By Grantland Staff at
Aaron Ontiveroz/The Denver Post via Getty Images
So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.
netw3rk: Without narratives our brains would be lost in a chaotic swirl of disparate and unconnected events. Narratives are the stories we tell ourselves. It's the way we imbue our lives with meaning. Without narratives we would all go through our lives like some debauched French existentialist philosopher with Memento disease. Are sports narratives reductive and dumb sometimes? Heck yeah; most times even. But the alternative would mean confronting the reality that you are watching dudes run back and forth, meaninglessly bouncing a ball, as time flows inexorably toward the eventual destruction of Earth when it is swallowed by our aging sun. That's no fun at all. So without any further ado, here are 16 mainstream narratives pertaining to the Knicks-Nuggets game in Denver presented in March Madness bracket form.
With 2:15 left in the third quarter at the United Center last night, the Bulls and Sixers made their ways to the proper benches for a TV timeout. It was that time in the night when a footrace between animated breakfast food comes on the video board, and as the racers were announced (Dashing Donut, Cuppy Coffee, and Biggie Bagel), people in the crowd reached for their cards to find out in which Dunkin’ Donuts product they had a rooting interest. My friend made a joke about how Larry Bird must hate all this, but aside from that, I see little problem in providing fans with interstitial bits of entertainment. Plus, Dunkin’ Donuts coffee is delicious.
The troubling part came when we noticed that joining the viewing public was the majority of the 76ers bench. Down 11, two days after a double-digit loss to D-League Orlando followed by a public chastising by its coach, most of the Philly roster was more invested in Dashing Donut’s triumph than in whatever Doug Collins had to say.
Chicago and Philadelphia, it would seem, are in similar situations. Both are in their third year of playing for a demanding head coach who occasionally sounds like he ate a pack of Marlboro Reds for lunch. Both have spent this season without the star that was supposed to define their rosters. And both came into last night’s game mired in their worst stretch of the season. It was something, then, to watch how each responded at their lowest point. It’s not that the Sixers’ starters shared their apathy of their bench-dwelling teammates in their 93-82 loss; it’s that none of them were Joakim Noah.
By Zach Lowe at
Jesse D. Garrabrant/NBAE via Getty Images
A lost season hit its low point last night in Philadelphia, when an Orlando team that is now 4-28 in its last 32 games blew out the Sixers, resulting in a postgame borderline meltdown from Doug Collins. Over an excruciating 10 minutes, Collins did the following:
• Passed the buck for Philly’s awful game almost totally onto the players, saying he’s only in charge of “execution,” while implying the players are responsible for everything else. That includes “effort,” Collins said. And more: “I did not think our guys prepared themselves during the [All-Star] break to come back and play.”
• Went out of his way to specifically mention that Nikola Vucevic grabbed 19 rebounds, while Spencer Hawes snagged just one in 21 minutes. In related news: Vucevic was a member of the Sixers last season, and he was even in the rotation before Collins tossed him through the always-revolving turnstile that leads to Collins’s doghouse. Vucevic played less than three minutes total in Philly’s 13 playoff games. The Sixers’ front office, acting to a large extent under Collins’s directive, traded Vucevic, Moe Harkless, Andre Iguodala, and a future first-round pick away in the Andrew Bynum deal.
So much amazing is happening, and the Shootaround crew is here to help you keep track of it all. You'll find takes on moments you might've missed from the previous night, along with ones you will remember forever.
This Is Happening
One of the best things about sports is the way it can turn the crusty, cold analysts among us into childlike believers in magic and chemistry and destiny once in a while. Not that all of those things are hokum; chemistry, roster fit, and the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good are enormously important things in building an elite NBA team. But over the long haul, numbers and stat-based trends usually win out, and the teams that look the best on paper typically beat other teams four times in seven games.
And yet when the Warriors celebrated like teenagers after Draymond Green's last-second layup, and then again after LeBron's game-ending miss, the thought darted through my head: "Something special might be happening in Golden State." No, Zach! Those thoughts are for teenage you, and for the builders of false narratives about mythical heroes and clutch winners. You must banish those thoughts before approaching the keyboard!
The growing importance of the 3-point shot in today’s NBA is hardly a secret. It has become an essential element for efficient team offense. Not only is the shot itself valuable, but its mere threat creates by far the most precious commodity in the game today — space.
Modern-day defenses, more sophisticated and aggressive than ever before, are built to take away that space. Elite offenses, meanwhile, emphasize ways to create as much of it as possible. With the exception of a select few, like Dwyane Wade, this becomes a struggle for players who struggle with outside shooting.
Because of that, a reliable 3-point shot has become the most critical skill for players to develop. It not only helps maximize earning potential, it allows players to seamlessly fit into nearly any system with positive results. Rudy Gay and Evan Turner are two such players currently reaping the benefits of an offseason spent honing their 3-point strokes.
The rookie deal non-max extension is one of the least efficient/riskiest contracts in the NBA. It comes when a player is still very young, at a stage when it’s possible to believe he might advance more in the next 12 months than he did in the previous 36 combined — even if history says that sort of leap at age 23 or 24 is unlikely. If a team passes on an extension and that growth comes right away, the team will have cost itself something like $10 million or $20 million by failing to lock up the player ahead of restricted free agency. Saving that kind of money has real roster-building impact; Boston would be short a Jason Terry or Courtney Lee right now had it not locked up Rajon Rondo at an absurdly cheap price at the extension buzzer in 2009.
Today's big picture: Two teams with point guards who appear to be foundational offensive players have locked them up with long-term deals, while two others (Milwaukee and Philadelphia) have passed on extending point guards who have yet to show that kind of potential.
Well, it’s a good thing the Sixers have four center types on their roster and entered last offseason with the goal of handing the reins to Jrue Holiday and Evan Turner. Those guys may get more scoring responsibility than even their biggest supporters envisioned, with news today that Andrew Bynum is experiencing continued pain in his surgically repaired right knee and has not yet been cleared to run.
Philadelphia sports fans are regarded as a nasty bunch — jeerers of Santa Claus, cheerers of paralysis, heavers of battery acid at toddlers — but the only venom produced this week was a half-hearted “Beat L.A.” chant. Instead, Wednesday’s press conference introducing Andrew Bynum as a member of the Sixers was an adorable congregation of the optimistic. To giddy hooting, the new centerpiece of the franchise declared affection for the city, rattled off native credos, and coyly alluded to sticking around for longer than the final year of his contract. Damn that flirtatious, Shrek-size rogue. Meanwhile, GM Rod Thorn, for whom the acquisition of Bynum represents an opportunity to leave a legacy in Philly, looked like a proud grandfather at a wedding reception after too many toasts.
