Back in the Game — NBA Take-a-thon
Celebrating a long-overdue return with an avalanche of disparate thoughts and a new rendition of an old favorite.
Wherever you go, there you are, huh?
Just over a year ago (this draft has, at various points, read “nine,” “ten,” and “eleven months ago,” so that's how that’s going), I got the wheels turning on this latest, aspirational return to writing about basketball (alongside another passion project). This wasn’t out of a self-important need to reflect on every roster machination and cap gymnastic. Nor was it because I’m nostalgic for homework. The plan, such as there was one, was to free-form this thing.
To this end, I reprised “Reading Between the Lines,” a relic from the basketblogosphere, when previewing a season through the prism of gambling was, if not “edgy,” then also neither celebrated nor lucrative. The Eastern Conference came off without a hitch, and with decent accuracy, provided you ignore the Celtics and Bucks. So, too, did my presumed six-team “contender class” out West. Of course, like any truly incisive NBA knower, I relegated the eventual conference champs to “Western Conference gen pop,” whose subsequent preview…
Along with the commitment to writing here again came the realization that something basketball-related would have to break the ice. What to do when the desire to do everything all at once all but guarantees you’ll do nothing?
Over many weeks, while trawling for an idea, I compiled a list of my NBA takes. Like, all of ‘em. All temperatures, historical, contemporary, forward-looking, micro, macro, contrarian, basic, niche, inconsequential, you name it. Essentially whatever’s come of almost four decades with the NBA.
What if I made the whole plane out of “making up for lost time? Fuck it, just write 100 scattershot NBA sentences and call it good.”
Appropriately weird as this might have been, parachuting in from the wilderness to hit you with a century’s worth of disparate takes, bound only by their convergence in one weirdo’s mind, seemed a bit much.
With more time, I whittled this down, to 50. Then 30. And finally, to a more digestible, less well-depleting, and entirely arbitrary 25.
A Take Dump
Many of these (I think) don’t require much explanation. Some come with brief writeups. Others are opaque by design so that — barring any more stumbles off the edge of the Earth — they can become posts of their own in the future. That’s enough preamble, huh?
Ignoring the ABA when discussing historical stats and records is idiotic.
I understand the impulse to devalue the Bubble Title. Had the Celtics or Clippers won, I’d still be making a spectacle of myself. In all sincerity, even if the Lakers hadn’t won, I wouldn’t be rushing to devalue an NBA title won without the fatigue and inconvenience of travel, on an equal amount of rest, in isolation from everyday life, in the same empty gym. As bizarre as the circumstances that necessitated it, Bubble basketball delivered a “just hoopers and a gym” purity that we never get. I’m not saying we should live that way but, objectively, it’s every bit as impressive as a “normal” title.
The only point guards in NBA history better than Gary Payton are Magic, Steph, Isiah, Oscar Robertson, and Clyde Frazier.
Jason Kidd barely cracks the top ten.
I agree that Michael Jordan is the best ever. That Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is seldom even in the conversation is criminal.
As catastrophically as it played out, the Steve Nash-Dwight Howard “This Is Gonna Be Fun” gambit is one worth trying every damn time.
Naturally, the Clippers’Kawhi-PG (and now James Harden) answer, though more protracted, has somehow been sadder and more limp.
Roy Tarpley is every bit the monumental “what if” as Len Bias. What Tarpley’s tragic downfall lacks in suddenness and untapped potential compared to Bias’s it makes up for with proven excellence in the conference finals, at age 23, against the Showtime team that became the NBA’s first repeat champion for 19 years.
On a related note, the ‘87-’88 Mavericks deserve a spot on the “best team never to win it all” conversation.
Though he’s probably a touch underrated at this point, Trae Young’s never been good enough at the stuff he’s very good at to headline a meaningful team.
Of NBA archetypes that have fallen by the wayside, the Buck Williams-esque “quintessential power forward” is the most glaring loss.
Anthony Edwards is the player I spent my formative years pleading for Isaiah Rider to become. That Rider didn’t even wind up being Two-Guard Bernard King (the comp I always had for him) will forever bum me out.
As for Edwards, while excellent now, fun as hell to watch, and a real-deal superstar, the universally accepted “next MJ” movement should pump the brakes.
Whether judging by the first four NBA seasons (less generous to Kobe and T-Mac and… HOLY SHIT, MIKE) or age-22 season (Wade’s rookie year; and I omitted Jordan because he only played 18 regular seasons games), Ant only “stacks up” — not particularly well by advanced metrics — against Young Money and the best wings (más o menos) of the last 30 years.
I don’t say any of this to denigrate Ant, but to urge at least a dusting of moderation. After all, his first-four-year Win Share total would be the tenth-best single-season mark of Mike’s career, while his WS/48 puts him in some decidedly pretty good — but decidedly not great — company.
Despite understandable concerns about defensive consistency*, massive looming cap hits, and personality fit with The Garden Faithful — and the very real loss of Donte DiVincenzo — I’m decidedly in on Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks. Moving on from Julius Randle is addition by subtraction, and KAT, Jalen Brunson, Mikal Bridges, Josh Hart, and OG Anunoby is one hell of a five-out, perimeter-defending lineup. Also, KAT is far more suited to be A star on a contender than the guy on an excellent team. In terms of on-court offensive fit and personality, Brunson is a pretty ideal leading star for KAT — his vibe, the mountains of goodwill he (and this team) have built up, even the ‘Nova of it all (even sans Donte) should insulate KAT from a front-and-center, face-of-the-franchise role that does not suit him.
* Assuming Mitchell Robinson makes a reasonably timely return from his ankle injury (he’s currently targeting January) and remains reasonably healthy when he does return.
I will take to my grave an unwavering belief in John Collins’s impending stardom.
For all the bloviating it inspired at the time, Kobe’s two-year, $48.5 million golden parachute in 2014 — which, even then, was not just defensible but the right move — looks downright quaint these days.
Few commonly-espoused NBA opinions are more maddening than “Kobe just did an MJ impersonation for 20 years.” Yeah? And?? Virtually anyone who’s taken up basketball since about 1987 has tried to do precisely this. What set Kobe’s rendition apart was that it actually looked the part.
I’m disinclined to shoot even a modicum of praise in either man’s direction, but John Stockton was unequivocally a better and more important player than Karl Malone.
From 1980-81 until foot and knee injuries torpedoed his career in 1986-87, Sidney Moncrief authored one of the great six-year runs by a perimeter player in basketball history. Sure, he was recognized for it at the time with five All-Star, All-NBA (First Team in ‘82-’83), and All-Defense (First Team four times) selections and the first two Defensive Player of the Year awards in 1982-83 and 1983-84. That he had to wait nearly three decades for it to get him into the Hall of Fame is an embarrassment.
If you ever feel compelled to proclaim that Allen Iverson is overrated, you’re a fucking cop.
Isiah Thomas running through Magic, Michael, and Larry to three straight Finals and two consecutive titles — at his size, as an undisputed headliner and sole creator — is an absurd achievement that shouldn’t be completely buried beneath many, many, many, many post-playing career fuck-ups.
I hope Patrick Ewing’s career, both as a pre-injury generational marvel and later as a historically great defensive anchor, gets favorable treatment as time goes by.
It’s tough to argue with the end result, the salary cap flexibility, or the fact that a move was inevitable as Kobe entered his prime, but an inferior Glen Rice celebrating the ‘99-2000 title for which Eddie Jones helped lay the foundation will never not gnaw at me.
For more than a decade, Shane Battier was a useful NBA player. For four of those seasons (‘04-’05 through ‘07-’08), he was quite good. And though he’s probably gotten overrated in this regard, he was also a very good defender. And, by all accounts, he’s a nice guy. So, it kinda sucks that, despite accepting all of this, for me he is, first and foremost, the maddening avatar of a too-clever-by-a-half set that will inevitably one day “just ask questions” along the lines of “Are we sure Robert Horry and Andre Iguodala weren’t actually better than, say, Tracy McGrady and Chris Webber?” I am preemptively triggered. On a not-unrelated note…
Byron Scott remains the best player in NBA history to never make an All-Star team. In fact…
No Longer In Plain Sight, Now Just Hidden
Just over thirteen years ago, amid chatter that Robert Horry and his seven rings might get serious Hall of Fame consideration, I wrote, at some length, about the incredibly short shrift given to Byron Scott’s NBA career. My contention at the time was not only that Scott was the best NBA player never to make an All-Star team but far closer, in both ability and achievement, to his seven-time All-Star, no-brainer Hall of Fame teammate James Worthy than Horry.
At no point since have I wavered on any of this. At the same time, there was no reason to keep beating the drum. I’d said what needed saying and put the matter to bed. There’s no changing the past.
Then came this past spring.
On April 6, we learned that Laker great and top-[tiny number of your choosing] all-time perimeter defender Michael Cooper would be one of 13 members of the recently-inducted 2024 Hall of Fame class.
There are accolades, sure — eight All-Defense selections, five of them First-Team, the 1986-87 NBA Defensive Player of the Year — but for anyone who watched the Showtime Lakers, what resonated most about Cooper was just how constant he was defensively. Fast, quick, strong, fiery, tough, smart as hell, seemingly all limbs, with the rare ability to smother opponents horizontally and vertically. From picture-perfect blocks, chase-down or otherwise, to consistently making Mike earn everything he got against the Lakers to dropping the hammer at the other end, Coop was it.
What are you supposed to do against that?
And, of course, RINGZ — Coop was crucial to all five Showtime titles.
And yet, at no point did I ever contemplate the possibility that this was all hurtling toward the Hall. To even suggest such a thing would have felt absurd. I understand that defense is half the game and foundational to winning. Even so, constructing the case for a dude who put averaged 9 points and 4 assists in 27 minutes per game would have felt asinine. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely better to have Coop in before Michael Lewis, a cadre of Valley VCs, and the Bostonians jam in Shane Battier, Andre Iguodala, and, I dunno, Derrick Jones or Danny fucking Ainge. But, c’mon.
As unhinged a homer as I can be, the furthest I’ve ever ventured out onto this limb was suggesting that Byron Scott should have made an All-Star team or two — I didn’t realize the fucking Hall of Fame was in play!
Of course, to make such a case, “leading” basketball writers old enough to have seen the ‘80s and purportedly smart enough to know better would have to acknowledge Scott’s mere presence on the fucking teams on which he played. From there, I suppose we could maybe — maybe — contemplate mentioning his favorable standing among his contemporaries.
From there, we might, perhaps, refrain from dismissing him as barely a role player — when not dismissing him altogether — and consider just how vital he was to Showtime. Like for instance, his legitimately great 1987-88 season (in the midst of an excellent 50/39/87 three-year run), in which he led the first repeat title team in 19 years in scoring, at 21.7 per game on 52.7/34.6/85.8 shooting splits, with 4.1 rebounds and assists (each), almost two steals, and stacked up decently in virtually every advanced metric against Prime Magic.
Sound like bullshit? Consider…
In NBA/ABA history, 13 players have produced a total of 18 seasons of 20+ points and 4+ assists per, with at least 58% True Shooting and 10+ Win Shares. LeBron’s got three. Jordan, Steph, and KD have two apiece. One each for Kareem, Wilt, Magic, Bird, Giannis, and Nikola Jokić brings the tally to 15. Jayson Tatum just did it in ‘23-’24. Connie Hawkins’ MVP-worthy 1967-68 rookie season with the ABA’s Pittsburgh Pipers makes 17.
The eighteenth? Byron Scott in 1987-88.
At this point, at least one of you has screamed, to no one in particular, “Dude, get over it! He was just lucky to land next to Magic!”
Fair enough.
We are, after all, talking about a classic two-guard, with minimal playmaking responsibility, flanking a singular genius, on a spectacularly stacked roster, racking up rings as part of an era-defining dynasty.
Surely those guys are too busy giving thanks for their incredible good fortune to pile up All-Star selections and cruise into the Hall of Fame. Right?
It’s the start of a new NBA season and, again, here we sit. The plan this time around is simply to let this thing be what it’s going to be — at the very least, let it be something — unencumbered by self-loathing screeds or latent fantasies of one of, like, three surviving, earnest sports media outlets finding these musings from across the Atlantic so enchanting that a future without me on the payroll feels untenable.
Just go the fuck back to writing about basketball, like no one’s watching.
For the record, I love Klay Thompson. None of this is meant to downplay his achievements in any way, but rather to highlight the extent to which Byron Scott’s have been overlooked.