JoePa book to examine the 'real' person - Oct 21, 2011

The above article shows you - through its absence - how quickly and authoritatively the sports media has covered and colored the Sandusky-Paterno situation at Penn State. You just have to wonder what Joe Posnanski could be feeling, to have his "dream book's" subject go from the most respected person in college athletics to one of the most disrespected. This is some amazing, surreal stuff, folks.

I'm not trying to foist my expectations on Posnanski, but the nexus of talent and situation is uncanny: he is the best sportswriter in America writing an authorized book - originally his dream subject - about his good friend, who just happens to be at the the center of arguably the biggest scandal in the history of American college athletics since Len Bias. Anything short of "The Breaks of The Game" is going to be a disappointment to anyone that understands Posnanski's talent and the historical place of Penn State. Posnanski is in the weird situation of Brian Wilson before the SMiLE album - unfathomably high sudden expectations. I just hope he can deliver and come out the other side without an eternal bitterness, because it's the optimism and virtue that has made Posnanski so much more than just a scribe to his fans.

Of course, all of this aside, our thoughts are with the victims of the senseless tragedy in State College.

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 Ryan Anderson, Lamar Odom, and Samardo Samuels.

• • •

[018] Anderson, Ryan

Ryan Anderson is a pretty bro-ish player. He's a poor man's Rashard Lewis, though at this stage of Rashard's career, he's arguably better. Statheads tend to love him -- Kevin Pelton and John Hollinger are especially adamant about his value, Pelton comparing him to a young Dirk Nowitzki and Hollinger named him a Kevin Love all-star early last season. I don't quite disagree with the Dirk comparison, but I would add about twenty individual grains of salt to it. The thing you need to understand with Anderson is that he's underrated. The thing you need to then understand is that, despite being underrated, he's a relatively limited player. He shoots very well and has an underutilized post game, but up til now he's shown no ability to take up the possessions he'd need to eat to be a legitimate second option on a championship squad (which, if I'm honest, is exactly what he is on the Magic right now). His defense is poor. Not as bad as some no-D forwards, as he does put a bit of effort in on that end, but it's not good. His post game is underrated, and he's a decent rebounder on the offensive end (though that tends to cover up how poor he is on the defensive boards, and why he's only going to look particularly passable as a rebounder if he's placed next to a Dwight Howard or Andrew Bogut type).

I'm very hesitant to go with Pelton's per-36 stretch that Anderson is prime to be a new Nowitzki-lite, though, with reason #1 being Anderson's positively anemic career playoff averages. To wit, he averages 3.4 points, 3.9 rebounds, and 0.4 assists on 28% shooting (29% from three) in about 16 minutes per game. That's pretty awful. To the point that I can't accept any Nowitzki comparison on its face -- part of what makes Dirk great is that he's never really had an awful postseason. The closest thing to it was 2007, where he averaged 20-11 on poor 38% shooting. His first postseason? 23-8, on 42% shooting with a poor 28% from three. Anderson's game can be compared cerebrally to Dirk's. But until Anderson shows himself to have Dirk's sense of how to score on a competent defense, it's tough to really call him a potential franchise guy. Not to mention that he's got poor defensive fundamentals, much like young Dirk without his ability to score on strong defenses. Still. He's a promising young piece, don't get me wrong, I just don't see his ceiling in the same way Pelton does -- Pelton makes sure to caveat his piece by saying he doesn't see Anderson as an MVP-type player, but I disagree with the fundamental conclusion that Anderson can thrive in a larger role. His playoff performance seems to counter that.

As well as the fact that his game is predicated on the pass -- last season, for instance, Anderson was assisted on 98% of his threes, 66% of his long twos, and 100% of his shots from the true midrange. The only area of the court he wasn't assisted over 50% of the time was the post, where he was only assisted a respectable 38% of the time though he converted 60% of his shots there. Dirk has a better ability to create his own shot, which is why the offense runs through him more. Until Anderson learns how to create a shot outside the basket, he's going to continue to be the player he is today. That is, a no-D finisher who plays efficiently but needs quite a bit of work before he can work outside of his role. Off the court? Don't know much about him. He looks like a bro, though. Probably goes to frat parties with J.J. Redick and tries to get Dwight to toke up. ... Maybe not that last one. Definitely see frat parties in his past, present, and future, though.

• • •

[019] Odom, Lamar

Lamar Odom is a bit more well traveled as a dude than as a basketball player. At his core, he's a manchild -- completely addicted to candy, married to the generally uninteresting heiress Khloe Kardashian, has his own fragrance of perfume, and has appeared in a video with Linkin Park that I philosophically refuse to watch. The last one is true, by the way. Look it up if you doubt me, because I refuse to link to it. Absolutely, 100% refuse. No deal. As for his game? He's a stretch three/four depending on the matchup. Phil got a pretty good amount out of him at the three, though he can't stay there for a whole season. Very multifaceted game, honestly. Doesn't have good three point range, but he shoots the long jumper decently well and defends the power forward position about as well as he defends the small forward if he's matched there in small stretches. He's a very good weakside rebounder.

If I'm honest, there aren't many flaws in his game outside of his effort. Because no matter how nigh flawless he is when he's on... when he's off, Odom can be a player with absolutely no positive impact on the outcome of a game. Which is absolutely befuddling given his talent. It's almost like his sweet tooth infects his play -- this is patently absurd, but it's a decent metaphor. He plays as though he's consistently facing a crazy sugar rush. He unpredictably oscillates from amazing all-star level 20-15 kinds of dominant games to these nights peppered with atrocious 1-6 shooting with 3 rebounds in 37 minutes of underwhelming defense. It's like he has no control whatsoever as to his play, and you get the sense that while he could put in a lot more effort on his bad nights, his game is fundamentally broken when he has an off night. He comes and goes. Superstar to shitshow. Constantly.

To stick with the terrible metaphor I've been pushing this entire post, Lamar Odom is like sticking your hand in a candy jar on Halloween night. You can be the cool kid and pull out a full-on snickers bar that they didn't mean to put in the candy jar and hop away as the housewife stares longingly at the Snickers bar she did not mean to put there. Or, you know. You can grab one of those small packets of M&Ms with, like, one friggin M&M in it. And it's not even a cool color, it's just yellow or something. How do they get away with that? I bet David Stern owns Mars Candy.

Mars? More like Mar$$$.

• • •

[020] Samuels, Samardo

I think this is the first "wow, I really have to write about him?" player on my list. Samardo Samuels is the backup's backup's backup big man for the Cleveland Cavaliers. His game isn't particularly complicated. He's not a good scorer at the NBA level unless his man completely lays off him (something that happened relatively often, as he got to enter the league playing on a team nobody got up for in one of the worst teams in the last decade) and he's a pretty terrible defender. His only particularly useful trait is that he's a bulldog rebounder, which is a pretty decent trait to have, though not one that's going to make him an NBA starter anytime soon. He hustles, too, so that's worth something.

Still. He's undersized and unathletic. He tends to try and get his defender by doing an endless array of poor countermoves and bad footwork in a almost-always-unsuccessful attempt to make his defender forget that he's taller than Samardo. Which is depressing, as a Cavs fan. Possessions that end in Samardo taking a bad shot in the post are some of the worst moments of my life. Then again. He was responsible for one of my favorite moments of the 2011 Cavs season, where the Cavs beat the Knicks and Melo had no idea who Samardo was. That was probably his best game of the year. And probably the "this is the pinnacle of my talent" moment for Samardo's career. I feel like I'm being kind of harsh on him, honestly. He was an undrafted rookie last season. Like Manny Harris, he at least occasionally contributed. That's better than you'd expect, and should have him in the league for at least 3 or 4 years, if not more. True, he probably will never be a starter. But he hustled and when he succeeded it was fun to see him succeed. Can't ask for much more in an overutilized bench player.

Also, a few days ago, Samardo was involved in quite possibly the most hilarious out-of-nowhere twitter "scandal" I've seen in a long time. The guys at I Go Hard Now alerted me to it on Twitter. It was basically the best. Essentially, Samardo started ranting about how he was "addicted" to having sex with women and how he didn't hate gay people but he definitely, without question, was not gay. It seemed to come out of nowhere and it was totally worth spending a while on his twitter page trying to figure out what he was talking about. I can't do it justice here. Read up on it. And just remember: Samardo Samuels can't be homophobic. He went to St. Benedicts.

• • •

Sorry for the sparse updates the last few days. The post about depression wore me out, much like this lockout is doing.

Here's hoping it ends soon.

Depression is, at its core, a selfish disease. I once heard someone describe his depression as walking into a McDonalds and immediately being paralyzed with the fear that everyone in there was judging him. It obviously wasn't true -- after all, nobody was looking at him, and everyone was wrapped in their own little world. It's honestly a pretty narcissistic thing to assume that everyone in a room is waiting on your every move to judge you. But despite that, to the mind of many people who suffer from depression, the faintest sideways glance, the most imperceptible frown, the offhanded sigh -- all of them are magnified to impossible levels. Their existence all seem to inexplicably signify the weight of the sins and guilt a depressed man carries on a day to day basis. It isn't logical. It doesn't make sense. And people who are depressed realize that, dwell on it, and feel worse about it all. Because self-obsession is actively harmful when you legitimately hate yourself. But alas. Still happens.

Another thing most are familiar with is the "I can't get out of bed" type of depression. Those days when the weight of the world and living with the mistakes you've made -- many or few as those may be -- is too much and you simply cannot bring yourself out of bed without some sort of substance, or incentive, or -- for some people -- simply convincing yourself that if you stay in bed you're a terrible, horrible person. Thus perpetuating the cycle. It's always a cycle, really -- you try to do something, do it wrong, mentally eviscerate yourself for it, feel bad for doing that, etc, etc. You try to stop feeling sorry for yourself and end up playing a mental cat and mouse game, pretending you're Kevin Garnett and screaming at yourself like you're a misbehaving stanchion. Stop doing that. Be happy. Stop it. Why do you do this. Great questions, even without proper punctuation. But the answer always seems elusive.

I have lived the majority of my life with severe depression.

• • •

I try not to talk about it too much. In fact, I probably will refrain from linking this blog to any of my friends in real life for a few weeks while Alex and I pour on more player capsules and stories and games and other distracting things. This is my first particularly public mention of my depression on the internet. It is also my last. Because I'm only really writing about this in the context of basketball, because I feel like writing it down and I've long since realized that in this stupid lockout, there's really not a damn thing a fan can do besides write stuff down. We have no power. And we shouldn't really have any power, but that's not really in the scope of this piece.

Back in late 2009, I took a bad dive headfirst from "got the sads" depression into serious "you need help right now" depression. For a several month period of my life, basketball wasn't just a hobby to me. It was essentially my daily drug. Every day, I'd sit down after I'd done all the homework I could stand to get done and watch whatever NBA games were on. Grainy streams, all, but everything I could find. The Spurs and the Cavs -- my two favorite teams -- were doing well. LeBron was working miracles every night, and while I dislike him now, I will never forget just how happy his good games made me. For that dark, dark period of my life, where I felt alone and hated myself and couldn't bring myself to get over a sad breakup and the death of my very close grandmother. Basketball was the thing that got me up every day. "Hey, Aaron. Wake up. Yeah, you have a lot of bullshit to do today, but after you get off work you're going to watch a shitload of basketball and forget about every other thing in your life."

Got me out of bed, regularly. Got me on my feet again. Got me to where I forgot about the things that triggered my descent and eventually got OK. I didn't get well, I got OK. And getting OK is a momentous achievement to someone who was (and still is, to some extent) in a place as low-down as I was. And having finished college and moved on to a job I love, I am alright now. Sort of. I still have my bad days. Sometimes my very bad days. Days when my antidepressant isn't strong enough, where my girlfriend and I have a minor tiff that manages to set me off in the worst way, where I get stressed out about something and need to latch onto something to calm down. And those are the days that the NBA's sheer existence actually helps me out. Keeps me from going to bad places. Keeps me chugging along on my overachieving, gray hair-inducing, self-loathing life.

In the end, this blog exists in its own little corner of the internet, a project for me and Alex to work on our writing and hopefully entertain the few who happen across our work. I don't expect nor particularly desire your pity for being a poor man who has a dumb, annoying disease. I don't really know what I want. From you? Nothing, really. From the league? I just want basketball. When I watch the NBA, I know none of the players are judging me while I ceaselessly analyze their games. I know that the storylines, the narratives, the rivalries don't matter. I know that in the broader sense I'm wasting a whole hell of a lot of my life immersing myself in something trivial, something that simply doesn't matter. But I don't care. I love this sport. There's a dumb ad campaign from the early 2000s where teenagers cited what their anti-drug was. Mine is the NBA. Because for a few hours a night, when the league is on, I get to watch a game and feel normal. I don't focus on myself at all. I don't think about what the people around me are saying, or thinking, or analyzing about me -- I'm watching a silly game played by athletically gifted people and it's well within my rights to act silly. I may cerebrally know that few people judge me on a regular basis every day, but when I'm watching basketball, I'm too engrossed in the action to really tell.

So, I'm scared about basketball being gone. I'm scared about my favorite players, people who I hold in admittedly far too much respect -- Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Steve Nash, Anderson Varejao, et cetera -- I'm irrationally scared about never seeing them play my favorite game again, or having a bad day when I realize that there's not going to be basketball for quite some time. My opinion on this matter sincerely DOESN'T matter. I say this knowing that full-heartedly. This is a labor issue, and the owners have lowballed the players to the point that the players are fully entitled and (quite frankly) probably SHOULD reject their offer. It's insulting. It's disgusting. It was made in bad faith and the owners are well aware of it. But I really, really want a deal. I want it so that I can selfishly reimmerse myself in basketball -- I don't even care if my teams are good. Because I love the league. I have a favorite player on every team, and there are hundreds of guys I want to see succeed in this league, and in this sport. It helps keep me grounded, in a lot of ways. Therapy helps. Medication helps. But having something to immerse myself in, a hobby where I feel I have true confidence in my opinions, observations, and actions? That's just invaluable.

When LeBron said after the finals that his haters will "wake up tomorrow with the same life and problems as they did the day before" it struck extremely deep for me. Because that's what basketball is, for me. As Scott Raab turns to drugs and idolatry and too many of my other depressed friends turn to alcoholism and smoking, I use my love for -- some would say my obsession with -- the NBA to keep me from making choices I'll regret and getting attached to substances that'll get me horrifically addicted. Or any other number of sins I could jump to. It's an escape, and I admit that. But there are far worse sins than basketball. But in the end, LeBron is absolutely right. If I'm honest. When the lights go out, I do indeed have to return to my life and the same problems I had the day before.

And with the lockout looming large, that's exactly what scares me the most.

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 Andray Blatche, Hasheem Thabeet, and Kyle Lowry.

• • •

[015] Blatche, Andray

I'm going to be honest. I don't like the current Wizards team. John Wall is nice, but Javale McGee is an overrated shot blocker with poor defensive fundamentals and little offensive talent. Nick Young is a chucker with no particularly glaring redeeming factor. I agree with David Thorpe that Yi had some promise when he entered the league, but he's pretty clearly failed to capitalize on it and at this point shows little in the way of signs that he'll ever put it together. Rashard is still a passable 3rd or 4th man on a contender when he's healthy, but honestly, is there any chance he's going to show up properly motivated to play on this terrible Wizards team? No. And don't get me started on Al Thornton. No, the Wizards are a bad team -- overrated as a possible playoff team in the east (which, while true that they could sneak in if EVERYTHING goes right, it's really phenomenally unlikely) and with very little in the way of future prospects outside of the fact that they have a franchise point guard and a never-ending stream of high draft picks to play with. Jan Veasley is a good start -- from the film I've seen, he looks like he's gonna be a stud.

But this all ignores the most unlikable part of the entire Washington Wizards roster -- Andray Blatche, of course. There is no redeeming quality behind Blatche's play for me. Statistically, he's a semi-all-star type player -- 17-8-3 is a pretty solid statline, and he certainly had his share of decent games last year. In fact, I watched two of them. His 34-19 game against Cleveland and his 25-17 game against Charlotte, to be exact. Those are beast games. Star-level numbers, even. But watching his game is just... it's an excruciating experience, to say the least. He took 32 shots in the Cleveland game and would've taken more if his teammates didn't exclude him from possessions occasionally to make sure they got to work with the offense. If he gets the ball, he tries to end the possession. That's his maxim, essentially. There's only one player in the league with a worse tendency to take bad shots than Blatche, that being Demarcus Cousins. There's only one player who fights their teammates for rebounds as much as Blatche does (hint: he also plays for the Wizards). And frankly, there aren't any players who immediately come to mind for more prick-headed and lazy on the court.

His actual skills? Well, if he reined in his shot selection, he'd be a passable shooter for his position. When he stops fighting his teammates and simply shows some grit on the boards he's not all that bad. He has horrible, horrible defense in every conceivable way but has the frame to be an average defender if he puts his mind to it. Unfortunately for the wizards, he won't. And as I said, if he reined in his shot selection, he'd be a passable shooter -- as is, he's the modern day incarnation of Antoine Walker. He takes over 15 shots a game despite shooting under 45%, playing less than 36 minutes a game, and taking only 18 threes on the season -- that's about as bad as you can get, shot selection wise. Two turnovers a game. Enough bad decisions to make everyone watching him unhappy. Why is he considered a franchise cornerstone for the Wizards, again? Just wondering, guys.

• • •

[016] Thabeet, Hasheem

Time for a Controversial Opinion about Hasheem Thabeet. The opinion in question: he's going to have an 8-9 year career in the league at a minimum, and will carve a role as a niche roleplayer near the end of his career. I don't have many reasons to think this, if I'm honest. Thabeet has shown his offensive skills to be utterly nonexistant, and while he's a shot blocker, he's a blocker of more the Manute Bol type than the Alonzo Mourning type -- IE, a blocker who goes for highlight blocks instead of truly getting his man down. He jumps for low difficulty blocks in blatant stat padding. And his offensive skills are minimal at best. To say he's a 7'3" tall bust at the second pick is beyond accurate. At this point in his career, he's played about as much time in the D-League as he has in the big leagues, and it's soon going to be time for him to put up or shut up.

Personally, I don't think he's going to be out of the league that easily. Lost in his complete lack of basketball ability is the fact that he still is 7'3", and the barriers to entry of him being a productive nba player are virtually nil. Whether or not he deserves it, Thabeet is going to be picked up constantly in the next ten years, always by teams who think their big man coaches are going to do what no others have done and make a productive and useful player out of him. They may succeed -- he's tall enough that, if he had any moves whatsoever, he could simply place the ball daintily in the hoop. His rebounding is poor, his post defense is poor... really, at the moment, his only particularly redeeming quality is that he is decent at helping on defense to cover for a poor defensive four. At the moment, that's the sum total of his skills. But Thabeet is probably going to be much like the sirens of Odysseus to a number of NBA teams -- coaches that refuse to take no for an answer, refuse to believe that Thabeet will never put it together, and think that he's one coaching session away from being a competent backup big. But nevertheless. In order to put in context how hilarious Thabeet's draft location is, here are players from his draft class who are better than Hasheem Thabeet despite being drafted below him.

Pick   Player (Team)
3   James Harden (OKC)
4   Tyreke Evans (SAC)
7   Stephen Curry (GSW)
9   DeMar DeRozan (TOR)
10  Brandon Jennings (MIL)
12  Gerald Henderson (CHA)
13  Tyler Hansbrough (IND)
17  Jrue Holiday (PHI)
18  Ty Lawson (DEN)
19  Jeff Teague (ATL)
20  Eric Maynor (UTA)
21  Darren Collison (NOH)
23  Omri Casspi (SAC)
25  Rodrigue Beaubois (DAL)
26  Taj Gibson (CHI)
29  Toney Douglas (NYK)
30  Christian Eyenga (CLE)
36  Sam Young (MEM)
37  DeJuan Blair (SAS)
38  Jon Brockman (SAC)
39  Jonas Jerebko (DET)
41  Jodie Meeks (PHI)
43  Marcus Thornton (NOH)
44  Chase Budinger (HOU)
55  Patty Mills (POR)

Twenty-five players. Yikes, Thabeet. You better hope Odysseus can teach a good jump hook.

• • •

[017] Lowry, Kyle

Kyle Lowry is currently the best player on the Houston Rockets. Rather shocking statement, actually, but it's 100% accurate. At the start of last season I would've said that was Scola, but despite Scola's excellent opening act to the 2010-2011 season, Lowry had his number by the end. In the same way that Manu Ginobili and Amare Stoudamire absolutely destroyed all opposition after the all-star break in 2010, Lowry was quite possibly one of the most valuable players in the league after the all-star break, posting an insane 20-5-8 line in the month of march on 47-43-87 shooting and in a conservative 36 minutes per game. Anyone remember how the Rockets almost snuck into the playoffs despite their god-awful start to the season? That was essentially all on Lowry, who played better than any other point guard in the last two months of the regular season, and spent the season strengthening his vice grip on the title of "best defender at the point guard position."

It has been written that Lowry's breakout may be a case of small sample size bias, and I agree. I don't think Lowry is the kind of player who is going to average 20-5-8 in a full season. But it's worth noting that ending a year with a streak of amazing performance, if consistent enough, doesn't often evaporate. Amare and Manu came off their torrid 2010 closing acts to be strong MVP candidates for the first few months of the 2011 season. And Lowry is younger than either of them, and roughly at the age and minutes threshold where a point guard will start to reach his peak. I don't think a 16-4-7 line is out of line for Lowry, and if you look at NBA point guards, that's a top five line. Especially when you're running a team as efficiently as Lowry, and defending the other team's best perimeter player every possession down the court. And taking charges without flopping, like a boss. He's essentially the worlds most anonymous almost-elite point guard, and could be considered our generation's poor-man version of Jason Kidd. I look forward to seeing if Morey can leverage what he's got to fill this Rockets team in with pieces that let Lowry break out -- in particular, I'd love to see a team with Lowry, Iggy, Scola, and a lockdown defensive big. That wouldn't be a championship contender, but it would be an incredibly fun team to watch.

Anyway, stop underrating Lowry, it's getting aggravating.

• • •

I'm tired, so no daily riddles today. Goodnight, folks.

Joe Frazier

R.I.P. Smokin' Joe. Joe Frazier died today at the age of 67, leaving behind (of course) three classic Ali bouts and one of the great classics of sportswriting, "Ghosts of Manila" by the late Mark Kram. I reviewed "Ghosts" last year for the precursor to this blog, and I figure it would be good to edit a bit and repost it.

UPDATE: DAMN YOU SIMMONS!!!! Seriously, it was actually Simmons' original post that inspired me to read "Ghosts" and write the original book review. It's just weird we both had the exact same idea to edit or repost our reviews. It's not a coincidence, though: "Ghosts of Manila" is like an obituary to Frazier written before he died.

Mark Kram’s “Ghosts of Manila” recounts the third and final bout between heavyweights Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, in the Phillippines of the 70s so rife with corruption: the infamous "Thrilla in Manila". Kram paints Ali as a gifted and enigmatic boxer, but gives us a dark side as well: Far from the acclaimed cultural icon and civil rights leader that lives in cultural memory, Ali's is a flawed celebrity whose cultural power is by the end up for a sick sociological auction built on exploiting weaknesses in his personality and his standing. Under the influence of relatively insidious Black Muslims, Ali was at the center of a media machine that "played him like a fiddle" in Manila. Frazier, on the other hand, had done everything right: With quiet, unassuming dignity, Frazier would do what he had to in order to win in the ring: a tough, classy, scrappy competitor of the highest caliber. But as virtuous as Frazier had been, Joe found himself outcast because of Ali's defamatory and malicious statements. Joe found himself in foreboding danger because of the shady Black Muslims around Ali. And eventually, when the dust had settled, Joe found himself filled with permanent hatred because of the injustices of his experiences with Ali. Ali and Frazier, in their own ways, killed was was true and dynamic about one another in that fight.

Ali's disturbing existence is exemplified by the epilogue of "Ghosts", where his current (~2000) handlers take a shaking Ali to a quack doctor. It's surreal: Years after the symptoms of his Parkinson’s had appeared, this doctor continues to deny the reality of Ali’s neurological disorder. No, the doctor tells Ali, your problems weren’t caused by having been hit in the head hundreds of thousands of times: You have a “blood problem”. I mean, the whole episode is pathetic, lacking even the comfort of a lesson: It’s doomed to repeat forever for Ali, maybe with different handlers now and again. Throughout this whole epilogue, it’s hard to tell if Ali’s handlers (a constantly changing group of people) are malicious, or merely the hired, fungible managers of a lucrative company whose product just happens to be an individual.* And the episode raises so many disturbing questions: Are these handlers denying Ali's Parkinson's because it helps them control the purse-strings better? Is Ali himself denying the disorder to himself to prevent having to face his mortality? Is there a horrible group-think inherent to these types of “people-managers” that surround celebrities that allow spectacles like “The Decision” to go forward? The answers, Kram seems to imply, are impossible to divine, but always lead us into a sick Gordian knot of tangled lives and every sort of vice. The knot eventually strangles Ali, leaving him with bad handlers and an accommodating void of a personality, not to mention a fighting career extended to the point of parody.

*Striking resemblance to (great young sportswriter) Shane Ryan's portrait of Ric Flair, actually.

More profoundly, the knot strangles Frazier, the central tragedy of “Ghosts,” for getting too close to Ali. For even as Kram masterfully shows us Ali, Frazier’s story is clearly more important to the author. Their bouts leave Frazier with a legitimate fear of and anger at Ali and the Black Muslims. The hardworking, tenacious Frazier stands against Ali and his vicious army of handlers with grace and dignity. Meanwhile, Ali (Kram tells us) excused by silence the Black Muslims’ role in Malcolm X’s assassination. Ali had the unmitigated temerity to place the “Uncle Tom” label on authentic* Frazier and with Ali’s relative media machine, Frazier as "Uncle Tom" stuck. For awhile Frazier surreally symbolized the establishment to a lot of people. Cosmic unfairness, a ghost that won’t leave, a public image of a rivalry that is amazingly false. And it all grows on Frazier: His fear and anger at Ali slowly transmute into unbelievable, paranoid, absolute contempt. For even as he held his own, through sheer will, training and integrity, with the most brilliant, athletic heavyweight of his era, the public nevertheless understood Frazier as the enemy of Ali, a force of injustice standing in the way of Ali’s quest for glory against the American establishment.** By the epilogue with Ali's sad blood work incident, Frazier is just as damaged spiritually, making amazingly sad, bitter comments years after Manila. Granted, more recent reports have found Frazier with more pity for Ali and his devastating neurological condition, but you have to think that's all it is: Sheer sympathy.

*Frazier endured real childhood poverty, while Ali manufactured his childhood poverty out of motivation, delusion, or marketability.
__**Kram expresses his mystification that Hemingway’s favorite boxer was Ali and not the stoic Frazier. But really, Kram is not mystified at all: Ali’s narrative behemoth had, over time, simply obscured all other narratives. So Hemingway couldn't really see the fighters.

Now, Kram often comes off as annoyingly moralistic, the kind of guy that uses a few pages and a flimsy pretext to call all Boomers selfish opportunists, the kind of guy that detects tiny imbalances of power and injustices, and rails angrily against them regardless of any possible justification. And this works to his disadvantage as a chronicler: We have to trust him, because we were not there, but his style is so rhetorical, so absolutely shrill at times, that we end up not wanting to trust him, and so we don’t. Similarly to Joe Menzer’s “Four Corners,” Kram’s failure to gain ideological credibility means that we have to read his history in a slightly non-literal, mythological sense. But it is a history, and what Kram lacks in credibility he more than gains in depth and breadth of understanding: "Ghosts" captures the aesthetics of boxing with great descriptions and quick biographies of its historical figures. Kram is great at finding the tiny facts that are difficult to tease out (such as that Joe Frazier was literally blind in one eye and hid it from the boxing authorities) and amazingly vivid descriptions of the instants and rounds and motions of the sweet science. Boxing in America has long had great writing as part of its heritage, and Kram continues that tradition.

And unlike “Four Corners,” which I can’t defend as a conscious mythology (I seriously doubt a mythology was actually Menzer’s intent, even if the interpretation works), Kram is conscious poet and myth writer in “Manila”. For he is a supreme craftsman: If his footwork (overbearing rhetoric) is often dodgy and clumsy, his hits (turns of phrases, literary interpretations) are still immensely powerful. His poetry yields the troubled Ali and the haunted Frazier. The story of Ali and Frazier would be interesting no matter how he told it, but Kram writes in a rhythmic, off-beat style more at home in a shelf with Steinbeck or Conrad than with Bill Simmons or even Halberstam, and at every moment you have to be on your toes for the deceptively insightful devices and questions that Kram’s sometimes straightforward metaphors and interviews belie. Like a formative Ali, Kram tunes his style, always dodging and weaving, relentlessly seeking ideal craft through the medium of writing, while at all times keeping a little corner to rest the style for awhile just to get at the fallen Frazier without any tricks or steps.

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 player is KEVIN GARNETT, whose name we will put in all caps to ensure he knows we are giving him the proper respect. Don't kill us, KEVIN.

• • •

[014] GARNETT, KEVIN

Kevin Garnett can't read.

Now that I've started with the most important sentence of the piece (and one that I will explain later), I will try to explain my horrendously complicated feelings on Kevin Garnett. I'm not one of those people who thinks that KG at his prime was really equivalent to Duncan at his prime. I know there are some, and I don't think they are altogether lacking in a point, but I simply don't think that you win four titles with KG in Duncan's place. One, maybe. Two, possibly. Four? No way. There's no way KG dominates New Jersey the way Duncan did in 2003 with the battered and old Spurs team that was behind him, or even simply beats the Lakers. I don't think Garnett leads the Spurs back from being down hard in game seven in 2005. I don't think 1999 Kevin Garnett would stand much of a chance at a title, and while I think he'd still win 2007's title, I wholly admit that 2007 was the only title of Tim's 4 where Tim wasn't the first, second, and third options on his team -- he was merely the first*. Regardless. Perhaps he'd have won 2006 as well, or broken through in 2003 or 2004. Perhaps he'd still have 4 titles. But I sincerely doubt it.

* Yes, goddamnit, he deserved that finals MVP. He had more support in 2007 than ever before, but he still wholly deserved that MVP.

No, I'm not particularly conflicted about his basketball talents. Dirty though he may be, KG is a top six power forward in league history. Duncan is first, Malone is second, and KG is in a nice little bubble with Dirk, Barkley, and Kevin McHale. Maybe Elvin Hayes -- I honestly haven't seen much of him, so I don't feel comfortable rating him. The other six, though? They're the class. And KG is among them. Not at the head, as Duncan pretty well laps the crowd, but he's among the stragglers. Not a bad place to be, all things considered. And in all the whining about LeBron's "horrible" Cleveland teams and offhand comparisons to Kevin Garnett's awful Timberwolves teams rather ignores the fact that his Timberwolves teams were roughly 200x as bad as LeBron's Cavs teams.

After Ferry got into town, he got LeBron a great shooting close to all-star point guard who let him run the offense, a close to all-star big man who has and always will be incredibly underrated (Big Z in 2007-2009, until the playoffs), a veteran defensive wizard who still had stuff in the tank (Ben Wallace), the only man in the league fat enough to guard Dwight Howard (Shaquala Williams, clearly), and a competent cast melded around LeBron's skillset, flaws and all, so that LeBron could be the best player he could possibly be. Oh, and he also got the best defensive system coach around to make sure that the team's problems could be hidden. And would always spend on draft picks and refuse to make sure the Cavs had the biggest chance they could have. KG? He had... Sam Cassell. And that was pretty much it. Terrible coaching every year he was there, terrible teammates, an owner that didn't spend a dime to keep KG around, and quite possibly the worst NBA market in the league. Remind me again why people consistently compare the two situations? KG didn't do as well in Minnesota because Minnesota didn't do as well as Cleveland to put a team around him. Not to mention KG in his prime was worse than LeBron in his last few Cleveland years. But that's a whole other turkey.

Regardless, I'm not really conflicted about his basketball talents -- very talented, but I think I have a proper sense of where an all-hustle all-grit defensive savant with a knack for filling the box score belongs. What I'm truly conflicted about is KG as a person. Because there are a lot of times I think about KG and I feel a whole lot of sympathy. And you should too. Did you know that KG lost his closest Timberwolves teammate, best friend, and college idol in a car crash early in his NBA career? Because he did. Malik Sealy, in case you were wondering. There's a relatively well done interview on the subject. KG cries. If you think you know a damn thing about KG and you haven't seen this interview, you're utterly mistaken. And KG, more than most, has a legitimate case for being enormously misunderstood throughout his career. While he has a bully-ish sense of humor, he's a pretty funny guy. No Shaq, no Duncan, but it's a great sense of humor that's fun to watch when he's not being super obnoxious. Like this. Or perhaps this would suit your fancy. Both great examples -- hilarious, classic KG. And the side of KG that has gotten virtually no play in his career in favor of the "KG is literally a crazy person" narrative.

Which brings us to the unfortunate part of this post, and the part where my conflict begins. Ever since KG was traded to Boston, he began a slow descent into proving that pesky narrative right. The playful though intense and colorful KG of Minnesota was replaced by -- frankly -- pure unadulterated lunacy and screaming. When he was with the Wolves, his intensity always struck me as a very real manifestation of a suffering star who really wanted to win, but was simply hamstrung by a terrible situation. And when he first got to Boston, I gave him something of a pass -- he hadn't won a title yet. He'll ramp it down when they win something, and go back to being a KG that a man can root for. Right? Hah. No. I absolutely positively detest the KG I see on the court now. I can't stand Boston games, and it's primarily because of him and Pierce. He has chosen to deal with his body breaking down by transferring what used to be defensive acumen based on athleticism and his crazy lift for "hey, if I stealthily elbow you in the gut, maybe you'll be slower and easier to defend" and general dirty tricks on that end. And, obviously, his intensity has gone from "hah, ringless vet getting at it" to "wow, this guy needs some anger management classes." He has told rookies that wanted his autograph to fuck off. He refuses to pick fights or even react to players who ACTUALLY have the ability to hurt him, and now focuses all his trash talk on undersized bigs and guards -- people who pose no real threat to him.

Which leads me to be about as conflicted as I could possibly be about him, at this point. I remember rooting for KG, back in the day. It was fun. And I wish there was a way to do that now without feeling like I'm rooting for a schoolyard bully. Who can't read. And now that I've used it a second time, I'll explain the line. There was a post on CelticsBlog about two years ago where they were discussing one of Garnett's injuries. It was pretty sad. He was gonna be out for the season. The comments were a bunch of people discussing their issues and things they thought KG needed to do. I don't usually read comment threads, but something compelled me to keep reading. So I did. And there was some joke about how Kevin Garnett couldn't read. I laughed, because it made no sense but seemed like a KG kind of joke. Then I read another. And another. I linked Alex, and we kept scrolling and scrolling, eventually stopping at a count of about 37 comments mentioning in some form or another how Kevin Garnett couldn't read.

Then, just as soon as we finished, I saved the HTML for safekeeping and Alex reloaded to see if there were any more. There weren't! Because, as it turns out, the admins deleted all of the posts and were most likely in the process of deleting them when Alex and I found them. The posts had begun about ten minutes prior, which means for anyone else to have read them, they would've had to have been at the website in that ten minute interval with the two of us. Highly unlikely. So I doubt I'll ever get any kind of confirmation as to what the hell kind of a ridiculous trolling concept that was or where it came from. Which is a shame, because the "Kevin Garnett can't read" meme is probably the most hilarious meme I've ever heard of. Just imagine -- KG at a library, just getting furious because he cannot access any of the information around him. Just, steam billowing out of his head, an insatiable urge to beat a stanchion, etc.

Man, KG is fun to write about.

• • •

And now, the daily riddles.

015: I honestly don't think there's a less entertaining to watch player in the league than this guy.
016: While he is a bust, I think he's gonna get minutes next season. Whenever that may be. He might pull a Kwame surprise.
017: Might be the single most underrated point guard in the NBA, bar none.

Until next time.

Overview:

Ball Don't Lie - written by Kelly Dwyer, Eric Freeman, and Dan Devine - is The Quintessential Work-A-Day Blog™ for the NBA. Featuring news, analysis, and regular features, BDL is the blog you go to when everything else feels stagnant. If you are a young writer and you ever feel discouraged, you can always go back to Behind the Box Score for a look at how it's done and how it should be done from October to June. A few too many gimmicks and some annoying tics, but overall an exceptional blog that goes out of its way to be down-to-earth and personal.

Authors:

Kelly Dwyer - Dwyer is the twee alpha-dog of this blog. Mixing in anecdotes of a life spent in ridiculousness, simplicity, and Midwestern earthiness, Dwyer is the fan's fan, and the writer's writer. My praise can scarcely go higher for his basketball acumen. Imagine: Someone that can actually understand and describe the Triangle, someone that actually knows what Jerry Sloan's offenses are, someone that has seen the successes and failures of every ownership group since 1997. Someone that can give voice to Scottie Pippen's brilliance when Pippen cannot find the words himself, someone that was doing the same thing during the last lockout, someone that has seen it all but is too young and fresh and invigorated to be cynical. Someone that can feel passion for a player without needing to rank them, someone that can empathize with a player but still end up on the other side. Someone that doesn't need a definitive MVP.

I don't know that Kelly Dwyer - outside of his basketball brilliance, of course - is actually a great analyst when it comes to the lockout, contractual issues, and so on. Sometimes it feels like he (if only for political reasons) gives the too-often tabloid hack Adrian Wojnarowski far too much credit. Sometimes Dwyer descends into his own frustrated, Woj-like rants about players that just don't wash. But for the most part, I trust his judgment, he's a great writer, and - Kelly Dwyer really seems like an exceptionally compassionate and empathetic person when it comes to the people he writes for, with, and about.

Eric Freeman - The Free Darko alum is a knowledgeable and thoughtful blogger. He mostly does the daily roundup of news with some analysis thrown in. His analysis - and his knowledge of obscure annals of basketball - is often exhaustive. Which is good, but it usually feels a bit too exhaustive: "On the other hand" should only be used to balance an issue, not to create an opportunity for two or three misdirections and blind alleys. This isn't a Gregg Popovich or Doc Rivers misdirection play and I shouldn't have to check the blog's author field to be sure I'm not being flare-screened by Kevin Garnett. I'd prefer clearer, simpler (though not simplistic) takes and more solid justification for his conclusions, especially when his conclusions rely on...everyone in the audience being exactly as liberal as him. While I may not like his style, and sometimes I wish he would defend his ideas more (because it would improve both ours and his ideas), I can't deny he's creative, he knows his stuff, and he is deserving of our respect as NBA fans. Overall he is a reliable, solid thinker that takes the news and turns it into a solid, readable daily tally of NBA events.

Dan Devine - The comic relief of this blog, Devine is exactly 85% as good as Trey Kerby, and that's a surprisingly high compliment. If Trey Kerby is Tim Duncan, then Dan Devine is Pau Gasol or something - the peak isn't as high and he's not an historical-level game-changer. Most importantly - he's not taking control of the blog anytime soon. But Devine does what Kerby does, extremely well and efficiently. Like Kerby, Devine has a good ear for humor, a good ear for character writing, an irreverent knack for perfect sentences and paragraphs. Also, like most humorists just has a good sense of the human condition. I don't usually read the caption contests much (his main feature), but I rarely set out to read a Devine piece and end up disappointed. I should note that Devine's Juwan Howard dialogues for playoff previews were awful, which is kind of symptomatic of the general "absurdity for absurdity's sake" role of the comic relief blogger.* The dialogues violate fundamental rules of drama and comedy, and are doomed to fail as stand-alone vignettes. That's really his problem: his features are contrived in premise, and it's hard to make a bad premise work as humor. During the season, there's more news to go around and his role feels a bit less contrived. And Devine's occasional lengthy, serious journalistic features are always worth reading. On the whole, solid as hell, no major complaints.

*A role I know all too well. You know, it's a goddamn tragedy. First you're writing good and wholesome humor about basketball. And it's good... for a time. Until your editor comes along and demands more wackiness. Soon every day is a living hell, every second filled with ironic, irreverent takes on the Supersonics moving. [Editor's Note: Alex is taking a personal day. In the meantime, Alex wants you to guess: Which otherwise quiet rotation guard for the Blazers actually sounds __exactly like Bill Simmons if you get to know him?___ Details after the jump. Which is where you are, already. Whoops._]

News:

Excellent news coverage and they're good at summarizing news sections from much longer, more exhaustive sites. Their links posts (daily during the season; almost nonexistent during the lockout) are superb. Having managed biweekly links posts for several months on the precursor to this blog, I know it's a bit more stressful and time-consuming than it seems (after all, you have to read far more than 10 sports articles if you want to link 10).

Features:

As you may have...Devined... from my description of Dan, the features are kind of hit-and-miss. I really love the in-season chat rooms. Usually run by Dwyer, KD answers any and all questions that people are wondering about - while it isn't exactly personal, KD gets to every question posted in the first 20 minutes, and has funny, intelligent answers. Behind the Box Score is Dwyer's signature feature, and it's the feature that takes BDL from a good roundup and analysis blog to...a fun, exhaustive experience that contextualizes almost all the games. Get this: KD writes a little something about every game that happened the night before, whether it's a feature Sunday or Thursday, or a jam-packed, 15 game Wednesday, (though he doesn't do it 7 days a week, it's still impressive). Usually in this feature KD gives us a few gems from his years of watching and covering such a large percentage of games over the years. And KD gives us various spot special features during content-poor months (like positional rankings: Who are the top 15 SFs entering this season?). Freeman's "What They're Saying On Twitter" feature and Devine's Caption Contest are the definition of blog filler, and I usually skim or skip them. This is a blog surprisingly vulnerable to the lockout, and the filler is what is left as a draw to BDL, along with the same 5 stories a day that every other basketball newsblog is covering, with a slightly different take.. You'd think Dwyer's great body of experience could be used to really take us into some vintage basketball, but I don't know that that's justified by the blog format or its administrators at Yahoo! Unfortunate, but them's the breaks of the game.

Overall this is a great blog when the season is active, one of the best, and arguably the most essential.

Thanks for reading.

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 Derrick Favors, Andrew Bynum, and Jrue Holiday.

• • •

[011] Favors, Derrick

I see a lot of promise in Favors' game. He was a decent defender as a rookie -- not a major plus defender like Ekpe Udoh or Greg Monroe, but a solid defensive player for a rook. He clearly worked hard on that end. In general, his game is fun to watch for someone like me -- it's generally predicated on hard work, even if he doesn't always know exactly what he should be doing. He's always bodying up and trying to establish position underneath the basket, working really hard to get himself in position. It doesn't tend to lead to much of anything, as Devin Harris doesn't really like setting him up (for whatever reason), but his effort at trying to get himself open even in the face of rarely getting the ball is nice. He sets killer picks, too, which is always a great sign for a young player.

And don't beat around the bush -- Favors is YOUNG. He was, in fact, the youngest player in the NBA last year, and has the distinction of being one of only two players currently in the NBA born in 1991. Which is pretty absurd, all things considered. His statistics aren't great, and honestly, watching him you tend to see why -- he fouls out far too soon, doesn't seem to have a great grasp on how to deal with tough defense, and gets somewhat discouraged when he has a bad game. But he's hyper athletic, very talented, and has shown promising signs of someday being a major player for a contender. He has games where you wonder why he's in the NBA at all, then has games like the late season Jazz win against the Lakers last year where he defended Pau very well and showed some signs of someday being a go-to big in the league. As I said, lots of promise.

The one issue I have with him, really, is that he came from an absolutely horrible college coach that developed him poorly and it's essentially going to be up to Ty Corbin to make sure he turns out alright. "Promise" cases don't always turn out happily and there's no particular reason to think Favors is going to make it -- his rookie stats are, again, really terrible. And while I see promise, I could also see him simply remaining one of those Ian Maihinmi-type players who seem to exist solely to be the big men on the recieving end of the star calls that Kobe, Wade, and LeBron get so often. And, again -- Ty Corbin? Color me not-so-confident. I do hope he turns out well, though. As I said before -- hard worker, seems like a good kid. Best case scenario is a poor man's Kevin Garnett. That's not a bad best case at all. It's up to him to make sure it happens, I suppose.

• • •

[012] Bynum, Andrew

I really, really do not like Andrew Bynum. Emphatically so. This isn't because his game is overrated -- it may actually be underrated. I completely agree with the Laker fans who insist that Bynum would be a top three center in the league if he stays healthy. I agree that he often shows more hustle and grit than anyone on the Lakers, and I agree he has that elusive will to win that makes him valuable for a contender. If you ever hear from a Laker fan that there were only two players that even gave a crap in a Laker game, chances are pretty high that Bynum was one of them. And he's not lacking in dominant performances -- see his 42-15 game, or any number of the times he's gotten high 20s in points with high teens in rebounds on 60-70% shooting. When Bynum is on, there are few centers in the league who can match him on offense, or even contain him. And his defense? Extremely good. Never will be league-best -- not while Bogut and Dwight are around -- but Bynum is a major plus defender and a great guy to have in your corner. The Lakers, you may remember, rolled to a 17-1 record straight after the All-Star break -- the primary reason for their insane play was Bynum, whose defense was about as good as it could reasonably be expected to ever be. Shades of Dikembe Mutombo, even.

So, I basically just described a player I should like quite a bit. His style is a nice combination of everything I like watching, in a very generalized sense. Why don't I? Pretty simple. He's an arrogant S.O.B. who thinks his game is essentially perfect as is (given that he's refused repeated offers from Kareem of personal tutoring dozens of times). He spends such an absurd amount of time injured that the Laker fan diatribes about how great he is are generally undermined and worthless. Most of all? Great defender, sure, but he's also an immature and dirty player. The completely terrible bush league hit on J.J. Barea at the end of the Mavs sweep that he felt wasn't all that big of a deal wasn't the only example. Check this hit on Beasley, if you want to see dirty. Perhaps this hit on Gerald Wallace is more to your taste? Keep in mind that these are all from the last few months of this season. It's starting to become a somewhat concerning pattern. And while I'm certainly among those who think that the league might have gotten a bit too soft in its reaction to the 80s and 90s, I don't particularly want to see a league where players are starting Kermit Washington-style deckings on a nightly basis.

Andrew Bynum, for better or for worse (and in my view, strongly worse), is the highest profile player with any chance of doing that. More than KG, who shirks from actual bodily harm. More than Charlie Villanueva, who probably just needs to go to therapy. Like, a lot. Andrew Bynum has the requisite combination of rage, heft, and immaturity to physically harm another player -- on purpose. I don't like that. I root for the Cleveland Indians, after all -- I'm more than familiar with the story of Ray Chapman's untimely death at the hands of Carl Mays. If there's any NBA player who fits the dossier of a modern day Mays, it'd probably be Bynum with his inability to take responsibility for his actions and his rampant disregard for the amount of damage he could do to another player. I'd like to think that won't happen, though. I hope.

Anyhow. One of my Laker fan friends, Cesar, started a religion. The Disciples of Bynum-Jesus, I think they're called -- a reference to the now-defunct demo of NBA Elite 2k11 where Bynum "stands in the middle of the court like Jesus or something" due to a hilarious clipping error. For Cesar's Bynum-Bible, I contributed a Psalm. I guess I'll end this capsule with it?

53 They met at the foot of a great mountain, Jesus and Phil
54 " I need to go smoke some peyote, have fun with mike brown"
55 And the Bynum Jesus stared sadly into the sunset as Phil vanished
56 To calm his nerves, he punched a Puerto Rican midget
57 And it was good

• • •

[013] Holiday, Jrue

Man, I really like Jrue. I'm no big UCLA guy, but I can't deny that Howland does a pretty good job preparing his boys for the NBA. Jrue was incredibly underrated his rookie year, due to the glut of flashy and quality point guards that were around his freshman year. Steph Curry, Brandon Jennings, Tyreke Evans, etc. For my money, he's always been a better defensive point than any of them -- and while point guard defense isn't a humongously valuable asset due to the minor role they play in a team's defensive structure, having a point guard who can switch out and defend the better of the opposing team's two guards is an underrated asset to having a solid defender as your floor general. As for offense, while I think he was clearly worse than all three of those guys his freshman year on that end of the floor, he's recouped his sophomore year and added a few more moves and became a better pick and roll passer.

Jrue couldn't really be more dissimilar to Brandon Jennings in style and general swag, but as a scorer, their skillsets are actually extremely comparable. Both of them have decent (not great, but decent) outside shots. Jennings takes a few more shots, but their games both fall apart at the rim, where neither of them have very advanced finishing talent. Decent shooters, both, but poor at drawing contact -- both of them incidentally have the strong potential to improve on that front, much like Iverson and Rose did later in their careers. They're both very good floor generals, and they run their teams well. The Sixers have more offensive options than the Bucks (depressing, but true) and Jrue gives the ball up more than Brandon does because of that, but with the exception of the number of shots they feel they need to take, there's not much differentiating the two.

Except age, which is really the avenue where Jrue's most underrated -- like Favors above, Jrue is incredibly young. He was born in 1990, in fact, and was the first player to play a game in the NBA born in the 1990s. He's already a decent floor general, and the potential to improve from his current state (good point guard who could definitely start for a contender) to a key franchise guard is clearly there. Long story short, there's a lot of potential with Jrue. And unlike Favors, he's already made good on a lot of it, enough so that if he never improves he'll still be a very valuable, worthy player in the league. Not too bad for a guy who played his first crunch time minutes in a playoff win months before his 21st birthday.

• • •

Here's your daily riddle. Only one player tomorrow, but he's a long one.

014: AUUAAAAAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Until next time.

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

• • •

INTRODUCING... THE CHARLOTTE BOBCATS!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ENDTRODUCING... THE END OF THIS POST!

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

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

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

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 Danny Granger, J.R. Smith, and Nate Robinson.

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[008] Granger, Danny

Danny Granger, the starting small forward and resident low-tier star of the Indiana Pacers. If I'm honest, Granger is pretty frustrating. He goes from nights where he looks like a legit second option for a championship contender to nights where he looks like he barely belongs in the NBA -- he's a high variance player, as one would say. If you catch the wrong/right games, you'd be perfectly justified in thinking he's anything from a D-League washout to a superstar.

Regardless of his variance, his game is pretty damn slick. A few year's back, before he had a few nasty little injuries, he more often than not looked like a future superstar. Impossibly smooth midrange J, more than passable defense, and a ton of swagger that nobody notices because he plays on an awful team. His defense is rather underrated even considering the rest of his gifts -- outside of Iggy, he's one of the better post defenders among wings in the league, and he's decent on help defense (if a bit lazy on his man on the perimeter). Now, though, he's widely considered a middling-tier option that the Pacers actually shopped at the deadline, trying to trade him for little more than picks and young talent.What happened? Honestly, if there was ever a case of a coach single-handedly producing major harm to a very good player's career, this is probably it. Granger came into the 2010 season dealing with nagging injuries -- instead of letting him rest and get into game shape gradually, O'Brien threw him in and played him roughly 40 minutes per game until he predictably tore his plantar fascia. Playing injured is never a good idea.

He hasn't been consistently dominant since, his lift that was once one of his primiere attributes is essentially evaporated, and it's sort of up in the air whether he's ever going to fully heal from his nagging leg injuries. Which is a shame, because he's actually very fun to watch when he's got it going. He has a smoother jumpshot than virtually anyone in the league, and while he's not a ballhandling wing like LeBron or Iggy, he's got enough hops to rebound passably and his defense is very solid. Which all overlooks the fact that he's also a ridiculously nice guy. Granger was the first NBA player to even consider doing anything for the arena workers who are all losing jobs to the lockout -- specifically, he proposed taking all the Conesco Fieldhouse workers out to dinner, and was the first player to suggest playing regular season games with semi-full rosters in abandoned arenas for charity. It isn't mentioned in that article, but he's also throwing a raffle to raise money for the laid off Conesco Fieldhouse workers. Some serious player-of-the-people stuff, that. By all accounts he's a stand-up guy, and I really do hope he recovers from his injury woes. The NBA would be better with him in superstar form, I think.

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[009] Smith, J.R.

My feelings about J.R. Smith are essentially schizophrenic, and I don't think I'm alone on this. Half the time I watch him, I'm utterly and completely enthralled. The other half I simply can't stop cringing. I don't really think he has a fraction of a chance of ever putting it together at this point. He's got arguably the greatest athletic gifts in the league, and a boatload of talent -- when J.R. is on, the sorts of absurd pocket passes he'll complete and the crazy shots he'll make are matched only by the league's superstars. When J.R. is off, there's not a single player in the league who can be more harmful to their team -- he will make the single most horrible decisions of any player in the league, he'll gun the ball every time he touches it no matter his coverage and no matter how much of a zone he's in, and he'll up his showboating to compensate for his otherwise hemorrhaging game whenever he gets the slightest change.

On defense, he's about what you'd expect for a player as prone to massive fluctuations in his production as J.R. -- incredibly up and down. When on, he can make these occasional miracle defensive plays where he does something absolutely crazy and groundbreaking only to immediately forget how he did that and immediately make the most boneheaded defensive plays you can imagine a player making. It can actually be hilarious to watch. Once, I remember, he was lazily batting at the ball while guarding someone, then perfectly timed his jump to elbow-tapped the players' pass, grab it in the other hand, and start furiously driving across the court. He literally looked surprised the entire fast break. I don't remember the outcome of the dunk, though I do remember he gave up easy open shots as he tried in vain to replicate the feat for the next few possessions. As for the finisher on the fast break? I don't remember if he made the dunk or not, but it would be very J.R. Smith of him to completely shank the dunk after trying to do some ridiculous 720 windmill two handed jam or something.

Long story short, if real life was NBA Jam, J.R. would be a superstar. But it's not, and he's terrible. Next.

• • •

[010] Robinson, Nate

Oh, Nate. The super-short chucking point guard for the Oklahoma City Thunder. After Nate got traded from the Celtics to the Thunder, I remember reading someone on CelticsBlog, I think, writing a semi-obit to Nate's "career" with the Celtics. I can't remember exactly what he said, but the gist was basically that Nate's real value to a team is in his attitude. He treats every minute he spends in the game like the last minutes of a blowout win, for better or for worse. Does that make him entertaining? Yes. Most of the time. Does that make him a good player? Not particularly -- I get the sense that he spent too long with the rudderless sideshow that was the Isiah Knicks in the mid 2000s, as he has the same devil-may-care attitude towards the outcome on the court that comes with growing as a player on a team as awful as those Knicks teams. It often seems like Nate mostly just worries himself with making sure that he's entertaining doing whatever he does. Which, given how limited his skillset is, may not be the worst thing in the world.

He has boundless energy and confidence and will take shots without setting up his teammates, chuck it as though he's trying to break a record, and mug the crowd every minute he's out there. You don't win too many games because of Nate Robinson, but you win many in spite of him, and every once in a while he'll have a night where he's so on you feel like he could actually be a starting quality guard someday. (Hint: NO.) But those nights combined with Nate's general demeanor can paint fans a decent picture of how to really root for Nate. You can get over his chucking, his inability to play any defense whatsoever, his boneheaded moments. That's all rather tertiary. Because frankly, the amount of entertainment you get at watching someone as good-natured and fan-friendly as Robinson on your favorite team is probably worth the severe lack of polish and his bonehead transgressions.

His dunk contest wins may have been travesty (hint: 'may have been' my ass, they were a travesty then and they're a travesty now) but he's a nice guy whose energy is infectious. He's the guy that makes blowouts fun, not because he's bad, but because he's just so goddamn excited about every stupid little thing that happens. Yes, he's a poor basketball player who isn't even replacement level. No, I don't care. I'm still going to be amused watching him do his thing, and so will most fans of his teams. Off the court, he's similarly amusing -- check out his lockout video blog where he does menial tasks as he tries to while away his time until the lockout finally ends. Or check out the police reports where he got charged with public urinatio--wait, what? Nate, seriously? I just spent like three paragraphs painting a positive picture of a terrible player. Nate, I am disappointed. Not because I care that you urinated somewhere. Mostly just because I'm not even sure how I was supposed to respond to that being the first news article that came up when I was looking for what you've been up to recently.

Goodbye, Nate Robinson. Please don't urinate on my car.

• • •

I originally had riddles at the end of each set about the next few, for people who wanted to guess who the random number generator had designated would come next. Might as well bring that back. Today's riddles for your next three players:

011: Decent rookie big man. Promising future, though like Durant, hasn't shown us much yet.
012: Suffers daily through a seething hatred for people smaller than him. Probably.
013: I'm very up on his game. A super-young point guard with an absurd amount of upside.

Until next time.