Year of Judgment

History very well could peg Adam Morrison as another mis-step in the post-basketball management career of Michael Jordan and little else. Only three years ago Morrison and Redick slugged it out for the nation's scoring title and captivated a national audience. It seems like that happened more than ten years ago.

Since being drafted I've had few opportunities to watch them on television. To start, the Bobcats aren't exactly in high demand for those outside of North Carolina. (Or in North Carolina from the looks of it.) But more importantly, the play of both guys was mediocre. Redick rode the bench when I believed he had a legitimate shot at competing for a starting position in a weak Magic backcourt. Morrison's season was less mediocre than Redick's though fraught with inconsistency and absolute stinkers with respect to field-goal percentage and overall efficiency. Watching Morrison, on the couple occasions I managed to, revealed a one-dimensional player: Morrison could only jack up shots. And they missed.

Which brings us to Year Three for JJ and Morrison. Early reports out of Orlando indicate that Redick should see a little more action this season. Morrison looks destined for worse. On a highly athletic (though terrible) Bobcats team, I simply can not find a spot for a one-dimensional player coming off a down season after tearing his ACL.

(And apparently Morrison's hair is longer. Like waist-length ponytail. And more facial hair. What's with these wholesome-looking white dudes in the League who go nuts overnight? Case example: Robert Swift. His career has been packed with injuries, so what did he do with all that free, rehabbing time? Got a bunch of tattoos and grew a huge ponytail. What possesses these white NBA players to go all Cherokee Parks? CP is the white man's trailblazer for freedom of expression.)

How much of the Redick/Morrison thing was a fabrication of the white sports media (which is really, really white)? As a collective entity did they project their want of white sports heroes in collegiate basketball in the form of JJ and Adam? Granted, both players put up big numbers in big programs, but the media certainly elevated them to levels of Bird-esque grandeur. NBA scouting services went so far as to call Morrison the next Bird.

Isiah Thomas famously remarked that Larry Bird was a fabrication of the white media. I'm not sure how the media fabricates three Championships, but hey.

Were Isiah Thomas to ask the same of Redick and Morrison, you'd have a difficult time arguing against him considering the perspective we now have, their professional output in tow. Their respective games just don't translate to the NBA-level. A part of me wishes for both of them to find some modicum of success, which, realistically speaking, means earning 'role player' status. Redick in particular has something to offer. His shot is still textbook. During the two or three times I've seen him make late entries into a game, he never failed to work hard for his shot and nail a couple threes.

With Morrison coming off surgery I don't see a bright future for him. At least not in Charlotte. The Second Coming of Larry Bird he is not. Ultimately, his legend was the greater of fabrications. And I think that's what history will ascertain from his career.

Banana Question

A quote from Amir Johnson's Wikipedia page:

"Amir has a brother that he dont know about and his brother plays basketball at Penn State and his name is David Jackson."

(Quick Amir, check your Wikipedia page! Your brother has been revealed! Ungrammatically!)

The Wiki editors let an abominable opening paragraph reach the interweb. Regardless, one of the NBA's most efficient, albeit unused, players will begin the pre-season as a starting power forward.

The Pistons, despite multiple years of uninspiring play in crunch-time, look like a dangerous team.

The biggest issue with the Pistons has always been motivation, namely that they believe they can turn it on whenever it counts (ie. the playoffs). But they can't turn it on whenever they want. If first-year coach Michael Curry can get through to them - and new coaches can always light a fire under their player's asses - they'll be fantastic.

Amir Johnson will finally get some burn. I believe him and Stuckey will tally up many MIP votes. Maxiell is still a fantastic piece off the bench. The only drawback is age. It won't be a major issue this season, but the window is quickly closing for one of the most successful core groups of players of the 2000s. When you look up and down that Pistons roster, they're still menacing. And they have more talent to unleash.

Just don't let Kwame Brown see the court.

Down with James White

James White's athleticism has been on my radar for a while.

During my adolescence, I went to a school where all kids were required to own laptops. When developing this program, the school mistakenly thought the technology-infused academic environment would enhance our academic abilities. Most students ended up playing Quake III or Mario World on a SNES emulator during class. When a teacher walked by someone playing a game, a flurry of hand movement would occur and the game exited safely from the student's screen. Eventually the teachers were wise to these spasmodic actions when their entering our vicinity. My thing was basketball videos. Scouring shitty websites looking for anything basketball related.

(My buddy Tumelo and I used to watch Rucker Park highlights during Canadian History class. Our teacher often showed up to class twenty minutes late. Some girl in the class thought our oohing and ahhing came from watching porn.)

For the first half of high school, I went really big into University of North Carolina basketball. I think a UNC basketball website was my home page. I was up on all their recruits and everything, one of whom was Jawad Williams. Williams participated in a McDonald's All-American dunk contest. David Lee edge out James White in the finals. Lee was pretty creative, but White was an all-out athletic freak. Some videos were posted on the internet and White became a teenage hardcourt myth. Here was a high school kid converting free throw line dunks with more flair than any man who converted the same dunk in the League's version of the contest (Jordan, Dr. J, Brent Barry [obviously]).

Things didn't work out with the University of Florida (where Lee played his ball) and he ended up with the Cincinnati Bobcats for the remainder of his collegiate career. He hasn't held down a permanent NBA gig. Which doesn't matter because his potential move to China spells certain fame for one of basketball's greatest athletes (link via HoopsHype).

Like I mentioned in an earlier post, basketball is built on the spectacular. The greatest moments from most NBA games are when a player defies the conventions and framework of typical NBA basketball and complete a play which challenges the viewers notions of basketball's limits. And this is why James White will succeed in a global market.

White possesses athletic abilities few NBA players, if any, can replicate in the most competitive professional sports league in the world. Against professional competition in China White will dominate and find an ideal venue for his dunking abilitity.

Basketball is rapidly expanding. China's enthusiasm for American players during the 08 Olympics is all the evidence you need. Kobe Bryant's popularity compares favourably with Yao Ming's. And in a sport built on the spectacular, James White could enter a fruitful career in a flourishing global economy.

Oakley Cafe

When you speak of unrealized potential in the NBA, former player Keon Clark has to come to mind. As a player he defied any sort of categorical classification with regard to position. He weighed next to nothing. He liked drugs. He left us with too few highlights from a heavily blemished career.

Regardless

"Move, trick. Get out the way."

Some things which excite me before the coming 2008-09 NBA season:

-Nathan Jawai's health. Did Colangelo pick up a Mike Sweetney character here? Is his blood-type Dr. Pepper? This guy is a year younger than I am, is a professional athlete, and has cardiac problems. Jawai might have Eddy Curry-syndrome.

-Jose Calderon getting full burn in Toronto. Is Calderon more effective as a spark plug off the bench? Can he progress from last year's breakout season?

-Greg Oden. Part of me feels like he'll be his generation's Bill Walton. Which could bury a promising TrailBlazers franchise.

-Darius Miles, namely how long it'll take before he starts sweating red wine in practice.

-Clippers fans. Expect some big names to fill up the courtside seats at atrocious Clippers home guys while they support their new best friend, Baron.

-Like any year, the shitty teams. I can't wait for the Jefferson-Love-Miller era in Minnesota or the Gay-Mayo era in Memphis. Wow, Gay-Mayo. That's great.

-Denver Nuggets. I fully don't expect them to make the Western Conference playoffs, but with Camby out of town, an already dismal defense gets even worse. What's the over/under on how many times they give up 135+ points? I think a 9.5 makes things interesting.

White Boy

In the late 90s the Sacramento Kings became one of the league's great teams - and ultimately one of its underaccomplished - due partly to Jason Williams arrival. Catching the Kings on national television now became easy. Here was a team both charismatic and reckless, balanced and flawed. For the start of the 1998-99 season, Jason Williams and Paul Pierce were the early favourites for Rookie of the Year before Vince Carter usurped their spots at the top of the rookie class. Regardless, Williams netted a spot on the NBA All-Rookie First Team with his flash and style. Whether by side-arming no-look passes or crossing over opposing point guards, the Kings became must-watch NBA basketball. None of us wanted to miss his next highlight.

Which is why Jason Williams' (affectionately known as White Chocolate) retirement from the NBA, just yesterday, is as underwhelming as the eventual plight of those cherished Kings teams. There's that old Neil Young line (it's a bit overused I realize, but I digress), "It's better to burn out than to fade away." And Williams did fade away. He managed to sign on with the Clippers this summer, during, what was for him, a quiet off-season of free agency. The news of his retirement will barely register with most sportscasts, though at one time his jersey was the highest-selling of any NBA player.

What I remember about Williams is that he made the pass cool. For ninth-grade basketball players, most of whom could barely touch the rim, we took unprecedented levels of influence from his game. Granted, we were taking influence of that infamous, reckless style, but scoring was no longer the most important aspect to the game. If we could fire a no-look pass with flair, that was just as good.

During English class in Grade ten, my teacher requested the class write a report on someone who greatly influenced our lives. Not wanting to go with the requisite choices of Pierre Trudeau or Martin Luther King Jr., I chose Jason Williams. A guy who was suspended from the University of Florida towards the end of his collegiate career for smoking pot. A guy who was the Eminem of basketball. He was a little misunderstood, a little trailer park trash, but his game was undeniably fun to watch. A logical choice for an impressionable NBA junkie. At one point his Kings team was the only in the league to average over 100 points per game. Offense was going down the tubes and Williams did his best to keep it alive. Shockingly I received an outstanding grade for the report.

When Williams ended up on the Memphis Grizzlies, his individual play flourished. Hubie Brown did his best to tame J-Will's wild tendencies. The reckless point guard was now among the league leaders in assist-to-turnover ratio. He posted his best statistical season as a Grizzly. But we all tuned out. The half-court bounce passes were few and far between. I have no idea how to sum up the career of a guy like Williams. He faded away, my support diminished. Though I always felt a twinge of excitement when Williams came in for the Heat and occasionally launched up some ill-advised three-pointers. There was a joy to his game that wasn't really conducive to the pro game. Here I'll leave you with a video of some moments in a difficult, and awe-inspiring, career:

Formatting

The NBA dunk contest continually ranks as one of the top moments in any NBA season and the hallmark event of All-Star Weekend. (As much as I enjoy Bill Laimbeer and Michael Cooper tanking half-court shots with WNBA players whose team names elude me at the moment...) My first memories of the dunk contest are as follows: the older guys at school putting the ball through their legs and sorta-dunking on the monkey bars a la Isaiah Rider (no word on whether they emulated anything from Rider's personal life); and watching my first televised dunk contest, the year in which Brent Barry defied the racial odds and beat out such NBA luminaries as Jerry Stackhouse & Michael Finley. (Rick got the scoring prowess, Brent the hops, Jon the, uh, broadcasting skills?)

For any basketball fan who is beginning, in childhood, to take awe of the game and its freakish levels of athleticism, the dunk contest becomes an annual event of pure indulgence: for a moment we take away all the notions of 'proper' basketball - as preached by coaches at any level - and eschew its constrictions in favour of basketball's equivalent of candy. The game frequently dazzles on any given night, but there's also the final three minutes of a game (which take a good twenty to thirty minutes to complete), the lackadaisical beginnings of the third quarter, and the overall gamesmanship (READ: defense) which requires teams to put away any notions of the spectacular.

Vince Carter, in an interview with the Toronto media several years ago, said he was going to stop dunking. That two points were two points. That, basically, dunking was a frivolous skill. (At this point, Vince was already wildly unpopular with the Toronto media and, days later, was dunking during games.) And sure, he's right - a dunk and a lay-in are worth the same on the score sheet. But a lay-in doesn't inspire, nor does it make the highlight reels or ensure any level of endorsement. The foundation of basketball is built on the spectacular.

My cynical eleven-year-old self noted that Barry, in his winning foul-line dunk, had technically taken off from inside the line, if one were going by the location of his toes. Yet it was still the stuff that sent kids to their six or seven-foot rims.

Over the years the dunk contest has gone through some great highs and the occasional lull, but the same enthusiastic sentiment remains. However, if I could find one fault in the current system, it's that the NBA is doing everything to discourage its superstars from participating. Sure, we occasionally get players like Dwight Howard and Amare Stoudamire, but we've had some underwhelming winners, players like Gerald Green who don't see any significant NBA minutes. The Dunk Contest, I believe, should be about the best dunkers in the league. So yes, Green deserves a spot. But there are players like Lebron James who possess otherworldly athletic abilities and vertical leap, yet would never go near the dunk contest, and frankly, are afraid to do so.

In the dunk contest years post-Carter (there's room for another jab at VC), the superstar player has shown apprehension with taking part. Let's take a look at Carter's dunk contest year: Vince Carter, Steve Francis, Tracy McGrady, Jerry Stackhouse, Ricky Davis, and Larry Hughes all participated. Regardless of how we all feel about their respective talents, the fact remains that four all-stars competed in that competition and two elite-level players. The contestants from 2008 featured Dwight Howard (a superstar), Rudy Gay (nice sophomore player), Gerald Green (one year from a career in Italy), and Jamario Moon (energy player, ultimately nothing special).

Another point: Jordan participated in the dunk contest on three occasions, Dominique Wilkens an astonishing five times. Dr. J participated in two during the twilight of his career and on neither occasion did he win. The dunk competition has become an exhibition for capable athletes who are largely one-dimensional, with maybe the room for one I-don't-give-a-fuck type superstar. And it's got more to do with the system.

What I loved about the Barry-era dunk contest was that you had 90 seconds to put together three dunks in the first round of competition, then 60 seconds for two dunks in the final round. Players would rattle off whatever they could in that amount of time. The pressure of nailing dunks on one opportunity didn't exist. You did what you could in the allotted time and saw how it panned out. Some things didn't work, others did. When some failed you had time to think up something on the spot and try it out. This was a free-wheeling era in dunk competitions.

But ultimately, the prospect of competing wasn't nearly as scary. The whole thing is hyped up so much these days, and rightly so, but with so few competitors and so little room for error, why would a superstar, someone of Lebron's caliber, risk embarrassment as a global audience tunes in? In Carter's day, there was at least some modicum of honour in winning the title. Now we're all too scared to step out and take some risks. The honour is still present, but the journey to that desired end result is difficult and not-at-all conducive to NBA stars. Let me repeat: Jordan competed in three of these things. The chances of Lebron competing in one is suspect. It's much more comfortable videotaping it, next to Damon Jones in a leopard suit, on the sidelines.