Durant = playoffs, Oden = conference finals

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[From Stephen B. Snyde...]

Poor Man's Commish doesn't usually let me argue about NBA teams and what they should do, because normally we like to leave the rantin' and ravin' to the myriad of blogs out there, but when I brought this up, he didn't think anybody had touched on it, at least not the way I'm about to.

Now that Portland and Seattle are #1 and #2 in this year's deep NBA Draft, which will lead to this year's best Vegas Summer League ever, you have to be asking yourself: Greg Oden or Kevin Durant?

Ballaz everywhere will, of course, lean towards Durant because we can all "be like Kevin". You have to be much taller than everybody else around you to be like Greg. And it's hard to pass on a guy who scored 30 ppg in the college format. What if Oden is to Sam Bowie as Durant is to Michael Jordan?

But haven't we seen enough in the NBA Playoffs this year? You look at the Warriors and you go, "Plenty of swingmen. They need a Carlos Boozer, Kevin Garnett, or Elton Brand. They need a tall guy in the middle who can score, rebound and draw defenders to kick out." You look at the Suns and you go, "Something's wrong with the system. The Spurs closed down everything and let Amare Stoudemire get his. The Suns need another Amare." You look at the Spurs and you go, "Who the heck can guard Tim Duncan and not be forced into a double-team?"

Now, there are plenty of teams that merely need a Durant to get to the playoffs. Or a Yi Jianlian, who is simply a freak-of-nature inside-out pick a la Dirk Nowitzki. In fact, we've already seen the better playoff teams neutralize opposing fives made up of mini-Durants (think Leandro Barbosa and Stephen Jackson in their team systems) and, of course, MVP Dirk.

Remember, it's a team game. Granted, Durant maybe can disrupt a Jazz, Spurs, or Pistons defense enough to significantly alter their pack-it-in styles. But that seems like more of a risky prediction as we sit on the verge of the NBA Finals these next couple weeks.

If you want any chance of getting to the conference finals, you must pick Oden.

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TrueHoop: Baron Davis

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Ever since TrueHoop got assimilated into the Borg that is ESPN.com, there hasn't been one single post where you could just forward to your friends without further debate. After all, TrueHoop was supposed to be the facilitator of stories, where one thread could explode into a much bigger, well-rounded, knowledge-enfused medium with the help of its valued commenters. Now in the ESPN cube, you can't so much as make an educated guess as to what to type into your URL box to get there (what's with the "myespn-dot-go-dot-com" nonsense?) -- this is just the tip of the iceberg and Poor Man's Commish promises to make a full frontal assualt on TrueHoop's Borg assimilation in the future.

But let us not digress. Baron Davis has truly been playing like a perennial NBA MVP lately, in the most important games of his career and of the modern era of his franchise, against the best team in the NBA which has the consensus real MVP on its team. If you were watching last night in the closing moments when BD hit a clutch drive-and-fade swish, then surgically dismantled the proud Mavs' defense by finding Andris Biedrins for a dunk-and-one, you were sitting there shaking your head in disbelief of how good he his. The number of highlights this guy had from just this one game approached Michael Jordan's level, making it a similar sacrilege to leave your seat from tipoff to final buzzer.

Alas, there's really nothing to add, no extra comment to make about TrueHoop's post, "The Baron of Davis".

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The eeriness of MJ's last championship

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While researching for the blogpost about the Warriors win meaning the Mavs will win the championship, I came across another couple eerie finds about Michael Jordan's last championship against the Utah Jazz. You know, the one where he drove on Bryon Russell.

Now, we all know about his 45 points, with 23 of them coming in the first half (for those of you have been living in Antarctica, he wore #45 when he came back from retirement and then went back to his #23 shortly thereafter).

But here's another couple that are weird, that I just discovered today:

• The all-time scoring leader in terms of points per game shot exactly 15-for-35 from the field in both Game Six finales in 1997 (boxscore here) and 1998 (boxscore here).
  
  
• John Stockton only had exactly 5 assists in each of those games. We're talking the all-time assists leader, who averaged 10.5 assists per game his entire career.

Wow, two all-time NBA leaders in their respective categories in one game happening twice in a row, and one clearly outshining the other on both occasions.

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Guess this means the Mavs will win the championship

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The #8 Golden State Warriors just beat the #1 Dallas Mavericks by double-digits (12, to be exact), leading to much joy in the Bay Area today. Which got me wondering, when was the last time the team with the best record in the NBA lost its first playoff game?

Let us preface by noting ESPN's Elias Says, embedded in the game's boxscore, which mentions the following...

Only one other team in NBA history lost its first playoff game following a season in which it won more than 63 games. The 1966-67 Philadelphia 76ers won 68 games during the regular season and went on to win the NBA title despite dropping their playoff opener to the Cincinnati Royals (120-116 at Philadelphia, March 21, 1967).

If you look up the last 10 years of playoff results on Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_NBA_Playoffs, where you can type in your desired year in the URL], you'll see that there are only two instances in the last 10 years when the team with the best record lost its first game in the playoffs...

• 2003: The Stephon Marbury-led Phoenix Suns defeated the San Antonio Spurs, 96-95, on Marbury's buzzer-beating bankshot trey.
  
  
• 1998: The Houston Rockets, behind Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley coming off the bench (?), and -- believe it or not -- an 18-and-14 by Kevin Willis, defeated the Utah Jazz by 13, 103-90. Utah tied the Chicago Bulls for the best record in the NBA that year and had the tiebreaker over the Bulls.

So now that they have botched Game 1 against the #8 seed, this means the Mavs are guaranteed to reach the Finals, because we know the 76ers did it 1967, Jazz in 1998, and Spurs in 2003.

Both the 1967 76ers and 2003 Spurs won the championship. Since the 1998 Jazz don't count because they faced Michael Jordan's 2nd three-peat and impending retirement, as well as the Willis factor (remember, he's now on the 2007 Mavericks!), this means the Mavs will win the 2007 championship. I'm not a Mavs fan, I'm just showing you the voodoo.

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Is there a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ?

In light of Kobe's recent history-making outburst, this would be a good time to mention the nail that writer Scoop Jackson hit squarely on the head in the latest issue of Sole Collector that was passed out for free at the Jordan Brand Experience at Vegas All-Star Weekend last month.

In an interview by Anthony Gilbert, Scoop answers the question of a legit comparison to Kobe and MJ quite effectively:

Yeah, easy...like tracing paper. Xerox machine. KINKOS. As much as the replication looks, seems and feels like the original, it's not. There's always some resolution that gets lost in the process. But that's just in basketball...they are totally different as people. And that affects the outcome of their games. Kobe is not as personable and charming as Mike. It's not in his nature, that's just not who he is. Part of MJ's greatness was his ability to be cool with everyone, teammates, and victims. Dudes that played with [MJ] would kill for him, he was able to draw that much love from others. Kobe's never been able to do that and because of that I think he hasn't been able to reach MJ's level of brilliance. He has too many people around him that will never love him...It's like, imagine how differently Barry Sanders' career would have been if his offensive line hated him?...They would not block or fight as hard as they could for them to get those yards, which in the long run affect's Barry's...greatness."

ESPN.com's Chris Broussard today writes that Kobe's starting to "get it" (Insider subscription required), that he's finally maturing...

The sad thing is that if Kobe had "gotten it" years earlier, he might have left the game with more titles than MJ.

Can the right amount of maturity ever put Kobe on MJ's level? Scoop's theory seems to be the correct one, not Broussard's.

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#1 GSW "shoulda woulda coulda"

If you check out the GSOM blog today, aside from a theoretical trade involving Adonal Foyle (among others) for Kevin Garnett, you'll see this reference to a blogpost from last June, perhaps the greatest "shoulda woulda coulda" ever made: Jordan-Pippen 2.0. In other words, the Warriors could have drafted Kobe Bryant in 1996 and Tracy McGrady in 1997.

dreamblogue did the due diligence for you. Only two other teams had draft picks earlier than the GSW in either year: Vancouver (now Memphis) and Philadelphia. In theory, either of those teams could've also drafted "Jordan-Pippen 2.0" as well, but at least Vancouver got Shareef Abdur-Rahim (who was eventually traded to Atlanta for, yes, Pau Gasol) and Antonio Daniels. Philly got Allen Iverson and Keith Van Horn.

Bear in mind, though, that Vancouver had the #3 and #4 picks those years while Philly had #1 and #2 -- back in those days, no way do you spend a top-five pick on a high schooler (which actually makes the Warriors picks stink even more). We all know how far AI took Philly and Pau took Memphis, so you can't really fault either of those teams. Meanwhile, the Warriors had picks #11 and #8 and chose Todd Fuller and Foyle. Obviously, no playoff appearances, let alone consistent starting contributions.

A quick glance at both drafts suggests that as a GM, you are best off drafting for basketball skill, not size. But then again stating the obvious is beyond the scope of dreamblogue. "Jordan-Pippen 2.0" is the best shoulda-woulda-coulda I've ever heard.

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All-Star violence and Tommy Davidson

There's a rather hot debate in the NBA blogosphere right now, summed up best by TrueHoop, that doesn't paint a beautiful picture for the Average Joe (or Poor Man Commish) to attend All-Star Weekend. It also reaches into the problems of violence in American society, with which we've previously compared to Iraq.

Interestingly, in this month's issue of Black Enterprise (which has a terrible archive search section where I couldn't find a link to the article), comedian Tommy Davidson was profiled by Kenneth Meeks. Davidson disclosed his very profound beliefs and passion in life to try and fix these very ills...

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Hey Cubes, EVERY WEEKEND is already Basketball Day!

Basketball Day, Mark? C'mon now.

Via TrueHoop via AOL's NBA Fanhouse via Eddie Sefko of the Dallas Morning News, late last week we got wind that Mark Cuban thinks having a "Basketball Day" would be a cool idea:

"It would have to be a weekend, but we could have NBA, college and high school games all day long and market the heck out of it," Cuban said.

Yo, Cubes. In basketball, Mutombos do fall in the paint when you happen to not be there. Trust me, while Superman is saving Earth, Bizarro is surely dooming Htrae.

Translation: every Sunday, the Asian American community alone is running about 35 games here in the Bay Area within a 20-mile radius, which by its sheer size results in some perhaps made-for-TV happenings, such as Ryan Mateo's 48 points (details below) yesterday in only 36 minutes of dreamleague running-clock format. More notably, Mateo outscored his opponent's entire team total.

In the post-Wilt Chamberlain era, the only thing that comes close to this Bizarro world wonder is Kobe Bryant's 62 points in three quarters against Dallas on 12/20/2005, outscoring them 62-61 (no, Kobe's 81 on 46 attempts in 42 minutes played most certainly does NOT compare to this, and we will discuss this in detail below).

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Wonder-trail of MJ DKYs Part III of IV

He could have owned TWO dynasties!

Continued from Part II...

Then if you Google "jonathan kovler bulls", you'll find courtesy of the NY Times that George Steinbrenner (of all people) once owned 10% of the Bulls, but his share was bought out by Jerry Reinsdorf in '85, prior to the Bulls' championship runs. Based on 2003 estimates in Rovell's article, Reinsdorf parlayed his $9.2 million investment twenty-fold into $184 million! When Steinbrenner sold, the Bulls were only worth a little over $16 million. Ten percent of that is only $1.6 million, so my guess is, Georgie's original investment was probably around $500,000 (maybe less). Had he held onto his share, theoretically he could have turned $500k into about $33 million!

Btw, according to 60 Minutes, MJ was worth $4 million (annually?), mostly in endorsements. He was worth a quarter of the Bulls value! Assuming that's a per-year basis, not even LeBron comes close to that (Nike: $90 mil over 7 years, Cavs: $80 mil over 5 years).

More to follow in Part IV someday in the near future.

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Wonder-trail of MJ DKYs Part II of III

As you'll recall from Part I, our brief TrueHoop-YouTube-Google excursion of Michael Jordan Did You Know's began with the 1986 60 Minutes interview where we read the fine print and saw that MJ's "love of the game" clause was addressed to one "Jonathan". If it was addressed to "Jerry", as in Reinsdorf or Krause, we would not have pressed forward.

A Google search on "jonathan bulls owner" reveals an ESPN article from 2003 called "Cashing in on the ultimate cash cow" by Darren Rovell describing how MJ impacted the wealth of other people, with Reinsdorf at the top of the list. Curiously absent from the list: William Wesley, the most important NBA insider no one's heard of, as unearthed by TrueHoop's Henry Abbott.

More in Part III to follow.

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Wonder-trail of MJ DYK?'sPart I of III: The so-called "Love of the game clause"

It's amazing how interesting a particular strain of TrueHoop, YouTube, and Google can turn into. So let's surf this nice little wave that is the Internet, the first of a series of Did You Know ("DYK?" for ESPN watchers) nuggets I found on the O.G. Michael Jordan...

It all started when last week, TrueHoop.com came across an old 60 Minutes interview with Michael Jordan from 1986, posted on YouTube. I couldn't help but press the pause button when they flashed MJ's so-called "love of the game clause" up on the screen -- a camera shot of the actual document!

For those of you who grew up in the Magic/Bird/Jordan era, this is like finding the Rosetta Stone or a copy of the Declaration of Independence in your attic -- okay, terrible metaphors, but I think you feel me...

Rest the rest of the story

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A bunch of Allen Iversons play in dreamleague

Over the Thanksgiving holiday (Fri Nov 17 to be exact), I was watching the Philly vs Phoenix game on ESPN when Jim Gray reported that Allen Iverson was paying for the funeral of Kevin Johnson, a kid who got shot refusing to give up the AI jersey he was wearing...

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