It’s Thursday, March 21 (our 10th weekiversary!) – here’s what to watch the rest of the week
1. Can the Doc Cure All?
Clippers coach Doc Rivers spent Tuesday night answering to speculation that he might be headed crosstown to the Lakers. All this despite the fact that the head spot on the Lakers bench is still occupied by the coffin known as Luke Walton.
“Well, I have a job and the Lakers have a coach, No. 1, and I am going nowhere. I can tell you that. Straight and up front, I’m going to be here until [Clippers owner] Steve [Ballmer] says get out. I plan on being here a long time.”
A closer look reveals that the contract extension that Doc signed last year included an opt-out for him this coming summer. But Rivers said that he and Ballmer already have a verbal agreement to work out a longer extension. Anyone who has ever said “I love you” to their middle school girlfriend knows that verbal agreements aren’t always the strongest of declarations.
A Doc-Lakers marriage would be perfect. Here’s why:
Doc has presided (and won) with all different types of teams. The way that they’re currently constructed, the Lakers are a confusing, poorly-thrown-together mix of winning now and winning later. They want to contend immediately, so they brought in LeBron and continue to big-game hunt. But they’re built for the future, with Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, and Josh Hart at ages 21, 21, 23, and 24 respectively. Yes, I know they won’t all be on the roster next season.
Where does Doc fit in? Doc’s won with the type of super team that the Lakers aspire to build. The 2007-08 Celtics featured the Big Three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen that brought Boston its first NBA championship since the 1985-86 season. The previous season, in 2006-07, the Celtics had the second-worst record in the NBA at 24-58. Adding Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen didn’t hurt, but what a wild turnaround. Remember that the Heat didn’t win the championship in their first season after adding LeBron and Chris Bosh. That’s good coaching.
And Doc’s won with the kind of team the Lakers are right now. The surging-yet-talent-deprived Clippers currently sit at 42-30 after an ESPN preseason prediction of 35-47. And after trading their best player, Tobias Harris, midseason, Los Angeles has gone 12-5, including 8-2 in their last 10. The two best players on the current roster come off the bench. That reeks of good coaching.
Need more fuel for the fire? Rivers and Lakers president Magic Johnson are “very close friends” in Doc’s own words. And Doc wouldn’t have to uproot his family. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to change his commute.
Obviously, the Lakers are going to be interested – it’s going to come down to Doc’s decision. As big of an offseason as it is for the Lakers, it’s just as big for the Clippers. Both teams are hunting for stars this summer. Both teams would greatly benefit from having Doc at the helm while they try to do so.
The only summer certainty in Los Angeles? You can find Luke Walton under the Santa Monica pier, smoking doobies while he updates his résumé.
2. A Wild Nets Comeback
What a comeback for the Brooklyn Nets Tuesday night in Sacramento. For a team struggling to right the ship before the playoffs, it’s exactly what the Nets needed.
Coming into the game clinging desperately to the seventh seed in the East, the Nets had lost four straight and were immediately outscored 38-25 in the first quarter. Per ESPN stats, the Kings had an 86.9% chance of winning at that point.
Nets coach Kenny Atkinson (shoutout to a fellow Richmond Spider) then called a timeout literally 20 seconds into the second quarter after Bogdan Bogdanovic drained a 3-pointer, bumping the King’s win probability to 90.7%.
Brooklyn managed to limp into halftime down only eight, which looked fantastic until Sacramento scored the first 20 points of the third quarter. Woops! Sacramento’s win probability up 88-60? 99.7%
With 2:09 left in the third quarter, Sacramento’s win probability started flat lining at 99.9%. They were up 100-72. This 99.9% chance of winning continued into the second minute of the fourth quarter, when the Kings were cruising with a 103-80 lead. Then the near-impossible began to happen.
So how exactly did the Nets outscore the Kings a mind-numbing 45-18 in the fourth quarter? Ask D’Angelo Russell (think the Lakers regret that trade?). Russell scored 27 of his career-high 44 points in the final period, including four 3-pointers. It was the most points scored in a single fourth quarter by any player in the league this season. He simply took over the game and the Kings frankly looked scared of him once he got rolling. He muscled his way to the hoop, hit contested jump shots, and feasted at the perimeter. He slept with a few of the Kings’ girlfriends after the game.
The Nets can now boast of being the fourth team since the 1954-55 season (officially known as the “shot-clock era”) to come back from a 25-point deficit in the fourth quarter to win. There’s no telling what that kind of confidence can do for a 37-36 team fighting for its playoff life with nine games left to play.
I really should write a separate article about him, and maybe I will. But I absolutely adore Kenny Atkinson. As I’ve discussed, he’s (unfairly) not going to win Coach of the Year this season because it’s going to go to Mike Budenholzer, who captains the league-leading Bucks. Nate McMillan’s going to get robbed too. But can’t say enough about the job he’s done with this Nets team. ESPN had the Nets pegged for a 32-50 campaign before the year started. Brooklyn hit 32 wins back on Feb. 25, doing so in style with a 16-point win over the Spurs.
I love this quote from Atkinson after the game: “The coaching was terrible. The zone was terrible. I used up my timeouts. They never responded. We put a group of players out there that have a great bond and a great spirit and were working their tails off behind closed doors. It was 100% on them. That’s player ownership.” Think the Nets like playing for this guy?
Now for the flip side. Back in our Feb. 28 edition, I had mentioned that, while I trust their long-term vision, that I wasn’t quite ready to trust the Kings down the stretch of their first season in years in playoff contention. The Kings were 31-30 at the time, and I mentioned that it wouldn’t shock me to see a young, inexperienced, ahead-of-schedule team falter down the stretch. Fast forward three weeks, and the Kings sit at 34-36, with a less than 0.1% chance of making the playoffs, according to everyone’s favorite ESPN BPI Playoffs Index.
Please don’t fact check any of my other predictions.
3. Summer League Continues Its Rise
If you had told someone ten years ago how big the NBA’s Summer League would get, they would’ve laughed in your face.
And yet, here we are. Last year’s Las Vegas summer league set a record for total attendance, with 139,972 fans attending. That might not sound like a lot, but each team only plays seven games in a college gym.
Last season, even LeBron was sitting courtside for the action. Granted, he probably wanted to make a good impression on his new Lakers fans. But he was also probably scouting his future teammates’ trade value.
Regardless, the NBA just announced a new development for the Summer League this coming season – the Chinese and Croatian national teams will join the 30 NBA teams at this years Vegas tournament from July 5 – July 15. This is a fantastic idea.
China had previously sent a team to the Summer League once in 2007, while this will be Croatia’s first time. It’s a great way for the NBA to grow the game of basketball in several different ways. First of all, it will simply get more eyeballs on the Summer League product. Secondly, global players will get more chances to square off with the future of the NBA. It’s an injection of excitement for the other national teams to have a chance to compete against NBAers, and also a way to gauge how they stack up against incoming American players.
While China has stagnated a bit in terms of their NBA exports, Croatian NBA players are stronger than ever. Notable Croats include Bojan Bogdanović, Mario Hezonja, Dario Šarić, Dragan Bender, Ivica Zubac, and Ante Žižić. While none is an NBA superstar, each is a solid player known to dedicated NBA fans.
The NBA continues to be the major sports league with the best globalization strategy for growing its brand, and it’s been at the forefront for a while now. Another great move for them.
4. Top 10 List – Why the Knicks?
What’s with all the rumors of big free agents going to the Knicks? All they have to offer is cap space, and a disastrous team culture and track record. And yet, everyone from Kevin Durant, to Kyrie Irving, to Kemba Walker is rumored to end up there. There has to be something else at play. Here are my top ten hypotheses:
10. Kyrie thinks that the Knicks will help him prove his flat-Earth theory. “Isn’t it odd that everyone thinks it’s a three-dimensional arena, but we call it Madison Square Garden?”
9. James Dolan has promised free agents a chance to star in their very own movie, produced by his good buddy Harvey Weinstein
8. Kemba’s looking to return to the scene of the crime
7. Kyrie is excited at the prospect of playing basically in New York City, the capital of the United States
6. Only the Knicks offer players front row seats to watch their owner banish fans and former players from home games
5. The Knicks are assuring players that they’ve managed to fix the draft again like it’s 1985
4. Durant and Irving feel they’ve been covered unfavorably in the media, so they thought they’d give New York a shot
3. Free agents have been told they can also play for the Rangers on off days
2. Cheap real estate and reliable public transit
1. Where else do you have the opportunity to play with Emmanuel Mudiay and Frank Ntilikina?
5. Did You Know?
A great fact that keeps popping up during my research is that a real-life NBA player, Larry Owens, was once paid $21,049 for an entire season. And this was less than 10 years ago. However, I can’t verify this through any reputable sites such as Spotrac, so I’ll go with something else.
Wilt Chamberlain was a freak of nature, and every basketball fan is more or less familiar with his superhuman statistics. The 100-point game. The 50.4 points per game average in the 1961-62 season. The 30.1-point, 22.9-rebound career averages.
But here are a few of my other favorite:
- In the same 1961-62 season in which he averaged 50.4 points, he also averaged 48.5 minutes per game. For those of you who are new here, there are only 48 minutes in a regulation basketball game
- On Feb. 2 1968, against the Detroit Pistons, Wilt recorded the only double-triple-double in league history: 25 points, 22 rebounds, and 21 assists. That’s just stupid
- In the 1967-68 season, Chamberlain became the first (and still only) center to lead the league in total assists
- My personal favorite? In his 14 seasons, 1,045 regular season games, 160 playoff games, and 55,418 total minutes, Wilt the Stilt never once fouled out of a game. Think about that
