1. Playing The Long Game
Damn! Those NBA playoffs take forever! They sneaked up on us this year, starting earlier–as did the regular season–in an effort to give players more rest between games, given that the league’s owners insist on keeping their insanely brutal eighty-two game schedule, despite the greatly increased incidence of injury that it causes.
What’s to keep a thinking person from throwing in the towel before the two month slog is over? After all, why care? Press “One” to answer this question. Otherwise, please bear with my personal journey: unless you’re one of those gamblers or fashionistas who’ve so swelled the ranks of basketball enthusiasts. But don’t worry: the market knows about you [1].
Perennial Finalist and Warrior foil LeBron James was absent from the playoffs this year, because of a groin injury that derailed the Laker franchise to the point that no-one seems to remember things were working out just fine until his injury in a game against Golden State on Christmas day. Later wrongfully derided, Luke Walton’s charges made a 20-14 start, with a clear upward trajectory, as would befit a young team that was beginning to jell, before James got hurt.
For the Lakers, the fallout from their newly acquired star’s injury and team collapse included James’s temporarily tarnished reputation as undeniably “the planet’s best player,” a designation that did not exist before him (there having always been a bifurcation between greatest all-around player and greatest big man), and which suddenly seemed up for grabs.
The season’s focus shifted to the new oligarchy of younger stars: James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetekoumnpo, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, Paul George, Damian Lillard, Joel Embiid, and Anthony Davis [2].
To include Durant in such a group perhaps creates dissonance, but maybe only logically so: subtraction is part of mathematics too. And think of how it actually played out!
Even though they had won before Durant ever arrived, and swept this year’s Western Finals with him injured, the Warriors were undeniably a different team without him: suddenly vulnerable [3].
Still, even though they were not consistently dominant, Golden State (poised to move back across the Bay and abandon their fan base in Oakland) was clearly the elephant in the room, though this time without LeBron as sparring partner; as quarry at the end of the hunt.
I could not bring myself to question seriously their obvious-to-those-who-care- to look hegemony, when healthy. They just had too many weapons, and I continued to believe in the charisma of Draymond Green. But newspapers needed to be sold, and a scenario had to be developed that questioned this mind-set.
Speculation was rampant about Durant’s future intentions (loyalty was never his strong suit), and Green’s long-term future prospects seemed in doubt. Was he just having an off-year, or would his atypical NBA body be projected to thicken rapidly, and thus deprive him of the prospective longevity necessary to command the “max” contract which he had once seemed destined to enjoy? Would Klay Thompson consider departing too? Et tu, Klay? T’would be the unkindest cut of all, perhaps inducing Cousins to leave as well, stranding Curry with a fading, decaying dynasty.
2. The Resurgent East
Most people assumed that the Eastern Conference survivor would succumb easily, whether Durant was back or not, but largely because of my fascination with Embiid, the 76ers’ skilled, agile, and enigmatic Cameroonian giant, it was the East that had captured my waning interest. There, I at least felt doubt about the eventual outcome, and could hope that a worthy opponent might emerge, and perhaps a bit more seasoned.
After all, both Milwaukee and Toronto had won more regular season games than Golden State, and the Sixers–if only Embiid could overcome his precarious and fluctuating physical condition–might have something special and unpredictable to offer. After all, who else makes you think of both Wilt and Hakeem?
I was not yet enraptured by the little I’d seen of the dramatically revamped (by African-American team president Masai Ujiri) Toronto roster. Toronto’s emergence seems destined in retrospect, because of how expertly they handled the Warriors, but the Sixers extended them to a seventh game that was only decided at the buzzer, on Leonard’s truly spectacular rainbow three pointer.
As great as Kawhi (whose return to action after a forced trade and controversial full year’s hiatus resulted in his second Finals MVP) played throughout not only the Finals but the grueling two months of the playoffs[4], along with all his admirable Raptor team-mates, who can minimize the significance of the loss of Durant? Not just for the thirty-two day/nine game period when he did not play, but also for the duration of frenetic Game Five, when he pulled up lame with a ruptured Achilles tendon, having helping the Warriors to a 39-34 lead.
Without him, Golden State held on. One big reason was DeMarcus Cousins, who first entered the game after Durant’s departure. Considered to be in dubious shape, Cousins was used only sparingly, as he had been re-injured after an almost year-long rehabilitation from his torn ACL, the injury that had made him into discounted goods, available to be snatched up by the Warriors on a one-year deal for a mere $5.1 million.
Massive and multi-skilled, Big Cuz is a pinpoint passer, much like Draymond Green, but, having been stuck for many years on a bad Sacramento team, he had acquired an undeserved rep as a selfish malcontent. In Game Five, he showed how much of a force he can still be, when his conditioning permits him to capture the rhythm and pace of a game that on other nights had moved too fast for his still-recovering huge body.
3. Save The Dynasty? Whither KD?
Toronto had emerged from the newly powerful East by winning four straight games against a Milwaukee team that had compiled the league’s best regular season record: 60-22.
The Bucks were marching through the playoffs as if invincible, even winning their first two games against the Raptors.
Facing Golden State at last, Toronto held serve impressively in the first game, but then lost Game Two, thereby ceding home court advantage, as they had against Philly, but recovered superbly, surprising the world by winning both games at Oracle.
Finally, the Warriors were in real trouble. They had needed at least a split at home to even a series in which they did not hold their accustomed home court advantage, yet here was a devastating loss of consecutive home games. Toronto was proving fully able to take their measure, with an under-publicized (largely because LeBron James had annihilated them early in recent years), cohesive, and well-coached unit that had a full complement of three point shooters and stellar defenders at all positions.
Both received wisdom and NBA history deem a 3-1 deficit nearly impossible to overcome: the Warriors faced possible elimination in Toronto, but, with their incredible track record, one could never count them out, even with Durant hurt.
The first half of Game Four was hotly contested, but a 37-21 third quarter broke it open, leading to a decisive 105-92 Toronto win. Only at the end did a Warrior comeback no longer seem possible. There were telltale signs: down 99-89, Curry shot an air ball, and when Toronto scored quickly, Green immediately threw away a pass. It was as if the air could be heard leaving the dynastic balloon.
Having missed nine straight games over the course of thirty-two days, Durant was pronounced ready to play in Game Five, which began with the Warriors’ Big Three (Durant, Curry, and Thompson) hitting five straight three pointers, spurting to a 19-12 lead in just five minutes.
Then, suddenly, Thompson picked up his second personal foul, and soon thereafter, Durant was sitting, having his leg wrapped, giving way to Cousins. Green then upped the dramatic ante by picking up his sixth technical of the playoffs, meaning that one more would automatically trigger an unthinkably disastrous one game suspension.
Down the stretch, in less than two minutes, Leonard scored ten straight Raptor points to turn a 95-93 Warrior into a 103-97 deficit. That seemed to be “It,” just as an earlier “It moment” had occurred when Durant left the game re-injured.
But in the final three and a half minutes, the Warriors once more found the kind of magic for which they are known, miraculously hitting three straight threes (two by Thompson) making for a 9-2 finish, with Green saving the win by blocking Lowry’s final attempted three: 106-105 [5].
4. Endings: Bangs and Whimpers
Win or lose, Game Six of the Finals would be the final game at Oracle, giving way, appropriately in this gilded age, to the new Chase Center, across the Bay. Black uniforms, Durant shirts, and then, incredibly, Thompson tearing his ACL, likely to sideline him too, perhaps for the entirety of next season. With all that, at the end, Curry still had a decent look for a three-pointer that would have thrown the series into a seventh game.
My old YMCA locker room friend Jim (an African-American transplant from New York at a time when more than just a few blacks still populated San Francisco) used to claim that there was a curse on the then-inept-and-struggling Warrior franchise, due to the venerable building (then known as the Oakland Coliseum)’s having been constructed over an Indian graveyard.
This was before the arena was re-named Oracle, and before the franchise was transformed by the Silicon Valley ownership, under the expert management of GM Bob Myers [6], who used a combination of inspired draft picks (Curry, Thompson, and Green) to build a championship team that arguably morphed into a latter-day dynasty with the acquisition of Durant. When the Warriors acquired Cousins last summer, the groundwork for lasting hegemony seemed to have been laid.
Under the enlightened and humane tutelage of Coach Steve Kerr, the Warriors popularized a brand of team basketball reminiscent of the old New York Knicks and Bill Walton’s 1976-77 Portland Trail Blazers. Though in some ways a faux superstar [7], Stephen Curry was the perfect franchise face, a thoroughly likable ordinary sized man that all fans could identify with, winning consecutive MVP awards, and torturing frustrated defenders by hoisting up shots from ridiculous distances.
Curry had the ideal back court running mate in 6’7” Klay Thompson, as pure as an athlete can be [8], always a joy to watch shoot, and a great defender as well.
And these two, referred to as The Splash Brothers, had the perfect complement in Draymond Green, who, pre-Durant, was arguably the team’s most valuable player. With Durant’s added presence, less of the offense went through Green, diminishing his role, and thereby subtly changing the team’s essential character. The recruitment of a super-talented mercenary from their closest Western rival had its insidious effects.
And, oh, the deliriously fawning fan base: an Americanized version of France’s gilets jaunes in their jaunty yellow t-shirts. Warrior fans behave as if any words uttered against Curry should be worth two free throws. They make that extra pass, bro, so God is on their side!
Feel good triumphalism became the franchise’s new face.
As hopes were fading at the end of Game Four, Mark Stevens, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist with a minority interest in the team, exemplified the local entitlement mentality by shoving and holding Toronto’s Kyle Lowery, who had chased a loose ball into patrician patron real estate: the expensive seats.
But what an ending! The franchise whose spirit, in just five years, had traversed the metaphorical distance from being the Mets to being the Yankees, had finally, when Thompson went down, begun to reclaim my sympathies, which had been lost years earlier, when Green went for LeBron’s–and later Stephen Adams’–nuts[9].
From a franchise exemplified by the toughness and grit of Al Attles, their essence had become four stylish memoir-bound rich dudes headed to East Hampton to recruit the guy who should have dethroned him that year, had he played team ball half as well as did the difficult-to-harnas-Russell Westbrook, who was finally toeing the line as a point guard, only to watch Durant hoist up 19 (!) first half shots in the critical sixth game at home that Oklahoma City needed to win to bury the Warriors.
Was this a dynasty? Press two if you think not. Regardless: the fall-out, the ending the detritus! We’ve never seen anything like this before. Not even close. Like in Hamlet, suddenly, it was as if everyone was dead.
A kind of NBA-911: Durant and Thompson both out for the entire 2019-20 season, with contract and loyalty issues wildly at play in both cases, which nonetheless are quite different from one another.
And the dizzying array of implications for free agency and the temptation to play Tank Now/Win Later. In The Process shall we trust? To a franchise like the Knicks, Durant might be worth more injured than healthy, as he would have only a delayed influence on the team’s fortunes, allowing them a better shot a year from now at the kind of second or third star needed to complement him.
Injuries, injuries, injuries: Cousins, James, Embiid, Leonard last year, now Durant, and Klay Thompson. Our collective greed leads to the sacrifice of our heroes. Injury trumps dynasty. What is to be done? Probably nothing. Nearly everyone too much loves the NBA. Would Kawhi Leonard stay in Toronto? (An incident of non-fatal shootings at the Raptor victory parade showed that they belong and have accepted America’s ways). Or might Leonard join Davis and James with the Lakers, and begin another dynasty?
Right now, I’m not hurt, but really tired: a two month grind with free agency just over the next ridge. But with James and Davis teaming up in Los Angeles, and if Philly gets Embiid some good coaching and in the kind of shape to block Leonard’s Game Seven jumper [10], maybe I won’t follow through with my plan to throw out my television next April after all.
Notes
1 League Commissioner Adam Silver estimates that for every time out, the NBA loses 6% of its television audience (12. 5% at halftime). The now-fully international NBA is such a growth stock that how can one legitimately question its future; or down-size its product?
2 With the Lakers’ post-playoff acquisition of Davis, the stage is perfectly set for LeBron’s return to contention and glory. In fact, with this team’s athleticism, if Steve Kerr wants a sabbatical while his injured stars heal, he could maybe get piece work shooting three-pointers off LeBron’s feeds, and see for himself how they match up with Michael’s. He might even bring Dell Curry along, to spell him.
3 Despite the existence of a Facebook ad hyping “Steph Versus the Game,” Durant is widely acknowledged to have been the Warriors’ best player for the three years that he has graced the franchise with his dazzling skills and often regal presence. With James hurt, the designation of “best player on the planet” was often used about him.
4 28.5 ppg, 9.8 rpg, and this guy made his reputation for defense.
5 In the final minute, a dubiously nullified put back by Cousins, on which the video replay offered conflicting conclusions from different camera angles, could have eased matters; instead Thompson’s game-winner was needed, to close out the Raptors by a single point.
6 With the flurry of uncertainty and change in Laker-land, another interesting rumor began to circulate: would lauded Warrior GM Bob Myers consider the Laker job vacated by Magic?
7 I still maintain that with the old rules that allowed hand-checking, and made “shot selection” a whole different matter (awarding just two points for field goals of all distances), Curry would have been traumatized and ingested as a light lunch by defenders such as Al Attles, who later became the Warriors’ legendary coach, spiritual model, and elder statesman.`
It was sadly ironic to see Al, now frail and emaciated by illness, heroically eking out a last appearance at Oracle.
8 One thinks of a latter day version of Jamal Wilkes, whom UCLA Coach John Wooden once said represented the perfect combination of qualities to be sought in a basketball player. He might as well have been quoting Mark Anthony’s eulogy of Brutus: “His life was gentle, and the elements mixed so well in him that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, ‘This was a man.'”
9 I had delighted in Green’s unique combination of brilliance and intensity, but could no longer root for him after that incident, which resulted in the one-game suspension that let Cleveland back into a series that the Warriors had wrapped up, 3-1, a lead that had never been surmounted in the Finals. Ironically, the Warriors had just come back, against OKC, from a 3-1 deficit.
That time, the culprit was Durant.
10 An awesome physical specimen with talent to match, Embiid is still raw; not in real playoff shape. He’s a great piece of sculpture, but still needs work.
Brilliant but impatient, a rhythmic giant who loves and has somehow mastered the Euro-step, Embiid squanders his seed, such that he lacks the needed energy to get back against the opposition’s fast break. He makes poor choices (like going to the floor for loose balls and making spectacular but ill-advised saves of balls headed out of bounds), rendering him exhausted and needless reducing his minutes.
He routinely hoists up ill-timed threes that result from his need to shorten the distance he has to run to cover both ends of the floor (“sides of the ball” in contemporary parlance).
I haven’t played in years, but I never could tell one side of the ball from another. Didn’t they used to call it “roundball”?).
Still young and very new to the game, he is a unique combination of high basketball IQ and poor judgment. This should change, along with Ben Simmons’ shot, but, where is the coaching that this wildly talented Sixer bunch so badly needs to get Embiid’s awesome talents under proper control, allowing his awesome presence and skills to fully emerge?
If Leonard goes to L.A., He The East!