Archive for the ‘Pick-and-Pop’ Category

Is anything gonna be better than this Western Conference first round? I couldn’t have plotted it better myself — all four matchups are the exact ones I was hoping would shake out going into the final weeks of this regular season, not an obvious NBA TV series among them. (OK, maybe Warriors-Nuggets, but that’s more about the market sizes and lack of marquee players than any comment on the likely quality of the games themselves.) The four series should be filled with enough drama for an entire postseason, with player comebacks, long-simmering feuds, stylistic clashes, and a whole lot of across-the-board star power. It’s gonna be great, seriously.

But before that starts — like, TOMORROW — you gotta know your subplots for each series. Here are the five biggest for each of the Western Conference first-rounders.

OKLAHOMA CITY THUNDER (1) VS. HOUSTON ROCKETS (8)

1. James Harden vs. His old team.
Duh. This subplot is worth two or three regular subplots just on his own. The two teams behind the biggest trade of the season (technically last offseason, whatever) meeting up in the first round of the playoffs, with the biggest name moved in the deal taking his new team from the lottery to postseason respectability, and his old club prospering even further in his absence. And there’s absolutely no telling how Harden will perform in the series. In three regular-season games against the franchise that drafted him, Harden had 17 on 3-16 shooting, then 25 on 6-17 shooting, then 46 on 14-19 shooting. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a couple games of each in this series.

2. Sam Presti vs. Daryl Morey
Most debates about the league’s best GM will include these two guys at the forefront, the rare front-office types with visibility and name recognition on par of their head coaches and even some of their players. Even before they pulled off the biggest and least-expected trade of the year in tandem, they were associated with each other for their smart drafting, innovative cap-management techniques and ability to see both the short and the long game. But after the Harden deal and this upcoming first-rounder, they’ll likely be mentioned in the same sentence for the rest of their careers.

3. Derek Fisher vs. the Rockets
Yeah, technically Fish was an ex-Rocket (as were, of course, Kevin Martin and Jeremy Lamb, as well as Hasheem Thabeet for a minute there), but he never actually played a game in H-Town before being cut and re-routed to OKC, so that’s not why he’s listed here. Rather, he’s listed for this play in the 2009 postseason, where he responded to his Lakers getting muscled around by the tougher Rockets in their second-round matchup by absolutely decking Luis Scola (who probably flopped a decent amount, but still), then giving a kind of “What? Me worry?” head-scratch. The list of teams around the NBA that hate Derek Fisher for various reasons is a long one, and the Rockets’ case against him will likely only get stronger after he gives Jeremy Lin a forearm shiver this postseason (and somehow gets Lin called for a charge in the process).

4. Winston Garland Flashbacks.
Journeyman point guard and Leigh Ellis trading card favorite Winston Garland made the news last year for something he had done nearly two decades earlier, when he illegally snuck on to the court at the end of the Rockets’ Game Seven of the ’93 Western Conference Semifinals matchup with the then-Seattle SuperSonics, a minor and ultimately inconsequential cheat that went unnoticed until Ethan Sherwood Strauss noticed it and wrote about it for ESPN. Memories of the play and moment will be especially strong for one guy involved with this series: Thunder coach Scott Brooks, who was on the sideline right next to Garland when he made his out-of-bounds creep, and who played with the Rockets for two-and-a-half seasons, even winning a championship with them in ’94.

5. The divided loyalty of the Oklahoma City RedHawks.
The triple-A team of the Houston Astros — and a bunch of future stars they surely are — is based out of OKC, called the Oklahoma City RedHawks. Who will such part-time major leaguers as Jordan Lyles and Jimmy Paredes, or prospects like Jarred Cosart and Jonathan Villar, be rooting for in this series? In any event, the Triple A club should do a promotional scrimmage with the big league club at some point in this series. At best, the Astros would be 3:2 favorites.

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Only two days until the postseason now, thank the heavens. After a wild, 1,230-game regular season, we now have just 48 hours to mentally prepare ourselves for what should be the most epic postseason since … well, since the last one, but we’ve had some pretty epic postseasons lately, so no shame in that. Anyway, there are other places that’ll do a much better job than I could in breaking down the actual ins and outs of the eight upcoming first round matches, but I figured we should use this precious time we have to review the four or five all-important subplots that will dominate each respective series — the shared history, the bad blood, the geographical rivalries, etc.

Start with the East today, do the West tomorrow, and by Saturday we should all be properly prepared for the series four-to-seven-act plays that will be the first round of these NBA playoffs.

MIAMI HEAT (1) VS. MILWAUKEE BUCKS (8)

1. Ray Allen’s homecoming.
From the amount of coverage given to Hall of Fame sharp-shooter Ray Allen’s jumping ship to the Heat in the offseason, you’d think the Boston Celtics were the team he’d played with his entire career. But lest we forget, it was actually Milwaukee that Allen called home for six-and-a-half seasons — the longest stay for Allen with any of the four franchises he’s played for — and where he achieved his first real career success, leading the Bucks to the conference finals in 2001 in the team’s only visit to the NBA’s final four in the last quarter-century. It’s been over a decade since he left, so the response to Ray-Ray in Milwaukee probably won’t be hugely emotional, but expect to see a bunch of montages of a young Jesus Shuttlesworth draining threes and dunking (yes, Ray Allen used to dunk) in those hideous turn-of-the-century Bucks jerseys before all is said and done.

2. Dwyane Wade’s homecoming.
Wade never played for the Bucks, of course, but he did school for three years at Milwaukee’s Marquette University, just about a mile away from the Bradley Center, where he led the Golden Eagles to the Final Four in his breakout 2003 campaign. The school remains close enough to Wade’s heart that it was considered his stop on the Heat’s recent “Reunion Tour,” which also included stops to Toronto (Chris Bosh), Boston (Ray Allen) and Cleveland (LeBron James) — though the fact that the crew didn’t even seem to remember that Ray once played for Milwaukee too should tell you all you need to know about the distance of that relationship.

3. Does Monta Ellis really have it all?
In an oft-quoted local TV segment (turned viral video) from this year, the Bucks combo guard memorably opined that he was on the same level as D-Wade as a baller, with the only difference between the two being Wade’s “more wins and two championships. Besides that, of course, MontyElly have it all. The skepticism expressed by many to the veracity of this claim is something Ellis could theoretically put to rest with an excellent series against his supposed NBA peer, though given Monta’s scoring averages in the Bucks’ four games against the Heat this year — 9.5 ppg on 30.2 percent (!!!) shooting — betting on the haters would probably be the smart move here.

4. Blue Devil “Jeopardy!” Showdown.
The Heat’s Shane Battier and the Bucks’ Mike Dunleavy, likely to be matched up on the court at some point during the series, were once teammates at Duke, both helping to lead the team to their ’01 championship. The two players’ intra-squad feud even stretched to this year, where Dunleavy publicly doubted Battier’s claim that he could beat any fellow NBAer in “Jeopardy!,” saying “I don’t know if he could beat Duke players … I don’t think he could beat me.” (Battier’s response: “Michael knows better … I’m ready any time, any place. Tell Dunleavy, tell Grant Hill, you know where to find me.”) Could make for some good halftime entertainment at one of the games. Coach K would probably even make a pretty good Trebek.

5. The Battle for Ryan Braun.
The best hitter in the National League has shown sporadic support for Milwaukee’s other pro sports team, showing up courtside for the team’s game against the Thunder a couple weeks back, and even rolling with fellow Wisconsin hero Aaron Rodgers to a game a couple years ago. However, Braun is not without his South Beach connections either, having attended the University of Miami for three years before being drafted by the Brewers in ’05. The best athletes are always notorious front-runners, especially if they have a lame personal reason to do so, so don’t be surprised if Braun shows up at one of the Bucks games wearing a throwback Heat cap or something.

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Most of us amateur prognosticators without real access to NBA scouting and game film (and/or subscriptions to Synergy or Elias or what have you) will be making predictions for this upcoming postseason the same we always do — with a mixture of basic observation, superficial insight and (mostly) anecdotal, cliché-based intuition. What teams seem to have their opponents’ number in certain matchups? What players do we trust in the postseason, and which always seem to let us down? What teams have a certain swagger, and what teams seem like they just don’t have it this year? It’s hardly the most scientific method, and its degree of success isn’t usually terribly high, but it’s fun to do as long as there’s no real pressure to be right, and when you are right based on a gut-feeling hunch, it’s pretty darned satisfying — like I don’t need the numbers, I just know THE GAME, man.

Anyway, I’ve decided to bridge the worlds of intuition and stat-based predictions with a pseudo-scientific breakdown of one of the most important factors in making semi-arbitrary NBA picks: Coachiness. If you’ve never heard the word before (which would make sense, considering it doesn’t actually exist), Coachiness is the heretofore undefined quantity of just how much your coach feels like an NBA coach, how closely he fits the paradigm of what we expect an ideal NBA coach to look, sound and behave like in our heads. Having a coach with a high Coachiness factor is critical for postseason predictions, since you’ll always feel more secure picking with a fairly Coachy coach than one who seems like he should never have gotten out of the tape room.

Below, I’ve ranked all 16 playoff-bound NBA coaches based on their Coachiness scores, from lowest to most Coachiest, grading them on a scale from 0-60, with the following six categories (worth 10 points each) making up their score:

History of Winning. Obvious factor. How much has the coach won in his career? How much respect does he get for the wins he has? Has he done it in the playoffs, or just the regular season? Having been a winner as an assistant coach or former player can help here as well, though it’s not essential to the category.

Reputation for Being Defensive-Minded: With the possible exceptions of Don Nelson and Mike D’Antoni, no coach wants to be thought of as offensive-first, as hanging your hat on defense seems much tougher, much more adult, and just much coachier. So how much respect does the coach get for his defensive prowess? Does he preach it a lot? Do his teams follow suit?

Sideline Intensity: The Coachiest coaches tend to make their names on the sidelines, barking at officials, gesturing wildly at their players, repeatedly flirting with technical fouls in the pursuit of getting all involved with the game to adhere to their view of the way things are and should be. While you may or may not view your ideal coach as being totally insane, you certainly don’t want him just standing there with his arms crossed the whole time — which is bad news for a couple playoff-bound coaches this year.

Interview Irritability: The Coachiest Coaches are all both too arrogant and too short on time to have much patience with the press, and thus tend to keep their interviews short and sour, especially when asked about subjects deemed frivolous or beyond the reporter’s understanding.

Refusal to Celebrate Wins: A good coach understands that certain low-leverage wins should not be overly celebrated if they are just a prelude to a larger goal, while a particularly Coachy coach views his players finding joy in any win but a championship downright disgusting. Coaches who win more will likely have the chance to score higher in this category, as it’s difficult to be known for your hatred of win-celebrating when you don’t even win that much.

Well-Dressed/Good Hair: Being a coach is still a management position, and as such, we expect the Coachiest among them to dress to impress. As Coach Stewart of the Eastside Projects would say, “Man, look the part, be the part, motherf—er.”

Of course, coaches who have been around for a while will invariably score better in some categories than those we’ve been less exposed to, and indeed, in the case of a tie in scoring, I gave the edge to the coach with the greater experience. But every new season, and especially every new post-season, is a new chance for a coach to expand his Coachiness profile, so look for a couple of the names towards the bottom here to possibly seem a lot Coachier by the time these playoffs are through.

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