SportsDystopia

Tony Parker erupted for 55 points on Wednesday night to save the Spurs from an 0-4 start in a spectacular double-overtime showing against Minnesota.  In adding 10 assists, he also became just the 3rd player in NBA history to drop a 55/10, joining very elite company in Michael Jordan and Oscar Robertson.

With Manu Ginobili sidelined until at least December and Tim Duncan starting to slow a little with age, the load is now on Parker’s shoulders to carry the offensive load.  He has shown himself to be one of the league’s premier slashers, featuring an explosive first step and an ability to score driving to the basket.  Through the Spurs’ first 4 games, Parker is averaging 33.3 PPG, nearly double his career high.  While he’s certainly not going to continue at that level, Parker is making it clear that he’s ready to take the big step forward that’s been looming for him the last few years.

Big news broke in the NBA today, as the Denver Nuggets dealt Allen Iverson to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Chauncey Billups, Antonio McDyess, and seldom seen Cheikh Samb.  Pistons president Joe Dumars had vowed changes were in the works after last season’s playoff loss to the Celtics, and just a few games into the 08/09, he delivered on that promise.

It’ll be interesting to see how the deal plays out.  At first it looks like a major risk for the Pistons.  Billups has been essentially the motor that made Detroit run the last several seasons, running the offense and playing fierce defense on the perimiter.  If Iverson has another big season in the tank however, the deal could reignite a Detroit team that had grown stagnant in the seasons following their championship.

With Iverson’s contract set to expire this season though, it makes sense for the Pistons to take the gamble to see if he meshes with the team, especially with Rodney Stuckey waiting in the wings to take over the point long-term.  If Alley-I’s arrival excites ‘Sheed, the Pistons are as dangerous a team as the Celtics were last season, with 3 big threats including Rip Hamilton who at this point in his career is a more reliable scorer than Ray Allen.

Denver takes a larger real risk in acquiring the aging Billups, who’s played alot of long seasons at the age of 32, and has 4 years left on his contract worth over 50 million.  McDyess has another year left on his deal at around 7 million, but he’s put together a nice stretch of healthy seasons, and can be a reliable reserve for the Nuggets.

It’s another major deal for the NBA, which has seen it’s share of blockbusters over the last two seasons.  It also represents another shift of power back towards the East, as the Pistons and Celtics now represent 2 of the 4 favorites for the NBA Championship, including New Orleans and the Lakers.

By this point, you’re probably well familiar with the controversy that has swirled around Dallas Mavericks forward Josh Howard in recent days over his comments made in July at Allen Iverson’s Charity Flag Football Game.  As usual these days for anything vaguely offensive, the reaction has been knee-jerk righteous indignation, as commentators can’t resist bludgeoning Howard, who’s become an easy target in the past few months, after he bafflingly confessed to the Dallas Morning News that he smoked weed in his free time, and then partied it up while the Mavs went down in the playoffs.

ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith called him “The franchise’s resident idiot, someone who is gainfully employed solely for his ability to bounce and shoot a basketball.”, which is 2 more reasons for him to be employed than Stephen A. Smith, as far as I can tell.  Smith claimed that “others around him respectfully stood in recognition” while Howard “spewed his rhetoric”.

Here’s the full video.  Howard’s comments come at 1:43, but if you start watching at 1:20, you’ll see there weren’t too many people on the field “standing in recognition”.

Others who’ve watched the video have also seen things that aren’t there in their eagerness to get in a free shot on Howard, like J.A. Adande, who said “the worst part isn’t in what Howard said.  It’s in the comments that follow, a free-flowing cesspool of n-words and orders to go back to Africa”.  Uh, I’m sorry, what was that J.A.?  Were we watching the same video?

Josh Howard’s comments were brief and not terribly eloquent, but I have to ask, why SHOULD a black man stand in respect for an anthem written by Francis Scott Key, a slave owner?  And why is that simple fact not mentioned in any of these commentaries that villify Howard, especially those penned by black commentators like Smith or Adande?

Even when Adande is trying to get to the heart of the matter, he still misses completely when he says “I’d bet Howard would tell you the country has been great to him. He went to college and made it to the NBA. Now his contract is being used against him, why is it that we hate it when athletes put money first, but so many believe that same money should trump their right to complain about the country?”  Again, did we watch the same video J.A.?  Howard said nothing about his country, nothing at all.  What he DID say was “Star-Spangled Banner’s goin’ on.  I don’t celebrate that sh*t.  I’m black.”  Considering who Francis Scott Key was, and the obvious hypocrisy of a man who kept slaves penning lines about “the land of the free”, how can you blame him?

Stephen A. Smith can take his free pass and call Howard “ignorant” all he likes.  It’s really Smith and his cohorts who are ignorant of the history that surrounds the Star-Spangled Banner, and it is they, the members of the media, who do us a disservice when they fail to understand or interpret the racial issues that surround the situation, and instead content themselves to take aim at the easy target.

It’s just not fair.  All my life, I’ve been a Lakers fan, and now, because of…him…I can barely stand to watch the team anymore.  I grew up with the fast break, with Showtime, with Magic running the team with a smile on his face, with Big Game James and The Captain alongside.  Those teammates of Magic’s, they sure loved playing with him.  It was a joy to watch, the Purple and Gold, up and down the floor, night in, night out, usually winning, always having fun.  But now…he’s here.  He might be the best basketball player the planet has ever seen…and it kills me to have to root for him night after night.

I didn’t always feel that way about Kobe Bryant.  When he came to the Lakers at 17, he was a brash, precocious, and yes, arrogant young man, who already possessed all the tools to turn him into his generation’s Jordan.  And like so many other good young players of the past 15 years, he was hung with the label of “The Next MJ”.  But unlike the Penny Hardaways, Vince Carters, and Tracy McGradys, with Kobe, the label fit.

He had a relentless desire to do one thing: win.  It was clear as soon as he set foot in town, but it would take Phil Jackson’s calming influence to bring out the real beast in Kobe, to teach him how to harness those immense talents for the sake of a championship.  It was only his 3rd year in the Association, but there he was, leading a Shaq-less LA squad over the Pacers in a memorable game 4 of the NBA Finals, doing his damage down the stretch and in OT.  The Lakers clinched in 6, and a dynasty was born.

The Lakers won 3 titles in a row on the backs of Kobe and Shaq, with alot of help from Robert Horry, Derek Fisher, and Rick Fox along the way.  But maybe Kobe resented living in the shadow of The Big Fella, and Kobe/Shaq feuding came to dominate LA storylines for as long as O’Neal stayed a Laker.  The window finally closed on the era 4 years ago, when LA (now dragging the corpses of Karl Malone and Gary Payton along for the ride) was destroyed by Detroit in a disappointing NBA Finals.

The Lakers turned down a trade offer which would’ve given them the most entertaining team in the league, when they rejected Dallas’ offer of Steve Nash for Shaq, and instead dealt the Big Fella to Miami, getting in return Lamar Odom, Brian Grant, and Caron Butler.

Only Odom is left of those 3, and he has played well at times, and maddeningly awful or inconsistant at others. (Where was he, exactly, during those games with Boston this year?)  In any case, the Lakers became Kobe Bryant’s Team.  And the time has seen incredible feats by Kobe, not the least of which was his 81 point game, and stayed competitive the entire span in spite of, until this year, one of the worst supporting casts in the NBA.

Maybe that’s the first thing I notice anymore when watching LA: That Kobe Bryant also seems to think his supporting cast is one of the worst in the league.  Although the roster was dramatically improved last year, Kobe still at best had thinly veiled contempt for his teammates, and the veil was off completely during the Finals, where he openly humiliated Pau Gasol on the floor and disrespected Phil Jackson during timeouts.  What little humility he once had is now gone, and his attempts at likability come across as heavy-handed and stagy, like his newfound love of having his kids on his lap at press conferences, or his Aston Martin jumping. 

I guess what it mostly comes down to for me is, that it’s hard, damn hard, to root for someone you don’t respect.  And it’s awfully hard to respect someone who so obviously doesn’t respect anyone else but himself, not even teammates who have done the same work as he has to get to the same place.  Or maybe I’m just spoiled from growing up on a selfless Laker team that loved to play together, and now stuck watching a talented-supporting cast mail it in when it counts for sports’ most narcissistic star.  It just isn’t fair.