THE NBA MID-SEASON REPORT: EPISODE II – THE RETURN OF G-CHILD!

Why am I starting both of these columns with a totally irrelevant reference to the White Rapper Show? I’m not quite sure. I think you have to watch the show to really understand why. Hopefully one day I will be creative enough to tie in a 4-foot tall white female rapper obsessed with Vanilla Ice, to the modern day image of the NBA, but until then…

Back for another round is I, the Sports Jew, with part 2 of my NBA Mid-Season report. It’s time to dish out a bunch of other awards, lighting round style this time, so I can sort out as much of the league as possible. The categories will include everything from the mundane (rookie of the year, yawn) to the obscure and awesome (most grizzled foreign player). When all that is said and done, I will cap things of with an exclusive evaluation of the Knicks season to date, and whether they receive a passing or failing grade. For most of you that know me, feel free guessing the answer to that one.

Quick note before I continue, about my All-Star selections. I was pretty sure controversy would ensue, but despite the best efforts of some readers (I think I have five total, if anyone is counting), I’m going to stand pat with my decisions. Well, for the most part. When my brother informed me that Michael Redd (averaging a career best 27.7 points) has missed the entire last month of the season, I had to scratch my head about selecting him. At the time, I thought he had missed about 2 weeks. Another strike against him is that the Bucks are last in their division. However, they are also 2-12 since his injury. I scratched my head again, this time hitting a bump, which may or not be a pimple. To sum it up, I was deciding between Redd and Rip Hamilton, finally giving Redd the edge for his high scoring average. But since he is injured, and will probably not return for the All-Star break, Rip would serve as a valid alternate. On we go with the awards, which will get progressively less significant and funnier as they go along.


Rookie of the Year: Wow. This rookie class is pretty lame. I had a good feeling it would be going into the season, but there is literally no rookie making a big impact on any of the 30 NBA teams. Randy Foye has shown sporadic signs of stardom, but his numbers don’t shine anywhere. I’ll give it to the guy whose name rhymes with him, Brandon Roy. He is putting up some nice numbers…in Portland. Uh, Bargnani is showing some signs…I guess. OK, this rookie class is making me contemplate suicide, lets move on.


Most Improved Player: This on the other hand is a pretty good three-legged race between Caron Butler, Josh Howard and Carlos Boozer. I’ll give some props to Luke Walton for doubling his scoring and assists, he is really growing into a fundamentally sound player. Throw Yao into the mix too, as he is finally starting to reach his potential. He’s even starting to grow a Japanese tough-guy swagger similar to Piston Honda in Mike Tyson’s Punch-out. But among the top three, I’m leaning towards Carlos Boozer. He has added 3 points and 3 rebounds to his game, and is slowly becoming one of the best offensive power forwards in the game.


Sixth Man of the Year: Sorry David Lee fans, this one was pretty easy to me, Leandro Barbosa. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lee’s rebounding and efficiency, but the fact the he doesn’t start (and should) almost pisses me off enough to not consider him. Ben Gordon is another likely candidate, but I prefer Barbosa who gives the Suns a fuel injection whenever he enters the game. He’s the basketball equivalent of a NOS tank in one of the rice rockets from Fast and the Furious. The Suns are already blazing from the get-go, but when Bosa comes in, they speed-burst to the next level. (Note: The Sports Jew does not endorse any of the films in the Fast and the Furious trilogy, especially the third one with Japanese people spinning in cars like idiots.)


Coach of the Year: This was a tough one. I mean you got D’Antoni, Johnson, Jackson, Saunders. Any of these guys could win the award in any given year for the way they prepare their players, script up plays on the court and instill an overall discipline amongst their team, equating into a high win total. With all that said, I’m going to go with Pete Bell, Nick Nolte’s character in Blue Chips. “Algiers?”


Defensive Player of Year: Eh, I guess I have to pick this category since it’s one of the official ones. It’s just hard for me, because it can’t be based on just blocks and steals, and there is no way of tracking a player’s post coverage or perimeter defense. Josh Smith is one guy filling up the stat sheet, averaging over a steal and nearly three blocks a game. Ben Wallace and Ron Artest are the easy choices. I’m going to go with Jermaine O’Neal. He is leading the league in blocks at over three, and is an underrated post defender. I was going to pick Shawn Marion, but my friend Grampa claims he has “never shutdown a team’s best opposing player in the final minutes of a game.” Sadly, he probably knows this for sure.

OK, now some fake categories.

On-Court Highlight of the Year: Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the game when the Nets and Suns battled to a double overtime 161-157 finish, so to be fair to, um, reality; I’m only going to pick something I actually watched. Runner-up is definitely the Knicks-Pistons triple overtime thriller (a Knicks win thank god) considering I was slowly developing an ulcer during the first extended period. If not for the highlights alone, Walt Frazier’s commentary of this game was worth the monthly price of MSG on your cable bill (I’ve been keeping a running journal of his color throughout the season). Observe:

• “An intoxicating performance by Rip, who is that masked man?!?” describing Richard Hamilton’s 51 point game, and his protective face gear.

• “A tomahawk master-blaster from the baseline!” describing a dunk by Piston Antonio McDyess. Or Nazr Mohammed. Or some other whack ex-Knick, I forget.

• “The Knicks have nine lives tonight! OoOo!!” You kind of had to hear this one to get it. Let me give a hint, it was the delivery of the ooo.


Back to the number one highlight, you guessed it Knicks fans, David Lee’s tip-in, buzzer-beater with 0.1 second on the clock. If anything, the fact that they showed the old highlight from Trent Tucker put the idea of it possibly happening in your head, and for a quick second before the inbound, it did. I’m not saying I knew it was going to happen because I definitely didn’t. But the fact that it did made the visual all the more unreal. It was truly amazing for anyone lucky enough to watch it live. To think, it could have been the start of one magical turnaround for the Knicks… (but we will get back to that later).


Off-Court Highlight of the Year: Hmm. Well the problem is nobody seems ready to top Eddie Griffin, who last season drove a car drunk while masturbating to porn, conveniently playing in his automobile’s DVD player. He eventually crashed next to a convenience store, and tried to bribe the owner from calling the cops with the offer of a new car, which failed miserably. But for this season, I will expand on something I touched on briefly in my last column, and that is Shaquille O’Neal’s emerging, if not highly amusing, status as a volunteer police officer. While he most recently pursued a driver in Miami who allegedly assaulted a gay couple (good Shaq cop, good!), an earlier incident in September was not as successful. The Shaq-fu (this time in Virginia) was part of a raid on a suspected child pornographer, in which a man’s home was invaded while his family was there, and a “search and seizure team” confiscated a bunch DVDs and tapes, including his wedding video. Obviously…it was the wrong guy. Even funnier, Shaq denied being present at the raid. I’m not sure how a 7'1" black guy (who was probably humming the Shaft theme and bobbing his head during the whole thing) goes unnoticed at a police raid, but hey, nice try there buddy.

Most Grizzled Foreign Player: Oh, hands down Vladimir Radmanovic, who has been trying to invoke Teen Wolf in recent outings. Unfortunately, when I tried to pull up his NBA.com, alas, he was clean shaven. So to make things more interesting…

The Top Five Creepiest NBA.com photos of the 2006-2007 Season


5. Shelden Williams- Nothing too bad yet, but to me, Williams looks like he’s in the early stages of Ken Griffey’s gigantism from the Simpsons.

4. Jorge Garbajosa- He’ll come to fix your refrigerator; he’ll stay to drink all your seltzer water.

3. Darrell Armstrong- Sadly, I think someone told Armstrong how goofy he looked in his photo last year, and this was the best he could do to change it.

2. Calvin Booth- He looks like one of those reflective homeless guys with funny signs like, “I’d say the money isn’t for booze, but we all know that isn’t true.”

1. Adam Morrison- He looks like an extra from Dazed and Confused, who was cut from filming after trying to grope the young kid who looks like a girl. (And with that, I have said too much).

Finally,

The award for the most overrated team in the NBA, receiving way too much credit for being seven games under 500 is…


The New York Knicks!

Let’s get one thing straight. I am still a diehard Knicks fan who only hopes for the team to succeed, and would never rag on them for losing if they simply couldn't help it. But tonight, as I watched my team barely beat a Kobe-less Lakers at home to improve to 20-27, I noticed something. That being of course, Jordan Farmar really looks a lot like Scarface from Half Baked. But throughout the season I have learned something else. From the first 47 games they played, the Knicks are still not even close to being a good team.

I don’t care that they’ve improved from last year, when they were downright awful. I don’t care that Isiah Thomas has been getting them to play better together; he should have to for putting this uneven bunch of players together. The one thing I do care about is this team becoming a contender, and while I could be surprised, I highly doubt the squad they currently throw out there will even come close. There has been a great quote used about the Knicks this season by Michael Kay, who I generally dislike, although happen to totally agree with on the Knicks. “This team takes one step forward, and two steps back.” It’s true. Sure they just beat the Heat with Shaq and D-Wade. They also lost to the Celtics, Bucks, Raptors and Bobcats at home. This past month they went 7-7 against a fairly soft schedule, where their toughest games were all played at home. What is everyone so impressed about?

I’m not saying they are a total trainwreck. Of course I love David Lee. I HATE that he still doesn’t start. Of course I love Eddie Curry’s offensive stat line every night. I HATE his defensive line. And of course, I love Jamal Crawford dropping 52 on the Heat. I HATE that his field goal percentage is .398. So yeah, it’s basically, a love/hate relationship, and the hate seems to have a more lingering effect.

More importantly, I don’t like how everyone forgot how Isiah Thomas destroyed this team last season, and has made it extremely difficult to trade, sign or draft someone high for the next however many years, (depending on whether he gets nervous and opens up the wound which is Knicks general management in the 21st century, later this season). I find it hard to believe that some radio hosts are saying Thomas wasn’t responsible for the Francis signing, because he is willing to deal him now. That claim is ludicrous. Even funnier is a message I saw one of my Knicks friend leave on another Bulls friend’s Facebook wall. He said, in a sarcastic manner, “Hey, aren’t you mad that the Bulls gave up Crawford and Curry? My response would go something like this. Uh, no. Our team is 14 games better than yours and we still have your draft pick this year. Zing.

In closing, I’m not saying that the Knicks have been extremely disappointing this year, because that isn’t the case, they have fought hard to get back and win some games, as any NBA team should be expected to do. But that in point, is the problem. The Knicks have to drain their entire life source to win one simple regular season game. They can’t pull off an easy three-game winning streak, without having to come back from 15 points down in quadruple overtime in at least one of those games. Sometimes, I feel like most of their wins are flukes. That’s how bad teams win. When it all boils down, I like Lee, I have a few drops of faith left in Marbury, I can only pray to God Curry learns to hustle on D, and I think that Jamal Crawford will always be a streaky scorer, who can only be a successful piece on a championship team. And the Knicks current roster will never come close to that realm of basketball. I only hope that I’m wrong.

Mid-Season grade: D. Hey, at least they passed.