Band of Ballers – The Basketball Blog for Hoops Junkies

Sad KD

So I just saw a graphic on ESPN2 saying that in the last 15 years, there have been 67 instances of a team leading by 15 or more with less than 5 minutes to go in the NBA Playoffs. In those 67 instances, only once has a team come back and won the game. We all just witnessed it, this lone outlier of a game. The Mavs hung around all night and were in striking distance distance until the 4:48 mark when Kevin Durant hit a three to put the lead up to 15  at which point my buddy Jacob (a die hard Spurs fan, no less) and I looked at each other and said; “well that’s ball game”. We were both sitting on my living room sofa where we both had watched the entire game up until this point.

It was then that Jacob asked me; “When you’re team is getting slaughtered, do you like to change the channel to just some random show out of disgust?”

“No (irritated)…I like to let the Mavs toy with my emotions…I’m sick like that”, I respond.

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Lebron James

So the dust has settled and Lebron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade are ‘taking their talents’ to (or in Wade’s case, remaining in) South Beach and the Miami Heat. Talking heads everywhere are sounding off on Lebron. Cleveland is beyond crushed. I’ve never been there before but I imagine the entire Northeast Ohio area now looking like nothing short of a Mad Max like post-apocalyptic wasteland.  This NBA season will feature the first time in my short lifetime that I’ve felt an American athlete might have to fear fans for his life when Lebron heads to Cleveland wearing his shiny new #6 Heat uniform. It’s comparable to the way South Americans feel about their soccer heroes after a failure of epic proportions. So as I was glued to the TV for the last week or so, gobbling every Ric Bucher, Chris Broussard and Mark Stein ‘report’ for nuggets of information that would dictate the NBA balances of power for at least the next 5 years (and probably longer), the following conversation takes place in my house:

My Wife: Why’s everyone so mad at Lebron James for going to Miami??
Me: Well it’s not only that he went to Miami, it’s how he did it.
Wife: What do you mean? Did he lie about where he was going to go?
Me: uhm…no, not reall-
Wife: Did he break a contract?
Me: no….it’s just tha-
Wife: Where would you rather go Miami or Cleveland??
Me [irritated, eyes closed, shaking head]: You don’t get it. How can I explain….

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One of my biggest regrets as a basketball fan is how I treated Michael Jordan in his prime. You see, I’ve always been a die hard hoops fan for as long as I can remember but despite how cool Jordan was and how much I loved his shoes, I remained (and still remain) a homer. The Rockets were my team and Akeem/Hakeem (there never was or will there ever be a better highlight reel for a center) was the man. I loved the Rockets, loved Rudy T, loved Robert Horry (before he was big shot Rob) and even loved Sam Cassell (this love ended in the latter part of his career). One of the best kept secrets of the 90′s was that the Rockets played the Jordan led Bulls better than any other team in the NBA.  So because of my allegiance to the Houston Rockets, I always found myself rooting for a Bulls/Rockets Finals which, as you know, never came to be (thanks to a prison rape foul on Clyde Drexler by Karl Malone that allowed John Stockton to hit this shot). So in my mind, The Rockets were forever under appreciated, never given their due and The Bulls just happened to become the target of all my basketball hatred. I was a hater, I hated Jordan, I hated the refs kissing his butt, I hated Charles Barkley kissing his butt and laughing with him in the 93 Finals. But then a funny thing happened; Jordan retired after the 98′ Finals and there was this vacuum, this void left in his wake. Suddenly I couldn’t change the channel when ESPN classic showed a Jordan game. Suddenly, Iverson’s crossover wasn’t popping off quite the way it was when he did Jordan. Then came these rumors that MJ might come back with the Wizards and I was re-invigorated. Was this my chance to enjoy Jordan, a chance to finally see him in person? Well the answer is sort of, and yes, respectively. Jordan came back and had a pretty much uneventful run with the Wizards as a shadow of his former self. Besides a monster block on Ron Mercer and a quasi playoff run, Jordan clearly was no longer Air Jordan. I even got to see him play for the first time of my life against the Dallas Mavericks in an overtime game that Jordan, ironically enough, missed the game winner of at the end of regulation. He just wasn’t the same.  Till this day I always wish I could go back and just enjoy rooting for Jordan and not rooting for the Stockton/Malones & Payton/Kemps of the world.

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Dear Kobe,

Really? When you put this on and looked in the mirror, what was going through your head? Better yet, who made you do this? You know what, forget I asked. Here’s some advice though; in the future if anyone asks why you did this just say you lost a bet with Sasha Vujacic. It’s really the only acceptable answer to that question. It HAS to be Sasha too…nobody will believe you if you say anyone else here (ok, maybe Pau but let’s stick with Sasha, it’s safer).

P.S. A good rule of thumb going forward: ask yourself, would my puppet be allowed to wear this?

Sincerely,

Concerned Hoops Fan

Everyone seem to be real fired up about the playoff this year and with good reason. This year there are a ton of story lines out there. In order from least to greatest here are the five storylines that I find most intriguing heading into the NBA’s annual tournament.

5. The Wild West – I’m not a NBA stat nerd. I don’t necessarily dislike NBA stat nerds like John Hollinger or Henry Abbott but I think at the end of the day, you either know basketball or you don’t. I didn’t need a +/- sheet in front of me ten years ago to know that Allen Iverson’s 32 points were less valuable than Kobe’s 23 points. Put me in a basketball gym full of NBA players and let me and John Hollinger pick teams and my money’s on my team winning more than John Hollinger’s. Of course any Joe Shmoe can say this (this would be a great reality show right?) but this is my blog and damnit, I believe it. So as I digress, let me get to my point; I think this is the most stacked lineup in either conference in NBA history but I refuse to look up the stats to prove it. Hey, I’m not an NBA stat geek. I just know the game. I’m a throwback of sorts when it comes to blogging and this year’s western conference is a throwback to the days when there were only 11 teams in the entire league and you played everyone six times. Out of the 8 western conference teams, the only team that could lose in the first round and be called a legitimate upset is the Lakers. Seriously, I have a buddy who claims in his heart of hearts that he thinks the no.7 Spurs are a legit favorite to win over my beloved no.2 seed Mavericks. And you know what? Personal biases aside, he’s got a legit argument. When have you ever been able to say that about a 2-7 seed matchup?

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The NBA has a ton of nice guys. Commercial guys. The sort of guys that when they do those NBA Cares Commercials, they look like they’re really into it. Those guys have ‘gone global’ and are now, literally, international brands. They have handlers that manage every aspect of their lives off the court; clothes, business affairs, travel arrangements, even women (take notes Tiger). They have to distance themselves from the normal things that you and I deal with because they are literally ‘above it’. They have bigger things to worry about, like how their going to sell 100k pairs of shoes in China. On the other hand however, there’s still some hooligans and knuckleheads in the league. Guys who, if you caught them at the wrong time, would have no qualms throwing down with Mr. Joe Average Fan. These guys aren’t global brands and they definitely aren’t worried about losing any endorsement deals. Hell, with the image these guys project, a fight with a fan would only reinforce them as sponsors to any company that was even considering them in the first place. So here are my Top 10 NBA Players you wouldn’t want to fight. The rules are simple; anyone who might seem like a good candidate here but has too much to lose (Yes, that means Lebron is excluded) is omitted here. Anyone lacking the temperament to really knock out Mr. Average Joe Fan (Yes, this means Dwight Howard is excluded). So without further ado here are last 10 guys you would want to run into in a dark alley.

10. Stephen Jackson – This guy is one of my favorite players in the league right now and coined the quote of year when he boasted that he “makes love to pressure”. Besides the fact that he might just shoot you, Jax definitely doesn’t have issues swinging on a fan. And as he showed in Indianapolis, if you’re a fan, you don’t want to fight Stephen Jackson. On the other hand, if you’re an NBA star that’s gonna fight a fan, you might want him as a teammate.  Now the one weakness he may have in a bar fight is that he apparently only throws hay-makers, so maybe if you work the jab, you’ll have chance.

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I’m a homer. I love the Dallas Mavericks. As many of you homers out there know, when you’re evaluating your teams’ chances of winning it all, you start to go over every potential match up and scenario that could end with your team hoisting the Larry O’Brien trophy at the end of the season.

I was extremely excited about adding Caron Butler, Brendan Haywood, Deshawn Stevenson and his Amish beard (see above) but  you might imagine, Wednesday night when the Mavs beat the Lakers, I began to go through the contenders and envision who I do and don’t want to see come April/May/June.  If we were so lucky fortunate to beat the Lakers and get to the Finals and I could pick who we have to play from the legit contenders of the East, I say bring on the Cavaliers.

Now you definitely can argue the flawed premise of the Mavs making The Finals this year, but you’ll have a much tougher time making a compelling argument against my perceived flaws in the Cavs and their Alpha Dog, Lebron James. My issue with Cleveland is very simple; when push comes to shove in the playoffs, when points are hard to come by and every one begins to tighten up the D, the Cavaliers will revert to Mike Browns Offense where everyone just parks it in the corner while Lebron goes one on one. We’ve seen teams win titles running this play on the last couple plays of the game (see Jordan, 1998) but we’ve never seen a team win running this offense from the 6 minute mark of the first quarter, which is exactly what every NBA fan knows is coming this post season.I’ve seen better offensive play calling in Hoop-It-Up and Gus Macker 3-on-3 tournaments than what Mike Brown is able to conjure up for the greatest player on the planet.

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