I’ll give you ’til January.

The Suns have agreed to sign Hakim Warrick to a four-year, $18 million deal. Seeing how Warrick plays Amar’e’s position, and given the financial burden of signing him and retaining Channing Frye with a five-year, $30 million deal, Amar’e is pretty much out. As of Friday, July 2, it seems as if he will be going to the New York Knicks with a shiny new five-year, near-$100 million contract. However, given the nature of these things, that is hardly set in stone. Amar’e could still end up in Miami, Chicago, New Jersey or some weird sign-and-trade destination (Houston and Cleveland have reportedly shown interest). Anywhere but Phoenix, really. Maybe even the moon.

But honestly, I don’t care about that.

I don’t care about 27-year-old power forwards who spend 8 years with one franchise, see that franchise stick by them through one of the most daunting operations in all of sports (microfracture surgery) and another, bizarre injury that leads to them playing with goggles (goggles!), see that franchise give them the best teammate humanely possible and the best possible playing style (excluding that awful Terry Porter stint), allow that teammate and that style to mold them into one of the best big men in this game, and then bolt because their pride was hurt when they were only offered $96 million to play basketball for the next five years. Those insolent, Phoenix McScrooges. How dare they.

To be fair, though, I also don’t care for the Suns in this saga. I can’t condone a franchise who dangles a young man back and forth for years, almost trading him for everything from Kevin Garnett to Al Jefferson to J.J. Hickson, repeatedly throwing him under the bus while still holding on with one arm, and reminding him that every dollar he gets is another dollar they refuse to use to enhance the supporting cast around him and the aforementioned teammate.

No, I don’t care for either side here. Both of them are right so little and wrong so often, that the antagonism flows like money to an unproven power forward in the summer. What I care for is the short, floppy haired, Canadian two-time MVP, who — at age 36, with no ring to his name or in his near future — is once again forced to make something out of nothing.

The greatest movie of all time starts with the immortal Scar saying “life’s not fair.” Well, sports are rarely fair either. If they were, we wouldn’t be talking about money and championships, because every single player in the league would finish every single season with a participation trophy, a popsicle, and a pat on the back. But sometimes, the best guys are thrust into the worst circumstances, and we are left with no alternative to sulking in the corner and complaining.

And you know what the worst thing about this is? That while you, me, every Suns fan, every Steve Nash fan and every proponent of justice will do just that, the only one who will refuse to sulk in the corner and complain is Steve Nash himself. If anything, Steve will look even happier, express his gratitude towards Amar’e for 6 years of fruitless cooperation, and say he’s looking forward to playing with Hakim Warrick.

And he’ll mean it. He loves the game, loves his teammates that much. Heck, he could actually pull off this Hakim Warrick crap. If Warrick averages 25 points and 12 rebounds a game next season, while suddenly shooting 62% from three-point range, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. That’s what Steve Nash does. He makes his teammates happy, turns rosters from barren fields into booming, blossoming crops of talent.

However, it’s just not enough. Because to win titles, you need more than a magician. You need those lucky breaks that Steve never had, for whatever reason. It’s fun to say that the true greats always get those breaks, always get the right teammates, always luck into walking on the golden path instead of falling into the insurmountable abyss. If you decorate your statements with enough exclamation marks and capital letters and words like “FACT” or “PERIOD,” people might even buy it. But the truth is that sometimes luck is just that: luck. A statistical fluke. A coin that lands on the same side five times in a row, only to land on tails when you finally call heads.

Well, Steve just lost the coin toss. Again. The fluke to end all flukes. For the fourth time, an All-Star teammate has walked out on his team because … well … um … I have no idea. Just think about that. How many players even get to play with four All-Stars in their lifetime? Well, Steve fell on the four whose priorities have “I have no idea what I’m thinking” over winning, over playing with the best teammate of our generation. This comes after a run in which his team has sold multiple draft picks/productive role players for nothing, let go of a revolutionary coach in Mike D’Antoni (although we’re still not sure if that was to the detriment of the team or not, given how good Alvin Gentry has been at the helm), and has been knocked out of the Playoffs by Joe Johnson breaking his face, Amar’e’s microfracture surgery, two suspensions, a Tim Duncan three-pointer and a Ron Artest putback off a Kobe Bryant airball. Not to mention the multiple gashed/broken/severely deformed noses, the hip-check-into-the-scorer’s-table, and the black-eye-swollen-shut that he suffered while trying to win anyway.

Steve Nash. Where lightning strikes again and again and again and again.

So yes, Amar’e is leaving. The longtime co-pilot has followed the path of many a former wingman, seeking greener pastures but — if history holds — on the verge of failing miserably. The only current Phoenix Sun who was on the squad when the Dallas Mavericks let Nash go is Leandro Barbosa, whose best years seem behind him (I use the word “seem” because I like Leandro and hope that his diminished form truly is the result of ankle injuries that are now in the past).

But even though the biggest constant of Nash’s second Phoenix Suns stint is now gone — and at 6’10”, 249 pounds, Amar’e is a pretty big constant — things are still the same. The Suns will play the happiest basketball in the league, everybody will be shocked at how good their seemingly average role players are, Hakim Warrick will get several most improved player votes, and the Suns will walk into the playoffs with an abundance of “IS THIS THE YEAR?!” stories, before suffering a heartbreaking loss. And they will lose. You know it, I know it, they know it. Hakim Warrick is just as capable of losing track defensively of Pau Gasol as Amar’e was, just as capable of missing huge rebounds and going 7 for 20 in the deciding game of the Conference Finals. And next summer, they will lose another key contributor (Grant Hill to retirement? Jason Richardson to free agency?) and we will be in the exact same spot.

Steve Nash will still be smiling in the US Airways Center, whether it’s after a marvelous pass to a cutting Robin Lopez or lying on his back on the sidelines, rooting for that plucky bench unit. He will continue to do things we never thought possible, playing basketball at the highest level into his late 30s, making nifty layups over the tallest athletes in the world, prompting millions of “OMG I LOVE STEVE NASH HE’S THE BOMBZ!!!!111” articles and tweets by the hour.

And he’ll do it without winning his ring.

No, this is not the end of the Amar’e era. It’s the continuation of the Steve Nash era. An era responsible for some of the funnest basketball in all time — and for the six-year lump in my throat.

This isn’t Misery. (video from The Baseline via Ball Don’t Lie)

It seems kind of unfair that after finally beating the team they could never go by, the Phoenix Suns still have such a long, long way to go.

And because they’re up against the Lakers, we should probably add the word long one more time, just for good measure.

Long.

Yes, the stories about how long, and tall, and big the Lakers are keep flowing in — and for good reason. They just are. Starting two 7-footers isn’t something you see from every team, especially not from a team whose first guy off the bench is 6′11″. And it’s not the kind of moot length you get from players like Yi Jianlin or Spencer Hawes; no, this is the length that dominates opposing frontcourts, knocking them out of the playoffs, leaving behind a path of broken hearts and failed attempts at defensive rebounds.

That length should be a problem. The Suns have always had problems with it. These same Lakers took the Suns to 7 games in 2006, only it wasn’t the length of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum that they were utilizing, it was that of Odom and Kwame Brown. And while these Suns are nothing like those Suns – they didn’t even have Amar’e that year – Pau and Bynum are quite an upgrade over Kwame Brown.

Then again … these aren’t the same Suns. Wait, did I already say that?

Yes, these Suns are different than any Suns team we’ve seen in the past. These Suns defend. These Suns are deep. These Suns do all that other stuff that we said before the San Antonio series and have said even louder ever since. These Suns do stuff that makes you say, “you know what, I think the Suns can do it.” And it’s the same stuff that makes other people reply, “you know what, you could be right.”

Because once you look past that length, these Suns have everything – everything – a team needs to beat these Lakers.

Speedy point guards who can torch Derek Fisher? Steve Nash is one of the best in the game, and he is spelled by a player so fast he was nicknamed “The Brazillian Blur” and by the newly crowned Goran “The Dragon” Dragic Jordan. Shooters who can spread the floor? The aforementioned Nash/Barbosa/Dragic trifecta, Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and Channing Frye. Strong, long defensive swingmen, who can at the very least stay with Kobe and contest his mid-range game? Grant Hill and Dudley. A dominant offensive big man who can draw fouls on the Bynums and the Gasols? We give you the post-trade deadline Amar’e Stoudemire. An offense that should be able to score against that suffocating, LA defense? If they can’t, nobody can. Not to mention that other-worldly chemistry, that always prevails over groups who aren’t as tightly knit (or so we’re told).

On paper, they should have a shot. Except for that length. Can they handle it?

The truth is, at this point, we just don’t know. Because – and I hate coming back to these same two points – we have yet to see what this version of Phoenix basketball is capable of.

Will they have Robin Lopez back? Will Amar’e continue to give a crap on defense? Will Channing Frye draw the LA big men out to the three-point line, opening the paint? Will the Suns just go small and blow LA out of the water? More importantly, can the Suns just go small and blow LA out of the water?

Conventional wisdom answers none of those questions, except perhaps the first one, which gets a “but Lopez will be rusty” asterik at the end. Conventional wisdom also says that the Suns don’t sweep the Spurs and don’t win 22 of their last 26 games, so you could see how hesitant I am to listen to it.

While getting caught up in Sunsarebackmania, however, it’s important that we don’t take the Lakers for granted. Because these Lakers are perfectly capable of playing both much better and much worse than they’ve played so far in this postseason. They’ve already done both – dominating four games against the Jazz (all games were fairly close, but apart from Game 3, was the result ever in doubt?) and Game 5 against the Thunder, but seeming very vulnerable for the other five OKC games.

Which Lakers show up this time? Who knows. They could go down low to Bynum and Gasol, exploiting the Phoenix frontline, playing their offense, moving the ball in that sort of way that makes spectators drool and coaches jealous of the talent Phil Jackson gets to work with. Or, Kobe could try to single-handedly avenge his two previous playoff losses to the Suns and play the hero. That might work in and of itself, with how he stepped up his game against Utah. Though it should be mentioned that the Jazz had bad matchups for him without Kirilenko. While, of course, considering that even good matchups for Kobe are matchups that you’re going to lose.

And if that last paragraph seemed to involve way too many conditionals and side-notes, that’s because it did. These are your 2009-2010 Los Angeles Lakers: the team that can but, on any given night, might spontaneously decide not to.

Of course, conventional wisdom might once again try and force itself into the conversation and remind us that the Lakers tend to get better as the playoffs go on. At which point we smack it in the head and tell it to stop ruining our premise.

All jokes aside – yes, last season’s Lakers got better the higher the stakes, with this year’s version seemingly following in their footsteps. And yet, the question must be asked: did they really face a team that was both talented enough and had the mental state needed to knock this team down?

These Lakers are so, so good that on most nights they win games on talent alone. And to take down that massive chunk of talent, a team has to have both a level of talent that, at the very least, approaches that of LA, and the mindset to utilize it. Last year, the only team facing the Lakers that came close to having both of these requirements were the Denver Nuggets, who — as we’ve seen this season — aren’t stable enough to maintain any mental state, let alone a positive one. And indeed, those Nuggets just lost it after four games.

This will probably be percieved as a shot at the Lakers, as an attempt to de-legitimize their title. Please understand that it isn’t. If anything, this is a compliment to LA – yes, in my opinion, they won the title last year without meeting a worthy adversary, but that’s only because they were so, so good that no adversary could possibly be worthy. And they won that title with me feeling that they could have played better. This year could be the same scenario: they could blow everybody out on talent alone. They could also run into that worthy adversary and blow them out of the water as well. All I’m saying is that it needs to happen before I’m absolutely sure that it will.

And I feel like these Suns could be that worthy adversary. There are a lot of ifs involved – if they don’t feel content with just being here (unlikely, with Steve Nash running the show); if they continue playing defense, specifically Amar’e and Frye; if Lopez returns and Amundson plays bigger than he is to round out that front court; if Jason Richardson doesn’t re-gain conciousness; if Steve Nash really is as great as we all know he is; if the Suns mental state isn’t diminshed by their lack of success against LA in the regular season (which really isn’t indicative of these two teams, since only one of those meetings came with Phoenix at their recent form and even then they were without Frye).

Really, anything could happen. Though the way some of these series have ended won’t show it, this Western Conference was extremely close from the get-go, and the matchups working in their favor had just as much to do with these two teams reaching the Conference Finals as them being the two best teams (again, not a knock – they are clearly the two best teams in the conference). That’s Playoff basketball for you: you never know how things will turn out until you have witnessed the match-ups.

And the match-up here is still inconclusive. While the Lakers have the far superior frontcourt – Bynum, Gasol and Odom should all be near-impossible for the Suns to stop if used correctly – the Suns have the far superior back court even though LA has Kobe. Fisher is that bad. And unlike against OKC, when Kobe took on the challenge of guarding Russell Westbrook, the Lakers won’t be able to guard those guards with Kobe, because (a) you can hide Fisher on Thabo Sefolosha, not on Jason Richardson/Grant Hill, and (b) Kobe’s defense on Westbrook consisted of giving him room and stopping his drives, but Nash has arguably the best pull-up jumper in the game. And while the Suns have such a deep bench that their Los Angeles counterparts seem even worse than usual in comparison, the Lakers have the better starting five and – more importantly – the best player.

So please take this prediction with a grain of salt. I’m picking the Lakers here because I think home court wins them Game 7 in an otherwise too-close-to-call afair, but anything can happen. Just like two of the four series in the previous round went against all bets. Just like series always have in years past.

Lakers in 7

Enjoy.

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Here’s the carnage as it unfolded from (1) the initial injury, (2) the return after six stitches, and (3) the final, post-game swollen-shut look. Truly unbelievable performance from Steve, who finished with 20 points on 8/15 shooting (3/3 from three), 9 assists and 4 boards.

UPDATE: Here’s some fourth quarter statistical info courtesy of Trey Kerby of Ball Don’t Lie that helps further show how great Steve is sans depth perception:

[Nash had] 10 fourth quarter points in a close-out game against the Suns’ rivals … and five assists for good measure. If you’re scoring at home, that’s 40 points and 20 assists per 48 minutes, so maybe Nash playing with one eye could be a strategy Phoenix could use in the Western Conference finals. Just throwing it out there.

Derek Fisher probably cried himself to sleep last night.

(All images via @jose3030 … image one … image two … image three)

And if that’s not enough to convince you that he’s just a remarkable basketball player, check his wonderful and expletive-laced (but edited) message to his teammates after the Suns won Game 3. (via SportsGuy33)

After the Goran Dragic-fueled beatdown that Phoenix handed out last night, it looks like San Antonio will soon be on vacation for the summer. And with this, we once again have an uber-hyped Western Conference Playoffs that, while by no means lacking luster, will not quite live up to the “this might be the best Playoffs ever” billing that it had way back when we were all salivating over four First Round match-ups featuring eight 50-win teams.

This is at least the third consecutive year that this has happened out West. And it seems marginally ironic that, this year, the key reason is that the Suns unexpectedly beat the snot out of the Spurs whereas, in 2008, one of the key reasons was because the Spurs dismantled the Suns, starting with a Tim Duncan three-pointer that sent Game 1 into double OT. After that shot, the series was all Spurs.

This year? There was never even any that much intrigue. The games have all been competitive by and large, sure, but the Suns have been in control throughout. There has been no question about that.

When we look back at the 2008 series, Duncan’s three was an oddity that helped prove the truth: those Spurs were much better than those Suns. And when, a few years from now, we look back on the 2010 series, Goran Dragic’s 10/13 shooting, 26-point night will stand out as an oddity that helped prove our new truth: these Suns are much better than these Spurs.

It’s a weird thing to type — let alone think — given how thoroughly San Antonio dominated Phoenix for the entire last decade. And it’s also strange for me personally because I really wanted both these teams to win this series.

On the one hand, I was starting to enjoy the “one last run” thing for the Spurs and would have loved to see Timmy — the grizzled, battle-tested titan who often seems like he may be the Last of the Mohicans when it comes to a certain type of big man — get a crack at knocking off the upstart, more-talented, more-flappable Lakers squad that we all now believe to be the class of the Western Conference. Plus, more Manu. That’s always a “yes, please” proposition.

On the other hand, the Suns getting back to the Western Conference Finals — and perhaps even continuing on to greater heights — after getting back to running represents a culmination of sorts for the Seven Seconds or Less era and — perhaps more philosophically meaningful — the Seven Seconds or Less conceptual view of basketball. These aren’t the Mike D’Antoni Suns exactly anymore, but the Nash/Amar’e core is still intact and the script is similar. Very similar. Snatch/Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels similar.

And this is a great thing for those of us who loathe the dismissiveness continually raining down from Wisdom Mountain of Certitude by the hallowed “defense wins championships” crew who will never even consider that uptempo basketball can be good basketball.

Offensively focused basketball is beautiful basketball and it can be winning basketball.

You of course need to get stops and you of course need to do many, many other things well (rebound, execute, not have Patrick Ewing as your center), but an offensively focused team, with good enough players, could someday win a championship. It’s just a fact. And the fact that so many people refuse to acknowledge it and dismiss all the positive contributions that the Seven Seconds or Less Suns brought to this League (which, oh by the way, seems much more receptive to incorporating uptempo, early-shot clock concepts into its repertoire for success) is a very negative thing. Maintaining an allegiance to certainty when new information that should make you at least question that certainty surfaces is not a positive trait. Not for a basketball fan thinking about basketball. Or for any person thinking about anything.

Yet, so many people’s only thoughts about offensively focused basketball are this: “The Suns lost so it can’t work.” While factually true, that line of thinking is an oversimplification of a much more nuanced conversation.

The series that Phoenix lost throughout this decade were failings of those particular Suns teams, not the failings of a philosophical view about the sport that should now be dismissed and never tried again. Nothing one particular team does can disprove that a particular way of playing can work.

But — and this is the beautiful part — one particular team winning while playing that way does prove it can work.

In the Western Conference Finals, the Suns will try.

Previous Doc Funk Friday installments can be found here. And much, much more unadulterated goodness can be found from the man himself at Brain on Funk.

Head that way ASAP.

From Suns vs. Spurs Game 2

From Magic vs. Hawks Game 1

From Cavs vs. Celtics Game 3

From Suns vs. Spurs Game 1

From Suns vs. Spurs Game 3

(Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

“Oh, thank god. I thought that I lost you forever. Welcome back, and don’t ever disappear like that again.”

If these thoughts didn’t run through your mind once this match-up was officially determined, your brain is wrong.

After a one-year hiatus that felt like way more, Suns/Spurs is back. And while the personnel has changed, the main suspects remain the same: the Steve Nash- and Amar’e Stoudemire-led offensive juggernaut against the Duncan/Ginobili/Parker trifecta.

Let me tell you, as someone who, up until October, was certain that these teams would never face off in a meaningful playoff series again, this is heaven sent.

Notice how I said “meaningful” playoff series. As in, a series with title implications. Because while the Lakers are pretty much consensus favorites to make it out of the West, both of these teams could make it out instead — and you shouldn’t be the least bit surprised.

Really? The Suns?

Yes. They’re as good as ever offensively, somehow getting better every time they let go of a key player, turning would-be bench warmers into NBA rotation guys. How could any player not want to go there? If you have a pulse and you join the Phoenix Suns, you will shoot over 40% from three. It’s just a fact.

This time around, though, they’re winning with the same things that were once their greatest weaknesses: defense and depth. The Suns held Portland to an offensive efficiency mark of 104.1 vs. its 108.0 pace in the regular season. And apart from the usual suspects – Grant Hill shut down Andre Miller after game one, Jared Dudley gave his usual serving of hustle and the most athletic hands in history – it seemed as if the whole team was buying in. Even Amar’e Stoudemire was moving his feet and looking like he gives a damn. When was the last time that happened?

As for the depth, well, the Suns now have either 10 or 11 legit rotation guys (depends whether Robin Lopez is healthy and if you count Jarron Collins). They finally have their Nash backup in Goran Dragic, who has evolved from perhaps the worse player in the NBA to a future starter in the making (and yet he got no MIP votes. Sigh). In fact, they played extended minutes against Portland without a single starter. Don’t be surprised to see that again against the Spurs: between the hustle of Dudley and Amundson, the shooting of Dudley and Frye, and the speed of Dragic and Barbosa, the Suns’ second unit is a force to be reckoned with.

On the other side, we have the Spurs. Oh, those marvelous Spurs.

Somehow, they just keep doing it. Keep finding these diamonds in the rough, as they have done for over a decade now and as they probably will continue doing until the end of time. This time around, it is George Hill. I’ve always been way, way too high on Hill, even when he was mostly a volume scorer for the first season and a half of his career, but, man, has he been amazing. As if the Spurs needed another clutch scorer.

As for the aforementioned trifecta … what else can one say? They just keep finding ways to come back. For the first half of the season, it was Duncan who was, somehow, sustaining an All-NBA level of play, having one of his best offensive seasons and putting up an MVP-type year. And when fatigue caught up with him – bam, Manu. The Poo God exploded for his own post-All-Star Break obliteration camp, taking his turn carrying the Spurs on his back with Tony Parker on the injured list.

And Parker? Back from a broken wrist after the worst season he’s had in eons, he seamlessly returns to the lineup – only in Manu’s former 6^th man role. I mean, in the name of all that’s Eva Longoria, he’s a former Finals MVP. Coming off the bench. How many teams in the league – how many players in the league – could pull that off? And not only has he been accepting his role without complaint, he’s been excelling in it, taking and making clutch jumpers to put away those pesky Mavs.

Which is what makes this series so, so different than it was in the past:

This time around, we have no bad guys.

In the past, we were all rooting for the fun, refreshing Suns over the dull, mean Spurs. We were counting on Phoenix to prove to us that beauty can triumph, and we were all disappointed when ultimately it didn’t.

But this year? How can you be against these Spurs? How can you be against Tim Duncan, at age 34, a step slow defensively and much more prone to bad offensive outings, as he tries to get another one? How can you be against Manu Ginobili getting back on the court four minutes after breaking his nose and leading his team to victory? How can you be against Dejuan Blair as he proves that rebounding is 100% mental, 0% ACLs?

We’re in for an absolute treat. We just have to hope it isn’t taken from us. Between Steve Nash’s back, Robin Lopez’s return, Duncan’s knees, Manu’s nose and Parker’s everything, health can swing this series either way. And in a playoffs marred by injury-related swings, one would hate to see it affect such a potentially great series. A series which, as it seems right now, I have no idea who takes.

So many players have the ability to tip this thing either way. Jason Richardson has proven that when he’s on, the Suns win – just ask the Blazers. Amar’e could go 2005 on Duncan. Duncan could go 2005 on Amar’e. Manu, Parker and Hill can all get their points. Steve Nash can never be counted out. And please note, that almost 1000 words in, I have yet to mention Richard Jefferson, who might decide that he wants to play the kind of basketball we’ve become accustomed to seeing from him in New Jersey.

If I had to predict what happens, though – and I do, because I’m writing this – I go Spurs. Barely. Partially because they were my preseason Finals pick, and I’m a man of my word. Partially because with George Hill playing like this, Steve Nash has nobody to guard: Parker, Ginobili and Hill would all torch him. And do you really want him guarding the 6′7″ Jefferson, even as bad as he’s been? He can still score, as evidenced by his two good games against Dallas.

Mostly, though, it’s because of Duncan. Look, he’s slipping. He knows it. We know it. Not so much on offense – again, from November to January he was a monster – but on defense. And yet, you can’t bet against him. You just can’t. This could be his last chance to get the 5^th ring, to distinguish himself as the best of the 2000s (though, to be honest, he already did). And as much as one likes Jarron Collins – who really is a good defender once you get past the twin jokes – if the Spurs need a win, and Duncan is the one who has to step up, he will.

I love you, Phoenix Suns, and if you prove me wrong I will be ecstatic. It’s just that this time, if you lose, I’ll still be happy for the winner.

Spurs in 7.

Head over to Red’s Army to listen to this month’s episode.

We discuss how every Playoff series looks after one game and pontificate about Kevin Garnett, both in terms of the most recent incident that got him suspended for a game and, more generally, about whether or not he’s just kind of a dick. (Kelly Dwyer had a State of Union of KG-piece yesterday called “Why We Don’t Like Kevin Garnett Anymore,” which, while interesting and representative of the overall issue, delves way too far into armchair psychoanalysis for my liking.)

We also yell at each other about Amar’e/the Suns franchise, profess our love for Mavs/Spurs and make fun of Adam Morrison.

Ya know, the usual.

Here’s the line-up of this month’s participants:

• Michael De Leon of Project Spurs
• Jeff Garcia of Project Spurs
• Zach Harper of Talk Hoops, Cowbell Kingdom and Hardwood Paroxysm
• John Karalis of Red’s Army
• Glenn Moore of The Dugout Sports Show
• Matt Moore of Hardwood Paroxysm, NBA Fanhouse and NBC’s ProBasketballTalk
• Rey Moralde of  The No-Look Pass
• Jared Wade of here, Eight Points Nine Seconds and Hardwood Paroxysm

Pretty handsome crew. Particularly the last one.

I don’t think I actually speak all that much on the nonbasketball KG stuff in the podcast — mostly because I lack the motivation to care. But, for the record, I think most of the KG backlash is nonsense. He’s most likely a bit of a dick when he plays basketball, sure, but so were MJ, Larry Legend, Reggie and dozens upon dozens of other Hall of Famers. That doesn’t mean you have to like the guy, no, but I’m not exactly sure when we as fans started wanting to watch sports played only by clean-cut, model gentlemen.

Shouldn’t we spend our time praising genuine role models like Dikembe Mutombo and Dave Bing and save our scorn for legitimate malefactors like Jayson Williams and Donald Sterling? We really need to debate this incessantly? I guess it’s interesting perhaps. He is one of the best 25 players of all time and we do have cool YouTube clips of all his theatrics/transgression. But, really, I don’t have the time nor the inclination to come to any actual decisions about whether or not another grown man yelling and acting a little weird while playing a sport is a negative thing. /soapbox

(Funny photo though, right? It comes us from to the fantastic Doc Funk. The one where he looks at his watch is even better.)

(Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)

But like any good business monitoring its employees, the Suns organization wanted to know just how positive Steve is in a quantitative sense. As we know, if you can’t count it, you can’t measure it. Or something. I dunno. They said something like that in that management class I took that one time.

To this end, the Suns had their intern watch a game and count exactly ow many high fives Steve gives out in a game. And from this one-game sample size, they determined that Nash averages 239 high fives per game. That’s a lot of slapping.

In similar news, the Suns marketing department was able to inform us that Amar’e Stoudamire is the Suns player who received the most slaps on the ass during this game.

Congratulations, STAT.

In response, Amar’e replied, “What the heck?”

Grant Hill was similarly perplexed. “You kept track of how many times he touched another man’s butt?” asked Hill.

“No promo,” a Suns marketing representative did not add.

Video from Sun.com (h/t @AlexisGentry)

In other words, ouch.

I wrote more on the topic over at Hardwood Paroxysm today. Read that.

Also, yesterday, I wrote some stuff about Tyler Hansbrough’s vertigo-like affliction, which has become “officially troubling” in my eyes and will likely shut him down for the rest of his wasted rookie season in the eyes of his coach.

Yup, jolly good times in Pacerland — as always.

1. How Steve Nash Shines in Basketball — and Business

The gimmick throughout this Fast Company article by Chuck Salter is pretty dumb, but the content itself is pretty good. Basically, it breaks down how Steve Nash has gone from reluctant celebrity who turned up his nose at corporate endorsements and celebrity appearances to a guy who has embraced becoming a revenue-generator since realizing that he can do a ton of good in this world if he just had more capital and a bigger platform.

It’s basically the same philosophy that Jay-Z breaks down in “Moment of Clarity”:

I can’t help the poor if I’m one of them
So I got rich and gave back, to me, that’s the win/win

Obviously, “poor” is a relative term here but the basic premise is that while a guy like Steve Nash may seem ungodly rich to day-laborers like us, his basketball salary and status alone isn’t ever going to allow him to make the type of difference on this planet that he hopes he can. He needs Vitaminwater’s corporate backing. He needs to mold and then leverage the type of celebrity that things like playing in the NBA can’t offer alone. So he needs to go on Entourage and David Letterman. He needs to make movies for ESPN. Basically — and I know it sounds cheesy — he needs to turn himself into a recognizable brand that will entice people to open their wallets and corporate budgets to help support his causes (with the environment and fitness seeming to lead his agenda).

To quote Jay-Z again (he’s so wise), Steve Nash has started to look at his post-NBA life from a broader, more ambitious perspective:

I’m not a businessman; I’m a business, man

And this is why Nash is not only the funniest dude in the league — at least in public — he is also one of the few who might actually be worth looking up to. No, he’s not Dikembe Mutombo. But he seems to be try to do as much for other people as he has time for in between, ya know, that whole being an NBA All-Star thing.

To get to where he wants to be once his playing days are over, he will also be consciously making himself into a much bigger mainstream figure — but that’s just collateral damage.

That might be hard to believe in this cynical world where we presume everyone wants to be famous, but I believe the guy when he says he doesn’t really want to be in the spotlight.

What perplexes me more is why anyone would.

(AP Photo/Winslow Townson, File)

2. A Lament for Tall Guy

Matt Moore had a great conversation with his wife about Zydrunas Ilgauskas. Here’s the set-up:

Me: “I have great news!”

Paroxi-Wife: “You canceled League Pass and will now actually spend time and attention on me?!”

Me: “…”

Paroxi-Wife: “What is your good news? If this involves the word ‘trade exemption’ I’m going to stop listening now.”

Me: “The Cavs traded for Antawn Jamison!”

Paroxi-Wife: “…”

Me: “You know, the guy on the Wizards I’ve been ranting about? 20 and 8? Aaaan-TAWN Jamison?”

Paroxi-Wife: “….”

They go back and forth a little more and we find out that Paroxi-Wife is devastated to hear that Tall Guy, aka Big Z, got dealt. And then Matt skillfully puts what Ilgauskas means to the Cavs franchise all into perspective. I have to imagine that Zydrunas will be bought out by Washington and return to Cleveland for their Playoff run.

But, man, what if he doesn’t?

That would just suck.

3. Is Donnie Walsh Too Old For Us to Change His Nickname to “Zeke”?

To me, a Pacers fan and a Donnie Walsh apologist, I saw the unfortunate yet somewhat necessary inclusion of future draft picks to dump Jared Jeffries and acquire TMac’s expiring contract as something Donnie had to do. He was brought in before the 2008-09 season to fix a sinking ship, and he and the other powers that be decided that they were going to do whatever they could to fix the franchise’s salary cap situation, which was oh-so-memorably and colossally burnt to the ground via fiscal arson by Isiah Thomas. And this seemingly insolvable riddle of bloated albatrosses, nonproductive players and low-level assets all needed to be transformed into roster flexibility by May 2010. When Walsh was hired, it seemed like the only thing that could turn such turd into gold that quickly was alchemy.

As an outsider and an Indy fan who is genetically predisposed to hating the Knicks, even I was a little squeamish upon learning how much New York gave up just to dump Jared Jeffries and get far enough under the cap to be able to sign two max players this summer. But, still, Donnie Walsh was just doing his job. He was in a no-win situation, but had already committed to at least giving the team the possibility of being better aligned towards a 2011 resurgence. After going so far in the direction of “cap space or bust,” he had to go all in no matter the cost, right?

Well, even if the Knicks are now better off financially than at any other time in the last decade, some Knicks fans aren’t exactly willing to give management a pat on the back for mortgaging the future on a pipe dream.

Or at least not for the way they got there.

In this article, Kenneth Paul Drews of the inimitable Free Darko Presents: The Disciples of Clyde NBA Podcast (which is the best NBA podcast there is in my book) breaks down how the Knicks got to this position and notes a few perhaps major missteps along the way.

If you don’t care how the sausage is made then this is a good day to be a Knick fan.  They have lots of cap space for a deep free agent class, Eddy Curry’s expiring contract (for next year) to trade, two young quality rotation players (Chandler, Gallo), threetalented young wild cards (Sergio Rodriguez, Toney Douglas, Bill Walker), and a top tier coach (Mr. Pringles). For the first time in a decade, the Knicks are in good (if precarious) shape.

But as Ken shows, the way the sausage was made isn’t necessarily pleasant.

My condolences to KPD. Although more than anything, I’m just really looking forward to a Knick Summer of Discontent, during which they use all their cap space on TMac, Carlos Boozer and Rudy Gay.

It’s going to be glorious.

(Photo by Garrett W. Ellwood/NBAE via Getty Images)

4. Does LeBron Take Too Many 3’s? — An Analysis

Vince Grzegorek breaks down the main criticism against the one player that the Knicks certainly will not be signing this summer.

LeBron ranks 5th in the NBA in most 3’s attempted with 286 so far this year. Only Danilo Gallinari, Aaron Brooks, Peja Stojakovich, and Travor Ariza have more. 25.7% of LeBron’s field goal attempts are 3’s. 286 out of 1110.

His 35.3 shooting % on 3’s, however, ranks 77th in the league among qualified players. Make sense? Probably not, especially when you have Boobie Gibson (ranked 2nd in %), Anthony Parker (ranked 6th), and Mo Williams (ranked 8th) on your roster.

For what it’s worth, in the Cleveland’s 12 losses, LeBron averages 6.5 3-point attempts per game (season average of 5.2 attempts per game), and is connecting on only 33% of them (season average of 35.3%).

I’m definitely with Vince fundamentally here and do wish that LeBron would either penetrate or post up every time he touches the ball. This is a thoughtful, well-researched and level-headed way of showing why he should shoot fewer long jumpers. It’s a fact that’s pretty much impossible to dispute at this point. He takes too many long jumpers. Perhaps way too many.

Unfortunately, this same argument in the hands of most others just turns into “LEBRON SHOOTS TOO MUCH TREYS, BRO. KOBE’Z WAAY AWESOMEER. WIN A RING, LEBRICK, THAN WE TAALK. BUM.” Or, even worse, we get a slightly more high-level English version of the same “LeBron isn’t that good really” argument that people might actually take seriously for some reason.

We should all know that LeBron isn’t perfect. No player is or was. Not Bill Russell or MJ.

Look, I love me some Mamba, some CP3 and some Dwyane Wade, but LeBron is by far the best player on this planet. And while his minor flaws (let’s be honest — he’s shooting 35% from three, which is ultimately not killing a team) are worth discussing, let’s not over-magnify them to the degree that we lose sight of what’s really important: There is no other player in the world that gives you a better chance to win a basketball game than LeBron. And it’s not even remotely close.

We’re watching Haley’s Comet on a nightly basis. Let’s try to enjoy it, folks. Because I’m pretty sure that those of us who just sit back and gaze in amazement are having a much better time watching the best player dominate a league that is better than it has been in at least 20 years.

UPDATE: Kelly Dwyer has more to say on the issue. And much like Vince, very good stuff from KD, too.

5. In It to Win It

This month’s GQ has a great, must-read cover story on Kobe Bryant by JR Moehringer. Unlike the gimmicky format of the Nash piece, the one in this profile totally works. Honestly, it’s one of the better things I’ve ever read about Mamba (even if it’s a little over-flowery in a few places for my taste from a technical standpoint).

Since you made your way to this little site, you probably know most of the stuff that is discussed here about Kobe. Still, you should head over there and read all 4,000 words.

For those of you too lazy to do that, however,  here are the passages I enjoyed the most.

On his commute to work:

The second he’s aboard [the aircraft], seat belt clicked, the box with the pretty beige bow tucked beside him, the pilot lifts off. He gets vertical fast, banks hard at a forty-five-degree angle, soars north at 140 miles an hour. Bryant squints into the lowering sun, then looks down at all the teeming life below, the sprawling, striving, smog-shouldered city of Los Angeles. His city. From up here he could palm it like a basketball.

This is how the 31-year-old co-captain of the Lakers, the eleven-time All-Star, the four-time world champion, the most prolific and accomplished scorer currently drawing breath and an NBA paycheck, commutes. He takes a private helicopter from Orange County, where he lives with his wife and two children, to every home game. It’s a nice dash of glitz, a touch of showbiz that goes well with the Hollywood sign in the hazy distance. But sexy as it might seem, Bryant says the helicopter is just another tool for maintaining his body. It’s no different than his weights or his whirlpool tubs or his custom-made Nikes. Given his broken finger, his fragile knees, his sore back and achy feet, not to mention his chronic agita, Bryant can’t sit in a car for two hours. The helicopter, therefore, ensures that he gets to Staples Center feeling fresh, that his body is warm and loose and fluid as mercury when he steps onto the court.

If you make $23 million a year with your body, taking a helicopter to work is actually quite practical.

On his injuries:

With all its scars and aches, spasms and pulls, stingers and inflammations and hyperextensions, his body is a living record of his journey. From boy to man. From ball hog to team leader. From alleged narcissist to tormented perfectionist to apparent masochist. Every athlete knows pain, but Bryant’s body charts his unique combination of pain, passion, and virtuosic skill. His body explains him. Maybe better than he can.

The Redeem Team:

He haunted the Olympic Village, stared at the fastest and the strongest the way people stare at him. For once he didn’t feel alone with his priestly devotion to craft. He felt like a nomad reunited with his long-lost tribe.

On his “desire for privacy”:

His reticence, his desire for privacy, extends to the good stuff about himself as well as the bad. His reps urge him to speak more about his charitable works, like his fund to help victims of natural disasters in China or his partnership with After-School All-Stars, a program that tutors and mentors schoolchildren. You can be with Bryant for hours and hours and he won’t tell you about the cancer-stricken boy he took to Disneyland. They spent most of the day together, and when the boy died soon after, his mother phoned to say that the last time she saw her son smile was that magic afternoon with his idol.

On the ESP between him and Phil:

Bryant has become an “extension” of Jackson on the court. During one recent practice, Bryant told teammate Adam Morrison to take a higher position. “Not even point-five seconds after I said that, Phil says: ‘Adam, make sure you’re higher!’ Adam just kind of looks at me. I’m like, ‘We been together for a while.’ “

On his sleeping habits:

Every night he passes out around ten, then wakes feeling fully refreshed. He yawns, looks at the clock. Midnight. What the-? He’s been asleep only two hours. He’d love to sleep more, but his body is up, raring to go.

What does he do?

Watch TV, maybe a movie. He’s mad for Tarantino. (Especially the Kill Bill movies; he sees himself as a samurai, though he’s a kamikaze with his body.) Sometimes he goofs around on the computer…Around 4 a.m., he says, he’ll go back to bed and sleep until six, when his daughters get up. He likes to make them breakfast, and make them laugh, before heading to practice. Despite just two naps a night, he swears that he starts his days feeling rested.

There’s plenty more really good stuff in here. Go read it.

]]> http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/2010/02/23/stuff-i-read-and-enjoyed-featuring-steve-nash-as-a-business-man/feed/ 0 http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/2010/02/16/hes-100-canadian-%e2%80%94-as-are-his-tuxedos/ http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/2010/02/16/hes-100-canadian-%e2%80%94-as-are-his-tuxedos/#comments Tue, 16 Feb 2010 22:30:48 +0000 Jared Wade http://www.bothteamsplayedhard.net/?p=6480 Here we have Steve Nash rocking out for another Vitamin Water spot. This one certainly doesn’t match his earlier, genius Vitamin Water work, and the whole “Most Interesting Man in the World” parodies are a little played out, but the Canadian tuxedo showing up here makes it at least worth your 45 seconds.

Unless of course you’re an obstetrician. If so, seriously, go deliver the baby first. (video via @GoWhereHipHop)

Here’s a sample.

If the NBA wants to keep elevating the level of this contest, they need to bring in better — or at least more willing — talent. It’s not like your average sports fan knows who Shannon Brown or DeMar DeRozan is any more than The Air Up There or some obscure French dude with ridiculous springs. Nor do they care who the person dunking is if it isn’t someone who is already famous. Sure, the NBA wants to promote their young players and the occasional Nate Robinson will emerge to semi-stardom, but it’s not like even great performances from guys like Gerald Green turned them into anything more than footnotes on the All-Star Weekend Wikipedia page.

And one more teaser:

It took a while, but I have learned to accept that Zach Randolph has redeemed his career by becoming a high-caliber veteran who taught his teammates how to win rather than being just a career malcontent who brought sadness and orphan tears wherever he went. It’s weird. But I’m cool with it. What I was still not ready to see, however, was Z-Bo being the guy who would start playing defense in an All-Star Game and spur everyone else to start taking it seriously.

Head over to HP for the rest.

GIF via the inimitable @jose3030

UPDATE: This “virtual high five” from Deron Williams made for a pretty sweet photo and completely makes up for his whole “I’m a PG who didn’t know time/score/situation” thing when he unnecessarily fouled Dwayne Wade, who went to the line for a pair of go-ahead free-throws with like 20 seconds left in what was previously a tie game.

Evil Chris Bosh and Used Car Salesman Kaman are also both pretty great. Gotta love Chocolate Thunder, too.

Photo: by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images (via NBA Offseason)

(Photo by Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE via Getty Images)

It’s one of the better basketball books I have ever read, and part of its allure is that it is broken down into compartmentalized, stand-alone chapters, each of which details a different aspect of the game. No matter who you are, at least three or four of them will be compelling to you.

Some readers will be struck by the opening piece on “Killer Instinct” that psychoanalyzes Kobe Bryant. Others will no doubt love the anatomical breakdown of LeBron that catalogs the reasons why his alien-like exoskeleton and other physical gifts make 66% of NBA players think he is the most athletic player in the League. And perhaps up to a billion others will love the chapter on Yao, Shaq and the other “superbigs” who have graced the association.

The “thinking fan’s tour,” however, lies more so in some of the other chapters that may lack some of the name-brand caché provided by the Black Mamba and The King. I, for instance, grew up as a three-point specialist who patterned my game around Reggie Miller, so I was immediately drawn in by the chapter about the “Pure Shooter,” which features Ballard — a former D-3 college player and, by the sound of it, quite the shooter himself — squaring off in a three-point shootout with Steve Kerr. As Ballard explains, Kerr may still look like a 15-year-old paperboy (my words, not his), but he is in fact getting up there in years and rarely plays hoops anymore. And after such a long lay-off from competition — and pretty much, from even shooting around altogether — even Kerr is’t sure how many threes he can hit on the afternoon him and Ballard get together. But as we soon learn, a shooter is a shooter is a shooter is a shooter, and Kerr holds his own against the unexpectedly accurate journalist.

Even more cerebral than outlining the theory behind the difference between a pure shooter and a very good shooter is the chapter on defensive specialists. The shut-down defender profile centers on Shane Battier, a man who has become very famous around the internet hoops community ever since Moneyball author Micheal Lewis wrote this New York Times Magazine cover story on him. Like Kevin Youkilis was to Major League Baseball before him, Battier has become the poster child of a new breed of advanced statistical revolution in the NBA. Certain basketball analysts, scouts and even GMs have begun to advocate a new method of thinking about the game that prioritizes using every possession efficiently. In layman’s terms, this means shooting a high percentage, not turning the ball over, getting to the line and, if all that still doesn’t allow your team to make a shot, getting some offensive rebounds. This train of thought places a distinct value on each possession and judges teams — and players — by looking at “success per possession” more so than the traditional barometer of “points tallied.”

No executive has embraced this concept like the Rockets GM Daryl Morey. And no player has embraced it more than Shane Battier. Sure, all NBA insiders are now aware of the fact that (a) the layup, (b) the free-throw, and (c) the corner three-pointer are the “most efficient” ways to score in the NBA. But the degree to which guys like Battier have expanded the concept of making the offensive player do what they do worst the most makes for fascinating reading. Like Michael Lewis before him, Ballard gets exclusive access to the Rockets’ operations and the insights he learns and shares with readers while essentially job-shadowing Shane on back-to-back games where he guards Brandon Roy and LeBron James are alone worth the price of the book. (There’s about 20 minutes of conversation on this stuff in a podcast I did with Ballard earlier this week.)

There is much more, however, including two fine chapters that delve into the intricacies of rebounding and shotblocking. And while all this stuff is great, ultimately, the book’s real accomplishment is its ability to combine these interesting, nuanced takes on parts of the games that remain too-often overlooked in favor of free agent talk and moral finger-pointing with what can only be described as damn fine writing.

As much as I enjoyed reading insider perspectives of NBA athletes and coaches, my favorite aspect of the book was simply the way the stories were told and Ballard’s ability to flip words. As a writer myself, I often found myself being more impressed than simply informed or entertained — although I was certainly both of those things as well.

So with the hopes that I’m not overextending the fair-use provision of a book review, I’ll just end this thing now with my favorite eight passages from the book rather than trying to weave them into an extended, more ambitious book review that would, ironically, probably just illustrate — glaringly — my inability to write about sports as well.

And really, the excerpts below are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to good writing — let alone great, throwaway anecdotes and thought-provoking, stellar chapters about some of the sport’s most fundamental aspects. (Cop it here on on Amazon.)

• “I can spend an hour talking to someone at a dinner party and never make the kind of real, true connection that comes from running one seamless give-and-go with a stranger during a pickup game.”

• “When [Ben Wallace] did jump, he had a tendency to do so with arms and legs at 45-degree angles, like an Afro-bedecked version of Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man.”

• “I asked [LeBron] James what he thought it would feel like when he could no longer jam. He talked about watching his sons grow up, then made a joke and finally said, ‘Maybe that will happen one day,’ as if he might ward off aging like it was just another weak double team.”

• “To talk to Barbosa is to receive the equivalent of a Steve Nash infomercial.”

• “After a pregame team meeting, Battier is back on the court for layup lines. While other players practice crowd-pleasing dunks, joke around and chat with players on the other team, Battier runs his layups with precision, claps his hands and, inside, quietly dies. This, he says, is by far his least favorite part of the night.”

• “To watch [Yao] shoot is to see the motion at it’s most refined. He keeps the ball high and releases it with his right hand in a short flicking motion, as if playing Pop-a-Shot. He does not jump and barely even moves his legs. His form is entirely replicable, almost robotic. By contrast, when [Rafer] Alston begins shooting jumpers 15 minutes later, his form is an intricate series of bodily tics and jerks. He takes the ball from the floor and whips it to his shoulder, then splays his elbow forward, leaping and catapulting the ball. It does not look as if Alston is even engaged in the same activity.”

• “Afterward, the two men headed in opposite directions: Michael Jordan into the air to celebrate and Ehlo to the floor, where he covered his face, as if he’d been teargassed.”

• “Those who excel at foul-free shot-blocking achieve it in different ways. Mourning and Mutombo waited near the rim, like human gargoyles; Okafor uses lateral quickness and anticipation; Andrei Kirlenko, the spider-armed Utah sixth man, prefers to come from behind the shooter after hiding “in the shadow of my teammate,” as he puts it. And [Dwight] Howard, well, he has the advantage of not being human.”

Thus, below, for your listening pleasure, is “Episode 3: The One Where Chris Ballard’s Publicist Doesn’t Probably Vet the Person Requesting an Interview.”

In all seriousness, it was a rather good discussion, if I do say so myself. And if you’re a person who is reading about the NBA on the internet, you will probably enjoy all the talk about Shane Battier, Daryl Morey and the Rockets’ use of advanced statistics/rigorous game-charting. We spend about 20 minutes on that stuff and also recount Ballard’s three-point shootout with Steve Kerr, talk about his D-3 glory days at Pomona College and go back and forth on the Dreaded 10 Questions of Stupidity.

Enjoy. Subscribe through iTunes. Rank/review us there. And tell your friends.

(Photo by Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)