Welcome to Path to a Trilogy, where we re-examine recent NBA events that have led to the Cavaliers and Warriors appearing in three straight NBA Finals. This series will be composed of several entries and will continue into the 2017 NBA Finals if necessary. Happenings of the past are written in the present tense, as they happened, to create a more vivid portrait of the NBA landscape as it was at the time the events took place.
In Chapter II, we examine the initial struggles of the Cleveland Cavaliers as they adapt to life with LeBron James, Kevin Love, and new head coach David Blatt. We also take a look at the dominance of the Golden State Warriors under their first-year head coach, Steve Kerr. Chapter I of Path to a Trilogy can be found here.
Without further ado, this is Chapter II of Path to a Trilogy. Hope you enjoy.
Heading into the 2014-15 NBA season, much is made of the Cleveland Cavaliers and their new “Big Three” of Kevin Love, Kyrie Irving, and, of course, native son and local hero LeBron James. Many are also curious about the adaptability of head coach David Blatt, who is coming off leading Maccabi Tel Aviv to a shocking EuroLeague title; one NBA general manager tells ESPN.com that Maccabi was “outgunned at every position except coach.” However, he is about to embark on the toughest challenge of his entire coaching career: jumping to the NBA and coaching arguably the most talented roster in the league. Also, it is fair to wonder if he can cast his ego aside and work with James, one of the more famously strong-willed stars in sports.
Early on, the new-look Cavaliers struggle with their new way of being as Blatt tries to institute his well-renowned Princeton offense. In the first game of the season, which quickly turns into James’ own personal homecoming, Cleveland loses 95-90 to the New York Knicks; New York goes on to win just 17 games that season. The Cavaliers, and particularly their prized acquisitions, aren’t on the same page, and as it’s later disclosed, aren’t fully healthy, either. James misses eight games between December 30 and January 11 with back and knee injuries, and his team goes just 1-7 in that span, a period that included losses to non-playoff teams such as the Hornets, 76ers, and Kings. Also included in that time frame is a 112-94 loss to the Golden State Warriors on January 9. Part of the problem is that the Cavs are playing under a microscope many of their players are unaccustomed to; after all, Irving and Love, to this point, have never appeared in a playoff game.
Cleveland craters in James’ first game back from injury, as a 107-100 loss to the Phoenix Suns drops them to 19-20 on January 13. This game truly represents rock bottom for the Cavaliers; while James pours in 33 points in nearly 37 minutes, Love and Irving contribute just eighteen points while collaborating to shoot a combined 7-for-25 (28%). After this, though, Blatt’s team pulls it together, winning twelve games in a row in a three-week span from January 15 to February 5; the final win of this run is an impressive 105-94 home victory over the Los Angeles Clippers in a nationally televised Thursday night game on TNT. The streak ends the next night with a loss to James’ old playoff nemesis, the Indiana Pacers. Love has quite possibly the worst game of his season, scoring just five points and making two of his eight shots from the field.
On February 7, the night after that game and the night before another nationally-televised game against the Los Angeles Lakers, James takes to Twitter and sends out this message, which many interpret to be a thinly-veiled shot at the struggling Love:
Stop trying to find a way to FIT-OUT and just FIT-IN. Be apart of something special! Just my thoughts
While the Cavaliers destroy the ailing and undermanned Lakers the next day, virtually all of the discussion is about James’ tweet. Sure enough, after the win, James seemingly confirms that his tweet was directed in the general direction of the former Timberwolves star; Love had previously spoken about “fitting out” in the preseason. Still, even with the drama and social media finger-pointing, the Cavaliers are playing their best basketball of the season and continue to do so for the rest of the year. One of their best wins of the season is a 110-99 home win over the Warriors on February 26. The team loses just eight games over the course of the season’s final two months to finish the year at 53-29 and in second place in the Eastern Conference.
Meanwhile, the Golden State Warriors do not have nearly this much drama or adversity, as they win 21 of their first 23 games and never look back. The team completes an outstanding season, the first for newly-minted coach Steve Kerr, at 67-15 and at the top of the Western Conference. The Warriors’ consistency is so impressive that they never lose more than two games in a row at any point in the regular season. Players such as Steph Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Harrison Barnes all have, to this point, the best seasons of their career. Curry’s year stands out in particular, as he emerges as a potential candidate for Most Valuable Player; the award becomes a two-horse race between Curry and Rockets guard James Harden. Curry also breaks his own record for three-pointers made in a season with 286 in 80 games. He emerges as one of the most popular players in the NBA, and some even argue that he has supplanted James as the face of a league awash in young stars.
Slowly but surely, the Warriors capture the public’s imagination with their exciting and unselfish style of play; Kerr has instituted a system that allows the Dubs to rank first in the NBA in three-point shooting percentage and assists. The Warriors are far and away the league’s best team in the regular season; the second-best team by record, the Atlanta Hawks, win 60 games but are viewed as overachievers who have defied odds and, frankly, the law of averages for a full season. The Warriors, on the other hand, are believed to be every bit as good as their 67 wins would suggest.
The Golden State Warriors are the West’s best team in the 2014-15 regular season. And while they have endured a tumultuous regular season, the Cleveland Cavaliers are the favorites heading into the Playoffs to come out of the East. The Cavaliers and Warriors are on a collision course to meet in the NBA Finals, but can injuries or other teams block the impact before it occurs?
Welcome to Path to a Trilogy, where we re-examine recent NBA events that have led to the Cavaliers and Warriors appearing in three straight NBA Finals. This series will be composed of several entries and will continue into the 2017 NBA Finals if necessary. Happenings of the past are written in the present tense, as they happened, to create a more vivid portrait of the NBA landscape as it was at the time these events took place.
In Chapter I, we take a closer look at the summer of 2014, one that saw Cleveland and Golden State change head coaches after disappointing seasons the year before. The biggest move of the summer, though, did not take place on the bench but rather in free agency.
Here is Chapter I of Path to a Trilogy. Hope you enjoy.
The date is May 3, 2014. The Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers are set to face off in Game 7 of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
This first Saturday in May is the epilogue to one of the craziest weeks in the history of the NBA. Five of the eight first-round series go the distance in these playoffs, but that isn’t the main story in the league at this time. The real headline-grabber in league affairs is newly-minted commissioner Adam Silver’s lifetime ban of Clippers owner Donald Sterling, who had been revealed by a TMZ-obtained audiotape on April 25 to have made racist and incendiary remarks to a mistress by the name of V. Stiviano. Sterling was upset at Stiviano for posing for a picture with Lakers legend and African-American Magic Johnson; the conversation was believed to have been recorded in September of the previous year.
The Clippers and Warriors play in Game 4 of their series on April 27, just two days after the tape was published on TMZ’s website. The Clippers wear their warmup uniforms inside-out to avoid association with their owner and make the statement that they play for themselves and not an organization run by an apparent racist. Both teams wear black armbands in solidarity and unity against the statements made by Sterling. However, a clearly distracted Los Angeles squad gets pummeled, 118-97.
Two days later, Commissioner Silver holds a press conference at the league’s New York City offices and announces in an unprecedented move that Sterling has been banned for life from the NBA, effective immediately. The move is praised by many both inside and outside the league, but some wonder whether or not the league overstepped its bounds in punishing Sterling after the release of a privately-recorded conversation. Teams such as the Clippers and the Kevin Durant-led Thunder, which had floated the idea of boycotting games, continue on with the playoffs as usual. The Clippers and Warriors split the next two games, leading to a deciding Game 7 in Los Angeles on the first Saturday in May.
The game is competitive throughout, but Golden State holds a 64-56 lead at halftime. The Clippers come back in the second half and outscore the Warriors 70-57 in the second half to win the game by five. A balanced Clipper offense sees four players (Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, Jamal Crawford, J.J. Redick) score 20 points or more. Steph Curry leads the Warriors with 33 points while Draymond Green chips in another 24. A Golden State team that had reached the second round of the NBA Playoffs the year before is clearly not quite ready to contend for an NBA championship, even with one of the most talented rosters in the league and one of the best jump-shooting backcourts in NBA history.
So, for those reasons and also for fostering a dysfunctional atmosphere with the organization, the Warriors’ front office decides to move on from head coach Mark Jackson. Jackson, who had reached the playoffs in two of his three seasons at the helm of the Warriors, is, from the outside, respected for his ability to turn the organization around and turn Curry and shooting guard Klay Thompson into two of the best players at their positions in the league. However, this nugget from ESPN’s Zach Lowe, which speaks about Warriors center Festus Ezeli, would suggest otherwise:
When Ezeli was injured last season, Jackson and his staff told the healthy players that Ezeli was cheering against them — so that he would look good, according to several team sources. Players confronted Ezeli in a meeting, and he wept at the accusation — which he denied.
That series of events, as well as several others, likely led to the demise of Jackson as an NBA head coach. The Warriors are said to prioritize two candidates in their search for a new coach: former Heat and Magic head coach Stan Van Gundy and TNT analyst Steve Kerr, who also worked as general manager of the Phoenix Suns from 2007-2010. Their search quickly zeroes in on Kerr, who has no coaching experience before being pursued by the team in the offseason. There’s one problem: the New York Knicks are also interested in Kerr for their head coaching vacancy. In order to ensure that Kerr, who maintained relationships with Warriors owner Joe Lacob and president Rick Welts, both colleagues of his from his time in Phoenix, the front office offers him a 5-year, $25 million contract, which he accepts on May 15. It is later reported that the Knicks lost out on Kerr because owner James Dolan only offered him three years and $13 million. Another purported influence on Kerr’s decision to spurn the Knicks and head west? Marv Albert. Yes.
The Warriors have a rather quiet summer, bringing in Nets guard Shaun Livingston as their only major player acquisition. But how were things in Cleveland, Ohio, at the same time this was happening?
Answer: very different. A team that used the number one overall pick on relatively-unknown UNLV product Anthony Bennett in the 2013 draft is expected to take a step toward contention behind point guard Kyrie Irving and second-time Cavalier head coach Mike Brown. Instead, the 2013-14 Cavs do the exact opposite, going 33-49 and firing Brown after just one season in his second stint as head coach. 14 different players start a game for an injury-riddled team that starts the season 4-12 and never gets within four games of .500 after December 13. Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert fires Brown on May 12. In a critical move, though, Gilbert retains embattled general manager David Griffin, who was heavily criticized for drafting Bennett, who would average just four points and three rebounds per game in what would be his only season with Cleveland.
The Cavaliers would need to fill their coaching vacancy after one of the more disappointing seasons in franchise history. They do receive good news on May 19, as the franchise surprisingly wins the NBA Draft Lottery for a second straight season. They do so behind good luck charm Nick Gilbert; the son of the Cavs’ owner represents the team at the Lottery and has a condition called neurofibromatosis, which permits tumors to form in his brain and other parts of his nervous system. Nick has represented the Cavaliers at the Draft Lottery every year since 2011, including a stretch in which the franchise gets the number one pick in three of four drafts (2011, 2013, 2014). With the top pick, the organization closes in on Kansas’ Andrew Wiggins, who is regarded much more positively in league circles than the aforementioned Bennett. With that decision just about predetermined, the team focuses on its head coaching search. As it turns out, they take an unconventional route that is similar to the Warriors’.
Cleveland’s head coaching search is far more methodical than Golden State’s, and it essentially boils down to three candidates: Clippers Associate Head Coach Alvin Gentry, Clippers assistant coach Tyronn Lue, and ex-Maccabi Tel Aviv coach David Blatt. Ultimately, Blatt wins the job, beating out Lue and Gentry. Gentry takes an offer to become the top assistant on Kerr’s bench in Oakland, a position that was offered to Blatt before he took the job in Cleveland. In a strange caveat, Lue, the runner-up in the Cavaliers’ coaching search, is hired by that same organization as Blatt’s top assistant. His contract of four years and $6.5 million makes him, at the time, the highest-paid assistant coach in NBA history.
Come draft time, Griffin and the Cavs front office surprise no one and take Wiggins with the top pick. The team’s fans and the organization are invigorated with the possibility of pairing Irving and Wiggins, two explosive playmakers who could make an immediate impact on the franchise’s recent misfortune. But the Cavaliers are not necessarily thinking about that in their selection of Wiggins.
They’re thinking about luring LeBron James, the best player in the league, back to his home state to play in Cleveland.
James played for the Cavaliers from 2003-2010 and grew up in Akron, Ohio, a mere 45 minutes away from downtown Cleveland. Under his leadership, the team went to the NBA Finals in 2007 but was swept by the San Antonio Spurs. LeBron never again reached the Finals in his first stint with the Cavaliers, and after a disheartening second-round exit in the 2010 NBA Playoffs, the superstar became a free agent. James had narrowed down his free agency decision to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Miami Heat, and decided to announce his future in a 75-minute ESPN special titled “The Decision”. He chooses Miami over Cleveland, leading Cavalier fans to riot and burn his jersey in the streets of the city and surrounding suburbs. Gilbert writes a letter, engraved in Comic Sans font, on the Cavaliers’ website. The letter is written and published with very little thought; Gilbert accuses James of “deserting” Northeast Ohio in going to Miami and calls the television special, which raised $2.5 million for Boys and Girls Clubs of America, “narcissistic” and “self-promotional”. This, though, is the climax of the letter, as well as its least-thought-out statement:
You simply don’t deserve this kind of cowardly betrayal.
You have given so much and deserve so much more.
In the meantime, I want to make one statement to you tonight:
“I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER ‘KING’ WINS ONE”
You can take it to the bank.
James wins titles with the Miami Heat in 2012 and 2013 and also appears in the NBA Finals every year from 2011-2014. The Cavaliers go 96-216 in the same time span. Essentially, both sides reject the notion of burning bridges in favor of the thought of napalming them. James stuns and disappoints his home state while Gilbert angrily immolates James mere hours after he leaves and sets the franchise up for massive failure without him.
But after all that, the Cavaliers feel they have a legitimate chance to pry the best player in the game away from South Beach. More importantly, they have the cap space to offer him a short-term contract that would offer him more money than the league’s max with increased leverage for James as the salary cap is expected to increase in the next couple of seasons. This leverage would be used not to leave Cleveland again, but rather to squeeze more money out of a front office that would have more room to work with under an expanding salary cap. The hypothetical had been foreseen by the Cleveland organization and became a legitimate possibility to the rest of the public with just one tweet:
Cleveland has replaced Miami as my frontrunner to land LeBron James…
The choice is simple for The King: stay with an aging cast of characters, including the injury-plagued Dwyane Wade and somewhat inconsistent Chris Bosh, or join a younger group in Cleveland with Irving and Wiggins (or another superstar) with a better chance to compete in the long run.
James also happens to be hosting a basketball clinic the same week he is to decide his NBA future, and while Broussard reports that Cleveland is his favorite, Miami still seems to make more sense; after all, James was not exactly given a hero’s sendoff upon leaving Cleveland and many thought that the wounds cultivated in “The Decision” had not yet healed in the span of four short years.
Ultimately, on July 11, 2014, five days after Broussard’s initial report, James put the speculation to rest and announced where he would be spending the next years of his life and possibly the final years of his NBA career:
In Northeast Ohio, nothing is given. Everything is earned. You work for what you have.
I’m ready to accept the challenge. I’m coming home.
With James suddenly back in the fold and the Cavaliers suddenly thrust into the title hunt, the team looks at other ways to improve their team. With three number one picks on the roster (Irving, Bennett, Wiggins), the team has plenty of chips to use to acquire a star via a trade. Sure enough, the front office, which had given Irving a max extension ten days before James returned, closes in on Kevin Love, the Minnesota Timberwolves star power forward who has the ability to opt out of his contract in the summer of 2015. The teams work on a trade until Minnesota agrees to send Love to Cleveland in exchange for Wiggins and Bennett. Additionally, a third team, the Philadelphia 76ers, agrees to send Thaddeus Young and a trade exception to the Timberwolves.
With the trade finalized, the Cleveland Cavaliers have their “Big Three” and a serious chance at ending the 50-year championship drought for the city of Cleveland. The Golden State Warriors have a new head coach and new philosophies, but not much seems to have changed in Oakland. Will the changes in both organizations be enough to lead them into contention for an NBA championship?
On May 3, 2013, the current state of the Boston Celtics would have seemed unimaginable to even the team’s most ardent fans.
That night, the Celtics lost Game 6 of their first-round series against the New York Knicks and were eliminated from the playoffs. Two-thirds of Boston’s so-called “Big Three” (Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett) were still with the organization while the other member (Ray Allen) had left before the start of the season to join the Miami Heat. Pierce was under contract for one more year while Garnett was locked up for another two; however, with the team’s decline from championship contender to fringe playoff team, Celtics’ GM and President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge would have a decision to make: ride out the length of their contracts or deal them to a team crazy enough to give up key assets for their services. At the same time, the front office needed to figure out what to do with coach Doc Rivers, who would have been less than willing to endure a rebuild and wanted more organizational influence; Boston later responded by dealing Rivers to the Los Angeles Clippers for a 2015 protected first round pick. Still, the situation remained with Pierce and Garnett.
As it turns out, the Brooklyn Nets were willing to help out the Celtics with their dilemma.
On June 28 of that year, the Nets acquired Pierce, Garnett, and Jason Terry in exchange for several role players, the most notable of whom being Kris Humphries and Gerald Wallace. Here’s the kicker: the Nets also sent their first-round picks for 2014, 2016, and 2018 to Boston, as well as the right to swap picks this year, something the Celtics are going to take advantage of in the draft lottery. However, both sides were happy: the Celtics got a truckload of draft picks while the Nets got three additional pieces they thought could help them win a championship; Nets owner Mikhail Prokhorov proclaimed shortly after the trade that “the basketball gods smiled on the Nets”. Little did he know just how wrong he would be; Pierce and Garnett played just one season together in Brooklyn before the former signed with the Wizards in the summer of 2014 and the latter was traded to the Minnesota Timberwolves at the 2015 trade deadline. Terry left the Nets and signed with the Rockets the next year.
The C’s predictably struggled in the 2013-14 season, winning just 25 games under first-time NBA head coach Brad Stevens. With just 23 games gone by in the next season and with the team sitting at 9-14, Ainge decided to trade star point guard Rajon Rondo to the Dallas Mavericks for three players, including Jae Crowder. Crowder is currently a significant contributor to the Celtics’ success, as he has started all of the team’s playoff games in the last two seasons. At the time, the deal looked like a classic sell move from a team looking to slowly work back towards contention. In hindsight, it looks like a steal for Boston; Rondo played just 46 games in a Maverick uniform before signing with the Kings after the end of the season.
The move, though, didn’t pay off right away: the Celtics slumped to a 20-31 mark at the All-Star break and did not appear to be in playoff contention heading into the trade deadline. One team that was looking at self-improvement for a playoff push was the Phoenix Suns; the Suns had already dealt guard Goran Dragic to the Miami Heat after he demanded a trade because of disagreements with the front office and then-head coach Jeff Hornacek. The Dragic deal necessitated the team’s acquisition of Bucks shooting guard Brandon Knight. With Knight’s acquisition, Phoenix and general manager Ryan McDonough looked to remedy the team’s crowded backcourt situation, as the Suns had played with three starting-caliber guards in the rotation for the first half of the year. That led the organization to ship Isaiah Thomas to Boston in a three-team deal that spawned the Suns….. Marcus Thornton and Boston’s 2016 first round draft pick. Whoops.
The rest is more or less history; the Celtics went 20-11 to close out that season and went to the playoffs where they were quickly dispatched by the Cleveland Cavaliers in four games. You may remember that series for this play but not much else. Ainge laid low over the summer of 2015 and over the remainder of the next season, as Boston’s most significant transaction was acquiring forward Amir Johnson in free agency. The Celtics continued to improve, and Thomas took over as the team’s starting point guard and undisputed face of the franchise. While the C’s lost in six games to the Atlanta Hawks in the first round of the 2016 playoffs, the team was clearly ahead of schedule in their rebuilding process.
Last summer, Ainge and the Celtics front office made their biggest splash yet, signing star center Al Horford to a four-year, $113 million contract; Horford was part of the Atlanta team that defeated Boston the year prior. With Horford in the fold and the rest of the core together for another year, the Celtics took another leap, finishing with 53 wins and, in a down year for the Eastern Conference, the number one seed in the playoffs. While some posited that they were the worst one-seed the league has ever seen (wonder who that could be), the accomplishment was still noteworthy for a team that looked to be locked in a long-term rebuild at this same time just three years ago.
Now, the Boston Celtics find themselves in the Eastern Conference Finals after defeating the Washington Wizards in a deciding game 7. Kelly Olynyk, a forgotten piece of the Celtics’ resurgence, went for a playoff-career-high 26 points, Thomas went for 29, and the Celtics moved on after a series in which the home team won every single game. This comes on the heels of Boston being down two games to none to the Rajon Rondo-led Chicago Bulls (yes, him again). Rondo missed the last four games of that series, all of which went to the Celtics.
It’s fair to argue that the Boston Celtics had lots and lots of luck in getting to this point. The Thomas trade, the Nets giving them most of their draft picks for half of a decade, the Bulls losing Rondo, etc. But it is impressive that Ainge and the Boston front office was able to rebuild the roster so quickly after having very little to work from not long ago.
Also, consider this: the Celtics could get the number one overall pick in tonight’s NBA draft lottery. Because the Nets (very dumbly) allowed Boston to swap picks this year and the Nets had the worst record in the NBA, the Celtics have a one-in-four chance to earn the top pick. And, because they have the most ping-pong balls in the lottery, Boston cannot pick any lower than fourth overall. Then, think about how loaded this year’s draft is; with the Celtics’ standing, they could end up with any one of Markelle Fultz, Lonzo Ball, Josh Jackson, DeAaron Fox, Malik Monk, or Jayson Tatum, all of whom could help the team from day one. And if they want to make a run at a championship for next year, they could draft any one of those players and trade him to a rebuilding team for a more established player or players, such as the Bulls’ Jimmy Butler or the Pacers’ Paul George. I’m not suggesting this would definitely happen, but it should be on the table when Boston makes their selection.
Also, this is not meant to suggest that Boston will defeat the Cleveland Cavaliers in this year’s Eastern Conference Finals. Cleveland has shown itself to be the far superior team over the course of the season and so far in these playoffs, so it would be a major shock to see Boston come out on top in the series.
Nevertheless, it is an incredibly impressive achievement for a team that will earn a top-four pick in the draft tonight and open the Eastern Conference Finals at home tomorrow.
It is no secret that LeBron James is still, even at 32 years old, the best basketball player alive. His sustained excellence has been somewhat improbable, as he is in his 14th season in the league and has logged nearly 50,000 career minutes between the regular season and playoffs. One would think that he would start to either slow down or break down over time; after all, he’s already logged more minutes than Michael Jordan and he retired two separate times in his career. James hasn’t had that luxury, but it still hasn’t mattered.
If anything, LeBron James has improbably improved this season.
As a general rule, though, we as basketball fans have gotten bored of LeBron James. We’ve become used to the ridiculous alley-oop-off-the-backboardfinishes, the absurd passes, the left-handed, Olajuwon-esque post moves, and the chasedown blocks to win championships. We regard him casually willing his team to an NBA title, the first professional sports title in 50 years for his city, the city of Cleveland, as commonplace. Now, he’s having the best playoff performance of his storied career. Guess what? He’s still not getting the recognition he deserves.
The reason why there has been such a muted reaction (or, more accurately, no reaction) in the media has been because we have come to expect this from James. From the time he was in high school, the expectations on LeBron have been sky-high; if you don’t believe me, he and his St. Vincent-St. Mary squad took on top-ranked Oak Hill Academy on national television in December 2002 at the start of James’ senior year. James was also on the cover of Sports Illustrated in February of that year at the age of seventeen; he was mentioned in the accompanying article as the heir to Michael Jordan before he could even vote. It’s easy to see that bizarre and outright nutty expectations have followed LeBron James in every level of his basketball life.
And yet, somehow, someway, he has almost always surpassed those expectations. This season, and particularly the playoffs, has been no different.
The problem is that every time James falls short of any expectation of him, realistic or not, he is criticized mercilessly by fans and pundits alike. Even when he does come up big, his loudest critics say, well, very stupid things. There are some people (cough, cough, Skip Bayless) who will literally go to any and all lengths to discredit James’ accomplishments over the course of his career. And even when he does succeed, those same people will still be there to find a way to delegitimize his successes.
That is why we need to stop trying to smear LeBron’s career and appreciate what he has done. So far in these playoffs, he’s averaging a staggering 34.3 points per game and has posted a 126 offensive rating, a postseason figure Michael Jordan only achieved once. Jordan may very well have been the greatest playoff performer in NBA history, but James is entering territory that was previously uncharted.
And just think about how consistently great LeBron James has been over the course of his fourteen-year career. James has averaged at least five rebounds, five assists and 20 points per game every year he has been in the NBA. Remember how much has changed in the league since LeBron entered the league; eleven days before James was drafted first overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers, the San Antonio Spurs defeated the then-New Jersey Nets in six games in the NBA Finals. Since that time, the Nets moved to Brooklyn, the Seattle SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder, the New Orleans Hornets became the New Orleans Pelicans, and six teams have moved into new arenas. Virtually the only constant in the NBA over that time period? LeBron James.
He’s been legitimately amazing for fourteen years. His greatness has spanned over two decades, countless pop culture fads, and three United States presidents. On the day he made his regular season NBA debut, the number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 was Baby Boy by Beyonce and Sean Paul. Last week, it was Humble by Kendrick Lamar. In the fourteen years between Beyonce and K-Dot topping the charts, LeBron James has been consistently other-worldly at his craft.
Of course, there will come a time when James is not the player he is now. He will reach a breaking point sooner or later (unless he’s superhuman, which I’m not entirely convinced he isn’t). When he does, many more people will realize just how great he was; unfortunately, those same people aren’t able to appreciate just how special he is right now. After all, he’s currently toying with a whole franchise and, for that matter, an entire country.
It is very difficult to predict how much time LeBron James has left as the undisputed best basketball player on earth. What is known is this: we need to appreciate LeBron for how good he is right now, and we need to do so before it’s too late.
Through two games of the NBA Playoffs, the Boston Celtics have looked less like the best team in the Eastern Conference and more like a seventh or eighth seed. That’s good, because they’ve been easily handled on their home floor by a team that was a self-implodingcaricatureofitself during the regular season and only got into the Playoffs because the Brooklyn Nets rested all of their semi-decent players in their last game of the season (by plus-minus, the best player on the floor for Brooklyn against Chicago last Wednesday was Spencer Dinwiddie).
But through two games of their first-round series, they have easily handled the top-seeded Celtics, dominated the rebound battle, and looked like the far superior team of the two. The Celtics are just the second one seed in NBA history to lose the first two games of their first-round series; the 1992-93 Phoenix Suns dropped their first two games to the Los Angeles Lakers before winning the last three in what was then a five-game series. The Suns later went to the Finals last year and Charles Barkley proclaimed that the team had a very famous fan on their journey. The rest is history.
But, while the Suns made the NBA Finals after such an inauspicious start to their Postseason, the Celtics don’t look as though they’ll have the same fate; after all, they are in the same conference as LeBron James. But, there is a bigger question to be asked:
Are the Boston Celtics the weakest one seed the NBA has ever laid eyes upon?
This discussion will be limited to teams who have secured the honor in the modern NBA Playoff format of sixteen teams, an arrangement that began with the 1984 Playoffs. We will also exclude the lockout shortened 1998-99 and 2011-12 seasons, as both seasons saw significant chunks of time knocked off the regular season.
Including and since 1984 but excluding this past regular season, a total of 20 teams have obtained the number one seed in their conference without getting to 60 wins; that number is generally regarded as the threshold for safely earning a one seed. Out of those 20, every single one won at least one Playoff series, and 19 reached at least the Conference Finals. Additionally, 12 of the original 20 reached the NBA Finals with three (the 1989-90 Detroit Pistons, 2009-10 Los Angeles Lakers, and 2015-16 Cleveland Cavaliers) winning the championship. History has shown that stumbling to a top seed and going far in the Playoffs are not mutually exclusive things.
In the modern Playoff era, just five eight seeds have defeated one seeds in the first round. They are:
1999: New York Knicks (27-23) def. Miami Heat (33-17) (3-2)
2007: Golden State Warriors (42-40) def. Dallas Mavericks (67-15) (4-2)
2011: Memphis Grizzlies (46-36) def. San Antonio Spurs (61-21) (4-2)
2012: Philadelphia 76ers (35-31) def. Chicago Bulls (50-16) (4-2)
*note: until 2003, the first round of the NBA Playoffs was a five-game series
Of the five one seeds that lost to eight seeds, the worst by win percentage was the 1999 Heat; their season, like all others that year, was abbreviated by the lockout and did not commence until February 5, 1999. If their win percentage was converted to a full season, they would have gone 54-28, just one win better than this year’s Celtics squad. However, with so short of a regular season, only six wins separated them and the eighth-seeded Knicks. It’s also important to remember that the ’99 Knicks went to the NBA Finals before losing to the Spurs, and the Heat put up the best fight of any team in the Eastern Conference Playoffs. In fact, it took this miraculous shot from Allan Houston to eliminate Miami:
The Heat, therefore, are exempt from this discussion; they obviously played an underachieving Knicks team that later went on a run to the NBA Finals. And in a lockout-shortened year, one had to expect some degree of craziness in the Playoffs. That also means that the 2011-12 Chicago Bulls are exempt from this discussion; they also lost defending MVP Derrick Rose in the first game of their series against Philadelphia and very likely would have moved on with a healthy Rose.
We then move to the 1993-94 Seattle SuperSonics, who won 63 games in the regular season but fell prey to the Dikembe Mutombo-led Denver Nuggets in the Playoffs. By the SRS (simple rating system), Seattle ranked number one in the league that season and were the favorite of many pundits to advance far in the Postseason and possibly even win an NBA title in the first season after Michael Jordan’s first retirement from basketball. Alas, they fell flat in April, but calling them a weak one seed would be a gross mischaracterization. While they disappointed in the Playoffs, they may have been the best team in the regular season.
Moving chronologically, the 2006-07 Dallas Mavericks were very similar to Seattle. They were second in SRS and while metrics say they overachieved by roughly six wins that year, they were still one of the best teams in the league. Unfortunately for them, they ran into the “We Believe” Warriors and were dispatched in six games. But with 67 regular season wins, the Mavericks were actually one of the strongest one seeds of all time. However, they turned in an incredibly lackluster Playoff performance.
The other one seed to exit in the first round was the 2010-11 San Antonio Spurs, who were ousted in six games by the Memphis Grizzlies. It’s worth noting that after beating San Antonio, Memphis took the Oklahoma City Thunder to seven games in the Conference Semifinals, clearly cementing their status as better than your average eight seed. The Spurs probably weren’t as good as the 61-21 record, but they hardly stood on shaky ground. If anything, they were actually beaten by a better team.
That leads us to the 2016-17 Boston Celtics. I’ve used the Simple Rating System for a couple of other teams in this article, so why not use it again: Boston ranked eighth in the league in SRS this year, behind teams such as the Jazz and the Raptors. At 53-29, they were a one seed in name only, and their expected win-loss record (48-34) suggests that they were really a middle-of-the-pack team.
Part of their failure against Chicago can also be attributed to their matchup deficiencies against the Bulls. While Chicago is a top-five rebounding team, the Celtics ranked 27th in the league in the same category this past year. The Bulls have exploited the Celtics’ weaknesses on the glass to the tune of a +22 rebound advantage over the first two games of the series. That doesn’t seem like a very advanced winning method; after all, everyone could have seen that coming, right?
No, we didn’t. Not one ESPN expert picked Chicago. I picked the Celtics in a quick and easy five games. Like many others, I saw the Bulls as a hapless, bickering misadventure of a basketball team with big names but not enough cohesion and, frankly, pure basketball skill to take out Boston. Like everyone else, I’ve been proven wrong by the Bulls’ tenacity and winning combination of Jimmy Butler, Dwyane Wade, Robin Lopez, and the National TV version of Rajon Rondo.
The metrics and the results agree: this is the worst and weakest one seed in the modern era of professional basketball. The Celtics couldn’t hide forever, and now that they’ve reached the Playoffs, their fraudulent identity has come to the surface.
We should have probably seen something like this coming, but we didn’t. We were wrong. I was wrong. And we’re all sorry. We saw the Bulls as a team that couldn’t compete with the Celtics, and we saw Boston as something they’re clearly not:
Worthy of being the one seed in the Eastern Conference.
Many smart people have invested their time and thoughts into dissecting this year’s NBA Most Valuable Player race. Many have come to the conclusion that the award should go to either Thunder guard Russell Westbrook or Rockets guard James Harden, both of whom are having historically great seasons. And yet, several others believe that the award should go to LeBron James; many have felt that way about the MVP race every year because James is the undisputed best player on the planet.
Everyone who has a say in this discussion has at least some form of logic behind their opinion. That’s what has made this debate so great; manyintelligentpeople have come to wildly different conclusions about the same thing. That’s not an indictment of the league; rather, it should be a celebration of just how good the players have been this season, rest or no rest.
Therefore, let’s delve into the different perspectives used to determine who should be the NBA’s Most Valuable Player.
For starters, there is a large subset of NBA experts who feel that the award should go to the best player in the world right now. Period. No questions asked. The question these people will ask is this: if aliens invaded Earth and we needed to pick our best player to play the aliens’ best player, who would we take? This perspective was made famous by Bill Simmons and Bob Ryan, among others, and it brings up another interesting question: should we give the Most Valuable Player award to the player who had the best season or the best player in the league? If we chose the latter, James would have more than his current four MVP awards. I would argue that LeBron has been the best player in the NBA since 2010, the year Kobe Bryant won his last NBA championship. And yes, that includes LeBron’s seemingly calamitous first year in Miami, in which I would like to humbly remind you that he led the league in win shares, a full 2.5 shares ahead of Derrick Rose, the 2010-11 league MVP.
Another perspective that voters use to choose the winner of the award is to use the definition of the word valuable in a literal sense. The logic these people use is this: if you took Player X over Team Y, how far would Team Y fall? When using this argument, in its simplest form, the candidate that best fits the description of “valuable” is Russell Westbrook. Westbrook, who became just the second player in league history to average a triple-double for an entire season, means more to the Thunder than any other player in the discussion. If Westbrook was taken away from Oklahoma City, it’s fair to speculate that they would be the Brooklyn Nets right now. The Thunder offense would run through Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis, and the team’s starting point guard would likely be Semaj Christen. Therefore, Westbrook is the dictionary definition of the word “valuable”.
A final argument for choosing an MVP would be to take the best individual season in the league for that particular year. This argument makes the MVP award seem more like the Most Outstanding Player award and it also loosens the definition of valuable. In this case, the argument depends on who you think of as having the best season in the league. That depends equally on statistics and the eye test; it’s also largely subjective. Through that interpretation, you could go with either LeBron, Harden, or Westbrook. It’s entirely up to you.
But who should be the MVP when the dust settles?
First of all, I am going to confine my argument to who I view as the top five players in the league this season. They are:
James Harden (Rockets)
LeBron James (Cavaliers)
Kawhi Leonard (Spurs)
Isaiah Thomas (Celtics)
Russell Westbrook (Thunder)
So, now that we’re clear on that, we can move forward. I don’t see anyone else as having even a legitimate chance at or claim to the award. These are the five players who should have a mathematical chance at winning the trophy this season. Just so you know: players on this list who have sat out games for rest this season (James and Leonard) will not be penalized. They had reasons for sitting out games, it’s not their fault, and it shouldn’t reflect poorly on them.
For starters, the MVP award should go to a player who helps his team at both ends of the floor. That is particularly true this year, with the particularly astounding play of the respective candidates. Out of the five I’ve chosen, Thomas has the worst defensive rating (112) and Box Plus-Minus (-3.4) on the list; both statistics are used to gauge a player’s value defensively, with the former gauging his value per 100 possessions and the latter using a positive/negative scale. Thomas is clearly the worst defensive player out of the five, and while his offensive prowess makes up for his defensive deficiencies in Boston, it doesn’t compensate for his deficit compared to the other four players. IT4, for as great as his season was, is out.
That brings us down to four. Out of the four remaining candidates, three are asked to be the primary ball-handlers and general creators of offense for themselves and their teams. The one player who does not fit this description is Kawhi Leonard. Leonard has the lowest assist-per-game (3.5) and rebound-per-game (5.8) figures among the five initial contenders for the award. Part of that is how the Spurs’ culture is built; the organization and scheme are structured so that no player overtly stands out. Coach Gregg Popovich has been quoted as saying that the team looks for players who are “over themselves” and who value the team over their own accolades. While that strategy is a large part of the Spurs’ sustained success, it isn’t conducive to players looking to win MVPs (unless you’re Tim Duncan, who won the award in 2002 and 2003). Leonard falls into that same category: a player who fits perfectly into the Spurs culture. Unfortunately, Popovich’s system doesn’t allow any player, even one as good as Leonard, to have the impact necessary to win the award. This is shown in Leonard’s 31.1% usage rate (a measure of plays run for a certain player while he is on the floor). For as much of a Kawhi Leonard disciple as I am, he’s out.
That whittles this discussion down to the three players I feel are truly deserving of the award. It would be completely fine if any one of Harden, James, or Westbrook took home the trophy; that is a testament to just how good they have all been this season. Honestly, who you think should win between these three likely depends on your interpretation of the award. I’ll go through some criteria that I view as important, particularly in a tight race like this year’s.
Many believe, as do I, that the worst thing one can do with the basketball is turn it over. In this category, Russell Westbrook and James Harden take the biggest hit, as both are averaging well over five turnovers per game. If you take a deeper look, though, you realize that Harden and Westbrook are the primary creators for their respective teams, averaging double-digit assist numbers; in fact, both players assist on more than half of their teams’ baskets when they are on the floor. James’ assist percentage is slightly under 42% for the season, a full 15 points lower than Westbrook’s and eight lower than Harden’s. Also, James only has a slight advantage in assist-to-turnover ratio. These are the figures for each of the three superstars:
LeBron James: 2.128
James Harden: 1.947
Russell Westbrook: 1.929
While LeBron obtains a clear advantage over the other two, it’s hardly disqualifying. Also, I would tend to give Westbrook and Harden a break here; their usage rates of 41.7% and 34.2%, respectively, are appreciably higher than James’ rate of 30.0%. Part of that comparatively low figure is the fact that James has Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, two excellent offensive players at his disposal. However, it’s clear that the Cavaliers require slightly less out of LeBron than the Thunder out of Westbrook or the Rockets out of Harden. So, as much as it pains me to say this, LeBron James, the greatest player in the world, is eliminated from the conversation for Most Valuable Player.
Now, we’re down to just The Beard and The Brodie. Let’s take a step back and first realize that the player I don’t choose to win the award would be an MVP in just about any other season in NBA history. Both had historically great years and should be appreciated for what they’ve done to make an otherwise anticlimactic NBA season interesting. Unfortunately, only one can win my vote for league MVP. Let’s take a closer look.
Westbrook has Harden fully beat in the rebounding category, as he has accumulated 205 more rebounds in 145 fewer minutes of on-court time. Even though Harden is a better shooter than Westbrook, he is shooting only fractionally better from three-point land this season (.347 to .343). Harden does have a better offensive rating, but Westbrook has a slightly better defensive rating. Both are actually having rather similar seasons, the only major difference being that Westbrook averaged 2.6 more rebounds per game than Harden. Harden was also slightly more efficient, as he took roughly five fewer shots per game than Westbrook. I must say, it’s extremely close.
However, this is where things start to turn: Westbrook, for all intents and purposes, smashed the league’s single-season usage rate mark with his performance this season. (The stats from this year aren’t yet official on Basketball-Reference, so it’s still unofficial.) Russ’ aforementioned 41.7% figure is a league-record and three points higher than Kobe Bryant’s 38.7% rate in 2005-06. The way I interpret this is that no other team in the history of the NBA has relied on one player as much as Oklahoma City has on Westbrook. That statistic is something that most people read and pause momentarily to make sure they’re not missing something. But that’s just how reliant the Thunder are on their best player every single night of the year.
And that is why if I had an MVP vote this season, I would use it on Russell Westbrook. When the Thunder lost Kevin Durant in free agency, many assumed that the franchise would take a major hit. While the Thunder are clearly not as good as they were last season, they are still solidly in the Playoffs with 47 wins, just eight fewer from last season. And not only did they lose Durant; GM Sam Presti also dealt the team’s third-best player, Serge Ibaka, to the Magic last season for Victor Oladipo. Then again, Orlando’s old GM took a picture of a whiteboard with the team’s free agent targets this summer, so he’s not exactly one you should trust with making good deals (Hint: the picture got into the wrong hands). The Thunder lost two of their three best players from a season ago and only lost eight wins. Not bad at all.
This is the final thing: Westbrook did something this year that was only done once before in NBA history, and that is average a triple-double. Oscar Robertson did it in 1961-62; it hasn’t been done since until this season. And while you may balk at Westbrook’s high turnover number, consider this: turnovers weren’t tracked during Robertson’s record-setting year. It’s entirely possible that he turned it over just as often as Westbrook; we’ll never know for sure. Forget the MVP discussion for a second; Russell Westbrook did something this season many of us have never seen before. That is historically awesome and his season is nothing anyone should soon forget.
This is also not meant to denigrate the seasons of anyone else in the MVP discussion. All players mentioned in this article have had excellent seasons and are all worthy of consideration and admiration.
When you consider the breadth of Westbrook’s accomplishments, though, he has the best case for the award. If he wins, he will be the first player to win Most Valuable Player on a sub-50 win team since Moses Malone took home the honors after the 1981-82 season; Malone’s Houston Rockets won 46 games that season. Just like this year’s Thunder, Malone single-handedly elevated his supporting cast, which consisted of an aging Elvin Hayes, a number of role players, and a future NBA coach (Mike Dunleavy). Westbrook did the same for this year’s Thunder squad, and his supporting cast may have been even worse than Malone’s.
While we can look at the numbers all we want, debate history, and, frankly, split some hairs along the way, it comes down to this: Russell Westbrook had one of the best seasons ever, one worthy of getting him to the Hall of Fame all on its own. While the others were also historically good, Westbrook had the most outstanding season of all and carried his team to places they would have never been able to dream of otherwise.
If you are reading this and you have an MVP vote: don’t take it lightly. My decision was not made without serious research and deep thought, and yours shouldn’t be, either. Ultimately, you must put the time in to make the decision you feel is best. What I’m saying is this: vote your conscience. Make your own decision.
And I’ll throw in my decision: I’m voting for Russell Westbrook.
As you probably heard yesterday, the Lakers have decided to fully take the plunge and immerse their front office in something completely new and different:
Magic Johnson.
The team announced this decision yesterday, which included promoting Johnson to President of Basketball Operations, firing GM Mitch Kupchak, and reassigning Jim Buss from his previous role of executive vice president of basketball operations. The move is not entirely surprising; Magic recently said in an interview that he wanted to “call the shots” in the organization and his hiring as an adviser to the owner seemed to suggest that this day was coming. However, the timing of the decision was bizarre, as Johnson was assigned to his new, all-powerful post just two days before the NBA’s trade deadline; this is a time when most front offices would need as much stability as possible to make important decisions in a team’s future.
Instead, the Lakers went in the opposite direction and hired Johnson, a franchise legend who, with this most recent assignment, has now played, coached, owned a stake in, and made basketball decisions for the Lakers. No matter what you think of this hire, that feat is awfully impressive.
However, the decision to put an inexperienced legend in charge of basketball decisions needs to be seriously questioned.
Johnson’s most important job as President of Basketball Operations will be as a talent evaluator. If you want a sense of how that will go, here are some of Johnson’s old tweets:
I love Okafor because he’s won a state championship in HS, NCAA Title at Duke and he can bring that championship pedigree to the Lakers.
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) June 10, 2015
The Dallas Mavericks’ trade for Rajon Rondo puts them in position to be a contender in the Western Conference.
For as great as those tweets are, though, this one has to be my favorite:
The only way San Antonio or Miami don’t win the championship is if neither team makes the finals.
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) March 7, 2014
Finally, a prediction Magic was right about! To be fair to Magic, though, saying bizarre and incorrect things on Twitter does not necessarily translate to failure as a front office executive. It just means that, well, his evaluation skills might need some work. That is not the end of the world; for example, the Celtics hired Danny Ainge as President of Basketball Operations in 2003; while he has not been perfect in this role, he currently has the Celtics as one of the best teams in the East and may have casually finessed his way to the #1 pick in this year’s draft. Ainge’s is the blueprint Johnson must follow in his new role.
One would figure that even as he assumes the power of his new role, Johnson would attempt to surround himself with experienced/skilled executives who have been around front offices and can provide a different perspective. If his first hire as President of Basketball Operations is any indication, however, Magic probably isn’t doing that.
In a move that broke yesterday, the Lakers are expected to hire well-renowned agent and Rob Lowe look-alike Rob Pelinka as their new GM. Pelinka also has zero front office experience and, perhaps most significantly, was Kobe Bryant’s agent throughout much of his career; he was also widely regarded as the sixth member of Michigan’s early 90s Fab Five, as he was a reserve guard on the Wolverine team that went to back-to-back national championship games in 1992 and 1993.
Pelinka’s hiring begs this question, though: if Johnson and Pelinka are heading the Lakers front office, how long is it until Kobe Bryant gets involved in the Lakers’ dealings? It is merely speculation at this point, but one would logically think that the Black Mamba would have some type of advisory role in the front office sooner or later, even if it is not an official role.
Also: what kind of responsibilities will Johnson and Pelinka have? One would think that Pelinka would be tasked with more of the day-to-day decision-making and cap expertise. After all, Magic admitted that he does not have a full understanding of the collective bargaining agreement (which, in some cases, is a prerequisite to holding a job like Magic’s) and that is why he hired someone like Pelinka as General Manager. Johnson would likely be more of a figurehead who has final say over roster decisions, the coaching staff, etc. We’ll see how the power shakes out, but the Lakers have now placed two complete neophytes in substantial front office roles. It will be interesting to see what results of this and who else is hired into LA’s front office.
Johnson also takes over the Lakers at a critical time for the franchise. The team is in its first season with new head coach Luke Walton and most agree that he is the right man to coach the team going forward. The organization has had three top ten draft picks in as many drafts and has converted those picks into Julius Randle, D’Angelo Russell, and Brandon Ingram. All three have been solid, competent players, but none looks like a superstar yet (Ingram likely has the highest potential of achieving stardom and also has the longest way to go to fully develop).
This is going to be Johnson’s job in this draft. The Lakers’ first-round pick is top-three protected this year; if it falls outside of the top three, it goes to the Philadelphia 76ers. The Lakers currently possess the third-worst record in the league and may or may not be tanking to improve their chances at a top pick in the lottery. In such a talented and deep draft, though, having a top-three pick will be enormous for the future of the Lakers. Converting that pick into a superstar is what Johnson must do if the Lakers want to improve their standing in the West.
Even though the new regime only took hold yesterday, the Lakers are already hard at work; hours after the shakeup, the team traded guard Lou Williams to the Rockets for Corey Brewer and Houston’s first-round draft pick, which will likely fall near the end of the first round. This seems like a logical trade, but Magic could have squeezed more out of the Rockets if he wanted to; Williams ranks eighth in the league in points per 36 minutes among eligible players and Houston likely would have surrendered more if the Lakers asked for it. This subtraction will hurt the Lakers in the interim, which probably is not an accident.
Magic Johnson is taking over the Lakers at a pivotal time for the franchise. The team must convert their draft pick into a star in this draft and build an organization capable of attracting star free agents in future years. The Lakers are rolling the dice in tasking him with basketball decisions, and the last time a former player and coach was hired to an executive basketball position he had no prior experience in, it didn’t go so well. I’ll just leave that right there.
But, we must keep an open mind with the hiring of Magic Johnson. After all, the fact that it’s an enormous risk doesn’t mean that there won’t be an enormous payoff down the road.
The NBA season has reached the All-Star break and there are several interesting storylines. The Warriors, replete with superstar Kevin Durant and many others, have emerged as the best team in the league, Russell Westbrook is having a season for the ages, and the Cavaliers have endured a difficult, injury-plagued season in their championship defense.
With the league at the All-Star break, now is as good a time as any to assess the state of affairs in the game and share some thoughts on players and teams. Here are five of my observations on the first half of the season.
A Unicorn Not Named Porzingis
If I were to tell you about a European, second-year big man who is a good passer, rebounder, and three-point shooter, your mind would immediately gravitate toward Knicks forward Kristaps Porzingis. Actually, I’ve got something (or someone) even better for you.
At the beginning of this season, Nikola Jokic was not even starting in a crowded backcourt for the Denver Nuggets. However, after Jusuf Nurkic was benched in mid-December, Jokic has emerged as one of the best big men in the game, averaging just over 20 points and 10 rebounds since assuming his starting role. More recently, he dropped 40 points on the Knicks and put down a triple-double in a 22-point win against the Warriors. In the box plus/minus statistic, a metric used to evaluate a player’s contribution to his team, Jokic ranks fourth in the league behind Chris Paul, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook. Not too shabby.
Sadly, many won’t be able to appreciate Jokic’s contributions unless the Nuggets make the playoffs. Denver is currently in the eighth spot in the West, one and a half games ahead of the Kings for the final playoff spot. And going to the playoffs would likely earn the Nuggets the right to be trampled by the Warriors in the first round. But just going to the playoffs would expose many viewers to Jokic’s diverse skill set, even if his team is wiped out of the playoffs in four games.
Score one for the unicorns.
Scott Brooks, Coach of the Year
That is a phrase you may not have expected to hear after the first three weeks of the season. On November 16th, the Wizards lost at home to the 76ers and fell to 2-8. People may not have been calling for Brooks’ job just yet, but things weren’t looking up in the nation’s capital, either. And then John Wall and Bradley Beal happened.
Wall and Beal combine to average 45 points per game and both are having career years for a Washington team that currently sits in third in the Eastern Conference. Last year, the Wiz were one of the biggest disappointments in the NBA, an outcome that led to the firing of coach Randy Wittman and the hiring of Brooks. Four months into his tenure with Washington, it has become clear that Brooks is the right coach for this team, having gone 32-13 since that devastating loss to Philadelphia.
Not only is Brooks the right coach for the Wizards, he’s the first-half Coach of the Year.
The Jazz Are Taking Care of Business*
Unfortunately, the asterisk must be addressed.
The Utah Jazz are one of the most improved teams in the NBA this season; at their current pace, they would finish the season with 50 wins, a 10-win improvement over last season. But, as I was just saying, we need to take Utah’s success with a small grain of salt.
Consider this: out of their first 57 games, Utah has played 22 of them against teams at .500 or above. In those 22 games, the Jazz are just 8-14. Included in that figure are two losses against the Los Angeles Clippers, the team’s most likely first-round opponent. Granted, the team has gone 27-8 against everyone else in the league, but these struggles are concerning. The fact that the Jazz have struggled against the league’s best teams could be explained in a number of ways; for example, the Western Conference has three of the league’s top four teams record-wise (Houston, Golden State, San Antonio) and Utah is not helped by playing these three teams a combined ten times this season.
This also does not mean that I would want to play Utah in an early-round playoff series if I was in the West. The team has length to burn and Quin Snyder’s bunch also owns the league’s best points per game defense by nearly three points over the second-best team. I’m just pointing out that maybe the hype around their success is just slightly overblown.
Orlando Is Out of Magic
Earlier this week, the Magic finally conceded their disastrous season, trading forward Serge Ibaka to the Toronto Raptors for Terrence Ross and a first-round pick. The move had to be made, as any chance the Magic had of making the playoffs would have been as the seventh or eighth seed in the East. The move is likely good for both teams; Ibaka gives the Raptors some needed length and is a definite upgrade over Pascal Siakam at power forward. For the Magic, it starts Act II of the rebuilding process that began with trading Dwight Howard to the Lakers in 2012.
And really, the Magic front office has been absolutely horrendous over the past five years. Some of general manager Rob Hennigan’s greatest hits include, but are not limited to:
Trading Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis to Oklahoma City for 56 games of Serge Ibaka
Hiring Jacque Vaughn as head coach in 2012 (he was fired halfway through the 2014-15 season)
Hiring Scott Skiles as head coach in 2015 (he resigned after the season because he had philosophical differences and a deteriorating relationship with the front office)
Drafting Mario Hezonja with the fifth pick in the 2015 Draft and passing on Myles Turner, Justise Winslow, and Devin Booker, among others
Trading Tobias Harris to the Pistons for Ersan Ilyasova and Brandon Jennings, neither of whom are still with the team
Trading Channing Frye to the Cavaliers for Jared Cunningham and a second-round pick; Cunningham was waived four days later
Signing wildly disappointing big man Bismack Biyombo to a 4-year/$70 million contract because of one good month of basketball (A.K.A the Brock Osweiler of NBA contracts)
So things aren’t going too well in Orlando. At least they still have Disney World, because their basketball franchise certainly is not a Magic Kingdom.
Russell Westbrook is the MVP
Whether you like it or not, Russell Westbrook is having one of the greatest NBA seasons ever.
At the All-Star Break, Westbrook is averaging 31 points, 10.5 rebounds, and just over 10 assists per game. At this rate, he would average a triple-double for the season. If that happens, here is the list of players in NBA history to average a triple-double over the course of a full season:
Oscar Robertson (1961-62)
Russell Westbrook (2016-17)
That’s it. Even more impressively, Westbrook is single-handedly carrying the Thunder to a playoff berth and succeeding without very much help from his supporting cast. It is entirely possible that the Thunder would be in the position of the Los Angeles Lakers or Pheonix Suns if it were not for Westbrook’s heroics. Fun fact: the Thunder’s fifth-leading per game scorer this season is Josh Huestis, who averages exactly seven points per game. Do you want to know why he averages exactly seven points per game? Because he only played in one game this season.
So kudos to Russell Westbrook, for being so great around so much, well, less-than-great. For that alone, he should be the league’s first-half MVP. Oh, and there’s that whole thing about doing something only one person has ever done before.
Have any additional thoughts? Please leave them in the comments section!
Photo Credit: Paul J. Bereswill/New York Daily News
This probably is not going to come as a shock to most of America (or the world), but the New York Knicks are a complete trainwreck.
This organization is a different kind of trainwreck, though. They are the type of trainwreck that redefines the meaning of a trainwreck. The Knicks are a mess. The Browns and Jets are laughing at them. New Year’s Eve Mariah Carey thinks they are spinning out of control.
Last night, though, was a new low, even by Knickerbocker standards.
Last night, the Clippers came to New York and played the Knicks in a primetime, nationally-televised game. The Clippers have been struggling as well, having lost five out of their previous six games and having been without star point guard Chris Paul since January 16th. The potential was there for a less-than-stellar game, but what we got was much more than what we expected.
Midway through the first quarter, with the game tied at 19 and Latvian unicorn Kristaps Porzingis at the line, a disagreement between Knicks legend Charles Oakley and Madison Square Garden security escalated into a fight. Judge for yourself what exactly happened:
Oakley was an integral part of the Knicks’ success in the 1990s, helping lead the team to the 1994 NBA Finals and several 50-win seasons in that time period. During his career, he played just as he behaved on Wednesday night; with an enforcer’s mentality and a reckless abandon. He once slapped Scottie Pippen and tried to end Charles Barkley’s lifein a preseason game. The fact that he would get arrested at a Knicks game isn’t exactly a surprise, especially when you consider that he doesn’t have the best relationship with owner James Dolan.
However, there have been two wildly different accounts of how everything went down last night at the Garden.
The Knicks organization contends that Oakley arrived at the game shortly after it started, almost immediately began hurling insults at Dolan (who was seated two rows down from Oakley), and was confronted by MSG security. Oakley, as could be seen on the ESPN broadcast, engaged in a physical altercation with the authorities and was arrested for three counts of assault and one for trespassing.
Oakley, on the other hand, says that he never directed any comments toward Dolan during the game and was escorted out of the game by Garden security for no particular reason. Oakley also added that Garden security asked him why his seat was so close to Dolan’s, forcing Oakley to explain that he bought his own way into the game. The authorities persisted, and that is when the fight escalated. There are multiple witnesses who have backed up both stories, and the truth of what happened is likely somewhere in the middle between the two.
This was the Knicks’ response to Oakley’s ejection from the arena last night. I assure that 100% of this is real:
The last line of the statement is my personal favorite: “He was a great Knick and we hope he gets some help soon.” There is a good deal of irony in that sentence. For example, just two years ago, Dolan received an email from a disgruntled, lifelong Knick fan about how badly the franchise was run. The fan, who at the time had rooted for the team for 60 years, ran through a laundry list of disgraces to the team and urged Dolan to sell the franchise. Dolan responded, suggesting that the fan was an “alcoholic” who was a “negative force” to anyone he came in contact with. But yes, Oakley is the one who needs help in this dispute.
Disparaging those who have given years of service to the franchise, particularly through a statement on Twitter, is not a way to professionally run an organization. Oh, right, Knicks brass already did that just this past Tuesday.
Bleacher’s Ding almost rings the bell, but I learned you don’t change the spot on a leopard with Michael Graham in my CBA daze.
I mean, this franchise is the definition of dysfunctional. Jackson seemingly agreed with an article suggesting that Carmelo Anthony, the best player on the team, has not a care in the world for winning. Subtweeting the other half in a relationship is something you do right before a nasty breakup; Phil Jackson, unless he trades Melo, is stuck with him for another two years. I think his only strategy here is to make Anthony so angry that he waives his no-trade clause and agrees to play somewhere else. There is literally no way this relationship works unless that happens.
Remember when Jackson was brought in as team president to be a steady presence and a beacon of stability for the franchise? Yeah, he’s actually been the opposite. Jackson’s leadership of the Knicks has left the team without much of a direction and, besides from Porzingis, not much of a future, either. Free agents don’t want to play for the Knicks and coaches don’t want to coach for the team, either.
Don’t believe me on that last point? This is what current head coach Jeff Hornacek had to say about the team’s exploits before the organization collectively cratered last night:
“I kind of, not was warned, but it was expected that it was going to be something all the time, and it’s lived up to the billing. It’s been something all year. So, OK, let’s go play a game and try to win.”
That’s spectacular. To an extent, I kind of feel bad for Hornacek; this could be his last opportunity to be an NBA head coach and he is not being allowed to function normally. At the same time, he probably knew exactly what he was getting into with the Knicks, so this probably shouldn’t be too much of a surprise to him, even as the season has gotten more and more out of hand.
Speaking of out of hand, we will likely never know what really happened between James Dolan and Charles Oakley on Wednesday. What we do know is that the Knicks have definitively hit rock bottom…. for now.
If you don’t think James Harden is one of the best players in basketball, think again. And think quickly.
Harden is having one of the great beginnings to a season in the history of the sport. Through just eight games, the beard is averaging over thirty points, thirteen assists, and seven rebounds per game. Granted, we’re only eight games into the season, but still, Harden is on pace to average numbers that have only been reached by Oscar Robertson. And usually, we would say “player X and others” in this situation, but there are no others here. Harden is in a league of his own, doing things many of us have never seen before.
But, as is often the question with hot starts in sports, will Harden be able to keep this up over the course of a full season?
First, if we are asking whether or not Harden can keep up this performance and these exact numbers, the answer is probably no; actually, that probably is likely closer to definitely. There is a reason Robertson is the only player in league history to average a double-double over the course of a full season. Additionally, Robertson averaged 45 minutes per game in the 1963-64 season for the Cincinnati Royals, one of the seasons in which he averaged a double-double. Harden has been held under 38 minutes per game so far this year, and don’t expect that number to increase that much, either; Harden’s career high in minutes per game is 38.3 in 2012-13.
Besides minutes, though, it’s going to be very difficult for Harden to do this simply because of the laws of averages. He’s going to hit a rough stretch at some point this season and that’s coming sooner rather than later. Also, look to see how defenses adapt to Harden and if they try to get the ball out of his hands. That strategy would theoretically drive down his numbers and force his teammates to account for more offense.
But let’s just think about this for a second: I compared James Harden to Oscar Robertson. Is that something you ever thought you would hear? Granted, don’t be surprised to see a dropoff come soon for the Rockets star. But still, we’re talking about James Harden and Oscar Robertson in the same sentence, people! We need to wake up and realize that we’re seeing something that hasn’t been done in many years. It doesn’t matter if that’s in 80 games or eight; it’s spectacular nonetheless.
And now, let’s think hypothetically: what would need to happen for Harden to continue at this torrid clip? What would the Rockets need to do to give him the help he needs to continue his success?
For starters, Harden’s role will have to remain unchanged in D’Antoni’s offense. Last year’s starting point guard, Patrick Beverley, has missed the beginning of the season after undergoing knee surgery in October; however, he could be returning to practice next week and hopes to come back to the active roster by November 25. Harden has currently been acting as the Rockets’ starting point guard, but will that continue when Beverley returns? It remains to be seen, but the hopes of an unprecedented statistical season may take a hit upon Beverley’s return and Harden’s hypothetical shift back to shooting guard, his original position.
At the same time, a common misconception of Harden’s tear is that his numbers have been artificially inflated by D’Antoni’s high-octane offense. While D’Antoni has been tremendously helpful in Harden’s development, his offense hasn’t actually worked at an overly quick pace. Houston ranks 16th in the NBA in possessions per game (96.9), a far cry from when D’Antoni consistently engineered the Suns’ offense to near the top of the league in pace. D’Antoni’s Pheonix offense operated so quickly that it earned the nickname “Seven Seconds or :ess”.
Interestingly enough, this year’s Houston offense has actually had a faster pace than the “Seven Seconds or Less” Suns, but it’s not like Harden couldn’t do this on other, similarly talented teams.
Harden’s move to point guard has paid dividends not only for him but also for the Houston offense. Their offensive rating ranks fourth in the NBA and is up roughly three points from a season ago. The rest of the offense has been simplified, as well. More often than not, Harden facilitates and gets fellow starter Trevor Ariza and new acquisitions Ryan Anderson and Eric Gordon involved. Also (and this cannot be understated), new starting center Clint Capela has boosted the offense with his energy and unselfishness; meaning, he doesn’t need the ball with his back to the basket to succeed (looking at you, Dwight Howard). Losing Howard was somewhat of a blow for the Rockets, but replacing him with Capela has:
Helped Harden and others assume bigger roles in the offense and
Indirectly made the offense much more efficient
Even if Harden does not sustain these numbers, he should still have success in the new-look Rockets offense. D’Antoni’s offensive scheme has always been very point guard-friendly (Steve Nash, Jeremy Lin) and that trend has continued with Harden. D’Antoni moved Harden to point guard before this season, which solved one of the team’s main weaknesses from last season. While it remains to be seen whether or not he will stay as the team’s main facilitator, his beginning of the season has been incredible.
Yes, he may not be able to continue what he has done over the first eight games of the season. But what James Harden has accomplished to start his campaign should not be overlooked, as it may be a harbinger for both individual and team success in the future.
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