Hey Knicks, I want that job!

In yet another lame attempt in pre-occupying myself on another hot, lazy afternoon, I have decided to apply for jobs in the NBA.

Yep, the NBA. Ze National Basketball Association.

Now I know I’m more likely to get hired as an oversized child in a Combantrin commercial than being called up to become a PR guy for the New Orleans Hornets. But with nothing else to do and with resources dwindling by the day, I might as well shoot for the stars and hope that I get noticed.

Upon seeing the NBA’s careers website, I was floored to see that there are a ton of jobs available. ‘Great’, I thought. I’m going to have better odds of getting hired! As I scrolled down the list of open positions, I realized that I was neither qualified nor had any background experience on 90% of the said openings.

Deflated but not undaunted, I scoured for more openings and landed on a particular job description that piqued my curiosity:

http://nbateamjobs.teamworkonline.com/teamwork/jobs/jobs.cfm/Communications?supcat=166

As I read the job descriptions, my heartbeat started beating a few more times than I cared to know. This job is perfect for me! I have a place to stay in New Jersey, and that’s only a 15-minute bus ride away, I love sports and the NBA (duh!), and I’m going to be writing about them for a living. The only thing I need to work on is my support for the team - or whatever they're called these days.

But hell, if they give me this opportunity and pay me while doing it, I’m more than willing to elevate them as my second favorite team. I probably just shot down my chances right there but still, the Hornets are still number one.

Regardless, it’s an avenue worth exploring. Who knows, right? It’s far-fetched to think that the NEW YORK KNICKS will even give me the time of day, but with my current state of mind, nothing seems too unbelievable anymore.

In the meantime, while waiting for a response from my soon-to-be-I-hope-second-favorite-professional-sports-team, I’ll keep my fingers crossed, hope they notice me, and see how great an asset I can be to them.

Now, about that Combantrin commercial; are there any casting calls for that?

When Bandwagonning Goes Wrong

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine recently and predictably, our dialogue ended up on basketball. Now this friend of mine, much like yours truly, is a die-hard fan of the game. He once called himself the greatest New York Knicks fan – a title I completely found unenviable.
We’ve spent countless hours debating about our favorite team, figuring out how to improve our team’s fortunes with otherworldly trade ideas and ridiculous free agent signings. Since our little game was devoid of any salary cap restrictions, all the ideas – ludicrous as they are – were fair game.

“I’ll trade for Chris Paul and Tyson Chandler for Stephon Marbury and a bag of peanuts,” he once said. I couldn’t blame for his attempt at the trade since CP3 and TC are two of the leagues up-an-coming stars whereas Stephon Marbury is most famous these days for his bizarre television interviews and a tattoo of his official logo on his head. “Hey, at least New York peanuts are delicious,” he retorted. Those were his trade ideas. Anything to improve the Knicks dreadful standing as league laughingstock, I thought.

Then, in one of our more recent conversations, he said something that completely caught me off guard.

KG: James Posey - New Orleans Hornet
KG: We’re going all the way, baby!
Air-nest: Hopefully, Pose can help the Hornets reach the 2009 Finals...
Air-nest:... and then get crushed by my Celtics!

Wait a second...your Celtics?! The BOSTON CELTICS?!

I vainly tried to wrestle an answer from him. In sports, it’s an unwritten rule that if you’re from New York, the last city you want winning a sports championship is Boston, and vice versa. There’s a detailed history of sports rivalries between those two cities that has transcended sports and has become a way of life.

“You don’t root for a Boston team if you live in New York!”

He smiled and said, “Well, the Knicks suck and the C’s are relevant again so might as well ‘lend my support them’ to them, right?”

Then it hit me. My friend – the man who once said Hubert Davis was his favorite player of all time – is a bandwagon fan.

“Nobody wants to root for losers”, he told me.

While I sympathized with his plight (the Knicks really do suck), it made his case as a bandwagon fan all the more convincing. The moment Kevin Garnett signed with Boston last year, that’s all he talked about. He even made a bet with another friend of ours – and a fellow New York Knicks fan – that the Celtics would win the championship.

I have nothing against bandwagon fans. They are free to choose which team to root for – even if they switch allegiances every few days, depending on how said teams are doing in the standings. I’m not even worried about offending him with this. We’ve thrown worse verbal lobs at each other that I’m confident that he’ll take this with a grain of salt and laugh about it. I venture a guess that he’ll even be the first to comment.

I just find it hard to believe that out of all the teams that he could’ve jumped on the bandwagon, out of all the teams he could’ve ‘lent his support’ to, it had to be a team from Boston.

A Right Kind of Buzz

As one of the biggest New Orleans Hornets fans this side of the Pacific, you can imagine my delight with the success they had this season.

Sure, they didn’t exactly win the championship, but if one looks deeper inside their season-for-the ages then you’d understand why this year will go down as the most successful – and most memorable – season in the franchise’s history.

If you’ve been following this team for as long as I have – 16 years and counting – you know that the Hornets aren’t exactly a ‘storied’ franchise. They haven’t won a championship and the farthest they ever got was Game 7 of the Conference Semifinals. It’s easy to forget that out of the four teams that entered the league during the ’88 and ’89 expansion years, the Hornets are the only team that hasn’t reached the Conference Finals. The Miami Heat already has a championship banner hanging in their building after Dwyane Wade led them to a title. The Orlando Magic reached the Finals in 1995 and if it weren’t for Nick Anderson’s world-class choke job, the probably would have had one by now. Even the Minnesota Timberwolves – perennial underachievers that they are – reached the Conference Finals during the peak of KG’s reign in ‘Sota.

Sadly, the Hornets’ past reads like a laundry list of unfortunate, ill-fated events and circumstances. On the court, they’ve always been a good – not great – team. And when they were a great team, they were damned – as with all the other teams, anyway – to have played during Michael Jordan’s reign of terror in the league. They also couldn’t attract big-time free agents to join them, primarily because most players were turned off by North Carolina’s glowing reputation as the “Bible Belt”. Go figure.

It gets even worse when you consider what’s happened to this team off the court. From George’s Shinn unprecedented fall from grace in Charlotte (ironically, due to a sexual harassment case), to relocating in New Orleans in what was then known as a dead basketball town, to enduring the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, to relocating AGAIN - albeit temporarily - to Oklahoma City, and finally, moving back to New Orleans in a time where the effects of the hurricane was still fresh on everyone’s minds and hearts.

The adversity this team has gone through in the past couple of years is unheard of in sports. It’s absolutely ridiculous when people make such a big fuss about a ‘supposed’ franchise player’s trade demands on YouTube, or another team who, until recently, employed a coach responsible for single-handedly burning what was once a storied franchise to the ground.

Would you trade that for what the New Orleans Hornets have gone through?

Me thinks not.

Their biggest headaches are walks in the park on a sunny Saturday afternoon compared to what the Hornets have been through.

And that’s precisely why as a Hornets fan for three-fourths of my life, this season will go down as the best one in their history - both on and off the basketball court.

Before the year began, the New Orleans Hornets were actually considered an up-and-coming team, penciled in most mock play-off trees somewhere along the sixth to eight seed. If somebody actually said the Hornets would finish number two in the West, he would have been called a cocaine-sniffing, ecstacy swallowing delusional idiot. “The Hornets having a better record than the Spurs, Mavs, Suns, Jazz, and Rockets?! Please!”

Most had them rated, predictably, as a good – not great – team. Good enough to make the play-offs and be offered as a sacrificial lamb to any of the true contenders. It was the usual step for a franchise, people would say. From not making the play-offs the past three years, to getting a taste of it and eventually, be bounced out wanting more. That’s how everybody thought New Orleans’ season would go.

For my part, I actually had them as a sixth seed, but I didn’t think they’d go quietly into the night. I thought they had a great young nucleus of Chris Paul, David West, and Tyson Chandler, complemented by veteran guys like Peja Stojakovic and Mo Peterson. They were a good team that had tremendous upside.

But not even myself, die-hard New Orleans fan that I am, thought that they’d be one of the West’s elite teams for most of the season - spending the last month of the season as the conference’s number one seed (they ended up being the number two seed).

So imagine the number of jaws-dropping after every New Orleans win. With every blowout of San Antonio, with every trashing of the Suns, the Hornets were slowly earning recognition around the league. But most importantly, their success has spurned the city to finally support them.

Playing their home games in front of crowds that resembled a Saturday morning YMCA scrimmage, the Hornets’ success began drawing in more people. In the end, the half-filled arena became a hotbed for rabid and delirious fans that at the beginning was a complete afterthought.

And it wasn’t just at the New Orleans Arena. The Hornets, with the irrepressible Chris Paul leading the way, were doing their part in galvanizing the city.

Even after two years of rebuilding, New Orleans was still a shell of its former party-town self. There has been an increasingly absurd lack of progress, with various parts of town still looking more and more like a third-world country.

But in spite of that, the Hornets were determined to do more than their fare share. When their minds weren’t on basketball, they could be seen fixing homes, visiting children, and participating in community events.

That’s what makes this team different from all the other 29 teams in the league. They weren’t just playing for a championship; they were playing for a city that was left in tatters.

That mindset carried them throughout this season. Through all the win streaks, through all the bumps, they rode on that motivation and it led them to the play-offs were they manhandled the Dallas Mavericks and took the defending champion San Antonio Spurs to the brink of elimination (would you believe that the aggregate final score of that series was 645-645?).

After being eliminated by the Spurs, head coach Byron Scott said that the Hornets needed to learn from this experience to become better next year. “You don’t go from not making the playoffs to winning a championship. It just doesn’t work that way,” he said.

With apologies to Byron Scott, I believe the Hornets won more than just a championship. It’s easy to get caught up in that quest for the title because, after all, that is what everybody’s playing for.

But while everybody is focused on reaching the destination that is the “promised land”, they begin to lose touch of the journey that led them there.

And that’s where the success of the Hornets’ season lies. It’s not how far they made it into the play-offs, but how far they came from being a wandering vagabond of a franchise a little over three years ago to becoming a symbol of hope the city of New Orleans desperately needed.

I’ve been waiting a long time for the Hornets to hoist the NBA championship. And while they fell short in that task this year, I’m left with a lasting thought that while no trophy was won, this team still hoisted something far more important than championship hardware.

They hoisted their city, put them on their shoulders, and gave them what nobody up until then had given them – a reason to cheer and a sense of hope that one day, New Orleans will rise again.

Tainted legacy

0 for 7.

For all of Tracy Mcgrady’s achievements, this is the one figure that might inevitably define his legacy.

The man has been in the play-offs seven times and for all his efforts, he has never gone past the first round. It’s an unsettling fact and surprising if you consider the caliber of player Mcgrady is.

That’s not to say that he hasn’t come close to advancing. Out of the seven first round series’ that he’s played in, three have been decided in Game 7’s. It happened against Detroit back in 2003 when T-Mac was with Orlando, and twice since he moved to Houston – in 2006 against Dallas and last year against Utah.

It’s beyond comprehension to think that somebody like Mcgrady would have lost three Game 7’s – let alone seven first round series’ - when everybody knows that these are the kind of games that define superstars and cement their legacies as one of the greats of this game. Hey, Lebron James did it in his first year in the play-offs. So did Dwyane Wade. T-Mac’s failures only magnify the long-held belief that he’s not superstar-material.

Some might argue that it’s unfair to put the onus on T-Mac’s failures all to himself; after all, most of those teams were better than his when they met in the play-offs. But isn’t it fair to say that the 2006 Cavs were no better than Mcgrady’s Rockets?

Besides, that shouldn’t be an excuse. Great players don’t use the ‘I-tried-my-best-but-they-were-a-better-team card’. Great players say “get the hell out of my way because I’m winning this game”.

Sadly, T-Mac doesn’t have the latter mentality. Too often he has differed to his teammates in key stretches of the game. You can look no further than Games 1 and 2 of their series against the Jazz this year. Those were two winnable games for Houston. In both games, Mcgrady scored a grand total of one point in the fourth quarter of both games. You think Lebron, Kobe, or D-Wade would have let that happen?

Tracy Mcgrady is an all-world basketball talent. His skill set is unmatched by all but a few. But while he does have all the talent in the world, he lacks an important trait that all other great players have: a bona fide killer instinct.

Even if he has shown flashes of brilliance, his biggest problem has been consistency. There are some nights where he scores 13 points in 30 seconds, but on the other nights, he literally becomes an offensive and defensive afterthought.

That’s the most important thing Mcgrady needs to develop a closer’s mentality; a killer instinct that says ‘I’m not losing this game’. All the greats have it and if he wants to be considered as one such, then he must learn to have it too.

But until he learns to have that mentality, his lasting mark as a player will invariably be defined as someone whose immense talents were devalued by a lack of results.

That’s the truth and unless he gets this immense gorilla of his back, that’s all we’ll remember him for.

It’s unfortunate considering T-Mac’s legacy deserves a happier ending.

Steve Kerr's Unnecessary Gamble

If Steve Kerr wants to reap the fruits of his highly controversial trade for Shaquille O'Neal, letting go of Mike D'Antoni is a move he should not, under any circumstances, make.

While D'Antoni's flaws as a coach were exposed in the first round against San Antonio, the Suns were undone more by their silly mistakes. Those mental breakdowns and blown assignments at the end of Game 1 were inexcusable. As were those costly turnovers in the latter stages of Game 5. Let's say that Phoenix won Game 1, the whole complexion of this series would have been completely different.

But alas, small mistakes always add up to having bigger consequences, and as a reward for the Suns penchant for mental lapses, they were given the boot in Round 1 and left everybody questioning the state of the Suns for next year.

Now that they've been booted out of the play-offs, the onus is on Kerr to breathe life on this floundering team and the first thing he needs to address is the status of Mike D'Antoni as head coach.

We've all heard about the philosophical differences Kerr and D'Antoni have had with regards to the team's direction. D'Antoni prefers his run-and-fun style of play and believes that after averaging 57 wins over the past four years, his style of play can work. Kerr, meanwhile, wants more emphasis on defense and a sense of accountability and responsibility from his younger players. In Kerr's mind, imagine how good Stoudemire will be if he cared a little bit more about getting rebounds, or how dominant Boris Diaw can be if he paid more attention to defense than the number of croissants he's had.

That's where their philosophical difference lies. D'Antoni thinks Kerr is micromanaging while Kerr thinks D'Antoni is being too lenient on his players.

If you ask me, there's a way to reseolve this and Kerr has to understand that firing D'Antoni will only exacerbate his gamble of acquiring O'Neal and you don't chase a gamble by making an even bigger one.

Kerr needs to ‘know his personnel' - as he always put it when he was a TNT analyst - and understand that the Suns are built to win now, and not later.

Changing coaches and changing philosophy takes time but the Suns don't have that luxury. Nash and Shaq are both 34. Grant Hill is 30-something, and Raja Bell has clearly lost a step - or three. Those four, supposing the Suns don't make any roster changes during the summer, are almost half of their regular rotation. Putting in a new coach with a different philosophy is a coated way of saying that ‘they're starting over'. That's fine and good if you're a team like the Toronto Raptors, but not if you're a team who relies a great deal on two players that are clearly past their prime.

The Suns can't afford to have another coach come in and put in a different style from the one they've been running the past couple of years. It's more important for Nash because D'Antoni's system fits his style of play like a glove.

If Kerr does decide to make a change, he should do everything he can to make sure D'Antoni's job is secure, but also try to convince him of the simple "merits" of playing defense in a way that will not undermine Coach D'Antoni's position as coach.

But if Steve Kerr does let go of Coach D'Antoni, he - for all intents and purposes - is closing the curtain on the run-and-fun style of the Suns; a bad idea considering the majority of his team is best-suited in that style of play.

Keep Mike D'Antoni, Steve Kerr. You already made a big gamble on the Shaq trade and its best that you don't get coaxed into making a bigger gamble on this one.

Miami has entered the Matrix

(This article was posted last February 23 shortly after the NBA trade deadline)

The American Airlines Arena didn't have a three-story billboard of himself. There weren't any balloons, water guns, and certainly no black SUV's with Superman-inspired rims.

What there was, however, was a long table with a requisite Miami Heat backdrop, a few chairs, and a couple of unopened bottled waters.

It was as inconspicuous as it could get.

Shawn Marion's introduction as the newest member of the Miami Heat fell way short to the extravagance and hoopla brought about by Shaq's introduction to Miami in 2004. But don't mistake this lack of confetti as an insignificant move for the Heat.

And while the world has made the Shaq-to-Phoenix move the `water cooler' topic of the week, Marion's move to Miami is equally - if not more - important to the Heat's fortunes.
It's true that Shaq was - and still is - a larger-than-life and revered figure in South Beach. After all, he did make good on his promise to deliver a championship parade down Biscayne Boulevard.
But that was two years ago, when O'Neal was still capable of being a dominant force in the paint. With father time catching up to him and his health breaking down every other week, Shaq has become a liability for the Heat, and as long as he was around, the Heat would be a marginal play-off team at best and a bottom-feeder at worst.

So if the Heat wanted to go back to being credible, cutting ties with Shaq was the most important thing to do.

So they did. And this move, ironically, could go down as the move that saved the Miami Heat.
With the Diesel under contract for two more years worth 20 mil per, his contract was - for all intents and purposes - a metaphorical handcuff for the Heat. Now that they've rid themselves of that, they now have enough flexibility to be a major player in the market - something they couldn't have done with O'Neal still in the line-up.

The indirect effect of this is that the Heat now wouldn't have to waste two years of D-Wade's prime just to wait until Shaq's contract ends. And with Shawn Marion, Wade and the Heat get a player that not only fits the style of play they want to run, but they get a proven stat-stuffer that's younger and cheaper - relatively - than the O'Neal.

It's premature to think that Marion's production will decline now that he won't be catching lob passes from Steve Nash. On the contrary, I believe Marion will take his game to a new level now that he's out of Nash and Amare's shadow. And while D-Wade is still Miami's top dog - for the self-conscious Marion, being number two is a whole lot rosier than being number three.If their first game was any indication, Wade and Marion will be a formidable duo for the Heat; not exactly in the league of Jordan and Pippen, as some have said in recent days, but good enough to make the Heat formidable again.

The next order of business is to surround these two with complimentary role players that will suit their style. The monetary relief brought about by Shaq's contract going West will allow the Heat to be a player in the free agent market this year. They don't need another marquee guy, just young role players that are tailor-made for Wade and Marion's skills. Add to that the expected high draft pick they'll be getting in the draft and it's looking like Miami's future is not as grim as it was a month ago.

Short-lived as it was, the Shaquille O'neal-era was a whole lot fun while it lasted. They became a contender in the league, a hot ticket among the fans, and they have a championship to show for it.

But in this day and age of the NBA, staying on top is harder than getting there. And just like what Shaq did for them a couple of years ago when they were nose-diving back down to the bottom of the mountain, the Miami Heat have brought in a new partner for Flash to help turn their franchise around.
Superman has left town and Miami has now entered the Matrix.

Striking Gold

(This piece was written last February 3, shortly after the Lakers pulled of the Pau Gasol trade)

Mitch Kupchak learned a lot from his mentor Jerry West. With the trade of Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies to the Los Angeles Lakers, you can say that Kupchak also learned the art of fleecing other teams from Jerry West.

For us who weren't around when West dominated the NBA in the 60's, the only memory we have of him was his cunning guile and craftiness as the general manager of the Lakers during the late 90's. After all, he was the one who signed Shaquille O'Neal away from Orlando and duped the then-Charlotte Hornets to trade their 1996 first round draft pick - a tall, skinny high school kid from Philadelphia - for Vlade Divac.

Jerry West made the Lakers a championship contender with those moves. And now - after a history of questionable moves - the apprentice finally made the trade that would make his teacher proud.

For those who haven't heard, the Los Angeles Lakers acquired Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies for Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, and two future first round draft picks.
The Lakers - especially Kupchak - clearly struck gold with this deal. They get a legitimate All-Star to join an already deep roster made up of Kobe Bryant, Lamar Odom, Andre Bynum, and Derek Fisher.

Kupchack knew that Gasol would fit in nicely with the Lakers because he's well-suited to play in Phil Jackson's triangle offense. Equally important - and something that plays to the Lakers advantage - is the fact that Gasol is one of the most unassuming stars of the league. Here's a guy who's not really too comfortable being the "main guy" on a team -like what he was in Memphis. In LA, he doesn't need to play that part anymore because it already falls on the lap of Kobe Bryant.

The Lakers also won't have to worry about any chemistry issues with Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom because Bynum prefers to bang inside while Odom - being allergic to any semblance of physical contact - prefers to play in the perimeter. That's all fine and good for Gasol because he prefers to play in the high block - the ideal place for a good passing big man playing the triangle offense.

As for the Memphis Grizzlies, you can't help but scratch your head on what Chris Wallace is thinking. The best thing they can get for Pau Gasol is an underachieving big, an untested rookie, and two future first round picks? Really, that's it?It's not a reassuring deal, especially if you're a Grizzlies fan. It's especially depressing when Gasol's stock was still high enough that you still could've gotten a far better deal if they had made a trade with another team, say the Chicago Bulls - a team that could have offered better players to swap for Gasol.

The obvious conclusion here is that the Grizzlies have basically torpedoed their season and are looking towards the future. How else do you explain the acquisition of Brown to team-up with fellow underachiever Darko Milicic? If they think that they can compete in the West with these two overrated hobos anchoring the middle, then they're far more incompetent than I initially thought.

The Grizzlies are rebuilding, folks. And what's the first way to do that? Rid yourself of your highest paid player and get some expiring contracts and draft picks in return. Of course, tanking the season and getting a high draft pick is also a way to do it. The Grizziles - whether they admit it or not - accomplished all three with this trade.

Now the Grizzlies can set their paws on the future. They have two young studs in Mike Conley

Jr. and Rudy Gay to build the franchise around, and they rid themselves of a player who clearly didn't want to wait for these cubs to mature.

And with a plethora of high-caliber free agents available in the summer of 2008, Memphis at least has the cash to make a run at any of the superstars. But the question is; who would want to go to a rebuilding team, situated in the middle of nowhere?

The Lakers and Grizzlies will make you think that they both won in this trade. But if you know your basketball, you know that the only form of winning that really matters is hoisting that championship trophy in June.

With this trade, the Lakers have made themselves a legitimate championship threat again, while the Grizzlies have returned to reprising their role as cellar dwellers.

And after years of questionable wheeling and dealing, Mitch Kupchak has finally made a deal that makes the Lakers formidable again. How he was able to convince the Grizzlies to make this trade remains a mystery.

But let's not forget that he did learn from the very best. And sometimes, that's all we need to know.