Junior's Wild Night (NBA Preview #2)

I drove by the newly-dubbed “Seau’s Cliff” today. The “accident” occurred in the early hours this morning and the SUV had been towed away hours ago, but they still had one lane blocked off to handle the immense news coverage this is getting. The cliff is about 40 feet high and it’s gradual enough that if you drive over the edge, you’re tires would stay in contact with the ground the entire way until you go head first into the sand. In a large SUV, you are going to be injured, maybe even severely, but odds are pretty slim that you’re going to die. Who knows what was actually going on in Junior’s head, but it’s fun to speculate.

The glass half empty approach is that Seau hit his girlfriend around midnight. She called the cops, who came and arrested him around 1:30 am. He posted bail and on his way down the coast, saw the cliff in the moonlight and had a flashback to Thelma & Louise. And really, it would be a pretty good way to go, flooring it off a cliff. The problem in this case was that he chose the wrong cliff. Driving down what amounts to being a very steep hill with a sandy bottom is like trying to commit suicide by shooting yourself in the leg. Sure, there’s a chance you could hit an artery and bleed to death, but if you really want to go through with it, there are ways to guarantee the outcome.

The glass half full approach is that he got in an argument with his girlfriend, who, in an effort to get back at him for being too awesome, called the cops and claimed he hit her. They came to the scene and were forced to take him to the station for questioning (presumably about the 1994 AFC Championship Game.) After pictures and autographs, they released him. He decided to go for a drive down the coast so he could get some thinking done about the next logical move for his charity, when he fell asleep behind the wheel and slowly drifted over the embankment.

Odds are, the truth is somewhere in the middle. (My guess is that he was rightfully arrested and fell asleep on the way home.) But, in the spirit of Junior Seau’s exciting night, I’m going to go over some best case, worst case scenarios for the NBA season.




Knicks and Amare’s $100 million contract

Glass half-full: Amare has a great first year in Mike D’Antoni’s offense (26 ppg and 8.5 rpg) and, most importantly, stays healthy. Next offseason, they use their remaining salary cap space to sign Carmelo to a long term, similar contract and include Raymond Felton, Wilson Chandler, and a pick in a sign-and-trade with the Spurs for Tony Parker-Longoria. (I don’t think landing Chris Paul and Carmelo is realistic, although Paul would be amazing with D’Antoni.) The Knicks, starting Amare, Carmelo, Parker-Longoria, Anthony Randolph, and Toney Douglas, are rising just as the Celtics are falling, and they spend the next five years battling with the Heat for Eastern Conference supremacy in a revival of the late 90’s rivalry, only with polar opposite teams from the earlier edition.

Glass half-empty: Amare blows out his knee again in February, right about the time the Nuggets trade Carmelo to the Nets for Derrick Favors, etc. Carmelo signs a long term deal with the Nets to be the face of the new Brooklyn franchise. Chris Paul sees a gimpy Amare in Manhattan or a young, up-and-coming, Carmelo led team in Brooklyn and decides to take a small pay cut to join the latter. Amare, coming off another surgery, looks around to see Danilo Gallinari, Toney Douglas, Bill Walker, and Timofey Mozgov joining him in the starting five with no help in sight. He becomes completely disinterested and as the pressure from the New York media grows, he tries to demand a trade. Only no team wants to touch a contract like that on a disgruntled, injury prone big man who can only create if he has a good point guard with which to run the pick and roll.




The Cleveland Cavaliers

Glass half-full: I can’t come up with anything. They win the draft lottery, I guess.

Glass half-empty: Really the glass is about 99% empty. JJ Hickson and Mo Williams lead the team to the worst record in the league, but despite having the best odds, they pull the 11th pick in the draft and select Nolan Smith out of Duke.




Boston Celtics

Glass half-full: Rondo continues the transition of taking over leadership of the team, averaging a solid 17-6-9 line. Big Baby is able to keep his emotions under control and he plays well enough to let KG keep his minutes around 25 through the first 4 months of the season. The O’Neal brothers, Jermaine and Shaquille, are able to split the load while Kendrick Perkins gets healthy. When Perkins comes back after the All-Star break, Shaq fakes a toe injury to rest up for an imminent second round matchup with Orlando. Nate Robinson provides a spark off the bench and they close out the Magic at home in Game 6. In the Eastern Finals, the Heat don’t have anyone to contend with Rondo. When they try to move Wade or Lebron to him, Pierce and Ray Allen kill them and they advance to face the Lakers. Kobe goes 7 for 25 from the floor in game 7, Artest bricks a 3 in the final minute, and Shaq finally gets his revenge on Kobe, evening up the championship count at five.

Glass half-empty: Rondo’s confidence is shattered after being cut from the Team USA this summer. He has to take a leave of absence from the team to try to get his head right. In his absence, the veterans are forced to watch Nate Robinson continually take the outlet pass and pull up from 25 feet. An internet video surfaces of Shaq furiously chasing Nate in the locker room after a 20 point loss in Atlanta. The O’Neal brothers, KG, and Big Baby all go down to injuries and they are forced to re-sign Brian Scalabrine as their sixth man. Rumors swirl about Delonte West sleeping with an undisclosed teammate’s mother. Doc Rivers finally grows tired of this team and ends up broadcasting the Celtics first round loss to the Bulls.



The Big Three in Miami

Glass half-full: This one’s pretty easy. Lebron accepts the facilitator role and averages the first triple double since Oscar Robertson. Wade plays exactly the way he has played his entire career, driving the ball and taking the last shot. Chris Bosh doesn’t have to worry about creating his own points, so he learns how to play defense and focuses on rebounding, averaging an 18-11. They run through the East with ease. In the finals, Bosh and Gasol cancel each other out, Kobe is drained from guarding Wade, and Artest can’t handle Lebron going to the hoop. Heat in 6.

Glass half-empty: There aren’t enough shots to go around. Rumors begin coming out of the Heat camp about underlying animosity brewing between Lebron and Wade. The hatred from opposing fans starts to get at Lebron and he begins to think everyone except Maverick Carter is against him. He wears headphones constantly in the locker room and moves his locker next to Shavlik Randolph, to try to get away from anyone that matters. Bosh goes down to injury and they are forced to rotate a Haslem-Juwan Howard-Big Z-Jamal Mcgloire front line. Pat Reilly gets fed up with a lackluster start and replaces the player-popular Erik Spoelstra with himself. The players revolt because of the treatment to Spoelstra and the team eases it’s way to a first round defeat in a 4-5 matchup with Atlanta. (This one was fun to think about.)




Chicago Bulls
(By the way, I just looked at their roster and realized they signed Brian Scalabrine for $800,000 this year. Apparently, they felt their team was lacking a comedic factor going into the season.)

Glass half-full: Scalabrine never has to see the court. Derrick Rose parlays his Team USA experience into an MVP season. They make the right move, holding onto Deng and Noah through the trade deadline. Noah and Boozer frustrate the Heat enough to pull off a shocker in the second round. They have another epic series against the Celtics, with Rose and Rondo battling to prove which one should have truly been the point guard for the US this past summer. KG is too worn down to handle Boozer and the Bulls pull out another mild upset. Unfortunately, even in the best case scenario, I don’t think they have enough to match-up with the Lakers.

Glass half-empty: Kyle Korver goes cold and, with no one else to truly stretch defenses, opposing teams can crowd the paint to control drives from Boozer and Rose. The team panics and gives up Deng, Noah, and a couple of first rounders for Carmelo. Without Noah there to be a pest, the Celtics or Magic are able to exploit their lack of front line depth and knock them out in the first round. They are able to sign Melo to a long term deal, but with no help coming from the draft for the next two years, they are forced to rely on the development of Taj Gibson. I still would like their team over the next few years, with or without Carmelo.


I’ll go over the Western Conference sometime before the season starts. Stay tuned.

A Tragic Love Story

It was made public on December 22nd, 2003. Who knows when it actually started. It might have been a business meeting in the late 90’s or a dinner party in the early 2000’s. Or maybe he became obsessed with the bad boy that he watched from a distance in the late 80’s. Whenever it started, it became official in the Winter of ‘03. That was the day we first knew how desperately in love James Dolan is with Isiah Thomas.

Dolan hired the former Piston point guard to run his New York Knicks franchise. I can’t blame him for falling for Thomas initially. I mean there were few candidates who could boast the resume that he was carried into that job: After finishing his playing days in 1994, he bought a minority interest in the Raptors and was hired as VP of Basketball Operations. After three years, Isiah left the team with a 62-151 record. In 1998, Thomas bought the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) for $10 million. In 2001, by direct fault of his reckless spending (according to most accounts), the CBA was forced into bankruptcy. He was immediately hired to coach the Indiana Pacers, a team coming off a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pacers lost in the first round of the playoffs the next three season before Thomas was fired by Larry Bird.

So, what possible reason would a business mogul hire someone who failed in every capacity of the game since he retired from playing? At first, I think everyone just assumed that James Dolan lost a bet to someone in Isiah’s family. Thomas is the youngest of nine children, so the odds are pretty good that at least one of his brothers or sisters is involved in high stakes gambling. But the more time went on, the more it became apparent that there was something deeper in this seemingly professional relationship. There is only one thing that could make someone blind to all logic, business sense, financial losses, Jerome James signings, win/loss record, sexual harassment charges, Stephon Marbury turnovers, luxury taxes, and utter incompetence: LOVE.

James Dolan's Happiest Split-Second

James Dolan is so in love with Isiah Thomas that he doesn’t see what the rest of the world knows. There are thousands of relationships like this in the US. The difference is that the most publicity that the majority of these relationships will ever see is an episode of Cops: Albuquerque. Typically, it plays out as a woman running out of a trailer yelling to the police that she doesn’t want to press charges as her shirtless boyfriend is being handcuffed and placed into the back of a cop car. It’s not his fault he hit her in the head with a full beer can; she forced him to do it because she wouldn’t stop talking about her brother-in-law getting that sweet new job down at the plant. It just so happens in this case, the woman is actually a man who is worth a couple billion dollars and owns one of the most publicized teams in American sports and the drunken, shirtless misogynist is his President of Basketball Operations.

James Dolan is like Jane from the song “Jane Says”. He is like Satan and Isiah Thomas is like Saddam Hussein. And I don’t mean this in a literal sense in which I’m saying Thomas is a megalomaniac former dictator of Iraq and Dolan is the ruler of the dark underworld. I mean this as a reference to South Park, where they are recurring lovers. In the show, Saddam verbally and physically abuses Satan, but no matter how hard Satan tries, he can’t help but run back to Saddam in spite of the obvious negatives. There are plenty of parallels between this fictional relationship and the steamy love affair that ran the Knicks for the better part of this past decade.

On many occasions, Thomas has shown the tendencies of a Saddam-like (again, in South Park terms) lover. In 2006, he and Madison Square Garden were sued by a female co-worker for Sexual Harassment. Isiah, allegedly, made demeaning and sexually-charged remarks towards the accuser. He denies any wrong doing, although he did admit to calling her a bitch once during a work day (this actually happened). The ensuing trial unveiled numerous details about Thomas and the alleged frat-like atmosphere he ran with the Knicks. But of course, James Dolan stuck by his man and even paid the over $11 million settlement, much like a beaten, trailer park wife would pay her husbands bail.

What Up, Steph!?!

Sticking with the subject of money, Dolan has a ton and Isiah didn’t mind spending it. If you’ve ever been unlucky enough to see the movie Requiem for a Dream, you might remember the opening scene where Jared Leto steals his mother’s television so he can pawn it for drug money. No matter how much this screwed the mother over, she was always going to forgive him. She loved him. (I say unlucky enough to see the movie for two reasons; neither of which are that it was a bad movie. In fact, it was a pretty awesome movie. However, five years later, I’m still stuck with the image of Jared Leto shooting up into his rotting arm burned into my subconscious. Probably the single reason I haven’t ever tried heroin. So, really it might be a good thing, depending on whether you’re pro-heroin or not. The second reason I consider myself unlucky to see Requiem is that no matter how charming and beautiful Jennifer Connelly was in Blood Diamond, she just doesn’t do it for me anymore. If you’ve ever seen the movie, you know exactly what I’m talking about.) James Dolan loves Isiah Thomas. And no matter how much of Dolan’s money he spends on Eddy Curry, Jerome James, Jared Jeffries, Zach Randolph, Steve Francis or any of the other All-Hype All Stars, Dolan will always forgive him. He loves him.

In fact, Dolan loves him so much, that he decided to make him head coach in 2006. This goes along the same logic of “you beat me, steal my money, and cheat on me, so why don’t you move in with me so I can change you into the type of man I want.”

But in most dysfunctional relationships, friends and family of the abused will start to pressure them to move on. “Can’t you see he’s no good for you?” In Dolan’s case, it was all of his friends in the New York media that held an increasingly desperate 4 year-long intervention. It began as a couple back page editorials, but eventually climaxed with the media inviting 90% of the fans in attendance at MSG to chant “Fire Isiah” over the final 4 months of the ’08 season. Finally, Dolan’s eyes were opened. He ended it. He met someone else: Donnie Walsh, the generally successful General Manager of the Pacers, who he would hire to replace Isiah. Dolan had moved on from the heroin-like highs (or so I’ve been told) and hell-like lows of his love affair with Saddam... I mean Isiah. At least this is what we all wanted to believe. We hoped, for Dolan’s sake, that it was over.



But the flame of a love that passionate doesn’t go out with just a strong breeze. And in the past month, Isiah’s name was again connected to the Knicks organization. According to several sources, Dolan and current coach, Mike D’Antoni, asked Isiah to speak to Lebron James in a last ditch effort to lure him to Madison Square Garden. Somehow, Lebron was able to turn down his charm. (Who the hell thought this would work? “Well Lebron, we know you turned us down earlier this week and the consensus is that you are either going to play in your hometown with the team you’ve been with for the past seven years or you’re going to take your talents to South Beach and play with two of your best friends who also happen to be a couple of the best players in the league, but here’s Isiah Thomas. What do you think about the Knicks now?”)

And, this week it was announced that New York offered to put Isiah back on the payroll as a consultant. Do they really want him to consult them with his obvious wealth of knowledge on how to run a team? Of course not. James Dolan wants Isiah back in his life.

(Rumors started to swirl in the wake of the Consultant announcement that Donnie Walsh was thinking about retiring. He came to the realization that Dolan would never truly be over Isiah and he wanted to get out before his heart was broken.)

It turns out that David Stern has nixed the idea of Thomas returning to the Knicks, saying it would cause a conflict of interest with Isiah’s current job, head coach of Florida International. (Another genius David Stern move.) But don’t worry Dolan, Isiah will return to you someday. A love strong enough to make it through all of this, has to have a happy ending.