglects to show Crash's D that made this a game for the ages. I'll try to fix this in the near future with some extra highlights.

ENDTRODUCING... THE END OF THIS POST!

Kobe and Crash had so many competitive staredowns in this game, and it was justified: Crash mitigated Kobe as much as anyone could and dominated Kobe on offense - but "mitigating" Kobe still meant he got 58 points. I'm reminded of a quote from a Celtic (Kevin McHale, maybe?) during the 80s: His takeaway from the Lakers-Celts rivalry was that the Celtics were a great team, so when they played very well, they would almost always win. When they played great, they were basically unstoppable. But against the Lakers, the Celtics could play _great and still come up short. _ That's the place Kobe and Crash were in for this game, where Nash and Duncan were in for their careers, where all the great rivalries in sports live. Now, both Kobe and Crash are a bit older now and don't have many great years left, but we have this game, a meaningless regular-season game in their primes that became transcendent art and entertainment and competition. It's fitting that both of them fouled out in the overtime sessions. Of course they took a bow.

THREE-MONTH-LATER EDIT: Someone found this post by searching google for "The Most Ferocious Cat."

I loved it so much, I changed the title of the post to reflect it. Thanks, person.

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The Worst Halloween Ever

A "Spooky" Tale of Psychology and Stanchions

Tim Duncan: Hey, you guys, I'm so angry! Guess who I am!
Richard Jefferson: You're Tim Duncan.
TD: Oh gosh. Heh. Yes, Richard, but who am I pretending to be for Halloween?
RJ: If I didn't know better, I'd say Kevin Garnett. Given that you're obviously wearing his uniform and attempting to scowl constantly.
_TD:_ Hey, you got it right! Richard, throw that gym mat and the duct tape over here.
RJ: Wait, what? Why? Don't wrestle me, old man.
TD: I need to complete the costume with a stanchion attached to my face.
RJ: Oh, heh. That's pretty funny, actually. Okay, "Kevin". Here's the "stanchion".

RJ throws the gym mat to Tim. Then he throws the roll of duct tape. Tim slams it back at his face with a bestial yell.

• • •

RJ (livid): What the hell, Tim? That really kind of hurt. Get it yourself! Last time I try to help a man dressed as Kevin Garnett.
TD: Sorry, RJ. I got a little wrapped up in the character. You know how Kevin blocks those dead-ball shots...
RJ: Whatever. Keep your character in check. I just hope to God we don't run into any ballboys or autograph-seekers... this is embarrassing.
TD: Sorry, RJ.
RJ: Just don't let it happen again, please. This was such a bad idea. You actually invest yourself into these characters, don't you?
TD: Yeah, you could say that. I am Will Hunting, you know, I studied psychol--
RJ: No. We're not talking about this anymore. Anyway, uh, we got everything for the party?
TD: Let's see, we got proximity mines, sticky grenades, we got Magnum .44s, we got Golden Guns... yeah, I'd say we're ready. I just need to load the, uh, pump.
RJ: ... were those just weapons you remember from Goldeneye, Tim?
TD: To be honest, those are the only weapons I'm familiar with. I'm starting to think that I wasn't cut out for this costume...
RJ: ... well, seriously, did you bring everything?
TD: I think we're just on the hook for punch, chips, and an N64 for playing Goldeneye. So yeah. Let's go.

Tim shoves RJ in the shoulder and then points indignantly at RJ as he backs away.

TD: Wasn't that just like him? Haha. He's done that so many times.
__RJ: You know what? Executive decision, I'm going to drive. You just go sit in the back seat. Now.

TD: __Alright, Richard.

RJ: In the meantime, while I'm driving, I want you to think about how you can do this KG impression...without alienating everyone in the Spurs organization. These characters are supposed to be fun, and you seem more interested in, you know, playing Kevin like this is a biography or a Christian Bale movie or something. Just think about how you can do this, Tim. And don't call Daniel Day Lewis. Deal?
TD: It's a deal.

20 Minutes Later

RJ: Well, here we are. The Spurs' Halloween get-together.
_TD:_ I figured out how to do it!
RJ: What, you mean how you're going to pass as a reasonable human being while dressed as Kevin Garnett in uniform?
TD: Well, yeah, but I mean, I figured out how to be an unaccountable prick with no class. I figured out how he must justify it in his head.
RJ: ... wait, uh, Tim.
TD: Okay, it goes like this: You know how in the Matrix the Agents say "There are levels of existence we're willing to accept."? Well, that's how KG treats class and accountability: Not as basic parts of the human condition, but as variables that can be tuned as low as possible if necessary. There are levels of class he's willing to accept. Very low levels.
RJ: Okay. Look. He's probably just a jerk. You're overthinking his character. Like, can you even picture KG sitting through the Matrix trilogy? I'm not saying he'd fall asleep, but it doesn't really seem like it's up his alley. He's not exactly a philosopher. He probably just doesn't like to help his opponents feel comfortable. I mean, what, you think he watched Raging Bull before he punched his teammate that one time? You think he watches Annie Hall before trying to figure out what makes the opposing point guards tic? Maybe this is how you could play him, but it sure as hell is not how he is.
TD: Wow...you're probably right. By the way, probably the best thing I could do is just changing my costume to Bill Russell.
RJ: Oh, because same team and number, I got it! That's great. But what do you want to do about the stanchion?
TD: I was thinking it could be the weight of cultural segregation against him.
RJ: Tim... maybe you should just lose the stanchion.
TD: My name is Bill, or Mr. Russell, and I'll thank you to remember it. And I can't just forget the stanchion, Richard. Not after-
RJ: Tim, I don't care how good our Goldeneye session is. This is already the worst Halloween of my adult life.

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_In celebration of our opening night, we're trying to make up for the NBA's current lack of a scheduled opening night. We're going to try and make it up to you by posting three full NBA matchups of the teams that WOULD have been playing on opening night, if the season's schedule hadn't been scrapped. Here's game #1: the defending champion Mavs face off against the ECF Bulls, 90s style. Except in 1996, with the Bulls the champs and the Mavs, well, pretty far away from any sort of conference finals. They've got Jason Kidd, though! _

Here's the box score. Click the jump for the highlight videos.

Pity Jason Kidd and the Dallas Mavericks. Sure, their stirring, amazing championship this year may have finally vindicated the careers of Rick Carlisle, Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion, Mark Cuban, and Kidd himself. But no amount of titles could ever wash off the taint of the team's performance in the 1990s. The Dallas Mavericks never broke .500 in a season starting in the decade. Their win totals - ordered by increasing levels of atrocity - were 40, 36, 28, 26, 24, 22, 20, 19, 13, 11 from 1990-91 to 1999-00.* The Mavericks were 15 years old in 1996 (and had even had quite a few good runs with Mark Aguirre), but seemed like the oldest expansion franchise in the league at this point - a total joke, filled with one superstar destined to leave soon (Jason Kidd) and two 17th-team All-NBA players (Jim Jackson, Jamal Mashburn [who actually suffered a season-ending injury about 18 games into 1996]). Can you even imagine rooting for the Mavs right in the middle of that awful decade? I can't, in all honesty.

*As a math major I have to note that they have every even number between 20 and 28 wins, inclusive, like they were playing a drinking game of mediocrity. The Mavs were 239-549 (.303) for the decade, a .303 winning percentage, which comes out to about a 25-win season, on average. Damn.

But to their credit, the Mavericks filled legendary Reunion Arena with dedicated supporters for their awful team. For the early regular season game we'll be covering, no fewer than five world-class athletes showed up. All - as I understand it - are top 10 all-time at their positions: Roger Staubach (former Cowboys QB), Michael Johnson (sprinter), Michael Irvin (wide reciever), Emmitt Smith (running back), and Deion Sanders (cornerback).* And even the Fucking Mayor of Dallas. Wow! All of them showed up to root their home team on (if they don't win, it's a shame!). The likes of Deion Sanders saw the high-flying trio of young Mavs' stars: sophomore PG star Jason Kidd, Jim Jackson at his absolute peak, and the always-sizzling Jamal Mashburn. Or, as they called themselves, Triple J (sounds like a radio station)!

*Missing were Nolan Ryan, Future Dirk Nowitzki, Tom Landry, and Holger Geschwinder.

It was obvious just from watching that Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Phil Jackson and the rest of the 1996 Chicago Bulls had a heck of a time mentally coping with the powerful support (ecstatic at times) for the good old 1996 Dallas Mavericks in the legendary Reunion Arena. And Triple J didn't disappoint, combining for an amazing 64 points on just 64 shots!

Part 1:

Being serious: For Dallas, Jason Kidd put up a rather incredible (and characteristic) 25-15-11-6 (8 offensive rebounds, Jesus.) on a kind of bad 22 shots, but like, look at that statline, seriously. He's a point guard! Like, he got 7 defensive rebounds, in addition to 8 offensive rebounds! Only 3 turnovers as the only Maverick with a really good handle! He did everything in this game, and it was possibly more impressive to watch than the statline suggests. Time after time, the Bulls perimeter defense would cover Kidd's passing target well, so he'd reset and find a better shot, then he'd rebound it if the shot didn't go in. He even shot the trey pretty well (2-6, but...well, you'll see). Every single possession Kidd would motor around on offense and defense, and do it efficiently. Say what you will about his apparent character (the less said, the better), but I can understand why he topped the polls of "smartest player in the league". Absolute tour de force. Jamal Mashburn was never an efficient player in his long career (his peak seemed to be a decent, starter-quality 22-6-6 on 42% and some floor spacing), but in this game he was a fun player to watch, with a lot of agility, apparent effort, and leaping ability. Monster Mash seemed like kind of a chucker in this game, honestly, but I mean, on the 1996 Mavericks? Unless he was always passing up a shot for Jason Kidd to reset or something, Mash probably should have just taken the shot every time. When Mashburn had the ball and a reasonable chance at the hoop, he was practically obligated to shoot. And he seemed like a living matchup problem at the 3, even if he wasn't especially skilled. Mash had a few swag drop-steps in the post, and definitely was a competent wide receiver for Jason Kidd when Kidd made an Ender's Game, five-steps-ahead-of-anyone-else sort of alley-oop.

The surprise of this game is that Dallas demolished Chicago on the boards in this game 66-50, winning 32-12 on offensive caroms (Dallas had 4 players in double-figure rebounds, and two more with 5). The Mavericks, in addition to having a dominating presence on the boards, also showed surprising acumen at passing when the legendary Bulls defense actually closed in on them in the second half. The Mavs didn't play great ball (considering their team, how could they, really?), but thanks to Kidd and their team rebounding, they really put themselves in a position to win with what they had. To be fair to the Bulls, they weren't near full strength: Dennis Rodman suffered a monthlong injury that lasted most of November (one of many weird facts about the 72-win Bulls). Rodman just got inducted into the HOF a couple months ago, and he absolutely deserved the honor: The Bulls' frontcourt was Rodman as a historically great rebounding and defensive force. As laughable as the claim is that Rodman was the most important player on the '96-98 Bulls (though he is a unique and truly great player), the way the roster was structured, he may have been the most irreplaceable Bulls player.

You see, the way the Bulls were constructed, losing Rodman meant losing 90% of his contributions. This isn't like when fans of all 30 teams today moan occasionally about wanting an agile seven footer that can defend and rebound (it seems so easy to get one!). No, Rodman was precisely what the Bulls were missing, qualitatively and quantitatively. Look at the numbers: Rodman got 14.9 rpg in 1996. Their next best rebounders that season were...Jordan and Pippen at about 6 apiece. Then came their starting center Luc Longley at 5 rpg, even though Rodman was playing far better defense than Longley: In addition to his infamous rep as an enforcer, Rodman won the DPOY (twice!), had unimaginably solid conditioning (he was 37 when the Bulls won in 1998), and the same gifts that made him a great rebounder (tenacity, endurance, predictive vision, lateral quickness, unpredictable blunt motions like hops) were also perfect for man and help defense. Furthermore, next to Longley, Rodman was only marginally less efficient at offense (same efficiency stats basically, but Longley got about twice as many touches). In about 6 more mpg, Rodman got about 3 times as many rebounds as Longley. Without Rodman they didn't have anyone that could consistently dominate on the glass (though both Pippen and Jordan were occasional double-double/triple-double threats, of course). Similarly on defense, while they had three great wing defenders in Pippen, Jordan, and Ron Harper*, Rodman was their only great inside presence. Longley, the infamous Croatian "prospect" Toni Kukoc, Jason Caffey, Bill Wennington? Yeah, all role players in the final tally. The Bulls without Rodman were a missing team. They weren't a 72-win team.

*The Bulls set the best half-court traps in all of basketball.

Part 2:

And yet, the Bulls without Rodman were not a bad team. They were a great team, in fact: Michael Jordan was hitting his final peak as an athlete, built around still-great driving ability, mental toughness, and an unguardable fadeaway (and generally, an amazing one-on-one arsenal and a much-improved jumper) that I am required by law as a blogger to tie into Kobe Bryant somehow. It's a cliche, but Jordan was honestly the brilliant assassin that his legendary personality dictated and that his athletic gifts often belied. Strange to say, but if anyone was truly athletically amazing in the Dallas game, it was Scottie Pippen (or Jason Kidd). What's really weird is that MJ's scoring was still very high and efficient in 1996 (30.4 per on .495 FG% and .427 3P%) but the points were often so easily gotten and difficult to defend that even if you were watching him, you could miss his insane scoring numbers. You could never mistake his level of production watching him in a 1991 45 point performance or his "God" game in 1986. But - similar to Tim Duncan's production throughout his career - late Jordan would often put in 7 in each of the first three quarters and 10 in the fourth and end up with 31 on 20 shots before you knew what was happening, no homecourt advantage or superstar calls needed. I mean, of course there were a few "how in God's name did he do that?" moments that only Jordan could have pulled off (can't wait to get this video up, seriously), but even so, Jordan scored more than 35 points, and it's a total shocker to hear. He somehow drops 17 in the second quarter, only 4 of which are conspicuous.

Unlike Jason Kidd, Pippen didn't quite get a triple-double in this game. However, his game was possibly more impressive and well-rounded. It was a great performance. Pippen got a 26-12-7 with 1 steal and 5 blocks, with just 3 turnovers. He also got the 26 points on 19 shots (not super-efficient, but better than Kidd). Now, Pippen didn't quite have the "_only good player" responsibility that Jason Kidd had, but on the other hand, Pippen also wasn't the statistical beneficiary of being the only good player on his team. When your team is filled with inefficient shooters and you get 11 assists, that's pretty impressive, but Kidd also got 8 offensive rebounds partially because his team didn't _expect to hit 50% of their shots ("We're not a 50% team," Mavs coach Dick Motta said at halftime, "But we're not a 35% team, either."). And as impressive as 6 steals is, Pippen got 1 steal and 5 blocks (none of them cheap perimeter swats), as a small forward.* Insane. Against an inferior Mavs wing defense (at best, they had an undersized Jason Kidd on Jordan), Jordan got a lot of unassisted baskets - and yet Pippen managed to find 7 assists. At one point in the first half, the Mavs were swarming Pippen: They had taken Michael as a given and were moving on to Scottie in a futile attempt to mitigate him.

*Small observation: A lot of blocks seem to happen when the offensive player makes a really formulaic counter-move switching from side to side in the paint. This is one reason I love when little guards use the "Eurostep," the "Dream Shake," and ball fakes in the paint. It's hilarious when it works (like when big linebackers make interceptions) and it's forced by the competitive structure of the game: The defensive player has established himself as good enough to block the standard layup, and the standard counter-moves like hand switches and turns.

And, oh man, so much of this game was brilliant transition offense and defense - as if Kidd, Pippen, and Jordan collectively signed a contract to make this game as fun and competitively possible in which they (and Ron Harper, guest star of Kenan & Kel this one time) were the only great players. You really have to see some of these plays. I'll try to get my highlight reel up, but this really is a vintage Jordan-Pippen-Kidd game - and you have to wonder how many people even saw it besides Kelly Dwyer and the Mayor of Dallas.

Maybe it wasn't so bad to be a fan of the Mavs after all.

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Joe Posnanski will use every detail in this picture - including
Joe Posnanski (left) - to disprove the viability of the intentional walk

As a recurring feature, Alex will be reviewing and analyzing various blogs and hoops sites. No number ratings or anything silly like that, just a good overview of the sites at hand with their strengths, weaknesses, etc. To see an index of previously reviewed sites, click here.

On a chilly day before dawn, I love a great essay or a short story. I just love that feeling when the piece ends, you know, when your neck shudders a little bit and you're the only one awake and the sky gets a little brighter? I don't care if the piece ends with fire or with insight - it ends with something meaningful, and something meaningful opens up in me. The heat of the sun gets my cold wet arms a little drier and warmer. I feel like I own the new day, and I see clearly what is real and earnest in life for awhile, and I see a little bit further ahead in my life. I just love that feeling. That's why today - just before dawn here - I want to talk about Joe Posnanski. But first I want to talk about Michael Jordan.

====

His Airness demonstrates his infamous
"Mockery of Tai Chi" dunk.

I don't know the path to greatness. I wish I did. It seems like you have to visualize an ideal and make your every choice in the shadow of that ideal. But I don't know, because even the great paths aren't so inevitable from the start. Michael Jordan may seem like destiny's child in retrospect - the unstoppable forward momentum of a singular champion. But nothing about 1998, 1996, 1986, 1989, or 1993, was so inevitable and historic in the moment. He was, sure, the heir apparent to Bird/Magic. But Bird's back broke down, Magic got HIV, and Len Bias overdosed. He was, sure, the best player in basketball for a decade. But his rise to prominence symbiotically coincided with the global rise of the NBA brand. He was, sure, the leader of two historic threepeats. But Ralph Sampson's back gave out, Portland chose Sam Bowie, and Jerry Krause and Phil Jackson brought the inscrutable Rodman to Chicago. Jordan's rise was a product of circumstance, and far from inevitable. Bill Simmons - following America at large - has his Alpha Dogs that win every game that matters and hit every shot that matters, but even a cursory study.of basketball history suggests that innumerable choices, literal lotteries, and economic realities guide what we in hindsight call fate.

Even though - or heck, precisely because - I believe this, I hold a lot of special reverence for Jordan. The world expected and demanded Jordan to take the lead as a showman and a winner every night - and every night Jordan delivered. He was, sure, genetically blessed and fell into perfect developmental circumstances and he was paired with a slightly younger, much poorer twin from rural Arkansas named Pippen that served as perfect teammate and foil. But Jordan's shots still had to fall, the killer still had to rise, and the motivator still had to find (or else invent) slights against him. Jordan still had to win. But he delivered on his promise again and again, even beyond what his circumstances and his gifts should have allowed. He may have been destiny's child in the other sense - the unstoppable thrusting of a man into greatness, but nothing about Jordan was remotely perfunctory. He cried after winning his first title in 1991 not because he was supposed to or because his handlers deemed it demographically lucrative. No, he cried because he loved what he'd earned and couldn't stand the idea of having been deprived of it. Jordan had no use for excuses - and he was too intelligent for any excuses to work. Jordan's was already a great throne when he inherited the kingdom, but he was a great king that elevated his throne still higher. Far from trivializing either the great Jordan or his great situation, hindsight only elevates both to more absurd levels.

====

"Alex, I'm glad you wrote it, and you wouldn't know this, but I already wrote
this exact same piece back in 1986 about my favorite sportswriter."

I'm sure Joe Posnanski has thought about Jordan in this way, because he has written everything that I have ever thought about sports and life into a curiously long and thoughtful post. Poz would probably figure out how the thought extends to LeBron: with his maddening playoff exits (inexplicable) and his maddening ceiling (higher and more fickle than perhaps any NBA player ever). I'm sure Poz would figure out how to work in all the greats of this era, some select greats scattered across NBA history, and a couple of personal anecdotes about tennis and baseball. Poz would work the Jordan thought into a winding yarn (but at all times simple and forward-moving). He'd work in a Buck O'Neill anecdote or a reference to Vin Scully or Joe Paterno. Wherever he'd go with it, Posnanski would think about this Jordan narrative for hours and turn it into a work of substance and entertainment. Or Poz would kindly and systematically point out all the flaws and banality and utter repetition of a bad narrative that he'd heard a thousand times but had never found the words to refute. And then Poz would find the words to refute the narrative, and in doing so would enrich all our lives with a work of substance and entertainment. That's just what he does.

I wonder if Poz senses that he has arrived and peaked (hopefully not fully) at exactly the right moments for his talents - the first burst of blogs and the first truly ubiquitous social networks, respectively. I wonder if Poz ever thinks about living in a time where niches like "Moneyball" become feature films and America can take an ironic distance towards baseball and still love it without question again. I wonder if Poz ever senses that we are living in a golden age of technology that still demands the scarce great storytellers in sports. I wonder if Poz realizes the weight of expectations his fervent readers place upon him, if he realizes the impact his best work has on us and the hours of joy his total work has brought to us. I wonder if he allows himself to be the avatar for virtue in his own narratives, as he is in ours as aspiring bloggers. I wonder if he realizes that he's in Chicago, so to speak, surrounded - as Jordan was - by a group of admirers that hang on the results of his craft. I wonder if he's proud of himself that he disappoints our expectations so rarely and transcends them so frequently.

I wonder, but I already know the answer: No, of course not. Even if he had the time (he writes a mile a minute and acknowledges that sportswriters have a shelflife), Poz can't find such narratives terribly interesting: He responded to a "Best Sportswriter Award" by making cheesy 70s references and making self-deprecating humor about himself as a blogger. Plain and simple, he's not going to let an award for best sportswriter go to his head. All he did was appreciate the praise and then he moved on; there's baseball to write about, y'know? Even if a great writer cornered him into talking about his own greatness, I'm sure he would just chalk it up to circumstance, teammates, and perseverance, like Jim Thome or Tim Duncan. His work passes through his head from his soul but seems to miss his ego, or maybe his ego just isn't very big to begin with. His advice to aspiring writers? Use active verbs, stay humble, don't think you're above the story. And that's it. Don't add flowery language, don't rest on your laurels, don't talk about your achievements, talk about your favorite stories. Don't go for the big-name contacts, go for the story and the people you're interested in hearing about. And maybe his simplicity is the whole trick. He's a master at it anyway: With a single active verb he says things that take me hours to express.* He puts Vin Scully's elegant simplicity into 4000 words or so, year-round on weekdays. He came about, sure, right when his talents were called for, but he has delivered - with virtue, sincerity, compassion, and humor - even beyond his thrust to greatness.

*Every few pieces there's just a show-stopping sentence, and Poz seems to know just where to place it. Example: "What followed felt too awesome, like those imaginary games we all used to play in our backyard with impossible comebacks and ridiculous twists and all those things that real sports so rarely become." on the Cardinals' improbable Game Six victory. Another examples: "I would not try to explain how Ron Washington manages baseball teams -- it seems to me some combination of feel, improvisational jazz, likability and Wile E. Coyote -- but it seemed pretty clear that he did not want other teams best players to beat him. ". Poz also loves his "Posterisks," which are long, asterisked parentheticals like this.

I read a lot of my favorite Posnanski pieces this morning to feel that certain joy and enlightenment. Before I read it all, I'd had an earlier version of this post. Oh, it had a lot about how he was different, about how he is a special guy, compassion pouring from his every word, his personality bursting from his every anecdote, etc. It started, "Every day on his blog, Pos shares a couple stories, anecdotes, or thoughts. Most of them deal with baseball." And I think that's all I need to keep from the earlier draft as a chilly dawn approaches here in Madison.

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As a recurring feature, Alex will be reviewing and analyzing various blogs and hoops sites. No number ratings or anything silly like that, just a good overview of the sites at hand with their strengths, weaknesses, etc. To see an index of previously reviewed sites, click here.

The way many fans tell it, the field of sports statistics is a conspiracy against their favorite player (*cough* Kobe). For others, sports stats is a conspiracy against the fan experience. For many beyond that, sports stats is a useful and instructive field still in its infancy that often makes claims far above its pay grade and level of sophistication. For a fourth group, sports stats is absolutely perfect with no flaws. Now, most people are in the third camp, largely because of the way I worded that paragraph to make it seem most reasonable. Obviously you can find good examples of the first two groups on any sports comment section or any basketball forum. Of course, no one is really in the fourth group this brings us to Wages of Wins, by process of elimination.

You see, Wages of Wins is perhaps the only group of people in basketball that think that numbers speak for themselves, and that it's up to us intelligent people to give the numbers a voice against the unwashed masses. They might not say they believe this, but the evidence of their book, their head blog, and their overall perspective and approach combine to make me think this. If you want a (crude and somewhat unfair) analogy, you could say that Wages of Wins form a similar niche to Objectivists in American political culture. To make the analogy more precise (and hopefully less insulting), they take their own group's exclusive access to objective truth and intellectual courage as a collective and partially unstated given. Is either group filled with awful people or even stubborn people? No, not really. But the philosophy itself is stubborn, the heads of the two groups are frustratingly stubborn, and in general the movement represents an easy, half-assed way out of a hard problem. Let me explain:

There's a difference in any intellectual endeavor between positive and normative claims: both are subject to evidence, but are the result of fundamentally different perspectives. A positive claim goes something like this: "Increasing the minimum wage may increase the clearing price of wages but also will create labor shortages." Sure, it's not an easy empirical claim to think about or describe an experiment for, but, like you could design and describe an experiment from the nature of the claim. You know? You can use economic statistics, look at legal complications, take surveys, use research in psychology, even Platonic reasoning about an established model, and so on, to look at the historical effects of the minimum wage. You can make a good argument for or against a positive claim using both creative and established methodology.

Normative claims are a bit hairier. Whereas the positive claim above makes two casual links (Minimum wage up to wages up to supply of labor down), a normative claim makes one of its causal links a "better" or "more moral" universe. "Increasing the minimum wage will lead to a better world" Even in principle, to address whether this claim is true requires a whole lot of shared assumptions: most people might accept the claim if increasing the minimum wage increased both wages and supply of jobs for the poorest citizens. But unless you accept what someone else's version of a better world is, you are unlikely to be persuaded by their normative claims.

Now, positive and normative claims both have their purposes: positive claims help us turn our experience into sound theories about the world. Normative claims often lead to imaginative and thoughtful interpretations of the world around us. They also both have fundamental drawbacks. You can positively describe all the psychology and economic consequences of something stark in human experience like love or slavery - but at the end of the day it takes a normative claim to affirm what is right and reject what is wrong. And dually you can make loaded and rhetorical claims about the nature of things until you're blue in the face, but if you can't turn your judgments into empirical claims, you aren't going to change anything if you're right, and you're never going to find out your error if you're wrong.

Now, The Wages of Wins - to its credit - seems to steer towards and pay far more than lip service towards positive claims. One of the group's major pet peeves is the media bluster over a hyped-up, flashy player like Allen Iverson or Kobe Bryant. The group correctly notes that the media will use toy statistics and scoring numbers without context to make scorers like Iverson seem like the single most productive player on the floor at any given night, excusing shooting inefficiency with raw scoring numbers, excusing low defensive impact with the flash of steals, and so on. The numbers - as the Wages of Wins group reasons - don't lie. And just because you saw Iverson drop 60 one night doesn't excuse the shooting inefficiency he often brings to the table. Even if Kobe Bryant is legitimately great - if his stats don't match up - it's fair to call into question his sum total of accolades. I think most reasonable people can accept this.

To this end they developed on an interesting statistic (from Dean Oliver's work) - Wins Produced. I can't summarize it perfectly without getting a bit mathematical*, but to give you a toned-down version, they plot team point differential against winning percentage to calculate the marginal (economically speaking) value of points and possessions. They use these valuations more-or-less Platonically** to put box score stats like made field goals, steals, missed field goals, turnovers, and assists onto an additive scale, so that if you add together all the things in the box score given these weights, you'll come extremely close to knowing who won the game by what - and, adding up a team's stats over the course of the season - you should know more or less where they finished in the standings and/or how good they are. Then they take this (even after months of dissing them I still say) perfectly reasonable statistic and define an individual's "productivity" by their per-minute box score stats. And then they make a perfectly reasonable adjustment for position. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly reasonable. Perfectly reasonable is their statistic.

* Like all math majors, long, fascinating, and complex chains of reasoning appear to me in my head. This is a practical joke by math to see how badly I'll butcher these chains of reasoning when communicating them to other people.

_ ** Platonically in the sense that all assists are valued the same, all missed field goals are treated the same way, all turnovers are treated the same (and the same as missed field goals), steals are treated like anti-turnovers, steals are valued identically to rebounds, offensive rebounds are valued identically to defensive rebounds. More on this soon._

Do they have a point? Sure. When a perfectly reasonable statistic fails again and again in favor of the demonstrably worse metric scoring volume, they have successfully argued that there is a problem with NBA decision-making (at least - as they empirically show - with Rookie of the Year, MVP, All-NBA, etc. selections). You see, any perfectly reasonable statistic should be at least pretty decently correlated with merit. You know what I mean? That's not to say there can't be exceptions (perfectly good reasoning often systematically ignores exceptions), but basically, if you invent a statistic where points are good, misses are bad, steals are good, and assists are also good, and so on, you're probably not going to go too far astray as long as you keep a decent sense of proportions. If your proportions are given by team point differential, you're probably on the right track. You could easily - easily - use similar chains of reasoning to argue someone is the MVP. In fact, the popular "assist = 2 points" trope is a great example of this kind of argument back in the "Kobe vs. Nash" MVP debate in 2007. So yeah, there is a point to be made here: "Maybe Kevin Garnett isn't just doing a showy and historically great job of choking in the playoffs for the Wolves, big-market announcers. Maybe he's actually the best player in the league. Here's my argument. Maybe he is a winner. Maybe he's one of the best winners in the history of the league." That's what Wins Produced is - at first glance - all about. And it's a good thing.

It's perfectly reasonable. But then they stray from solid positive claims into (as opposed to equally solid) sketchy normative claims. They take their "perfectly reasonable" statistic and make an idol of it. Now, Richard Jefferson is a perfectly reasonable, likable, and competent player, but I shudder to think that anyone out there has made an idol of Richard Jefferson. Not only would it be an allocation problem (underutilizing perfectly fine stars to idolize instead like...I don't know, Chris Paul? Gosh.), but it would - in basketball terms - represent a fundamental misapprehension of the sport. If Richard Jefferson stops your show, it's probably not a very good show in the first place.* The problem is that instead of taking this Wins Produced statistic, putting it in their back pocket to counter a specious claim like that Allen Iverson did more to make his team win than Shaq in 2001, they argue that Shaq should be the MVP because their statistic says so. And then they argue that Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett and Chris Paul and Jason Kidd should have had the award for the next 8 years. Okay, I'm exaggerating, but the bottom line is: If he leads in Wins Produced for a year, the people at Wages of Wins will argue that he should be the MVP. Not "this should be used as a sanity check" because if a player is terribly mediocre according to this metric they're probably not an MVP. Not "this is one of many perfectly reasonable metrics, but it gives us some substantive clues into how good Kevin Love has been." Not "take this with a grain of salt, but Kevin Love comes up higher than all of Allen Iverson's career years combined." (Sorry about all these exaggerations, but it's how the Wages of Wins blog actually sounds, and it's seeping in to my own style to recall). And unfortunately while they may grasp the rules of basketball very well (and honestly do seem to be fans when all is said and done), they seem to regard any attempt to use the sport of basketball - as it empirically is, not just as the Platonic rulebook deems it to be - as a personal attack. It's hard to get them to acknowledge anything about the sport of basketball as they personally see it, opting for a bizarre and non-committal set of descriptions consistent with their intellectual views. "Kevin Love is amazing! Just look at these WP48 numbers!" Never a hint that they are watching, though for such committed people they must be watching.

* The preceding is statistical fact.

It's sad to say, but they don't have grains of salt, they don't have much context, and they don't have a multidimensional set of perfectly reasonable statistics. They're Johnny One-Note, and even though they at one point had one of the most reasonable concepts and some of the best experiments in all of basketball stats (heck, in all of sports), they just couldn't sustain one note for five years, and instead of adapting, "stretching the game out" in hip-hop lingo, and taking as an idol the braintrust which produced their fresh ideas, they Rip Van Winkled in a ranch of laurels, and curmudgeonly cut all ties with the rest of stats culture, and now subsist on incredibly lazy extensions of their original ideas, dogmatic and misguided rants about the problems in decision-making that they at one time helped to ameliorate a bit, and actually quite-good visualizations of their concepts. They idolized their original positive claims and made a normative universe around them until everyone accepts their claims. I don't know that I'm a humanist or anything, but if they're going to idolize their powerful claims, they probably could have done better idolizing the minds and processes that created those claims in the first place and then built their normative universe around these minds and processes. If they did this, we as fans - and writers, and intellectuals, and basketball enthusiasts - could at least begin to get behind them.

For a mind - infinitely more than a perfectly reasonable statistic ever could - can reason perfectly well.

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Kevin Garnett, the Man of Unspeakable Cruelty.

And now, some Choice Examples of this Unspeakable Cruelty.

Ray Allen: Hey Kevin, could you help me out with moving this 50 pound bag?
Kevin Garnett: Do it yourself, Ray Allen. Here, take this strap so you can wear it on your back and buffer most of the load.

Stephon Marbury: Hey Kevin, could you help me pave my pool over?
Kevin Garnett: No, Stephon Marbury, because that's really not a wise decision. Drain your pool if you don't wish to use it or clean it, but it adds value to your property which is not going to be recouped by whatever else you put there.

Glen Davis: Hey Kevin, could you help me with a deeply personal problem?
Kevin Garnett: No, Glen Davis. You have to solve that by yourself. That's a personal problem.

Doc Rivers: Hey Kevin, can you help me motivate the team?
Kevin Garnett: I will try my best, Doc Rivers, but I demand that you oversee this, because that is your formal role as head coach of this team.

Sam Cassell: Hey Kevin, could you apply this hair-growth tonic to the back of my scalp?
Kevin Garnett: Sam Cassell, you are supposed to be in Washington. This is Boston, on the other-side of the massive metropolitan area which stretches across the Eastern Seaboard.

Leon Powe: Hey Kevin, do you remember me?
Kevin Garnett: Yes, Leon Powe. How are you?

Kendrick Perkins: Hey Kevin, can you guard Tim Duncan for me? He is sort of out-playing me recently.
Kevin Garnett: No, Kendrick, because if I did that I wouldn't be able to switch to cover their guards on the pick-and-rolls and flare screens which the Spurs are so fond of.

Tim Duncan: Hey Kevin.
Kevin Garnett: Hey... Tim Duncan...
Tim Duncan: We are playing a game against each other, tonight, Kevin. I just wanted to wish you luck. You could have had as many rings as I have if the luck of the draw had placed us differently, and I just wanted you to know that I have considered you my most potent and interesting rival over the years, and since we'll both be retiring soon, I wanted you to know that I have deep respect for your game and your toughness.
Kevin Garnett: Gee, Tim, thanks a lot! That means quite a bit, coming from you. I really wish we could have had more meetings in the playoffs with excellent teams, and while I do regret how things turned out, I finally got to a championship-caliber team late in my career, and I feel that vindicates everything that came before.
Tim Duncan: Yeah, I understand that. I didn't get full vindication for my skills until somewhat late in my career, either. But I was getting championships, and so it didn't matter as much to me. Well, I have to go to the arena, Kevin. I look forward to your performance.

Tim Duncan: Hey Kevin, now that it's about tip-off time, I wanted to, again, wish you luck.
Kevin Garnett: Thanks, Tim. You too.

Ref: Ray, you stand over there. Bruce, you stand on the left side, there, behind Tim. Alright, when I blow the whistle, it's tip-off time. Good luck.
Tim Duncan: Thank you, ref.
Ref: You're very welcome, Tim.
*whistle*
Manu Ginobili: Tim, get it to me...I will drive in the lane to space their shooters.
Tim Duncan: Okay, Manu.
Kevin Garnett: I WILL KILL YOU ALL WITH KNIVES MADE FROM YOUR BONES. AHHHHH. AHHHHH. AHHHH. GET OUT OF THE PAINT MANU THAT'S RIGHT. NOT TALL ENOUGH TO GET PAST ME. FUCK YOU TIM. THIS IS MY HOUSE, FROM SEA TO FUCKING SHINING SEA. AAHHHHH.
Doc Rivers: Oh Jesus Christ, Kevin, shut the fuck up.
Kevin Garnett: DON'T TELL ME HOW TO BE, DOC RIVERS. WHERE'S YOUR RING?
Ray Allen: Hey Kevin, can you pass the ball? I want to take this open shot.
Kevin Garnett: IN A MINUTE RAY ALLEN. I'M READING THE FUCKING DEFENSE. SO IF YOU CAN WAIT, JUST A FUCKING MINUTE. AAAHHHH.
Ray Allen: Okay, I can wait. But you know, the shot clock is 24 seconds, which is substantially less than a minute.
Kevin Garnett: RAY DON'T SHOVE MY LIMITATIONS IN MY FACE YOU KNOW WHAT I MEANT. DO I HAVE TO BREAK YOU LIKE I BROKE DUNCAN ON THAT LAST DUNK?
Ray Allen: Kevin, it's the first offensive possession of the game.
Kevin Garnett: I'M REFERRING BACK TO THE PLAYOFFS LAST YEAR RAY, YOU KNOW, WHEN DUNCAN WENT CRYING? HAHA IT'S GOOD TO BE THE BEST.
Ray Allen: The Spurs are in the Western Conference, while the Celtics are the in the East. Also, we lost in the second round last year.
Kevin Garnett: YEAH THAT'S WHAT KENDRICK WAS SAYING, BUT I THOUGHT HE WAS LYING.
Ray Allen: Well it's true. You should learn to trust people, Kevin.
Kevin Garnett: MAYBE, RAY, MAYBE.
Ray Allen: Like, I know that for all the bluster you're a fine, caring, thoughtful individual. If you added "trusting" to that, you would have quite an emotionally-available personality.
Kevin Garnett: NO, THAT'S NOT FOR ME RAY, I AM THE MAN OF UNSPEAKABLE CRUELTY AND I FIGURE I'LL ALWAYS BE.
Ray Allen: Oh, Kevin, that's not true. People can change in their lives.
Kevin Garnett: HAVEN'T YOU EVER SEEN A CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED DRAMA ABOUT A DAMAGED PROTAGONIST THAT TRIES TO CHANGE AND IN THE END REALIZES THAT THEY CANNOT? HOUSE, DEXTER, BREAKING BAD, THE WIRE? THE LIST GOES ON.
Ray Allen: Oh, come now, those shows are only that way for cynical economic reasons and because they don't want to alter the formula so much that they lose what made the shows successful in the first place. Looking at the formula for those shows is not the best way to find their most humane themes.
Kevin Garnett: MAYBE YOU'RE RIGHT RAY, MAYBE I CAN CHAN-
*whistle*
Ref: Shot clock violation. Spurs Ball.
Kevin Garnett: GODDAMN IT RAY. I WANT TO DUNK ON DUNCAN SO HARD LIKE LAST YEAR.
Ray Allen: Okay, Kevin.
Tim Duncan: Kevin, I just want to wish you the best of luck in this game.

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