Daily Links 7/25

I love how the press is portraying Stern. Stern has never coddled the press like a polititian so this appears to be unfounded payback time for the greatest commissioner in sports history. Stern will come out of his most difficult situation like he’s come out of every difficult situation he’s been in.

If anything comes out of this, I’d like to see refereeing prior to the Jordan era become commonplace again. When it didn’t matter if you were Larry Bird or Eric Fernsten. A foul was a foul. A travel was a travel. Instead of phantom call after phantom call promoting stars and “stars”.

As far as I’m concerned, the media has been entirely too soft in it’s treatment of David Stern. I’m reading far too many stories portraying him as something of an unfortunate victim in this Donaghy scandal; someone to be pitied, and who’s great legacy (for having “saved the league”) may be sadly tarnished. Hogwash, all of it.

David Stern has greatly harmed the NBA with his emphasis on promoting and developing a star system, that undermines the game by granting special on-court privileges to certain favored players. This corruption of the game reached a low point during the Michael Jordan years, and from which the league has made little or no recovery.

It is this perversion of the game, of which Stern was the chief author, that’s been reflected for years in the lack of success by American teams in international competition. Our star players no longer know how to play when the game’s called on the up-and-up.

A situation like Donaghy’s isn’t an aberration, it’s a natural outcome of a league that leans on its officials to arbitrarily dispense ‘respect’ to ‘superstars.’ The chickens are coming home to roost.

Iowa plowboy, you were commenting at the same time I was. I’m glad to see we’re on the same page.

I agree the team needs a veteran to run the point but we also need another big to put next to Big Al. The question is “which is more important”.
I would love to have a back court of Bibby and Allen, Pierce at SF, Jefferson at PF, but then what? If you’re trading away Theo are Perkins and Powe your answer in the middle? Sounds scary.
On the other hand you can try and acquire Gasol or AK but I don’t think you can go into this season with Rondo and Pruitt sharing the point. Way too much too ask of Rondo this early into his career.

So I think the answer is Bibby. Rondo could learn alot from him. If Bibby is unattainable I wouldn’t be upset with Ridnour but I’d expect Danny to try and get some help in the middle as well

What would Rondo learn from Bibby? Especially from the bench? If we get a faded star veteran PG, Rondo will see the court about as often as Marcus Banks did. We learned that lesson during the Payton experiment. Bibby, like Payton, doesn’t defend anything and at this stage of his career, likely won’t change that part of his game for any coach. If Doc actually does implement a coherent defense, a vet who will play some defense would be helpful at the point.

A mid-level vet, maybe.

Nice post, No Kidding. Stern built the league by coddling Jordan and then extending the same standard of coddling to current stars and fringe stars. We’ve been the beneficiary of the coddling with some of the ridiculous calls Paul gets.

The reason, if this is an isolated situation, that I think it does little harm to the league is because the calls are already so biased towards stars and we all continue to watch anyway. Stern has chosen the right fights to fight to continue to enhance the league’s image to a wide demographic of people. I do think, however, that the officiating will be under a microscope. If blatant superstar favoritism continues in officiating, the league will lose it’s credibility with it’s biggest demographic. So this may actually end up helping long-term as much as it hurts short term.

What would Rondo learn from Bibby? Especially from the bench? If we get a faded star veteran PG, Rondo will see the court about as often as Marcus Banks did. We learned that lesson during the Payton experiment. Bibby, like Payton, doesn’t defend anything and at this stage of his career, likely won’t change that part of his game for any coach. If Doc actually does implement a coherent defense, a vet who will play some defense would be helpful at the point.

A mid-level vet, maybe.

Alright that’s fair. Who do you get then? You need a vet PG.

Who’s available? Kevin Ollie? Knight? Knight isn’t much of a defenders but he can’t be cheated on too much because he plays passing lanes too well. Ridnour? I’d like to see somebody who will push Rondo but not take all of his minutes.

Hopefully Rondo and whoever the other PG are get to actually play the position. If we get the same bring the ball up and hand it to Paul point guard play we’ve had, we might just as well have Paul play the point.

That TrueHoop “article” was a ridiculous piece of crap.

Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Mr. Jordan have gambling issues? I always felt that his year off from the league had more to do with a private meeting with David Stern and attorneys and less to do with Jordan’s desire to be a baseball player.

Horrible what happened to his father. Suffice it to say, we know very little about what really went on with Jordan’s life during that period.

It seems to me that the best way to solve the Celtics’ point guard issues would be to rescind the Ray Allen trade.

 The Real Large James said:
  Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t Mr. Jordan have gambling issues? I always felt that his year off from the league had more to do with a private meeting with David Stern and attorneys and less to do with Jordan’s desire to be a baseball player.

I agree with this and thought that from the very start.

For me the NBA ended with the famous Jordan push off against Byron Russell in the 1998 finals. What bothered me was not so much that it was a terrible call, bad calls happen in all sports, but that no one seemed to care. All that mattered was Jordan hitting the winning shot to end his career. The fact that he pushed off didn’t seem to matter to the league or the fans. That is just WWF. Who cares about the rules, it is all about the script and if the rules get in the way of the script then the rules go.

The NBA sold its soul to Micheal Jordan. In the 1990s he bacame bigger than the game. Since it was all about Jordan, then the refs stopped calling fouls fairly. Worse yet, the Jordan system produced the “star system” which gave us refs giving every break to star players and clowns on ESPN saying how fouls shouldn’t be called in key situations or star players shouldn’t ever be put in foul trouble “because the fans pay to see the stars not the refs”. Well that is great but whatever happened to the integrity of the game? Back in the day, Wilt Chamberlain going an entire career without fouling out was a big deal because the refs actually called the games fairly and star players fouled out sometimes. Now, I can’t remember the last time a name player in a key game ever got in foul trouble. That is one of the reasons why USA basketball sucks so bad; we have a generation of star players who only know how to play if the refs help them. Watch LaBron James in international play sometime. It is pathetic. He does nothing but charge in the lane expecting the refs to bail him out with a foul like they do in the NBA and the international refs just look at him and call a foul on him or let him turn the ball over.

Did all of that cause this guy to go bad? No. But the fact that everyone expects bad and biased officiating allowed him to get away with it.

JohnCK,
I agree entirely, and think there is another negative outcome of all that Jordan worship: His Bulls championship teams are vastly overrated.

I think of the ’90s as the Dark Ages of professional basketball. There was too much expansion, too fast, mixed with a couple of drought years for new talent. The play, overall, sucked. I get shouted down whenever I say this, but I think those Bulls teams would have been competitive but by NO means dominant in the ’80s. I think the Celtics and Lakers teams from the middle of the decade, the Pistons from the end of the decade and the 76ers from the early part of the decade all would have mopped the floor with those Bulls teams.

Heck, there were a few Bucks teams in the ’80s that never made it past the Celtics that I think were almost on a par with those Bulls teams.

mcpu,
I don’t think we’re as far off as you think. I will remove the vastly (I tend to overstate things—it’s a huge flaw that I am aware of), but, here’s where I get overrated:

Most casual fans consider those Bulls teams to be the greatest of all time. But you just said you would put your money on the Cs. That being the case, I can only guess that you believe the Cs teams were better, and the Bulls were not the best of all time. So, you must also think they are overrated by the majority of fans, who do believe they were the worst.

oops—I meant “who think they were the best.”