over and under

i admit i'm immersing myself in every bit of news from heat land, the training camp and first practices, looking for clues, scouring interviews. i'm the reason there is so much media attention on everything they do, it's cuz of people like me. and i keep oscillating over whether we're all over or under estimating how good they'll be.
it goes like this:

we're overdoing it, they'll underwhelm, because
-having two great perimeter penetrators on the same team has not been a recipe for success. just like having two great post up players, like barkley and hakeem, they basically take turns, it doesn't add up to something better.
-they are coming into existence in a league that already has three superpowers, and all three of them have massive and talented and tall 4s and 5s, something the heat lack. the lakers are also an all star team, with 4-5 all stars / potential all stars, they're champs and also got better during offseason.
-can mike miller handle the pressure? if he shoots poorly the whole thing drops a few notches.
-they signed juwan howard

hmm. maybe we're under hyping them, and overly qualifying our praise
-when you really think about what they can do offensively it makes your brain vibrate. both wade and lebron, and bosh to a degree, have put up huge numbers against defenses completely keyed to stopping them and only them. now all three players will consistently be getting the ball in good situations, against unset defenses, with cracks and openings aplenty.
-their core three are very versatile and multi-talented, meaning the most diverse and unpredictable offense perhaps ever.
-when you really think about what they can do Defensively, it makes your brain bubble. wade and lebron are probably the greatest shot blocking 2 and 3 in nba history, and extremely good defenders. with less scoring burden on both players they should have more energy for D (bosh too). spoelstra, from riley, is a defense coach, and the heat were quite good last year. a few of the key D pieces are back, chalmers, haslem and joel anthony. anthony is undersized (6'9") but was third in the league last year in blocks per 48m.
-early signs are that lebron will indeed be more of a playmaker, spoelstra said he'll have lebron play some pg and some pf as well. it's looking more like wade and lebron could actually be more complementary than we thought. in the first practice scrimmages apparently lebron led a team of bench players and dominated the other squads, without scoring much himself.
-they have dwayne wade. he can do what lebron couldn't do against teams like boston and orlando - find the seams in their defense and do damage in the midrange, between the shot blockers and perimeter defenders.
-14,000 alley oops
-the chemistry thing, these are chemistry players. they've played together before. wade famously volunteered to come off the bench (!) in the olympics in deference to kobe. lebron was born a team player, never had to be taught to trust his teammates. he transmits his own confidence with each pass, like nash does, and thus increases his teammates shooting %.
-incredible speed and athleticism with anthony and chalmers on the court, or chalmers and miller with bosh at the 5. explosive fastbreak team with the greatest finishers in the world and great passing and great shooters and a big who can run and handle the ball. holy crap my brain is vibrating again.

Melo's Journey

One of the more fascinating stats in the NBA is the clutch shooter stat they have over at 82games.com. In 2008-2009, somewhat surprisingly, the highest percentage of shots made in the last 5 minutes of either the 4th quarter or overtime, neither team leading by more than 5 points, belonged to Carmelo Anthony (among players with more than 25 shot attempts in those moments). He didn't just lead the league in the category, but he shot an astonishing %56 from the field during those times. That's actually a measure better than his OVERALL field goal percentage. Nipping at his heels was Lebron James, at %55.

But for a real shocker, look at the list of best last second shot-makers...the data sample is from 2003-2006, including postseason, so not real recent. But Carmelo leads there too, in shots made (11) and his shot percentage goes up by another factor, to %65! Now wrap your head around that, the man wins games more the 2/3 of the times he tries. The next guy on the list, Ray Allen, made 8 such shots, but at only a %44 clip. %20 lower than Carmelo! Here's another stunner, Kobe Bryant? They guy everyone fears at the ends of games? He made %22 of those shots! Big Shot Billups? %19!

Ok, enough with the exclamation points.

My "point", however, is that Carmelo Anthony is a lot of things, sweet-faced, powerful, a born scorer...but he never gets mentioned in those converstations about clutch players, great winners. Why is that? He's never won a title, so maybe he hasn't done it on the very biggest stage. Kobe misses way more than he does, but perhaps he made one shot that the entire world saw, and now we fear him. But there's also something personally about Carmelo that doesn't claim that space. With Lebron and Wade and Kobe sucking up so much of the airspace these days, it's helpful to remember, as Carmelo's own melodrama starts to unfold (with the same posse of hangers on whispering in his ear), that he's in the same echelon, and in important ways, actually better than those guys. Maybe he doesn't have the fire to win a championship (though he won the NCAA championship as a fresman!), or is not a great defender, but maybe that's also why he's the guy you want with the ball in his hands at the end of a game. He cares, but not enough to cloud his mind with shadows of former greats and histories and legacies and shoe sales and everything else. It's just him, ball and basket.

The only trade I've read about I wouldn't do is the Bulls trading Noah for him. Guys like Noah are just too few, and the chemistry they have on that team is too rare. Melo needs to come to a place where he can warp the fabric, and that's a good thing. I hope he ends up in the right situation, as it'll be fascinating to see what emerges.

O Iceland!

So, part of the inspiration for my moniker was a long-time emotional relationship to the only Icelandic (and first European drafted) player to linger in the NBA for a little while, Petur Gudmundsson. Interestingly, like Swen, he ended up at the Spurs near the end of his career, which seems to have always been friendly to the foreigners.

Anyway, aside from my having some Icelandic blood, he also haunts my memories of early basketball playing.

I went to an alternative school in Portland, Oregon, and despite our teachers' best attempts at teaching us competition-free New Games (various excruciating activities like !Holding a Giant Earth Up Together! and !Parachute Flapping!), my friends and I played intense football and basketball games during lunch. Most of my early fights and emotional victories revolved around those various hippy playing fields. For football, we were mostly on our own, free to mash each other into the grass, and mostly in the same age range. But there was only one basketball court, and it being a K-12 school, there was quite a mix for the hoops games, including teachers. I was a chunky kid, but slightly taller for my age, and could hold up my end enough to get into a few runs, but not as a genius scorer. Rebounds, defense, etc. There was this older guy, probably just a freshman in high school, but at the time he seemed like a very mature adult, with slight peach fuzz and long hair, and he good-naturedly taunted me by yelling out "Gudmundsson!" everytime I missed a shot. I have no idea how he came upon that taunt for me, except that Petur had recently been drafted by the Trail Blazers, and his clumsy ways were probably more apparent to us than most NBA fans. I'm sure he didn't know I was part Icelandic. In fact, I'm not sure I knew I was Icelandic.

Anyway, as we prepared to do this blog, Swen got me to thinking of other awkwardly named players, and I was reminded of ole Petur. I tried to find out what he was up to these days, and came up with this archival tidbit from 1986:

By the standards of his native Iceland, Petur Gudmundsson, a 7-foot-2-inch center for the Kansas City Sizzlers of the Continental Basketball Association, is a pretty fair basketball player. By the standards of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service, he is nothing special.

Not special enough, anyway, to qualify for a special work permit given to aliens of ''distinguished merit and ability.'' In rejecting Gudmundsson's application for such a permit, the service indicated that playing in the C.B.A. was proof of his undistinguished merit. ''The C.B.A. is a good league,'' said Ron Sanders, the I.N.S. district director in Kansas City, ''but the players aren't of the same caliber as the N.B.A. And if he did have distinguished ability he wouldn't be in the C.B.A.''

So poor Petur was sent back home. But wait, was he? Searching a little further, I found a Linked In profile! Here's what he's up these days, up in Seattle:

I currently work in the commercial dispatch dept where we tend to trouble issues that come up at the fitness locations nationwide by dispatching contracted service techs to those locations. I also trouble shoot issues such as payment problems and monitor certifications of current contracted techs as well as interview potential new service techs on the phone.

So interesting to think of this guy who lived only as a taunt now working in a cubicle somewhere, answering tech calls. Perhaps I'll have the courage to get in touch with him some time, let him know I did my best to make those taunts into compliments.  

(From the Archives) The King Chronicles

This discussion occurred over the weeks between June 20 and July 10, encompassing a certain fateful Decision. From time to time, we'll post our past email conversations as a way to center us historically, to be reminded of how our addled prognostications and failed assumptions brought us to this place...

Gudmundsson Challah

Some report says it'll be Bosh and James signing with Bulls. Damn, that'd be a formidable team. Another report, though, says Bosh has made up his mind to go to Miami. Either way, I think we'll find out how badly James really wants to win titles with this signing. In Chicago, aside from Rose and Noah and playoff experience, they also now have room to sign another max player. If it's not Bosh, it could be Joe Johnson, Amare, Boozer, who really cares? Any one of those plus that core would be four times the talent he's ever had, plus playoff seasoning. If he's worried about legacies, about being famous, about making more money, about partying in the big apple, he'll sign elsewhere. But no other team can now come even close to offering him such ready-made championship possibilities. Two max contracts plus Rose and Noah. In fact, if Lebron doesn't sign there, he'll be allowing them to be an intense rival for the rest of his career, with Joe Johnson and one of Boozer/Bosh/Amare, or some other combo therein.

Miami, meanwhile, adding Bosh would suddenly be very good. It's funny how everyone's obsessed with where Lebron will go, and who would be his best running mate, and forgetting about Wade. You think that drives him crazy? You could ask the same question about him, when has he ever had a talent like Bosh/Boozer/Amare around? And they'll have room to sign another big ticket player, though not quite max. If he can win a title with a past-prime Shaq, they will be very good. I'd think a free agent might be tempted to play with Wade instead, as anyone who plays with Lebron will always be the guy that got him HIS title. In Miami, there's probably a better chance of a Celtics-like situation, of several players joining forces to get that title.

Gabe

yeah, as a devoted wade fan (i wear his shoes for chrissake!) i will be really excited when he is paired with any of those PFs (hoping for bosh) and has a team that can actually do something other than wait for him to score 40 (while grabbing 9 rebounds and 4 blocks and 5 steals and hoping someone makes some shots so he has 8 assists too). and as i like to point out, unlike lebron (who has also played with more talent this year than wade's 06 team), wade has...um.... WON already. ....but lebron/rose/noah/goodPF/piece of styrofoam could probably beat anything.

Warrior/ Poet

Tom Meschery was a power forward for the Warriors in the Sixties...his number in fact hangs from the rafters - though very few fans would know who he was. He was the first foreign player in the NBA, a Russian kid born in Harbin, China under Japanese rule in 1938. Interned in the war, he was finally united with his family in the US when it ended.... and their name changed from Mescheriakoff to better fit in during anti-Russki Cold War USA. He developed into a 6'-7" bruising forward who played with Wilt & Al Attles - banging with Tommy Heinsohn, Wayne Embry & the like. I knew of him back in the no-TV era because he also wrote poetry and had a book of Beat-influenced verse published while still a player. It was too perfect for San Francisco in those days, to have a pro ballplayer who was a real poet.

Meschery retired long before big salaries...and had various jobs before getting a degree and ending up as a schoolteacher in Reno. He continued to write, and published a poetry collection in 1999: "Nothing We Lose Can Be replaced". It has a segment of NBA memory poems, and this one struck me the most:

"TOM MESCHERY"

I admit sleeping late at the Hilton,

ordering room service,

handing out big tips while other men

are opening their lunch buckets. I know

you would have scolded me:

'What kind of work is this for a man?'

Old immigrant, I admit all of this

too late. You died before I could explain

newspapers called me a journeyman.

They write I roll up my sleeves

and go to work. They use words

like hammer and muscle to describe me.

For three straight years on the job

my nose collapsed. My knees ached,

and I could never talk myself out of less

than two injuries at a time. Father,

you would have been proud of me:

I labored in the company of large men.

Ouch

From hero to villain, so fast your head spins:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5575810

I wonder how well liked Barkley was? Or Bill Russell? Should anyone outside of a real competitor's city genuinely like a player? I certainly hated Magic Johnson throughout his career, but that was mostly due to his success against my team (The Blazers). He was certainly one of the most likable players in the NBA, and I can see that now. I guess I've never been one of those guys that easily likes a player that might hurt my team. There have been a few exceptions, and when your team is horrible it's much easier to like other players as you switch rooting to a less horrible team for postseason, or to avert your gaze from ongoing tragedy (The Warriors). But generally speaking, why would I ever answer that I "liked" Lebron James, as long as he's destroying my home team? I guess there are lots of places where there is no home team, or where people are more attached to players than teams. This is part of an argument I'm having with Bethlehem Shoals over at Free Darko in my head, which I'll elaborate on later. His focus on the individual's expression over all other narratives seems limited to me.

It's Always Been You

(From a series of sonnets that slipped out of Dwayne Wade's carry-on during a routine airport search, signed only The King)

IV

There is a pass that has already gone
A jump shot that will never drop through twine
A crossover that feels completely wrong
A heart that is breaking, and it is mine
This may be no-look, but yet still I see
In the sweltering south, your savage game
Ev'ry time you hit the floor it breaks me
Cause for our future I endured such shame
There is no I in TEAM, nor in US
I never dreamed friendship could cause a fuss

Autumn Leaves

from the lost and recently uncovered Haikus of Swen Nater:

the sharp crunching sounds
of autumn leaves remind me
of unseld's elbow