Kevin Arnovitz of ESPN’s TrueHoop and ClipperBlog talks Western Conference NBA with us today for the long-awaited Talking About Practice: Episode 4.
Kevin just saw his Clippers get smacked around by the Rockets on Wednesday night, so we start with Houston and that inevitably leads into some talk about efficiency and advanced stats. But we get back to talking about more general Western Conference stuff before long, focusing on the Lakers, Nuggets, Mavs and, of course, the Clippers. The stylistic reconstruction that has revived Al Thornton’s career is discussed and we analyze this as something that may fit into the ad-hoc termed “Josh Smith Corollary” that centers around a player forgoing the things on the court that he doesn’t do well and, instead, increasing his utility and efficiency to the team by concentrating on the things he does do well. Josh Smith has famously sworn off of three-point shots this season, and Kevin has seen a similar change in Thornton. We speculate as to whether other guys like Carlos Boozer are or can benefit from such self-realization.
We also chat about ESPN’s TrueHoop Network. Given my involvement in that whole thing via Eight Points, Nine Seconds, I’m admittedly not the best person to be asking Kevin about this stuff. But it is a big topic and an intriguing development in not just NBA circles but in the evolution of the sports blogosphere at large, as anyone who attended either of the Blogs With Balls sports blogging conferences this year can attest to.
And for all you 80s sitcom fans, we also talk for a solid 10 minutes about Benson. Not sure how that happened, but we were able to come to at least one thrilling revelation. I’m not going to spoil the amazing payoff that will surely be sweeping the collective mind of America come this afternoon, but let’s just say that one of the world’s great mysteries has been solved.
I would also be remiss if I failed to give a shout out to our boy AI. (That’s what it’s called in “radio,” right? A “shout out”?) There would be no Talking About Practice without you, Mr. Answer, and, frankly, I wasn’t ready for an NBA without you either.
As you may have heard, Michael Jordan is widely considered a Hall of Fame-caliber basketball player. And in about two weeks, on September 11, Springfield will make it official by inaugurating him into the Hall. To ensure people don’t forget who Jordan was, the museum’s curators have even gone so far as to partner with Jordan Brand to put together an exhibit that will run through the rest of 2009 called “Becoming Legendary: The Michael Jordan Story.”
Unfortunately, they have made it a countdown where you can only see those videos that have been released already, meaning that you can only watch moments number 23, 22, 2 and 20 as of today. But the videos do come along with written commentary from the likes of Coach Bobby Cremins, whose Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets got lit up for 39 by Jordan in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1983 for moment #23, and Joe Dumars, who got lit up by Jordan many, many times and had to watch helplessly from the ground as MJ drilled a 30-foot, game-winning three over him in 1992 for moment #20.
Writes Dumars:
It was only a matter of whether I’d be able to force him into a tough shot. I did. He was so far behind the 3-point line, but that wasn’t enough.
Keep your head up, Joe. You certainly did better than Craig Ehlo.
I’ll be looking forward to seeing/reading the rest, and ESPN advises us to “Check back daily as new videos are released, all leading up to his induction into the Basketball Hall of Fame.”
Slam magazine, too, is all about Jordan this month with a full issue dedicated to him that’s aptly titled “Slam Presents: Jordan.” I bought this “Hall of Fame Tribute” that’s “100% Mike” the other day and, while it’s nice to have all this stuff bound together in one place, avid Slam readers will soon realize that it is mostly just rehashed coverage from the past. It’s all good though, since we get to read some classic pieces from former editors @RussBengston and Scoop Jackson as well as relive some old Slamadamonths and “walk down memory lane” (wait for it…) in a feature that breaks down all the Air Jordan “sneakers” (…there it is) from I-XX3. (The piece is similar to Nike’s online timeline of Air Jordans, but even though it doesn’t have the cool interactiveness of the corporate spot, it does have some nice factoids and descriptions that you probably won’t hear about as succinctly elsewhere.) All told, this “Special Collector’s Issue” is probably worth your $7.99 — particularly if you haven’t previously read all the pieces that Scoop and Russ did back when Mike was actually playing. (And if you still have $24.99 left over, buy the Ultimate Jordan DVD collection. It’s the best value I’ve ever gotten out of a sports DVD set other than this one about Muhammad Ali.)
While it’s great that all this stuff is out there, fear not, sports fans; Springfield, Bristol and the Slam Dome aren’t the only ones getting in on the predictable commemoration/coronation/nostalgiation of the man widely viewed as the best to ever lace em up. Yours truly is also writing about the one they call Air Jordan aka MJ aka Money aka Hir Airness aka Johnny Kilroy aka Motorboat Jones aka Superman (?) aka Mike … … Okay. Wait? What? Basketball-Reference actually lists “Mike” as an official nickname for the man on its Michael Jordan page? That seems like overkill, particularly when the well-known, French point guard in San Antonio whose full name you probably don’t even know (William Anthony Parker) doesn’t even get a “Tony” mention. (Nor is there a “Fiery Francophile,” a “Parisian Torpedo” or a “Main Butter & Egg Man” mention, it should be noted. Watch this video if that previous sentence understandably makes no sense.)
It’s about how even if someday someone somehow comes along who is better at the sport of basketball than Mike, it will be very hard to convince anyone of that fact given that we all lived through MJ’s perfect career trajectory and are still experiencing the expanding mythos of MJ everyday. For evidence, see all the stuff discussed above. Keep in mind, however, that in no way is any of this at all intended to be disparaging to the G.O.A.T.; the post is just talking about how it will be nearly impossible to ever change the perception of perfection that is so deeply ingrained into our collective fan psychology.
Whoa. Sorry for all those polysyllabic words. I blacked out for a minute. Will not happen again.
You guys hear about this Jordan guy? I believe it’s “Jordan” … or “Your-dan.” It might be a soft “J.” Apparently, he’s going into the Basketball Hall of Fame. It’s supposed to be wild.
Unfathomably, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar has become the most underrated player of all time. Among people born before 1975, he often tops the list of best players to ever lace em up. But as they do with Dr. J, many people under the age of 35 tend to see Kareem as an after-thought in the greatest of all time discussion and even stretch reality far enough to consider guys like Hakeem and Shaq yo be his superiors. Some people even regard him as the NBA version of Nolan Ryan — a guy who was really, really good at one thing and broke a bunch of records because he played forever.
Hopefully, most everyone reading this regards such opinions as the utter nonsense that they are. Kareem is at worst one notch behind Michael and Wilt along with other second-tier guys like Larry, Magic and Russell. The videos at the end of this post help show two of the reasons why. And kudos to both ESPN and JA Adande for putting together “Secrets of the Skyhook,” a must-view multimedia feature that includes a fantastic article, two great videos and several historical photos.
As a sports blogger, I guess I am for some reason not supposed to like ESPN all that much. Well, I certainly take issue with the direction that some programs on the Worldwide Leader have opted to take in the past few years, but, obviously, ESPN provides more amazing sports coverage in any given six months than the whole sports blogosphere has in its entire history. The collection of knowledge the network has amassed is staggering. To think that a Top 10 player of all-time like Magic Johnson qualifies as a throwaway talking head for the network is astounding. Every week, a truly great segment, article, production or creative endeavor of some other sort emerges from Bristol.
Maybe it’s just that the world has gotten accustomed to the great coverage ESPN (often) provides? Those of us who write about sports on the internet tend to be around the age where we don’t even know a world without ESPN. Hell, I read the NBA Daily Dime and TrueHoop almost every day but rarely even link to them because I figure you’ve already seen everything that they’re talking about. And while I enjoy Yahoo! Sports, SI.com, Deadspin and a few other “mainstream” sports sites, the idea that any of them have ever even come close to providing the same depth or breadth of coverage that the Mickey Mouse sports empire does is laughable.
Which, in a way, brings us back to Kareem.
In the videos below, Murdock from Airplane! and Jermaine O’Neal both suggest that one of the reasons the skyhook has gone the way of the telegraph is because it’s just not viewed as cool. It’s not “sexy” to emulate the skinny, bald dude with the goggles, they say. As a fan, it’s really not even cool to like Kareem. Not only did he gain a reputation as unlikable, but if you’re a Laker fan or just a hoopss head discussing the best players ever, it’s a lot more fun to talk about Magic. He has an unprecendented personal story, not only for an NBA player but for a human being. On the court, he was unique. He was dynamic. He was peerless. He threw fancy passes. peerless. He forced basketball to evolve. And, maybe most relevantly, his highlights don’t all look exactly the same.
What are you supposed to say about Kareem? He had the most unguardable move of all time. He was the maybe the most dependable offensive weapon we’ve ever seen. He was a great passer. He was a good rebounder. And he was a much better defender than he is ever credited as being because they didn’t always record blocks during his first five years in the League and because most of his regularly televised highlights were recorded after he turned 32 years old.
All true. All boring.
Because of that, Kareem’s legacy, while impeccable, loses some luster. Similarly, even if for different reasons, the fact that today’s ESPN has fallen below what everyone wants it to be has hampered its reputation. It is cooler to poke fun and discuss the network’s bygone glory days than it is to give ESPN credit for a great piece it puts out — let alone for being the unrivaled mass creator of great sports coverage.
With enough time, such perceptions start to infect reality. If repeated enough times, things like “ESPN sucks” and “Kareem wasn’t as good as Hakeem” permeate popular opinion. Then they start to became acceptable. As the views of those who actually saw Kareem in Milwaukee become less visible in public, that reality starts to fade.
They say history is an agreed upon fable. This is as true of sports as it is of political events. Today, however, we have video, analysis and countless written accounts of every sporting event, so our future understanding of the current era should be, at least somewhat, more aligned with what actually happened. Unfortunately, the footage and the first-hand accounts and essentially everything about Kareem’s prime is much less accessible to mass audiences. So we are left with the option of either believing or not believing what others say about it anecdotally for the most part. As a larger percentage of our cynical youth chooses the latter, popular opinion is reshaped. The truth is lost. History is re-written.
The solution to ensure accuracy and maintain a truer understanding of the Association’s past is accumulating more information and providing better access to it. That’s why we need more video of young Kareem playing basketball. That’s why we need aggregated written accounts of the past. That’s why we need the game’s legends to share first-hand accounts from their careers. That’s why we need the NBA to unearth all of its old footage and make it avaiable.
And, yes, despite what may be popular to say, that’s why we need ESPN distribute it to us.
Since I presume most of you stopped watching Sportscenter about two years ago, none of you probably saw this. But some dude named Josh Elliot apparently works for Sportscenter and was appalled that play number nine on the Top 10 Plays of the Day was a clearly sponsored announcement of the unveiling of the new Air Jordan shoes.
Hopefully for him, he’ll get fired over this. (via Bootlegger Sports)
Find out where to play the best online slots by visiting SlotsLogic.com
--------------------
Shoot and score with NBA betting at SBG Global sportsbook! The online sportsbook offers live NBA betting odds, NCAA basketball betting options, numerous sports betting prop wagers, the $250,000 NBA Match Up contest and $500,000 Madness of March contest.
