Firing on Alcindor

You See The Ice... You See The Cars

2010-03-06T18:51:00.000-08:00

Aaron Afflalo, Nene, and of course, Mr. Lawson.

Why are these men not stars, on par with at least Kenyon (with his followers full of thuggish banter and self-assurance), J.R. (with his cult following of upside enthusiasts) and Birdman (any explanation really needed)?

Or on a larger, non-Nuggets level, how is that they dwell shadows cast by such NBA non-factors as Raja Bell, Johnny Flynn, and Andrew Bogut?

Why must these there wander the empty tundra of NBA Anonymity with nothing but their own self-confidence to keep them warm?

Because of our own apathetic fandom here in Denver, CO!!!

Aaron Afflalo holds Kobe, in LA, to 3-of-17 shooting, and we as a city complain about calls and misplayed opportunities. Mr. Bryant, with victory in hand, surely remembers the lingering stigma of being shut down by an also-ran.

Nene has an absolutely dominant season thus far, but due to limited shots, that highlights the skill of three volume shooting stars, and a lack of intriguing hair gel creations, he finds himself cast aside by a fan base far, far too infatuated with the rambunctious thugishness of Kenyon Martin and the Mattress King, Chris Andersen. All the while, Tim Duncan and Pau Pau want nothing more than to avoid a certain Brazilian in the first round.

And then there's Mr. Lawson.

Somewhere far, far behind such outstanding achievements as leading the Timberwolves, the Bucks, the Kings and the Warrriors to wherever they are headed (a decade of draft lotteries?), is being the most prominent difference maker for the most game-changing-est unit in the entire National Basketball Association. If this were not so, somebody would vote for Ty Lawson as Rookie of the Year. Someone in Denver might cheer when Ty tosses his warm-ups off, and the other team has to regroup for something far faster than Rajon Rondo.

However, there is clearly no way the Lakers, sitting on the Fisher-Brown combo, or the Mavericks bringing the Kidd-Barrea tandem, have overlooked this upgrade from Anthony Carter.

Denver, it's time to take your role players seriously. See past the ice on Lala's finger. See past the Bentleys in the Pepsi Center Parking Lot. There are stars everywhere the Nuggets are.

2009-11-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

I Want this Forever, I Swear I Can Spend Whatever On It.

2009-11-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

Exactly who thinks the Jason Kidd extension is going to be an effective use of money and 35 minutes a game by the second half of this year, let alone when he’s 40 at the end of his contract?

What position does Josh Howard play that is so different than what Shawn Marion does? Will these two force Dirk to dig in at Center?

Who is Jose Juan Barea? And where are his 11 points per game coming from?

Eric Dampier is the only center on this roster.

Drew Gooden.

There is something very weird happening in Dallas.

Sure, they beat the Lakers a few days ago, but what’s that? Nothing, because October wins are forgotten long before May flowers. And that’s where we’re guessing this train wants to go.

All the while, Mark Cuban is wallowing in high mediocrity. Is it because he wants to prove that Dirk Nowitzki really is a real NBA superstar? Probably. But Dirk is many things, but a superstar he is not.

Dirk can shoot a three over small forwards, but not defend them. Dirk can shoot a three over some power forwards, but the good ones will abuse him in the low blocks. Dirk can sometimes shoot a three over a Center, but, that’s really the only advantage he has over them.

Add to it his litany of playoff losses, the miracle of 2006 (and quite possibly the only mental error of Manu Ginobili’s entire career) not withstanding, and where will the Playoff victories come from?

And then there’s that whole Cristal Taylor thing, which is really just weird.

So, what is it that leads Cuban down this Quixotic road? Did he and the Maloofs make a bet? Is he making a play for Marbury soon?

The only certainty that will come from the uncertainty that is derived from this circus of incomplete, aging single-skilled athletes is that Mark Cuban will stay the course.

He will do it until all of Dallas stops wearing Mavericks’ Football Jerseys. Until Avery Johnson’s voice finally changes. He will go as far as possible to achieve it. Which is a shame, because it’s lead to things like Devin Harris thriving in New Jersey, and the Steve Nash revolution happening in Phoenix, not Dallas.

Oh well, Dallas is kind of close to Oklahoma City, so there’s that.

A Boy With A Very Peculiar Haircut

2009-10-30T15:35:00.000-07:00

At the start of a season a few years back- following the season of Charles Barkley harkening the birth of the 6’-10” Russian Point Forward with shouts of “Medvedenko!” and “Kirilenko!”-a beautiful young blonde Russian lass, Masha Kirilenko, released a statement that would reverberate throughout the league. She would allow him to wander from their marriage, as long as she knew about it, once per year.

This sent shockwaves through NBA locker rooms to say the very least.

However, it is what Andrei, her husband, has done since that time that will keep him from ever winning an NBA Championship. First, it was “Sloanisizing” his game to prevent any chance of attracting Groupie Love (seriously, he backed up an athlete known as Matt Harpring last season). Now, it is a haircut that eradicates all possibility of being desirous to women.

As Masha’s permission still lingers like a soft halo over his head, it is that action that dooms Andrei’s future.

For, if he was still the forgotten Russian love-child of Don Nelson and Pat Summit (his old game was filled with And 1 passes, three point shots, great on ball defense and incredible discipline), this haircut would destroy the locker room of any generous team that rescued him from the land of Mormons.

Imagine for a second, him achieving his destiny by landing in New York City, and playing for Mike D’Antoni. He could conceivably average a Quadruple-Double, as he could play Point-Power Forward, and allow the Knicks to go with Lee-Chandler-Harrington-Robinson as the other four on the court. This could put them in the playoffs, against an OLD Celtics team that with Rondo locked in a death match with Krypto-Nate, and Andrei completely distracting Rasheed into Technical Hell, would be extremely vulnerable to upset. After the fall of the Celtics, who’s left? Josh Smith? Lebron? Lamar Odom? The envious would form in droves at the gates, unable to rival the possibilities of a Knickerbocker Kirilenko.

However this is an impossible dream, for Andrei Kirilenko could never explain to Nate Robinson and Al Harrington, why he made himself so unattractive to women, while having a wife that permissive. And this would prevent them from achieving their full potential.

GM’s know this stuff. And they won’t take the risk. Not now, not ever.

And for that reason, they all exhaled on the first Wednesday of the season when they saw Andrei with that hair. All, that is except Kevin O’Connor of the Utah Jazz, whose job had just gotten that much harder.

Firing on Alcindor

2009-10-30T15:34:00.001-07:00

Ferdinand Lewis “Lew” Alcindor.

Ferdinand Lewis “Lew” Alcindor, born the son of a Police Officer/Jazz Musician, his is a story, of heartbreak and dreams deferred.

He dominated the New York High School leagues to a point far past absurdity and entering into the realm of the obscene. He won 72 straight games. His high school record was 79-2. He averaged nearly 26 points per game, for his entire three year career.

The school’s name: Power Memorial.

He entered UCLA, and continued to win. First, he beat the varsity team, with his fellow freshman, 75-60. He scored 51 of those 75 points, while the varsity team was the #1 team in the nation. During his career at UCLA, he won the national championship all three years he played for it. He won two Player of the Year awards, multiple other awards, He was responsible for the temporary banning of the slam dunk in the collegiate game (seriously). He did this while his team won all but two of the ninety games UCLA played during his career.

He lost the Game of The Century, the first televised collegiate game, to the University of Houston, 71-69. He had been poked in the eye, and had blurred vision. Later that year, UCLA beat the University of Houston Cougars, 101-69, later that year, in route to a national championship, and one of Alcindor’s three NCAA tournament’s Most Outstanding Player Awards.

Somehow, some way, he was selected by the Milwaukee Bucks, and went there (this was the NBA pre-David Stern, and apparently the NBA, pre-freezers as well). What happened? He won. While somehow losing more than two games in his debut season, he still won the Rookie of the Year. To remedy the situation, that off-season the Bucks acquired Mr. Triple Double (Oscar Robertson), and things returned to normal for Mr. Alcindor. In his second season, he won his division, the NBA championship, the scoring title, the NBA Finals MVP and the NBA MVP.

I’m sure he won more that season, but that’s not the point. After that season, he bloomed like no other NBA player before him.

For it was then, that he changed his name to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and irreversibly altered his future. Three years later, after winning two more NBA MVP’s and three division titles, he demanded a trade to L.A. or New York City, not for basketball reasons, but to feed his cultural side.

It was upon his return to Los Angeles, that he started to wear The Goggles, and started to practice Yoga. He joined the local Muslim community, became politically active, attended art openings and did many other non-Chamberlain-esque things- in short, he had embraced his father the jazz musician, while keeping to the strict regimen of the police officer.

However, on the court he struggled to fulfill team goals, while succeeding individually by winning All-NBA awards, MVP’s, Scoring Titles, Rebounding Titles and many more individual accolades by the handfuls. That pattern changed with the drafting of a revolutionary blend of talent-a 6’9” Point Guard, nicknamed “Magic,” that somehow sped up the offense.

It was during this, the second decade of his NBA career that the player formerly known as Alcindor, fought off –and presumably beat- aging to win 5 NBA championships, and transform into the winner etched in the collective memory of an entirely new generation. To do this, he shifted his game from power dunking and physical prowess to a game of Sky Hooks and intellect. The Lakers failed for years after his retirement in 1990, at the age of 42.

In short, during his career, if there was a way to succeed with a basketball, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar – the artist formerly known as Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor- had done it.

Somehow, Abdul-Jabbar, was labeled a “whiner,” a “ninny,” a “soft” type of player, during all of these accomplishments. In his post-NBA career, the NBA’s all-time leading scorer was labeled “reticent” and “passive,” which gave way to banishing him to coaching outposts ranging from an Apache Indian reservation in Arizona to serving as a personal tutor to NBA stalwarts such as Michael Olowakandi, Jerome James and Andrew Bynum. This punishments- fit for the most vile and despicable of players- is now worn by that most winning-est of players in the NBA culture.

Why the hatred and the banishment from the game?

Was it because he really was soft? Maybe. But my guess is that the player who scored more points than any player in NBA history, and who had the dunk itself outlawed in the college ranks, could probably hold his own.

No, it is that year after the first NBA championship, as well as the period following the name change, the game change, the Goggles, the Yoga, the Culture-the departure from normal NBA personality types that lead him to the deserts in which his life now exists.

And this is the tragedy of his life.

For as the boy known as Lew Alcindor, he was a powerful form that teams understood, a transcendent talent that powered his way into the elite class of all-time greats-indeed he may have projected to be the greatest of all-time- but he was not yet a man. And it was that expansion, that ability to become something so distant from the archetype of a dominant physical Center, that opened the door for Magic Johnson, the 6’9” Point Guard, to be magical, for James Worthy to play Power Forward, and record a Triple Double in a Finals Game 7. It was that mutation that laid the foundation to the Showtime Lakers to be Showtime, for Pat Riley to become Pat Riley.

It was that transformation that allows us to dream of a further evolution of the game, one that has Lebron James using his wild abilities to play Point Guard, not 1-vs-5 Small Forward, simply because he is the right size. For us to long for Allen Iverson to win an NBA Championship, while never playing the “Right Way” at Point Guard. That allows Andrea Bargnani, Anthony Randolph, Ricky Rubio, Wilson Chandler, Josh Smith, Jeff Green and so many more of the youth to dream that all their abilities will be treasured, rather than simply assigned due to size. It means that the tragedy that is Lamar Odom coming off the bench to play in the post may never be repeated.

Indeed by Firing on Alcindor, and all the myths therein, we can treasure the limitless opportunities, when open to all possibilities, that can form systems to fit abilities, and truly see greatness.

The future is evolution, not revolution. And we can never forget that Kareem first sent us down this road to the true root of the NBA game. This is not a game to watch for the numbers, it is simply the greatest sociology experiment of all time, with the deconstruction and mutation of Ferdinand Lewis Alcindor, standing alone as the most interesting of variables.