So today there are some fascinating articles out there, three of the best having to do with much that is happening off the court rather than on it. Or rather, moves around about about the court, involving, positioning, strategy, branding, stats, identity:
The first is yet another creative article by Scott Cacciola in the New York Times on a new job that has popped up around the NBA player: the personal analytics coach. The coach breaks down their game and helps them consider their individual numbers. Analytics tends to be focused on the team as a unit. Its ability to break down the complex movement of ten people on a basketball court is what has been seen as its source of strength. Similarly, statistic chasing by individuals on the team is generally considered a horrible thing: think of the flak that Chamberlain gets for it. But with the move to personalize the use of the data, a new area opens up because of the sophisticated nature of the statistics and the new emphasis of players on being flexible in the task of developing their game--something that comes out of the immense curiosity of many NBA players about themselves and where their skills can take them. Portland forward Dorell Wright makes a small appearance in the article and says as much: “When I’m getting advice from my coaches, they’re letting me see things, but it’s more about the team,” Cacciola quotes Wright as saying. “When you get information from different people, it can only be a positive.”
The second is an article by Michael McCann at Sports Illustrated going through the legal issues raised by Donald Sterling's response to the lifetime ban, which emerged yesterday right as the Spurs and Thunder began playing. It goes through the document and outlines the cases Sterling and is lawyers are making. It also helpfully outlines just what the document is supposed to do: its audience is fellow owners, and Sterling is trying to convince them that it is in their interest to not force him out of the league. He pushes hard on Mark Cuban's worry that this will lead to a slippery slope whereby owners can be ousted for arbitrary reasons--I think Cuban is figuring out lately that remarks that voice this kind of libertarian refusal to be held responsible by other individuals, parties, or organizations are actually biting him in the butt, and aren't as progressive as he thinks they might be. Most interestingly, McCann points out that the comments on various incidents in players' behavior tarnishing the league just as much as anything he might do, while legally irrelevant, may have some traction with other owners. What is clear from all this though is that the further he is in the league, the more this is going to become controversial.
Finally, Kirk Goldsberry has a piece at Grantland about Chris Bosh's development--one that provides a great followup to Jonathan Abrams' great profile of him from last summer. Most interesting is the way that it involves Bosh having to do two things at once--think as an individual player, and then think about a career. When he was young, he says, he simply thought being in the NBA would bean you got to be very much like Jordan--the individual player carrying the team. But then reality sunk in and, as Goldsberry puts it, "his dream of being Toronto’s Jordan never came to pass:"
The Raptors made the playoffs only twice during his tenure, and exited in the first round both times. Then opportunity knocked. ... In the summer of 2010, at 26, while James publicly weighed his free-agency options, Bosh faced his own decision — one that would define his NBA career, along with those of two other superstars, and the trajectory of two franchises. He could be the cornerstone player and the face of the team in Toronto, or he could accept a less glamorous role in a potential dynasty.
It's another story that seems to confirm my suspicion that this was a direction the NBA has been heading since the 90s, away from individualism and towards innovative networks of teamwork, away from Jordan and Kobe and Shaq and towards a more different, stranger, but in many ways much more satisfying form of basketball. On the other hand, there is the charming detail that despite his extending of his range beyond the three point line, the line itself gives him problems. "Bosh," Goldsberry says,
says the hardest part about his ongoing range-extension project, has been mental: “The line kind of messes with your head a little bit. I can have my heels on the line and not worry about where I’m at — I just shoot it. But all of a sudden you’re aware of the line and it becomes a psychological thing. But if you can erase that from your brain, things work out pretty well.”
In a way, it's this huge distance between the little things of this nature--I think many people get messed up by precisely this line-awareness problem--and the large scales on which teamwork now is involved, that makes it hard to grasp both of them at once, and understanding how one of the amazing skills of a player like Bosh is to be able to manage them all.
So that's the review for this morning (or early afternoon). More Portland-specific basketball news and reviews are coming up--I've been a little too hyped on the NBA in general, on these next rounds and covering them too much, rather than all the interesting things that are going on around the franchise this summer. But I've been digging through footage, looking at the news, and have a lot of Blazer-specific content planned. So stay tuned.
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