Thursday, May 20, 2010 6:14 PM EDT
Nash's sacrifices not enough against Lakers
Earlier this week I wrote about Steve Nash and the way his commitment to the broader concept of team basketball - not just passing, but sacrificing, supporting – was just as special as his other considerable athletic gifts. He helped guys play better because he believes that to be a worthy cause.
And thus you have guys like Jared Dudley and Channing Frye and 37-year-old Grant Hill in the rotation of a team that went 36-9 on their way to the Western Conference final.
But after two games against the Lakers comes a scary concept: What if a team with superior talent throughout the lineup – with the exception of point guard – really plays like a team.
The obvious point of comparison here is Kobe Bryant, who had a playoff career-high 13 assists as the Lakers blew out the Suns for the second straight game. In Game 1 Bryant did it with an impressively efficient scoring performance; in Game 2 it was him finding teammates in good spots; the best ones apparently anywhere near the Suns' Amar'e Stoudemire as Pau Gasol and Lamar ‘Lucky’ Odom combined for 46 points on 18-of-29 shooting.
But the snippet that stood out to me from the comfort of my couch was Andrew Bynum spontaneously and deliriously greeting Pau Gasol as he came off the floor after one late timeout and the Lakers were making their run. Either Bynum was really happy for Gasol, or he’s the best actor in the Staples Center, Jack Nicholson included.
A talented team with great chemistry can obviously do some exciting things in the NBA; a really talented team with pretty good chemistry can do a lot more. Of the two series I see the Suns as most likely being cooked; they don’t seem good enough. But Orlando? I’d be shocked if they dropped four straight to Boston; I still think they’re an excellent team, but they’ve put themselves in a deep hole and chemistry won’t get them out of it; Rashard Lewis has to starting making some shots.
One thing that explains to me the way the Lakers and the Celtics have caught fire in the past couple of weeks is that these are two teams for which internal and external expectations are massive. The Lakers won 57 games this season, but spent much of the second half of the season trying to explain why they were playing so crappy. Boston was in a similar boat. If you’re supposed to be the best team in the NBA, being one of the best doesn’t really cut it; you spend all your time trying to figure out why you’re not the best and blaming yourself and others because you’re not. Now Boston and L.A. are getting very close to actually reaching their goals; the pressure is off. Now they’re playing for fun, or at least the satisfaction of actually achieving expectations.
In other words, why shouldn’t Andrew Bynum be happy for Pau Gasol and vice versa? Or Paul Pierce play like a young buck. They’re this close to reaching the goal set by them and for them, and good chemistry seems a natural byproduct.
As for Nash? He again showed that his room for error and the Suns is pretty small. He’s been just okay and the Suns have been getting drilled. He had 15 assists against five turnovers in Game 2, but was hardly transcendent. He’s taken just 18 shots in two game and even if that’s because the Lakers are taking away that part of his game it seems like the play might be to find a way to thwart that strategy and score the ball a little bit. There’s no ‘I’ in team, but there is one in win, is how the saying goes, I think.
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Wednesday, May 19, 2010 3:59 PM EDT
Carter's failure hardly a shocker
It wasn’t hard to lose count how many times either Mike Breen or Mark Jackson intoned how Vince Carter was brought to Orlando for games just like last night’s, a conference final. A big game; the guy to get them over the top.
It’s standard TV hyperbole: The production people have a meeting; identify some themes and then hammer away at them to create the storyline to entertain the guy at home who is just now getting around to the idea that the playoffs are on and wow! Vince Carter plays for Orlando now!
I get that. If the sports business had to rely on only the eyeballs of people who followed the in’s and outs of the league exclusively, they’d probably go out of business. You need those people who used to be fans, or who would be fans if they had the time. It roughly approximates how I follow baseball: I like the game; it’s cool to learn about and every time I go to a game I’m blown away at how good they are. You can watch two guys long-tossing for 10 minutes and never see them have to move their glove more than a foot or two; it’s remarkable.
But don’t ask me who the closer is for the Cincinnati Reds, or what’s going on in the American League West. I just don’t have the time. But come the World Series I’ll be perfectly happy to be told that C.C Sabathia was brought to the Yankees for moments like this.
Anyway. The only problem is that Vince blew his moment, didn’t he? If you’ve followed his entire career, it wasn’t a terrible shock: He’s a solid free throw shooter and all and he’s won his share of games, but that was his first chance to win an Eastern Conference Finals game and he didn’t quite get it done.
The contrast with Paul Pierce was perfect. They’re from the same draft class. I remember sitting in the Raptors offices and doing a story on him in advance of the draft in 1998. Pierce eventually fell to 10th in one of those draft-day surprises that was never properly explained. The Raptors got Vince, which seemed like a good thing at the time. If I’m not mistaken Pierce was kind trending ahead of Carter in the early going until he injured his ankle badly in his second season and Carter went insane; winning games with dunks at the buzzer etc.
They’ve both had amazing careers by any reasonable measure, but Pierce long ago passed Carter in terms of meaningful accomplishment, and he did it in a fashion that Carter has never quite mastered.
His incredible talent, in my mind, has always kind of hurt Carter from developing a really solid floor game: If your goal is to beat guys for spectacular dunks – and you actually can achieve it with some regularity – why master the art of getting a shoulder just past your guy, getting low for leverage and then using the contact to your advantage? Pierce never had Carter’s leaping ability, but he’s always had a grimy, old man’s game, which is why it’s aged pretty well; better than Carter’s. Pierce has averaged 7.4 FTA’s for his career per 36 minutes. He’s been down in the low six range the past three years but before that he routinely was in the mid-to-high eights.
Carter has averaged 5.7 FTA’s per 36 for his career and only once averaged more than seven. He got to the free throw line because he had the ball a lot, I always thought, not because he was really good at making people foul him. Pierce is an expert.
Which is maybe why Carter looked kind of uncomfortable bricking his pair at the line with the Magic’s season very much at stake, and Pierce looked at home, making his two, putting the Magic away, possibly for good.
The Magic brought in Carter just for games like last night’s. The problem is Carter never played in one like that before.
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The beauty of the off-season is that even when nothing happens, it makes things happen!
So the Raptors ended up with the 13th pick, which is just where they were supposed to pick, but all sorts of options jump out because New Jersey didn’t get No.1 and Washington did, while 76ers got No.2 and thus might loosen their grip on Andre Iguodala.
Raptors HQ and Raptors Republic both have some interesting breakdowns of the various possibilities.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010 1:32 PM EDT
Nash can't lift Suns
As good as Steve Nash is, it’s a stretch to make the case he’s as impactful as the LeBrons, Wades and yes, Kobes of the NBA.
Not that it isn’t fun to try. You can pore over the historical production of just about any Suns teammate past or present and find some meaningful way in which Nash has made them better players, sometimes much better players.
Channing Frye’s best year as a three-point marksman before this season was last year, when he shot 11-of-33 for Portland. This year, playing with Nash, Frye shot 172-for-392, good for 43.9 per cent.
Chew on that.
Jared Dudley? He was 12-of-49 for his career from Deep after a season-and-a-half in Charlotte. Since arriving in Phoenix he’s 146-for-328, good for 44.5 per cent. Let’s pretend those two could keep shooting like that for the rest of their careers. Upon retirement Dudley would be the second-best three-point shooter in NBA history, trailing only his boss, Steve Kerr, who knocked down 45.4 per cent of his triples. Frye would tuck in just behind Jason Kapono for fourth all-time, edging Drazen Petrovic.
Grant Hill has played 15 NBA seasons, but only in one of them -- at age 36 playing along side Nash -- did he shoot better than 52 per-cent from the floor.
I could go on, but you get the point: If I was Jason Kapono’s agent I’d poison the water table in order to find a way to get my client to play for the Suns.
Seriously though; it’s those kinds of numbers that help build the case that Nash is a truly special player, on par with he most dominant in the sport. As I wrote for the paper the other day, his leadership ability and steadfast belief in what teams can be and do make him relatively unique in the pro game. I’ve talked with Nash enough over the years to know he’s no Pollyanna; that he’s not traipsing through the NBA singing “We are the World” and expecting Amare Stoudemire to join in for the chorus.
To me it’s a pragmatic approach, or even arriving at a higher level of understanding.
For those already not corrupted by the time they reach the pro level, the pro game can finish the job pretty well. To get paid in the NBA you need playing time and numbers and the league is full of guys who opt to get their numbers first and worry about the rest later or, conversely, spend most of their time griping and moaning because they can’t get playing time and thus numbers. And then there’s the guys who have got their playing time and their numbers and then their money and basically retire, not that Raptors fans would know anything about that.
It would be easy to get dragged down by that. And conversely it would be hard to see through all of that and recognize that playing some approximation of team basketball is required to win on a regular basis; that winning does get people paid. And in Nash’s case there would also have to be recognition that for him to be a special player with a legacy of deep playoff runs and 50-win seasons, he needs other players to believe in that too: It’s hard to push the tempo and lead the league in assists by yourself.
I’m not suggesting that Nash as the perfect teammate is phony or inconsistent with how he actually believes the game should be played; just that he’s way too smart and been in the league way to long to think that team play just happens by accident, or that he doesn’t benefit from being labeled as one of the NBA’s best teammates as much as someone like Kobe benefits from being known as the league’s assassin-like closer.
Which brings me to last night, and as I was watching Nash and then Kobe, Nash and then Kobe, I came to the not-too-profound-I-must-admit conclusion that Kobe (and LeBron and Wade) can impact a game more easily and more effectively than Nash, or maybe how fine a line Nash walks between being amazing and being just ordinary.
Last night he was just ordinary. He fell down. He fumbled the ball a bit (four turnovers, some other random mishandles). He did manage 13 assists – he’ll always find guys – but in taking just 10 shots he struggled to put his imprint on the game. The Lakers did a good job stretching him out on pick-and-roll plays and making it difficult on the Suns three-point shooters (the Lakers led the NBA in three-point defense in the regular season; while the Suns shot a league-best 41-per-cent. Last night Phoenix shot 5-of-22) and the Suns were never able to push the tempo to negate the Lakers size advantage.
Meanwhile Bryan was soaring and swooping and knocking down shots with efficiency on one of those nights that his fans will point to – if and when he wins his fifth or sixth ring – to make the case that he’s every inch the player Michael Jordan ever was.
Not sure I buy that; and it’s not that hard to make a case that Bryant, unlike Nash, doesn’t automatically make his teammates better.
But unlike Nash, Bryant doesn’t always have to worry about that.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010 3:21 PM EDT
Spend to win
So as the third round of the playoff picture comes more clearly into view, a few trends are emerging.
Among them?
Spending money on players seems to work!
Monday, May 10, 2010 8:48 PM EDT
Nash has eye on the prize
The image that stuck in my mind after watching the Suns sweep the Spurs was Steve Nash’s left eye, the one that wasn’t swollen shut.
Maybe it was just me, or maybe it was in contrast to the shape of the left one, but didn’t it seem extra wide open?
It gave me the impression that he was almost scared about what was going on: There he was, leading a team made up of worn out pieces and spare parts to the Western Conference Finals by eliminating the San Antonio Spurs.
Check that: Sweeping the Spurs. In San Antonio, no less.
As the final moments were getting kind of frantic, Nash’s good eye only seemed to be getting wider to the point where he looked like a guy who was trying to defuse a bomb for the first time.
Sure the Suns were up 3-0 and thus – even if they lost to San Antonio, who very nearly came back from trailing by 10 with two minutes left – prohibitive favourites to advance to the Western Conference Finals anyway.
But Nash seemed to look like a guy who knew he’d found a lot of money, and the more time spent standing there looking at the brief case full of cash, the more likely someone was going to realize it was missing and want it back.
Or, to stick with the bomb analogy, too much screwing around and the whole thing blows up in his face.
So he closed the deal with one eye shut; evading the Spurs desperate traps; setting up Stoudemire for one lay-up and converting a runner of his own; watching Jason Richardson hit deep-three daggers like he expected nothing different, as Nash himself chipped in with 10 points and five assists in the decisive fourth quarter.
I had no expectation of the Suns beating the Spurs because it’s tradition that they don’t but also because, well, have you looked at the Suns roster?
Not that good, based on recent, pre-Nash pedigree, at least. Hey throw LeBron or Kobe or Wade in the mix – maybe even Duncan – and we might look at the Suns a little differently. But I don’t think people look at Nash the same way as they do those other team-leading stars.
But maybe they should and maybe they will.
Regardless of what happens when they tip off against the Lakers, this season and this playoff run will go down as Nash’s master work, the final argument you can pull out to explain to any remaining doubters why he should be in the Hall-of-Fame as soon as he’s eligible, and why he’s deserves to be known as a two-time winner of the Most Valuable Player award.
His numbers will support it anyway: Health permitting he should be able to rack up 2,000 more assists which gives him a chance to finish his career third all-time in that category, behind only John Stockton and Jason Kidd. And there’s already evidence that he’s the best shooter to ever step on an NBA floor. So if you’re the best shooter and one of the very best passers and your ball-handling skills are pretty much perfect, well, that kind of makes up for some of those pe
And while there is an argument that Shaquille O’Neal, not Nash, was the rightful MVP in 2005-06, there’s just as good an argument that Nash, not Nowitzki was the MVP the following year.
As for this season? Can’t quibble with LeBron, but if the voting was done today, I’m pretty sure Nash finishes better than eighth.
He won 54 games with Channing Frye, Louis Amundson, Jared Dudley and Robin Lopez as key guys. Grant Hill turns 38 in October. Jason Richardson? Was anyone expecting Jason Richardson to be a playoff game changer when he was in Charlotte?
The legacy Nash will leave when he retires, which hopefully won’t be any time soon, is that the way he played got guys around him to play their best.
That doesn’t mean I’m picking the Suns to beat the Lakers, but when Steve Nash has his eye on the prize, it’s never wise to bet against him.
Friday, April 16, 2010 8:34 PM EDT
Grange: Bosh is gone
A few leftover thoughts from the Raptors post-mortem. My overall impression was this is a group that hasn't got it quite figured out.
I like Jarrett Jack, but clowning around by wearing a Leafs helmet for the benefit of the photographers on hand - and he made sure they all got a few chances to shoot him - was kind of funny, but not really the right tone. Surely he knows the Leafs missed the playoffs too?
There's a lot of revisionist history going on. Now we're finding out how hard it was to integrate all the new faces, for example. But the general mood was we tried our best, the chemistry was good, the coaching was great and we're not sure what went wrong. Obviously not all of these things can be true.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010 3:30 PM EDT
Motivation versus physiology
The Raptors playoff hopes have come down to the relative leg weariness of the Chicago Bulls.
This assumes, of course, that the Raptors will dig deep to beat the Knicks. Which is not a safe assumption, but I’m pretty confident that they’ll work hard and play well with a clear cut “must-not-lose” game at hand. Contrary to a lot of people, I actually think the Raptors have been playing pretty hard. Even against Chicago they played hard. They just got tired (Hedo’s not used to playing hard and got out of breath) and when they fell behind they got scrambly and panicky, fell behind further and then called it a night.
They played pretty good against Detroit and here they are now.
Monday, April 12, 2010 4:32 PM EDT
Raptors provide plenty of reasons to despair
There are a number of reasons to despair if you’re a Toronto Raptors fan.
Their unconventional march to the playoffs – losing five straight and going 9-19 since the all-star break yet somehow still having a chance at a playoff spot, that’s one reason.
I mean, could anything be less dignified? You get the feeling if the Raptors do make the post-season they’ll collectively grown and try and drink their way into oblivion to forget the pain after realizing their season will last at least one more week. There’s backing into the playoffs and then there’s doing everything in your power to miss the playoffs only to make them because the Pistons and the Knicks lay down faster and harder than you, while Chicago coughs up another game.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010 4:09 PM EDT
Cavs deliver a knockout blow
No word out of Raptor-land about Chris Bosh’s face, other than the possibility of him playing tonight is slim and none. Can he play Friday? Sunday? Is that how his Raptors career ends, writhing on the floor in Cleveland having taken a knockout blow from the league’s best team?
Metaphorically there’s some meat on that bone, but in the world of fact, again, I have no idea.
If you want to play doctor you can google maxilla and see what comes up. It’s basically the bone structure that supports the nose and upper mouth, nicknamed the mustache bone. Like most injuries the range of treatment and symptoms is wide. Does he require surgery? Is the swelling so severe that you couldn’t fit a mask on it? Is it a small, hairline fracture or something more grievious? Elbows and faces are weird things. I’ve broken my nose after what the other guy thought were fairly glancing blows – which is how Antawn Jamison described it to me last night – and I’ve been unmarked after some pretty hard collisions, so who knows?
Tuesday, April 6, 2010 5:18 PM EDT
On sitting LeBron, and a lament for tanking
Cleveland – Cavaliers head coach Mike Brown said he was the squeamish type, so he hadn’t watch Milwaukee Buck Andrew Bogut’s season-ending fall on Saturday, but he said the risk of a freak injury was no reason for him to sit LeBron James for any or all of the five games remaining on the Cavaliers schedule, including tonight’s against the Toronto Raptors.
“Knock on wood you don’t what something like that to happen for anybody [but] you can’t control that, that same thing can happen in practice. It’s a delicate balance, you have be conscious of that stuff, but you can’t base you life on it,” he said.
The Cavaliers have the luxury of home court advantage throughout the playoffs wrapped up so Brown can do anything he wants as he tries to guide the Cavaliers to the post-season as expertly as possible. Along the way he has to work in Anderson Varejao who’s been out with a hamstring problem, get Zydranus Ilgauskas back into game shape, find space in the rotation for Shaquille O’Neal, who has been out after thumb surgery and possibly back for the weekend – Antawn Jamison, added at the trade deadline, has never played a game with Shaq – and also find time to rest James.
From Deep Contributors
Michael Grange
Michael Grange has covered both Michael Jordan’s last game and the first game of his comeback; the Grey Cup and the Super Bowl; playoff wins by the Leafs, Canadiens and Raptors, Mike Weir’s Masters victory, F1 racing and scrabble. He coaches minor soccer, called Joe Carter’s home run from the couch and once made 75 out of 100 three-pointers; unfortunately there were no witnesses. He’s the co-author of the best-selling LeafsAbomination and author of Basketball’s Greatest Stars and lives with his wife and two children in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter @michaelgrange
