(Photo by Issac Baldizon/NBAE via Getty Images)
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Heat
Kobe Bryant is borderline imaginary at this point.
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I’m officially out of superlatives for Dwyane Wade.
What can you say? He’s one of the best players to ever lace ‘em up, and his approach to the sport is the most enjoyable form of basketball I’ve ever watched. Sorry, Reggie, but much like my alcoholism, the fact that Flash is my favorite player of all time has been something I’ve been cognizant of for some time — just never admitted publicly.
But it’s true. I’ve never enjoyed watching a human play basketball more. Reggie’s “moments” are timestamps of my adolescence and early adulthood, and because he was not only my favorite player but played for my favorite team, his career will always be more special to me than any other player ever. And it’s not like I want to like Dwyane more than Reggie. I just do. How does Martin Landau term it in Rounders? “What choice? … Our destiny chooses us.”
So, yeah, Dwyane is my favorite player of all time.
I say all this not out of any need to psychoanalyze a public admission that would have seemed blasphemous to me as recently as 2005, but more so just as journalistic disclosure. At this point, it’s entirely possible that my affinity for Dwyane Wade the player has begun to cloud my objectivity about him. It’s possible that I watch him play in a mental state of confirmation bias, wherein I ignore the negative stuff he does on the court and over-inflate the importance and greatness of the, well, great stuff he does on the court.
Players are regularly viewed by different analysts under the spell of confirmation bias, with Allen Iverson being, as he all so often is, the best example. His supporters, a group that would include me, excuse his insanely low shooting-percentage years in Philadelphia while his critics rarely acknowledge his higher percentages during his time in Denver when he was for the first time playing with other capable scorers. As you may have noticed, it’s quite possible that, just in the way I wrote those previous two sentences, I probably cannot be completely objective about Allen Iverson the basketball player — let alone Allen Iverson the person.
But I digress. The point here was to discuss the Heat and how they beat the Wizards last night,* giving them their second win over their division rivals from DC this weak and giving Flash his second 40-point outing of the young season. (His first came perhaps not-so-coincidentally against Washington as well.)
* (Ed Note: I wrote this last week and forgot to post it. They lost three times since then and won once, but I feel the same way about the team. Carry on.)
With a 6-1 record thus far, Miami is definitely overachieving in the eyes of most. It’s early, of course, and numbers can still swing wildly in just one game so take this all with a grain of salt, but the Heat, as a team, are on or around the top of the leaderboard in several defensive categories, and Dwyane and Mario Chalmers are both again among the league leaders in steals. (Both are in the top fifteen currently and they finished second and fourth overall last year in steals per game, respectively.)
Again, it’s very early and plenty of 6-1 teams have turned into pumpkins well before the New Year even arrived. Regardless, I think this Miami team is going to be better than expected and I don’t even think it’s going to take Flash doing his Flash stuff every single game like it did last year for them to get the the 5th seed. A lot of this hinges upon JO and Q staying relatively healthy — and I’m a Pacers fan, so I know just how preposterous that sounds. But I think Michael Beasley is rather good, Chalmers is better than people think and Udonis Haslem is perhaps the most underrated player in the NBA.
More importantly, however, I think this is just a well-constructed squad where everyone has their roles. It’s puzzling how many teams allow their rosters to just glide through month after month, or even the whole season, without all the players knowing their roles. A lot of this is on some pretty bad coaches that for some reason have jobs in this Association. But a lot of it also falls on the players. Rebounders wanna be scorers. Slashers wanna be shooters. Shooters wanna be ball-handlers. And no one wants to be a defender.
In Miami, however, everyone not only has a role, but they all seem to both know and accept what these roles are. There is no confusion and, seemingly, everyone is one the same page. They revolve around an all-world player and do whatever else is needed to fill in. Willingly.
Let’’s try to define the roles of the key contributors:
Dwyane Wade – Captain. Beast. Leader. Superhero. The guy who you all know just what he’s capable of. And so do all his teammates — and they love him for it.
Michael Beasley – Sidekick. Robin to Batman. Scorer. Mr. Go Get Some Buckets. The guy the team wants doing things with the ball. The guy the team depends on to do things with the ball. And the guy the whole team is rooting for to succeed.
Jermaine O’Neal – Intimidator. Paint patroller. Jumpshooter. Occasionally reliable post presence. The guy who just wants to stay healthy and is willing to bang, board and block shots — presuming you also let him get some looks in the post and take his beloved fadeaway jumpers.
Quentin Richardson – Elder statesmen. Spot-up shooter. Willing defender. Post-up specialist. Lead-by-example rebounder. The guy who has been passed around the league so much it’s a joke at this point — but his jumpshot isn’t, nor is his defense.
Mario Chalmers – Floor general. Place-Setter. Ball pressurer. Mr. Do What Coach Says. The guy tasked with reining things in when Wade starts going one-on-one too much and making sure the post guys get their touches and Beasley stays engaged.
Udonis Haslem – The Rock. In a Hard Hat. Mr. Dependable. Mr. Lunch Pail. The guy who does the in-the-paint stuff that no one else, not even Jermaine, wants to do and gets no credit for it nationally — but certainly does inside that locker room.
Carlos Arroyo – The Empowered Bench Team Leader. The Feisty Point. The Little Guy With A Chip on His Shoulder. Mr. Run the Second Unit. The guy who for the first time in years is being told by his coach and teammates to “Do you. Get points. Dribble around. Create. We need you to be productive off the bench.”
Dequan Cook – Shooter. Three-point shooter. Spot-up Shooter. Mr. Seriously Don’t Do Anything Else But Shoot. The guy who comes in for a few minutes and makes a three or two. And then sits down. Quickly.
Joel Anthony – Big off The Bench. Shot-blocker. No More. No Less. Mr. Eat Some Minutes While The Starters Rest. The guy who needs to help out JO and Haslem against the bigger bodies in the League and provide dependable, if mediocre, bench help.
Is this cast enough to scare the Easter Conference powers even if they all somehow stay healthy? Probably not.
It’s hard to believe in this lineup, no matter how well they know their roles. They are good defensively, but not great. They are fairly weak offensively, even if Flash is utterly unstoppable.
Still, watching a team constructed like this is nice. Personally, I just watch the Heat to marvel at Flash. Seeing all these other guys embrace their minor roles next to one another is just gravy.
It’s pretty rare to see these days, too.
Even on a team like Boston where KG, Pierce, Rondo and Ray should be the unassailable leaders, I can’t help but feel that, at least in the past, guys like Big Baby and Eddie House wish they had a larger role. They come into the game and play well, so it doesn’t affect the team, but there has been an air of begrudging-ality (it’s a word) to their whole time there. I would watch Big Baby play against the Bulls and the Magic last year and he seemed like he was half-fueled by a “See…Told yall KG shouldn’t get so many minutes” vibe. That’s not a bad thing. But it isn’t exactly knowing your role either. And I think some of that obviously exists in Rondo, too, given his general demeanor and foolish willingness to compare himself to Chris Paul.
Similarly, it’s hard to not get the feeling when you’re watching the Lakers that Andrew Bynum he deserves a larger role and more attention for his talent. Amar’e and Shawn Marion gave that vibe throughout Seven Seconds or Less, which was only the most Marxist distribution of statistical wealth I’ve watched first hand in the NBA and a team that barely even used its bench. At times, Nate Robinson rolls like this. A young Ben Gordon in Chicago could be the poster child for this concept. Brendon Haywood. Stephen Jackson. Jason Terry. Jamal Crawford. I enjoy all of those guys, actually, but they have in the past seemed disappointed with how they are being used.
Like I said, I’m not judging any of these guys who, to an outsider, seem to want a bigger role. I like these types of guys, by and large. I became a Reggie Miller fan mostly because he was so obviously an asshole, even through my TV set when I was 12, and because he so obviously walked around like “MJ aint shit.” So, I’m not saying any players who carry this attitude should fall back or that their teams are hurt in any way by their approach — many of them probably help fuel their teams.
I’m just saying that that type of dynamic doesn’t seem to exist in Miami — at least not right now.
And I really enjoy watching that.
Just like Flash.
Sorry, Reggie. Had to end some day. Still luv ya.
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Everyone loves a great highlight. Dunks, dimes, blocks … They all good.
But as good as they are in a standalone highlight reel or YouTube clip, they are 1000x better live during a game. It’s one of the things that makes basketball, and particularly the NBA, so amazing to watch no matter whether it’s Game 4 of the Finals or a random Hawks/Mavs game in December. At any given moment, something completely out of the blue and unreal might happen.
For instance, I was watching the Heat play recently, as I’m wont to do given my unchartable affinity for Dwyane Wade, and I saw this amazing behind-the-back dribble to split a double team plus an acrobatic layup finish thrown in for good measure. (It’s number two on this Plays of the Week video. It’s at the 1:57 mark and definitely worth your time).
This one brief moment in time (not to mention Dwight’s insane block, which is number four on that countdown) was insane. It’s things like this that make me wonder how anyone can ever watch NCAA basketball aside from the awesomeness that is March Madness. I mean, I try to watch. I went to St. John’s University and try to at least watch a little Big East. And when I’m at work and find out that Duke/Carolina is on that night, I get all pumped up to watch it when I get home.
Then I actually get home and see that there is a Nuggets/Jazz game on, and I’m like “Duke/Carolina will play again later in the year, right?” Because as much as the Tobacco Road thing is cool from a historic rivalry and huge intensity standpoint, there will definitely be multiple things done by Carmelo and Deron in a random Denver/Utah game that make anything that happens in a UNC game look like the basketball equivalent of tee-ball.
But I digress. Getting back to the original point, half of what makes these three or four other-worldly moments per NBA game so amazing is the spontaneity and the holy-poop-that-came-out-of-nowhere factor. And not only are you the fan caught off guard, but so are the defenders, the fans in the arena, the announcers and — oftentimes — the player himself. (Ricky Davis’ borderline leapfrog of Steve Nash is probably the coolest, organic, “what did I just do?” reaction, whereas The Reignman Point, which is number one here, is probably the best “I just did that? You’re damn right I just did that” reaction.)
And it is those times when announcers are caught off guard that I want to praise specifically right now. It’s always been a hobby of mine to pick apart the mundane, over-obvious, old-man-non-humorous and outright incorrect things said by in-game announcers. They are, by and large, pretty poor, and even though I fully realize that it’s a job that is very hard to do well, I more fully realize that it’s really easy and fun to mock those who do it.
But on rare* instances, announcers say something great. And on even rarer instances, these amazing audio moments are unexpectedly forever ingrained in video form by a forthcoming highlight. I’m not talking about the “spec-TAC-u-lar move” or “OOOOOooooooh, MAN … Hell-o” reactions to great plays. I’m talking about the things that are just being said nonchalantly and then oh-so-rudely interrupted by a moment that stops time.
There aren’t a lot of good examples for me to throw out there off the top of my head. But there has been a handful of great ones of the past few years that I remember really enjoying. None, however, likely compares to this “audio posterization” of the unnamed, yet clearly-being-discussed Hasheem Thabeet.
As you’ll see in the video below, Rudy Gay utterly baptizes Al Thornton with a baseline jam. Good stuff, Rudy. Well done. But as he is doing it, you will also hear Clippers announcer Ralph Lawler discussing this year’s coveted number two overall draft pick and saying “…Dikembe Mutombo. But a lot of people think he’s more likely to be the next DeSagana Diop.”
OOOOOooooohhhhh, Man. Hell-o. That has to hurt. How’s your pride feel, Thabeet? (video via Hardwood Paroxysm)
And now we will now forever have this audio posterization courtesy of Rudy and Lawler that will can replay endlessly eight years from now when Hasheem is on his fourth team and playing 15 minutes per night.
And that will be funny.
In the meantime, let’s keep a look out for future — or past — audio posterizations that you come across. Everyone enjoys them, so if you find one, come back here and drop them in the comments. Or at least email me the link.
* Marv, Clyde Frazier and Jeff Van Gundy excluded
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The Miami Heat have created a great brand through 21 years of mostly successful on-court performance, a rotating cast of memorable players and — perhaps most of all — a logo, color scheme and overall style that have nearly made me forget just how dumb their name is. Fortunately, there are plenty of horrible tattoos out there walking around that help remind me to “Never Forget.”
Still, from Rony Seikaly and Glen Rice toiling away in obscurity to Timmy and Zo making waves in the East to Flash and Shaq bringing home the Larry O’Brien trophy, the franchise has enjoyed a nice linear arc of success. And the team’s entire style, along with its logo, has transformed from expansion fly to champion iconic. For a team that once retired Michael Jordan’s “23″ in its rafters, today, the only jersey you’re going to see on South Beach is a Dwyane Wade — or maybe a Rudy Gay.
Looking past any of that, juxtaposed against other NBA teams that use basketballs in their logos (looking squarely at you, Clipps and Nets), the Heat have laid out blueprint plans for how any expansion franchise in sports should create and manage its logo:
Step 1: Create a logo that relates to your name. (Disclaimer: If you’re name is “The Thunder,” change name before beginning logo process.)
Step 2: Make your logo simple, sticking to the script of what has worked historically while also — and this is where most teams go astray — adding a singular, unique element that sets you apart.
Step 3: Don’t use more than three colors — or four if completely necessary and you can give a legitimate, well-articulated reason for it.
Step 4: Don’t use ephemeral color combinations, lettering or design principles that will be dated in a decade. The last thing you want is to wind up like the Spurs, who abandoned their timeless silver-and-black logo in favor of colors representative of an interior design fad during the South West population boom, only to later realize that, yeah, don’t do that. Not so coincidentally, the Spurs have reverted back to their original look. See also: 76ers, Philadelphia; Pistons, Detroit. (And, yes, I realize that the Heat’s lettering might start to look dated within the next decade — although not necessarily. Regardless, they should be able to launch a preemptive, minor redesign that will avert looking like an early-90s relic if necessary.)
Step 5: If after a few years you determine that the logo is not perfect, tweak it a little provided you first determine that the logo is worth preserving. This is always the ideal way of changing things. Never change just for change’s sake. Worse still is changing for marketing sake or to create a new revenue stream. Fans have and want to maintain a connection to the past and even if it’s only five or six years, a change will be jarring and ultimately unfortunate. Still, be honest with yourselves. If the logo needs aborting, don’t hesitate — kick that bitch down the stairs.
Step 6: Once you have a good look, remember the best part of Jay-Z’s Blueprint and apply it to your franchise: Never Change.
What up to my Miami and St. Thomas connects.
If Hov don’t sign LeBron, him and Flash gonna get paper longer than Pippen’s arms.
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