10.20.08 Regarding Wade

So, Dwyane Wade is back, right? He went in and kicked some serious tail at the Olympics and looks to be back to the old Dwyane Wade. The old Wade, remember him? He was the guy for a few days in June of 2006 looked like the closest thing to Michael Jordan we’d ever seen. Dwyane Wade had set himself on a path to being maybe a top 10 talent in NBA history with his performance in the NBA Finals three seasons ago. The he went and got himself hurt. Well, if he’s back, what does that truly mean?

For as good as Dwyane Wade can be when healthy, he wasn’t really that hyped coming out of college. Pat Reily has even said that if Toronto hadn’t taken Chris Bosh with the #4 pick in the 2003 draft, they may have passed on Wade and taken him. Dwyane would prove to be the right pick for Miami when he led the Heat to a playoff series victory in his rookie season. Wade made a statement right away, he was for real.

Everything would change for Wade though the following year. In the summer of 2004 the Lakers traded Shaquille O’Neal to Miami. That took Wade and the Heat from a promising young team to immediate contenders. Though, what was possibly the biggest aspect of the Shaq trade for Wade was that it set him apart. Dwyane Wade was playing in the kind of big games that LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony couldn’t. Wade became not only a superstar because of his athletic ability, but because of his ability to come up huge in the biggest of games.

I already said that Wade was spectacular in his NBA Finals performance against the Mavericks in 2006. Though, as big as that was to Wade and his career, his biggest moment came a year later in a seemingly meaningless game against Houston. Wade would separate his shoulder in that game and despite his mini-comeback in the playoffs, his season was over. After that, things haven’t been the same for Wade.

LeBron James and Kobe Bryant are now the two best players in the NBA. There was a time in which one could argue that Wade was better than either of them. That time is gone. LeBron James has proven to be the best all-around player in the league, while Kobe Bryant has cemented himself as one of the great offensive talents of all time. Wade’s current identity is only truly shared by Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill. He’s supposed to be a once upon a time player. That guy that had all the potential in the world, but then he got hurt. The world of sports is littered with those types of stories. This season becomes Wade’s time of testing.

Well, for all the talk of Wade being back, I’m hoping it’s true. Dwyane Wade, when healthy, is as entertaining to watch as any player in the league. No player in recent memory will have come back from as low of depths as Wade will have if he does truly return to form. This year may not hold many victories for Wade, but if at the end of the season we can say that Wade is back to being a top five talent again, that’s the biggest victory of all. Not only for Dwyane Wade, but for us too.

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09.23.08 Regarding LeBron

Everyone is always talking about this guy. Whether they love him, hate him or both, basketball fans today always allow LeBron James to enter the conversation of the sport. When you look at what he’s done on paper, beyond the stats, LeBron really hasn’t done much. He has one NBA Finals appearance and a scoring title. Yet, when people talk about this generation’s all-time great players, you simply can’t leave this guy off the list. Maybe it’s because there’s more to basketball than what can be read on a sheet of paper.

LeBron James was probably the most hyped player in history coming out of the draft in 2003. The guy was supposed to be Dr. J, Michael and Magic all rolled into one. That may seem a little ridiculous, but that was what people were saying about this 17 year old kid. That could have to do with the fact that he looked and played like a 25 year old NBA pro. LeBron James, even then, possessed a combination of size, speed and strength that had rarely ever been seen in the history of the sport. I would argue that no one player has had as many physical gifts as that of LeBron.

LeBron James didn’t set the world on fire when he first came into Cleveland. In his first few seasons the Cavs didn’t make the playoffs. That certainly wasn’t Jordan-like in that Michael never failed to lead the Bulls to the playoffs. LeBron James had won the Rookie of the Year and had thrown up some great individual stats, but his team simply didn’t win. The question of “Is LeBron just another Vince Carter?” was one that I heard quite often back then, and by knowledgeable fans and/or writers.

In 2006 LeBron would carry the Cavs into the playoffs, and would finish second in the MVP voting behind Steve Nash. To this day, I think if there ever was a playoff series that was fixed, it was the one the Cavs had against the Wizards in the first round of that year. Not so much in that I feel anything wasn’t on the level, but you couldn’t write a better playoff debut. Let’s see, in his first playoff game LeBron James walked out with a win and a triple double. He would follow that up with two game winning shots and a very memorable moment of punking out Gilbert Arenas in the deciding sixth game.

After that, LeBron was launched. He went out to push the Pistons to seven games, and then would overcome that same team with one of the all-time great performances in NBA history the next season. Sure, the Cavs would get swept in the Finals by the Spurs, but the fact that they were in the Finals through the will of their superstar was amazing. LeBron would follow that up last season with defeating the Wizards for the third straight year and pushing the eventual NBA Champion Boston Celtics closer to the brink of defeat than the Hawks, Pistons or Lakers could come close to. All of this brings a lot of speculation of when, not if, LeBron will get his trophy.

I’m picking the Cavs to win it all this year. I don’t feel that Boston will repeat, and they’re going to miss James Posey come playoff time. The Lakers have too many questions about them. Until they can prove otherwise, they’re too soft to win a championship. The Cavs picked up Mo Williams, and while he’s not the Scottie Pippen that they needed, he does make the Cavs a better team than they were before. The team they were before was one that was a Delonte West three pointer away from facing the Pistons in the Eastern Conference Finals. We already saw how that worked out the year before.

Then if you assume the Cavs would’ve beaten the Pistons, they would’ve faced the Lakers in the NBA Finals. Then the Lakers would’ve faced very similar match up problems with the Cavs that they did with the Celtics. Point being, last year, if the stars had aligned just right, the Cavs would’ve had a path to the NBA championship. They’ll be a better team this year, and that path remains viable.

The only question is not if LeBron will be great next season, but will he be great enough to win it all. I’m predicting that he will.

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09.15.08 Regarding Shaq

As I’m sure most of you have heard Shaquille O’Neal set his retirement deadline for when his current contract with the Phoenix Suns is up in two years. I personally believe that it might have been a good idea for Shaq to retire a few years ago, but you can’t blame the guy. He would’ve been leaving a big deal of money on the table. Who cares about a legacy when money’s involved?

The facts about Shaquille O’Neal’s career are pretty clear. He was one of the most physically gifted players of all time, with an ability to overwhelm his opponents with his size and strength. There’s no question that Shaq was one of the all-time great creators of mismatches. Though, along with his gift, came an arrogance that few could ever match. Throughout Shaq’s career he’s shown a great interest in being highly regarded as a player, but what it takes to maintain that regard was something he didn’t think applied to him.

When Shaq entered the league after being drafted by the Orlando Magic I think many people thought he had the opportunity to be the most dominant player ever. There had never been a player with so much size and power, but who also had the speed and basketball IQ to match. After two seasons in the NBA Shaq had carried the Magic to the NBA Finals, passing Michael Jordan and the Bulls along the way.

We all obviously know that Shaq jumped ship from Orlando to go play for the Lakers in Los Angeles. It was Shaq’s years with the Lakers that he will undoubtedly be most remembered for. Shaq did it all in Los Angeles. He won an MVP trophy, three championships and had a drama filled feud with Kobe Bryant that would make daytime soap operas jealous. In his prime, Shaq wasn’t only a winner, but he was also a star. Some would argue that being a star might be better than being a winner. Either way, Shaq was both.

It was his level of stardom that made him a very expensive talent to have on a team’s roster. In 2004, after the Lakers got spanked by the Pistons in five games, Shaq’s fate came down to the biggest decision Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak will probably ever make. I think everyone had seen that Shaq’s best days were behind him, but he was still the best center in the NBA at the time.

The choice to trade Shaq to Miami will always be a controversial decision. There’s two ways to look at it. One, the Lakers made a big mistake in that Shaq gave Miami two highly competitive years, one ending in a championship. Two, the Lakers saved themselves some money and were able to plan for a future that seems to paying off now. I tend to think it was a good idea not to pay Shaq the kind of money that he was asking, but I also think that the Lakers are just plain lucky with how things have turned out.

Shaquille O’Neal is never going to go down in history as he would’ve liked to. He never stayed in shape and he’s paying the price of those sins now. Like Hakeem and Ewing before him, Shaq has learned the pain of staying in the game too long. We tend to remember the best days of Hakeem and Ewing, and maybe that will be how we remember Shaq after he’s retired. I can’t predict the future. I do know that, right now, it seems like a million years since Shaq was one of the best players in the league. In a little over 700 days Shaq’s story as an NBA player will have come to a close. It may be a little past due, but I’m not looking forward to writing about it.

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09.08.08 Regarding Michael

We all know Michael Jordan. He was arguably the most famous athlete of the 20th century. Michael Jordan was basketball’s most marketable star for about the last twenty five years. He’s as identifiable with the sport as probably any one singular person ever will be. Despite some current background noise, no one can honestly claim anyone today can measure up to what he left as his legacy. I would argue that no player ever could, or indeed ever will be able to do that. Like Muhammad Ali and Babe Ruth, Michael was an exception to which there was no equal.

“If I was to honestly meet Michael Jordan, and he wasn’t an ass, I’d actually be disappointed.”

That was something a friend of mine said to me the other day. I grew up with the “I wanna be like Mike” image that we all did, but something is different now. When I was growing up Michael Jordan was the guy who got cut from his high school varsity team, and then worked really hard to get on the team the next year. He was the nice guy who practiced harder than everyone else so that he could be the best. Somewhere when I got older that view changed. Maybe it was when I read the infamous book “The Jordan Rules” or when I found out he punched Steve Kerr(I seriously still can’t understand that).

I no longer view Michael Jordan as a nice guy, but I have more respect for him now than I ever did. Michael did work harder than everyone else, but that’s not it either. Michael Jordan is notorious for having been extremely hard on his teammates, but you always saw that he was never harder on anyone than himself. Michael Jordan achieved five MVP trophies, six championship rings, ten scoring titles and hosts of other awards and accolades in his basketball career, but you could always tell that he was never satisfied. Now, old and retired, he still seems restless for the game.

One of the biggest mistakes basketball fans make about Michael Jordan is expecting his replacement. We will not get another Michael Jordan. It will not happen. As much as we may want to paint Kobe Bryant or LeBron James with the Jordan brush, they will never be Michael. Kobe and LeBron will no doubt go on to do great things, but Michael Jordan is just that, Michael Jordan. Players will eventually come along that will break the records Michael set and do things that Michael didn’t, but to dwell on that as evidence of a new player’s supremacy is a fool’s game.

What fans miss about what still makes Michael Jordan the measurement by which all other players are gauged is that it’s not about numbers. Michael Jordan won six championship, and Bill Russell won eleven. Michael has five MVPs, and Kareem has six. People don’t refer to Michael as the greatest of all time because of accolades alone. All of the greats have amazing numbers they can throw at you. What made Michael Jordan the greatest was the fact that we’d never seen a player that was as larger than life than he was.

When Kobe Bryant went up against the Celtics in the NBA Finals this year, despite it being his fifth trip to that level of play, there was a question about him. Could he rise to this challenge? The general opinion of the basketball minds in the early years of Michael’s career was that if he could get the Bulls to the Finals, Michael would find a way to win. You never had to doubt Michael in the biggest games. Michael had the least amount of help of any of the major dynasties, but when it came time to bring his team home a trophy Michael never failed. That is his legacy and why he is the greatest of all time. Bill Walton may be crazy, but he does say some smart things occasionally. He once said that the truly great players, the few of them there are, when the biggest games came around, you knew they were going to be the best player. Does that honestly apply to anyone else in the history of basketball more than Michael Jordan?

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09.01.08 Regarding Kobe

Greetings from your humble narrator! I’m nursing a bit of a cold, and it sucks. Though, I’m not one to let my public down. I’m just like Kobe Bryant. Kobe wouldn’t let torn ligaments in his pinkie stop him, and I won’t let a cold stop me. It’s obviously the same thing. Considering all of this, I thought I would throw out some thoughts on The Black Mamba.

Kobe Bryant may be the most controversial player in the NBA today, and perhaps of all time. As Kobe once said in a commercial a few years ago, fans either love Kobe or hate him. The fans that love Kobe will never give an inch on their praise, and neither will the opposite side with their venom.

You could argue that Kobe Bryant was the biggest steal in draft history. He fell all the way to number thirteen, when he was selected by the Charlotte Hornets in the 1996 draft. For a point of reference, Erick Dampier was taken with the tenth pick. In one of the most lopsided trades in history, Kobe was sent to the Lakers in exchange for Vlade Divac. The then General Manager of the Lakers, Jerry West, thought he would make a strong second option behind the newly acquired Shaquille O’Neal.

The first few years of Kobe’s existence in Los Angeles were good or bad, depending on your perspective. Kobe was being compared to a young Michael Jordan and Shaq had grown into the best center in the league. The two superstars managed to make the playoffs for their first three seasons, but were spanked by the Jazz and Spurs each time. The Lakers brought into Phil Jackson once his year long sabbatical after leaving the Chicago Bulls, and we all know the rest.

We all know about the three championships and Kobe and Shaq’s feud. We can all remember how ugly it had gotten. What am I talking about? It’s still ugly. When you have Shaq free stylin’ in New York about how Kobe can’t win without him, four years after the split, it feels like a divorced couple.

Kobe may have done some image rehab over the past year, but the funny thing is, as ridiculous as it was, Shaq was right. That’s right, I said it! I’m not saying that Kobe is incapable of winning a championship unless he plays with Shaq. It would take the biggest Shaq fan in the world to deny that Kobe Bryant isn’t looking a hell of a lot better than Shaq these days. Though, Shaq was still right. To this date, Kobe Bryant has yet to win a championship without Shaquille O’Neal.

Shaq won his post-Kobe ring, even if he should be thanking Dwyane Wade every time he looks at it. Shaq has been in a championship parade that didn’t involve Kobe Bryant. Kobe has yet to have a parade where Shaq wasn’t involved, and until he does, he’ll never be his own player.

Kobe Bryant is as talented as any player in the history of basketball. Still, there’s always a catch with him. The guy is a three time champion; he’s won the MVP award, has two scoring titles and has the second highest single game scoring performance in NBA history. Though, with all of that, Kobe is defined by not being Michael Jordan or not being the best player on those championship teams.

The two chances Kobe has had to prove himself truly worthy of being placed along side Magic, Larry or Michael, against the Pistons in 2004 and the Celtics in 2008, he failed. He won scoring titles, but then was knocked out in the first round of the playoffs. He won an MVP trophy, but was then outplayed in the Finals by Paul Pierce. He won championships, but he wasn’t the man on those teams.

I believe this is Kobe’s history so far. I do not believe this will be Kobe’s story forever. Am I wrong?

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