Showing posts with label NBA playoffs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NBA playoffs. Show all posts
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Ways to Ressurect the NBA
So recently, I posted a letter to the NBA to announce my resignation as a fan. I still stand by that, but have been thinking long and hard about what it might take to bring me back. The honest answer is that the product simply has to be better, from style of play to officiating. On top of this, there are some organizational things that could help. Take this proposal by the Golden State Warriors play by play guy. Its really interesting, and would be a good step in the direction of my becoming a fan again. Also, I discovered a Milwaukee Bucks blog that if it stays updated would be fun to have around. Finally, if my brother in law who is moving to Milwaukee is finally ready to wear the green and red, then I suppose I would have to join him.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Farewell to the Association
Dear NBA,
This has been a long time coming, and no doubt will not come as a complete surprise, but I am handing in my resignation as a fan. I am one of perhaps several Milwaukee Bucks fans, and it does pain me to turn my back on a team I have been loyal to my whole life, but I can hardly continue my allegiance to a team when the entire league is in this state. I confess that I have not always been the best fan, I have not always lived in NBA towns where I could take in a game, and I have never kept up with the carousel of jersies you have tried to inspire me to buy. I never drank the Michael Jordan kool-aid, er gatorade, and I do not have a lineage of excellent teams to pull from. My two clearest memories of the NBA are watching the Bucks beat the Bullets when I was ten, and watching Allen Iverson flop his way to victory over my Bucks in 2001. I live in San Antonio now, a city who loves their team, and have been to four games in a year and a half. I do not get excited by dancing, loud bad music, and all the things that are used to try to make me forget I am at a basketball game. I have three children, none of whom have been to a game, because even with the cheap tickets, my family would have to pay more to go to one Spurs game then we pay for a month of water and electricity.
To be fair though, my dying of love of the NBA is not all my fault, I really have tried. It is not that I dislike basketball, its simply that NBA basketball doesn't count anymore. Its like watching a high school dance where the pre-determined prettiest kids have the most fun, while the rest of us get harrassed by self-important, delusion filled chaperones who think the dance is about them. The NBA is not even the best place to teach my kids how basketaball ought to be played. How is that a league can have the unquestioned, best athletes on the planet and still be such a drudgery to watch? The answer is that basketball players don't care. 90% of every regular season games are about going through the motions. Playoff teams lose 2-3 games a series becuase they simply do not have "the focus" that night. If your teams are able to play half-heartedly, lazy, unfocused basketball, then certainly that is the sort of fan I ought be.
In some respects it is tough to blame the players for a lack of effort, especially when that effort is so rarely rewarded, and is often punished. The way your games are officiated disgust me on a regular basis. If I am ever thinking to myself, "My day has gone well, and I really have not gotten angry at incompetence yet..." I can easily rectify the situation by simply turning on an NBA game. I am certain that officials have been a problem with the NBA for as long as the NBA has existed, as they often are in other sports, but the officiating has become so over the top absurd its hard to take it seriously. But you do take it seriously right? They change the outcome of every game they referee, and to say they do not is to question why you have them in the first place. Referees exist to effect the game, if not, then get rid of them. You place referees in a game to control the flow, make sure the game is played with integrity and the players are safe. Which of those three have your officials been any good at in the last 15 years? There is no other sport that has its integrity challenged as often as the NBA. You are sketchier than soccer and boxing! How does this not bother you? I am also very tired of hearing that this is part of the nature of the game, because this is simply fundamentally untrue of the rest of basketball. While every level of basketball is filled with bad officiating, the NBA is the only one whose motives are consistently called into question, by the people who play and coach the game. Everyone knows that teams like Duke get a ton of calls during any given game, but no one believes (even remotely) that the NCAA is fixed, or is trying to produce certain outcomes.
When its all said and done, I am resigning as fan for the same reason I stopped watching wrestling when I was 12- I already knew the outcome, I could tell the wrestlers did not control their own fate, and the spectacle wasn't better than the sport itself. I would say that I would miss you, but I am just not sure that's true, it would be like me missing a cavity I had eating away at me. No doubt you will go on with life and not miss me at all, we will both see other people, and soon I will forget why I ever liked you in the first place. For now, good luck with the rest of your playoffs, not that you need it (wink). For my part, I think I will enjoy the time away.
This has been a long time coming, and no doubt will not come as a complete surprise, but I am handing in my resignation as a fan. I am one of perhaps several Milwaukee Bucks fans, and it does pain me to turn my back on a team I have been loyal to my whole life, but I can hardly continue my allegiance to a team when the entire league is in this state. I confess that I have not always been the best fan, I have not always lived in NBA towns where I could take in a game, and I have never kept up with the carousel of jersies you have tried to inspire me to buy. I never drank the Michael Jordan kool-aid, er gatorade, and I do not have a lineage of excellent teams to pull from. My two clearest memories of the NBA are watching the Bucks beat the Bullets when I was ten, and watching Allen Iverson flop his way to victory over my Bucks in 2001. I live in San Antonio now, a city who loves their team, and have been to four games in a year and a half. I do not get excited by dancing, loud bad music, and all the things that are used to try to make me forget I am at a basketball game. I have three children, none of whom have been to a game, because even with the cheap tickets, my family would have to pay more to go to one Spurs game then we pay for a month of water and electricity.
To be fair though, my dying of love of the NBA is not all my fault, I really have tried. It is not that I dislike basketball, its simply that NBA basketball doesn't count anymore. Its like watching a high school dance where the pre-determined prettiest kids have the most fun, while the rest of us get harrassed by self-important, delusion filled chaperones who think the dance is about them. The NBA is not even the best place to teach my kids how basketaball ought to be played. How is that a league can have the unquestioned, best athletes on the planet and still be such a drudgery to watch? The answer is that basketball players don't care. 90% of every regular season games are about going through the motions. Playoff teams lose 2-3 games a series becuase they simply do not have "the focus" that night. If your teams are able to play half-heartedly, lazy, unfocused basketball, then certainly that is the sort of fan I ought be.
In some respects it is tough to blame the players for a lack of effort, especially when that effort is so rarely rewarded, and is often punished. The way your games are officiated disgust me on a regular basis. If I am ever thinking to myself, "My day has gone well, and I really have not gotten angry at incompetence yet..." I can easily rectify the situation by simply turning on an NBA game. I am certain that officials have been a problem with the NBA for as long as the NBA has existed, as they often are in other sports, but the officiating has become so over the top absurd its hard to take it seriously. But you do take it seriously right? They change the outcome of every game they referee, and to say they do not is to question why you have them in the first place. Referees exist to effect the game, if not, then get rid of them. You place referees in a game to control the flow, make sure the game is played with integrity and the players are safe. Which of those three have your officials been any good at in the last 15 years? There is no other sport that has its integrity challenged as often as the NBA. You are sketchier than soccer and boxing! How does this not bother you? I am also very tired of hearing that this is part of the nature of the game, because this is simply fundamentally untrue of the rest of basketball. While every level of basketball is filled with bad officiating, the NBA is the only one whose motives are consistently called into question, by the people who play and coach the game. Everyone knows that teams like Duke get a ton of calls during any given game, but no one believes (even remotely) that the NCAA is fixed, or is trying to produce certain outcomes.
When its all said and done, I am resigning as fan for the same reason I stopped watching wrestling when I was 12- I already knew the outcome, I could tell the wrestlers did not control their own fate, and the spectacle wasn't better than the sport itself. I would say that I would miss you, but I am just not sure that's true, it would be like me missing a cavity I had eating away at me. No doubt you will go on with life and not miss me at all, we will both see other people, and soon I will forget why I ever liked you in the first place. For now, good luck with the rest of your playoffs, not that you need it (wink). For my part, I think I will enjoy the time away.
Saturday, May 19, 2007
out again
Alright, the last time I appeared in this space I was sick of the NBA, and honestly pretty sick physically as well. It turns out I was suffering from something called ulceric colitis, which is literally quite a pain in the stomach. But, after four days in the hospital I have been released, and really feel better than I have in over a year. I am pumped full of steroids and honestly just tired, which brings me to how I still feel about the NBA. The league is sick, and I honestly have no way to fix it. It seems that there is a ton of ideas out there and I am not really sure any of them are any good. The bottom line for me is that I love basketball, high school basketball, college basketball, and then I hate the NBA. The style of play, the officiating and really the money involved. The only hope is for teams like the Suns to radically alter the way the game is played, which the league seems to absolutely refuse. I am a little surprised to see some people picking the Spurs-Jazz series to go long (6-7 games). This series is exactly in the Spurs wheelhouse. The Jazz do nothing different than the Spurs, half court execution, solid defense and being tough, they just don't do any of those things better than the Spurs. The Jazz will be lucky to pull more than a game.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Yuck!
Last night was everything that is wrong with the NBA. The Bulls have a 19 point lead and figure out a way to squander it, and why? The answer according to all the pundits is because they are young, they have not paid their dues, they haven't had success in the playoffs before. Yuck! This is the worst sort of reasoning I have ever heard, its sickening, especially if its true. On the one level, it does not even make logical sense, "You can not have success until you experience having success" is the sort of Catch-22 circle of pain that makes you wonder if the person saying it has ever slowed down long enough to put together a complete thought. By this standard no one would ever experience success. So there must be another reason, right? Maybe its that the Bulls just are incapable of beating the Pistons, although this theory took a pretty siginificant hit this year in the regular season. Maybe its that the Bulls can not win in the playoffs, I guess with the exception of the first round. Not being able to win in the playoffs is exactly where the argument for experience comes from, but perhaps there is something else different in the playoffs- officiating. The NBA as much, or more than, any other sport lives and dies with its officials. This why Stern gets so angry every year when conspiracy theories and racism studies come up, because it goes to the core of his league. The way a game is officiated creates huge advantages one way or another. In the Bulls-Pistons series it is obvious, if the game is called tight, the Bulls have a huge advatange, primarily because the Pistons defensive scheme has so much grabbing and bodying involved. This, by the way, is always lumped away under "playoff basketball." Its not that defense wins championships, it defense that gets away with the most wins championships. The only team in the NBA on par with the Pistons in this respect is the Spurs who have made a living of playing just over the "line of legality" on defense. This is not new, and everyone in the NBA knows it (just ask Amare Staudamire). The only way to stand up to this brand of officiating is to be a bigger star than the team you are playing (insert Dwayne Wade and Dirk Nowitzki) so that you can get almost every questionable call. The irony is that the refs were to call every game the way they called games for Wade and Nowitzki the players would adjust, and the Pistons and Spurs would still figure out ways to be pretty good defensive teams. One last thought about the way officials control the game, and this is not a conspiracy theory, but it is rarely the number of fouls called in a game, it is when they are called that swings it, particularly when teams are as close as the Pistons-Bulls. So take game 2 and 3 three as examples, in game 2, the Bulls had made a bit of a run in the second quarter to close the gap, and when the third quarter begins, in 7 out of the first ten trips the Bulls turn the ball over. But these are not Pistons kick ass on defense turnovers, they are travellings (2), moving screens (3)
and two throw aways (at least one of these is the result of "inadvertant" contact between a Piston defender and a Bulls player going for a pass). This is not "intentional" neccessarily, and refs are human and get caught up in the emotion of the moment and the building, and in the case of game 2 it meant the Bulls had no shot to get back in the game. In the case of game 3, I am convince the following interaction happened at half time:
Ref 1: Good half guys.
Ref 2: I don't know, I felt a bit off.
Head NBA ref: Guys, you officiated that half like a regular season game, to many touch fouls (what other kind is there?)
Ref 3: Really, our bad.
Ref 1: Alright guys, let the close stuff go.
Twenty minutes late the Pistons are down 1. I am currently looking for empirical evidence to back this up, but there is no doubt in my mind that refs alter their strategies at halftime based on the flow of the game (this happens at every level). When I was in high school, I was the beneficiary of just such a plan. We were playing a team who pressed a lot and hacked like crazy. About five minutes in you could tell the refs were down calling it because the other team was just playing "aggressive defense." At halftime my coach got the stats and realized we had picked up about 5 less fouls then the other team (it should have been well more) and so our coach started are back up five (including yours truly) because he "knew" that the refs would attempt to even out the game in the first few minutes of the second half. I picked up two fouls in two minutes (one was for being near a guy who had the audacity to dribble off his own leg).
The point of all of this is to say that there are only two, maybe three, teams who have a chance to beat the Pistons. The Bulls can't do it, because they can not get away with the same things on defense that the Pistons can. In no particular order:
1 Cavs. They fit the neccessary superstar category. Lebron is far and away the most recognizable player in the series, and could command a Dwayne Wade type officiating effort, which would spell some trouble for the Pistons.
2 Spurs. Of all the teams this is the one that has the best chance, because defensively they get way with so much of the same stuff the Pistons do. Also they would have the biggest star in the series in Tim Duncan. Also, they humiliated the Pistons this season, and beat them recently in just such a scenario.
3 Suns. They have the superstar factors in Amare and Nash, although I don't know if thats enough to get them calls enough to beat the Pistons.
Also, I hate the NBA.
and two throw aways (at least one of these is the result of "inadvertant" contact between a Piston defender and a Bulls player going for a pass). This is not "intentional" neccessarily, and refs are human and get caught up in the emotion of the moment and the building, and in the case of game 2 it meant the Bulls had no shot to get back in the game. In the case of game 3, I am convince the following interaction happened at half time:
Ref 1: Good half guys.
Ref 2: I don't know, I felt a bit off.
Head NBA ref: Guys, you officiated that half like a regular season game, to many touch fouls (what other kind is there?)
Ref 3: Really, our bad.
Ref 1: Alright guys, let the close stuff go.
Twenty minutes late the Pistons are down 1. I am currently looking for empirical evidence to back this up, but there is no doubt in my mind that refs alter their strategies at halftime based on the flow of the game (this happens at every level). When I was in high school, I was the beneficiary of just such a plan. We were playing a team who pressed a lot and hacked like crazy. About five minutes in you could tell the refs were down calling it because the other team was just playing "aggressive defense." At halftime my coach got the stats and realized we had picked up about 5 less fouls then the other team (it should have been well more) and so our coach started are back up five (including yours truly) because he "knew" that the refs would attempt to even out the game in the first few minutes of the second half. I picked up two fouls in two minutes (one was for being near a guy who had the audacity to dribble off his own leg).
The point of all of this is to say that there are only two, maybe three, teams who have a chance to beat the Pistons. The Bulls can't do it, because they can not get away with the same things on defense that the Pistons can. In no particular order:
1 Cavs. They fit the neccessary superstar category. Lebron is far and away the most recognizable player in the series, and could command a Dwayne Wade type officiating effort, which would spell some trouble for the Pistons.
2 Spurs. Of all the teams this is the one that has the best chance, because defensively they get way with so much of the same stuff the Pistons do. Also they would have the biggest star in the series in Tim Duncan. Also, they humiliated the Pistons this season, and beat them recently in just such a scenario.
3 Suns. They have the superstar factors in Amare and Nash, although I don't know if thats enough to get them calls enough to beat the Pistons.
Also, I hate the NBA.
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Western Playoffs
Mavs v. Warriors
Tonight's game could be amazing in Oakland. It could be one of those rare, underdog, moments where this win is bigger than anything else that happens the rest of the way. For my money there is one person to thank for this game (who nobody has mentioned) and that is Devin Harris. Harris dominated the fourth quarter of the last game and was overshadowed by Dirk in the final three minutes. If you rewatch those last three minutes, Harris has the assist on almost all of those threes. On top of this, Harris refused to let the game get out of hand throughout that last quarter, and he did by driving right to the heart of the Warriors defense, making lay ups, gettting fouls and handing out assists. Bill Simmons in his blog today argues that the Mavs have no one who can handle the crowd tonight in Oakland, with the exception of maybe two or three guys. The one person he leaves off the list is Devin Harris, and its a glaring ommission. I have seen him do it in San Antonio last year, and I have seen him do it repeatedly in college. Harris has the will to stand up to the other team and their crowd, and if Dallas wins tonight, it will be because of him.
Suns v. Spurs
I am genuinely giddy with excitement over this series. My pick to win the whole thing at the beginning of the playoffs was the Spurs, with the Suns as the other team I think has a chance. Whoever wins this series I think will win the whole thing. In terms of talent, I think the nod has to go to the Suns. In terms of style and being able to finish a team, I think that goes to the Spurs. Playoff coaching I think goes the Spurs way. Benches are a draw I think. Suns better offense and not terrible on defense, Spurs better defense and pretty good on offense. I am rooting for the Spurs because they are local, but for the Suns because what their winning would mean for basketball. If the Suns could win a championship, it would legitimate their style of play and might undo the years of damage caused by the 90's Knicks and Heat teams.
Tonight's game could be amazing in Oakland. It could be one of those rare, underdog, moments where this win is bigger than anything else that happens the rest of the way. For my money there is one person to thank for this game (who nobody has mentioned) and that is Devin Harris. Harris dominated the fourth quarter of the last game and was overshadowed by Dirk in the final three minutes. If you rewatch those last three minutes, Harris has the assist on almost all of those threes. On top of this, Harris refused to let the game get out of hand throughout that last quarter, and he did by driving right to the heart of the Warriors defense, making lay ups, gettting fouls and handing out assists. Bill Simmons in his blog today argues that the Mavs have no one who can handle the crowd tonight in Oakland, with the exception of maybe two or three guys. The one person he leaves off the list is Devin Harris, and its a glaring ommission. I have seen him do it in San Antonio last year, and I have seen him do it repeatedly in college. Harris has the will to stand up to the other team and their crowd, and if Dallas wins tonight, it will be because of him.
Suns v. Spurs
I am genuinely giddy with excitement over this series. My pick to win the whole thing at the beginning of the playoffs was the Spurs, with the Suns as the other team I think has a chance. Whoever wins this series I think will win the whole thing. In terms of talent, I think the nod has to go to the Suns. In terms of style and being able to finish a team, I think that goes to the Spurs. Playoff coaching I think goes the Spurs way. Benches are a draw I think. Suns better offense and not terrible on defense, Spurs better defense and pretty good on offense. I am rooting for the Spurs because they are local, but for the Suns because what their winning would mean for basketball. If the Suns could win a championship, it would legitimate their style of play and might undo the years of damage caused by the 90's Knicks and Heat teams.
Saturday, April 21, 2007
NBA Playoffs 2007
Despite the fact that my wife hates it when I write about sports, I am going to do it anyway. The following are my picks for the NBA Playoff challenge I have instigated with my Brother In Law. He will most likey own me in this but here goes. After the team name, is the number of games I believe they will win in the entirety of the playoffs.
San Antonio Spurs 16
Dallas Mavericks 11
Phoenix Suns 6
Houston Rockets 7
Utah Jazz 4
Denver Nuggets 2
LA Lakers 2
Golden State Warriors 2
Cleveland Cavaliers 14
Miami Heat 11
Detroit Pistons 7
Toronto Raptors 5
Chicago Bulls 3
New Jersey Nets 3
Orlando Magic 2
Washington Wizards 0
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