Links to the Present: First Days of a New Season Edition

To be as edgy and culturally relevant as every other young writer,  I need to quote Drake and Future. “What a time, to be alive.” And, they’re right.

I feel like a little kid at Christmas time the first few days of the NBA season. Opening night is Christmas Eve. The small number of games seems like the sacrificial present some parents offer their child the night before Christmas.

Adam Silver was awfully nice this year with the TNT games he handed me on my Christmas Eve. The Cavs-Bulls game went down to the very last possession. The Cavs lost, but after playing sloppy all night, just being in a position to win was enough to make me happy.

The Warriors played the Pelicans. I could only watch the first quarter, but what a first quarter it was. Curry scored 24 in it to start the Golden State season off right. The Warriors won 111-95.

On Wednesday night, the NBA made my early Christmas one of the best in years. There were almost too many presents. The Cavs stomped Memphis passing their way to a 30 point win. Kevin Love looked like Minnesota Kevin Love. He was hitting shots in the post, draining threes, throwing touchdown bombs, and grabbing offensive boards.

And, I caught the end of the Spurs-Thunder game, which the Thunder won. Dion Waiters hit two “oh my god, what is wrong with you, there are other guys on the floor who are better scorers” mid-range twos in a row, with about two minutes left. One of them tied the game at 103, and the other took the lead. He shot 50% from the field on 4-8 shooting. Again, “What a time to be alive.” Cavs, former and present, were making a difference all night. Who would have thought Dion could play on a contender in a way that wasn’t aggravating?

How about the 76ers-Celtics match? Jahlil Okafor can flat out score. He had 26 points, despite coughing the ball up eight times. If he learns how to keep the ball up high, and Nerlens Noel continues to secure the paint, Philly may have the best front court in the coming years. They lost to the Celtics.

The Lakers blew a 16 point lead to the Wolves, and Kobe took 24 shots and made just eight of them. He was just 3-13 from deep in his 24 point performance. Julius Randle ran the floor like a three and finished like a five, but he only had 15 points on 5-13 shooting. DeMarcus Russell scored just four points and dished two assists. That is the fate of a man deferring to Kobe and playing off the ball, when he is better at playing on the ball.

And, the Wolves, well Ricky Rubio, didn’t look too bad either. Rubio shot 50% from three, put up 28 points, played stellar defense, had 14 assists, and was a game tying high +12 when he was on the floor.

There was simply too much basketball to watch, 14 games. Too many toys to open. I still feel like I’m opening a present that fell behind the Christmas tree every time I click a condensed game on League Pass from Wednesday night.

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The start of the NBA season is when you get a bunch of think pieces about what certain roster moves and coaching moves mean for a team. Dave Schilling of Grantland broke down the Lakers’ opening night game with the Timberwolves. Unsurprisingly, Kobe became the primary focus of the piece.

Lakers fans, not used to the level of suffering from the past few seasons, are holding out for some moment of truth that may never come — a rapturous day in which Kobe Bryant agrees to relinquish control of a basketball team he’s led to five championships and seven Finals appearances in 19, going on 20, seasons. As much as I and other Lakers fans adore Kobe for his myriad accomplishments, he’s come to represent something akin to a benevolent dictator who’s outlived his ability to govern effectively. No. 24 is sort of like Fidel Castro if he had a fadeaway jumper in his arsenal. We may not be able to fully rid ourselves of Bryant until he’s so feeble that he couldn’t even post up a chair.

Don’t worry, he touches on Kevin Garnett and everything crazy he did during the game.

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Nazr, the blogger.

Nazr Mohammed, formerly of the Chicago Bulls, is now blogging. This week he addresses roster construction and how to have a long NBA career. The best part of the piece is a story he tells about working with Terry Stotts.

Thankfully, I figured this out early on. I have a vivid memory of something that Coach Terry Stotts (now Head Coach with the Blazers) told me when he was my assistant coach for the Atlanta Hawks. And it’s something that makes a lot more sense to me now than it did back then! One night before a game he said, “Nazr, just give me your ‘B’ game today. I don’t need your ‘A’ game.” At first I thought he was crazy, but it’s funny because now I understand what he meant. As a young player, I was out there trying to show off all my moves and put on a low post tutorial during games lol. But that’s not what my team needed from me. Coach needed me to rebound, challenge shots, run the floor, set screens, play good individual/team defense and finish plays. He needed me to do a lot of the things that wouldn’t show up in a stat sheet or a highlight reel. You always have to give your ‘A+’ effort in terms of preparation and doing your best, but most importantly, you have to give what the team needs.

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Seven minutes before the Cavs’ new season started, Danny Leroux of Real GM divulged why the Cavs should be the favorites to win it all. Here’s the math.

That brings us back to the equation at the top. If the Warriors are 60/40 favorites against Cleveland in what many think is the most likely Finals matchup, and 80/20 favorites against every other potential Eastern Conference opponent, they still need to make the Finals at a rate somewhat close to the Cavs to be the most likely champion.

If Cleveland is a coin flip against anyone else and wins the East 75 percent of the time, the Warriors need to win three series out West 52% of the time to carry the same championship chances. Ratchet the frequency the Cavs win the East up to 80% or 90% and it gets even harder for Golden State – 56% and 64% to keep pace. Even lowering Cleveland’s chances of beating a non-Warriors Western Conference challenger to the same 40% does not help their relative odds too much.

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Ted Crow of The Plain Dealer sums up LeBron’s Memphis game in a cartoon.

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Terry Pluto interviewed David Griffin for Cleveland.com. The interview has some great quotes from Griffin about everything going on in the Cavaliers organization.

On the Cavs’ young core: “To have Kyrie, Shumpert, Kevin and Tristan in their middle 20s on long-term deals is very significant in a market like ours,” said Griffin. “We can look to the future and know what our future looks like. It’s not like we have a group of stars but we don’t know what will happen (because they are free agents) after the season.”

On David Blatt coaching in the NBA: “In Europe, every single game is an entity to itself,” said Griffin. “In Tel Aviv, he was coaching a team where every loss was a major story. He was with a team that was supposed to be the 1927 Yankees every year.”

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Kirk Goldsberry of Grantland chatted with Russell Westbrook and broke down all things Russell. My takeaways are that Russ throws wild passes, doesn’t care about numbers, and makes his teammates the equivalent of Dirk Nowitizki, when he passes them the ball.

Thunder players converted 55 percent of the 1,053 shots they attempted within two seconds of receiving a Westbrook pass last season. For context, Dirk Nowitzki attempted 1,062 shots in 77 games last season; he made 46 percent of them. In other words, aside from winning the scoring title himself, Westbrook used his passing skills to turn his teammates into a composite of a player who’s more efficient than Dirk Nowitzki.

Now, imagine what Dirk would look like if he were made up of Durant, Anthony Morrow, and Serge Ibaka. Just picturing Serge Ibaka with Dirk’s locks makes me wish we could force Ibaka to wear a blond Dirk wig.

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In keeping with my tradition of writing about the antics of Swaggy P, aka Nick Young, I give you this:

That’s what Nick went as for a Halloween party. I’m sure Iggy was happy. Basketball wise Nick is doing well. He was 5-8 for 14 points in the Lakers’ opening night lose to the Wolves.

Earl’s Pearl of The Week

J.R. Smith is actually the winner of his own award this week. This is a first. After Nikola Mirotic decided it would be a good idea to lower his shoulder into J.R. during their opening night meeting, J.R. gave him a quick arm to the gut. The refs called the foul and Smith turned away in disgust. He quickly received a reputation tech. This resulted in the Bulls going up by five with about five minutes left in the game. The league has rescinded the foul call, but that still doesn’t change how it effected the game.

Bottom Lines of The Week

LeBron James is pumping Kevin Love up. He probably has sensed all of the nasty talk about Love’s haircut and wants him to feel better, more on that soon. So, here’s what the King said:

“We’ll use Kevin however he wants to be used,” James said. “I told you Kevin is going to be our main focus. He’s going to have a hell of a season. He’s going to get back to that All-Star status. He’s the focal point of us offensively.

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Stephen Curry had the line of the week. He went 14-26 for 40 points in the Warriors’ opening night win against the Pelicans. He had 20 points in the first quarter alone, and handed out seven assists. He was 5-12 from deep.

Two Random Thoughts

The millionaire’s headband is made from his cut-off shirt sleeves.

1. Kevin Love is making $19,689,ooo this season, and he can’t even rock a normal headband. During one of the TV timeouts two nights ago in Memphis, they showed a quick fluff interview with Love. He had on a shirt with the sleeves cut off. The sleeves were on his head. He had fashioned them into a quasi-headband to support his mop. This headband looked like the one he was wearing during the actual NBA game. I’m all for the reuse part of the three R’s….unless, they make you look homeless. Buy a headband, Kevin.
2. The Pelicans should be protecting the paint a heck of a lot better. Against the Warriors they allowed 52 points there. Against Portland, they allowed 46 points. They are in the bottom five in points allowed in the paint so far this year. The season is young, but from the small chunks of their games I have watched, I’m not confident this high number will improve anytime soon. The Pellies still aren’t consistently dropping Anthony Davis back to protect the rim. They are also allowing a lot of cuts to the rim.