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ALLEYOOP.COM
The Basketball Page for Thinking Fans
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FROM THE BASELINE
December 21, 2001
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Ho Ho Ho
Christmas is just around the corner, so it's time for me to send a letter to the North Pole with all my requests for this Christmas. (Some folks prefer to sit on Santa's lap to pass along this information, but I thought the image of me doing that might disturb some readers, so I'll just pay the 34 cents and mail it, thanks). Here goes:
- Never, ever again should I have to hear some scrub like Mateen Cleaves or Dan Langhi demanding a trade because they're not getting minutes. Dude, if anybody wanted you, you'd already be gone.
- I want somebody to invent the Pot Patch for Lamar Odom.
- I'd like Rashard Lewis to learn the skill known as "dribbling," in which a player bounces the ball off the floor and has it come back up into his hand again, without having it hit away by a defender or bouncing off his foot out of bounds.
- I hope Dan Issel gets fired, and I hope the Nuggets to great pains to point out that it's strictly on merit.
- Give Hubie Brown a new laugh. I don't care what it sounds like. Just get a different one, man, please.
- I want an official to stop the game and make Steve Nash put on a hairnet.
- Please give Greg Ostertag's hands to Jake Tsakilidis. They aren't in demand elsewhere but would nonetheless represent an improvement.
- No more nicknames with the first initial of the first name and the first syllable of the last name. If some faux-hip loser starts calling a guy like Tariq Abdul-Wahad "T-Ab" or something I demand the right to remove his spleen, using whatever cutting instruments are immediately at my disposal.
- Somebody needs to do something about the Sonics new uniforms. Please, for the children.
- One game this season, I want Jerry Sloan to replace his entire lineup and insert Crotty, Stockton, Padgett, Kirilenko and Ostertag, and have the announcers call it The Charge of the White Brigade.
- It would be fun if Hedo Turkoglu got a new nose every year. We'd all sit in wonder, waiting for that first TV game to see his new look.
- I wish Charles Oakley would just shut the hell up already.
- For my nephew, I'd like the hot new children's game, "Where in the World is Chris Gatling?"
- I'd like to see Atlanta talk Ennis Whatley out of retirement, just to see if he'd be
better than Emanual Davis.
- Can everyone come to an agreement that Darius Miles won't go on the cover of another magazine until he actually shows some improvement? (And on a side note, how can Slam do a cover story on the Clippers and only give Quentin Richardson one passing mention in the last column? Shouldn't they be required to watch some of the Clippers games before they do a piece like this?)
- I don't think commentators should be able to say a guy makes his teammates better without providing a shred of evidence.
- Just once, I want to see Lenny Wilkens go completely ballistic at the officials. I'm talking throwing the jacket and the water cooler, spittle coming out of his mouth, throwing a chair onto the floor type stuff.
- I'm bothered by the idea of Antoine Walker being a key player on a winning team, and I'd like it to stop.
- I think LaPhonso Ellis should be required to don a cape and a square red cloth when he goes back on defense.
- I need to find out if Avery Johnson swallows helium before he gives interviews.
- Make Rick Adelman shave. What is this, some "solidarity with the Serbs" thing?
- I'd like a rule that says Sam Cassell and Tyrone Hill can't be teammates, because that's just too much ugly for one team to handle.
- I want the Hornets to move to the Big Easy; more importantly, they should call themselves the New Orleans Teetotalers until Utah agrees to give their name back.
- I want George Karl to be secretly replaced on the Bucks' bench by Jon Lithgow, just to see if anybody notices.
- I'd like to know what Rick Fox is trying to accomplish with his hair these days.
- I need a "mute Walton" feature for my remote control.
- And finally, for goodness sake, I do NOT want to see Andre Miller get hosed out of a spot on the Eastern All-Star team, even though I fear the inevitable. It's sort of ironic, since he's been the best player in the Conference.
Programming Note
The next From the Baseline will appear on Wednesday, December 26. Merry Christmas everyone.
Pot Shots
I read Jon Wertheim's piece in Sports Illustrated on the Blazers losing their grip on Portland's fans. Since I spent the last six years up there I think have some pretty good insights into the mood and thought I'd offer my $0.02.
I do think there's an element of hypocrisy here. First, NBA attendance is down everywhere, not just Portland. Second, the Blazers fans are as much P.O.'d about the team's record as about anything else, even if nobody wants to admit it. The same fans who are upset about the team's boorish behavior cheered with wild abandon when a team led by Isaiah Rider went to the conference finals in '99.
I also didn't agree with a couple of lines in the article. The gratuitous rip of Scottie Pippen, which has become a staple of Portland commentators in the last year, is something I just don't get. There are people in Stumptown who seem genuinely surprised that Pippen isn't as good as he was with the Bulls. But the fact is, he still plays harder than anyone on the team except perhaps Ruben Patterson.
Also, Wertheim implied that the Blazers gave up Steve Smith to get Patterson, and that's not correct -- they got Derek Anderson and All-Choir Boy team member Steve Kerr. (On a side not, I should also point out that if it weren't for Patterson and is 17.6 a game on 58% shooting this month, the team would really be up the creek).
That being said, I found myself nodding in agreement several times while I read the story, because you can't deny certain truths about it. It really is hard to root for a team without a single key player you could call likeable or charismatic. Rasheed Wallace practically dares people to root against him, for crying out loud, and unfortunately he's taken Bonzi under his wing, just as Rider did with Rasheed. Brian Grant and Steve Smith were the two faves, and they were both shipped out. Maybe Derek Anderson will become that kind of player to fans, but it's hard to imagine anyone else on this team doing so.
Management doesn't help any. Bob Whitsitt, for all his trading mastery, desperately needs some P.R. folks to prevent him from insulting fans. He has to be the least media-skilled GM on the planet, and has managed the difficult feat of always looking like he's lying even when he isn't. His "I'm not a chemistry major" line had to be one of the classic Lines That Will Eventually Get You Fired in the history of sports. The organization is almost certainly the NBA's least media-friendly, and Wertheim's story produced a few examples that are well-known in Oregon media circles.
There's a lesson here, which is reinforced by the fact that most of this story is being simulcast in Charlotte. While fans will put up with all kinds of crap if the team is winning big, people aren't going to pay money see an ordinary team unless they can identify with some of the team's players or qualities. Right now that's a tough sell in Portland.
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