Friday, November 2, 2007
You're cordially invited to 'Day One'
By Scoop Jackson
Page 2
It's a ritual. Every year. The guys, the fellas, the mind squad, the crew, all congregate in the basement of my house. "Day One," we call it. The Jumpoff. There's nothing like a basement full of basketball "experts" and a fully stocked bar ("Patron Platinum, are you serious?!?") to kick-start another NBA season. And if you think Stephen A. is the only black man that can get loud, please believe, on this night SAS might not have even been heard.
"In a one-on-one, LeBron James would kill Kobe!"
The voice inside my boy Paul's nephew's head must have short-circuited. Because what came out of his mouth, less than 15 minutes after he arrived, almost got him escorted from the house like Martin used to "escort" Brah Man.
There are some things that you might say to yourself, but never out loud; not in public, not in Chicago right now, not in a room full of people who are already trying to find ways to get Kobe Bryant into a Bulls uniform.
"Are you nuts!?!" You could sense it coming. It's never nice. "What were you smokin' before you came in here?!?" "Paul, get your nephew before he gets hurt up in here!"
The stories of what Kobe can do and what he would do to LeBron pollute the air. Stories of how Kobe has played in Finals games compared to how LeBron played in the last Finals. Stories of how defensively, James couldn't stop Kobe. Stories of how LeBron would probably beat every other player in the League in a one-on-one except the player soon to be remembered as Jack Bauer. "The only thing Kobe can't do better than LeBron is host 'SNL.'"
Laugh track not necessary.
"Could everyone please stop bringing up Larry Hughes' name. We all like him, but we gotta stop making excuses for him."
That was followed by Yao. Then Vince. Then the entire Phoenix Suns squad. The conversations (loudly) shift. Four to five at a time. "Oscar Robertson would only be a 20/7/7 guy if he played in the League now. He wouldn't average a triple-double. That backing defenders down the way he did wouldn't work. He'd be too slow," "Memphis is going to win the NCAA this year," "Any team that has to depend on Penny Hardaway is done," "Who's going to take Rick Reilly's place on the back page of SI once he leaves?"
It's only 10 after eight. The Glenlivet 18 is almost empty. I'm picking jerk chicken off the floor.
"The 72-win Bulls squad verses who? Name any team, they'd win."
After watching the Spurs get their rings, it seems like an appropriate question.
My godbrother Dre said the '85 Celtics or any of the Lakers teams in the '80's. I said the '83 Sixers.
"The one thing Michael Jordan never faced in an NBA Finals is a team with a dominant center. That's why he's lucky he retired the first time when he did … he wanted no parts of Dream [Olajuwon]."
"On the real" my voice begins to crack, "Moses Malone would have murdered MJ and Scottie. Plus Doc, Cheeks, Bobby Jones and Toney? They couldn'ta handled that."
Speaking ill of, about or against Michael Jordan in Chicago -- even in your own basement -- is like calling Al Gore a fraud at a Greenpeace seminar, or saying Oprah is the devil at a NOW convention. I begin to feel like one of those common sense-challenged guys in ESPN's "Monday Night Football" promos. The Lakers game comes on at the same time as the Utah/GSW game. I flip to the NBA package, to see the rematch of the series that was one of the best in last year's playoffs. Everyone screams at me as if I had turned from that scene in "Monster's Ball."
"Turn back, fool!! Just because this is your house doesn't mean you can do some dumb s--- like that?!?"
"But •"
Ain't none. "But nothin', we've been talking about Kobe all night, waiting to watch him play, not Carlos Boozer."
And that's when the stupidity of the Lakers trading Kobe and the ignorance of fans booing him becomes clear. "Are they booing, dude?" someone asked.
"Wow. That's crazy." Nick leans in closer to the TV. "Keep booin', make him wanna come here. Come on Kobe! Come to the Chi. We didn't boo Brad Sellers, so you know you good here."
Then, from out of nowhere … "Tim Duncan is the best player in the NBA. I don't care what nobody say!"
Here we go. Midway through the second quarter of the Lakers game, my other nephew Joel puts this out into our atmosphere. He isn't saying it just to be saying it, he means it. All of the talk about Kobe had reached a limit with him. The fact that he had almost outscored the Rockets by himself in the first quarter meant nothing to him. He felt the need to make sure we didn't get caught up in this Kobe-ness. Here's the abnormal part: While no one agreed with Joel, no one put up an argument, either.
"I'ma call the Little Fella," Lonnie screams from one side of the room. "The Little Fella" in this instance is the recently media battle-scarred Timmy Hardaway, who is still considered family among those in the basement. His opinion -- because he has one and he played the game -- on this latest addendum brought to the room would weigh heavy like a 7-series Alpina B. And it could stop Kobe's name from being mentioned again if he validated Joel's latest proclamation.
Emancipation? No sir. Voice mail. The Little Fella's not picking up. Joel's head drops. The debates continue.
"Look, I feel you on that," Rob G. screams, "and I'm not disagreeing, but as my man IP says, ("Where is he?" someone yells) 'Tim Duncan is a scientist. He's a basketball scientist.' Now most scientists when they reach the top level of their science are considered geniuses and in this situation, Duncan is a genius. He's the most brilliant scientist alive. But -- and this is where all of us have to decide how we define greatness -- who would you rather watch do their job at the highest level, the scientist or the assassin?"
Frowns and twisted smiles came over all faces. Like, none of us knew how that made sense, but it did. It got quiet. Only for a very short period of time. One one-thousand, two one-thousand, three one-thousand … noise. Grey Goose tends to bring out the best analogies.
"Scoop?" I heard my name, voice unfamiliar, face not clear. "When are you all going to give Greg Anthony his own show?"
Then the best observation of the night came from the bathroom, "Why are the two best basketball analysts black Republicans?"
The Lakers are down by whatever and no one cares. It's jokes and notes. Nick calls Dirk Nowitzki "Dirk Noheartzki." Someone asks about a former high school phenom from Cincinnati, Bill Walker.
"Patrick Ewing in his prime or Shaq in his?"
This becomes the longest verbal battle of the night. It goes from downstairs up to the first floor, where my wife, my sister and our girl Veronica are "Nip/Tuck"-ing.
They all said Ewing. But what do they know? Apparently, a lot.
Because back downstairs, 20 or so basketball gurus batted beliefs and opinions around like the Red Sox did the Rockies.
"The only reason I'd say Ewing," my other nephew Patrick said, "is because throughout his career Shaq has always had the luxury of playing alongside the 'other' best player in the game. When he was in college, it was Chris Jackson. When he came into the League, it was Penny. Then when he got to L.A., it was Kobe. Now it's D-Wade. I know some of you all will say that they became that good because of Shaq, but I wouldn't go that far. But I know for sure that if Patrick Ewing had any one of those players to hoop with in his career, this wouldn't even be a question worth discussing."
The yelling got louder. Shaq's name was being cried out like dudes were standing outside of a courtroom demanding his freedom. "Shaq! Shaq! Shaq!" The basement sounded like Jena.
Oh snap • the Lakers are only down by like five, and there's like under two minutes left. Kobe has like 37. "See, I told y'all!" PJ yells, referring back to the LeBron verses Kobe one-on-one issue from five hours ago.
"Hold your breath," Malik yells back at him, "wait until you see what LeBron's going to do tomorrow night before you start claiming victories." (LeBron scored 10 in his opening game against Dallas, not a good look for young Malik.)
The crowd around the television gets thick. For the first time that night, the basement is quiet. The ice stops melting. All eyes on him. Black Jack Bauer to the rescue • again. "And the Lakers want to trade this dude?" is the only thing said. As we watch the Lakers lose and Kobe finish with 45 points, eight rebounds and four steals, the basement begins to empty. The Commission files out one by one, hoarse, making sure there's a decent dent in the half-gallon of Gentleman Jack still sitting on the bar.
Upon leaving, some guy who I'd just met earlier, said to me, "Thanks man, I had a wonderful time. I'd been hearing about these annuals for a while, but never got a chance to come through. I'm glad that I did."
And after watching how much the dude ate while he was down there, I couldn't say the same. I wanted to charge him $50 plus tips before he left. But he froze me with his last words, (keep in mind the Grey Goose theory), and made me rethink the conclusion I was drawn to before.
"As far as scientists and assassins go, and who I'd rather watch, people love 'The Sopranos.' It's one of the best shows ever on television. But I ask you, Mr. ESPN, what show had the larger audience, which show was the most-watched when 'The Sopranos' were still on?"
I shrugged my shoulders.
"'CSI,'" he said. Then he said goodbye.
If scoop wouldn't mind telling me the name of the most well known assisan. Then tell me the name of the most well known scientist. Scientist can do much more damage than the assisan. If you don't agree, go read about Albert Einstien and the invention of the atomic bomb.
Funny stuff. Worth the long read.
Brains >>> Brawn
Arenas may not fit in the Spurs system, but he makes some good points. Nice comments on Kobe and others.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/200...nas/index.html
BOSTON -- Gilbert Arenas appears to be discovering his inner Charles Barkley. After years of deprecating himself as an underdog never expected to accomplish anything, Arenas has vaulted to the other end of the spectrum. Now his words are as loud as his game.
"If I'm doing what I do and I lead this team to 50-something wins, that's MVP,'' Arenas was saying after his Washington Wizards' practice Thursday. "Hands down.''
He believes his 28.9-point scoring average over the past two years qualifies him to say whatever he wants, which -- as of this moment, at least -- should make him the most provocative star in the league. When I mentioned the trade requests of Kobe Bryant, with whom Arenas was linked in a recently rumored proposal that was instantly shot down by the Wizards, he shut his eyes and shook his head, tsk, tsk.
"I don't understand that,'' Arenas said. "I don't understand a player like him sometimes.''
How so?
"One, you want to get traded because you don't like your team, you don't think your team's good enough,'' Arenas said. "But any team you go to, they're going to have to get rid of a whole bunch of players for you, which basically puts you back in the same situation -- just in a different city. I don't know how a player doesn't see that. If he just doesn't like the organization, then I understand that. But you hear the Chicago rumors: If they had to get rid of Ben Gordon, Luol Deng, [Andres] Nocioni -- that's your whole nucleus. Now you're stuck with Kirk Hinrich, you, Joe Smith, 'Kim Noah, Ben Wallace. That's great defense, but offensively you're going to be doing the same thing you were doing before.
"So it's like your situation is not changing. Unless somebody's going to trade you a one-for-one player, he's not going to be in a happy situation there either.
"I've never seen [Michael] Jordan act like that. I didn't even see AI [Allen Iverson], when he was going through them bad days, you know? They were always talking about trading him, and he was like, 'If they trade me, they trade me; if they don't, they don't; but this is my city.' And I don't understand how Kobe doesn't feel that about L.A. -- it's his city.''
According to a fellow All-Star, then, Bryant is wrong to think he would be better off elsewhere.
"With the Lakers, he's always going to have the opportunity to attract players. A free agent is willing to go to a Laker uniform. Everybody wants to go to L.A. -- KG would want to go there,'' Arenas said of Kevin Garnett. "Jason Kidd would want to go there. Jason Kidd is up next season, right? He's a free agent [in 2009]. Why don't you wait? Maybe he'll just come over there. You never know.''
Arenas is promising to opt out of his six-year, $65 million contract with the Wizards this summer. His intention is to sign a new six-year deal worth more than $90 million to remain in Washington. As the top free agent, he can't claim any longer that he's a zero (as his uniform number suggests) just trying to make it. Now he says that he's already there; it's just that the rest of us haven't noticed.
"This is what a lot of people don't realize about me,'' Arenas said. "They call me a shoot-first point guard. And honestly, OK.'' Which means he can't argue with that. "But no one's ever [been] a point guard that averages points like me and he had two other guys that average [19].''
He was referring to former All-Star Antawn Jamison, who averaged 19.8 points last year, and Caron Butler, who added 19.1 and made his first All-Star team. They did this while Arenas was going for 28.4 to finish third in league scoring behind Bryant and Carmelo Anthony.
"I've been doing it my whole career -- when I had Larry [Hughes, who averaged 22 points in 2004-05 alongside Jamison's 19.6); Antawn, Caron," Arenas said. "I don't see Dwyane [Wade] doing that. I don't see Kobe doing that. I didn't see AI doing that. I don't see LeBron [James] doing it -- there's not another scorer with him scoring 20.
"I mean, AI did it [last year with 24.8 points for Denver after his trade from Philadelphia] because Carmelo already was having 30, so they never started from the beginning where two other players were averaging [close to] 20 points. And the way I can do that is because I push the ball so much that we're getting opportunities. It's not like we're taking 60 shots and I'm taking 30 of them. I took 25 shots [in Wednesday's season-opening overtime loss at Indiana] and we had 99 attempts. Antawn had 25 shots. Caron had 19 shots. So your Big Three is still getting their opportunities.
"Nobody realizes how valuable I really am to teams. It's like, 'Oh, we don't know if he can be a point guard.' Well, every guard out there can't be me. But if I lose my speed, I can be them.''
He laughed at what he'd just said, then repeated it to show he was serious. "If I lose my speed getting to the basket, I can be them. I can be a spot-up shooter. I can come off a pick-and-roll and make passes. I can reach their peak; they can't be what I am.''
I told Arenas that I imagined at his best he could be like Isiah Thomas, who won two championships as a scoring point guard. He nodded in agreement and said, "I'm much stronger and a better shooter than he was.''
But it's his up-tempo approach that makes the big difference, Arenas insisted.
"When I was at Arizona, Lute Olson made it perfectly clear. He said, 'If you guys want to keep your averages, you've got to put up more attempts. You've got to speed this game up.' So that's how I always played,'' Arenas said. "If you want to make everybody happy, you've got to get opportunities. You can't slow the ball up. I understand truthfully how Larry feels over there at Cleveland because, as athletic as they are, they slow the ball up so that if LeBron takes 25 shots and they only took 60 [as a team], it looks like he's dominating. But if you're running and he takes 25 shots and you got your 19 and somebody else got their 19, you don't know the difference.
"That's the only reason the guys on this team like playing with me. That's why Larry Hughes loved playing with me because at the end of the day, even though I take a lot of shots, it doesn't seem that way because if you average 19 [points] and you're getting 19 [shots], you're not looking at mine. You play with Kobe, you see he took 37 shots. I've taken 30-something shots before but it never looked like it because Antawn got his 22 and Caron got his 22 shots.''
He was making it sound as if Hughes appreciated Arenas more after leaving as a free agent in 2005 to sign with Cleveland, where he has averaged 15.5 and 14.9 points over the last two years.
"I'm not even going to lie, I'm not going to put words in his mouth,'' Arenas said. "But he told me in training camp, 'Man, I want to come back.' The first training camp he was there. It's not [because of] LeBron's game; it's the offense he's in. He's not in that offense that used to be when they had Ricky Davis, Darius Miles -- oh my God they were flying. Now they're more a half-court, set-up team, so when [James] tries to play his game, it looks more dominating than it's supposed to look.''
Because he's an impending free agent, I asked Arenas how he would feel about playing with Bryant on the Lakers next year.
"If he adapted his game to my style, then it would be a great fit,'' Arenas said, "because he's going to get his 45 shots but the game is going to be fast. So if he can play this style, we're going to go up and down and you're going to get your 45 or whatever shots you need to keep you happy, but everybody else is going to get an equal opportunity too.
"It's so funny that no one ever realizes that about my game, that I've played with two players that averaged [close to] 20 points, and they're never complaining. Because if you think about it, if someone said, 'Would you play with Gilbert?' they would be thinking about it like, 'Oh, I don't know, he's shoot-first.' And then when you actually sit down and look at it, it's like, 'Damn.'
"They're not paying attention to the game. They're looking at the stat sheet and saying, 'He's a shoot-first point guard. He's a selfish type of point guard, he's a reckless type of point guard.' OK, I understand, but you name your top five scorers, the best players in this league, and then give me two other players on that team that are dominating like the two players I have on my team. That's how you judge somebody. You guys are saying all these great stars are making other players better, and you guys are not mentioning me. And you think about everybody who's played with me.
"D-Wade had Caron [with the Heat in 2003-04]. Kobe had Caron [with the Lakers in 2004-05]. I have Caron. What's the difference?''
Butler never averaged more than 15.5 points before he came to Washington.
"LeBron has Larry Hughes. I had Larry Hughes. What's the difference?
"Same thing with Antawn. Juan Dixon -- there's a reason when these players are leaving [Washington], they're getting paid. I might not be your Steve Nash, but I'm doing the same thing he's doing. I'm making these players look better.''
I wondered if Arenas was planning to have his best year because he was playing for a new contract.
"I don't ever want to hear somebody say he's playing better because it's his contract year," he said. "I mean, I did make three All-Stars and All-NBA three times, so I guess that counts for nothing. But it's just about getting better as a player each year.
"If you have a player who plays dead for five years of his contract, and then he has a blow-up year, that's called false advertisement. I don't think you should pay him. Because you pay him, what do you think he's going to do? He's going to go back into hibernation.''
I asked if he was talking about the Clippers' Tim Thomas, for example.
"Yeah,'' he said. "Thank you.''
And Duncan has both.
He's brilliant on the court.
And he's got the size and the strength to take the beating he gets inside every game.
I don't care if it's semi-complimentary, Scoop Jackson still sports an IQ about equivalent to your average rock.
actually, complimentary or no, i think its a good analogy and is written well as a story. scoop is a well known abuser of the race card but every now and again he gets a good angle and writes it up nice. thanks for posting it!
noble peace prize?
True. Assassins kill one person or a few people at a time. Great scientists change the whole system of humanity.
how lame and disappointing. the continued romanticism of death and moronity. every serial killer on the planet was an "assasin," and the two schmucks who drove through D.C. sniping folks at random certainly fit the bill. the 911 hijackers were assasins in their own right. the idiocy of the argument is sickening.
and as to the idea that it's just more fun to watch the assasin compared to the scientist (an analogy no one should pat scoop on the back for, he stole it from mark jackson), he's being too hollywood. i'm fairly certain assasins just poison you or shoot you (like that russian guy who put radioactive poison in the journalist's tea and the journalist slowly, painfully died of cancer ... geez, that was real great to watch!). has he not watched jim nye the science guy or listened to radio lab on npr? never watched archeologists uncover new civilizations or watch hubble space telescope pics? the logic is just stupid.
i've no idea why this subject drew such ire from me, but there it is.
God that was tedious. I don't know what demographic Scoop is writing for, but they're a lot younger than me I reckon.
Cheesy.
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