I’ve proclaimed myself a basketball purist, so it is incumbent on me to define this & then prove it as a sportswriter. Really I’m a sportsblogger, which is a form of sportswriter, but different in that bloggers aren’t held to a corporate standard or code-of-practice which binds sportswriters into a political straitjacket, severely restricting them from expressing their truest & deepest thoughts.
So much has to be censored & covered-up, in the name of fake news, which means corporate media sportswriters only scratch the surface on the most serious stories. Their task is often to keep it vague, and then forget it & move on. Current stories like ‘NFL ownership colludes to suppress QB salaries, then covered-up by NFLPA legal representatives’ don’t play well in the mainstream media. ESPN has just announced the purchasing of the NFL Network, so there’s no way ownership-union collusion can be a story to investigate & feature any more than professionally required.
The most compelling sports stories are usually discovered (& always best-analyzed) by bloggers & other independent entities these days. Virtually everyone promotes themselves on social media, which organically helps bloggers over corporate sportswriters whom we’ve heard from too much already. We all know they have very little to tell us despite all their Hollywood access & face time on Network cameras.
Network (1976) is the best Hollywood film ever. If you want to talk film with me then start there, otherwise you’re shit on movies. That’s basketball trash talking on cinema. Notice how it is concise & directly to the point. That’s how you win at a fast-moving game like basketball.
I’ve loved this game since Bird & Magic, and of course I was a Celtics fan back then. I hated the 76ers & Lakers, until the Celtics won three championships. Then Len Bias tragically died and these Celtics were finished winning titles. It got to the point where I accepted the greatness of Magic Johnson. That junior, junior sky hook was undeniable in its beauty & championship finality. Larry Bird’s shooting and overall play made black players give their respect to white dudes who can play. That was only part of how they transformed the game of basketball.
Basketball is a game where it is accepted by all serious participants that the black players are the best. When it was Larry Bird taking the last shot, it scared opponents to death, because they went in so often, and Larry would look at everyone with an expression that said, “I knew it was going in. What did you expect?!” That’s legendary hall-of-fame trash talking from a master, the first time a white guy could really do it.
Michael Jordan became the ultimate hoops master, the perfect basketball player. What does this mean? It means he has no weaknesses in his game, every aspect is the highest level of excellence & durability: scoring, passing, rebounding, defense, making your teammates better, being a team leader, winning, handling the media & being an ambassador for the game without claiming to be perfect. It takes all that & more to be the best and MJ did that for Generation X. He was the first modern rockstar athlete who you compare to Tiger Woods, Roger Federer & LeBron James.
Before Michael Jordan, sports heroes were different. They were allowed their privacy because they were so revered by sportswriters, as compared to the TMZ paparazzi media we’ve had since the rise of ESPN. In baseball Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax & Bob Gibson would be treated much more harshly today by a media industry that is looking to build you up to tear you down. We shouldn’t do that to our sports heroes, and I’m a sportsblogger who understands & expresses that. Too many sportswriters have egos and want to make the game about themselves. For example the issue of PEDs & MLB hall-of-fame voting, it is very political with stubborn intransigence among a class of ‘old school’ sportswriters who are eligible to vote, but maliciously shut out worthy candidates.
The NBA is a much different game today because of the great players I’ve mentioned from the 1980’s. The 1992 Dream Team is unquestionably the best basketball team ever assembled. Being on that team is equivalent to winning a NBA championship, so Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Chris Mullen, John Stockton & Karl Malone earn that respect. They are ALWAYS to be addressed as champions in NBA terms. What they did in Barcelona transformed the game. Opposing players were asking for pictures, sincere handshakes & autographs before their games because they knew they were going to lose and were simply honored to be on the court with them. No one had, or has since, seen anything like that in Olympic competition. It’s the athletes who create these-type moments that catapult them into the best-ever discussions, in any sport.
Here’s a digression that will eventually lead back to modern basketball, I promise. I’ve been a fan of women’s soccer since before the start because I played with girls in our hometown leagues as a kid and through high school. Summer leagues were more relaxed and you could pick your coach which was important because high school & traveling league teams were monopolized by local sports politics, with coaching dads often prioritizing college scholarships for their boys over developing the best players and building a winning style of play that can eventually compete with Europe & South America. That still hasn’t happened and that’s why the USMNT loses.
The World Cup is in North America next summer, so the USMNT gets the automatic hosting invite and didn’t have to qualify. If they had, they wouldn’t have made it. The next big day is when the World Cup teams in the 12 groups are revealed and the brackets are set. Lots of betting worldwide on the World Cup. It’s bigger than the Super Bowl because it’s only once every four years and football/futbol is the world game. The world stops when the ball is rolling in the World Cup.
As for the USWNT, their next World Cup is in 2027 and there will be no issue for them qualifying, they’ll again be a favorite but no longer THE favorite. The USWNT has slipped from it’s highest of highs in WC 1999 to settle in as a global force in women’s soccer. The best coaching in US soccer eventually realized the men were hopeless, so they gravitated into the women’s game. It was that dynamic that help US women’s soccer win the world.
Their best player from the start in 1991 was Michelle Akers. Mia Hamm was the first Gen X rockstar female athlete. They all had something you liked so they were like the Beatles in the summer of 1999, and after that it was cool to be a soccer mom. Soccer in the 1980’s didn’t have enough girls in most towns to have their own league, so they had to play with the boys.
The 1999 USWNT became the Dream Team of their sport. Now girls in every small American town have girls soccer leagues. What was achieved was a social revolution and what is important to understand is that an entire society was involved in it. Everyday people were inspired by this team of determined young women, and used their glorious victory to get something they didn’t even know they wanted for their children. The revolution was inspired by sports stars, but achieved by all the “little people.” Understanding that is the art & science of dialectics.
This is why I prefer the USWNT to the WNBA. They did it more organically and under greater adversity, where the WNBA has had huge promotional assistance from the NBA & its corporate sponsors from the start. Since the USMNT has always sucked, the soccer women had to do it on their own, which is much more impressive to me. Soccer & tennis are the two sports I most enjoy watching women compete, outside of the Olympics.
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My all-time rotating basketball five by position: PG- Magic Johnson/Steph Curry; SG- Michael Jordan/Kobe Bryant; SF- LeBron James/Larry Bird; PF- Karl Malone/Kevin Durant; C- Kareem Abdul Jabbar/Wilt Chamberlain. You get two bench guys and three reserves on a NBA team. Tim Duncan is one and the rest are debatable among a dozen or so great great players. You want Phil Jackson & Gregg Popovich coaching, I’ve always loved Hubie Brown, Chuck Daly, Doc Rivers & Steve Kerr too. They know the game, understand what it takes to win, and always respect the talent and get the most out of it by treating them as men first.
If you want to become a good basketball player then learn the rules. Become an official and learn the game from a different perspective and get paid for it. You’ll play a lot smarter after doing this because you’ll know how & why officials make calls– good & bad. Handling the officials is a skill & artform and no one was better at it than Michael Jordan. This video is the only known instance of MJ getting handled in trash talk, and Magic Johnson still half-apologizes for it– because he knows. Larry just laughs. This is as good as it gets.
Basketball is the easiest game to manipulate/fix through corrupt officiating. Too many team fouls and the other team gets free throws (easy points to a good team) for the rest of that period. Too many individual fouls and you’re either on the bench or disqualified. No other sport has this as such a big part of the game that determines winning & losing. Soccer is the next easiest sport to manipulate through officiating, but fans seem to recognize it quicker so it’s less of a constant at the highest professional levels. VAR and replay officiating have cut down on bad calls determining the outcome, but also have slowed down the game.
The NBA has had officiating problems since before the ABA/NBA merger in 1976. The NBA allowed the ABA to raid its top officials early in their existence, which helped the ABA gain legitimacy with its players and hurt the NBA. If you know you have straight & professional officiating, then you can actually play. If you have an incompetent officiating crew, then it’s hopeless and good players will quit on it one way or another. No point busting your ass only to get cheated with every whistle. I’m not MJ, I can’t overcome bad officiating by being ultra-dominate to a point where the officials have to respect my game. That’s how the rest of us who aren’t superhuman approach playing against bad officials. It’s part of the game, no question.
As far as not watching the NBA, the Shaq/Kobe Lakers early 2000’s titles were all tainted by league-biased officiating, favoring the Lakers every step of the way to three consecutive NBA titles, before it blew apart. It was a political ideology of the era (9/11) that insisted on physical dominance being the most rewarded trait that biased NBA officiating in favor of Shaq & his power game. I always thought Tim Duncan was the superior big man to Shaq. He worked hard and was a better teammate, a true quiet leader– the rarest of rare birds.
There was an aesthetic quality to Tim Duncan’s game that really impressed basketball purists. There was no waste in how he did things. Economical equals five NBA titles with the right coach. Critics called his game boring. The lesson there is don’t listen to the critics. Tim Duncan was the last great college player (Wake Forest) to stay four years when he could have been a top pick earlier. The San Antonio Spurs were the perfect franchise for him, an organization that understood him as the main guy to replace Dream Team center David Robinson when he retired. The right organization builds a dynasty around that by properly valuing his contribution to winning and showing him contract respect by never letting him get close to leaving.
On the other side of the management scale, Shaq from LSU went to the Orlando Magic in 1992, which proceeded to foolishly squander its championship aspirations in that era despite have (on paper) what it took to win a NBA title. They had Chris Webber as the #1 overall pick to go with Shaq in 1993, and potentially replace him in case he bolted for Hollywood– which he did. Weak management in Orlando listened to Shaq lobby for Penny Hardaway, and Magic management let their superstar player make their trade, dealing away the best player in the draft in Webber, a sophomore from the University of Michigan’s legendary Fab Five.
When Michael Jordan came out of his first retirement to re-join the Bulls and kick every team in the Eastern Conference’s ass, that was when Shaq finally went to the Lakers as a free agent and trashed Penny & the Orlando Magic as he left. When Penny hurt his knee and Orlando Magic team physicians were too incompetent to diagnose & understand the serious nature of his injury, Penny Hardaway was finished as an All-Star player. They didn’t do too well with Grant Hill either, all covered in this classic write-up of this tragic franchise.
Brian Hill, Chuck Daly, Doc Rivers & Stan Van Gundy are all above average NBA head coaches (at least) which needs to be respected. None of them could win a title despite having hall-of-fame dominate big men in two different eras: Shaq in the 1990’s & high school #1 overall pick Dwight Howard in the 2000’s. That’s organizational failure starting with cheapskate ownership and its incompetent GM’s, first & foremost. They had great players and all the resources needed to be a dynasty, but couldn’t figure out winning and still haven’t. They have another chance now with Paulo Banchero, another miraculous #1 overall pick that fell in their laps (call it NBA Magic), but I don’t like the guys they have around him so color this central Florida native skeptical on the Orlando Magic for a NBA title. Salary cap aprons really limit a modern NBA franchise’s ability to maintain championship rosters, meaning ‘windows to win’ are shorter, tougher and less predictable than ever.
If it happens for the Magic, it would be like how the Bucks got lucky in 2022. You need a great player, some serious guys around him, good luck & full health. They all count the same when you do it, dominant or lucky. It’s so tough to win so it’s celebrated as greatness as it should be in any integrated & competitive era. Can you imagine the NBA without blacks or foreign players today? Just watch a few YouTube videos and you’ll see it’s unwatchable by modern standards, NBA & NCAA. Diversity is good for everything is the lesson basketball teaches us all.
To understand the greatness of Steph Curry requires respect for ‘old school’ to be blended with an appreciation of ‘new school’ when referring to style of play in professional basketball. When the NBA began after WWII, it was all-white & had only has two levels of scoring: the painted area and an outside shot. Both counted for two points, but since it’s easier to score the closer you get to the hoop, an inside shot in the painted area was always preferred as a winning strategy. Coaches, announcers & analysts harped on this repeatedly, so you couldn’t get past it.
The ABA (1967-76) had the three-point shot from the start and its outside shooters embraced it. Boston Celtics GM (& league power broker) Red Auerbach was against the 3-point with the NBA-ABA merger, but when he acquired the draft rights to Larry Bird in 1978 he changed his mind and the 3-point shot has been in the NBA since the 1979-80 season. Larry Bird was immediately the best 3-point shooter in the game and changed how NBA players & coaches thought about that shot as a weapon. Back then it wasn’t used enough to be considered as a consistent source of offense. That came with Reggie Miller of the Indiana Pacers and his era. Ray Allen is the other hall-of-fame sharp-shooter in the pre-Steph Curry era. Their three-balls were now a potent source of offense on championship level teams.
What the 3-pointer did was create a ‘third level’ of scoring offense, where you can get 3 points by making a shot behind the line. This opened the game up for little guys (under 6’5″) who can shoot, which is always fun & exciting to watch as a basketball fan. SGA of OKC has mastered the mid-range, the area between the 3-point line and the painted area. Jimmy Butler is another guy who has that mid-range game and can finish at the rim. The 3-point shot has caused a lot of young players (Gen Y & Gen Z) to mistakenly abandon the mid-range. There are plenty of clean scoring opportunities in the mid-range, without have to absorb all that contact you get taking it to the hoop. A good mid-range game is a career-extender at any level of play.
What Steph Curry did was create a ‘fourth level’ of offense, well-beyond the 3-point line. You can’t give Steph Curry a wide-open 30-footer, he’ll make that shot consistently and if he gets hot the other team is finished– at any point in the game. Draymond Green sets a solid screen just past half court and the defense is in trouble. No basketball player has ever created such fear & panic from a screen set just past half-court. That’s how far the ‘fourth level’ extends out from the 3-point line.
Everyone from Luka Dončić to Caitlin Clark are prodigies of the Steph Curry ‘new style’ of play. Big men now handle the ball & shoot 3’s, when that was discouraged or forbidden by head coaches back in the day. Quick shots are okay now because advanced metrics have proven you might not get a better look so take the shot. No need to make your team work longer & harder to get essentially the same (or a worse) shot. Hubie Brown & Tex Winter always understood this, but they were in the minority in the profession of basketball coaching.
This ‘fourth level’ creates more opportunities for little guys with skill. For big guys, they are considered & referred to as ‘wing players’ instead of forwards in modern basketball terminology. They need to be long, quick & athletic. Their job is to rim protect and cover out to the 3-point line on defense, and be a vice versa threat on offense. Centers are thicker today, all can shoot 3-pointers, and need to be good passers to help their team on offense. Wing players are more shot-blocking conscious than ever, so center dominance of the Shaq/Wilt variety isn’t really possible in today’s NBA. The level of grinding & physicality creates a big man preference towards skilled mid-range & 3-point shooting over power basketball in the painted area. This reduces wear-and-tear on the body, and saves energy for when it is needed late in the game & season.
Health is a skill, and staying healthy in such a grinding game as the NBA requires hard work and serious maintenance. LeBron James is the ‘old man’ of the NBA at age 40, yet he has maintained his body at the highest level of basketball fitness. He went straight from high school, at age 18 into the NBA, and now you can’t do that anymore. When they change rules because of your talent, and fans are still amazed at it over 20 years later, that’s true greatness.
Basketball is a trash talking game. Every sport has its form of discourse between the competitors, but basketball is a fast moving game that only allows a series of split seconds & brief pauses to say what’s on your mind, and if you hesitate, the moment is gone and the other guy might get hot from there on which really shuts down your trash talking ability. That’s why so many young players start trash talking from their first made shot, because they know they might not see another one go in, so they’re talking like they are Kobe Bryant. As a rule: If you don’t have the skills & ability to back it up, then it’s usually best to check your trash talk.
The best way to shut down trash talking opponents is to play good defense. Shut them down, steal the ball, block their shot, fake them into travel violations, etc, and they’ll get real quiet. Defense is ~15% physical technique with the rest being heart, hustle & brains. All great defenders are among the smartest players. They know the rules, as well as all the tricks they can get away with and how to work the officials. And how to trash talk.
The US men’s team lost to the USSR in the 1988 Olympics because basketball is a team game. The US had the most-talented players, but they were up against professional teams from Europe that had been together for years. Playing as a team is the ultimate difference maker in competitive basketball. This filters down to high school, AAU & even YMCA leagues.
Unless there is a player who is exponentially better than everyone else on the court, generally speaking it’s the side that plays most as a team that wins the game. If you have basketball talent, but don’t help your teammates, then you create a ceiling for that team’s success because it’s all about the individual ego. Speaking of egos in basketball, corrupt and/or bad officiating can skew any game into unwatchable madness. There are plenty of (too many) out of control egos in the ranks of basketball officiating.
This is how I view basketball from an amateur perspective. I’m an amateur in the sense that I’m not paid for any of this, I publish here because I love the game and believe these thoughts are worthy of your consideration. You don’t have to have played the game professionally to know the game, you just have to study & apply yourself at it and you can learn many things about yourself and the world we live in.
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