 |
| We're Playing Basketball! |
With the NBA season quickly approaching, a quick look around the sport reveals an interesting phenomenon.
It is not difficult to argue that the 2 best teams are already set in stone. Golden State was a juggernaut of absolute destruction, losing 1 game all playoffs long behind some truly gorgeous representation of offensive basketball genius the type of which we couldn’t have imagined seeing.
If you love ball movement, slick offensive sets, and elite shooting, the Warriors are your baby. In fact, it would not be ridiculous to say we should just send the Warriors as our reps for the Olympic Games in Tokyo in 2020 and have that be that, as it were.
But all is not good in the kingdom. The Cavs have rebuilt their armaments for what everyone believes to be their last strike at the throne by trading for Isaiah Thomas, as LeBron James is widely expected to be leaving after this upcoming season. Boston has Kyrie Irving, Gordon Hayward, and still a good part of last season’s #1 seed coming back.
Out west, the Thunder and the Rockets have restocked as well. Oklahoma City added Paul George and Carmelo Anthony to the human personification of dark matter that is Russell Westbrook, and Chris Paul and James Harden joined together in Houston to provide us with either the sort of offense Mike D’Antoni wishes he could have had in Phoenix, or a massive blow-up of chemistry.
For this season, there will be questions. Here, on this blog, I do my best to answer some of them.
 |
| Is He Going To Keep Under Control? |
1: Can Russell Westbrook control his athletic brilliance long enough to lead the Thunder where everyone expects them to go?
To be fair, there are few things more exciting in the NBA, if not sports full-stop, than Russell Westbrook going full Kamehameha on an unlucky defender tasked with stopping him on the fast break. The trouble with that, though, is that Russell’s general penchant for that kind of aerial derring-do has oftentimes led him to take the kind of risky shots no one can make.
When he was swaggering through the NBA regular season like an uber-explosive colossus, that recklessness and athletic arrogance was a joy to behold. Simply put, he could do anything.
However, once the playoffs started, the flaw in the way the Thunder built themselves and the way Russell Westbrook chooses to play came into sharp, and painful, focus. Namely there weren’t enough people to carry the offense on the nights Russ didn’t have it, and any team worth its salt knew how to ensure that Russell rather quickly wouldn’t. And that penchant for believing he could do anything, take any reckless and normally high-risk shot, blew up in his face.
In fact, if there has been one criticism of his game that has remained constant, it is his continued belief that he could do anything when the cold hard facts of statistics and years of data indicate that’s not necessarily the case.
For his career, Russell Westbrook is a career 31% three-point shooter. He should take threes almost never. And yet, for his career, he averages a shade under three-and-a-half attempts per game. This is bad.
Russell should be remaking the league’s all-time single-season leaders for free-throw attempts per game. When he goes downhill, and cuts to the rim, you CANNOT stop him from getting to the rack. It’s up there with waiting for Colin Cowherd to make a reasoned sports point. It just cannot occur. And yet, his best season in this regard saw him land at 9th all time.
(Author’s note: The top 3 are Michael Jordan, Allen Iverson, and World B. Free. What was going on for him in 1979-80? Geeeez.)
So, as we go into this season, Russ finally has his lieutenants. Paul George and Carmelo Anthony should help on those nights Russell can’t get started. The question that still hasn’t been answered is this: Can Russell Westbrook’s belief that he can do anything he wants to, any night and any time he wants to, be tempered just enough to help the Thunder get where they want to go?
I ask this not to criticize Russell Geronimo Westbrook (Hat-Tip to Eddie Maisonet on that one) but to wonder. Can the Thunder be everything we expect them to be, and challenge the Warriors for basketball supremacy, if Russell Westbrook can’t harness everything that makes him special?
2: Will the Chris Paul and James Harden relationship look like the sort of basketball Mike D’Antoni has always wanted to play, or will it give him PTSD of his time with Carmelo Anthony in New York?
 |
| Two Kings, Or A Regicide Waiting To Happen? |
If you love the way the Warriors play, a tip of the hat needs to go to Mike D’Antoni and the Seven Seconds or Less Suns. It was that style, the high spread pick and rolls and the reliance on fluid ball movement over staid isolation, that served as the patient zero for what the Spurs did to disassemble the Heatles, which led rather fluidly into what the Warriors have become.
But ever since the Suns let him go, the Suns have never been the same. And up until his most recent coaching stop, neither has he.
It started in New York. And in every way possible, that was a bad fit. The Knicks’s best run was in the 1990’s, where they were a rugged defensive team who eagerly won games 81-79. And, while offensive basketball has (thankfully) moved on past those rock fights at blinding speed, there has always been a perception that you just can’t win that way in New York.
More to the point, there’s a section of the fanbase who was raised on the bully-ball that those 90’s Knicks played who don’t actually enjoy the running and gunning and would much prefer half-court offense and physical defense. And despite finding Jeremy Lin and giving us some of the briefest, and best, examples of just how fun his offense could be, it never worked in New York. There just wasn’t the infrastructure to do things how he wanted to see them done.
If possible, it was worse in Los Angeles. Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol are not the sort of big men you run a fast-paced offense like that around. Especially Dwight. I’d argue Pau could have been at his apex, based on the time he spent on the Spanish Basketball Team with his brother Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka, but it can be safely stated that by the time Mike D’Antoni got to Los Angeles, that was not the Pau Gasol Mike D’Antoni was getting.
So, by the time he left Los Angeles, we all thought he was done. It wasn’t unreasonable.
And then suddenly, as if the basketball gods decided to give him one more chance, he found himself the perfect canvas to try everything he’s always wanted to do since he left Phoenix. A sui generis offensive guard who can score, pass, and enjoys playing with pace? Yup. Shooters to spread the floor for said offensive guard? That too.
And most importantly, a front office that won’t give him personnel that doesn’t fit what he wants to do? Absolutely.
That front office has made it clear that they understand how the D’Antoni system works, and isn’t going to try and push round pegs into his square holes. But what they are going to do instead is give him who is, without doubt, the best pure point guard of my generation.
But that’s not all Chris Paul is. And to ignore that is to do a great disservice to him.
For all his brilliance at running a team, he is also widely regarded as a drill sergeant who needs control to an alarming degree. On most other NBA teams this wouldn’t be a problem.
But, on the pace-and-space Houston Rockets, it could be.
As this season goes, we’ll figure out if those problems will exist.
Good luck on the NBA Season. We’ll see you all here as often as I can.
No comments:
Post a Comment