Searching for Slava

Searching for Slava: Over the Hills and Far Away

2022-02-25T00:28:00.008-06:00

It can be difficult to find the right arc for a story. Harder still, when there isn’t an apparent beginning or an end.

Kyivan Stanislav Medvedenko is still the ember that inspired both the title and ethos of an obscure microblog some 12 years ago. The content was rarely about the undrafted former Laker, but more a quest for something elusive and hard to pin down. Slava had seemingly come out of nowhere—the Ukrainian pro leagues actually—and disappeared from view just as quickly once his NBA career had run its course. In truth, there was no real mystery. The taciturn shot-chucker who blazed an erratic orbit across our basketball firmament in the early 2000s simply headed home to Kyiv.

The capital city is receiving 24/7 news coverage at the moment, due to the Russian invasion. From the most available updates, Medvedenko is still in Kyiv, defending "the city from crimes against humanity." An exodus is clogging major roadways, with many leaving and a lot more sticking it out as sirens wail and bombs fall. It’s a dire situation that shares no commonality with whimsical hoops tales, apart from sticking another pin in the notion of circular time.

As his former coach Phil Jackson was fond of quoting, “Unceasing change turns the wheels of life. And so reality is shown in all its many forms.”

Medvedenko is no stranger to war and political instability. He was born in the village of Kiev Oblast in 1979, moved to Kyiv while still a child, and was balling in local youth clubs when the country declared its independence in 1990. He returned to the city in 2006 during an era of escalating political upheaval and instability. The former Laker (and Atlanta Hawk for all of 14 games) was working with the Ukrainian national team as well as his own local basketball club in 2014, when pro-Russian forces seized key parts of the capital, setting up the invasion of Luhansk and Donetsk, and the ultimate annexation of Crimea by Vladimir Putin.

Veteran NBA coach and TV analyst Mike Fratello served as the head coach for the Ukrainian national team from 2011 to 2014, with Medvedenko shepherding the team’s U16/17 division. Fratello left during the height of the turmoil in 2014.

“Obviously, it has escalated in the last five days,” Fratello told Mary Schmitt Boyer of The Plain Dealer at the time. “Things have gotten much worse. They closed the basketball federation offices last week. I think that was the smart thing to do. A bullet doesn't know where it's going when it leaves the gun."

Eight years later, the tanks are rolling once again. This time, the prognosis is infinitely grimmer with ballistic missile strikes reported in Kyiv Thursday night. An uglier part of circular stories.

Medvedenko turned to grassroots politics and activism in recent years, heading up a small non-profit in his Mykilska-Slobidka neighborhood in Kyiv’s left bank. His causes have been local, entrenched in multiple battles against corrupt land developers. In one notable case he was able to thwart the construction of several waterfront skyscrapers. A basketball court and skate park were built by the non-profit instead.

“It’s an accomplishment of our organization that we stopped further construction projects,” Medvedenko told the Kyiv Post. “There would have been not two, but 10 buildings. Everything you see here would’ve been gone.”

The backup center and power forward, and two-time NBA champion for the Los Angeles Lakers, also ran for Ukraine's parliament in 2019 and for Kyiv’s city council in 2020. A member of the small progressive Voice party, Medvedenko didn’t win either of those particular battles.

When the Pro-Russian Opposition Platform came calling with a plum offer, Slava gave them a hard pass.

“For me, a democratic pro-Western party is a must,” Medvedenko said. “My decision to take a part in politics is a weighted approach. It’s an opportunity to do something good for the city.”

After his failed city council bid, Medvedenko continued pushing initiatives with his non-profit, including the building of a community center where kids can learn English, play sports and chart their own paths forward.

For now, dreams of democracy, safety and self-realization are on hold in a fragile country that is largely standing and fighting alone. It’s a long way from the bright lights of the NBA. It’s not quite so far, geographically speaking, from allied nations who sit and watch, decrying the brutality of a madman who is looking to rewrite Russian history.

The pragmatic truth is that boots on the ground from the United States and other NATO members would spark the next world war. The alternative, is economic sanctions. The decision may be a “weighted approach” to borrow a phrase from Slava. But it sure as hell doesn’t feel right in the moment, as images of heartbreak and destruction flicker across our screens.

How do you end a story about a 12-year allegorical search for a quixotic power forward, and a country that has been contested, divided and torn since the Middle Ages? Unceasing change has been an oft-repeated bookmark and device, words that feel increasingly inconsequential and distant as Friday’s early morning hours arrive in a place under martial law, on the far side of the globe.

Hoping for safety and eventual autonomy for you and yours, Slava. In the meantime, we’ll keep these faint lights on at an eponymously named blog, over the hills and far away.

Ghosts, Grease Fires and Sinking Ships

2022-02-09T19:58:00.004-06:00

Lead balloon, lemon, loser, this years’ Lakers, we hardly knew ye.

The inexorable creep of squandered talent and lost expectations has been bumping along in various directions for 55 games now. There’s probably not much we don’t know and less that we should expect.

“You all know we are only passing by. We only walk over these stones a few times, our boats float a little while and then they have to sink,” said Billy Pretty, a forgotten character in the sublime novel The Shipping News.

The floundering regatta of the Los Angeles Lakers is a cause that has no hope as it slowly but surely spirals downward.

I was never a Russell Westbrook acolyte but I can remember when it was a ton of fun to watch him ball. There was the slew of playoff runs with the Oklahoma City Thunder that never quite resulted in the ultimate coronation. There were even some games in Houston where, in the moment, he did Russell Westbrook things that defied imagination. He has had the ability to ignite a game, to be a relentless and unstoppable attack dog. He has also, all too often, come crashing down to earth.

At age 33, Westbrook could still potentially salvage a piece of his elusive prime. But the game has passed him by and his stubborn way or the highway surely doesn’t fit this particular team. The deafening silence of any kind of legitimate trade rumors in the hours leading up to the deadline means that other organizations are equally loathe to take on the bloated contract of a recalcitrant Brodie.

The Lakers’ woes don’t fall entirely upon Russ. There has been yet another season of Covid protocols and too many injuries to rehash. The combined age of everyone on the roster does not translate to numbers that are yet known to the human species. But excuses are also beside the point. At some level you’d expect a roster with 57 All-Star selections to do basic basketball things through instinct and desire, like toss the biscuit toward the bucket and have someone actually flush the damned thing.

Granted, there have been sporadic highlight reels along the busted process. Personally speaking, the most entertaining part of the whole morass boils down to marveling at LeBron James’ ability to elude Father Time, especially during those moments when surrounded by a small retinue of still-young draft busts and those who were never drafted in the first place.

An honorable mention goes to Carmelo Anthony for consistently clicking from beyond the arc at .392, as well as saying all the right things and generally giving a shit. I would also shout out the effort of Anthony Davis except I’m literally afraid of jinxing an athletic yet oddly unbalanced gazelle who seems at constant risk of bad landings and lengthy rehabs.

Just a few of the ghosts of seasons past would include a string of lottery picks that are now playing their best ball elsewhere, ill-fated coaching hires, and contractual decisions by “management” that border on criminal negligence: cue the $132 million paid to Luol Deng and lumbering Timofey Mozgov to basically do nothing.

Back to the here and now, there’s seemingly more than enough talent and experience to get things right. There’s also an obvious case of too many creators in the cook space, and this current Lakers season has descended into a worst-ever episode of Hell’s Kitchen.

It’s not even fun to watch it, let alone write about it. A quixotic Oz-like journey gone horribly wrong. Sinking ships, ghosts and grease fires. The clichés feel staler than the team itself.

The 2021-22 season endures for now, however painful it may be. The 9th place L.A. Lakers face the 11th place Portland Trailblazers tonight. LeBron and Russ are both questionable, with left knee soreness and lower back stiffness respectively. Asked about fans’ boos after the Milwaukee blowout, Westbrook called it a “sign of respect.” If he does suit up tonight he’ll likely be treated to even more respect.

Somewhere in a parallel universe, things change on a dime. A team finds its unity, fourth quarter comebacks become sustained efforts, pitchforks are tossed to the side and the chants and cheers become infectiously good and inspiring. Boats are righted and souls are saved.

Somewhere, beyond the yellow brick road.

Ode to a Bald Eagle

2021-08-03T02:56:00.008-05:00

Pic SS&R

There’s no more joy in Mudville, the cake got left out in the rain and Lakers nation turns its lonely eyes inward. The bald eagle has landed…somewhere else.

There’s no way of figuring out this turn of events, although we’ll probably learn someday. "Cheaping out" is one way of explaining the Lakers' malfeasance, per Harrison Faigen at Silver Screen and Roll.

But for more than a few shining moments over the past few years, an improbable kind of Camelot happened, if you count shining knights as pasty white everymen who hail from the red dirt of College Station, Texas. There was no royal pedigree save for that inherited from a dad who cut his own teeth as a standout at Creighton before signing on as a lifer in high school and college sports at various places and various jobs, from administration to promotions to spectator sports safety and security, including a 30-year mainstay in Aggie athletics where he ultimately retired as Associate Athletic Director for Game Management.

Mike Caruso passed his love of the game on to his son, or his son simply took the ball and ran—whether that meant Alex’s own unlikely white-men-actually-can-jump antics or chasing after the loose ones that got away as a ball boy for Texas A&M. By the time the father retired in 2018, he was able to watch on TV as his progeny carved out a career in Los Angeles. Now he’ll pop a cold one and watch the kid move on to his next chapter with the Chicago Bulls for a reported $37 million over four years. That cash sure beats the $35K the 6’5” combo guard was pulling in when he first started out in the G-League.

It remains to be seen why the Lakers, who owned the dude’s Bird Rights, couldn’t or wouldn’t cough up the money to keep him. But see paragraph 2. Maybe it will all make sense someday, or even sooner than later, or maybe never at all. You say you know but you don’t know. Sometimes things go sideways.

I wrote about Alex Caruso for Forum Blue and Gold back in his two-way contract days and I wrote about him again this past season. I didn’t think I’d be saying so long this way.

He was a big fish from the scrublands, from the place of cul-de-sacs and Ford Rangers. He never seemed to be “L.A.” in the way that is commonly hyped and amplified, but he certainly fit in with a more bedrock aspect of the city—that being sports culture, and more specifically, the kind of grind-it-out, no complaints, no star trips, balls-out effort, and even the self-effacing good humor that allows one to cut a straight-faced commercial about manscaping—kudos to whatever creative genius came up with that one.

Memes and Laker fandom and GOAT jokes aside, Caruso is one of the best defenders in the league, a guy who reads the angles, organizes the team and in almost intangible ways, automatically elevates the play and attitudes of fellow teammates as soon as he subs in. You might have missed the moment coming out of a commercial break on national television when the music’s loud and the lights are blinding, but a minute later you notice that fortunes somehow seem to have changed, that momentum has shifted, and that the guy with the headband and sparse mustache just went flying out of bounds while flicking the ball back in. And, somehow made it back to the other end of the floor in time to set a pick or dish a dime or even throw it down.

That’s how you wind up with unworldly plus-minuses and net ratings, even when the highlight reels might not notice. It’s how you go from non-drafted to being very much on the radar of front office execs around the league who are more than happy to open up their wallets. It’s how hearts are broken and hard questions are asked.

It’s how dormant keys are dusted off in the wee hours of the morning, how a chapter closes here and opens there. Past the hour when normal people read, on a barely flickering search for something elusive. Soar on wingman, we wish you well and we'll be watching.

Anniversary

2021-01-26T16:44:00.008-06:00

Time drifts imperceptibly. We’re in our sanctuaries, waiting it out. Screens swipe left to right. The passing parade is like a drug, until particular milestones jar us awake.

During a glorious career, you flew higher than we ever thought possible. We couldn’t have known what would follow. A year has passed, a millions new angels circle in the dark…or light? You never got to say the things you might.

Close our eyes and remember. The jutting jaw, the pump-fakes and step-backs, the drives into waiting thickets. The anger and joy. Down the line, you went further. Past the line, past all limits. Soaring out of bounds.

He was the most uncompromising athlete of his generation, or at least the most successful implacable athlete. There are too many stories to tell or that have been forgotten, about those who never found the fame or heights of Kobe Bryant. He willed, worked, pushed, struggled and succeeded, past his contemporaries. Years after the countless headlong rushes, he began to rein it in. Could it be called compromise? Perhaps. There’s a middle territory where battles occur. Sometimes, there’s nothing but the battle.

“I never saw the end of the tunnel," he wrote. "I only saw myself running out of one.”

Time passes, slowly. It didn’t use to feel like this. A year of living in a dark viral overload, of hearing numbers that harden us. Statistics used to be fun. Anniversaries pass, markers are extended, goals are questioned and repositioned. We live with loss, and living itself becomes a labyrinth. The walls grow higher and the journey more uncertain, our voices absorbed in a dream state.

He would not have seen things so ephemerally. He would have considered the places where lines intersect. He would have planned a new line of attack. We aren’t you. Our angels are still crying in the dark.

An outpouring of love and remembrances puts a pause on our day. Former teammates, family and friends remember a girl and her dad. We read and remember as well. My own daughter still has a Lakers t-shirt I gave her, brought home long ago from a fan giveaway game. It became her familiar and comfortable night shirt through the many years. She is careful these days about the world around her, a product of the times. I can’t imagine what I couldn’t even write.

You can try to shape a memory through words, but there is only who he was and what he did. A younger player who fired in all directions, a scowl turning to smile, pieces of light jabbing through the haze. Someone isolated before he was revered, an iconic statesman in his retirement years. There was a family, healthy and happy. He learned and came out the other side in real and meaningful ways. But a tear occurred in the time continuum. A ruffling sound, blanketed and stilled.

The temperature is dropping and I put a leash on the dog. Heading out to capture what’s left of the fleeting sun, passing giant aloes that rim the sidewalk. The world of temporal time and space. Down inside, you remember. He flew higher than we ever thought he might.

The Prime of Kentavious Caldwell-Pope

2021-01-18T15:51:00.006-06:00

He’s never played in an NBA All-Star contest and will likely never sign a max contract. But a small town kid who made it to the biggest stage in sports, has clearly emerged as an indispensable cog on a championship roster.

At age 27, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is in his prime.

Coming off a banner year, the Los Angeles Lakers weren’t widely expected to rain long ball fury on the league. Their reputation last season was built on suffocating defense, and they’re just five years removed from the Byron Scott era—the arms-folded coach having famously opined on 3-pointers, “I don’t believe it wins championships.”

Under Frank Vogel’s leadership the Lakers did indeed win big last year, and they did it by combining star power (LeBron James and Anthony Davis), rim protection, pace and an efficient scoring game. Shooting from deep wasn’t their obvious weapon of choice—23rd in 3-point attempts and 21st in made 3s during the regular season, although the stat did improve to 11th in downtown makes during the playoffs.

And here we are again in another season marked with a pandemic asterisk, following last year’s scourge of the very same mutating virus. It has been a dark time in many ways, a serpentine journey connecting the dots from outbreaks past to today’s tribalism. Rays of light flash through along the way, diffused by cloud cover, postponements and protocols.

The Lakers have upped the offensive ante in 2021, hovering near the top of the NBA leaderboard in long-distance acumen. Caldwell-Pope is a key component, averaging .553 on 3.8 attempts per game from beyond the arc; good for third in the league in decimals behind his own teammate Alex Caruso and current leader Steph Curry. When it comes to the actual number of Laker lengthy launches, Caldwell-Pope lags behind LeBron James and Kyle Kuzma.

But make no mistake, KCP is the designated sniper, at least in the eyes of one teammate. ESPN’s Dave McMenamin recently polled team members as to who’s actually their King of 3-ball. James handed some props to Caldwell-Pope, but he still said he’d bet on himself.

Davis, however, sees it differently. “I would have to say Kenny is always our guy who we always look to for shots,” said the Brow, referring to the man who wears No. 1.

Caldwell-Pope has never been a big gabber, but he didn’t hesitate to second that notion.

"Numbers don't lie," he said, alluding to the career-best 55.3% he's shooting from 3 so far this season. "But I'm really enjoying LeBron shooting the ball. He's shooting it at a tremendous clip. He's knocking them down and it's fun seeing him have [success] shooting the ball as well. But we all know, I'm the real shooter, for sure."

Caldwell-Pope grew up in Greenville, Georgia. It’s one of the smaller cities you’re apt to come across—population 855, the last time anyone bothered to check. The largest structure is a looming century-old courthouse that dwarfs everything around it, positioned at the epicenter of a small turnaround that doubles as a two-lane highway. Residents are predominantly African-American; the median income is less than half the state level and staple items can be purchased at the local Piggly Wiggly.

The 2.36-square mile nondescript county seat won’t evoke memories of any small town southern flick you might have rented back when VHS reigned supreme. But there is a Greenville High and there was a Coach Carter. And a quiet kid who let his playing do the talking, became the big fish in a small town, ranked nationally and playing in the 2011 McDonald’s All-American Game where he scored six points in 12 minutes for the East. That same game saw future teammate Anthony Davis pouring in 14 points and four swats in 21 minutes for the West.

The guy Davis calls Kenny went on to two years at Georgia, and was selected by the Detroit Pistons as the No. 8 pick in the 2013 NBA draft. AD, of course, was the top overall choice the following year. The seven-time All-Star willed his way to L.A. last season.

The Pistons were in the middle of a dispiriting slump when they drafted Caldwell-Pope, failing to make the playoffs for three of his four seasons, and bumped from the first round without winning a game in 2016. The 6’5” guard was a starter for most of his stay, honing his skills and upping his minutes under Mo Cheeks, John Loyer and mostly, Stan Van Gundy. But losing doesn’t engender longevity, and high hopes in the Motor City sputtered out—KCP’s rights were renounced in 2017 and he landed in Los Angeles, scoring a one-year deal worth $18 million. There was some online grumbling about the payday but the larger story for months had been an executive shakeup that left Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka in charge. One-year deals were stepping stones forward.

As a 24-year-old starter in a season that mixed young talent, losses and booing fans in equal measure, Caldwell-Pope performed just well enough to land a second one-year contract. This time, it was in a lesser role at a six-million dollar discount. The fact that he shared an agent with the newly arrived James, no doubt helped him stick, even if the wheelbarrows filled with cash went to a player whose place in the pantheon of all-time greats is obvious. And when Luke Walton exited and Frank Vogel arrived, followed by a blockbuster trade for Davis (also a Rich Paul client), the Lakers brought Caldwell-Pope back once more to help fill a roster that had been cleaned out to the nubs. This time around, the capable role-player had to make do with a two-year contract for a total of $16 million, less than half of his original welcome to the City of Angels.

The season ended in the strangest championship run of all, hermetically sealed in Orlando, framed by an unrelenting pandemic and following on the heels of unrest, brutality and the unfathomable loss of a father and his daughter and seven other precious lives, taken without warning in a fiery helicopter crash in the California fog. Out of an untenable morass came the Lakers’ first ring in a full decade. Caldwell-Pope started every game in the Disney Bubble, replacing Avery Bradley who elected not to attend. The speedy wing was a key component of the team’s eventual success, from corner 3s to sneaky steals.

The Georgia native opted out of his player’s option during the short offseason and was rewarded with a three-year deal for $40 million. It afforded some stability and longevity after all the short term contracts.

“I believed in myself,” Caldwell-Pope said. “This year, to come out and perform how I performed, I’m truly blessed and humbled they believed in me enough to give me a comfortable deal that I haven’t had in so long.”

Rural Georgia is a place of cracked country roads, dragonflies and dollar stores. The state may be going through a tale of political and demographic change, but Greenville dwells in its own sleepy time capsule where summer days are hot and sticky and cold winter winds whistle through the pines. But in the far-off land of Los Angeles, where celebrations exist remotely during uncertain times, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is clearly on the map, and in his prime.

Searching for Caruso

2021-01-05T15:43:00.004-06:00

Last year’s fan favorite has now devolved into a categorical anomaly. Alex Caruso, who provided defensive moxie and team glue in 24 minutes per game inside the Orlando playoff bubble, has appeared for token moments in just three appearances so far this season; ultimately falling victim to an antiseptic designation known as “health and safety protocols.”

The term translates roughly into anything having to do with a global plague that has decimated the population, split ideologies and turned sporting events and the teams who participate in them into traveling time bombs. Caruso may have tested positive, he may have been exposed to someone who tested positive, or the most unlikeliest of scenarios—he could have pulled a Harden and been caught on tape at Jucy Lucy’s Landing Strip behind the interstate access road. The NBA simply isn’t saying, it’s part and parcel of the new non-speak, designed to create the most palatable and undefinable version of something that’s all kinds of scary and likely won’t get better before it gets worse.

Putting aside the above word salad, the uncertainty goes well beyond Caruso as the NBA attempts to cope with the logistics of running a show in the middle of a surging health crisis. As ESPN’s Baxter Holmes observes, the task has already exhausted those who manage their teams’ collective health, with a season that is still in its infancy.

“As the NBA tries to hold a season outside a bubble during the coronavirus pandemic, team health officials and others filling protocol roles are essentially the NBA's front-line workers. Roles that have been largely delegated to team health officials, as outlined in the NBA's 158-page protocols, include testing officer, contact tracing officer, facemask enforcement officer, facility hygiene officer, health education and awareness officer and travel safety officer, among others. Some team health officials hold more than one of those roles, along with their original roles.

A Western Conference GM added, "There's just not enough hours in the day to read the memos, the nuances, compliance, testing, the things that quickly change." The Western Conference GM continued, "You have constant scenarios happening where the memos don't cover that particular situation...That's no one's fault. It's just where we're at."

Returning to matters of the missing Bald Eagle, he’ll be in absentia again tonight for the Lakers’ second game against the Memphis Grizzlies. Silver Screen Roll’s Harrison Faigen tweeted a screenshot of a succinct official team statement: “Alec Caruso (health and safety protocols) is out.”

Players who fall into the new criteria can’t be anywhere near their team—not during a game, practice, a bus or a plane. They simply have to vanish until meeting a series of negative tests or timelines.

Even Lakers’ head coach Frank Vogel seemed flummoxed about Caruso’s whereabouts recently, per Silver Screen and Roll’s Christian Rivas.

“Forrest Gump: that’s all I can say about that,” said Vogel.

Cue Alex Michael Caruso, running along a two-lane blacktop with his arms pumping, heading somewhere only he knows, as the crowd recedes from view.

*Update: This piece had the lifespan of a mayfly, with Caruso now expected to return Thursday against the San Antonio Spurs. That’s it—revision over, keep reading, or don’t.

The undrafted success story last appeared in uniform on December 27 in a blowout win against the Minnesota Timberwolves, logging just 11 minutes off the bench but chipping in seven points and a couple boards. Beyond the obvious challenges of a pandemic that is nearing its one-year anniversary, there are other reasons to question Caruso’s role, whenever he does return. It has nothing to do with his value as a player, and much to do with his team’s shifting usage.

As Basketball Reference’s play-by-play data shows from this year compared to last, there’s a trickle-down effect creating a backcourt logjam. Whereas JaVale McGee, Dwight Howard and Anthony Davis divvied up pivot duties last season (Davis playing 40/60 at center and power forward), this year’s model has Marc Gasol and Montrezl Harrell carving up almost all the 5 intervals, with Davis now spending 92 percent of his time at his preferred 4 spot. This in turn results in Kyle Kuzma increasingly shifting to small forward, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope leaning 3 but also playing 2, Wes Matthews taking some of Danny Green’s former responsibilities, Talen Horton-Tucker picking up his sophomore game and Dennis Schröder kicking off a new chapter in fine fashion as a starting guard, with 16.3 points and 4.9 assists in 30.4 minutes per frame. That slots him right behind Davis and LeBron James in moments spent on the court—the 36-year-old power point forward and perennial All-Star continuing to confound Father Time, as well as any earthly positional definitions.

Where does this leave Caruso? His few appearances have been entirely at the point this season, compared to last year when he split duties between both guard positions. Of course, it’s early and there will be plenty of unseen scenarios in the months ahead, whether related to injury, coronavirus or adjustments that inevitably occur as coaches tweak and explore lineups over the course of a long NBA roadmap.

Searching for Caruso alludes to the obvious; a player who has gone MIA as of late. But it's also an allusion to a microblog that began with an allegorical quest for a Ukrainian power forward who seemingly vanished into the ether. The quest mirrored the site itself, as it blossomed to some minor degree before its inevitable slide back into soul-sucking obscurity. It’s highly doubtful that the subject of this piece will travel the same path as Medvedenko or this eponymously named basketball confessional. During the lead-up to Caruso’s first year with the Lakers, I wrote for Forum Blue and Gold about his humble beginnings in the sport, and where his journey might lead.

“The heat eases imperceptibly in the Texas Triangle but seasons do change, just as sure as kids hang out at the Dairy Queen and oversized pickups rumble along a cracked two-lane highway. It’s a land of cul-de-sacs and limestone facades. A thin contrail arcs silently, high across the azure sky. It’s much too soon to hazard a guess as to Caruso’s NBA future. But he’s somewhere on the map, living a dream and tossing the ball up ahead.”

Caruso’s quixotic vision quest has advanced considerably since then, and it’s doubtful that a kid from College Station will wind up cashing in his chips for a steakhouse franchise in the American hinterlands. But the game can move on quickly when you’re on the outside looking in, especially when rejoining a rotation that’s already 11-deep.

Ultimately, I want to see the dude back in uniform and back on the floor. I’m hoping he didn’t actually contract this fucked-up disease and if he did, that there’s no lingering aftereffects. I miss his presence, his dogged determination, his leave-it-all-on-the-floor mentality and those glorious, mind-boggling plus/minus ratios that spike as soon as he enters the game, even when other stats wouldn’t seem to justify it. Caruso just makes good stuff happen; he gets guys their touches, makes the game easier and in general, does the right thing. He’s an unlikely internet cult figure and everyman hero, with a rec-league game that has translated to championship bling. But for now, he’s nowhere in sight.

The New Year has begun, uncertainty remains and another bookmark appears in a 10-year-old trip down an oft-forgotten rabbit hole. Be well and stay healthy. The lights are still on at Searching for Slava.

Into the Unknown, Again

2020-12-16T13:44:00.009-06:00

For all of the slow-motion, frustratingly lonely and tragic dumpster fires of 2020, there has been a deceptively fast and infinitely welcome lead-up to the new and now current NBA season. Yes, exiguous readers, it’s here and now and will soon burgeon past preseason play to the real enchilada.

The futility of attempting yet another sporadic reboot of a dormant basketball blog is painfully clear. Its moment slipped away long ago, summers of a decade past seem ever more distant now. In 2010, Phil Jackson was beginning his final year as the Lakers’ head coach and Slava Medvedenko was three years out of the league. I wrote about anything and everything under the guise of hoops, from my dog Otis—gone these many years—to the Sages, also long gone. I used a black format with a white font during the portal’s nascent days.

I wanted to make it personal. And, I wanted it to be read. Oh, how I’d plant my links on other sites’ comment pages, or laboriously ping to the far corners of the earth with search engines that no longer exist. Independent basketball journals were flourishing then and the culture felt more connected. Or perhaps it still is and I no longer am.

This past season was uniquely interrupted, truncated and endlessly analyzed. It came to an end after 96 days in the Walt Disney World Bubble. The confetti dropped and piped-in noise ratcheted up to a banshee wail. Pixilated spectator images laughed and cried, affixed to a stretch of giant screens, as players celebrated on the court below in an oddly juxtaposed yet somehow endearing semblance of what was once taken for normal. The Los Angeles Lakers were crowned World Champions after ten long years. And suddenly the grand experiment was over, players and coaches and staff heading home like astronauts returning from a space oddity to a world that must have felt very different and strange. Left behind was an army of health workers packing up their test kits, steam cleaners advancing across garish hotel carpets, cooks and servers, security guards and shipping clerks, invisible camera operators and digital technicians packing massive equipment bags and leaving en-masse. And the memories of player vlogs, when those were what we had to acclimate to a strange new world.

A couple months have passed and once again, we’re heading into the unknown. Training camp is shorter and somewhat later, with two preseason games played to date and another looming on Wednesday. The Lakers are back in their own environment, both the UCLA Health Training Center in El Segundo and Staples downtown. But if anything, it can seem even weirder—a carefully crafted capsule that was nearly akin to a video game in structure has been replaced by cavernous and nearly empty sports arenas that have not been adjusted to scale. The punctiliously controlled Disney setting was remarkably free from a deadly contagion that flared back and forth across the outside nation, spreading in the simplest and most organic of ways—human contact and interaction. Now, the NBA will try its best to contain things on the fly, as teams hit the road again, albeit in a structured and complicated format intended to minimize travel and exposure, and best deduced by swiping a slide rule across a PDF printout.

The team also went through changes during a compressed NBA draft/free agency period, with Danny Green, Avery Bradley, Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee exiting stage left, and Marc Gasol, Montrezl Harrell, Dennis Schröder, Wesley Matthews and Alfonzo McKinnie arriving stage right. All-in-all, a decent haul, augmented by the respective extension and re-signing of megastars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and the retention/re-signing of the remainder of last season’s supporting cast.

Among the early storylines were a double beat-down of the Los Angeles Clippers as James and Davis rested, with new players impressing on alternate nights, including sophomore Talen Horton-Tucker going supernova like the next Big Thing. Last year’s No. 46 draft pick resembles a human fire hydrant with extraordinarily long gadget arms and legs, a preternatural savvy and the chops to play both ends of the floor with a grounded ferocity that belies his age and experience. On the second of two nights, the 20-year-old from the Windy City dropped 33 points, 10 boards, four dimes and four steals, matching up against the likes of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. At this rate he’ll be stealing thunder from fan favorite Alex Caruso, which is just fine—they both possess a team-first grind mentality that leaves room for all and all for one.

Despite the sum of the Lakers’ star power, depth and found-again championship swag, we can’t yet foresee how the impending season will play out. This is true under the most stable of circumstances and it is doubly indubitable with the vagaries of the Covid-19 era. Thirty teams along with their accompanying personnel structures, are now in wholly different environments compared to the novel summer bubble. Throw in new players, shortened conditioning regimes and the potential for injury—a constant bugaboo for ballers under the best of circumstances—and the prospect for change in any number of ways increases exponentially.

Still, it has been evident through just two exhibitions, that this is a mature squad that benefits from veteran leadership both on the floor and on the sidelines. Management and the coaching staff deserve more than a brief nod, and if this latest web restart persists beyond the immediate moment, that nod might turn to outright headbanging. Perhaps Frank Vogel can take an existential trip to Flathead Lake, and a meeting of the minds with the ZenMaster among the juniper and pine, the wild roses and brittle fern. Until then, these 1,000 words will serve as yet another bookmark in an oft-interrupted journey that began with the quixotic search for a Ukrainian power forward who vanished as unexpectedly as he appeared, a quest more figurative than literal.

You say you know but you don’t know, unceasing change turns the circle of life and you can return to a place but not a place in time. Don’t forget to keep your head warm this winter, the lights are still flickering at Searching for Slava.

NBA 2020 Season 2: The Starting Line is Thataways?

2020-06-12T14:18:00.003-05:00

Anyone possessing a basketball pulse should know by now that the NBA will likely resume its 2019-2020 basketball season in a self-sustaining bubble community known as the ESPN Wide World of Sports at Disney World, Florida, beginning with practices and scrimmages, and progressing to a reboot of competitive play sometime around July 30. By the time teams battle each other again for supremacy—assuming the magic ship doesn’t sail off the rails again due to rising cases of Covid-19 and contentious union negotiations—approximately four months and 20 days will have passed since things came to a screeching halt. With eight seeding games per team in a 16-day period followed by four rounds of a traditional best-of-seven playoff format, the new schedule will stretch out until about October 13. As welcome as this all is, it seems a bit ridiculous to refer to a novel concept as anything resembling the resumption of the regular season. Instead, let’s call it NBA 2020 Season 2, and assume that what we’re currently in qualifies as the preseason. There’s plenty to sort through during this waiting period, although the more important strokes will ultimately be left to historians to wrestle with. Basketball is only a small portion of it, part of the parcel, a footnote, a diversion, a necessity for some, an addiction, welcome solace, a thing to think about late at night when all is dark and sleep comes slowly and uneasily, when stresses and isolation and social inequities and survival all swirl together in a new normal that is anything but normal in any sense of the word. Remember when we took it all for granted? Remember when choices seemed simpler, even if there is nothing simple about the world we now inhabit?

The year was less than a month old when Kobe Bryant and eight other precious souls were lost in a fiery crash, a cataclysmic event that threw more than just the sports world into shocked disbelief and grieving. It was so sudden, so strange. It put us all into a shell-shocked stew of question marks and reminisces. We struggled to come up with words, but we all wanted to make words, and to relive and recount memories. Even as all that was unfolding, early news of Wuhan, China and the wariness of an uncontainable contagion had been seeping into our collective consciousness, and it wouldn’t be long before we were all asking, or at least thinking, about the where and when of a larger spread. By the time of the inevitable cessation of NBA play, our thoughts were not so much a result of surprise, but the inevitability we all knew or suspected. Matters only mushroomed from there, in each and every facet of life.

The rapid proliferation of a lethal disease came at us in waves, a sea of tragedy compounded by sheer ineptitude and negligence at the highest levels of the federal government, embodied by a petulant and narcissistic loaf of a man with an incongruous blonde up-and-over swirl of hair offset by an orange spray tan and pale piggish eyes. If there happens to be an insulted reader or two out of a scant handful that still pays any attention to a microblog that’s way past any imagined prime, that’s okay—I don’t give two fucks at this point. We’re three and a half years into a Category 5 shit storm of non-leadership, ripped from any norms of governance that still exist, with no standing left among nations we once held as allies, and with even less at home. But months of sickness, death and a shattered economic collapse from coronavirus wouldn’t deprive other societal disorders of their needed oxygen, case in point being the slithering rot of white nationalism spoon-fed by Dear Leader to fear mongers and blunderers, aggressors and dog whistlers, slack jaw feeders, bleaters and red coal carpet creepers. A steady stream of protectionism, harassment, brutality and murder amalgamated like a freeway pileup during a pandemic that had already rubbed a nation raw, culminating with an eight-minute, forty-six-second asphyxiation of George Floyd by a white cop who was so fucking nonchalant about a public execution that he actually kept his hands in his pockets while kneeling on the man’s neck, like a golfer lining up his next putt on a flawless green. That policeman and his three cohorts uncorked a levee that has been threatening to breech for a very long time. We don’t know where the surging tide will lead—it’s righteous hurt and anger, a human shapeshifter, purpose and peace, visible from space on 16th Street.

Sports is not a panacea for all that ails us, but it’s an endeavor that deals with success and failure, domination and disintegration. It can be inspiring and frustrating, unifying and dividing and whatever other words you want to toss into the bubbling stew, but I sure as hell would be okay watching a high-arcing shot from way downtown hitting nothing but net right around now. It has also become a late-night diversion that begins with rewatching NBA games from earlier in the season on a mobile device, and proceeds toward vain attempts to lull myself to sleep by imagining exactly what this sports experiment will actually look like. There have been all kinds of rumors and tidbits about the possibility of not having actual on-site play-by-play and color commentators, perhaps using drone cameras and positioning remote analysts in studios safely removed from the action, or even more confounding, the notion that head coaches over the age of 65 might not be allowed to roam the sidelines. That’s not gonna fly. There’s also news of a faction of players holding conference calls to debate the sustainability of playing in the Disney bubble and you can’t blame them for asking or wondering, given the volatility of the situation on the ground, as well as the optics of a league largely made up of black men being sequestered to entertain the masses. I have loads and loads of questions, like what will it be like for athletes to train and compete on an obstacle course that has never existed before, what will the viewing experience be like for an audience, and whether fans will be replaced by cardboard cutouts perched on blacked-out bleachers with subtle backlighting and ambient noise from an NBA 2K20 soundtrack? Where will the players live, what will they eat, what teams will advance and what’s the weather like in that neck of the woods in August anyway? I’m assuming high-90s and constant humidity that feels like a hot, wet towel draped across the face. Plus mosquitos the size of mutant bats.

I find myself with a lot of time on my hands these days. I’m not exactly hermetically sealed off in an alternative timeline but I do find myself staring at the screen a lot. I’m not sure whether up is down or down is up. I go to sleep later and I wake up later and I’m not entirely convinced that dreams are any less real than reality. The never-never land is a fragmented journey to get somewhere but the finish line is forever changing. References to the upcoming basketball reboot inevitably use Orlando as a key word but the resort is actually in Bay Lake, a city that was incorporated 53 years ago yet still only has a population of 51. The 23 square mile municipality is owned and controlled by the Walt Disney Company and its original residents were relocated a long, long time ago. These days, the only permanent townspeople live off the grid in a tiny cluster of mobile homes, surrounded by thick stands of pine trees and bodies of water. These hand-picked good folks are supposedly there to keep the cogs of bureaucracy running when it comes to matters such as land use and planning, but in truth, they mostly just live there, paying $75 a month in rent and watching the bobcats and manatees play. These aren’t your day-to-day Disney World employees tasked with actual nuts and bolts jobs at the theme parks, such as cashiering, food service and frolicking in brightly-colored tunics. Those people are uniformly referred to as Cast Members, and live in different residential communities where their rent is automatically deducted from electronic pay deposits. Regardless, it’s all part of Orange County, Florida, where coronavirus numbers are rapidly spiking upwards, even as the state continues on track to a full reopening. You can insulate a reboot of the National Basketball League all you want, but somebody’s got to serve Woody’s Box Lunches to hungry athletes. And at some point, the ripple effect of flag-draped boat rallies and 55 Other Best Things to Do in Orlando is going to make itself known. I could go on for a couple thousand more words but I won't. Which way was the starting line again?

Our Collective Kid

2020-03-16T21:13:00.002-05:00

How can you begin to write about a season upended, of sickness and panic and utter strangeness, stemming from a microscopic piece of genetic material taking its first uncertain toddler steps before exploding into a dead run? The enormity of the entire NBA closing down over the course of an evening was juxtaposed with the ever-growing and sobering reality of local, national and global events, swarming our senses like a giant cloud of locusts. As days passed, a larger reality of societal shutdown began to dwarf a game in which two opposing teams—with no more and no less than five players each at any one time—advance an inflated ball from one end to the other and then back again, in hopes of putting that cylindrical object through a metal hoop ten feet off the ground. That magical portal is composed of high tensile carbon steel, draped in nylon netting. It is a transcendental thing, the be-all, end-all culmination of great effort, of sprinting, pounding, dribbling and passing, of blocks and rebounds, misses and curses, slips and tumbles and taunts, of elbows and teeth and whistles, of stops and starts and leaping and soaring, crashing and burning, layups and jams, of hanging on the same steel circle as its supporting structure sways and strains precipitously. This is the place where the netting dances, almost silently, as a full-grain leather orb completes its perfect rainbow arc from somewhere downtown, swishing through a split second before the roar of the crowd climbs over 100 decibels, louder than a freight train thundering past, and mingling ever so perfectly with the incandescent blur of LED lighting powerful enough to melt the average cornea. It's the place where spirits soar and fall, where pure joy happens, where drinks are sloshed and relationships begin and end. And a game that can be akin to a scorching solo or a perfect choir, that is both objective and unabashedly opinionated, and one played and observed from inches to miles and miles away, is suddenly silenced.

“Shut the light, go away. Full of grace, you cover your face.”

The NBA did what it had to do. And all the shuttering, the social distancing and hoarded goods and claustrophobia, the unanswered questions and staring at screens doesn’t begin to compare to the larger losses and suffering around a globe that we all knew was in some kind of trouble waiting to happen. We just didn’t know exactly what, even with warning signs all around, even with all that we read and hear and consume and ignore. I want a moment back in time, to make dinner and grab a beer out of the fridge, to turn on the warming rays and sit on the couch, to sit and grin, to get up and pace and frown and curse, to share the experience on social media, to win or lose, but ultimately, to be absolutely lost in the moment. The beauty of these shared experiences—sports or otherwise—is that even when the season draws to its inevitable close, there’s always the security of knowing that it will roll around again, that the year is broken up into segments that are part and parcel of an unbroken picture. It’s all changed now, we’re emptying shelves and straining to see—specks in our eyes, we were dropping like flies.

Time passes imperceptibly and the path begins its gradual ascent, a late afternoon sun bouncing off canyon walls. A thousand dimpled footprints from a time gone by. Hawks drift lazily on thermal banks, a contrail arcs across the azure sky. Somewhere, a skillet is sizzling, hunks of onion curl and wine burbles slowly from a dark bottle’s neck. Pings of music echo from a distance away and lights are slowly crackling to life. We want our moments back.

“I think I know, some things we never outgrow.”

Lyrics from "Kid"/Pretenders/C. Hynde

Kobe Bryant: The Things We Never Had Time to Say

2020-01-27T22:25:00.004-06:00

It was a day. A long, drawn-out, numb day. A day spent scrolling and reading, a day spent silently tapping the "like" icon, as if by that mute acknowledgement, something was actually being communicated. But mostly, it was a day of vague and scattered thoughts, of melancholy and a strange disconnect—even while wholly connected to the moment.

People I know and respect were posting and reposting, old articles from years past, new pieces conceived in the moment, a time in space where a grieving community comes together. I considered reposting something I wrote during the lead-up to Kobe Bryant’s final season, something that was whimsy and absurd invention and sincerity as well. But I hesitated, partly because of the image, a gyrocopter gliding through the air. Regardless, for all the things I wrote about the guy over the years, this was the one I liked the best—the clickety-clack of the keys under my fingers felt right at the time. Now, staring at a new word doc, my keystrokes feel all wrong.

I take a break from it all and go for a walk, along some Austin residential streets a block or two removed from the urban bustle. A young couple is strolling slowly ahead of me and my pace takes me past. The guy is saying to his edgy, raven-haired girlfriend: “I feel like going and adopting a dog today, and naming him Kobe.” A simple sentiment, yet infinitely relatable.

Here in Austin, on a street with three visible people on it, one is talking about Kobe and one listens to another talk about Kobe, as a stranger walks past with his eyes on the ground, also listening. It's here, there and everywhere. Because Bryant wasn’t only Los Angeles even if he was essential Los Angeles. There was and is a global admiration that has always gone beyond what anyone can say in the moment; whatever anyone’s favorite memory or game or take on a game is. And, a personality and a style of play that engendered controversy and more than a few scorching analytics debates devoted to the unseemly notion of taking contested mid-range, ball-hogging, jab-stepping, fadeaway jumpers when everyone knew, or claimed they knew, that easy 2’s and spaced-out 3’s were where the game is at now, man.

I was all-in with Kobe, from the moment he arrived in L.A. as an untamable teenage rookie through to his final limping chapter, topped of by that 60-point swan song finish. There were years spent, many of them, driving back from work with Chick’s "left-to-right on your radio dial," getting home in time for the second half on TV, or the trips to Staples, or at a club or a bar, talking to friends about the Lakers and Kobe, at a time when that was what the city needed it, when purple and gold pennants on car antennas were part of a unifying message that was embraced, even in unsaid ways. Kobe was the face of it, a high-flying and completely combustible Robin to Shaq’s Superman. And, he seized a mantle he already believed was his, once the Big Fella actually did leave the building. Remember how the headstrong Bryant fought with and resented Phil Jackson and the idea of system basketball in the early years, and how he came to accept and actually embrace the Zen Master’s teachings once Jackson returned for a second stand? There was the tough and ugly time in Denver and the hurt and repercussions rumbling across the Western Conference’s fractured tectonic plates and beyond—a messy era engendering anger and mistrust and bandages ripped off as soon as they were applied. And if the first portion of a 20-year career was filled with dazzling smiles and improbable dunks, the second chapter was marked by a grim assassin’s look, pounding away at opponents until his own tendons and bones would break, as if by torturing himself as well as others, there could be some redemption that only Mamba himself could fathom. Still, he continued his relentless Sisyphean challenge, pushing the heavy boulder uphill, partnering with Pau Gasol and gathering two more rings to add to the three others he already possessed. By the time Jackson left for good, Kobe was showing pleasure in the game again, except for a body that was betraying him in increasingly obvious ways.

Three more head coaches would follow, as would a ruptured Achilles and a fractured knee, just to mention a couple of the mind bending litany of medical mishaps. There would be no more titles, just an extended Lakers' march toward the basement of the league’s standings. But there were still moments to enjoy, and Bryant himself seemed more at ease with the world—if that’s possible for perhaps the most driven athlete of his time. If asked to pick a favorite memory from the last days of Kobe’s career, it would certainly be that 60-point storybook finish. Because how could it not be? It began in halting, painful fashion with shots clanking off the rim and it morphed into something spectacular and impossible and textbook Kobe; a cacophony of ridiculously hard shots and ragged breath and the very definition of leaving it all on the court. But that was just the capper of a two-decade run. Through all of it, the good, the bad and the infinitely complex, there was the undeniable truth of beautiful basketball, served up in outrageously large portions.

The tragedy of Sunday is not only the passing of a sports icon, it is the unfathomable loss of a father and his daughter and seven other precious lives, taken without warning in a fiery crash in California fog. It’s the bereavement of a widow and three other daughters, including an infant too young to know what was lost in the moment—that pain will unfold over years to come. It is unthinkable but still we think about it, these are the things we know and the things we can never know, the things we say and will never say.

A long, drawn-out day turned into another and a league and fans continued to try and process an unfathomable reality. Bryant was fond of talking about process, a word that seemed like a touchstone for a complex personality. How do you break something down into logical bites, when not a single part makes any sense at all? He lived in the incandescent moments, the deafening noise and the wash of light, the impossible and improbable, the kicked-out leg and jutting jaw, moments we wished would last forever. Kobe famously said that he never saw the end of the tunnel. We never got to see the ending we wanted.

There were things that we never had time to say. So long, down the line. You called us, but we never had time to say. Goodbye.

LA Lakers: A Decade Ends and Another Begins

2019-12-31T20:48:00.001-06:00

After an indeterminably long summer, a roster overhaul and endless anticipation and speculation, the Los Angeles Lakers blasted into the regular NBA season, showing early strength and lengthy winning streaks that turned to signs of mortality as 2019 drew to a close. Case in point: a four game losing streak that caused heads to spin, holiday joy to ebb and trade machine fantasies to rise lazily from the complacency of a season in progress that looked nearly unstoppable for about two months.

But despite some peaks and valleys, the team is still leading in the West and will end the decade at 26-7, off a pair of back-to-back wins. At its best, this year’s edition has been a vet-heavy Goliath that steamrolls human asphalt in its path. But flies in the ointment have certainly been revealed—2020 will tell if a finer-tuned monster will emerge.

The Lakers last reached the postseason in 2013. Countless players have passed through the doors since then, along with three head coaches (four if you count Bernie Bickerstaff’s five interim efforts; five if you count Mike Brown’s final gasps to kick off the 2012-13 season and six if you include current HC Frank Vogel). Toss in multiple training staff turnovers, two general managers and two team presidents, the last being Magic Johnson who threw in the towel during an impromptu resignation/heartfelt tell-all to reporters prior to the start of the last game of last season, aka the team’s sixth consecutive losing frame. Years of downward plunges, endless injuries, annual trips to the lottery, the acquisition of LeBron James and a passing parade of scintillating young talent that was consistently frittered away until finally, almost as an incongruous last gasp—Los Angeles pulled the trigger on a trade for Anthony Davis. There was a moment last June, when the roster consisted solely of James, Davis and Kyle Kuzma—the latter being the sole survivor of all the young dudes who walked through the door during countless teen spirit rebuilds.

Credit goes to Rob Pelinka who waited out the Kawhi Leonard sweepstakes, and, after getting burned by the Claw as the vast majority of remaining free agents waltzed elsewhere, managed to put together a roster of credible bodies. There would be one last gut punch over the summer when DeMarcus Cousins blew out his ACL during a pickup game, leaving Lakers management to sort through the scrapheap of leftover big men, settling on a minimum unguaranteed contract to Dwight Howard—the only current Lakers to have played on the last Purple and Gold roster to taste the playoffs, seven long years ago.

Overbaked days of summer and the drone of cicadas fade away and the welcome cool gives way to drudging gray and cities of hacking flu/colds. The confessional’s eponymous muse comes to Los Angeles now and then for retirement ceremonies but mostly stays in his native Ukraine—a place now thrust into the forefront of our national discourse. But for a seminal biscuit-in-a-bucket-chucker, it’s simply terra firma and a place to coach youth basketball for the nation’s state run sports system.

Searching for Slava began in 2010 as a whim, an ode to the mighty Medvedenko and an attempt to meld creative writing exercises with a beloved sport. It was an era of basketball blogging adventurism but the FreeDarkos of the world mostly fell to the side, replaced by other sports models or not replaced at all.

The current Lakers feel like a throwback in more ways than one. The Howard experiment has delivered pleasant results this far in. A guy who torched every bridge behind him until little was left ahead, has settled into an effort-intensive role. He and starter JaVale McGee evoke traditional big man schemes in measured minutes, a two-headed monster so to speak, seguing into small ball units with Davis sliding up to the 5. It’s all part of a decently managed rotation that uses more bodies on the floor than has been the norm in the modern NBA. A case in point is the phalanx of guards and wings, none of whom are stars, but are snapped neatly in and out of place like human Lego pieces.

There have been injuries to be sure—there are always injuries. Avery Bradley’s hairline fracture, Kuzma’s foot stress reaction, and Rajon Rondo’s calf and hamstring issues have resulted in multiple games missed, while Davis’ nagging sore shoulder has been mostly managed day-to-day. But physical maladies haven’t been as draconian as seasons past, and they also haven’t slowed the train’s chugging forward progress in any real demonstrable manner.

Going hand-in-hand with the number of veteran bodies is Vogel’s allocation of playing time. Every Laker not named James and Davis has seen a reduction in individual stats from previous seasons. There was early anticipation for a breakout third season for Kuzma but the dual superstar-driven model hasn’t truly benefited a still-developing scoring talent who previously shined through a more freewheeling game plan and a whole lot more touches.

Bradley, Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kuzma, Rondo, Alex Caruso, Howard and McGee have been playing in a range of 16 to 25 minutes so far this season, with none except Kuz averaging double figures. But they manage to fill in spaces like pencil marks on a Scantron test, and as weeks turn to months, some in the pack have been emerging. KCP, in particular, had a strong December with increased confidence and consistency, both as a starter and off the bench. Caruso, the kid from College Station, has also been a steadying presence, doing all the little things that matter and often in crunch time. His Achilles heel continues to be over-deference when open shots are presented.

Ultimately, it’s left to James and Davis to be the clear and obvious stars, far outpacing all others in scoring yet dedicated to defensive effort as well as the art of sharing. James leads the NBA in assists per game while Davis has been at or near the top of the league in blocks all season, not to mention filling up stat sheets across the board. The sum total effort is not unreminiscent of Phil Jackson’s star driven turns backed by solid veteran role players. Even so, there is not the level of drama or newspaper headline intrigue that often accompanied those particular halcyon days. Indeed, Vogel—himself a longtime admirer of the Zen master—keeps an even and affable keel, as the team itself keeps churning out wins. If and when the offense does starts kicking into more advanced sets, it could resemble a perfect storm of explosive weather fronts, all coming together to blow straight into the NBA Finals and beyond.

It seems hard to reconcile that nearly half an NBA season has passed in the blink of an eye, when a summer of waiting seems so recent. It may be indicative of a fleeting and transient period that will continue to accelerate. This is not a bad thing, considering that losing spells often drag on for an eternity. It is a healthy hope, that successes come fast and frequent once again, to be devoured in the moment and quickly digested before the next feast appears on our collective plates. If that seems greedy or presumptive so be it. Six years of defeat would have any fan grasping for hope.

A decade ends and another begins. The team with the best record in the West kicks off 2020 with a New Year’s Day game against the 10th place Phoenix Suns. Meanwhile, Searching for Slava pokes its head out of a frozen burrow, looks for a shadow and ducks back down again.

LeBron James and the summer of the Lakers’ content…or discontent

2018-07-04T20:15:00.002-05:00

Dear Laker Stans,

Your team began its offseason by drafting a couple of intriguing floor-stretchers and then signed LeBron James—aka the World’s Best Player—on a 3+1 deal.

Yeah, you let Julius Randle go but you kept a potent young core in Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma and Josh Hart. Plus, KCP is back in the fold at a discount. Hooray!

Additionally, three veteran role players are on board in Rajon Rondo, JaVale McGee and Lance Stephenson. Two of the three knuckleheads own rings, one is a three-time assists leader and one is nicknamed “Born Ready.”

You’re not yet over the cap, you’ll have cash to spend next year, you didn’t give up any future picks and your glut of meaningful rookie contracts mean you’re financially well-positioned for years to come.

So why the long faces; the gnashing of teeth; the panicky outcries and lighting of creosote torches?

Apparently, because the front office didn’t see fit to trade its best young assets for Kawhi Leonard and his degenerating quad, nor did they invest in Boogie Cousins’ shredded Achilles.

Meanwhile, all of NBA fandom—not just the Lakers—has declared next season to be over before it even begins. Because, naturally, the Golden State Warriors who had until now been casually chilling in their championship afterglow, took a moment to toss the MLE at Cousins (when nobody else would), knowing full well that he might not actually play, or that he might not play well.

Back-to-back champions can afford to do that. A rebuilding team fresh off five losing seasons—and who finally, incongruously, hit the honeypot with LeBron—can-not-and-should-not-do-that.

Nonetheless, there is a sizable contingent of soothsayers—armed with empirical data and abstract dot-connecting—that is tilting at the interwebs in the firm belief that Rondo’s flameout in Dallas four years ago, or Stephenson’s wild inconsistency and/or character issues, or JaVale’s limited yet effective 9.5 minutes per game last season (including starting three-out-of-four in the Finals) somehow impinges disproportionately on LeBron’s consistent greatness and will, in fact, send everything hopelessly spinning down the drainage hole of oblivion. Also inherent in the doom-and-gloom scenario is a belief that too many playmakers and not enough firing power is at stark odds with the modern-day game.

But as ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Ramona Shelburne write, all of the memes and jokes may actually be part of the Lakers’ master plan: a blueprint for a superstar to age successfully.

What if somewhere in a parallel universe—a place where palm trees gently sway and every day is the perfect temperature, where limos glide past homeless encampments and ultra-fit bodies scamper up dusty canyon trails—the Los Angeles Lakers actually wind up having a semi-awesome season? Sure, there may be cringe-worthy moments here and there, and probably too many game that are won based on James’ inherent greatness overcoming the opposition while his teammates stand and stare (not that Laker fans have ever witnessed such a thing before, centering around any other geriatric franchise superstars). But the overall idea remains that entertainment abounds and wins happen more frequently than not. For good measure, let’s also toss in all the unexpected injuries, losing streaks, winning streaks and general force majeure that are part of the long NBA season and life itself.

The locusts swarm of free agency began at midnight Saturday EST, blazed furiously for a few hours, took a Sunday morning pause and then went supernova that evening with LeBron’s signing. It was the beginning of the end of meaningful money deals—roughly 90 percent of all free agent spending occurred within a 24-hour-period, yet the majority of actual free agents are still in limbo, unsigned and uncertain of what comes next.

And if the undulating nature of Laker fandom—the long faces and teeth-gnashing and creosote torches on one side, offset by optimism and joy from the other—had blazed so fiercely during the initial spasm of free agency, Monday and Tuesday brought a more temperate rehashing of issues and analysis, and a barely existent trickle of players being signed to table scraps. By July 4, traditionally a hot time for the basketball marketplace, attention had drifted away to hotdog-eating contests and a woman scaling the Statue of Liberty.

At some point the Lakers will have to sign a starting center, using what’s left of their money. The odds are fairly decent that Brook Lopez will be persuaded to return back for a year at an approximate 75 percent discount. Meanwhile, Leonard’s prospects for a trade seem increasingly dim, his management having grossly misplayed its hand. At least he’s still collecting a max contract for not playing.

A holiday comes to a close and a new workday is about to begin. And life slowly restores its balance, like ebbing ripples from a skipping stone. The start of the NBA regular season is only 105 days away.

Mitchell Robinson: A Path Less Taken

2018-06-06T14:37:00.001-05:00

The NBA Draft can be screwy proposition: a volatile mix of potential stars, role players and cautionary tales. And while the top of the totem pole is where the major media casts its blinding beam, the descending order with its gathering chaos and uncertainty has no shortage of other storylines.

Enter Mitchell Robinson, a former 5-star prospect who came up with the dubious strategy of dropping out of college before his freshman year actually began, hence guaranteeing himself plenty of alone time in which to “concentrate on my training.”

There may be a consolation prize for a player once regarded as a lottery lock: whispers of a promise from the Los Angeles Lakers to take Robinson with their No. 25 pick, first from NBADraft.net and more recently from the New York Times’ Adam Zagoria.

But these kind of agreements—when they actually exist apart from rumors—can be fluid and uncertain things, especially outside the lottery as the selection process devolves into a mad scramble.

Growing up in Pensacola, Florida, Robinson wasn’t much for hoops. But a seven-inch growth spurt in eighth grade persuaded him of obvious possibilities. He entered Pine Forest High School at 6’9” and climbing. Between growing pains, academic problems and the mastering of basketball fundamentals, the sapling center struggled to make an immediate impact. But by summer of his sophomore year, Robinson had sprouted yet another two inches and was tearing up the AAU circuit on teams like Alabama Challenge and New Orleans Elite.

Concurrently, his mother, Kesha Hall, moved to New Orleans. Robinson followed, enrolling briefly at Landry-Walker High before changing his mind and heading back to Pensacola and the grandmother who primarily raised him. A few weeks later he did another 180, this after his mom and his sisters resettled in the parish of Chalmette near the Mississippi River—an area still struggling to rebound from the massive destruction of Katrina a decade earlier. It was the dawning of a new school year and the Chalmette Owls had landed a giant.

Robinson arrived in the bayou ranked No. 33 nationally with interest from Alabama, Auburn, Florida State, DePaul, LSU, Texas A&M, UMASS and Tulane. A summertime visit with his mom to Texas left a strong impression—they liked the College Station campus as well as assistant coach Rick Stansbury, a hard charging recruiter with a litany of prior stops including 14 years as head coach of Mississippi State.

The budding rim-runner announced his commitment to the Aggies at the beginning of October, 2015—two full years before he was due to begin college.

As a high school junior, Robinson averaged 19.6 points, 12.5 boards and an outrageous 7.9 blocks per game. He also led Chalmette to the second round of the state playoffs—the last time the school managed even one playoff win has been nearly two decades earlier.

Now a seven-footer, Robinson was amassing a growing circle of advisors, mentors and friends. There’s nothing like the hint of stardom to pad out one’s retinue, especially when you’re the new kid in a new town and life is coming at you fast. But nobody had Robinson’s ear quite like his “godfather” Shammond Williams, a standout point guard at North Carolina who went on to a journeyman career with seven NBA teams and numerous overseas stops before finally hanging up his kicks for good in 2011. He joined Tulane’s coaching staff as an assistant a couple years later.

Robinson’s senior year saw a continued trajectory punctuated by 25.7 points, 12.6 rebounds, 6 blocks and 1.8 steals per game. A heady combustion of length and raw athleticism spoke to the potential for life beyond school sports, given the NBA’s hunger for shape-shifting big men who can thread the needle between pure size and multi-positional versatility.

One thing he didn’t yet possess was any long distance aplomb—the paltry 28 percent of three-pointers made in 12th grade was only slightly better than the year before. But this was a skillset that might reasonably be honed at a good college program. Meanwhile, his verbal commitment to the Aggies had not dissuaded other suitors.

The level of abject greed at the highest levels of college recruitment has been a constant in modern sports history despite periodic soul-searching efforts for NCAA atonement married to ever-expanding rules and procedures.

A notably long FBI investigation into over 20 basketball programs listed Robinson among players who received favors from ASM Sports president Andy Miller and his associate Christian Dawkins. Michigan State and Villanova were among schools that had dined Robinson and his family. But the decision to never actually play in college rendered possible recruiting violations specific to his case moot.

The young sky walker capped his high school career with scintillating appearances at Jordan’s Classic and MacDonald’s All-American games in 2017. He was also invited to USA Basketball camp tryouts for the U19 squad where he measured out at 7’1” with a 7’4” wingspan, weighing 233 pounds.

Now the No. 1 center prospect in the nation, according to 247Sports, Robinson had been anointed a lottery draft pick before his one-and-done year had even commenced.

Stansbury had landed a job as head coach at Western Kentucky University in 2016 and was working hard to get Robinson to renounce the Aggies and commit to the Hilltoppers. It was a curious choice as Conference USA isn’t a huge calling card. But Shammond Williams soon joined Stansbury’s staff and that seemed to seal the deal. At least momentarily.

At a presser on June 20, per Courier Journal video, Stansbury talked about the challenge of coaching a mixed bag of mostly freshman unknowns. He also claimed a kingmaker role in regards to Robinson, the biggest recruiting coup for Bowling Green in years.

“Basically, when I got him connected to A&M, no one had ever heard of him,” the coach boasted. “He didn’t exist, on anybody’s radar screen. And we built our little relationship with him. And helped hire a guy who had a relationship with him and made it real easy.”

Two weeks later, “the guy” (Williams), abruptly resigned. In fact, he was one of three WKU assistants to leave during a one-year period.

Things at the Camp Robinson were quickly unraveling. Other potential school destinations were bandied about. But Stansbury temporarily staunched the bleeding, reminding his teen dream of the binding National Letter of Intent he had signed.

Robinson dutifully arrived on campus for summer school sessions on July 10. Over a two-and-a-half-week period he took classes and participated in basketball workouts. A team trip to Costa Rica was just days away.

On July 27, after Robinson didn’t show up for practice, team personnel went to check on him. All they found was an empty dorm room. Calls to the family went unreturned. The missing big man had first returned to Louisiana and then headed further east to continue his soul searching in Pensacola.

The school issued a statement and suspended the would-be freshman for violating team rules. Stansbury was eventually able to reach his wayward prodigy by phone, releasing him from his scholarship.

In August, Robinson visited Kansas, LSU and New Orleans. But the idea of red-shirting for a year didn’t quite fit the game plan. He returned to WKU and a momentarily relieved coach and administration.

But the agonized twists and turns had not yet run their course. Robinson left school again in early September. A week later he sealed the divide during a conversation with Scout.com’s Evan Daniels.

“I’ve decided to leave Western Kentucky and just focus on next year’s NBA Draft,” Robinson said. “I want to thank Western Kentucky, the coaching staff, the fans and my teammates, but I decided to pursue a professional career.”

And so began an eight month grind toward draft day. During the week, Robinson would work out in Dallas, Texas with trainer Marcell Scott. Most weekends he’d return to New Orleans, often playing nighttime pickup games with friends at his old high school gym.

“It is tough,” Robinson said per Rod Walker of the NewOrleans Advocate. “I'm working out, and nobody is able to see me like they are seeing everybody else. So I have to really make sure that I am working out too. I can't afford to take days off.”

He packed on some muscle and worked on ball-handling and face-up moves. And couldn’t help but wonder about a school year that happened without him as Bowling Green’s ragtag collection of players made it all the way to the National Invitation Tournament before losing to Utah at Madison Square Garden.

The former phenom investigated playing in the G League to get extra exposure and experience. But according to ESPN’s Jonathan Givony, Robinson’s convoluted college enrollment saga prohibited it.

Making matters even worse, NCAA rules don’t allow NBA teams to scout players outside of sanctioned games and events until after April 25. Robinson would have to soldier on in anonymity, aiming for the Basketball Combine in Chicago, an annual rite of passage that draws draft hopefuls, scouts, team executives, coaches and media. It’s a chance to be seen, to scrimmage and to be measured, to be evaluated and interviewed. The combine is a three-day clearinghouse of basketball intelligence and data, and the player who had been the subject of so much mystery would finally be able to step back into the limelight.

But after hiring an agent in in early May—Raymond Brothers from IAM Sports and Entertainment—Robinson pulled one more U-turn in a years-long slew of them. On the eve of the combine, Robinson dropped-out-of-the-very-same-combine. You say you know but you don’t know. Maybe nobody does.

There’s ample precedent for exiting this prestigious yearly event. Sometimes a player is so high up the draft ladder that there’s nothing to be gained and plenty to lose. Or, there could be a medical issue or some other type of unwanted exposure.

But for a guy hovering wildly between the middle of the first round and somewhere in the nether regions of unguaranteed contracts? Maybe Robinson and his agent really do have a card up their sleeves—like a commitment from the Lakers. Remember that, from 1,500 words ago?

Yes, a promise can mean many things, from hope to assurance and from pledge to potential.

Meanwhile, the Lakers have needs across the board, including backcourt depth and true shooting ability. Maryland wing Kevin Huerter checks off those key boxes and recently had a great workout in Los Angeles. He then bailed from his next date with the Utah Jazz (21st pick) and is now rumored to have a promise from a team drafting in the first round.

Mere coincidence? Well sure, probably. At this point, all roads intersect with certain common points. Huerter’s stock soared after a great combine while Robinson chose a different angle, eventually showing off his moves at The Sports Academy in Thousand Oaks, CA where multiple teams sent representatives to observe.

Despite his serpentine journey, Robinson does have a personal motivation to succeed and it’s a familiar story for professional athletes.

“My grandmother,” Robinson explained to USA Today’s Jason Jordan. “She lives in Pensacola, Florida, and she was the one that raised me. I want to be able to move her away from there and have her come stay with me wherever I end up. That’s what I think about every time I step on the court and it keeps me grinding.”

The Lakers have churned through a lot of centers over the past five seasons (Lopez, Zubac, Robinson, Frye, Mosgov, Black, Hibbert, Sacre, Hill, Gasol and Kaman) and that’s not counting power forwards masquerading as pivots who have at times been more effective than their larger brethren, or offseason experiments such as a giant pterodactyl who ultimately flamed out of the G-League.

Is Mitchell Robinson the solution or is he destined to be a forgotten footnote in a never ending conversation? And how do narratives like this measure up against the inescapable fact that teams eyeball dozens and dozens of young hopefuls this time of year as part of a calculated process designed to help select the best option left on the board—regardless of position—when the clock starts ticking?

Maybe the kid from Pensacola can be that elusive unicorn, even with all his contradictions and question marks. Because the NBA is still a league where the combination of high risk and high reward can be an irresistible roll of the dice.

Somewhere there’s a place where grinding leads through an impossibly narrow path, where one’s personal journey eschews any larger structure, where siren voices beckon toward the treacherous shoals and where redemption waits on the opposite side. In the early evening hours of June 21, 2018, the next chapter in the life of Mitchell Robinson begins.

Remember when Kobe was here?

2016-04-13T12:54:00.000-05:00

Somebody recently asked about my favorite Kobe Bryant moment of all time. I couldn’t come up with one. The thousands of games and tens of thousands of plays within all those games have somehow formed into composites—an athlete performing mind-boggling feats under washes of light and accompanied by a screaming sound chorus, moments that become isolated on sports shows and augmented by camera pans and time-altered effects until they simply become part of an ever-changing narrative.

Glory, defeat, shame, redemption, injury, recovery, debate, the bloom of youth to the inevitability of age, from his rookie year to this—hours before his final game with the Los Angeles Lakers.

I haven’t written much about Bryant this season. I can’t begin to explain why, except that it is some form of avoidance. And a rationale that if everyone else is doing it, there is no need for me to. What could I possibly add to that vast lexicon?

During training camp I contemplated a story that would take place in the present while imagining the future—one without the man. The idea that he has touched so many people in so many different ways, and a vacuum that could have a more lasting impact than some might imagine.

But I couldn’t really wrap my head around it all. Instead, I simply looked at box scores and read the commentary. I winced at the truly awful games and took small pleasures in those rare moments when a guy who should be in a wheelchair managed some approximation of the greatness he once was.

And a season slipped by.

He has outlasted several generations of players when you consider the professional lifespan of an average NBA hoopster is 4.8 years. Bryant’s two decades have not only put him into the fringes of uncharted territory, but have also resulted in a shifting and evolving attitude toward him, from those who played with him and those who chronicled his career. He has earned the well-deserved reputation of a difficult person to be around.

Fierce, uncompromising, competitive beyond what is acceptable even in the cutthroat world of sports.

In a Nike commercial in which athletes were asked to sum Bryant up in a single word, Kevin Durant said quietly, “asshole.”

There was an implicit respect in the curse.

Or as his onetime Lakers teammate Steve Nash mused on a different occasion, “a fucking asshole.”

But generational fluxes also play into these dynamics, the take-no-prisoners attitude exhibited toward peers becomes folklore observed by younger athletes growing up, who then become participants themselves.

What always struck me, above anything else, was the degree of difficulty.

Bryant set the bar impossibly high, Icarus flying too close to the sun but tinkering with the mechanics or “the process” as he always called it, in order to somehow avoid melting the wax and feathers. And when his plummet to earth inevitably happened, he took the road back as a Sisyphean challenge—a self-aggrandizing overachiever who pushed a too-large boulder up the hill over and over again, pausing only for ice baths or Orthokine knee treatments in Germany.

The impossible shot selections, the tendency to take over games, the tunnel vision that his way was not only the best but the only way, wasn’t the work of a guitar hero shredding without form or structure. Because his relentless film study, his analytical destruction and reconstruction of all known aspects of the game, recalibrated after each injury and the passing years, seemed to coalesce into airtight arguments, statements of fact and accomplishments so detailed and immense that it just became easier for others to simply give up in the end.

Until the end.

The last time I wrote at any length about Bryant was last summer, acknowledging the futility of adding to a story that has been so thoroughly covered for two decades by imagining what might lie ahead through a fictional construct:

Ask the average person how many articles have been written about Kobe Bryant and you’ll get a blank stare in return. Nobody knows but it is certainly a very high number. It would be like counting the mosaic tiles in the Basilica of San Vitale.

There are no new angles to explore, there is no new information to report. Past glories have been repeated to death and there are only so many ways to spin predictions for his probably-but-not-absolutely final season of basketball. There can be no criticisms that have not yet been voiced, no chronicling of hero shots that have been launched or death glares cast toward teammates. Or teammates who worship him or those who hate him, or new ones he hasn’t yet met due to a top secret gyrocopter excursion to a mountaintop retreat where he’ll undergo molecular cartilage transfusions in an attempt to grow a new finger in place of that hideous turnip currently attached to his right hand… or left hand.

Twenty years of witnessing a particular player, on television, in person, listening left-to-right on the radio dial while stuck in rush hour traffic on the way home from some job or another. Chick Hearn’s words eye view gave the kind of accompaniment that transformed to actual visual memories years later. Because these are all snippets, brush strokes that form a collective over time. Watching pirate feeds on a shaky dialup connection, commenting with bloggers on long ago threads that no longer exist, bantering on social media with friends from another place in time.

The passing generations were not only the players Bryant encountered and outlasted along the way, they were also the observers and the very methods of observation. The snake is long, 20 miles long.

ESPN’s Baxter Holmes recently wrote a stunningly good piece about the last true days of Bryant. Seven brutal games in which the gift and curse of obsession was on full display, the refusal to rest, the chain reaction of a freeway pileup in order to achieve a cause, leading ultimately to a blown-out Achilles tendon:

It's possible, in retrospect, to see what happened three years ago as something foreshadowed by ominous portents. The last game of Kobe Bryant -- the gladiator Kobe Bryant, the bulletproof, monomaniacal Kobe Bryant -- was full of such moments. But that's how history works. After the fact, everything is clear.

That should have been the final chapter, the ultimate body betrayal and self-destruction after so many wars.

Of course, that wasn’t how it ended. There would be a surgery to reattach the tendon after so many previous surgeries on other body parts, and months of rehabilitation followed rapturously by the media, followed by another season in which he broke his left knee after just six games, with another torturously long recovery period made even longer by all the previous damage done to his body. And that was followed by the Lakers signing Kobe to a new $48.5 million two-year contract. And then he was trotted out once more, only to tear his shoulder, requiring yet another operation.

They shoot horses, don't they?

And finally, one last farewell tour, one that could only have been imagined by the spirits of the underworld. Bryant, his body completely broken, soldiering through the worst season in his team’s entire history.

But somewhere along the line he finally came to peace with it all. The jaw-jutting anger from years past has been replaced by something we are far less familiar with. He smiles more easily now, laughs off questions he once would have bristled at, talks about gratitude and acceptance. Bryant has managed to hold his body together until the very end, the team leader in points per game, putting up 35 the other night against the Houston Rockets.

And the inescapable fact that he has been a pure joy to watch over these many years. We could still squint our eyes a little and see that guy.

How do you identify a favorite moment? It is elusive and subjective, with only one remaining sliver to grasp at. It is just hours before the final curtain. One more ice bath, the last drive to Staples Center and a gimpy stroll through a tunnel accompanied by cameras and shouted questions.

And then the wash of lights and the swelling sound.

Remember when Kobe was here?

Marcelo Huertas and D’Angelo Russell: The Parallax View

2015-09-09T16:52:00.000-05:00

Coming from different places in time and space, two rookies will converge at the same point this fall.

D’Angelo Russell is the Los Angeles Lakers’ prized No. 2 draft pick while Marcelo "Marcelinho" Huertas will make his NBA debut at the ripe old age of 32.

News of Huertas being signed by L.A. caused a ripple but certainly not a roar.

Perhaps it’s because the Brazilian point guard is relatively unknown in this country, or maybe it's just the dog days of late summer.

Then again, Russell can sell copy for days by simply tweeting about Tracy McGrady.

It’s understandable—the precocious playmaker is 19 years old and holds the promise of future fame and fortune. His star-crossed storyline hits the required notes of a journey yet traveled.

Huertas, meanwhile, has long been regarded as the one of the best non-NBA point guards in the universe. But that universe is “over there” and the 6’3” Euroleague star is closer to the end of his career than the beginning.

Their parallel paths may have seemed worlds apart but now they have been placed on an intersecting course that could provide plenty of media fodder for the basketball season that lies just ahead.

L.A.’s success rate with lead guards has been spotty in recent years. The three-year contract with future Hall-of-Famer Steve Nash produced just 60 games as he limped to an ignominious ending demanded by the gods of time.

Last season’s Jeremy Lin experiment fizzled out and before that, Steve Blake and Jordan Farmar spent as much time on the trainer’s table as did Nash. Chris Duhon and Darius Morris existed on the roster at some particular point while Kendall Marshall was plucked from D-League obscurity to average 8.8 assists through 54 games during the 2013-14 season.

But while he tied with John Wall for 2nd on the APG leaderboard that season, Marshall wasn’t invited back by the Purple and Gold.

The brightest spot in all of this was Jordan Clarkson—last year’s No. 46 draft pick parlayed scrub minutes into a Cinderella success story, including All-Rookie First Team honors. His speed, athleticism and work ethic probably should have earned the 6’5” guard a chance to build on his success at the point. But L.A. pulled a draft night stunner when they chose Russell as the second overall pick, passing over Jahlil Okafor—perhaps the most potent offensive pivot of a generation.

Clarkson’s trajectory now shifts to the shooting guard slot where he may or may not succeed alongside Russell—imagine two souped-up street racers being asked by Lakers coach Byron Scott to proceed at a leisurely half-court pace while their internal RPMs redline frantically.

But as interesting as the Russell/Clarkson dynamic could be, the acquisition of Huertas serves as an unexpected late summer hip check. A wild card just entered the race and his credentials, though continents removed, are well established.

Born in Sao Paulo, Huertas grew up playing in local youth clubs before transferring to Coppell High in Texas for his senior year. The foreign exchange student landed a varsity spot at the small suburban school by unleashing a 70-foot bounce pass during a pick-up game.

Once his 2000-2001 season ended, Huertas returned to Brazil where he honed his skills at the Academy of South America before turning pro. Three years later he jumped the Atlantic to the Spanish ACB league, playing for DKV Joventut for three seasons and Bibao Basket for one. He spent the following year in the Italian league before returning to ACB with Saski Baskonia. For the past four years he has played for FC Barcelona—the powerhouse Spanish team that spawned both Pau and Marc Gasol.

The point guard is also a longtime member of the senior men’s Brazilian national team, playing in Olympic, FIBA and Pan American competition and winning several gold medals along the way. The international games have allowed him the experience of matching up against Team USA stars like Jason Kidd, Dwyane Wade, Chris Paul, Derrick Rose, Stephen Curry and a guy named Kobe Bryant.

There have been lucrative Euro contracts and exorbitant buyout clauses, precluding the NBA dream. But with his most recent agreement having expired, Huertas was finally be able to cross one more thing off his bucket list.

The middle-aged rookie will be the first NBA player ever produced by Coppell High and it took just 14 years to get there.

Meanwhile, Russell was a prep sensation and played his one-and-done freshman year at Ohio State, leading the Buckeyes to the NCAA 2015 Tournament before losing in the round of 32 to Arizona.

But despite the vast differences in age and experience, the two NBA newbies also share common attributes.

Russell is heralded for possessing an uncanny court vision at a tender age and Huertas has been similarly celebrated for years. The teenager fires ridiculous wrap-around passes that seem to defy the laws of physics, while Marcelinho has been dealing spectacular dimes ever since that long-ago 70-footer.

Neither is an elite defender—Russell lacks strength and is slow getting around ball screens while Huertas doesn’t have great lateral mobility and is also relatively ineffective combatting screens. Each will benefit from being backstopped on the defensive end by L.A.’s biggest free agent acquisition this summer, man-mountain Roy Hibbert.

There are also important differences. Russell is a superior rebounder and more complete shooter whereas Huertas’ offense is streaky, featuring a funky-looking set shot and a one-legged runner.

One has already peaked while the other is just getting started. During an interview with Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Huertas spoke about a potential secondary role in the NBA at this late point in his career, mentoring young players and assisting veterans.

“If you look at NBA rosters, there are unbelievable starting point guards, but maybe not as many guys who can come off the bench able to run the team, score the ball , as well as being able to be a leader for young players,” Huertas said. “Those are things I know I’ll be able to bring with me.”

But despite his expressed willingness to play a backup role, it’s doubtful the Lakers front office is viewing their overseas acquisition as mere insurance or an afterthought.

After all, if there is any chance for Bryant to experience one more playoff run, it will take more than the developmental curve of rookies and sophomores like Russell, Clarkson and Julius Randle. It will mean a heavy reliance on Hibbert, the steadiness of journeyman Brandon Bass and the scoring punch of reigning Sixth Man Lou Williams.

And you can now add one of the world’s great playmakers to the mix—a guy who dropped 13 dimes on Bryant and Team USA during an Olympic exhibition. But this time he’ll be on the Mamba’s side.

As for those wondering if an overseas point guard can succeed in Scott’s hybrid Princeton offense, not to worry—both the Brazilian national team and FC Barcelona feature traditional systems, including liberal doses of the Flex offense with its heavy reliance on passing, cuts and ball-reversals. Huertas has also run a lot of Horns sets in Spain, something the Lakers dabbled with last season.

None of this should diminish Russell’s potential—the immensely talented lottery pick represents the potential next face of the franchise. But it is also not fair to place outsized expectations upon a kid who will often err while reaching for greatness. His 175-to-102 assists-to-turnover ratio ranked him 175th among other college guards last season, and his 5.2 turnovers per game during Las Vegas Summer League was an inauspicious introduction to the NBA—especially stacked against an average of only 3.2 assists.

The princeling’s greatness will come in time, but he has to learn not to drink the entire ocean in one gulp. That said, the future belongs to the new generation and the Lakers front office has made no pretenses about their forward-looking rebuild.

But parallel lines don’t always have to go peacefully into the night. Maybe Huertas is a complementary second fiddle and maybe he gives a young kid a run for his money. Maybe he rips world-class passes to Bryant’s sweet spots all night long or maybe they both hobble off to the retirement farm before the season’s half over.

If recent years have proved anything for the Lakers, it’s that nothing seems to go by plan.

The point guard position can be viewed along two different lines of sight, measured by the angles of inclination between those lines.

Russell could grab the gauntlet and achieve his instant success. Or maybe a Euro legend throws a full-court skip pass to a swan song superstar, and all bets are off—across the basketball universe.

Wag the Fandom: A Midsummer Night's Joint

2015-08-04T21:21:00.001-05:00

There are two types of basketball fans, those who go to games and those who don’t.

It’s not a particularly accurate statement but it’s the kind of hook that can serve to illustrate a message.

What is the message? There isn’t just one, there are many. Wag the fandom!

And don’t forget the hook—bolster it, express it, worship it, pervert it, turn it into software and sell it by the bushel, baby.

One type of fan may go to as many games as he or she can afford, immersed in the live experience and feeling part of a community—celebrating the wins and feeling the abject misery of the losses, shouting themselves hoarse and knocking fists, hands, hips and spilled drinks with surrounding bodies.

Another fan mostly stares at a screen or multiple screens and is obsessed with social media. This fan may or may not attend the occasional game in person but crams in as much action as possible through the cyber experience.

There’s also the media types who may be part of the live experience by attending games on a regular basis in order to write/comment/observe, or may stare obsessively at a screen on order to do same.

Chronicling the game takes shape in many forms, including traditional global behemoths, city beats, national fan sites, networked oligarchies, team fan sites, boutique highbrows, egghead analysis and sublimely ridiculous basketball confessionals. For anyone who feels as if they have fallen through a crack, do not worry—the crevices aren’t all that deep.

As a collective, you can simply lump all human parts together like modeling clay—talking heads, old-school writers, college kids who are way too smart for their own good and basketball freaks and geeks of all colors and political/religious/economic persuasions—all part and parcel of the same soulful stew, contributing to an experience with an untold worth that in turn caters to the teams themselves and their estimated $30 billion gross annual value.

But while fandom is an intrinsic part of it all, there are still other equally important components. Such as players and coaches and executives, and owners and league operatives and sources—don’t forget the sources. These are the nameless shape shifters, from team personnel to snake oil salesmen and from “league officials” to friends, family and fans!

But the sources typically can’t have names—not in sports or anything else media related because that compromises the integrity of the message and the message is sacrosanct, no matter how ludicrous it is.

Journalism’s word is binding and that’s why the granting of anonymity is taken so seriously. This is important stuff and players’ careers, their earnings and the lives of their families depend on truth, accuracy and fair play.

Let’s examine a case study while protecting the anonymity of all involved.

A particular freewheeling player is coming off a career year and has been rewarded with a four-year deal, the final year of which is a team option. The money is good but nothing in the superstardom range. It may be $5.5 million per year.

We will call this player “Bill.” He is now our friend and we want him to succeed, even if he sometimes annoys us with his capricious shot-chucking ways.

Bill is at practice and he jams a finger. Most humans know how painful and commonplace this can be. It screws up everything. For hoopsters it is a routine occurrence and is often treated in a cursory way—ever seen the twisted, gnarled hands of professional athletes?

Our finger-hurting pal shows up to work and has an off night which is not surprising as he is a rather streaky fellow, even when healthy. Undeterred by the throbbing pain, Bill lofts up 13 attempts, connecting on only two. He laughs it off after the game and chuckles good-naturedly when a member of his entourage makes a trade reference.

A weary media member who arrived too late to get any actual worthwhile quotes, decides to tweet out the trade joke, omitting any elements of humor. The “possible trade of Bill according to an unnamed source” receives minimal attention on a slow night.

But an editor of a large fan site instructs a writer to pen 800 words about Team X Searching for Trade Partner for Bill, adding some helpful tips: “Use your unique perspective and expertise to make a credible argument that will convince your readers!”

As it turns out, the fan site is not alone, with several other media platforms milking the same message. It is assumed that this minor blip will be nothing but programming filler.

Two nights later, Bill’s finger is still swollen and stiff with a nice knob forming at the intermediate phalange of his index digit. He loves his social media and has laughed off the rumors but it’s another lousy game and he’s still jacking up rim-clangers. It’s starting to get into his head.

One of the traditional behemoths decides the little story could benefit from a few million extra hits and augments it with video auto-play commentary. There’s “what-if” pontification and a new unnamed source.

It is the third game since Bill’s boo-boo occurred and the team has headed out on a mini road trip, appearing on a cold winter’s night at a Really Big Arena where opposing fans have picked up on the gathering story and are only too delighted to add to the communal joy experience. Our erstwhile Volume Scorer forces up a rather large arsenal of air-balls and other wounded ducks as boos rain down from the rafters.

It’s a nationally televised game and a color commentator mentions the trade rumors. During the post-game presser, questions are coming at Bill and his coach—a guy who sometimes likes the sound of his own voice a bit too much. The team’s PR guru grits his teeth and pulls the plug.

The team’s general manager, "Joe," is well aware of all that is happening but he’s a veteran of these idiotic wars and considers it all bullshit. He has more pressing things to deal with, like a Megastar who will be a free agent at the end of the season—said centerpiece being a hell of a lot more important to the world than Bill.

A writer at an egghead stats-based site has been observing this nonsense from afar—living in Iceland as he does. After a day spent coding for a new game about baby sea turtles trying to cross a coastal highway, our scribe just needs to decompress. He believes he has found some interesting patterns cementing his existing belief that our finger-jammed hero is nothing more than a one-dimensional ball hog with a ludicrous usage rate. This turns into a scathing treatise filled with shot charts and analytic logic and the inescapable conclusion that the entire organization stinks from the top down. Most importantly, Bill must go!

Mount Quoranocco forms a lonely peak from which rains sluices down, gathering speed in a myriad of tiny streams and joining forces with runoff from neighborhoods, streets, yards, golf courses and factories, filtering into storm drains and carrying the collected polluted water into a giant discharge pipe that emerges from the side of a sandy cliff, spewing the frothy stuff into an otherwise peaceful ocean inlet.

"Ben," the owner of Team X and a man who made his fortune as an industrialist, is sitting by the window wall of his beach house, staring quizzically at the sewage spilling from that cursed pipe into his beloved ocean cove. The irony of the origins of his wealth and the gray damaged water do not escape him.

But there are other things on his mind as well. While Ben may be the only person in his entire organization who has never jammed a finger, he has formed definitive notions about the dynamics of business and sports and how that correlates on the court. He also had somebody create a special software analytics model at an exorbitant cost that he has been using to examine the chasm between where his team is and where he thinks it should be.

Ben also just finished reading the Icelander’s article. He picks up the phone and calls his GM.

Meanwhile, Bill has taken to wearing a part-time split on his wounded finger and the combination of rest, ice treatments, various drugs and the ability to semi-compartmentalize pain has resulted in a slight improvement.

Joe takes the call from his owner and is told to explore the trade market. This news is leaked immediately, of course, because by now, a very prominent writer who can deduce all transactional information within fractions of seconds with a 99.9 percent accuracy rate, is on the job.

But after a few days of calls, it becomes apparent there are no serious takers for Bill’s multiyear contract—the exception being a lottery-bound team who offers up a 23-year-old center with artificial knees who has yet to make his rookie debut, three years after being drafted.

On December 22, Bill scores 32 points off the bench, including all seven of his downtown bombs. His team still loses. The following night on a back-to-back, the guy with the healing finger defies all known logic with another 32 points, along with two steals, no assists and no rebounds. Basketball twitter melts and an editor instructs a writer to crank out 800 words about Why Team X Must Surround Bill With Worthy Teammates, adding, “Use your exceptional abilities to convince your audience of the credibility of your argument and make sure you reinforce the message every three sentences.”

Two days later the Superstar demands a trade to “any team possibly contending for the playoffs” and Bill’s up and down journey falls completely off the map after only getting as high as No. 37 on the All-Sports Media Syndicated Ratings Data for the second two weeks of December.

There are fans who go to sports events and those who don’t, and players who either play the “right way” or have no interest whatsoever in matters of subjective correctness, or in owners whose career successes have more in common with carcinogenic runoff than any actual tactile experience with a spinning orb on a rainbow trajectory toward an improbably small and distant target.

The sources and messages and interpretations, along with aimless wordsmithing can matter a lot or not at all, and who will really remember once the next evolutionary step of Frogger is released, 20 years later, this time starring baby sea turtles?

Wag the fandom!

Somewhere a car floats around a corner with the music bumping and the windows dark. A 7-foot junkie is busted in Gold Bar with a stocking over his head, and a man who once roamed the sidelines in richly colored synthetic blends lies quietly in a sterile room, imagining the road ahead.

There’s no reason to reinforce the hook now, it was just a midsummer night's joint.

Sasha Vujacic: The Machine Also Rises

2015-08-01T22:22:00.000-05:00

Aleksander “Sasha” Vujacic—known for psycho-ferret defense, fastidious eyebrow-grooming rituals at the charity stripe and the constant need to be loved—is back.

The former NBA combo guard has reached a one-year, veteran’s minimum salary agreement to join the New York Knicks. Forget the relatively inconsequential contract details—this is a story that could beget many other stories.

Vujacic rejoins former Los Angeles Lakers teammate Derek Fisher (now coaching the Knicks) and former coach Phil Jackson (now running NY operations).

Born in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which transitioned into present-day Slovenia, Vujacic blazed a precocious path of teenaged basketball excellence in the Italian League before being drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers in 2004.

The 6’7” combo guard with mercury speed and erratic shot sniper tendencies, played the better part of six seasons in L.A., providing an impassioned bench presence that sometime bordered on a Cockatoo-like neurosis.

He was an irritant to opposing teammates as well as Jackson himself. In 2009, the coach zinged the five-year veteran, per the Los AngelesTimes (h/t @KG_NBA):

We just had to come to the conclusion that Sasha's just an emotional player that plays by the seat of his pants, and that's about it. He just doesn't have a brain. He's just out there whacking away and working really hard. He's not using his head out there at times. We're working with him, hoping that he will.

A decade later, Vujacic prepares to join forces with this year’s fourth overall draft pick, Kristaps Porzingis—a spindly and preternaturally talented 7-foot Latvian teen prodigy. This, amid an interesting and elusive time continuum as Jackson attempts to borrow from his own fading history books. He is trying to marry the past to the present in a league that, quite frankly, has moved on.

Vujacic picked up two championship rings during his run with the Lakers. But in December 2010, he was traded to the New Jersey Nets as part of a three-team package that returned 35-year-old Joe Smith and a couple future second-round picks. Smith averaged 0.5 points over 12 games and then retired.

In what might have been his last interview as a Laker before being heading East, Vujacic expressed frustration with reduced minutes while also providing a meandering insight into matters of fandom.

“It’s nothing in-between,” Vujacic said per Elie Seckbach. “Y’know, either to be or not to be. That’s what it takes to be on top. And that’s always why somebody will like you. But when I play I like to give everything I have. That’s one thing they will hopefully always appreciate.”

The Machine was once engaged to Maria Sharapova. He favors a miniscule headband that barely constrains his raven locks and is the founder and creative spirit behind Aleksander—a luxury red wine produced in Paso Robles, California. And, his basketball career continued after Los Angeles, albeit in a serpentine fashion.

The combo guard actually put up career numbers in New Jersey, averaging 11.4 points in 56 games. But then the NBA summer lockout of 2011 happened. Vujacic decided not to wait it out, signing for a full season with Turkish League powerhouse Anadolu Efes which subsequently led to a second season.

There were attempts to return to the NBA, usually heralded by Vujacic through cheerful social media workout messages and gauzy beach sunset photos.

In February 2014 he appeared in two games and a total of 10 minutes for the Los Angeles Clippers.

Nothing speaks NBA oblivion more clearly than a 10-day contract with no further services required.

Not to be deterred, Vujacic headed back overseas, playing in both the Spanish and Italian Leagues before returning to Turkey.

Brief articles that have encapsulated Vujacic’s signing by the Knicks invariably question whether he has anything left in the tank. Yet, the Slovenian converted 44 percent of his shots from beyond the arc for Istanbul BB during the 2014-15 season.

He’s always had the ability to catch-and-shoot or let fly off the dribble, using his height and a high release to avoid approaching traffic.

The question isn’t necessarily whether the nomadic baller has the means to contribute, but the larger context of Jackson’s revisionist remake of the Knicks.

The Zen Master has a long habit of retreading veteran players, bringing Ron Harper and Horace Grant from his Chicago Bulls heyday to the Lakers in the early 2000s for instance. In returning full circle to New York where he began his career, the man with all the NBA bling assembled a coaching staff that not only included Fisher, but Kurt Rambis and Jim Cleamons as well—all longtime operatives in his Triangle system.

There aren’t many active NBA players left from Jackson’s coaching days—Kobe Bryant is entering his 20th season with the Lakers, Pau Gasol is with the Bulls and Trevor Ariza is with the Houston Rockets.

That left few viable options, save for the return of the Machine.

Vujacic will be joining a team that bombed out last season before restocking over the summer. His teammates will include Carmelo Anthony, Robin Lopez, Jose Calderon, Russian shooting guard Alexey Shved, rookie guard Jerian Grant (nephew of Horace), and Porzingis.

Notwithstanding Jackson’s long-ago lack-of-brain comments, the veteran guard shouldn’t have any problem snapping back into the old off-ball cuts and curls. He has also played under some true coaching legends overseas, including Duda Ivkovic and Zalijko Obradovic.

“Unceasing change turns the wheel of life, and so reality is shown in all its many forms,” is one of Jackson’s favorite sayings, borrowed from Nobel Prize winning economist Amartya Sen.

Vujacic has also been immersing himself in the ways of wisdom as of late, retweeting quotes such as: “The heart of the wise man lies quiet like limpid water.”

Come the fall, the onetime Celtic-slayer will break the glassine surface once again, part of a generation of basketball that is quickly fading away.

It’s not Vujacic’s last best chance to return to the NBA, it’s his last chance period.

Kobe Bryant: The Things We Know but Do Not Say

2015-07-24T23:18:00.001-05:00

Ask the average person how many articles have been written about Kobe Bryant and you’ll get a blank stare in return. Nobody knows but it is certainly a very high number. It would be like counting the mosaic tiles in the Basilica of San Vitale.

There are no new angles to explore, there is no new information to report. Past glories have been repeated to death and there are only so many ways to spin predictions for his probably-but-not-absolutely final season of basketball. There can be no criticisms that have not yet been voiced, no chronicling of hero shots that have been launched or death glares cast toward teammates. Or teammates who worship him or those who hate him, or new ones he hasn’t yet met due to a top secret gyrocopter excursion to a mountaintop retreat where he’ll undergo molecular cartilage transfusions in an attempt to grow a new finger in place of that hideous turnip currently attached to his right hand… or left hand.

Kobe was last seen somewhere east of Eden. He has been busy creating a new monetary system for Greece. He has a soft spot for small yappy dogs. He only sleeps in five-minute increments. He is still a member of the Los Angeles Lakers and will begin his 20th season in the NBA in the fall.

He has five body doubles, three of which are robots. He does not consume salt or sugar or flour. He has a world-class chef who has learned how to extract protein from tree roots, which is then served on top of poached salmon with toasted watercress.

But the man who would be Sisyphus is far more than a complex superstar.

He is a teacher, a husband, a father and a friend. He is a soothsayer.

Bryant is known for summoning select teammates to early morning workouts at a clandestine location that is actually his home basketball court. The reality of the domestic whereabouts is never actually specified in the media, out of fear and respect. Instead, it remains mysterious and unobtainable.

Recently, the man with five—“count ‘em”—championship rings (apart from those received in an alternate universe that have not yet been revealed) invited a new rookie teammate who shall remain nameless to the above-mentioned undisclosed location which is between five and 50 miles from the team’s official workout facilities in El Segundo, California. There, the rookie was instructed to make 300 shots in a row from half-court, blindfolded and without the use of his hands or feet.

At some point, one would imagine that there should be more than just backstory and aimless narrative. But one could also simply select another of the countless mosaic tiles if one needs insight into whether Kobe’s going to shift over to the wing this season for 12 games before his femoral artery spontaneously detaches, requiring an adjustment in minutes played on odd/even days.

Last Tuesday, I was invited by Mr. Bryant to a sushi restaurant in (location redacted) for an exclusive interview. There were no limits on subject matter except that the spoken word could not involve a language known to modern man. I wish I could begin to convey the joy and enlightenment that ensued during our telepathic conversation, augmented by birdsongs and clog dancing. I have not yet found a means of translation and it may not really matter. I find myself humbled, contemplative. I have begun reading all known works pertaining to Helen Keller.

He’s a street walking cheetah with a heart full of napalm.

On January 23, 2006, Kobe Bryant scored 81 points in a basketball game against the Toronto Raptors. The absurdity of that statement is made all the more poignant by knowing it can never happen again. Analytics won’t let it happen. In fact, the science of advanced basketball analysis was invented solely to prevent such occurrences.

Do you actually doubt the veracity of this statement?

In April of 2006, a series of emails encrypted through MIT’s Cray supercomputer were exchanged between Daryl Morey who had just become general manager of the Houston Rockets, Henry Abbott of ESPN and David Stern who was then the commissioner of the NBA. The purpose was to invent a new way of examining basketball logic; to prevent an 81-point atrocity from ever happening again and to install a set of curbs that would reduce Bryant’s point average on a yearly basis.

It has worked on an incremental level but Bryant’s shot attempts and usage have remained stubbornly high and fiercely self-justified.

These are the things we know but do not say. Instead, articles are written about fading glory, a difficult personality, a litany of unimaginable injuries and money.

Offered $48.5 million as an octogenarian hoops star, Bryant simply said, “Okay.”

During an interview with GQ’s Chuck Klosterman earlier in the year, the 36-year-old was asked about any negative effect that advanced metrics have had upon his career, and about the perception by Abbott and others that he shoots too much. Bryant responded by comparing himself to an 18th century Austrian composer.

“Some people thought Mozart had too many notes in his compositions,” Bryant said. “Let me put it this way: I entertain people who say I shoot too much.”

Basketball as an on-court professional enterprise will end for the longtime Lakers cornerstone at 9:31pm on February 19, 2016 just seconds after nailing a contested fall-away jumper from the top of the key. At that point, his left leg which will have swollen to twice its normal size from the diverted femoral artery, will cease to support his weight properly.

He will answer questions from the media for approximately 22 minutes before going to the hospital for emergency surgery.

It’s four in the morning, the end of July. I have managed to translate a small passage from my telepathic conversation with Mr. Bryant. During the course of our discussion he predicted many things, some of which he wishes to share with you… (unintelligible bird sounds).

The start of Lakers training camp is still more than two months away. During that time there will be countless new articles to add to the Bryant lexicon, most of which will in some way center on his age and predictions of failure. Each piece will also contain no less than three sentences of obligatory homage to the Mamba’s greatness.

But his job is a job, after all. And he’ll probably transition to the next stage of his life without the painful soul-searching that causes actual humans to resort to the toolbar for alternate synonym suggestions and information about the Basilica of San Vitale.

Somewhere, a gyrocopter sails through a glorious rose-colored sky. Daughters wake their father and ask what’s for breakfast. A basketball bounces softly, repetitively. Birds sing mysterious songs.

You say you know but you don’t know.

One more article about Kobe Bryant is now in the history books.

Jeremy Tyler: Across the Universe

2015-07-22T15:30:00.002-05:00

Jeremy Tyler recently wrapped up an engagement with the Dallas Mavericks summer league squad. At 24, the 6'11" basketball nomad has been with 11 pro organizations and counting.

He's hoping this gig will lead to something more permanent.

Tyler was once a famous phenom, a player who jumped the gun way too early. Not only did he skip college but his senior year at San Diego High as well. At the time, the 17-year-old decided the best path to the NBA was through European pro ball—it would take just a couple years to reach that pesky minimum age requirement imposed by David Stern.

The precocious prodigy was counseled in this regard by his father James Tyler, sneaker huckster Sonny Vaccaro, and agent Arn Tellem, then of the Wasserman Media Group.

“This hopefully will turn out to be one of the great life lessons for Jeremy,” Tellem said per Pete Thamel of the New York Times.

That was back in 2009 but it seems much longer ago. That was when Tyler was being described by NBA veteran Olden Polynice as a young Hakeem Olajuwon, and as “one of those guys who comes along once in a lifetime.”

That was when Polynice described the young protégé as being “pimped.”

Jeremy’s plan was to go overseas and come back a star. He’d become the top overall pick in the draft, shake Stern’s hand on stage, make $200 million over a glorious basketball career and then segue into modeling.

But the trans-continental divide didn’t quite work the way Vaccaro had pitched it to the high school dropout. Tyler’s first team was Maccabi Haifa in Israel where he butted heads with tough veteran players and a head coach with no time for coddling.

The teenager was benched, disciplined and lectured. He responded with complaints and accusations. And he played just 10 games before quitting and returning home to San Diego.

Vaccaro was nonplussed, saying per ESPN: “It would’ve been beautiful, utopia, if he had played and helped his team win a championship."

Tyler’s older and wiser now, a tough, solid player who averaged 11.8 points and 8.3 rebounds per game in Las Vegas. He has learned the tricks of the trade during his globetrotting years. Perhaps Tellem was right, but it wasn’t just one grand epiphany.

Back in San Diego, Tyler examined his options—no high school diploma and no longer eligible for college ball after signing a $140,000 pro contract. And he wouldn’t be draft legal for another full year.

But he still had Vaccaro in his corner. The godfather of the sneaker wars hooked Tyler up with Tokyo Apache, a Japanese basketball team that had just been purchased by a Los Angeles-based investor group led by Evolution Capital Management.

Tyler’s dream was still alive, he’d just get made in Japan.

The new head coach of Tokyo Apache was Bob Hill, a seasoned basketball operative from both the college and pro ranks, including the Indiana Pacers, San Antonio Spurs and Seattle SuperSonics. Bob and his son Casey had been working out prospects for their new venture in Dallas. It was now July, 2010, and the Hills had a reclamation project they would partner Tyler with—Robert Swift who would ultimately become a junkie with a stocking over his head in Gold Bar, Washington. But that hadn’t yet happened.

Swift had been another teenage cautionary tale, drafted at 18 out of Bakersfield High in California before Stern had instituted his age limit. Like Tyler, Swift had been repped by Tellem.

By the time Tokyo Apache happened, the 7-foot Swift had played parts of four seasons with the SuperSonics and the Oklahoma City Thunder. He had wrecked his knee more than once, picked up some nasty habits and scorched all his bridges. Hill had been one of Swift’s coaches in Seattle.

Things didn’t start well for either Tyler or his new mentor in Tokyo. Swift was holed up in his downtown apartment, drinking himself into oblivion. And Tyler, who was still not privy to certain basketball fundamentals, was being ripped a new one at practice by Hill.

But things turned around with interventions and tough love. Swift stopped drinking, turned 25 and began collecting double-doubles. He was also relating well with Tyler who was now 19, and starting to figure out how the game should be played. The universe was coming back into alignment.

“Being in Japan is amazing, especially in Tokyo,” Tyler said per Christopher Johnson of the Times. “Everybody is so positive, my coaches, my teammates. There are so many different things to explore here. Basketball is taking care of itself.”

But on March 11, 2011, a massive earthquake shifted the earth on its axis and caused a tsunami that washed out entire cities. In the aftermath, Tokyo Apache disbanded—their L.A. investors decided it just wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.

That was the end if basketball for Swift whose life spiraled into heroin and minor crime sprees. But for Tyler, there was still hope—he was finally eligible for the NBA draft.

He returned home again, convinced there was still salvation to be claimed. And to the surprise of many, the basketball exile began snaking his way up the draft board with the gift of gab.

Per Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com: "In interviews with team executives,Tyler has shown himself to be more than a perceived ungrounded basketball soul wandering the globe in search of the next start, and has impressed clubs with his maturity and ability to address his image—even spinning his tangled past into a positive."

Just days before the draft, there were rumors that Tyler could be a fringe lottery pick. But on the night of June 23, those hopes failed to materialize. Perhaps there was simply too much baggage, too many missteps. Tyler slipped out of the first round and was ultimately selected at No. 39 by the Charlotte Bobcats and immediately traded to the Golden State Warriors for cash.

It wasn’t exactly the dream he’d been peddled as a high school junior, but Tyler was now in the NBA—maybe.

The 2011 lockout began a week after the draft and lasted until December. Summer twitterdom and media opinions turned in on themselves like dogs chasing their own tails. And when a shortened season finally got underway, the Warriors found themselves in transition under new head coach Mark Jackson.

It was the beginning of something good for Golden State but it was still a choppy ride—Stephen Curry played just 26 games with ankle issues and the team wound up going 23-43.

As for Tyler, he played 42 games with the Warriors, starting 23 of them but averaging only 13.5 minutes per game. His stat line of 4.9 points and 3.3 rebounds during his rookie season still remains his high water mark in the NBA. He was also assigned to the Dakota Wizards in the D-League on multiple occasions.

Despite the low numbers, Tyler was improving. His starts came toward the end of the season on a team decimated by injuries. In the last game of his rookie campaign, he played 44 minutes and delivered a career-high 16 points, plus nine boards.

The team even put together a brief “swagger and power” clip of the rookie’s highlights.

But the following season Tyler only averaged 1.1 point over 20 games for Golden State, along with more D-League assignments—the Wizards had by now moved west and become the Santa Cruz Warriors. And more changes were still in store.

Right before the February deadline, Tyler was traded to the Atlanta Hawks for future draft considerations. It was nothing more than a cost-cutting move—owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber wanted to get under the luxury tax ceiling. And whatever portion was left of Tyler’s second round minimum rookie contract, was enough to do the trick.

The onetime high school sensation played exactly one game in Atlanta before getting waived. Tyler was becoming a nonstory.

He appeared with the New York Knicks summer league team in 2013 and was signed in the fall before suffering a stress foot fracture that required surgery. He was subsequently cut to make room for J.R. Smith’s brother and signed by the Knick’s D-League affiliate, the Erie Bayhawks.

Tyler was brought back in late December by New York, playing 41 games for a team that had reached its nadir, featuring the endless death march of head coach Mike Woodson.

Zen master Phil Jackson took over basketball operations in March. Tyler was excited about new opportunities. He studied up on the Triangle offense, feeling that its inside-out nature could benefit his game. He listened in April as Jackson addressed his players in an impromptu group meeting. And when summer arrived and Derek Fisher was hired, Tyler praised the new coach’s leadership.

“Everyone is following his plan,” Tyler said of Fisher during summer league in July. “Everybody respects his system of the Triangle. Even off the court I’ve been replaying different sets in my mind.”

But Tyler was traded to the Sacramento Kings a month later and immediately waived. He managed a training camp invite with the Los Angeles Lakers who were coming off a train wreck season and about to embark upon one that would be even worse. Tyler lasted three preseason games before getting the axe.

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes, they call me on and on across the universe.

The NBA washout did what anyone still chasing the dream would do—he headed to the People’s Republic of China. And there in an ancient mountainous province, he played basketball for Shanxi Zhongyu and a roster of Chinese nationals…plus Von Wafer.

Tyler was a star in Asia once again. He was living in the large industrial city of Taiyuan and took in the outlying sights—massive crumbling Buddhist statues and cliff-hanging temples. But this northern region isn't particularly suitable for tourism in the cold winter months, Mostly, Tyler practiced, played and enjoyed the hospitality of his hosts.

The Shanxi Brave Dragons finished their season by losing on the road in the CBA quarter-finals to the Quindao DoubleStar Eagles. The game deconstructed in its latter stages, with the tempestuous Von Wafer kneeing an opposing player in the family jewels before tossing a chair into the stands.

Not to be outdone, Tyler got into a fight with Iranian man-mountain Hamed Haddadi and later deigned the giant’s act of contrition—matters escalated into a full-scale hallway rumble replete with security forces and ongoing Brave Dragon/DoubleStar Eagle skirmishes.

Another basketball season was over.

***

During the first week of summer free agency, DeAndre Jordan fled the Los Angeles Clippers for greener pastures, feted by select organizations before agreeing to terms with the Dallas Mavericks. Owner Mark Cuban went all in on the endeavor, according second-choice waiting status to Tyson Chandler who promptly signed with the Phoenix Suns.

But Jordan changed his mind after nearly a week of being a de facto Mav, leaving Dallas conspicuously lacking at the pivot.

A couple years back, Cuban blogged about the capricious nature of free agency and his penchant for seeing something in retread players who had failed in other organizations or systems. “I like our ability to work with what I call 'fallen angels.'"

How can a man who has been mentored by Robert Swift, engaged in fisticuffs with Haddadi, and failed to launch a $200 million career, not be a fallen angel? Tyler rebelled against the Basketball Gods and was cast out time and again. He has chased the rainbow, worked on his craft, become a father and played in every hoops system known to mankind—all by an age at which some prospects are just getting started.

Jeremy Tyler’s greatest sin wasn’t in listening to influencers. It was daring to be a teenager. Sure, he made a mess of things, like a kid with an electric guitar—just take some time and learn how to play.

But while sports is generally big on redemption stories, there is also a coded structure—a beginning and a middle and an ending. And if you take too much time getting to the hook, all is lost.'

Maybe Cuban will play the smart business angle, filling a hole with a minimum salary deal. And maybe a kid once bound for glory will knuckle down in Texas and finally deliver on his much-delayed promise.

But NBA training camps are still months away and professional basketball has increasingly become a year-round globalized business.

For Tyler, the great life lessons continue, across the universe.

Robert Swift Longform: Leaving Bakersfield

2015-01-11T17:33:00.001-06:00

My brother once emptied a clip at his apartment door—someone was trying to break it down from the outside. Both parties lived to see another day, until they didn’t. This is par for the course for heroin addicts. It is not a lifestyle destined for longevity.

When I read the latest news about Robert Swift—the onetime center for the Seattle SuperSonics and Oklahoma City Thunder—it seemed like the logical next drop-step for a basketball curiosity. Because downward spirals are not complicated patterns. The personalities might be, but not the slide itself—it’s just a sucking hole and it is rarely denied.

The former NBA prospect pleaded not guilty on weapons charges in a Seattle courtroom Monday. He was arrested January 6, in the town of Gold Bar, along with 28-year-old Carlos Abraham Anderson. The inept duo were apparently attempting to rob a home in broad daylight.

As Shari Ireton of the Snohomish County Sheriff’s Office recounted: “I believe there were a couple of people who called in, they saw masked subjects on the property, reported that at least one of them was armed with a weapon, one possibly with a baseball bat. It appeared they were either trying to make an entry or knocking on the door.”

Gold Bar, Washington—pop. 2,075—began its existence as a prospectors’ camp in 1889 but more recently faced bankruptcy. Swift, a 7’1” heavily inked-up dude who averaged 4.3 points per game over an injury-plagued five-year career in the NBA, earned about $9.8 million as a pro baller. He went broke a long time ago.

At the time of his arrest, Swift had an outstanding warrant for failure to appear in court the day after Thanksgiving. The admitted junkie had initially been arrested October 4, during a SWAT raid, and was charged with possession of a sawed-off shotgun, along with a grenade launcher and several other firearms on or under his bed.

Also arrested in the ATF-led operation was his roommate and owner of the house, Trgve Bjorkstam. Known as “Trigg,” the 54-year-old was booked for illegal firearms and dealing heroin within 100 yards of the Hellen Keller Elementary School in Kirkland. Other items confiscated included methamphetamine, meth pipes, used needles, a blackened fry pan with heroin residue, and dozens of weapons, some fitted with suppressors.

During their search, agents also discovered a hidden underground bunker initially used to grow weed before being turned into a firing range.

According to police reports, Trigg said that the former hoopster was just a “good guy” who was trying to help him collect on a heroin debt. There are yet no indications whether the more recent botched robbery was in any way connected.

***

East Bakersfield is a fairly typical inland community—desert heat, strip malls and ranch-style houses. Swift grew up as a tall, gangly white kid, with a younger sister, Samantha, now 22, a brother Alex, 28, and parents Bruce, 52, and Rhonda, 59. Robert’s dad was an air conditioning repair man who didn’t work for a few years following a car crash. His mom was dealing with cancer and seven surgeries. There wasn’t always enough food on the table.

Swift was 6’4” by the time he entered junior high. He did what super-tall skinny kids usually do and began playing basketball. He got pretty good too, good enough to go to the MacDonald's All American Game, good enough to attract the favor of AAU leeches armed with promises. Good enough for his parents to encourage pursuing a straight shot from high school to the NBA.

His high school coach suggested the college path instead. “His body was so frail and if you are seven feet tall at 16, your body has some growing to do,” said Gino Lacava during an interview with the UK Daily Mail. “That NBA schedule is rigorous and it doesn’t take much to hurt you. Me and the other coaches were all thinking the same thing, that Robert had definitely nothing to lose by going to college for a few years.”

But Swift’s parents, described as “middle class at best” by Lacava, had dollar signs in their eyes. “They got tied in with these AAU coaches who were constantly throwing around free offers and shoes and all the money and I think to them…it seemed like free money.”

For Swift, a quiet kid who averaged 20 points, 11 rebounds and eight blocks per game as a senior, there was the dream of getting lots of tats, and throwing parties and buying cars. His coaches almost won out though—Swift committed to playing for USC and Henry Bibby.

But his father hired Arn Tellem at SFX and USC went out the window. Heading into the draft, Tellem took an unusual approach. Robert wouldn’t attend predraft workouts, wouldn’t talk to teams, wouldn’t take physicals and wouldn’t attend the Chicago combine. In fact, he wouldn’t even be in New York City on draft night.

The sports agent didn’t want his client’s weaknesses exposed.

Bruce revealed the plan at the time, per ESPN: "His daily routine is to hang out with his buddies and get into some open gyms, shoot a bit, play against local guys here in Bakersfield."

Absence made the hungry hearts of NBA teams grow fonder—the skinny kid from the high desert began zooming up draft boards. On June 24, 2004, he was selected as the 12th overall pick by the Sonics.

The Swift family soon left Bakersfield, courtesy of an 18-year-old meal ticket in a custom pinstripe suit. Their ship had finally come in and the timing couldn’t have been better—Bruce had filed for bankruptcy in 1999 and again in 2003.

That summer trip may have been the best part of what would ultimately become Robert Swift’s long losing streak.

He earned $1.6 million for his rookie season, minus agent commission, taxes and other sundry expenses. He leased a Cadillac Escalade EXT pickup with a 3,500-watt sound system and bought his parents a pair of new SUVS for Christmas. He also bought them a home in Seattle’s upscale Sammamish suburb. And he rented himself an apartment near the team’s facility and started growing his hair and acquiring tattoos.

He didn’t play much basketball, though. Nate McMillan was the head coach at the time and had little patience for the new teenaged center—the paint was already packed with Jerome James, Danny Fortson, Vitaly Potapenko, and Nick Collison who had been drafted the year before but sat out his rookie season with injuries.

McMillan banished Swift to the weight room and told him to bulk up. The kid complied dutifully and also got more tats, threw parties for local college kids, began collecting guns and visited his family a few times a week. When the team went out on the road, Swift’s dad would usually tag along. Bruce never held a job during his son’s time in the NBA.

During his rookie season, Swift averaged 0.9 points and 0.3 rebounds in 4.5 minutes per game, over 16 games.

McMillan left after 19 years with the Sonics organization in order to join the Portland Trail Blazers. Bob Weiss was promoted from assistant coach to head coach for all of 17 games and was then fired. Bob Hill—the man with the year-round tan—was the next Sonics assistant to take over the lead chair.

Hill saw something in Swift and began giving him floor time. He also showed him tough love and tried preparing him for a career in basketball and life beyond.

Jayson Jenks for the Seattle Times wrote about Swift’s flameout and the relationship he built with Hill. During summer workouts, the 19-year-old gushed about a Dodge pickup he had just purchased.

“Robert, I don’t give a (expletive) what your truck looks like or what you drive,” said Hill. “I’m more concerned about making you better here so you can get another contract and maybe another, so by the age of 28 or 29 you can be finished in life. That’s my concern. Not your truck.”

Those words would ultimately be prophetic, although not in the way Hill had hoped.

Swift played his best basketball in the NBA that season, starting 20 out of 47 games and averaging 6.4 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game. He had improved his strength and his footwork, could hold his own in the post and had a nice feathery touch on mid-range jumpers, converting 50 percent of his shots from 10-to-16 feet.

The Sonics renewed Swift’s contract for his third season. Hill was planning on making the 20-year-old his starting center for the 2006-07 season. Swift even purchased his own house that July in Sammamish—a sprawling four-bedroom home valued at $1.3 million. Life was starting to look pretty rosy.

But during the preseason, Swift dived out of bounds for a loose ball and tore his right ACL. He wound up missing the entire season. For all intents and purposes, Swift’s NBA career was over but it would take a couple more years for the final nail to be driven into his basketball coffin.

Swift gained weight during his year off, got more tattoos and partied hard at his new mansion. Hill was fired over the phone at the end of the season, after a 31-51 record and failing to make the playoffs for the second year in a row.

The Sonics exercised their option to bring Swift back for another season. He tried making a comeback under new head coach PJ Carlesimo but appeared in only eight games before wrecking his knee again.

The Seattle franchise had been going through their own painful transition since changing ownership from Starbucks founder Howard Schultz in 2006. The team eventually relocated to Oklahoma City as the Thunder, leaving longtime fans in the Pacific Northwest with a bitter taste.

In July of 2008, Swift signed a qualifying offer with the Thunder for $3.6 million. It was a bump up from his previous salary by nearly a million bucks, and would make him a restricted free agent the following spring. It would also allow a draft bust who had played just 71 games in four years, one last opportunity to make good.

The kid from Bakersfield was now 22 years old. He was big and had a body covered in black ink, and had begun painting his fingernails black as well. He was lugging a bulky knee brace up and down the court, but had also dedicated himself to losing weight. He was used sparingly—playing spot minutes for a few games, sitting out a lot more.

Swift averaged 3.3 points and 3.4 boards in 26 games his final NBA season. Carlesimo was fired after going 1-12, and Scott Brooks took over. It was a team heading in a new direction, and that direction would not include a redheaded center who had once been compared to Bill Walton.

Swift was now a free agent and without a paycheck for the first time since high school. He played for the Boston Celtics in summer league action, averaging seven points and 3.6 boards over five games. Danny Ainge had once coveted the teen prospect and had promised to pick him at No. 15 in the 2004 draft. But Seattle got there first.

Summer league ended without an offer and Swift returned to his eastside home in the Seattle outskirts. He began drinking heavily and getting high again. He put the weight back on, plus some. He wandered down to Bakersfield that fall and began hanging out with old friends.

Swift decided to give his hometown another try. In December, he signed with the Bakersfield Jam in the D-League. But after just two games he headed back to Seattle, citing personal issues with his family. The former lottery pick had also just learned his girlfriend was pregnant.

In July of 2010, Bob Hill was with his son Casey in Dallas, working out some prospects. Hill had just landed a job coaching Tokyo Apache. The Japanese pro basketball team first formed in 2004, had been purchased in June by a Los Angeles-based investor group led by Evolution Capital Management.

Hill contacted Swift, and wanted to know if he’d like to play some ball again. The season would begin in September. Swift grabbed at the chance for some semblance of redemption and was also intrigued by the setting—his paternal grandmother was Japanese. He booked a flight to Texas and arrived weighing 335 pounds and sporting a Mohawk.

He told Bob and Casey he’d get a haircut and lose the weight. He’d get right.

But when the season began in Japan, Swift had trouble adjusting. He’d lost 70 pounds of mostly water weight but hadn’t gotten his timing or his confidence back yet. There were things that were bothering him.

According to Jenks and the Seattle Times, Bob and Casey walked into the troubled center’s darkened Japanese apartment in December. He was alone and hung over in bed, an empty vodka bottle nearby. His fiancé had phoned to call off their engagement.

Bob Hill told Swift to get out of bed and read him the riot act: “Maybe being drafted at the age of 18 wasn’t fair. Maybe making all that money at that age wasn’t the right thing for you. But it happened and you have to deal with all this. You’re going to have to plant your feet on the ground and take control of your life.”

Swift began to cry. And then he began putting himself back together. He stopped drinking and worked on his game. He turned 25 and began collecting double-doubles—something that had occurred only twice during his entire time in the NBA. He also mentored 19-year-old Jeremy Tyler—another cautionary tale who skipped college.

The transformation was so dramatic that NBA scouts started calling. The Celtics and New York Knicks wanted to bring Swift in for workouts when his season was done. Hill said it was fun to watch somebody turning their life around.

On March 11, 2011, a massive 9.0 earthquake occurred in the Pacific Ocean, 231 miles northeast of Tokyo. The shock was so big that it shifted the earth on its axis and caused 130-foot waves, including a tsunami that washed out entire cities.

That was the end of the basketball season for Tokyo Apache, and for their existence altogether. The L.A. investors decided it just wasn’t worth it and scuttled the enterprise.

***

Swift returned to his home in Sammamish. In April, he worked out for the Portland Trail Blazers. A brief YouTube video of a tall, slim ginger with a wispy beard shooting jumpers may be the last known basketball footage of the former McDonald’s All-American.

On July 1, 2011, the NBA went on a lockout. It lasted five long months. It wasn’t a good time for a basketball reclamation project to be wishing for a job.

Instead, he started putting harm in his arm and stopped paying the mortgage on his house. Nearly $10 million had slipped away over the years. It would take another 12 months before the bank finally foreclosed on the property.

Swift began shutting down and shutting people out—people like Bob and Casey Hill, like his old coach Lacava, like childhood friends from Bakersfield, and even some members of his own family.

In text exchanges with the UK Daily Mail, Robert’s mother said she hadn’t spoken to him in years, adding: “He bought and did things for his dad and sister but not for his brother or me.”

She also mentioned a book she was writing that would “tell the whole truth.” Because a tell-all book deal will certainly explain how parents helped a multimillion dollar meal ticket grow into a broke heroin addict with a bunch of guns under his bed.

The foreclosure on the house in Sammamish wasn’t a quick and tidy affair. Swift, who owed more than $160,000 in back payments did not want to leave his home. He just wanted to be left alone—with his friends and his dogs and a girlfriend, and his gun collection and various cars in the yard including an El Camino without an engine.

And so he became a squatter in the house he bought with NBA money and then that became the Robert Swift story—for another nine months. He stayed there even after a young couple bought the house at 50 cents on the dollar in January of 2013.

Once the media outlets got hold of the story, little bits of information became malleable. The former draft bust became “Seattle’s basketball savior” and the $10 million he earned turned into $20 million. One local news anchor with a stentorian voice described Swift as the “No. 1 overall draft pick.”

And everybody wanted to know how it came to this.

The nice young couple tried calling Swift and writing letters and knocking on the door of the house they now owned but couldn’t move into. They hired a lawyer and filed legal charges and did TV interviews. News crews tried peeking in the windows.

And finally, one weekend at the beginning of March, Swift and his girlfriend and their dogs were gone. But they left almost all their belongings behind.

The nice young couple rolled in a giant dumpster almost as tall as the house and invited a news crew to come and film. And they wrinkled their noses at the filth as the cameras rolled.

“A lovely way somebody lives,” said the young husband. "The first thing you get when you walk in the door is kind of whiff of whatever is festering in here,” said the young wife.

But what else were they supposed to do? They paid their money just as Swift had paid his. And they wanted to fill their new house with things they had purchased, just as the onetime basketball prospect had done.

The TV footage and the photo galleries from mainstream outlets to basketball blogs showed a myriad of images and some were shown more frequently than others.

There were guns and bullets and empty shell casings. There were bullet holes in the walls and windows and foundation. An article mentioned 100 pizza boxes and 1,000 beer and liquor bottles. Did somebody actually take the time to count?

The empties included dozens of cardboard 18-packs of Coors Light, and there was Mountain Dew and Coca Cola and Twister Tea as well. And cupcakes squashed on the granite kitchen breakfast bar, and outside there were blackened hot dog buns by the grill. There were beds and clothes and a bathroom with blow dryers and toothpaste, and a towel on the vanity that looked like it had simply been used and left before someone headed out for the day—as if they might be coming back later. There was a pool table and computers and stereo equipment, and speakers that once pumped out music, loud and strong. And board games and a model of a covered wagon and a large fishing net and a graveyard of remote controls. The basement had been turned into a firing range and the deck was a place for dogs to poop.

And then there were the photographs of an all-too-short NBA career, and photos of Bakersfield. And a box of letters from colleges with scholarship offers. And outside was a brightly painted basketball court that unlike the interior of the house, seemed oddly clean and well-cared for.

After Swift left, and the dumpster got filled to overflowing, the stories began to recede into the background. Few people seemed to know or care where a washout had wandered off to. Casey Hill said the last he heard, the former basketball player was working as a salesman somewhere in Seattle.

Eight months passed and another NBA draft came and went, as did another summer league. And a new NBA season began and there were new draft busts to write about.

And then the stories came flooding back. A guy who admitted to doing heroin every day got popped in a drug den 100 feet away from an elementary school and didn’t show up for his hearing. And a month later he turned up in a small town that had fallen off the map.

How do you end a downfall story about a homeless seven-foot junkie who decides to put a stocking over his head and knock on someone’s door in Gold Bar?

With a convenient tag about hope for brighter days ahead, or an improbable return to a profession that never quite worked out? Swift’s basketball career didn’t have to end when the earth shifted on its axis and a giant wave hit the Japanese coastline.

He could have played for dozens of other teams that provide refuge and employment for NBA outcasts. But a house and guns and dogs and pizza boxes, and bindles of heroin, were infinitely warmer and easier.

By the time Swift was arraigned on possession of a sawed-off shotgun Monday, he looked frailer than any time since high school. He is being represented by the King County department that works with indigent defendants. His next court date will be January 26.

Ultimately, we look at stories through the lens of our own existence, and sometimes seminal journeys and family memories. Like a string of bullet holes stitched in an apartment door, left by someone who died long ago.

This one is for you my brother.

(updated 1/12/15)

Will Slava Medvedenko Coach the New York Knicks?

2014-05-25T12:25:00.000-05:00

Kyivan Stanislav Medvedenko blazed an erratic orbit across the basketball firmament in the early 2000’s before pulling a vanishing act worthy of Greta Garbo or Amelia Earhart.

Phil Jackson hasn’t forgotten though.

In January 2014, Jackson appeared on Fox Sports Live for an extended interview with hosts Charissa Thompson, Andy Roddick and Gary Payton. 11 Rings listened as Payton described injuries, adversity and unlikely heroes during the Los Angeles Lakers’ run to the Finals in 2004, before falling to the Detroit Pistons.

And then the Zen Master spoke, just two words: “Slava Medvedenko.”

Payton blinked a few times, as if temporarily short-circuited. And plowed ahead: “Oh he makin’ big shots, big shots!”

Now, of course, Jackson is running operations for the New York Knicks and facing the challenge of finding a coach in the aftermath of being turned down by Steve Kerr.

But we know there’s a plan B. And perhaps, it was plan A all along. As in “unceasing change turns the wheels of life. And so reality is shown in all its many forms.”

For Jackson, the cycle completes by returning to the city where he first made his mark as a player, drafted in 1967 in the second round.

As for Medvedenko, the lines of reality can become more blurred. At long last, after years of self-imposed exile, could a bear emerge from the forest?

Pros of Slava coaching the Knicks:

Medvedenko may have pretended not to understand the intricacies of the triangle offense but he understands coaching. He's been stalking the sidelines with the Ukrainian national team's youth division (U16/17), as well as his own basketball club, for the past several years.

Coaching Ukrainian basketball is fraught with challenges these days. The unrest that has broken out across the country isn't making as many headlines but continues regardless,with pro-Russian gunmen seizing control of key sectors and local forces often seeming powerless. Kiev, the capital city and Medvedenko’s home since childhood, has been especially rocked by violence and political instability and now moves toward an uncertain future as citizens go to the polls to elect a new Ukrainian president.

Mike “the Czar” Fratello, known for his work as an analyst for TNT as well as being head coach for the Atlanta Hawks, Cleveland Cavaliers and Memphis Grizzlies, has also served as head coach for the Ukrainian national team since 2011.

Per Mary Schmitt Boyer of The Plain Dealer, Fratello visited Kiev in February as violence was escalating: "Obviously, it has escalated in the last five days. Things have gotten much worse. They closed the basketball federation offices last week. I think that was the smart thing to do. A bullet doesn't know where it's going when it leaves the gun."

It’s one thing to be turned down by Kerr, it’s another thing when the tanks start rolling in.

Does this ever feel like Déjà vu?

Imagine the small hours of the morning. Two tall figures walk down a lonely city canyon, impossibly tall skyscrapers on each side blocking out all but a ribbon of inky sky overhead, peppered by tiny distant lights. One figure has a gate that seems far too painful for leisurely strolls through high-walled city canyons with a ribbon of inky sky above.

They see the city sleep tonight. They see the stars are out tonight.

Why it won't happen:

Basketball would be too beautiful, causing the fabric of the universe to tear asunder.

Because who would teach the children, now?

Because if you coach the Knicks, at some point you’ll have to deal with James Dolan which would actually be a picnic compared to dealing with Mother Russian masked thugs with Pecheneg machine guns. Maybe this should be a pro not a con.

Take a moment and imagine the fourth quarter of an important game at MSG with lights shining hard and teenagers screaming with twisted faces and Medvedenko calling a time out and stolidly trying to make his instructions known to Carmelo Anthony.

Medvedenko: “Vy rozmovliajete ukrajinśkoju?”

Anthony: “No, I don’t understand what you’re fucking saying, dammit! Where’s Phil?”

In truth, Slava Medvedenko is never coming back.

He was just another big eastern European dude who went undrafted in 2000 and might never have caused a ripple beyond that. But something happened—perhaps a rift in the basketball time continuum, and he was signed as a free agent by the Los Angeles Lakers where he made an immediate impression—freelancing and jacking up shots at will, pretending not to understand the language and trudging back to the bench with cheeks aflame when Jackson yanked back on his leash—usually about five minutes after sending him in.

There was something wonderfully elusive about him. He made some of us laugh and never knew about it. And the laughter was good then—it was an intoxicating era of basketball, with wins and championships coming fast and free. And then his time was done—a operation on his back never quite panned out right.

Medvedenko had one last shot in the NBA with the Atlanta Hawks in 2006—just 14 games and his back simply wouldn’t allow him to continue at the level he wanted.

He dabbled in film production for a short while, due to his marriage to producer Svetlana Anufrieva. Slava eventually returned to Kiev and began devoting time to youth sports and education.

Anufrieva remained in the U.S. and produced a documentary entitled “Divorce: A Journey Through the Kids’ Eyes", released in 2014.

Medvedenko’s journey also began as a child, in the village of Kiev Oblast. He wasn’t all that interested in basketball—preferring swimming, volleyball and especially soccer—until a coach named Alexander D. Kovalenko pointed out the obvious. Namely, that Stanislav was getting rather tall.

Like a bear, which was also his family nickname. Medved, meaning Bear.

As Slava later said, “Alexander D. instilled in me a love of basketball and I realized it was mine. From hatred to love in one step.”

And a career that took him from the youth league to professional basketball in the Ukraine and Lithuainia, and then to the US., getting summer league invites from the Dallas Mavericks and Phoenix Suns before signing with the Lakers.

Medvedenko began toying with the idea of founding his own basketball school during the Lakers offseason in 2001 and it became a reality in 2004. “Vedmedi” (UKR) or “Medvedi” (RUS) translates to “Bears from Kyiv”. More commonly known as BC Bears, the team became the official cadet division of BC Kyiv (the Ukrainian national team) in 2012.

During an interview with the Ukrainian sport site iSport, Medvenko spoke of the end of an NBA career:

“Frankly, after a serious injury you’ll never be able to return to the previous level. You constantly have fear and dread. As I have said, when you finish with basketball, everything in life becomes different. Other colors and sounds. People need to rebuild their lives completely, to find their place, where you can be useful, where you can feel interested again.”

Stories don’t always play out as we imagine. And in many cases, we don’t imagine them at all. A world away, kids get into a gym when they are able, trying to find some escape from a war-torn landscape in which the various sides and alliances can be hard to figure out.

On Sunday, polls will open in critical presidential elections that could determine the future of Kiev and other western parts of Ukraine, while to the east, violence will continue to rage on, and voting will be unlikely.

And in New York City, Jackson will continue to look for a coach for the Knicks.

Looking Back on Mr. D’Antoni’s Wild Ride

2014-05-03T00:14:00.000-05:00

It wasn’t quite two seasons long but that’s just a trifle—Mike D’Antoni was hired by the Los Angeles Lakers ten games into the 2012-13 campaign and took them on an unapologetic spin through his uniquely myopic, often entertaining and ultimately disastrous brand of basketball.

Along the road were too many injuries to recount, empowerment for minimum-salary castoffs and 67 wins and 87 losses. Yowsa!

The overall total reads better than the denouement—his second season accounted for 55 of those misfires and will go down as the worst loss record in franchise history.

Toward the end, it had become a screaming banshee death spiral capped off with one last flourish that says more about D’Antoni’s lack of tether to the franchise than any other singular action.

The Lakers ended their train wreck with back-to-back wins, thus squandering any chance to move up the ladder in the all-important draft lottery.

And when told by reporters of the implication of beating the Spurs in the last game of the regular season, the onetime COY responded, “They played hard, and I think, if I’m not mistaken, it’s the same number of ping-pong balls, right? They flip a coin, or something.”

Oh, you impish wag.

He was informed of his misperception, of course.

But in the end it really didn’t matter—D’Antoni had long since gone all in on a basketball philosophy that could just have well been told in iconic theme park verse:

“We’re merrily on our way, to nowhere in particular!”

I never wanted him to coach the Lakers. I was a Zen Master devotee through and through—it was all about the guy with the rings and the soul patch, and that absurd fascination with staring at the floor while seated, as important basketball business transpired on court.

The decision just didn’t make any sense in my mind, I spent too much time recycling through an endless tape loop of “but, why?”

I probably missed too many memorable moments over the almost-two seasons, simply because I found obstinate fault with a system that never had a prayer when married to guys like Kobe Bryant, Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol.

It was prideful and wrong and basically stupid of me, like parents who turn away from a class performance because they don't approve of the silly bumblebee costumes.

Yes, it was an abomination like no other. But how those pom-pom antennas waved merrily through the air, as an array of giddy gunners launched gobstoppers toward a distant honeypot.

“We’re always in a hurry, we have no time to stall!”

Mr. Toad's Wild Ride lasted 154 games, the likes of which we won’t see again. If there’s any comparison in the annals of Laker lore, it might be Dennis Rodman’s 23-game party rager during the 1998-99 season, in which he averaged 2.1 points and 11.2 boards before taking an impromptu detour from the Forum to Vegas, causing Jerry West to remove the tap from the keg.

D’Antoni wasn’t the right coach for the Lakers, at least not for a team assembled from such disparate elements. And of course, nobody could have won with all those injuries. Just because it’s been repeated ad nauseam, doesn’t change that inherent truth.

He rejected the star system in an organization that personifies it.

And the villagers with their pitchforks and fiery torches helped hasten a foregone conclusion. Or maybe not, does it even matter?

He went out the way he came in, suddenly and amidst contradictory reports and predictions.

And despite the dark days, D’Antoni delivered some shining moments—diagraming brilliant timeout plays, reviving the careers of young NBA rejects and never once wavering from an extreme form of tunnel vision that belongs to life’s true believers.

I never supported him but I find myself wishing I had paid better attention nonetheless.

Actually, I kind of did pay attention. I think I watched all 55 losses. Sometimes, wild rides can be god-awful.

Fare thee well, Mr. D’Antoni—may the wind be always at your back, though our roads are perpendicular!

Mike D’Antoni, Life Journal, Day 576

2014-04-26T20:08:00.000-05:00

Laurel is annoyed with me for playing Dark Side of the Moon all night on the stereo system. She said that’s why she bought me ear buds, but I don’t like how they feel.

Woke up, had a half-grapefruit and some turkey sausage. Sat on the patio and texted Kupchak, asked if they were ready to guarantee my fourth year. I don't do things half-ass, you gotta burn the house to the ground if you really want to rise to the sun.

Mitch is alright, though. It’s that Jimmy kid that worries me. Can’t trust amateurs like that.

Goals for the week: No. 1, make a rock garden. No. 2, grow some tomato plants. No. 3, take up watercolor painting.

I’m gonna miss Dan.

If I come back next season, Shawne’s coming back too. That’s non-negotiable.

Made good progress last night on new treatise for next season—cribbage analytics as applied to skill-ball. Always lead your opponent during play. For example, if you start with a 7, the other guy could play an 8 for 15 and score 2 points. By leading, you can play a 9 to score 3 points for a Run.

Three is always better than two.

If I could get some of these new number junky bloggers on my side I could rule the basketball universe. I wonder how much that would cost me. I bet some of them would do it for free.

We take what the league gives us and that basically means less physicality under the basket. If you suck more defenders out toward the three-point line it opens up paths to the rim even more. Occam’s razor says it’s pointless to do with more what is done with less. Big guys who stand around in the paint are more. Scoring a three-pointer is less because it means more points with one possession.

I'm not coming back for a third year if they won't give me a fourth.

“Run, rabbit run—dig that hole, forget the sun.”

I still miss the wildflowers in Abruzzo. We used to drive there in the spring. It was just Laurel and I, then. Bombing along in our old Fiat Spider, not a worry in the world. Lilies and orchids and primrose. And the silver birch trees in the forest.

SEARCHING FOR SLAVA

2014-03-18T00:18:00.000-05:00

The season hasn’t gone as planned, and the season before didn’t go as planned, or the one before that.

The mind-numbing tape-loop of sequential injuries provided fodder for a while, as did an avalanche of losses that finally lost their power and simply continued to accrue, silently, impotently.

Like snow falling at night.

You mined the controversy and misery, you found effective hit-seeking hooks and far-reaching narratives that fed upon themselves until all the good stuff had been chewed out, and what was left felt tasteless and plasticine. The concentric circles of hell began to flatten out and dissipate.

It felt this way long ago but you were younger then and media strip-mining hadn’t yet sucked your soul clean of caring. Losing meant more, then.

You go from watching three games at once to none at all. You pretend to become deeply obsessed in the story of a missing airliner instead. You take too much time choosing between a five-dollar frozen pizza and the one that cost 3-for-$10 with your store discount card.

The lockout season was better than this.

You decide that it’s all part of the greater good. That stuff—about renewal and Sisyphusian challenges—and you devote a small portion of think-power to constructing something grand and beautiful but then Netflix happens instead.

The Los Angeles Lakers are currently at 22-44 and have a few days off. They were dead last in the Western Conference standings, but somehow, Utah must have lost additional games faster than the Lakers lost additional games, so now the Jazz are dead last.

You stare at the screen, knowing that the Lakers paragraph should move up several spaces for maximum efficiency. And that you need to put a block quote some place.

You forget that the oven timer went off. The 3-for$10 pizza is now an unappealing shade of brown around the edges.

Someone from Milwaukee or Cleveland would hit you in the face with a two-by-four just to shut you up.

You take a moment to gather small pieces of foam rubber from a destroyed dog bed and kneel on a damp spot from puppy piss from many hours earlier, or even days ago.

Every now and then, people still wonder whatever happened to Slava. The answer is actually quite simple—he returned to the Ukraine several years ago and has been working with youth basketball, including the U16/17 National Team.

Per Mary Schmitt Boyer of The Plain Dealer, Mike Fratello, coach of the Ukrainian National Team during tournament play, recently visited Kiev, as violence was escalating:

"Obviously, it has escalated in the last five days. Things have gotten much worse. They closed the basketball federation offices last week. I think that was the smart thing to do. A bullet doesn't know where it's going when it leaves the gun."

It’s one thing to have a few bad seasons in a row. It’s another thing when the tanks start rolling in.

On Monday, the Lakers announced that Jordan Farmar had strained his right groin in practice. His return to the lineup is uncertain.

It's just one more stumbling block in a larger narrative of loss, and an ongoing sense of dysfunction that feels murky and ill-defined, like a recipe randomly put together by bored children.

The Lakers host the San Antonio Spurs, at Staples Center on Wednesday.

And I’m still searching for Slava.

SOMEONE'S NUMBER NINE: THE RETURN OF SHAWNE WILLIAMS

2013-09-06T19:22:00.000-05:00

The Los Angeles Lakers are in a gathering mode leading up to training camp. Mindful of vagaries of age and health, the front office is stockpiling multi-positional projects in hopes of plugging a hole left by the amnesty of Metta World Peace. Forward Shawne Williams has faced well-publicized off-court challenges, including multiple drug busts and the loss of his older brother. This will be a low-risk deal financially, as his minimum salary is only partially guaranteed. The initial press blurbs were slimmer than they once were. Burn enough opportunities and the story tends to downsize.

I was driving cross-country a few summers back and took a detour into downtown Memphis. A couple random historic district signs led past abandoned buildings and empty lots. The Housing Authority came in during the 1950's and wiped out about half the area. Things were never quite the same again. Nearly 1,500 acres have been deemed a menace to public safety, health, morals and welfare according to the current Community Redevelopment Agency. Another eminent domain razing is being planned in the name of gentrification. For a guy making random lefts and rights in an old green Explorer, it simply looked like a place you could get lost in real easy. About 30 minutes later I was refilling my ice chest and buying post cards at a convenience store and heading back to ten lanes of mind-numbing banality that now passes for a road trip.

A “cautionary tale” is one of sports' pet phrases, often used in primetime style and easily applied to athletes who never quite got there. Demetrius “Hook” Mitchell dunked over cars on the mean streets of Oakland. He grew up with the likes of Jason Kidd, Gary Payton and Brian Shaw, and has been called the greatest player to never make it to the NBA. Instead he played for weed and crack and wound up in and out of prison. Lamar Odom faced more loss than anyone should but eventually reached the pinnacle of NBA success, as well as marrying into the kind of tabloid status that keeps buzzards like TMZ well fed. Lamar's current woes took another turn when he checked out of rehab a day after checking in.

Getting high happens on different levels. There aren't enough prisons in the world to hold everyone who has ever smoked a joint or done a line of coke, or who has hung with someone that's just not going to make your life simple and easy, although it might seem simple and easy in the moment.

Shawne Williams grew up in South Memphis in a neighborhood marked by crime and prostitution. He and his brother Ramone, one year his senior, were primarily raised by their grandfather, Lou Williams. Shawne wasn't really seen as a bad kid by Coach Ted Anderson at Hamilton High, though he later observed that the troubled player had nine lives. It's probably a cliché to say Williams has used most of them up, it's also probably true. He was courted by Coach John Calipari and the University of Memphis. Anderson admits he lobbied for Shawne to declare for a different college, someplace far away from friends and temptation.

A standout freshman season led to Williams being taken as the 17th pick in the 2006 draft by Donnie Walsh and the Indiana Pacers. Things were good for a while until they weren't. Off-court troubles started piling up. Shawne was traded to Dallas and wound up being paid by Mark Cuban to stay away from the team. Dallas traded his contract to the Nets and he was subsequently released. Kiki Vandeweghe later said, “I'm glad he's not our issue.” Out of the NBA and hanging out with old Memphis friends, Williams said “a light switched on." He decided to get out of town and back into shape.

Timelines don't always tell the whole story but they're a part of the story nonetheless. Williams has been arrested three times during his NBA career and stopped, questioned and ticketed at various other junctures. Aggregate causes have included smoking a blunt, driving without a license, associating with a murder suspect and being part of an Operation Lockdown dragnet in Memphis. Williams pleaded guilty to four misdemeanor charges for that one, including intent to sell hydrocordone, aka sizzurp in a styro cup. He was placed in a six-month diversion program and tested positive for weed four times during that period. In 2012 he was popped again for codeine-based syrup.

In the spring of 2010, Williams traveled to the IMG Basketball Academy in Brandenton, Florida, and began playing again. He lost weight and dedicated himself to the game. He received a summer league invite from the Charlotte Bobcats and coach Larry Brown, who was likely influenced by the recommendation of Calipari. Summer league lead to two NBA training camp offers: the Bobcats and the New York Knicks. Williams went with the Knicks for personal reasons. Madison Square Garden was the last place his brother saw him play during a college tourney. Ramone was murdered shortly thereafter. It's also worth noting that Donnie Walsh, who drafted Williams, was now running operations for the Knicks.

Likened to a reclamation project within a reclamation project, Shawne Williams thrived in his new environment. Mike D'Antoni admittedly tested him, tossing the 6-9 forward into various rotations and situations. Williams slowed down LeBron James, was choked by an agitated World Peace and was even used at center against Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic. The size mismatch was ridiculous but the forward didn't back down. He's never been accused of playing soft. As D'Antoni said, “He's coming at you. And I like that about him.” His minutes increased and his role solidified. He shot .401 from behind the arc and helped the team to their best season in a decade.

The following fall found Williams at the Knicks training camp, waiting for a free agent offer. He ultimately signed with the Nets for two years and $6.1 million, calling it a business decision. Things didn't work out in New Jersey; he was traded after 25 uneventful games to the Trail Blazers. Williams didn't play in Portland and was arrested again the following winter. According the affidavit, the 26 year-old said, “Officer, I ain't gonna lie to you, there's a blunt in the car and some syrup.”

Williams hasn't seen any NBA action in well over a year. Still, his tough-nosed play caught on with D'Antoni that one season and his coach remembers. The Memphis product will be playing for a spot against a glut of other question marks. He's burned his bridges and used up at least eight lives. Still, if you're going to be someone's number nine, it might as well be the Lakers.

A predictable thing happened after the first Lakers beat stories about the signing of Williams. National basketball writers started to circle like hawks. They remembered the cautionary tales, they might have even played a part once. During a slow summer news cycle, events like this can generate interest. Phrases are dusted off, links are explored and parsed.

Somewhere a car floats around a corner, the music's bumping and the windows are dark and you don't know if it's a guy going somewhere or if it's just another ride with a group of friends. Headlights, taillights, it could be Los Angeles or it could be Memphis. Another season's about to begin.