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For many Americans, their long national nightmare is over--at last, the NBA's ultramarathon season is done. So, they say, the older, slower, earthbound Dallas Mavericks defeated the hard-driving, high-flying Miami Heat? Hoop-dee-friggin'-do! We didn't particularly like last fall's big-bang explosion and subsequent clumping together of binary stars LeBron James and Dwyane Wade and their satellite Chris Bosh, they say, but really, who cares? NBA basketball is a game of too many isos and too much rough play in the post by huge men sporting too many tats, with too many uncalled fouls and travels, although calling them would chop up the game and make watching it even more aggravating. Let us spectators escape the world of the shot clock and enjoy TV casts of leisurely outdoor pastimes like baseball, with its sun-splashed green and angled sward, or golf, with its 18 grassy, tree-lined lanes leading to undulating greens protected by sparkling water and gleaming white sand traps, and let us look forward to the clashes of football's military formations on precisely-lined gridirons, clashes that begin in late summer's warmth, segue into fall's crisp afternoons or mild rains, and end on frozen tundras in cold winds and occasional snow showers. How, they ask, can a septuagenarian whose days are clearly numbered waste precious time on NBA basketball?
Beats me. Geneticists have not yet identified a basketball gene, but if they want to examine my DNA for clues, I'll certainly volunteer a sample. I enjoy watching baseball, golf, and football, but for some unexplainable reason I can never get too much of basketball. My love for the game began in fourth grade when my parents bought me my own ball, a cheap leather-covered bladder with laces that made it bounce crazily. We didn't have a basket at our house on Maple Street, but I would go three doors down to fellow Maple Street All-Star (so we dubbed ourselves) Dick Curry's place and shoot at his hoop. At night my brother Mike and I would play in the room we shared. Stripped to our underpants and sleeveless undershirts, our makeshift uniforms, we went one-on-one with a sponge rubber ball the size of a baseball, shooting at an imaginary basket above the lintel of the bedroom door. One day at a Cub Scout meeting, about the time I was a Wolf struggling to get my Bear (how bad I was at knot-tying, woodcarving, and other handicrafts!), Den Chief Alex Pettersen asked us to respond in roll call by naming our favorite sport. All the other guys were saying baseball or football, but when he called "Booty" (my boyhood nickname was Booty because I admired a UW basketball player from Everett named Boody Gilbertson [we used the "t" rather than the "d" because that's how our ears heard it coming over radiocasts of the Husky games; anyway, in those days "booty" to us meant only pirate treasure--we'd never heard of "shaking our booty" or being "bootylicious"], I surprised myself and the others by saying "Basketball." What was that about? No Edmonds grade-schoolers said basketball was their favorite sport in those days! Anyway, I went on to play high school ball, coach high school ball for 25 years, and gym-rat twice a week into my fifties. I still play whenever I get the opportunity (I work on my shooting drills at LA Fitness and play in pickup games if others show up), attend local high school games during the winter, and of course watch as many televised college and pro games as I can. Fortunately, I multitask (and my new iPad is making that easier than ever before) because I do spend hours and hours in the company of college and pro announcers, analysts, and color commentators like Bob Knight, Digger Phelps, Dick Vitale,Jay Bilups, Bill Raftery, Jimmy Dykes, Marques Johnson, Ernie Kent, Clark Kellogg, Doris Burke, Heather Cox, Rachel Nichols, Craig Seger, Hubie Brown, Eddie Johnson, Gary Bender, Steve Kerr, Mike Fratello, Mark Jackson, Reggie Miller, Keven McHale, Michael Wilbon, Magic Johnson, Charles Barkley, Kenny Smith, Ernie Johnson, Marv Albert, Gus Johnson, Kevin Calabro, et al.
Sometimes the company is good. Brown is an analyst to my taste. He goes well beyond the obvious, doesn't put down players, coaches, or officials, points out pieces of action that he approves of ("Now I like the staggered screen for Korver here"), comes armed with loads of statistics ("We know that Howard is averaging 2.8 blocks a game"), has plenty to say without hogging airtime. Albert is an announcer from the school of cool whose terse signature phrases I never tire of: "Wade gets the step," "Duncan going glass," "Allen from downtown," "Bryant able to elevate over Marion," "Re-JECT-ed by Garnett," "James on FIRE!," "Rose on the step-back," "Nowitski with the fadeaway--YES!" He enjoys the game yet maintains a slight ironic distance from it. At times he will slyly try to pit one of his commentating colleagues against the other, and it was he who first sardonically called Fratello, who was busy diagramming a play for the viewers, "the czar of the Telestrator." Calabro is verbally creative ("Flying chickens in the barnyard!"), Marques Johnson is wry, Smith insightfully contrarian, Barkley enjoyable blunt. But many of the others are obvious or repetitive or preachy or scolding. Vitale, the bobblehead doll, has become a parody of himself. Phelps can hardly utter a sentence without using the phrase "Get it done" ("Too many turnovers--that's not gonna get it done," "They're giving up too many offensive boards--that's not gonna get it done," "They made their free throws down the stretch and they got it done"). If I had a grande drip or tall mocha for every time Jackson and Miller channel the worst of all their old coaches and start haranguing ("You can't take that shot!", "You can't settle for the jumper," "You can't shoot so early in the shot clock," "You can't turn the ball over in that situation," "You've got to take care of the basketball"), I'd never have to pull out my Starbucks gold card again. And I cringe during all of the sideline interviews between quarters and at halftime because they are so horribly embarrassing for coach, interviewer, and audience alike. There's the "feeling" question--"Take us through the emotions you were feeling at that point"--followed by the unfelt response: "I was pleased--but we still have a long way to go" or "I was upset--fortunately we still have a long way to go." There's the overly general question--"What about the defense?" or "Are you satisfied with your offense?"--followed by the overly general answer: "We need to tighten up the defense--fortunately there's a long way to go" or "The offense has been OK so far--but we've got a long way to go." There's the "how much" question--"How important was it to go on that 8-0 run at the end of the quarter?" or "How big was Durant's three right there?"--and its inevitable answer: "Pretty important" or "Pretty big," followed by "But there's a long way to go." And there's the overly specific question that answers itself--"LeBron said he had to get more involved in tonight's game, and we've seen him driving hard to the hoop, taking open shots, dishing the ball to teammates when he's double-teamed, rebounding on both ends of the floor, getting in passing lanes and making deflections, blocking shots, and helping out on defense; so has he become more involved?"--leaving the interviewee with nothing to say but "Yes. But there's a long way to go."
More importantly, no matter who the broadcast crew, NBA players throughout the season demonstrate superb skills that continually amaze and delight, and, in the playoffs at least, the quality and drama of the games are generally first-rate. This year, there were several intriguing themes: MVP Derrick Rose and the Chicago Bulls seeking revenge after being spurned by LeBron James, who chose instead to go to Miami; Boston, San Antonio, and Los Angeles, all with aging, fading stars, struggling valiantly to remain among the league's preeminent teams and refusing to go gently into that good night; talented but callow Oklahoma City pushing its way almost to the top; Dallas, with its one great scorer and core of more-than-competent journeymen desperate to take advantage of a rare window of opportunity to win a championship; and Miami, with its three self-recruited stars, which seemed finally, at playoff time, to be playing better than all other teams. Was I glad that, ultimately, Dallas defeated Miami for the championship? Yes. But not because of any antipathy toward the James-Wade-Bosh triumvirate. The Mavs' coach, Rick Carlisle, ordinarily rather subdued, exulted rather pompously after his team won, "We knew that it was very important that we win this series because of what the game is about and what the game should stand for." Presumably he meant that (a) it was wrong for three superstars to, by their own design, join forces and gang up against the rest of the NBA and (b) Dallas played as a team, not as individuals. I like Carlisle. I think he's brought excellent defensive intensity and discipline to the Mavs. And I was able to overcome my distaste for Mark Cuban, Dallas' epitome of the meddling owner, because of the pleasure I take in the unique greatness of Dirk Nowitski, the laconic stoicism of Jason Kidd, the versatility of pogo-sticking Shawn Marion, the jitterbugging ability of undersized J.J. Barea to penetrate the lane, and the Seattle roots of Jason Terry. But I think Carlisle should shun such pontificating. For one thing, the owners and general managers of all teams try to amass, within the framework of the salary cap, as many stars as they can. Cuban has tried to get great players for years and this season had two of them--Nowitski and Caron Butler--until Butler got hurt, forcing him to miss the playoffs. Boston had a great run with its three luminaries--Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen--as did L.A. with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, and the Andrew Bynum-Lamar Odom combination. And New York has now picked up two big guns--Amare Stoudemire and Carmelo Anthony--and is aggressively looking for a third. The only difference between Miami and the other teams is that the initiative came from the players themselves. Nothing wrong with that, in my view. Let the humble multimillionaire workers of the world unite! Further, the Miami team was more than just those three stars. It was well-constructed, with a nice balance of role-playing defenders and rebounders (Udonis Haslem, Zydrunas Ilgauskas) and shooters (Mike Miller, Mario Chalmers, Eddie House), and the stars were willing to take less money themselves in order to make that possible. Miami also played together as a team, every bit as much as Dallas did. Statistically, they had the best defense in the league during the regular season, and they held Dallas below its season averages in the playoffs. Their schemes were good. They jammed Nowitski, bodied him hard and took away his space with extra defenders, and rotated quickly to close out on shooters. In fact, in the two games that Miami won, Dallas got very few open looks from outside because of the determination and speed of the Miami defenders. Coach Eric Spoelstra, a protegee of Pat Riley's, had a well-taught squad. It seemed inevitable that they would prevail. And that, finally, was the problem. After winning at Dallas to go up 2-1, the Heat lost its intensity. As he huddled with teammates for a last word before the tipoff of the fourth game, James, knowing that the camera was on him, said, "Even though we're up 2-1, I feel like our backs are to the wall. We've got to play like our backs are to the wall." However, there was absolutely no conviction in his voice. He was going through the motions, saying the politically correct thing. He and his teammates, one could tell, felt that, after all the work in gathering the personnel and putting them together and sorting out roles and overcoming the adversity of several slumps during the regular season, then playing very efficiently in the first three series of the playoffs, things were destined to work out. Not work out if they played their hearts out but work out because they were the best, they had it coming to them. They had prevailed so far and they still had the home court advantage--what was not to like? They had that cliched "sense of privilege" that Americans detest. They lacked that cliched "sense of urgency" needed to beat a tough team. Not that they dogged it. They played hard--but not quite with a necessary sense of desperation. They did not have enough fear of losing. They felt that there was always another game or another possession for them to establish themselves. Spoelstra helped feed this feeling, I believe. His Xs and Os were good, his substitution patterns were fine, but he was a little too steady and relaxed, too accepting of mistakes, too new-age certain that if they all kept calm things would turn out well. (In mid-season, in a game where the Heat was playing poorly, Spoelstra called timeout and James, walking toward the bench, shoulder-bumped him without apology. Spoelstra should have sat him down and ripped him right then. He didn't; in fact, he brushed off the incident in post-game interviews.) There's often much to be said for a coach being cool and reassuring; many rant unnecessarily over trivial matters. But this overconfident team did not need to be reassured; it needed a coach like the Spurs' Greg Popovich to put the fear of losing into it. Even after the final loss, Spoelstra avoided analysis. He remained placid, showing no sign of the burning pain of failure. He said they all needed time to "decompress," time to "heal," time to "process." If
Spoelstra had asserted himself more on the bench and insisted that James assert himself more on the floor, they could have spent the summer celebrating, not processing. The more desperate team won.
Anyway, it's over. So how will I spend NBA-less summer hours? Watching the WNBA, of course. Some games will be shown on ESPN, some on NBA TV, some will be streamed on individual team websites. I'll be tuning in either on the big screen or on my iPad. (I've downloaded the app that gets me access to games all across the country.) There are many intriguing story lines to follow this season. Will last year's success spoil the Seattle Storm? Will Lauren Jackson ever return to health and form? Will the Phoenix Mercury figure out how to put dogged defense together with their high-powered offense? Will the Los Angeles Sparks be able to overcome yet another injury to Candace Parker? Will the addition of powerful rookie Danielle Adams be enough to carry the San Antonio Silver Spurs to the top? Will the addition of all-around talent Maya Moore be all that Minnesota needs? Can sweet-shooting Katie Douglas carry the Indiana Fever? They may lack the size and strength of the NBA men, but these women can play. The action they'll provide will be enough for this basketball junkie to get himself through the summer.
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