Hey, everyone. Welcome to the third and final installment of Basketball Vintages. BV is a mini-feature I've been working on. The idea is simple (and shamelessly appropriated from the great Joe Posnanski): For every year since 1934 (Russell's birth year), we grade the "vintage" of the NBA players born that year. It's a neat concept, and so far we've made it up to Gary Payton (born 1968). Today we're going to finish up and plow right through to Chris Paul and Dwight Howard (1985). You can check out the Dream Team in Part II, and the first couple decades of the shot clock era back at Part I. Hope you enjoy.

1969

Best Player: Shawn Kemp

Other Nominees: Larry Johnson, Christian Laettner, Sam Cassell

Vintage Grade: B

Comment: Sam Cassell was a part of four completely separate generations of contending franchises: the 1994-95 Rockets, the 2001 Bucks, the 2004 Wolves, and the 2008 Celtics. That's... pretty strange. I'm not going to try to explain it, though I'm sure I could figure it out if I threw enough numbers at the table. There are some things should remain a mystery to the world, and Sam Cassell is one of those things.

Shawn Kemp was the best player on the beloved 1990s Sonics, a short time after which his production began to seriously decline. Kemp (as you likely know) fathered several children and, in the decline, dealt with drug, legal, and weight issues. Kemp's public image largely centers around his infamous post-lockout training camp, in which he showed up a couple stones overweight (for you British readers). Of course, he was a starter on a team that fared well against the 1996 Bulls. Based on his stats, it's safe to presume Kemp's decline had less to do with the 1999 weight gain, and far more to do with the natural decline of a big man scorer's quickness on the wrong side of 30.

Seriously. Think you know Shawn Kemp? Look at his stats from 1998 and 1999. Try to find a single thing he did worse in 1999 than he did in 1998. You will quickly discover an odd and unheralded truth -- there's nothing worse. By all statistical measure, Shawn Kemp's 1999 edition was as good or better than the 1998 edition. Sure, this doesn't account for his defense, which took a tumble. And the team around him collapsed. But that isn't necessarily his fault. Kemp's falloff post-Sonics had less to do with his weight gain and more to do with the natural way things go for players with his kind of a game -- Kemp never had an especially polished post game, for all he did in iso situations. His athleticism and quickness was his money skill, and when that went, his ability to contribute left him as well. Perhaps he would've lasted longer if he had unimpeachable conditioning. But probably not.

1970

Best Player: Alonzo Mourning

Other Nominees: Robert Horry, Latrell Sprewell

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: Latrell Sprewell is a decent scorer mostly known (deservedly) for choking P.J. Carlesimo in 1997. But he was a great volume scorer on the 1999-00 Knicks and the 2004 T'Wolves. One of my favorite Duncan games is in Game 5 in the 1999 Finals. In that game, he and Sprewell got into a master-class shoot-out where the two players alone got roughly 25 points combined for a stretch where no one else on either team seemed to score. My most enduring image from that series is a shot taken from the corner of the backboard as Sprewell fiercely drove the ball from the opposite side, his fiercely-arched eyebrows holding pearls fixed right on the camera through the webbing of the net. It was the Knicks' defining moment of a finals defined mostly by Tim Duncan destroying all comers. And Zo's in this class, too? With Horry, whose game is consistently unfairly denigrated due to his clutch instincts? (Really. Watch him on the 90s Rockets. He's a good player in his own right, not just in the clutch.) That's a B+.

1971

Best Player: Bruce Bowen or Penny Hardaway

Other Nominees: Allan Houston, Nick Van Exel, Eddie Jones

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: Tremendous upside in this class. You have three explosive players (Houston, Penny, Van Exel) that are encoded in a thousand of those seven-second slow-motion videos that made the rounds before Youtube. And yet - thanks largely to their injuries - the most "accomplished" of this class is probably Bowen, who won a slew of All-Defense 1st teams for his tenacious, frustrating, dirty perimeter defense in three Spurs titles. But it wasn't just injury that made the difference: Though Bowen wasn't a star, he played a role in the Spurs perfectly suited to his talents, a role that is practically archetypal now. In the wake of the Heat's somewhat underwhelming offense it's easy to go back and frame everything in terms of redundancy, but really, the Spurs didn't need a great finisher, they didn't need a dominating shot-creator: They needed someone that could play great defense on the opponent's best player, one through three, could make good rotations, and could learn to shoot a corner three. Bruce Bowen was exactly the skillset the Spurs needed, with no extra cost or baggage. Bruce didn't leave anyone to wonder if he could possibly be more efficient with his skillset (nope), if he had unexplored upside (nope), or if he would shrink or rise to the occasion on the biggest stage (rise). And then when his corner three stopped dropping, he got traded in the deal that brought Richard Jefferson to San Antonio, a more talented, more skilled player that would try desperately and futilely to recapture what Bruce had done with less, and the Spurs would despair.

1972

Best Player: Shaquille O'Neal

Other Nominees: Grant Hill, Kurt Thomas

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: Solid A. These are the first active players we're seen so far, Shaq having retired a few months ago.

For 13 consecutive years Shaq finished in the top 10 of the MVP vote. For a few of those he was a marginal candidate, yes, but it's still pretty insane. Shaq only ended up with one MVP, and while he probably should have gotten AI's in 2001, his career accomplishments speak for themselves. On blogs we always like to contextualize (and even to mitigate) greatness for no good reason except to show that we truly understand a situation, but I don't know that Shaq's physicality on the court and causal presence off it can be given a proper context or understanding. Shaq for a few years gave you the sense that he could score without much skill and defend without much effort simply by being so large and developing a basic but effective skillset to go along with it. And in the end that's exactly what he did. Sure, Shaq could have done more, he could have hit more free throws*, he could have had better help defense, and so on. But this misses the point: Shaq in his prime was an inherent flaw in the logic of the sport of basketball until finally his body wore down and his opponents found ways to respond and mitigate (most infamously the Hack-a-Shaq, now a standard part of strategy). And in the importance of his presence and the competitive response, Shaq became part of the now-slightly-broader logic of basketball, like Eddie Gaedel given 20 years in the big-leagues or like the Liar's Paradox becoming central to our understanding of the limitations of formal systems.

*I kind of doubt that Shaq could have done much better with free throws whenever I see fierce, far more well-regarded competitors like Tim Duncan or Ben Wallace or Bill Russell shooting the same mediocre percentages. It's more plausible to me that the same size which allows them such greatness in other areas also gives them especially tired legs at the ends of games, big hands to botch apparently simple motions, and trouble getting into the self-starting, unnatural rhythm of a free throw. Seems a lot more likely than the tired "Shaq is too lazy/busy with other ventures to care" narrative (even for an infamous sandbagger).

1973

Best Player: Chris Webber or Jason Kidd

Other Nominees: Michael Finley, Juwan Howard

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: Very solid class. Four of the Fab Five (Howard, Webber, Jimmy King and Jalen Rose), two first-ballot HOFers (Kidd and Webber), an insane and unstoppable force at one point that basically ended the Stockton-Malone Jazz's run singlehandedly in 2001 (Finley), a totally ubiquitous and ridiculous player that shows up in every important regular-season game from 1998 to 2008 (Howard), an hellacious point guard that seems to control the flow, structure, and tempo of every single possession he encounters on both ends (Kidd), a bunch of players that played for the Mavericks at random times or otherwise might have, and Eric Snow (that guy that inexplicably played on three different overmatched Finals teams -- the 96 Sonics, 01 Sixers, and 07 Cavs). Shock the world.

1974

Best Player: Steve Nash

Other Nominees: Ben Wallace, Rasheed Wallace, Jerry Stackhouse, Derek Fisher, Antonio McDyess, Marcus Camby

Vintage Grade: A++

Comment: Okay, so my eyes are basically sparkling right now, guys, I'm not going to lie. This is the single most likable class in basketball history. Steve Nash, Ben Wallace, Antonio McDyess, Marcus Camby? That's fantastic. A treat. It's no coincidence my first attempt at writing this class devolved into feverish chuckles and imagining what it would be like to meet them. Hey, Steve Nash, how are you? Care to show off a pull-up jumper, today? Do you have any amusing opinions about the events of today that you would like to share?

Seriously, Steve Nash has always been somewhat politically active, spearheading the virtuous "Los Suns" jersey campaign in the 2010 playoffs in the wake of an Arizona immigration debate. Derek Fisher, for all you can critique his handling of this dispute, by all accounts is a tremendous, hard-working person. McDyess (along with Nick Van Exel) literally spent a year in the Nuggets uniform helping the troubled young player Chris Herren stay out of drugs, eating dinner with him every night just so that he wouldn't relapse into his many addictions (Herren wouldn't relapse until traded to the Celtics). McDyess (like Nash and Big Ben) is known as a great teammate. "If you don't like Dice, then I got a problem with you," Ben Wallace once said. I think that about says it all for this class. Great class. Very... classy.

"These new rooks... don't have any respect for the history of the game."

1975

Best Player: Sugar Ray Allen Iverson

Other Nominees: Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Jason Williams

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: I'm starting to realize that this is what a very decent, above-average class of players looks like, a couple HOFers, a couple likable players with high upsides and good stories, and 10 or 15 good rotation players. Pro Basketball is really strange that way: There are only about 8 players that really matter on a team, and only about 30 teams, and the best careers are fairly long, and you only need three very good players or one great player to make a team worth watching and caring about. It's a simple queuing problem with a simple solution. Put simply you don't have to have a lot of exceptional classes, either in birth year or in the draft: You just have to have a few great players on average in every class and you'll wind up with a fairly rich league, but basketball is also well-structured enough to accommodate even richer classes in the future. Maybe this is why it's such a great sport: It's so scalable and malleable to the talent available. As long as you have a ball and a hoop, you can play.

1976

Best Player: Tim Duncan or Kevin Garnett

Other Nominees: Andre Miller, Chauncey Billups, Antawn Jamison, Brad Miller, Antoine Walker

Vintage Grade: A++

Comment: Yes, those extra pluses are becoming gimmicky. I apologize. More glaringly, I apologize for putting Duncan and KG on the same level. My justification for this is only that KG is not one of the "other nominees," he is a clear 1b, obviously a HOFer himself, a champion, an intense and an indelible image, an archetypal character, a raw and complex personality, and someone that is just plain fun to make fun of and use as a hypothetical. What's more, in terms of physical command and intellectual understanding of the game he is frighteningly on the ball, and has been for 15 years. If he had been on a better team earlier, who knows what he could have accomplished? Of course, he made his bed, and given how much of a prick he's been as a contender in Boston it's not so tragic that he didn't accomplish more in the playoffs. But KG signed a $100 million dollar, decade-long contract with the expansion Timberwolves, who proved over this decade that it is in fact possible to mismanage a franchise as skillfully as R.C. Buford managed the Spurs. GM Kevin McHale scorched the earth quite thoroughly, even attempting a hilariously inept underhand deal for Joe Smith that cost KG's team like four first-rounders. This would have been a lot funnier if it hadn't come right around the time of teammate and friend Malik Sealy's absolutely tragic, horrifying death at the hands of a drunk driver (on KG's 25th birthday, after his party. Damn.). With his ineptness, McHale turned KG's fierce loyalty into a dark tragedy, as if the Wolves were trying to prove Jerry Krause's (infamous and possibly misquoted) "organizations win championships" statement right by counterexample. Ugh. No, KG, love him or hate him, is not an "other nominee". Call it a lifetime achievement award.

Tim Duncan, though, is easily my favorite player in the league today, great and without any of the qualifications I gave to Garnett. Taking just his career at the elbow (on both ends), he would still be a first-ballot for Springfield. Taking either his defensive or his offensive contributions, he would still be a first-ballot for Springfield. Taking just his clutch, his poise, and his fierce, understated competitiveness, he would still be a first-ballot for Springfield. But put it all together and you have someone, something new that nevertheless fits into history like a glove. We're going to probably have millions of Duncan posts before we tie our laces. I'll refrain from over-coverage and move forward. Extra plus is for Andre Miller, a friggin class act, quiet and understated. Fast and effective. A point guard's point guard. His longevity and his dependability take him up about 20 notches from where his talent would place him. Great player, decent dude.

1977

Best Player: Manu Ginobili or Paul Pierce

Other Nominees: Vince Carter, Jason Terry, Stephon Marbury, Peja Stojakovic

Vintage Grade: A-

Comment: Another great class. This might be over-familiarity biasing the results upwards, but it seems like the classes are getting better, on average. Am I crazy? League Politics Alert: Manu is a HOFer. I'm biased as hell towards Manu, but seriously, every solid advanced metric I've ever seen puts Manu well above even the most favorable "decent, exciting, above-average" reputation he has among casual fans, and the eye test really bears this out. He's considerably above-average, he has been the Spurs' best player for a few years, and is constantly a threat to dominate any given game or series (and has been since about 2002, before he even entered the league). You're hard pressed to find 10 SGs in the history of the league that are better than him, and you're even more hard-pressed to find any player like him. Paul Pierce may have an equally crafty, solid resume, but I'm a Spurs fan and Manu is my horse in this... wine race.

On a sidenote: It's kind of cool that KG/TD directly precedes the Manu/Pierce year, and Ray Allen is one year before. Maybe my biggest disappointment of last season is that we didn't get to see a Spurs/Celtics Finals. If any two teams embody some sort of Platonic ideal for great all-around, solid, professional, well-constructed teams with a few dirty players sprinkled in... in the modern era, it's these two. (Thanks a lot, Danny Ainge. I hope Jeff Green works out for you.) Plus, they have very similar strengths and the matchups would have been legendary. Ah, well, them's the breaks of the game. Also, if you want a fun read, try Darcy Frey's "The Last Shot" from your local library, about Coney Island high school basketball, featuring a 14-year-old (!) Stephon Marbury riding a big wheel, all like, through a chain-link fence or something (90% of this sentence is true).

1978

Best Player: Kobe Bryant

Other Nominees: Dirk Nowitzki, Shawn Marion, Shane Battier, Jermaine O'Neal, Rip Hamilton

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: Dirk absolutely dominated the playoffs this season, showing such insane clutch and tenacity in the face of a poor reputation that you really couldn't have scripted a better turnaround in perception. He also inspired this, the spirit animal for everything I've ever written. Kobe scored 81 points in a single game and while he will never reach the heights of Jordan (not even bringing up Kobe's league-average defense against Jordan's well-above-average D), Kobe has taken certain elements of MJ and distilled them even more thoroughly in himself, and has one of the highest ceilings for a game in NBA history, on any given night. Marion is a statistical freak, the ultimate grounding of the SSOL Suns in something remotely (but not totally) tangible. Battier is his own brand of statistical freak.

1979

Best Player: Tracy McGrady or Elton Brand

Other Nominees: Baron Davis, Ron Artest, Rashard Lewis, Lamar Odom, Hedo Turkoglu

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: A lot of weird public perceptions here. McGrady is heralded for his scoring prowess but is widely seen as having missed much of his potential, even inspiring his Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy and his GM Daryl Morey to publicly diss him at the MIT Sloan conference earlier this year. I absolutely agree with Dan Devine's skepticism of this narrative here, and the "what can't superheroes do, right?" and the killer, perfectly-on-point:

"Still, I can't help feeling like selecting McGrady as the poster boy for wasted chances is at least partially a function of our own propensity as writers, observers, executives and fans to jam talented players into a hyperbolic chamber, imbue them with whatever dreams may come and then get all pissy when they don't pop out, pure and perfect, exactly the way our imaginations envisioned."

Ouch. I bring this up because, to some lesser or greater extent, almost everyone on this list has suffered from disappointed (or even exceeded without notice) expectations. Artest with the melee, Baron Davis and Odom with their inconsistent production, Hedo with his frustrating sequence of trades and his...highly contextual success, and Rashard and Brand with their...perfectly-well-deserved-but-ill-fated contracts. On the other hand, all of these players have contributed a lot to their teams, and with all the expectations we place on these players, it's easy to overlook that.

1980

Best Player: Pau Gasol

Other Nominees: Yao Ming, Richard Jefferson, Matt Bonner, Roger Mason, Matt Barnes, Luis Scola, Nick Collison, Mike Miller, Luke Walton, Jamario Moon (Warning: All but Yao and Gasol may have been chosen partially for comedy value).

Vintage Grade: B

Comment: Pau was the linchpin for this latest Lakers dynasty. Bynum deserves... ... Hi, Alex. How are you today? Well, I finally latched on to a host. That means I'm 1 for 4 today. Guess I've earned myself the Finals MVP. Don't you think so? Well, a lot of Kobe fans would agree. ... HELP ME. GOD, I'M BEING OVERTAKEN BY THE SPIRIT OF BILL SIMMONS. NOOO ... Hi, Alex. ... NOOO, MUST NOT MAKE POP CULTURE REFERENCES THAT OTHERS CAN POSSIBLY RELATE TO, NOOO, MUST RETAIN UNDERGROUND CREDIBILITY, NOOO, I'M LOSING CONTROOOL... So, Aaron. Screw this post. Let's pitch a sitcom called "The Association" about the 1980 birth year in basketball. You know. Like The Wire. We can have, say, Christian Bale as Richard Jefferson, Tracy Morgan as Jamario Moon,... GET OUT OF MY HEAD, SPIRIT OF BILL SIMMONS, THAT DOESN'T EVEN WORRRKK. IT'S AN EMBARRASSING MISAPPROPRIATION... Fine, I'll go, but don't blame me when you don't get any readers and you die a cold and lonely man.

Anyway, like I was saying, Pau was the linchpin for this latest Lakers dynasty. Bynum deserves a lot of credit, and speaking in terms of pure basketball, Kobe played incredibly well, finally getting an MVP at the dawn of the dynasty. But I think Pau did more to determine the success of the Lakers when they won and the failure of the Lakers when they lost. Simple as that. I can't give his class lower than a B, especially when you include an important player with immense skills (Yao), my favorite hapless player (RJ), the Medium Fundamental (Matt Bonner), and... that guy that could have ruined the season (Roger Mason Jr.)? How u.

1981

Best Player: Zach Randolph or Carlos Boozer

Other Nominees: Joe Johnson, Jason Richardson, Kirk Hinrich

Vintage Grade: C+

Comment: All Spurs fans are biased against Z-Bo, but really, everyone should be. The Jailblazers era is on him, for better or for worse, and just as Indiana fans will never forgive Artest for the melee, the average NBA fan shouldn't forgive Z-Bo for his indiscretions. Though that might just be my Spurs bias flowing through. Really, I don't like him, I don't like Carlos Boozer, and I don't like Joe Johnson, and it's not like any of them have been overwhelmingly good too often. Have they had their moments? Of course. And Boozer gets a lot of extra credit for his 2001 title and his play with the Jazz (21-12-3-1 on 56% shooting in 2007 is pretty damn good, and he actually ratcheted it up another notch in the playoffs, getting to the WCF. Not bad at all.), and Randolph of course was the main reason the Grizz beat the Spurs in 6 games. Replace him with even an above-avg PF and the Spurs are on the right side of the tracks in that series. But overall, dominating one playoff series and doing quite well in the second round is hardly grounds for the HOF, or anywhere close. This isn't about disappointed expectations, it's about results, and I don't really see it, at least compared to the last several classes. Solid, decent class, just not so great. Boozer has a great post game, though. This is the political risk of siding with Duncan's style: you have to side - at least a little - with the players that embrace it, even if they're Carlos Boozer.

"Okay, guys, we'll run the May Pole play on 3. Ready? Hands up? Let's start spinnin'."

1982

Best Player: Dwyane Wade

Other Nominees: Amar'e Stoudemire, Tony Parker, Gilbert Arenas, Boris Diaw (and Leandro!), Gerald Wallace, Tyson Chandler

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: Ooh, nice. We have three crucial SSOL players, "Flash" (hey, it's better than the dyslexic hell of "Dwyane"), Crash, Tony Parker, Agent Zero, and crucial Maverick champion Tyson Chandler. This class has it all: Crash and Flash, Run and Gun. I'm sorry. But seriously, look at all those great finishers, shooters, and great defensive workers, all brought together by the all-around superhuman Dwyane Wade. Sneakily, it's a hell of a class. Also, weird that the bulk of the SSOL Suns seems about 8 years younger than Nash.

1983

Best Player: None

Other Nominees: Let me just list the top 10 in minutes played now

Ben Gordon, Danny Granger, David Lee, Kevin Martin, Devin Harris, Jarrett Jack, T.J. Ford, Delonte West, Nenad Krstic, Channing Frye

Vintage Grade: D+

Comment: I don't see anyone that looks like a star. I see a lot of likable players, a lot of players with upside, players with decent seasons (Harris and Lee come to mind), but they're 28 going on 29. I don't feel too bad about going with a D+, but I hardly see my arbitrary stance bringing them up to even a C- over time. Now we're really into the "legacies still being molded" section. Devin Harris for all we know might be the Finals MVP one year, God forbid. It's a bit too early to tell, you know?

1984

Best Player: LeBron James

Other Nominees: Chris Bosh, Carmelo Anthony, Brandon Roy, Andre Iguodala, Deron Williams, Andrew Bogut

Vintage Grade: A++

Comment: You have considerable depth at every single position. You even have Nate Robinson, Gary Neal, JJ Barea, and Kendrick Perkins to draw from. It's ironic (at least working from the assumption that that one Apple commercial is the main cultural staple of the year 1984), but you hardly have to "think different" in order to appreciate how to make a lineup from this team.

"Yeah, I hadn't thought about it that way, but you're right:
I totally should have an MVP by now."

1985

Best Player: Chris Paul or Dwight Howard

Other Nominees: Josh Smith, Luol Deng, Al Jefferson, LaMarcus Aldridge, J.R. Smith, Darko (!), Marc Gasol

Vintage Grade: A++

Comment: I'm pretty high on both CP3 and D12 and I think it's rather odd that LeBron has 2 MVPs, Derrick Rose has 1, and these two combined have 0. They are both spectacular, emblematic examples of their position, and as far as I'm concerned, they're easily the best (though I suppose CP3's injuries are a real concern for the MVP voter). Hopefully this is the year. Dwight in the regular season and Paul in the play-offs had absolutely vintage breakout seasons, with Dwight running roughshod on the league and CP3 doing the same to the Lakers. The A++ is a projection that one or both of them will put together such dominant seasons in the next few years that Springfield will be an afterthought. Might be off base, but I doubt it.

• • •

When you're making projections about a class of ten players whose two best players very possibly haven't peaked yet, it's time to stop and conclude. We're running around 9000 words, most of them my own, and so it's been a long journey by blog standards. But I hope you enjoyed this look into basketball history sorted by the rather arbitrary classes of birth year, and I hope you learned something, had light shed on your own questions, or had a laugh at my embarrassing ignorance of the sport of basketball. This is Alex (1989) signing out.

One more shout-out to 1974. Heh. Heh.

O vanity! you are the lever by means of which Archimedes wished to lift the earth!

-- Mikhail Lermontov

I have a series of divisional previews coming down the pipe later this week -- rather simple stuff, a nice three-point summary of each team meant to be a pre-free-agency preview of where each team stands after last season and the draft. But this is my blog, and I feel as though being the editor allots me the creative freedom to write my own odd vanity pieces. So, on that note, here are some freeform thoughts on Kawhi Leonard.

• • •

Before the draft, before the Pacers trade, and before the lottery in general I had two simple preferences in the draft. First was that Kyrie Irving would go to a team I liked. I went to Duke, I met him once, and I think he's going to project out as one of the 5 best point guards in the league. The fact that he went to the Cavs made me incredibly happy about my birth team, and made the abhorrent 2011 season all the more tolerable in retrospect. But Kyrie isn't the hero of this class for me -- he's a great point guard, a decent guy, and will probably be the best player drafted this year. But he's not quite my favorite, nor is he the impetus for this post. The player I was most interested in seeing, and the player I most wanted to land on a team that fits his talents? That's Kawhi Leonard. Not because he'll be the best player in the draft, though it's entirely possible he will be. And not because he's a sure thing, because he certainly isn't. But Kawhi is, if nothing else, the most interesting player in the 2011 draft.

It all starts with his game. Kawhi represents something of an intersection between Gerald Wallace and the fountain of youth, basketball-wise. His game brings me the electric rush I get watching an older and wiser Gerald, grounded in a younger, more durable frame. The leaping athleticism I love watching in Gerald's game is there, but in Kawhi's game it's completely unhinged from Gerald's creeping tendency to dial his pure athletic plays back a slight bit -- Gerald knows he's pushing 30, and he knows he needs to keep from killing himself just to make the super athletic move when he can do an efficient but not exactly as effective move that keeps him from injury. It isn't the raw and brute strength of a Blake Griffin athlete, but the fluid and intense strength of a thinner Usain Bolt type, or a pole vaulting demon. Kawhi Leonard's college game embodied a visceral excitement that's hard to explain if you weren't watching. Watching him play was like watching pickup games where the most athletically gifted player on the floor also happened to be the hardest worker on both ends of the court. That's Gerald Wallace at his best, and that's Kawhi Leonard in college.

And the defense, well -- Kawhi's wingspan is absolutely insane, in the best way. And his hands are huge. He's built for defense. He made great use of his talents in college, bringing the Wallace comparison full circle. He plays defense akin to a man on death row who has to fight for his right to live, or even just to have his last meal. Thirsty for deflections, plays his man tight, and has a great sense of how to read an opposing offense. His play on the defensive end reminds me of John Wall's fleeting brilliance on offense -- when he gets on a roll when he's covering his man, he's efficient, effective, exhaustive. You simply weren't going to find a college player on the planet who could consistently score on him when he was on. Not one. I don't know if he'll be able to play quite as effectively on defense as he did in college, at least initially -- the game is different in the NBA, and the players are faster, stronger, and smarter. There will be an adjustment. But just like his offense and general attitude electrifies all comers with athleticism in spades and grit to spare, his defense as he presented it in college is my jam. It's everything you love to see in a player. And with his athletic gifts, he should the ability to bring it to the next level. In some form or another.

And this brings us to my Spurs. You know. The "boring" team.

Never mind that Duncan on defense has always been one of the most beautiful things the league has to offer. The defensive structure of the Spurs as a whole, really, but Duncan especially: Tim's defense has always inhabited a brave world oscillating between the bounds of reactive and impressionistic fluidity on one end to a prescriptive and predictive rigidity on the other. Duncan's defense has always been equal parts shutting down what the offense gives him and preventing the offense from giving him anything he can't handle in the first place, through reputation and savvy alone. But that's just Duncan. Don't forget Bruce Bowen, the title-winning mainstay with the peculiar, exacting defensive identity of a brutish tax-man come to extract a dime. And then Manu, who sees the bounds of the dichotomy I posited for Duncan and laughs in its face as he takes his wild gambles and wrecks his singular havoc (the likes of which no minuscule white euro-ball player has made before). Or Pop himself, he who molds the ever-flowing stream of feckless roleplayers into system-strong cadets, sent off to boldly go where every single Spurs defense of the modern era has gone before. That's what the Spurs have been, for the last decade.

The Spurs defense is a thing of beauty, for anyone willing to really watch the defense. Immerse oneself in it. Great defense in its construction can be just as beautiful as Steve Nash with his adaptive offensive mastery, or George Gervin with his ice-cool demeanor atop his red-hot shot. The way a defense adapts to an offense will always be an incredible thing to watch. If one looks for it. But the Spurs aren't like the bad-boy Pistons or the knockdown Celtics. They aren't based on a certain segment of the court, or a certain type of defense. And they aren't based around a defensive "personality." The Spurs, if anything, are based somewhat around the Duncan-centric concept that you can completely separate your team from the personalities of the players. That a team explicitly attempting to operate without a visible identity can be just as effective operating in the absence of an identity than a team operating with one. That simply being a team that works hard and combines most efficiently the incomparable talents of a myriad of once-in-a-lifetime steals can dare to outmaneuver the most loaded media-obsessive teams that Los Angeles, Boston, and New York have to offer. Not an identity, not a personality, but simply working towards a goal. A goal that you'd like the entire league to think is inevitable -- "oh, gosh, not another Spurs championship." But a goal is not an identity -- it's a different beast entirely.

Enter Kawhi Leonard. The opposite of a preening star, Kawhi hasn't yet been one for theatrics. In timeouts, and off the court, Kawhi is far more Tim Duncan than anyone else, approaching the game with a quiet strength that any Spurs fan can respect. But it's his game that really could bring us back. His defense could, once it adapts, do much to make up for Duncan's declining grasp of the impressionistic. A lineup of Parker-Manu-Leonard-Duncan-Blair could very well turn defensive basketball on its head, in the same way the Heat define this generation's current definition of the optimal defensive team. If Kawhi's defensive chops are as formidable as they looked in college, of course. The young rook has the potential to jumpstart a movement with the end goal of taking the Spurs back away from the drifting tides of 2009's disappointment, 2010's flicker, and 2011's all-too-early denouement. Away from our "grandfatherly old Spurs" team of recent years and back to the culture we had in our title teams. You know, defined by Tim Duncan's humble roboticism and our utter lack of an identity.

But that's the key. Kawhi represents something new, for the Spurs -- but he's new only by calling out to the old. The first rookie with real star-tier potential since Manu Ginobili laced up. I strongly consider the post-2006 Gerald Wallace a star -- Kawhi's ceiling is just above that. He represents the first real attempt to move forward from the Duncan era, and the first step forward. But in picking up Kawhi, I'm not afraid of the change. I'm excited. Truly. Because of any team in the league, it's just like the Spurs to do it like this. It's just like Buford to pick up a player who brings the Spurs forward by taking the Spurs back. A player whose defensive identity fills in the cracks that Tim's gradually declining defensive game is losing. A player who, at his best, would herald a return to the baroque defensive stylings of the prime Duncan years.

I reiterate -- a player like Kawhi may not be the greatest player in his draft class, but he's the most interesting. The defense is without compare, and with a coach like Pop to mold it, the potential is through the roof. And his rebounding, his athleticism. There's so many questions, and so much to look forward to. I don't know if Kawhi Leonard will do all this by himself. He may be a bust -- perhaps his athleticism fails him, perhaps he's too thin, perhaps his advanced post game won't make up for his lacking shot. But perhaps my intuition is right, and the Spurs rebuild is about to begin on-the-fly. And the evolutionary Gerald Wallace could very well be just the player we needed to bypass the doldrums entirely.

The season starts on Christmas, folks. And I can barely wait.

Continuing our ongoing series with our own basketball-centric take on Joe Posnanski's brilliant trivial concept, we bring you today the second part of the series. While the first part covered players from the 60s and 70s, this part covers the majority of the Olympic Dream Team, that motley crew headlined by the most unlikely Olympic three point champion of all time (really, honest question: who led the Dream Team in 3-point percentage? Bet quite a lot you'll get the answer wrong -- check the end of this post for the big reveal) and other various stars of the mid 80s, born from 1956 to 1968. Get the popcorn -- we're in for a long haul, here.

1956

Best Player: Larry Bird

Other Nominees: Adrian Dantley, Maurice Cheeks, Bernard King

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: There's one odd and pathological exception in the later years, but Larry Bird came very close to never having a losing month in the regular season. In November 1988, Bird played his only six games of the season and the Celtics went 2-4. And that's it. That's Larry Bird's losing month en route to three championships and becoming the leader of one of the GOAT teams, the 1986 Celtics. Dantley scored a HOF worthy 23177 points on a career 54% shooting, King was similarly efficient and...volumetric, but had his career cut short by injury, and Mo Cheeks was a good defender point for the 83 Sixers. It's not a team, but it's a great class.

1957

Best Player: Kevin McHale

Other Nominees: Sidney Moncrief, Bill Laimbeer, Mark Eaton

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: If you put these four players together on one lineup with a replacement-level PG, your team would simply be too hardnosed and they'd be kicked out of the league, but not before reinventing defense, caroms and grit. And, on occasion, getting lit up for 75 points by, like, Muggsy Bogues.

1958

Best Player: Paul Pressey

Other Nominees: None.

Vintage Grade: D

Comment: Apparently (Wikipedia; he's actually rather obscure) Pressey is the originator of the "point forward" position. Pressey did legitimately have a stretch of five years where he got between 6.6 and 7.8 apg and between 3.9-5.4 rpg, while scoring a decent 12-16 ppg. I mean, not bad, not a lot of turnovers, pretty efficient, lot of All-Defense teams... And Bucks fans from 1986 seemed to love him, seeing him as one of the difference-makers along with Moncrief in beating the Barkley Sixers. Still, Pressey's 3 All-Defense selections give him some of the only individual accolades in the NBA for this birth year. Lots of All-Rookie selections, a Wooden Award (Darrell Griffith aka Dr. Dunkenstein), etc. A lot of title contenders too, hence:

There was an influx of players that eventually become coaches: Kiki Vandeweghe, Rick Mahorn, Mike Woodson, Larry Drew, and Kurt Rambis. And...that's it. That's the influx. D.

1959

Best Player: Magic Johnson

Other Nominees: Mark Aguirre, Danny Ainge, Rolando Blackman, Larry Nance

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: Pretty good year for sixth men, All-Defense, Wooden Award winners...and...uh, that guy that averaged a 19.5-7.7-12.3 in 190 playoff games with five rings, three MVPs and three Finals MVPs, and has the highest apg in the history of the game.

An enigma wrapped in a riddle.

1960

Best Player: Dominique Wilkins or Ralph Sampson

Other Nominees: Sleepy Floyd, Fat Lever

Vintage Grade: A-

Comment: While Sampson didn't really pan out in the NBA thanks to injuries, and Wilkins deserves his nickname "The Human Highlight Film" as a great, great offensive player, I have trouble throwing out the 3-time Naismith/AP and 2-time Wooden award winner like that considering he did have a Finals appearance and 4-5 quality years in the league. Anyway, Sleepy Floyd - despite a 12.8 ppg career average, hit up the '87 Lakers for 29 points in the fourth quarter (12 consecutive FGs) in the playoffs. Charles Barkley was a bit short of Floyd in a recent Eye on the Classics, and it felt for stretches like he was hitting his every shot. That's strange, but not quite as strange as Fat Lever, the single most enigmatic statistical figure in the history of the league.

1961

Best Player: Isiah Thomas or Dennis Rodman

Other Nominees: James Worthy, Byron Scott, Doc Rivers

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: Rodman or Isiah? It's a toss-up. I have to say it's really awesome what Isiah could do for a backcourt and a culture and what Dennis Rodman could do defensively and as a rebounding presence. I've seen the second-dynasty Bulls without Rodman (he was injured quite often and old, notice that Isiah and Dennis "peaked" about 8 years apart despite being born in the same year), and it's really amazing how perfectly the Bulls fit with Rodman's defensive style, a versatile big man enforcer to complement a versatile tweener to complement a versatile wing, all of whom could defend and rebound substantially above average for their positions. Really, could you have made the 1996 Bulls much better using real players, especially for the grind of the Van Gundy/Riley years? I don't think so.

Okay, Doc Rivers wasn't really a nominee, but he was a solid, work-a-day player, and I read his special (and rather short) book "Those Who Love the Game," written with a co-writer around 1995, just as Doc was nearing his end. It's a great book because it shows you how intelligent, outspoken, and visionary Doc was at a relatively young age. He says explicitly that his goal is to coach and then to GM, in the three stages of his basketball life. He posits that race plays a part in Bill Walton being in the HOF while his semi-mentor (and then-infant son's namesake) Austin Carr is excluded from the Hall. Doc also talks about an unfortunate incident with Mike Fratello, the hidden humor and wisdom of Moses Malone, and what Pat Riley is like as a role model and as a coach. Just a wonderful firsthand account from one of the best coaches in the business, before he became one. Highly recommended, especially if you're a Hawks, Knicks, or Celts fan.

1962

Best Player: John Stockton

Other Nominees: Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: We're getting into the prime Dream Team years now. Heavy, heavy for the vintage. Not much to say here, three two-way legends with a lot of Finals appearances between them and serious legacy questions to answer for. A few interesting quotes from SI on their late careers:

"John Stockton
NBA guards are like Hollywood actresses—their bankability as stars seems to expire when they hit 35. However, at 38, an age by which Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan had all retired, Stocktonremains at the top of his game. Through Sunday he was second in the league in three-point shooting (50.7%) and in assists (9.3 per game). He needs more help on defense than he once did, but no other guard in league history has been so effective at such an advanced age."

Phil Taylor, Booms...and Busts, February 19, 2001

This is a fascinating comment to me, considering Steve Nash will be 38 on February 7, about two months away. Don't those sound like plausible Steve Nash numbers (actually looking at per-36 numbers, late-period Nash comes out at or better than eerily consistent late-period Stockton in almost every category)? Stock ended up playing 2+ years after this comment. How long will Nash last?

As for Ewing:

It helps their relationship that Camby doesn't demand shots, which Van Gundy must delicately distribute among Ewing,Houston and Latrell Sprewell. The Knicks are a collection of complex factions. Camby's boys are Sprewell, forward John Wallace and guard Rick Brunson. The clean-living Houston and point guard Charlie Ward have been nicknamed the Christian Coalition, while Ewing, the proud old warrior, stands alone, his friends having been traded, his skills eroding, his stature on the team diminished. He doesn't talk much these days, and team officials wonder how it will end.

"Pat's used to being the Guy in this city says Camby, who has taken some of Ewing's minutes. "But I can't worry too much about him. He's still going to come in and get his number called. Hey, I don't get any plays called for me. I get my baskets off hustle plays. The one thing I do feel bad about is the injuries Pat's had. The Achilles [tendon tear] has set him back two to three years. His wrist is still messed up. He's playing through a lot of pain."

Jackie MacMullan, "The Nba," February 7, 2000 (Steve Nash's 26th birthday!)

Rivers, whom Ewing reportedly doesn't speak with much anymore, gave Ewing his first "DNP-CD" (did not play-coach's decision) on the scoresheet last week after almost 1,200 games.

"[Retirement is] a decision he's going to have to come to," Rivers said. "I don't think any of us can help him. If he asks my opinion, I'll give it to him."

Shot back Ewing: "I'm still a player."

Chicago Tribute, "An old center refuses to fade away," April 8, 2002

Kind of self-explanatory. Sad after sad after sad.

1963

Best Player: Michael Jordan

Other Nominees: Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, Joe Dumars, Chris Mullin

Vintage Grade: A++++ (no, wait, that last plus is just Drambuie!)

Comment: Alright, so this year is not a typo. The only way to understand this is to just...tally up what we're looking at for this birth year. Between the six they achieved:

• 62 All-Star selections
• 6 ASG MVPs
• 9 regular season MVPs
• 9 Finals MVPs
• 35 Players of the Month
• 27 All-Defense selections
• 33 All-NBA 1sts
• 14 All-NBA 2nds
• 8 All-NBA 3rds
• 3 DPOYs
• 10 Rings
• 16 Finals appearances

Yeah. None of those rings or Finals appearances were together, either. I'm not counting Mullin's 12 total Finals minutes for the 2000 Pacers.

But none of this compares to 1964. No, really...

1964

Best Player: None

Other Nominees: Aging Arvydas Sabonis, tragically short-lived Drazen Petrovic, injured Ron Harper, uh...Mark Price, Chuck Person, Otis Smith, Scott Skiles, Dell Curry, John Salley, Nate McMillan

Vintage Grade: C-, considering the players listed are all at least D-cent, but for the modern era? After that whole 1963 thing? Yeah.

Comment: N/A, though it is kind of weird how many coaches we get in some of these atrocious down-years. If we're using all facets of basketball achievement, instead of just NBA accomplishments, this class gets much better with Sabonis and Petrovic and all the coaches, and for 1963, the non-NBA achievements would include Nike, the Dream Team, Inside the NBA, and...the Bobcats ownership group?

While neither could win a title alone, they were both very good at NBA 2k12!

1965

Best Player: Scottie Pippen or David Robinson

Other Nominees: Reggie Miller, Mark Jackson, Horace Grant, Muggsy Bogues

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: We've been spoiled by 1963. Two players that couldn't singlehandedly deliver their teams to a title, but that legitimately carried their teams to contention for a few transcendent years on both ends. We also have the second-leading assist leader (Jackson), the second-leading three-point shooter (Miller), an incredibly successful journeyman and apparently the main source for Sam Smith's classic The Jordan Rules (Grant), and the tiniest player of all (Bogues). I switched an A and A+ between this and 1938, because I think Oscar-West is a few notches above Pippen-Robinson. No, not a perfect grade, but still a great class. I mean, the list of players was so concentrated with talent that, in a last minute decision, to top it all off, Starks got ejected.

1966

Best Player: Dikembe Mutombo

Other Nominees: Tim Hardaway, Kevin Johnson, Danny Manning

Vintage Grade: B-

Mutombo had a pretty darn successful career and I see no reason why a likable, awesome, defensive/rebounding superstar with two crucial roles on contenders (okay, they were the Nets and Sixers, and he was a roleplayer in NJ, but still) who loved the game wouldn't go into the HOF on his first chance. Then again, what happened to Rodman that it took him until 2011?

Including Hardaway and Johnson was easy. As for Danny Manning? Well, he posted a 31-18-2-5-2 in a National Championship game and was named the Big Eight player of the decade. That means he was the best player drawn from an eighty-team sample. I don't feel bad putting Danny Manning as a nominee, plus I'm sure Joe Posnanski saw this game, so that's a plus.

1967

Best Player: Glen Rice

Other Nominees: Mookie Blaylock, Derrick Coleman

Vintage Grade: D+

Comment: As a convenience, I've been using basketball-reference.com's Birth Years Frivolity. For each year I sort by minutes played, because there's usually a fairly clear line below which is "don't even bother" and above which is "you should probably look them up" (Note: This stops working around 1983-4). In 1966 - a year I gave a B- to - 13 players have more than 20000 minutes played, and 9 have more than 25000. In 1967, only 3 players (Rice, Blaylock, Coleman) have more than 20000 minutes. Neatly, all three have more than 25000, too. Neatly, they are the only players that you'd think to mention from this class as even decent starters. I went with Glen Rice as the best because he got a substantial MVP vote in 1997, he actually was part of a great team (2000 Lakers), and he's the closest to perennial All-Star in this class.

1968

Best Player: Gary Payton

Other Nominees: Sean Elliott, Vlade Divac

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment:

The 1996 Bulls ended up 87-13 and 15-3 in the playoffs. That's pretty unreal, but the Payton-Kemp-Schrempf Sonics had firmly earned their own place in history: Two of those 3 playoff losses came from Seattle crawling out of an 0-3 hole. (The commentariat actually went a little bananas with these two losses as they happened, saying that the 1996 Bulls might not even be the best Bulls team of the 1990s. Yeah, really.). So the Sonics getting to Game 6 was a little insane, and Ron Harper's injury and the Bulls' age actually put a little fear in the hearts of Chicagoans that the greatest team of all time might very well suffer the greatest choke in the history of professional basketball. And a lot of the credit for the possibility of the Sonics' ultimate upset and comeback goes to Sonics PG Gary Payton. Standing just 6'4'', Payton earned and deserved the 1996 DPOY in an era of brilliant defensive big men, finding 2.9 takeaways per game.

Once Sonics coach George Karl decided to use Payton on Jordan instead of "a random sequence of non-DPOY guards" in Game 4 (really), the whole tenor of the series changed: Payton played near-perfect defense on Jordan and (aside from various switches) the two were constantly vying for position, with Jordan usually far from an ideal place even when he won. Though the commentators only rarely mentioned it (usually only to note that Jordan was shooting a low percentage), Payton dominated Jordan defensively. By Game 6, all Jordan could do to get some workaday baskets was to take advantage of a couple facts:

• Payton isn't Michael Jordan, and Michael Jordan had a reputation as the GOAT, even in 1996. He could trip over his own feet and run into people and a lot of times he wouldn't get called for a foul but his man (in this case Payton) would, especially in the United Center.
• Payton is one person. He isn't two people, and people that aren't two people can't be two places at once, and they have a nasty susceptibility to screens and switches and rotations, no matter how tenacious and intelligent they are.
• Sonics not named Gary Payton had a tough time dealing with Jordan. (the obscure Vincent Askew was possibly the only other Sonic that truly contained Jordan on a possession, and he was [according to the commentators] in Karl's doghouse and logged just 5:00).

"In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage."

--John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

"I think he was talking about basketball and birth years."

--Anonymous

The venerable Joe Posnanski has once again come out with a masterpiece of readable sports trivia. What's his angle? Well, he takes every baseball birth year since 1931 (when Mantle, Mathews, Banks, and Mays were born), and grades that birth year's "vintage". It's a cute idea which immediately inspires a 58-bullet-point-list, each bullet point with multiple sections. Now, of course it's Pos' massive knowledge of the figures involved that really glues this together, but once he found the premise, the rest of the piece kind of wrote itself. So we're going to do the same for basketball - eventually. This is going to take a several part series, but we think the end result will be worth it, albeit absolutely trivial at its core. We'll start at 1934.

1934

Best Player: Bill Russell

Other Nominees: Elgin Baylor, Jack Twyman, Tom Heinsohn

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: Suitably we're starting with the first really great year. You have a GOAT candidate and his 11 titles in Russell, which automatically makes this a great year. Then you have Russell's incredibly depressing also-ran counterpart that is also a historical great in Baylor. Finally you have Russell's comic foil and GOAT announcer Tom Heinsohn. Oh, and marginal HOFer Jack Twyman, who really has one of the great stories in the history of basketball to his credit.

1935

Best Player: Guy Rodgers (yes, really)

Other Nominees: Jim Krebs, Charlie Tyra, Barney Cable

Vintage Grade: F

Comment: No, I haven't heard of them either. Guy Rodgers has more than double the minutes of anyone else from this birth year. He's...a starter that got 12-4-8 from 1959 to 1970. It's a good thing we started with 1934, isn't it?

1936

Best Player: Wilt Chamberlain

Other Nominees: Hal Greer, Dick Barnett, Don Ohl

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: I have trouble giving this lower than a "B" with one of the great forces in the history of the game. Wilt carries this class to an above-average year by himself. A starter from the beloved 1970s Knicks (Barnett), a 5-time All-Star (Ohl), and a HOF teammate on Wilt's famed 1967 Sixers? Yeah, pretty good vintage.

1937

Best Player: Lenny Wilkens

Other Nominees: Bailey Howell, Wayne Embry

Vintage Grade: B-

Comment: Lenny Wilkens actually finished second in the 1968 MVP vote. That's pretty damn impressive, all considering (though it would have been a travesty if he had won)...plus he was a 9-time All-Star, an ASG MVP, and that coach that coached a lot. He also served in the military at one point and gave us a sad, frank look into American racism from that period. Howell (HOF; late Russell Celtics) and Embry (Oscar Robertson teammate, late Russell Celtics) both had solid careers. A low B, in other words.

1938

Best Player: Oscar Robertson or Jerry West, take your pick

Other Nominees: Tom Sanders, Gus Johnson

Vintage Grade: A+

Comment: "A" is for "An especially great class with two first-ballot HOFers of the highest order that didn't get their rings until well after their primes." Tom Sanders has 8 rings with the Boston Celtics, leading to his famous nickname "Big Shot Tom". Also, check out Gus Johnson's Wikipedia page for a really cool bit of history. It's story time, kids. This Wikipedia article really "Nails" it. Hop on the bus, Gus; we need to discuss much. Later Edit: Wait, Oscar Robertson and Jerry West together not an A+? Yeah, that's a terrible choice on my part.

1939

Best Player: Walt Bellamy

Other Nominees: Bill Bridges, Zelmo Beaty

Vintage Grade: C

Comment: This article seems pretty damning of Bellamy, though all accounts also point to a supremely talented seven-footer. This damning article itself says that Bellamy would give a team a fighting chance against Wilt or Russell in their primes. But, I mean, Bellamy never made it to the ASG after 26, never once (in 14 seasons) cracked an All-NBA team, and overall gives you the sense that he had put antifreeze in the basketball wine for this year.

1940

Best Player: John Havlicek

Other Nominees: Chet Walker, Jerry Lucas, Don Nelson, Dave DeBusschere

Vintage Grade: A-

Comment: Though Havlicek is by far the best player of the five here, the other four would have gotten a B by themselves. Don Nelson had a decent career with the late-dynasty Celtics and then went on to coach a million games and win 53% of them. Lucas is an Ohio Basketball Legend who can remember anything and can teach you to do the same. Lucas once pulled down 40 rebounds in a game, as a forward (as he said himself on a recent Cavs' broadcast), and on the 70s Knicks Lucas' teammate Debusschere was a crucial all-world defensive player.

1941

Best Player: Nate Thurmond

Other Nominees: None

Vintage Grade: B

Comment: Historically great defender? Check. Historically great rebounder? True. Did he get a quadruple-double this one time? Fact. Was he from Akron and make the Miracle of Richfield possible for the Cavs? Yup. _1941 gets a B. _

Hawkins was the prototype of the SLAM magazine superstar. Before SLAM even existed.

1942

Best Player: Willis Reed or Connie Hawkins

Other Nominees: Jerry Sloan, Bob Love

Vintage Grade: A

Comments: Solid A. Reed/Hawkins was a tough decision and I decided not to make it: Willis Reed definitely has the more impressive NBA resume, racking up every imaginable individual and team honor in 1969-70 and having his name be synonymous with toughness. His name is on a feature on this blog. And we like to reward achievement instead of idle speculation. But sometimes - as the lockout and its threat to legacies should have shown us - the NBA is susceptible enough to contemporary forces not to have the absolute last word on legacies, and we have to stand up for folks like Connie Hawkins sometimes. See, Hawkins had a completely bullshit block placed on his NBA career (thanks, everyone involved in point-shaving and the resulting arbitrary backlash). One of the most legendary and exciting streetballers ever to lace up, Connie Hawkins came to the league only after long stays with the Globetrotters and the ABA. "If he hadn't got such a bad deal, you would mention Connie Hawkins with Baylor and Pettit," Russell said. We can roll with that, especially considering he did pretty great in the ABA to back up Bill Russell's sentiment.

1943

Best Player: Billy Cunningham or Dave Bing

Other Nominees: Bill Bradley, Gail Goodrich

Vintage Grade: C

Comments: Okay, so you want a dilemma? Scroll down to "Appearances on Leaderboards, Awards, and Honors" on both Cunningham and Bing. It's a pretty even matchup, right? Well, I'm glad we've established that. Aaron, like, met Bill Bradley this one time, I think. Editor's Note: Yes, Alex, I did. He's a really nice guy, and his wife is very sweet.

1944

Best Player: Rick Barry

Other Nominees: Earl Monroe, Lou Hudson, Louie Dampier

Vintage Grade: A-

Comments: Underhanded free throws, hilariously awkward media gaffes with the GOAT, the thousands of people he has personally upset. These are the the things we associate with Rick Barry. But he is also easily the best player born in 1944. Bigger than Jesus.

1945

Best Player: Elvin Hayes or Walt Frazier

Other Nominees: None

Vintage Grade: B+

Comments: Every firsthand account of Elvin Hayes is kind of bad and every firsthand account of Walt Frazier is pretty good. But Hayes played 50000 quality minutes (literally exactly; kind of a weird situation there with the tanking pre-Hakeem Rockets). Clyde was a decent, stylish, creative person who wrote a book about catching flies and anticipating steals and about coming correct in all manners of life. Hayes was "the most despicable person I've ever met in sports" (coach Alex Hannum). I'm sure I know who you'd pick. But 50000 minutes is a friggin ton. And we have to be objective on this blog. Plus, imagine how good Hayes would have to be if they still played him that much despite hating him and believing he shrunk in the clutch. Anyway, whatever the case, check this out: _Nearly every single contemporary account of Hayes is hilariously negative; even the positive things are taken as exceptions. _

1946

Best Player: Wes Unseld

Other Nominees: Bingo Smith, Don Chaney, Jo Jo White

Vintage Grade: C+

The best player on one of the weakest contending teams in the shot clock era, Unseld is a walking trivia machine: He was named Finals MVP in 1978 nine years after his only MVP, which was also his only All-NBA season and his rookie year. There are like 10 trivia questions in that sentence, seriously. Thanks, Wes. Don Chaney is the answer to (I think) Bill Simmons' great trivia question: Who played with both Bill Russell and Larry Bird? (Don Chaney) Finally, I only included Bingo Smith so that I could link to the scrappiest article in the history of professional sports, which involves Bingo Smith quite a bit. Also, Bingo has had a lot of health issues (major strokes), and that's pretty unfortunate: Dude is classy and solid as hell.

1947

Best Player: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Other Nominees: Pete Maravich, Norm Van Lier, Bob Dandridge

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: It's not quite 1934 with Russell and Baylor, but it's pretty close. Obviously Kareem is right up there as a GOAT candidate; he really mattered - like, seriously, made a difference in the outcomes of college and pro basketball - from about 1965 to 1990, and he was a top 3 player (at least) for 50% of that era. Can anyone else say anything to that? Well, Russell and Jordan can, for about 20 years apiece. But that's about the beginning and the end of the matter. Pistol Pete was an ungodly scorer and an ungodly passer. I'm rolling with a high A here.

1948

Best Player: Dave Cowens

Other Nominees: Tiny Archibald, Dan Issel, Bob Lanier, Calvin Murphy

Vintage Grade: A

Comment: Two of the tiniest HOFers out there (Tiny, Calvin), the former inspiring a cool SI portrait, the latter inspiring a Red on Roundball in which Calvin Murphy twirls a baton at a world-class level while Red Auerbach explains that you should never use size as an excuse. Cowens, on the other hand? He only inspired the greatest "absurd GM-period Auerbach" article. Oh, and he won some basketball games. All of them won many a basketball game.

"I had never for a minute thought of Cowens as a coach," Auerbach said later. "He was the last guy. I always thought when his playing days were over he'd get in his truck and go cut down Christmas trees. But then I started thinking about his personality. He doesn't like losing one bit more than I do."

--From John Papanek's "Call it the Redheaded League," SI, Nov. 27, 1978

1949

Best Player: Artis Gilmore

Other Nominees: Sidney Wicks, Spencer Haywood

Vintage Grade: B-

Comment: Artis Gilmore put up an 18.8-12.3-2.3-0.6-2.3 line in 1300 games on .582 shooting. _ Sure, some of it was in the ABA, and his raw stats do get a little worse from his slightly older NBA days. Weirdly, though, his efficiency stats actually _get better from his 12 years in the NBA: His NBA shooting percentage was (a historically great considering sample size) .599! In 12 years! His is one of those strange cases where he got every award imaginable in the ABA and his productivity actually carried over to the NBA. But despite the highest respect of his contemporaries like Bill Walton and Kareem and the clear statistical evidence to back it up, Gilmore really didn't receive the All-NBA and All-Star accolades for his production, only now in 2011 being awarded to the Hall of Fame. It's quite strange.

Dexter Morgan proceeded to sue Dr. J for copyright infringement, in treble damages.

1950

Best Player: Julius Erving

Other Nominees: George McGinnis

Vintage Grade: B+

Comment: Okay, Julius Erving is a remarkable player, the spiritual enigma of improvisational creativity on one hand and the work-a-day prototype for every legendary wing to follow. He dunked two balls this one time and he dunked from the free throw line. Literally in the same contest. He is the face of the ABA's memory. Dr. J made the dunk what it is - an event. Not only that, but he was an underratedly efficient player defensively and on the boards. Dr. J won 2 ABA titles and 1 NBA title, he won 3 ABA MVPs and 1 in the NBA, and while it's technically true that he wasn't the "alpha dog" in 1983 and that, okay, his last ASG (of 16 consecutive) was more of a victory lap, let's be real: he was the second best player on a historically great team (83 Sixers) and won every imaginable accolade besides Finals MVP. I've talked myself into bringing this class (made almost solely of Erving and a decent-but-unspectacular McGinnis) up to a B+ from a B- in the course of writing this paragraph, put it that way.

1951

Best Player: Bob McAdoo

Other Nominees: Bobby Jones

Vintage Grade: B-

Comment: McAdoo's a first-ballot HOFer and an MVP. Bobby Jones was the well-regarded sixth man on the famous 83 Sixers. It's decent wine. It's a decent year.

1952

Best Player: George Gervin or Bill Walton

Other Nominees: Maurice Lucas

Vintage Grade: A-

Comment: Do you like productivity? What kind of productivity? Be more specific. If you like historical-level greatness that can carry your team to a title or be an ideal sixth man while spouting hippie slogans and hyperbole from a seven-foot redheaded frame and getting constantly horribly injured, then Bill Walton is your guy.

If you're looking for someone that plays nearly 3 times as many minutes as Walton in his career (no lie; 35597 to 13250), and is a clever, efficient, fun scorer that never quite got onto a contender and manages a level of infinite cool that transcends established concepts of hipness*, then you're probably looking for George "The Iceman" Gervin.

*"Whereas I never went fly like some of the boys," says Gervin. "I'm conservative. I got the short hair, the pencil 'stache, the simple clothes. Plus I'm 6'8", 183—no, make that 185—and when you look at me all you see is bone. Otherwise in Detroit I'm known as Twig according to my physique. I just do my thing and stay consistent. I figure the people be recognizing the Iceman pretty soon now. Whereas I be up there in a minute."

My mind is breaking.

Oh, and if you're looking for a really great power forward that could keep the 77 Blazers from floating up into the clouds by just getting up in everyone's faces and winning everyone's respect as an enforcer with a spirit, you're looking for Mo Lucas.

In any case, you're a very particular person.

1953

Best Player: Robert Parish

Other Nominees: Jamaal Wilkes, World B. Free

Vintage Grade: B

Comment: Parish the thought that you'll have a longer or more accomplished career than Robert Parish. This class would have been a B- or a C+ but 00 kept plugging away at his work for so many years and I decided I'd give his entire class a B.

1954

Best Player: None...

Other Nominees: Alex English, Dennis Johnson, David Thompson

Vintage Grade: C+

Comment: All HOFers, all historically great. None of them were that great, though. DJ was involved in one of the most famous plays in all of basketball history in the 87 ECF. You probably know the call by heart even without a link. Oh, well, here it is: "That's a set play, off the backboard." Less famously from the same series, DJ cut towards the basket after Bird stole Isiah's inbounds pass. Thompson of course had immense potential (and a great college career) that was derailed too soon by substance abuse problems and injury.

1955

Best Player: Moses Malone

Other Nominees: Jack Sikma

Vintage Grade: A-

Comment: "They tried to make us go the distance, I said "Fo', Fo', Fo'". Yes we got beat (by Sidney Moncrief), I say: "Fo' Fi' Fo'"." -Amy Winehouse, "Moses Malone Autobiography"

• • •

We'll have more tomorrow! We'll cover the Dream Team and work our way up to just about Gary Payton. In case you haven't seen it, Aaron was featured (and will be featured for the next few weeks) on Fear the Sword for some quality player previews with Conrad Kaczmarek. Not that it'll affect his posts here -- dude is a warhorse, he's probably got a camel in his back or something. I don't actually know what that means, but then again, neither do you.

Editor's Note: Aaron may be responsible for that last sentence, there.

Editor's Note #2: And these editor's notes, as well. Maybe.

As one of our mainstay features, Aaron is writing posts highlighting every single player in the NBA. Role players, superstars, key cogs, or players who are barely as useful as ballboys -- none are exempt from the prying eyes of our readers. Check the index for a lowdown on order, intent, and all that jazz. Today's trio includes Armon Johnson, Marc Gasol, and Peja Stojakovic.

• • •

[030] Johnson, Armon

My most pertinent Armon Johnson memory was when I was talking about the Blazers on draft day with Alex and I kept calling him "Armond", truly expressing the deep well of knowledge I carry with me about the University of Nevada's basketball program. I think I like the name "Armon" better, though, so there's that. As an NBA player, Armon wasn't all that much more than a benchwarmer his rookie year, which is sad, but not altogether unexpected for a pick made in the middle of the second round. Johnson played well in summer league, showing off some decent floor-leadership skills and some tenacious defense for his size. He even went into the season as the #1 backup for Andre Miller. Unfortunately, Armon quickly lost that role to Patty Mills as the season went along. Pretty sad for Armon: I love Patty as an off-the-court personality, but if you're getting beaten by a rookie Patty Mills for rotation minutes, there are some issues with your game at an NBA level. Not to say there aren't things to like about Armon: Defensively, he's a top tier PG defender -- terrific on-the-ball pressure defense, good on help, great sense of the court. He's got a decent grasp of how to use his left hand for lefty layups and left-facing drives, too. Just a net positive all around.

Sadly, though, as soon as teams scouted his left hook (around Game 10), he became increasingly hard to justify playing time for. They found that if you cut off his left side options at any given moment, his offensive game is limited enough that he really can't do much to hurt you. And in a slow-down system like Nate McMillan's, a player who makes it four on five on offense is a major detriment -- especially at the point. If Armon can work on his outside shot, cut his turnovers, and develop some degree of ambidextrosity in his passing and driving, he'll probably project out as a decent backup-tier guard in the NBA. Players with the defensive acumen Armon shows combined with his rebounding and generally solid passing ability aren't exactly rare in the NBA, but they're valuable, and he could carve out a decently long career if he just makes some spot changes to clean up his game and make him less easy to guard. He certainly seems like a good dude -- check his twitter, where the good man has (as the Portland Roundball Society put it) definitely mastered the craft. He's learned that it is never a mistake to type in all-caps, he clearly aspires to be like Jeanie, and lightly admonishes LeBron James for even considering football over basketball. My kind of guy, that Armon Johnson. Hope he cleans up his right-facing game and carves out a bigger role with the Blazers next season.

• • •

[031] Gasol, Marc

Marc Gasol entered this year's playoffs as a relatively underrated two-way threat of a big man. He's a solid widebody defender and a solid offensive contributor. His help defense isn't quite up to snuff due to his weight and his general lack of mobility, a weakness that becomes ever-more apparent the faster your opposing big man is. As a teaching example: compare him versus an old Tim Duncan in the first round and him versus Collison or Ibaka in the second round. Still, Gasol represents one of the better two-way bigs in the league. A solid defender in isolation, a good paint bodyguard, and a solid (if not multifaceted) offensive contributor. I get the feeling, though, that his matchups in the 2011 playoffs drastically overrate him both as a defender and as an offensive player. Tim Duncan's bank shot has decreased in accuracy with age, and a lot of Gasol's dap for shutting him down was based solely on the fact that Tim's offense was pretty substandard this year to begin with. Gasol did shut down the paint very well in that series, better than he usually does, but his offense was composed (as usual) with primarily drop downs and pocket passes that worked especially well on the Spurs due to the decreased mobility of our two primary centers. Spurs backup Tiago Splitter did a better job of keeping Gasol in check, when he was playing, and if the Spurs in general had played better overall team defense against the Grizzlies it would've been a lot harder to get Gasol those kinds of shots.

Now, don't get me wrong: Gasol was the 2nd best player on the Grizzlies and incredible in a lot of ways. He shut down the paint rather expertly. But in terms of one-on-one D and offense, last year's playoffs definitely overrate him (as seen in the constant drumbeat of commentators who are now proclaiming that he's better than his brother). While he surely had a better 2011 playoffs than his brother (almost infinitely so), Pau is still the better NBA player and probably will be for at least one or two more years, before Pau begins to fall off from age. No, Pau isn't the shutdown paint guy that Marc is, but he's more mobile, and he does a better job defending big men that can step out and bury long shots like Dirk, Durant, or Brook Lopez. And Pau's offense isn't even in the same realm of comparison -- Pau is arguably the second-best offensive big man in the game, behind only Dirk. Marc is a "set him up, maybe it'll be okay" kind of player. No comparison. You can do a small debate as to whether Marc is more useful than Pau in a general sense, given that the number of paint-patrolling big men of any quality in the league today is one half or one third the number of solid four-men, but that would be a bit ridiculous given the gap between the two players on offense and the relative lack of a gap between their one on one defense if you account for their different skillsets. You can't really make a good argument that Marc is the better Gasol yet. Not yet, anyway.

• • •

[032] Stojakovic, Peja

Peja Stojakovic is notable to young fans for winning a ring with the Mavs last year, but to me, he's most notable as one of the lovable miscreants on the early 2000s contending Sacramento Kings teams. His skills have deteriorated in recent years, and though he's prone to a decent percentage on his threes (he shot 42% on them in 2011), Peja's a rhythm shooter who's prone to games of 3-3 or 6-7 from three on good days and 0-8 or 0-9 on bad days. And his defense? Slow footed and prone to injury, he's never been a good defender, but his defense has atrophied even further in old age, leaving him with net-negative defense. Still, he doesn't turn the ball over and he shoots the three very well even at his advanced age, possibly giving him one more viable year. Just one, though, because while he was marginally useful for the Mavs, the second his shooting stroke leaves him is the second he becomes a 100% useless NBA player. Most likely, the burn he gets from here on forward is going to be based on totally unreasonable expectations of his play. Unfortunate for Peja fans.

    Player           Age  Tm   MVP Pts   MP     PTS    TRB    AST   WS/48
1   Kevin Garnett    27   MIN  1219.0    39.4   24.2   13.9   5.0   0.272
2   Tim Duncan       27   SAS   716.0    36.6   22.3   12.4   3.1   0.249
3   Jermaine O'Neal  25   IND   523.0    35.7   20.1   10.0   2.1   0.155
4   Peja Stojakovic  26   SAC   281.0    40.3   24.2    6.3   2.1   0.198
5   Kobe Bryant      25   LAL   212.0    37.6   24.0    5.5   5.1   0.210
6   Shaquille O'Neal 31   LAL   178.0    36.8   21.5   11.5   2.9   0.192
7   Ben Wallace      29   DET    24.0    37.7    9.5   12.4   1.7   0.160
8   Jason Kidd       30   NJN    17.0    36.6   15.5    6.4   9.2   0.141
9   LeBron James     19   CLE    11.0    39.5   20.9    5.5   5.9   0.078

The most notable thing about Peja to me has always been his lofty place in the 2004 MVP vote, where he placed a strong fourth. Ahead of both Kobe and Shaq. In a year where the Lakers would make the finals. Really, the whole MVP vote that year was amazing. Look at this table. Jermaine O'Neal placing above Shaq, despite shooting at Brandon Jennings levels for a big man and contributing little defensively? LeBron James actually getting MVP dap his rookie year? Peja Stojakovic suddenly being considered an MVP-level player despite his complete lack of defensive ability and his stats being inflated by his minutes total? Ben Wallace getting votes for the actual MVP but somehow being left off finals MVP ballots when his team WON THE FINALS? No, it's clear to me. The 2004 MVP vote, despite Garnett correctly winning it and Duncan correctly placing second, may be the most hilarious MVP vote beyond the top two of all time. And before I get angry letters from Kings fans: yes, I know Webber was out most of the year, and Peja was their only star. But they were a weak western four-seed, guys. He got more votes than Kobe or Shaq. I mean, come on. Really, guys?

• • •

As is obvious, I'm still going to be doing the player capsules despite the fact that there will be a season. Most likely, I'll stretch it into the season. I still should be done by All-Star weekend. Given that we're starting to get into the 30s, I'll create a better index for these capsules soon -- probably a sortable team-by-team index, so you can keep track of who I've done off your favorite team. We'll see. Have a good Sunday, everyone. See you tomorrow.

Goodbye, lockout. Go ahead and leave us alone forever now. And go ahead and let the door hit you on the way out. Last night, not 30 minutes after I went to sleep, both sides came to an agreement and signed off on a settlement to end the litigation, complete the lockout, and bring us a season starting on December 25th. Dave Checketts' heart is smiling. Now, us here at the Gothic have been making the best of the lockout (see: our Lockout Coverage tag) and we'd like to think we did a good job of covering it. But let's not beat around the bush. Nobody seriously wants to cover the lockout for a year, and nobody seriously wants to read about the lockout for a year. That would've been awful.

Thank God it's over, and thank God that arena workers can at least get 33 games of guaranteed income starting in 30 days. And that the bars and eateries suffering from the lockout can get the patronage they need starting on Christmas Day, if they can just survive until then. In all the player/owner love, very few people have been mentioning them -- and that's a shame, because it's THESE people that we should be giving our love to right now. They're the ones who have done the majority of the suffering. And they're the ones who I'm most glad will reap the benefits. Regardless. The NBA hasn't released the full deal yet, but by tilling through a variety of sources, we can pull together just enough information to start commenting on the deal in hand. Once we get a full reveal of the new CBA, I'll do a long analysis of that working off my last analysis. But until then? Scraps will do. Click the jump as I examine these scraps and muse on their importance.

• • •

First, some nuggets from Chris Sheridan.

On the financial split, the players will receive between 49 and 51 percent of revenues, depending on annual growth. The players had complained prior to Saturday that the owners’ previous offer effectively limited them to 50.2 percent of revenues, but the source said 51 percent was now reasonably achievable with robust growth.

Well, that's a good thing. The band as it was previously designed made it virtually impossible for the players to drop below 49.7 or go above 50.3. So, a more honest BRI band that actually gives the players a fighting chance at 51 is a good "hey, we were offering you crap before, let's make that less awful" concession.

Owners dropped their insistence on what would have been known as the Carmelo Anthony rule, preventing teams from executing extend-and-trade deals similar to the one that sent Anthony from the Denver Nuggets to the New York Knicks last season.

It will forever mystify me that this became a big deal. The owners had already enacted a 3 year delay rule that ensured this wouldn't come into play until halfway into the new CBA. Sure, it's an annoying little rule, but it comes into play barely at all. Not nearly enough for either side to attach that much value to it. This should ensure that future players get the same levity afforded Melo, LeBron, and Bosh when they signed their extend-and-trades. Rather straightforward, and one of the few things here that is specifically written with top tier free agents in mind.

A new $2.5 million exception will be available to teams that go below the salary cap, then use all of their cap room to sign free agents. Once they are back above the cap, they will be able to use the new exception instead of being limited to filling out their rosters with players on minimum contracts.

Assuming we're taking the previously discussed CBA as a baseline, this was part of that CBA and will most likely be set up the same way. I won't rehash why it's a good thing here -- just see my bit in my CBA analysis on exceptions and take a gander at everything I said about the "room" midlevel. Then apply it to this. Good for the players that they kept this.

The rookie salary scale and veteran minimum salaries will stay the same as they were last season. Owners had been seeking 12 percent cuts.

I honestly have no idea how this is going to work. The cuts weren't strictly cuts, they were simply re-scaling those respective salary scales to fit the decrease in player BRI. I suppose if they aren't doing this, they'll simply not state the amount to which they're re-scaling all the salary scales. Which, all things considered, might be a good thing. They didn't really need to state it outright, I think we all get that it's happening. Still, this strikes me as a "maybe if we don't state it outright they won't realize that the exact same thing is happening" kind of thing that is at best intellectually dishonest and at worst trickery. Few people are going to call them on it, but this actually does bug me a bit.

Teams above the salary cap will be able to offer four-year mid-level exception contracts to free agents each season. ... from NBA.com: The mid-level exception for non-taxpaying teams will have a maximum length of four years every season (instead of alternating at four years, then three years). Starting salary can be as much as $5 million.

They bent on the number of years, which means less player movement due to contracts running down. If you add in the nuggets we've gotten from NBA.com, a clearer picture emerges -- if I'm reading everything right, they've extended it so that the non-taxpayer MLE doesn't simply apply to under-cap teams, it also applies to teams operating in the sweet spot of right at the cap to the first dollar of tax. Which is, you know, where teams actually want to be. So it's a good compromise in the sense that the previous MLE suggested didn't actually make all that much sense. Combine the higher minimum salary provision with the fact that teams over the cap couldn't use it and you had a recipe for an MLE that would virtually never be able to be used. This way? Will be used about as much as ever. And that's a good thing.

Other compromises were believed to have been reached on the “repeater” luxury tax penalties to be paid by teams exceeding the tax threshold in four of any five seasons. Among the “B-list” issues are the age limit for entry to the draft (possibly upping to 20 years and two years out of high school), drug testing modifications, discipline and D League assignments. Both sides will have a 6 year opt-out.

Oh, christ. I really hope the age limit increase doesn't go through (for reasons I will be writing a column on at some point in the next few weeks), but the drug testing/D-League stuff should be interesting. The repeater stuff still thoroughly befuddles me. It was only going to be in effect for two years in the duration of this CBA, and was nowhere near a finalized thing that couldn't be removed in the next CBA. If the players extract concessions on the repeater tax only to have the league move up the tax's implementation schedule, it won't really do a thing for the players. Still. If it's a concession they want, and it'll get the deal done? I'm glad they got it.

EDIT: New from Zach Lowe after this piece dropped, a lot more information about the MLE compromise. Seriously. There's a lot in there, and I think you should probably just read it. Cliffs notes, though: the new MLE can be used so long as using it doesn't take you $4 million over the tax line, but if it does take you there, you can only use bird rights to get up to that particular line. That is, if you're two million under the tax line, then you use the MLE to sign a $4.5 million player, you'll be $2.5 million over the tax line. That means that any bird right signings you do can only be for $2.5 million dollars a year, maximum. That's a pretty good concession for the players, as that's system-positive for them even relative to the last player-positive CBA. So, good call on Zach for figuring that out and getting his sources straight. A lot easier to see why the players took the token concessions on other issues for a legitimate improvement of the system relative to the last CBA where the midlevel is concerned.

• • •

Overall? These are concessions the owners should've offered weeks ago. Don't let the lockout euphoria let you forget that. Just about every one of these concessions is incredibly minor, with the exception of the BRI band. Which isn't even a concession so much as it is making their previously intellectually dishonest BRI split into an actual band. Some of these, like the repeater tax concessions, may end up being a net positive for the owners if the players allow them to move up the implementation schedule, something I see as quite possible. When the final gravestone is laid upon this lockout, it's the owners who should be notably blamed for making this last forever. It's the owners who have the egg on their face for making this last so goddamn long after they'd already extracted ridiculous concessions from the players.

Just remember that. If anyone was flying too close to the sun, it was the owners. You know. If you want to recast Icarus as a greedy monopolist trying to bleed his employees dry. Which would, admittedly, be a really really weird recasting of a Grecian myth. Then again. This lockout WAS really, really weird. So I guess it fits. When we get more information about the new CBA, we'll be sure to get you detailed analysis. Until then? Rejoice, NBA fans. Season starts in less than a month. Get ready for some awesome content from your friends here at the Gothic Ginobili. Because personally? We can't wait.

"The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing."

--Isaiah Berlin, quoting Archilochus

Ray Allen is the ultimate hedgehog and Steve Nash is the ultimate fox, in Berlin's famous dichotomy of historical geniuses. This placement of Allen and Nash is true, but difficult to write about, largely because the argument is so straightforward if you understand both players (and also because Berlin's dichotomy is - as Berlin knew - flawed at its core). We're rolling with it, though, so as to uncover the mystery of chessboxing; that is, the essence of these two athletic geniuses. Nash is the fox and Ray is the hedgehog. Game on.

Anyway, in 2006, Nash and Allen both led their Suns and Sonics to a high-scoring, double-overtime classic. A dual for the ages. It's the kind of game that would've had highlights running on SportsCenter for weeks. That is, if it hadn't happened on the exact same night Kobe dropped 81 on the defenseless Raptors. Some based uploader (MrMagic2worthy) uploaded the whole thing to Youtube, and yes, it's more than 2 hours long, but I have to say: this is a must-see. Click the jump for the videos, and a whole wheelbarrow of words.

• • •

THE INTRO (or: a toast to Nash)

I sing the bodies electric. Watching this hypnotic 20-minute shooting drill by Nash, you're struck by how consistent and accurate the Canadian point really is as a shooter, even knowing his stats and having watched his jumper in games. Nash's shots are - at least in his lower body - variations on a hopping theme: His pull-ups and jumpers use his toes and calves more; he kicks his right leg out more on fadeaways to draw fouls and create space; he lifts his knee much higher on layups. And the shots in the drill invariably form one indivisible motion of his upper-body. It's an integrity and an economy of motion that virtually guarantees he'll get within inches of the center of the basket. With athletes that possess body control like Nash, it's no wonder airballs are so rare in the NBA. And every step Nash takes in this drill outside of shooting is exactly the same: An uncannily efficient flat-footed step with a bit of a knee-jerk that can go any direction at any point mid-step. It's all so fundamentally sound, and looking at it, my first thought was to compare it to Ray Allen, one of the great shooters of his generation and of all time.

I say this all not just to praise Nash. No, his 20-minute drill shows us - in its absence - what's so odd about Nash's "core" as a player in actual games: Nash has "fundamentals" the same way Deep Blue has skills to move a knight around the board: Perfectly and trivially. When he sets up for a shot and goes through the motions correctly, he will hit that shot. He will hit that open man, he will hit that lane. 99%. And yet for all his fundamentals, we don't think of them when we're watching him. He plays with the perfect fundamentals of Basketball's Deep Blue, but I'll be damned if he doesn't play a fun, deceptive, brilliant game of chessboxing. What we think of as the "fundamentals" are so far buried beneath the baroque complexity of Nash's basketball prowess that it doesn't make much sense to appeal to them. In the case of Nash, it all starts with his motion: That simple flat-footed stride - that seems merely efficient and repeatable in the drill - becomes something totally new in games: That same stride becomes a psychophysical masterpiece of economy, the chessboxer's twisting, contorting lower axis. When he has to react to game situations, Nash moves like a weird propeller motor atop another propeller motor, connected by a universal joint at the waist. He moves in three dimensions with two independent motors, all without losing his dribble. His mechanics let him suddenly move any direction and approach that direction from any angle. Structural integrity seems to give way totally to malleability and degrees of freedom.

And that's just his motion. Nash uses his unique motor - on seemingly every offensive possession - to do something psychophysically crazy that no one quite understands, in order to push past the most wily of defenses. These neat pull-ups we see in the drill become abrupt, creative fallaways over Tim Duncan closeouts. These neat "dribble-stop-fadeaway" sequences that Nash drills become long, impossible-to-articulate-fully sequences that can last .1 or 23.9 seconds (averaging about 7 seconds, heh.) in games and might end with him passing to the wing 48 feet away out of a trap on the baseline. Defenses are designed - in the broadest sense - to make offenses imperfect as much as possible. But Nash has none of that. Even on the most deliberate and obvious of pick and rolls, Nash seems always to have an extra option or three in the back of his head, and even the most straightforward of his options have an extra flash of difficulty to them. His offense can't help but be remarkably efficient and fun to watch. Sure, the SSOL Suns (and the Finley-Dirk-Nash Mavs) were both loaded on offense, but as we've seen in the slow unraveling of the Suns franchise, Nash can take mediocre and D-league players to 40 wins, and a decent second option to 55 wins. He is quite simply a candidate for GOAT offensive point guard. Has any player so consistently made all of his teammates (from the D-Leaguers to the HOF) look so much better on offense? Bad offenses seem to be short a player against the most pedestrian of defenses. Great offenses seem to be short a player against the best defenses.

In both cases, that short player that they're missing is Steve Nash.

THE GAME (or: the Hedgehog beasts it)

In this particular game, Nash was typically brilliant, putting up a 28-8-16 line on 20 shots. His passes - as is his wont - made the very good Raja Bell and Leandro Barbosa both look like... well, Ray Allen. Add to this that he was the primary ballhandler and only suffered five turnovers in a game where the pace was frantic, and you have yourself the average everyday night in the toolbox of a legend. And don't dally around it: the pace was as frantic as you'll see in the modern era, with both teams combining for 212 shots, 52 free throws, and 32 turnovers. The Suns went 18-38 from 3-point land and you have to think (correctly) that most of these shots came on an assist or a hockey assist from Nash. And yet, for that many passes, most of them no-look to a rotating man on the perimeter, Nash botched maybe two of them. He botched perhaps two transition plays, too. And he got the ball stolen from him once. For most players and games 5 TO is a mediocre percentage, but it's kind of incredible in context with the pace and the degree to which the offense ran through Nash.

Unfortunately for Nash, this fifth turnover came a few seconds before the end of the first overtime with the game tied, where a singularly amazing Luke Ridnour went around the great dribbler and forced Nash to turn it over out of bounds 40 feet from the basket, giving the Sonics one last chance (a failed Rashard Lewis shot) and sending the game to double-overtime. Now, let's be clear -- this post is about Ray-Ray and Nash, and I don't want to get too distracted. And Ridnour himself is an average (okay, a bit below average) starting PG, but his fast-paced style appears to lend itself to these kinds of insanely fast, efficient games. Take this observation as a cherished aside: take a look at these games in which both teams scored 50 FG on better than 50% shooting. Of the nine such games since this one, 3 involved Nash (duh) and 2 involved Ridnour. Luke Ridnour's ceiling is apparently to make a game unforgettable, and he did a great job in this game, honestly matching the HOFer drive for drive. A decent ceiling for a career roleplayer, I'd say.

Of course, matching Steve Nash cowlick for cowlick, drive for drive, in the Seven Seconds or Less era would hardly be enough to send the game into overtime, much less double-OT. You need a transcendent talent to do that. Enter Ray "He Got Game" Allen. Kinematically, Jesus Shuttlesworth is the complete inverse of Nash: Allen simply possesses (and applies consistently in games) a degree of structural integrity unmatched by any NBA player I have ever seen. Allen brings the Nash drill to the game, every game. Every single move Ray makes is from his whole body in one atomic, complex motion. It's like the game is his drill.

Ubiquitous in mastering physical skills is the idea of letting the object be an extension of your body. But how much control do we really have over our body? Ray Allen more or less gives us the upper bound, it's fair to say. For something to be more an extension of Ray's body than the ball during his jumper (or a golf club during his swing), it would have to more or less fuse surgically with him and then spend 38 more years learning the ins and outs. His three-point jumper is about as pure and beautiful as any individual action in sports, and you get the sense that - unguarded - Ray could hit a shot from every location on the halfcourt with at least 60% accuracy, blindfolded. And unlike (say) Tim Hardaway or Stephon Marbury (two of his lesser shooting contemporaries that could god-mode a half-courter now and again), Ray's 40-footers don't seem like swag highlight plays but the result of rational, obsessive calculation. As one of the most obsessive player in the league (he literally has OCD, as Aaron will get further into in his upcoming player capsule), his form and decision-making are fairly immaculate. Ray is a bit slower now, but in his prime he was a true triple threat, a complete, efficient SG with speed and decent defense. As it stands right now, he's merely the greatest shooter in the history of the league.

Anyway, Ray Allen made 32 of his 42 points in the last 19+ minutes to end this game. Okay, so read that again, please, because I don't have them time to garner redundant enthusiasm for an obviously insane fact. (Okay, there have been quarters with players scoring 33 points, and Charles Barkley scored 27 in one quarter in a game I reviewed. But these are historical level performances, and Ray's performance belongs with them.). Sure, his second half started slow, but so did his decisive match against Denzel Washington. Ray Allen's run started with a three-pointer on the wing, moving from there outward in a spiral to two borderline-deadball afterthoughts from 30 feet at the sidelines (only one of which counted!). Then he moved to a swag step-back 3 at the top of the key at the end of regulation, and finally - in a dagger seconds before the end of the second OT - Ray made a 32-foot shot whose trajectory you could place a steep barn under. It was one of those great games that Ray's obsession and kinesthetics are tailor-made to create.

THE CLOSE (or: the misallocation of genius)

Of course, Ray's approach has its drawbacks: while Ray's individual offensive skills may rival Nash's, I nevertheless doubt that his obsession and perfect structural integrity lend themselves well to the unending sequence of fakes and endless imperfect options that form what we call "running an offense". Even if he had the ability to make the passes (which in many cases he couldn't), I can't picture Ray Allen putting on a nightly assist clinic. Sure, Ray can fake you out with a pump, with a deceptive run off a screen, with a delayed release, with a ball-fake, with a devious cut without the ball, and so on. But I don't think Ray Allen has the mental processes (nor the vision) to have Nash's Offensive Conversations. That is, to be able to say in real time: "Now I've beat my man and I need to fake kicking it out to the left to draw out a defender so I have room here on the left so that I can start my layup motion and then get the help-side defender to bite so I can bring the ball down for a bounce pass down the baseline for an easy three on the right corner," and so on. Everyone misses shots, everyone bobbles passes, no matter how perfect. Ray owns his mistakes on offense, but you have to think that if he owned his team's mistakes, he'd have stressed himself out of the league. It's just not who he is.

Asking Ray Allen's individual brilliance to run an offense would be like asking Paul McCartney to score his songs for full orchestra - kind of a misallocation for a genius. Similarly, asking Nash to focus only on shooting and driving would be like asking Stravinsky to write pop songs. Square hole, round peg. The round peg belongs to Nash, for better or worse. For what Nash has is deception and complex orchestration at his core - a deep understanding of the shifting logic of a possession and of how to play the dozens of roles available to him on every possession. And what Ray has is the tunesmith's gift: He can take a short spot-up situation and make an atomic, beautiful, fitting response. In Steve Nash and Ray Allen you not only have two completely inverse body types - you have two completely different (but equally brilliant) approaches to offense. And, for one game, a magical night that leaves you wondering what kind of offensive insanity would've resulted if these two giants had ever chanced to play together.

Regardless. Great, worthy game. Worth your time, at the very least.

So, the NBA usually puts really crummy games on at Thanksgiving. Like, incredibly crummy. If you've been watching the NBA in the past decade, you know the score. This year, when we were all naive young souls who didn't know our season would be cancelled, the lineup was (I kid you not) the Hawks hosting the 76ers and the Clippers hosting the Hornets. Which may be bad, but they aren't any worse than previous years. In fact, they may be marginally better. The NBA only officially began the trend of nationally televised late games on Thanksgiving in 2009, but they still scheduled Thanksgiving games before. So let's take a look back at the last decade's NBA on Thanksgiving, because I'm still waiting for dinner and have little better to do.

• • •

• 2010: ATL 116 v WAS 96 & LAC 100 v SAC 82
  I remember this slate, mainly because I actually watched it. Before these games were nationally televised I had little to no means to actually watch them, so I'd just read about them in the paper the next day. I distinctly remember being marginally impressed with Josh Smith, but being far more impressed with the mushroom ravioli my girlfriend's father had made from scratch. Blake was good in the nightcap, though I thought Gordon was better.

• 2009: ORL 93 v ATL 76 & UTA 105 v CHI 86
  So THIS is why the Bulls signed Boozer to that insane contract! He went dynamo on the Bulls on Thanksgiving night, putting up 28-8-5 with a steal and three blocks on 85% shooting in 35 minutes of work. Glad we finally got to the bottom of that. Otherwise, an extremely boring night, with an average margin of victory of +18 points. No transcendent performances to speak of.

• 2008: ORL 105 v WAS 90 & NOH 104, DEN 101
  Holy shit! It's a game that was actually worth watching! Am I seeing things? The Hornets were fresh off nearly making the WCF in 2008, and the Nuggets would make the WCF that season. Chauncey Billups was still adjusting to his teammates, and shot a hilariously bad 33% on the night. Hilton Armstrong started at center for the shorthanded Hornets, J.R. Smith dropped 32, and the game was tied with 25 seconds to go before Posey dropped a three-bomb on J.R. Smith's face. The Nuggets missed a chance to tie it, had to force free throws, and nearly shocked them when Smith made a swag three with four seconds to go, but the Hornets made their free throws to close the night out. Looks like the kind of fun unexpected regular season close one that I WISH I WAS WATCHING RIGHT NOW. In other news: the 2009 Wizards blew, and the Magic made the finals that year.

• 2007: No games scheduled.
  Whoa, whoops! I had forgotten about the legendary 2007 Thanksgiving player strike, where the NBPA boycott Thanksgiving games in order to protest the draconian "everyone must wear turkey suits" dress code instituted by David $tern for that year's Thanksgiving slate. Instead, they all played NBA 2k12 and wondered how the hell LeBron, Wade, and Bosh had ended up on the same team. Also: they all wondered how they'd somehow gotten copies of a game that wasn't to be released for four more years. Then they realized that seeing too much of their own future could create a time paradox, the result of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. Then Barkley did a Chaos Dunk, and everyone stopped worrying about it and ended the strike.

• 2006: WEST SIDE STORY 112 v MACBETH 140
  This year, $tern decided to treat the players to a Thanksgiving off. In so doing, he decided that the 2006 Thanksgiving slate would be played by two troupes of actors currently starring in competing plays in the San Fernando valley. They had to hoop it up in full costume, leading to some awkward moments where the Macbeth Players tripped on their robes while trying to run the fast break. Despite lacking any competent defensive talent on either team, the players scrapped it out on offense. The Macbeth crew pulled it out behind a magical night from their star, scoring 67 on a wide array of trick shots, swag threes, and generally balled all over everyone's face. It was fantastic. Upon completion of the game and an awarding of the complimentary bathrobe stamped with David Stern's face, Macbeth gave a celebratory speech only to be tragically cut short by the reanimated corpse of Emperor Norton shooting him and accusing Stern of regicide. He then broke up the crowd with an ill-conceived duel with Stern's handlers. Entertaining, but Norton's corpse was never heard from again.

• 2005: __DET 235 v AIR BUD'S PICKUP TEAM 25__
  Wow, uh... that turned into sort of a slaughter. A mercy rule game if there ever was one. At least it answered the age-old question as to whether Air Bud was really a good player. Disastrous 1-26 shooting night from the old pup, along with 23 turnovers (an NBA record) despite fouling out with only 20 minutes to his name. And thus was Air Bud revealed to be, as the folks at I Go Hard Now once surmised, little more than a ballhogging chucker that simply couldn't make it in the big leagues. I don't know why Stern had them do this game. A cruel matchup, at best.

As one of our mainstay features, Aaron is writing posts highlighting every single player in the NBA. Role players, superstars, key cogs, or players who are barely as useful as ballboys -- none are exempt from the prying eyes of our readers. Check the index for a lowdown on order, intent, and all that jazz. Today's trio includes Elliot Williams, Delonte West, and Ben Wallace.

• • •

[027] Williams, Elliot

Elliot is the first Duke player on this list I actually went to school with, though calling him a Duke player is slightly disingenuous. He transferred to Memphis for his sophomore year, so he was drafted as a Memphis player rather than a Duke player. It's become almost a little-known fact he went to Duke, which suits me fine, since I'm guessing fewer people will judge him before they see him if they think he's a Memphis player rather than a Duke player. Nonetheless. Back when he was at Duke, he was a pretty stand-up guy. Very laid back, very down to earth, very quiet. I don't know if he's still dating the girl he was my freshman year, but seemingly everyone in my dorm was obsessed with how cute they were together and how nice they were with each other. Doubt he's still dating her, but a man who treats women right is always a plus in my book.

From the basketball side of the universe? I thought this was a pretty nice pickup for the Blazers. He hasn't played a single minute in the NBA yet, as he blew up his leg last year. Out of the 2009 Duke team, though? Elliot and Henderson are easily the two most NBA-quality players from that lineup. Elliot was a tenacious defender at Duke, and his shooting was reasonably solid. I didn't get to watch him much at Memphis, but in the games I saw? NBA-quality shooting, decent speed, and NBA athleticism. Penetrates like a pro (stop thinking dirty thoughts), slashes amazingly, etc. With the defensive talent he showed at Duke combined with his shooting talent and general work ethic, I think he's going to be a great NBA prospect if he puts everything together. And he's a nice guy. So, overall? I really hope he succeeds in the NBA. Go Elliot.

• • •

[028] West, Delonte

My favorite player I've examined yet, without question. Look, he's bit of a redneck-type. To put it lightly. He's among the strongest "southern white" type of guy in the NBA, even moreso than Jason Kidd. He's suffered from bipolar disorder for the majority of his life, with a nasty side of depression (something I understand and sympathize with via depression of my own). When he's on your team, his mental state has slowly left him to the point where you can't count on him. He plays like, well, someone who's bipolar could be expected to play. Some days he's there, some days he's not. Honestly, though? Despite his lows, I love the guy. He's hilarious, his game is nasty, and he's got serious gravitas. When his head's on straight he's absolutely the most tenacious guard defender in the league -- up in your grill, won't let you take a shot without his contest. Strong three point range, crazy hustle. Prone to turnovers if you force him to over-handle the ball, but if you utilize him correctly (i.e., not as the primary ball handler, as the Celtics often have him when he comes off the bench) he's the perfect complementary two guard on a contender. That is, when his head's on straight. When it isn't? Different story. He's passive, poor on the defensive end (he's undersized, so unless he's completely mentally dialed in, players can outmuscle him -- he is not a player who can get by on cruise control), and guns poor long twos that you know full well aren't going in. He can't defend anyone halfway passably when his mind isn't dead set on the court. Which is an incredible shame.

Does that all make him frustrating? Very. In that sense, he's like J.R. Smith. Never really know what you're going to get. Whether it'll be the good Delonte or the bad Delonte. Unlike J.R., though, his good includes great defense and doesn't include an overinflated sense of self. And comedy. Well, J.R. brings that too, but it's not as stirring. His style of play is of the hard-nosed sort, the kind of play rooted not in finesse or technique but in the immutable spirit and vigor of a guy who won't back down. It's almost like, when he's having his good days, he lays his mental health issues and the hardships of his upbringing out on the court. As the player he's guarding, of course. Because he gets chippy, he gets angry, and he sticks to them like their attempts to make a shot on him are a personal affront to his existential soul. And as someone who's battled with issues of my own, I appreciate that mindset. While I was going through my "use the NBA to escape from my head" phase of my life, the inflexible grit and anger in Delonte's defensive game (fairly or not) reminded me of my own daily struggles and my angry attempts to force myself out of it. And it made him that much more dear to me.

I have to add -- big ups to the Cavaliers for everything they (reportedly) did in the 2010 season to try and accomodate Delonte's illness. That was a completely underreported story, to me. For about half the season, I was reading stories about how they didn't make Delonte travel with the team, didn't require practice for him, etc. They still allowed him to go to home games and play when his head was on straight. I've been told (not confirmed, but I've been told) the Cavs provided him a team psychiatrist specially suited to work with his case (a service I'm positive not every team offers) and made sure Delonte was about as comfortable as a man can be after going through a heart wrenching destructive breakup of the type he suffered and his general meltdown from his legal troubles and his bipolar disorder. And then, all that said, big downs for whoever the fuck in the Cavs organization started the pathetic rumor that Delonte was doinking LeBron's mom. There's evidence from some sources (namely Scott Raab, someone who I'd expect to get some sort of sick fetishized glee at the rumor and wouldn't want to disprove it so quickly) that whoever "leaked" the rumor originally was a member of LeBron's team, attempting to pre-empt the incoming wave of "dear god, what happened to LeBron" coverage. I didn't believe Raab, at first, but after the "Rashard Lewis is having an affair with LeBron's girlfriend" rumors leaked by "anonymous sources" close to the situation in the finals this year, I'm a bit more inclined to think Raab may have a lead. LeBron has never surrounded himself with the best people, and Delonte's visceral annoyance with the rumor makes me hesitant to believe it all.

In the end? I love Delonte. And I really, really hope he gets his head straight. One of my favorite NBA players.

• • •

[029] Wallace, Ben

This is easily the most liked-by-me triad of players in the 10 posts I've gotten through in this series. Elliot from being in school with him, Delonte from being my depression-fighting muse, and Big Ben for being... well, Big Ben. You may have noticed I'm irrationally up on some players. Big Ben is one of those. He's scary, ripped, and ballin'. I'm of the opinion he should've gotten the finals MVP in 2004. He didn't exactly shut down Shaq, but he completely gummed up the Lakers' offense and kept Shaq from being a defensive force in the paint by making his offensive goal to keep Shaq from shutting down the Pistons guards. One of the all-time underrated Finals performances, and in my view, quite a bit more valuable than Chauncey was then. Regardless. Ben has been underrated for most of the last decade, primarily because he spent that decade locked in a cell with his "never-make-a-shot" offensive stylings. He's been among the best big man defenders in the league since the turn of the century, and he's been one of the most impact-heavy paint patrollers in that duration as well. If you were a guard, and you saw Big Ben was going to be facing you in the paint, you'd have some second thoughts about making a foray down there. To put it lightly.

He's an absolutely vicious rebounder. Shuts down the paint, and any player he wants to. His offense isn't underrated (it's properly rated as "god awful and cringe inducing"), but with a player he has chemistry with, you can occasionally set him up with a basket or two. I'm of the view that Wallace is the main agent responsible for the Pistons' early decade success, and that the Pistons trading him away is the main reason the Cavs were able to beat them in 2007. Under his tenure, though, the Pistons had a hell of a lot of success -- the Pistons were the Eastern dynasty of the 2000s, rather underratedly. Under Ben's tenure they made the conference finals from 2003 to 2006, won a ring over a stacked (though flawed) Laker team, and were without question the class of the eastern conference. Funny thing about Wallace? First big contract wasn't with the Pistons, the team he came to define -- it was with the Bulls, where he proceeded to drastically underperform expectations due to the strange insistance the Bulls had with trying him to provide offense. Doomed to fail, no matter how much money you give him. His 2009, though? Traded to the Cavs, and tore the world asunder. At least until his injury. Ben was lights out for the Cavs early in the year, and was essentially the perfect roleplayer. I'm of the opinion, and have been for quite some time, that his injury was stealthily the most important reason the Cavs didn't make the finals that year. Sure, we had a zombie Wallace playing in the conference finals, but the Wallace the team had for the first few months of the season pre-injury was the same havoc-wrecking terror that haunts all the slashing guards in the league every night.

A healthy Wallace could've slowed Dwight down, even if he was too old to truly shut him down. But in the series, Wallace was absolutely awful when he played -- he was hobbling on both ends, a liability even on defense, and easy for any of the Magic's players to take advantage of. He wasn't the Wallace that we'd had during our amazing season. Which was a damn shame. We then traded him for Shaq, proceeding to get his contract waived by Phoenix so he could resign in Detroit. Which was absolutely the right move for him -- Big Ben should retire a Piston, and I'm glad he gets to do that. Wasn't expected to be a big difference-maker, but he's actually been rather successful. Easily their best and most consistent player over the last two seasons, only falling off from that role as Greg Monroe rose from the ashes of the 2011 Detroit Pistons season. It's really great that they've got him as a locker room presence, I think -- if Monroe can learn some of Ben's tricks, the Pistons are basically set. They'll rise again. Monroe's too good for them not to. Now, a fun Ben Wallace fact: did you know he literally wants to be a lawyer after he leaves the league? He plans to use the money from his latest contract to go to law school and become a Detroit area lawyer. Really, this is a thing. And it's amazing. It honestly makes me want to go to Detroit and get accused of a crime, solely so I can get represented in court by Ben Wallace. I heard his defense is impeccable.

Ed. note: That may be the worst joke I've ever told. Kill me now.

• • •

Thanksgiving's tomorrow! I will be celebrating by eating food, rooting for the Lions for no reason whatsoever, and probably editing more of these to post tomorrow night. No real content schedule right now, just going on the fly. Still. Keep it real, folksom. Here's hoping you have more to be thankful for than the average NBA fan does.

For several years, the recently retired FreeDarko blog took a groundbreaking and individualistic perspective towards the NBA as a whole -- a perspective rooted as much in critical theory as in hip-hop. FreeDarko's main strength was that it collected some of the best minds in basketball out there - both readers and writers - into a single, content-rich site. Its main weakness was that it sometimes felt like the New York Times covering hip-hop: alright, we get it, you think this player is good at basketball and fun to watch...you don't have to abuse the word "profound", if you dig me. But on the whole? The collective added a lot to the community in so many ways, obvious and subtle. The most tangible contributions were the group's two books, the first decent but uneven, the second a classic of sportswriting. On the blog, the underratedly apt commenters and authors frequently expressed (or tried valiantly and interestingly to express) their best interpretations of what was going on in the Association and the new lenses they were bringing to bear on it. In the final tally, FreeDarko brought us some of the great sports conversations of the last decade in basketball, and the collective has a lot of credibility.

Since the blog's retirement, many of FD's authors have stayed in touch and teamed up for spot projects after the main blog started to wane. Their first really substantial project - called The Classical - is the first true sequel, though. The closest analogue (though it pains me to make the comparison) is Grantland - in terms of their longform, firsthand, unorthodox takes on the great stories mainstream and forgotten. The talent pool is quite different and the differences in content will become quite clear a couple of months from now, but for now, the comparison fits. Also, Bill Simmons doesn't write for The Classical, generally a positive thing. I digress. Right now, The Classical is in preview mode. If the content is representative (and it appears to be), then we have fodder for our fourth installment of "Juwan A Blog?". In general, for this feature we'd like to use blogs that are well-established, but the FD group has enough credibility with the community that we're going to allow it. And they even got quite a few new established authors that we can dig into immediately. So, let's.

• • •

There are only 23 posts on the site at the moment (and that's including the post explaining that it's a preview). I felt the size itself, along with the generally individualistic author-centric design of the site, led itself well to a simple "let's read their posts and see how they stand" kind of analysis. To that end, I'm going to go through a large proportion of what they've produced so far and offer 8 separate spot reviews of the most recent pieces. But first, a few paragraphs of general impressions:

First, it's worth noting that they went all out with the authors. Just like with Grantland, this is one thing The Classical really did well: They found people who could write, and had interesting particular angles. I don't know if this is just great emergent social networking or great top-down management by FD and their "handlers," but they found their favorite writers and they brought them into the fold. You have to respect that, given the wide range of backgrounds and sources these writers came from.

Second, almost all the pieces were good to great. Besides the unfortunate Tebow piece (you can read my problems with it in 2. below), I enjoyed every single piece that I reviewed. As a writer I don't consider myself to be on their level of excellence, but I'm very well read and I know good work when I see it: this is damn good sportswriting. You've got innovative prose, new forms of presentation, and systemically solid subject matter. All the good things that make sportswriting good. And while I apologize for making this paragraph somewhat fawning, repetitive, and trivial, I can't really help it. I'm always looking for people that can make our corner of reality a little bit bigger and have it blend into the whole of human experience a little more fluidly.

The Classical - at least in its limited preview - has done so. It stands poised to achieve greatness.

Of course - as fans of basketball for more than one year well know - "tremendous upside" is practically a slur against the unpolished and untested. It's very much up in the air if they're going to be able to sustain this level of quality. Grantland looked great in its first incarnation only to gradually peter off to where it is now, with the legitimately interesting and world-intensifying pieces (such as Sebastien Pruiti's great Austin Rivers piece earlier today) slowly being drowned out by the ditherings of Simmons and his least-interesting cronies. I do have fears the Classical could follow that sort of a path as well, though in a different way. How many introductions to rugby culture (6.) are we going to be able to sit through? How many stories like this and great chroniclers will The Classical be able to find? But the seeds are there, the initial results are promising, and I have very high expectations for The Classical. Let's get to examining some of their posts.

Reviews:

Without further ado, let's get into my spot reviews of the last eight posts. We're going to work backwards from the newest post, that way you can read these reviews in the same order you'd (I'd) read them on the site.

1. War King Blues (by Tom Breihan) - At indie wrestling company Chikari, the self-contained universe of absurd narratives clash with the earnestly great (and troubled) wrestler Eddie Kingston. It's maybe a tiny bit overstylized ("He’s a big guy, all gut and head-stubble, with a titanic honk-rumble of a Yonkers accent") and I wish it went into a little more detail about Kingston's personality outside the ring. But as a twin profile of Chikari and Kingston coming from an obviously sincere fan? It's great stuff, and really excellent writing. Reminds me of this, always a high compliment.

2. Tim Tebow: Magical White Person (by Mobutu Sese Seko) - This is kind of an unfortunate piece about Tim Tebow. There isn't much of a story. The only "story" here is that Seko is offended by straightforward things that he is interpreting as cryptically racist. Now, I know I have some hidden racial prejudices, as do my countrymen at large. And I really do want to address them when I find them. But while I or my countrymen may have such hidden prejudices, I'm not entirely sold on the idea that they're cryptically coded in sports media for a member of the sophisticated to condescendingly unravel for me. Seko really may have a point here, and I'm actually inclined to agree with a lot of his points, but the flip side of that is that Seko should at least attempt to persuade or explain in passing to people like Aaron and I who agree in broad strokes but aren't convinced on the specifics. Instead, this piece struck me as simply assuming everyone reading agreed with his main point about Tebow without properly arguing it or providing any sort of coherent explanation for why he felt the point stuck.

Seko lost me at first with that "convenient Christian Michael Irvin" comment, even though I'm not a Christian (or a Cowboys fan). Why? Because the comment was snivelling, out-of-nowhere, unnecessary and dismissive of the actual possibility of a person changing their perspective and atoning for previous mistakes. And as far as substantive evidence for Seko's piece goes, that would back up his thesis and leave me persuaded to a view I'm not all that far from holding? Again, I want to be enlightened, and convincing narratives and stats are what have successfully convinced me of my and my countrymen's prejudices in the past, and of the existence of institutional racism at the core of our society. But Seko basically gives us the single anecdote that Tim Tebow is being treated differently by the media from Michael Vick as the be all and end all of his proof. That doesn't really fly with me. Vick, last time I checked, has a metric ton of confounding variables, like... dog fighting, a vicious sport, no matter your ethnic heritage. Jail time. A more complicated game. And nowhere near the general obsession Tebow has with religion.

That is reason enough for this comparison to be somewhat ridiculous, and - considering it's one of Seko's only substantive claims made to back up the vitriol in the article - reason enough for this piece's central thesis to fail. Tim Tebow and Michael Vick are not just two running quarterbacks of different colored skins. Mystifyingly, even Seko's appropriation of Spike's Magical Negro - which by contrast is a great example of hidden American racial prejudice in the media - is unbelievably off-base and unjustified. But all of that said, despite it being the worst piece I'd read on the site thus far, the piece itself is still quite well written. That is a credit to it despite my disagreement with its methods, reason for being, and general form. As an example of the writing, see the hilarious possibly-intentional irony from the piece: "If the boilerplate about Vick and Newton can at times come queasily close to describing them as exceptionally well-bred beasts..." which does encapsulate racism in sports quite well. I just can't get on board with the whole picture, at least for this article.

1. LeSean McCoy and the Insistent Style (by Eric Freeman) - Freeman has never been my favorite writer at BDL or FreeDarko, but that sentiment has nothing to do with his ceiling, which is on display here. A fantastic, semi-improvisational look into the Eagles back McCoy and what seems to set him apart from even the most creative backs before him. I like this piece a lot, and it ripples with the enthusiasm of someone obsessed with marginal physical advantages. His piece also - I must note - could have some conceptual extension into guard penetration in basketball.

2. Home? I Have No Home. (by Tom Scharpling) - A nice, irreverent take on the Nets fan experience. While these "aw, shucks, isn't my mildly unpleasant situation sort of amusing and generalizable to your own experiences?" pieces are usually fluff, this made me laugh (and lockout-fugue; there are new holes in my walls) quite a few times. And what else can you do but laugh (and lockout-fugue) and try to make the best of the lockout?

3. Science Bureau: The Pilot (by Rob Mitchum and Dr. LIC) - Some interesting summaries of recent scientific finds. Dr. LIC had a similar column back on FreeDarko, and it was usually a treat. This is no different. Cool contents, cool presentation.

4. New Zealand’s long, All Black night of the soul (by Linda Hui) - One thing I like about this solid look at New Zealand rugby culture at the World Cup is that not a single sentence or paragraph sticks out as great or terrible. And despite this apparent handicap, Hui manages to testify well to her personal experiences and give us a sense of New Zealand's rugged competitiveness, intensity, and hospitality. You know as writers we love great sentences, but there's something to said for perfectly conveying the poetry of a culture and a moment without slipping into poetry yourself. In its way, a simply-stylized, well-written closer like "Euphoria took longer to take hold. It had been far, far too close" actually evokes the same blissful, look-away-for-a second that one of those jaw-dropping masterclass sentences does with a lesser piece. It's good writing that sneaks up on you. The drips dropped.

5. All up in the videos (by Tomas Rios) - A look at UFC President Dana White and his questionable mainstreaming tactics, where by "questionable" Rios means "insane," by "mainstreaming" he means "mishandling," and where by "tactics" he means "of the sport he is ostensibly tasked with mainstreaming". A look at UFC President Dana White and his insane mishandling of the sport he is ostensibly tasked with mainstreaming, in other words. And it's an overview replete with good journalism, well-argued frustration, and innocent disappointment.

6. On Pitching, and the AL MVP in the Hour of Chaos (by Jack Hamilton) - Possibly my favorite of the eight I've reviewed so far. I opined of Hui's rugby piece above that it's astonishing when such a complete piece has no transcendent sentences or paragraphs. Kind of like Greg Maddux*. But like Pedro at his peak or Verlander this season, this piece is a superfluous trip through the viscerally mind-shattering sentimentality at the heart of the fan experience. Every sentence is another yaw-turn on a hoverboard trip over a Pit of Sarlacc. Imaginative prose, imaginative concepts. I love it.

*Warning - this link is Gothic Ginobili canon

1. Running is other people (by Max Linsky) - Okay, sorry Jack Hamilton, your piece was pretty good but I'm changing my vote and my number of pieces reviewed to 9. "Number nine, number nine, number nine," how they mock the song. But don't they recognize how great Revolution No. 9 is from start to finish? Don't they recognize that beneath its apparently pretentious/avant-garde surface lies a masterpiece of human frailty and vulnerability, an eight-minute look into the silent yawn of the void? I mean, I love a good pop song, and given the choice, I will listen to something without a melody less 1% of the time... but it's a damn good song which really stands with the best in the Beatles catalog as a major success. Anyway, sorry about the Gothic G-sharp there. Linsky's piece is about running marathons and it's pretty damn funny and it's pretty damn good. Short, sweet, amazing, mostly because it shows - in the most obvious, direct sense - what it's like to go from spectator to well-respected athlete. The ending line seals the deal on the theme.

• • •

And... that's a wrap. Tune in next time, when I'll be offering spot reviews of every single post on this blog, leading to a maddeningly Borgesian Thousand And One Nights scenario. The post will contain a spot review for that post itself, a spot review which will hinge on my handling of that very spot review, which shall pivot to cover the handling of...

Oh, fuck it, I'll just do Matt Moore's blog.