Unless your name is Raja Bell, Wednesday night in the NBA was legen…dary.
Shaq suits up for the Suns. Kobe sons Shaq.
JKidd suits up for the Mavs. CP3 has gotta be kidding.
Bibby suits up for the Hawks in Sacramento. Everyone is happy there are no horrible puns involved.
Seriously though, look at the lines for Chris Paul, Kobe and Amare, and Superman and CB4. Meanwhile, ho hum, LeBron is now two-for-two on triple doubles since winning the All Star Game MVP. And, hell, we even got some legit effort out of Vinsanity tonight as he nearly dropped a trip-dub himself while leading the Nets to an OT victory over the Bulls. Nothing motivates like a true love for the game, I guess. Well, nothing like a last-ditch audition to get yourself traded out of East Rutherford, New Jersey, anyway.
Barney, of course, also suits up.
Yet, despite all these on-the-court shenanigans, Shaq still manages to steal the show. No, not with his moderately impressive debut in a home loss. But with a post-game press conference that featured these gems.
“You Earthlings think I can’t run anymore. But Steve Nash has told me to get my Randy Moss on.”
“I told [Raja] it was an accident. And I told him in Spanish.”
“Steve Nash is a hip hop version of Scottie Skiles…The Canadian Eminem version.”
What can I say? I’m now officially excited for the Diesel Era in Phoenix.
I know, I know…after a title like that, why even go on, right?
But go on we must
Stephon Marbury, however, is now likely going nowhere before Thursday’s trade deadline as it was recently revealed that he will miss the remainder of the season while he struggles to recover from ankle surgery. I suppose devastating ankle injuries are prone to occur when your kicks cost less than your t-shirt.*
Now, it would seem the only thing left of Coney Island’s Finest’s New York homecoming is the inevitable buyout this summer. Personally, I’m heartbroken. To date, this had been the greatest year of this great experiment, and I was truly hopeful that it was going to ratchet up another notch over the next few months.
Alas, it seems a quiet weekend announcement of Steph’s shutdown is the last thing we’re gonna get. So in light of the meager fanfare all this has received thus far, Both Teams Played Hard is taking a look back at “Starbury: The Year That Was.”
June 30 - And…we’re off. Here, the point guard/sage philosopher kicks things off by talking about Isiah’s “power move” to get a “youthier” “left-hand, southpaw, switch-it-up, you-think-he-shooting-right-but-he-really-shooting-left” “beast.” I think he’s talking about the Zach Randolph trade.
July 1 - Where can I even start? In this now-infamous “Marbury Tape,” Stephon appears on Mike’d Up for an interview where he rambled incestently,** providing us with some of the best impromptu soliloquies since Brando enlightened the world to the horrors Col. Kurtz has seen. Here he explains how he doesn’t play for shiny stuff because it can’t make you billions of dollars…no it cannot. He goes on to seemingly talk about making out with his sister, unveil his theory on how his ability to differentiate Isiah Thomas the player from Isiah the man is equivalent to him starting a shoe company, admit that he wants the Knicks to be like the Mavs because they lost to Golden State, inform us that he never slept with Kevin Garnett, and contrast happy tears from bad tears. Confused? Yeah…so was he. And if all that is not enough to get you interested, he also answers his phone mid-conservation and explains “That’s my better half…my better ho,” and ends the discussion by dancing in his chair as he screams at host Bruce Beck about how much he wants “to see the spit on your mouth.” Just watch.
July 18 - Marbury vows to go play pro ball in Italy after he finishes out his current contract. I think he and his “better ho” had recently gotten back from vacation and he said this to a reporter:
“I’m not just thinking of doing it, I’m going to do it. My wife loved it there. It’s like a [David] Beckham thing.”
Due to his goldfishian attention span, however, my guess is that he forgot all about this promise instantaneously.
August 23 - Like a miniature Buddha, Stephon weighs in on the Michael Vick scandal. He’s so wise.
“I think it’s tough that we build Michael Vick up and then we break him down,” Marbury said. “I think he’s one of the superb athletes, and he’s a good human being. I just think that he fell into a bad situation.”
“I think it’s tough,” Marbury said, according to Albany TV station Capital News 9. “I think, you know, we don’t say anything about people who shoot deer or shoot other animals. You know, from what I hear, dogfighting is a sport. It’s just behind closed doors.”
September 12 - In what had to be the best courtroom testimony since Col. Nathan Jessep, Starbury took the stand in Coach Zeke’s sexual harassment trial. Here, he revealed that he convinced one of Anucha Browne Sanders’ young, female underlings to escort him from the strip club they were lounging in out to his SUV, where it’s possible they had some chicken and maybe some sex…you know see what happens. He went on to testify that he had indeed called Sanders a bitch and we also learned from Sanders that Marbury’s cousin (unfortunately not Sebastian Telfair) slept with some Knicks intern (predictably a St. John’s University student) in that same truck. The best part, however, is that none of this is even the best part. I really wish we had some video on this, but the Pulitzer-quality Daily News reportage will have to do:
Afterward, as Marbury raced to a blue Rolls-Royce trailed by reporters, he called the trial a ‘tough situation’ and refused to speculate on the possible outcome. “It’s not for me to judge,” he said. Marbury tried to change the subject by making fun of the reporters’ ties and shoes, noting that he was wearing expensive tan lace-ups, then drowning out the pesky questions by breaking into song. “I got some new Starburys that are coming out,” Marbury said before disappearing, a pitch for his reasonably-priced basketball shoes.
November 13 - Thus begins Starbury v. Madison (Square) as Steph skips his team’s game in Phoenix after an alleged altercation with Zeke. Supposedly, Eddy Curry told Starbury about Isiah’s plans to start Mardy Collins at point instead of him in mid-flight, and Stephon moseyed on up to the front of the plane to have a little pow wow with his coach. There was one third-hand account of a physical confrontation, but the consensus tale is that it was merely a verbal spat. Best of all, according to one anonymous source on the plane, he said this when he got back to his seat:
“Isiah has to start me. I’ve got so much shit on Isiah and he knows it. He thinks he can fuck me. But I’ll fuck him first. You have no idea what I know.”
The original quote was censored for publication in the Daily News, so those are merely my own presumptions at which curse words he used. It could have just as easily been “thunder pussy,” “potato-cock” or some other magical sailor speak made up by and only known to him. Because as we all now know, we have no idea what Stephon Marbury knows.
December 3 - Marbury’s dad dies shortly after suffering a heart attack while in Madison Square Garden watching a Knicks game. Okay…nothing funny about this. But I guess we all now know how to make a post like this come to a screeching halt.
Oh well. Nothing else matching his previous antics has taken place since anyway.
Hopefully, we can pick this saga back up this summer though. Or better still, maybe Marbury will get a buy-out from Jimmy Dolan and make good on his promise to go head to Italy. Because if there’s one thing that has made America so great, it’s the way we export our culture to the rest of the globe. And sharing our one true national treasure, Stephon Marbury, with another continent should go a long way in squaring things up with the rest of world after that whole messy quarrel prior to the Iraq invasion in 2003. Who really remembers what that whole argument was about anyway? Even Steven, I say.
* Yes, I’m aware he doesn’t wear them.
** See what I did there?
Sir Charles has given his word to Wolf Blitzer that he will in fact be running for governor of Alabama in 2014. And if there’s one thing you can’t do, it’s lie to a dude named Wolf. It’s in the Bible. Fourth Commandment, if I recall correctly.
Speaking of religion (which he does below)…I’m not a political strategist nor have I ever been to the Deep South, but I’m not sure running on the anti-Christian platform is the quickest way to Montgomery.
Regardless, he’s got my vote.*
* Fortunately, I’m not permitted to vote in Alabama…but he will retain my rhetorical absentee ballot.
New Orleans set the stage perfectly, prompting everyone to be slightly more engaged than normal. Having CP3, DWest and Byron Scott all representing the most exciting team in the League in its own building certainly helped, too.
Of course, we all loved Birthday Cake, Kapono’s record-setting title defense and the Boobie Gibson show. And, hot damn, there really can’t be enough said about Dwight’s performance. That tip dunk was borderline extra terrestrial and the phone booth costume change theatrics leading to that Superman throw down was the perfect blend of showmanship and freakshow athleticism.
(AP Photo/Eric Gay)
Even the actual All Star game was worth the hype. Predictably, with Kobe out, the two usual suspects showed up at winning time: Bron and Wade. But the most impressive display was the shooting pyrotechnics of Ray Allen. Indeed, Jesus Shuttlesworth turned water into twine down the stretch, drilling Tom Emanski-esque, back-to-back-to-back dagger threes in the waning minutes. LeBron and Wade closed it out for the East with two impressive drives to the cup, but it’s hard to believe they win without Ray Ray, who would have been MVP had the voting not gone all American Idol for the first-time ever.
Either way, watching the best shooting display in an All Star Game since Glen Rice got me thinking: Is it possible that Ray Allen is the best shooter of all time?
(40 Acres & A Mule Filmworks)
I’ve always thought Peja is the best I’ve seen, with Bird, Dale Ellis, Allan Houston, Ray, Reggie, Dell Curry, Hornacek, Hersey Hawkins and Drazen all coming up just a whisker hair shy of Mr. Permanent Five O’Clock shadow himself.
Honestly, it’s a question that I don’t think gets asked that much. All these guys are listed as “one of the best shooters ever” but I’ve hardly ever seen any rankings. Obviously it’s tough given that the difference at the top is so minute and full of subjectivity, but with Ray Ray soon to become the all-time leader in career threes made, this question is bound to come up more often (Reggie is #1 now but is only up by about 500, which is a little more than two typical seasons for Allen).
So in a quest to get some sort of answer here, we’re gonna take an extended look at this subject at Both Teams Played Hard in an attempt to get something close to a ranking of the Top 20 shooters of modern NBA history.
(Note: As always, I’m not going back before 1980 in these history debates because (A) I think the game changed after Bird/Magic, and (B) I wasn’t alive before that.)
After some quick research, here are the early contenders:
Ray
Peja
Bird
Houston
Reggie
Hornacek
Dale Ellis
Dell Curry
Drazen
Calvin Murphy
Hersey Hawkins
Mark Price
Rip
Chuck Person
Wesley Person
Chris Mullin
Glen Rice
Michael Redd
Mitch Richmond
John Stockton
Dirk
George Gervin
Dennis Scott
Rashard Lewis
Freddie Brown
Brent Barry
Steve Nash
Detlef
Joe Dumars
Rickey Pierce
Terry Porter
Sean Elliot
Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf
Mike Miller
Chauncey Billups
Dan Marjerle
Danny Ainge
Alex English
Ginobli
Jason Terry
Hedo
Wally Szczerbiak
Dana Barros
Scott Skiles
Kiki Vandeweghe
Kyle Korver
Rolando Blackman
Sam Perkins
Mike Finley
Jim Paxson
Bernard King
Adrian Dantley
Kobe
Vince Carter
Terrell Brandon
Voshon Leonard
Craig Ehlo
Steve Smith
Tom Chambers
Danny Ferry
Ben Gordon
Tracy Murray
Bob McAdoo
Sheed
(Another note: I’m not including any of the Kerr/Legler/Hodges/Hoiberg types. They never played a significant enough role to count. Yes, they were all incredible and possibly better pure shooters than anyone on this list…but they weren’t really legit 4th Quarter NBA-caliber players. I’m looking for the best shooters who are real players, not specialists.)
Okay, that’s the loooong list of 60ish guys who either my memory and the percentages consider to be somewhat legit contenders. I’m sure I missed several. And a few of these guys probably don’t even belong.
Also…there are various others that don’t match up with the stats or my memory. For instance, Shane Battier has a career 3PT percentage of 39.1%, which is good for 40th all time. But I have to believe that’s more circumstantial than anything else. I mean, he’s a good shooter and all, but he doesn’t strike fear into opponents. Similarly, Raja Bell is somehow 17th best of all time, which to me is more D’Antoni/Nash than his pure ability. Neither is making the list.
On the other side of things is Dan Majerle, who I’ve always considered one of the most dangerous shooters of all time. But for all his Playoff heroics and propensity to drill daggers, he never once shot over 40% from three in a season. Danny Ainge, too, has lower numbers than I expected. But since I remember these guys being dead-eye, I’m keeping them on the list for now. Why? Cause it’s my list.
Unfortunately, that’s all for now, folks.
But this will be an on-going project and we’ll revisit it soon in the coming weeks. And for all those out there reading (Hi Mom!) please let me know about the deserving guys I’ve certainly overlooked, especially those early 80s guys that I’m not going to remember as well.
The answer is that we’re not sure just yet. But not since Sly Stallone was climbing mountains and fighting John Lithgow in the snow have we seen such a captivating cliffhanger.
Really, all we know thus far is that he’s an English dude that rocks bow-ties, composes in composition books, maintains a debonair hair cut and will soon be interviewing Chris Bosh.
Don’t fret, though. I have a feeling that the thrilling conclusion will be revealed during All Star Weekend.
The only downside is that this multi-part Blane Harrington saga can’t possibly live up to CB4’s last effort. Here it is in case you somehow missed it:
It’s pretty rare that you can make the worst trade of the year and lose the best game of the year in the worst possible way all in the same day. Kudos, Phoenix.
First off, the game.
Unreal.
Picked up watching this one at half time and boy I’m glad I did. Hands down the best game of the first half of the season and there hasn’t been a close second.
Chris Paul played kid’s games with whoever was guarding him and stole everything that wasn’t nailed down. Steve Nash floated finger rolls at will and stuck dagger threes. Peja was water and hit the biggest shot since co-European Hedo Turkoglu drilled that 40-foot turnaround vs. Boston. Amare shut down DWest for the entire 4th Quarter. DWest got tired off being shut down and started beasting in the OTs. Boris Diaw was buttery croissant soft. Shaq ate a lot of free food in the luxury box. Matrix smiled somewhere. Byron Scott gave small ball a new name by going CP3/Bobby Jax/Pargo/Peja/DWest (?!?!!??!) the entire overtime. D’Antoni added 15 gray hairs to his pilot mustache.
Not sure if I would have preferred a 3rd OT or that walk-off-fadaway-get-tackled-by-current-MVP sequence by Peja. Either way, Nash, D’Antoni and company aren’t even mad…that’s amazing.
Second off, the trade.
(Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
Okay, the trade wasn’t really as bad as it might seem.
Marion had to go…that much was clear. And the Suns have been trying to get out of that Marcus Banks contract since about five minutes after they signed it.
Could they have gotten a big guy better than Shaq? Maybe.
But even when Diesel isn’t playing particularly well — i.e., most of the time — he’s still creating space, demanding double teams and changing the game entirely. It will give Nash space to dribble around like he does, Raja/Leandro/etc. even more open threes and, most importantly, let Amare move to PF, from which he can be an even bigger beast than he already is. Just watch as STAT catches more lobs, gets more offensive boards and doesn’t get abused nightly by Duncan, Yao, Kaman, Bynum, and, hell, even Erick Dampier.
Altogether, those non-tangible upgrades could potentially have a larger impact than Marion’s solid perimeter defense and the 20/10 his puts in the box score nightly.
All this, of course, hinges on The Big Albatross being healthy. And even if he is healthy, that contract is still pretty tough to swallow. $20 million next year and $20 million the one after that — when he’ll be 38.
But whatever. I’m not paying.
So even if it’s weird that a team that’s been selling its 1st Round picks for three years because it didn’t want to pay rookie salaries is now willing to take on that much in payroll, it’s still a decent gamble by Stevie Kerr. I really didn’t think they had much chance at a ring how they were constituted anyway (especially with the probable Odom/Gasol/Bynum front line in LA LA land), and this gives Phoenix a boom/bust excitement that will be better to watch than Shawn Marion pouting through a 2nd Round Playoff loss while Steve Nash ages another year.
And no matter what happens, the rest of us can at least take solace in the fact that we got the STAT/Matrix crosslegged photo (see next post) into the public record prior to this deal taking place.
