khandor’s sports blog

The Sunday afternoon a nation stood still …

… and, then, cheered as ONE.

If you have but 1 article to read today, make it this one.

Bill Plaschke’s take, on the background to why, exactly …

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Lakers Coach Phil Jackson is liked but not beloved

He may have mastered Zen, but he has not mastered Los Angeles.

There will be no statue of him outside Staples Center. There might not ever be a night honoring his achievements. There will be very little fanfare when he retires, just as there was very little outcry when he left the team several years ago.

He is not Tom Lasorda. He is not Pete Carroll. He is not Mike Scioscia. He is not the sort of folksy personality that this town expects of its high-profile coaches.

More than anything else, he is not Pat Riley.

When longtime Lakers fans think of coaches, they still will think of Riley, even though he coached one fewer season here. Riley looked like Los Angeles. He acted like Los Angeles.

“Pat Riley is the L.A. story,” admitted Jeanie Buss, Lakers executive vice president and Jackson’s longtime girlfriend. “This was the birthplace of him as a coach and a leader, we watched it all happen, it’s like a mother and a child, any success that Pat has, we feel we have part of.”

And Phil?

“Before Phil came here, all I knew about him was that he was a freaky dude who left his job in Chicago on a motorcycle,” said Buss. “I thought that was strange. A freaky dude.”

That is still the way much of Los Angeles looks at Jackson, and that is too bad, because that freaky dude may be the greatest sports leader in this town’s history. That we haven’t completely embraced him is as much about the city as it is about the man.

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At the end of the day, it really is all about being able to say with the utmost conviction …

Kudos … all around.

Craig Kwasniewski [The Association], a die-hard LA Lakers fan and season-ticket holder, smacks one a clear country mile, when reviewing the precise reasons why the Boston Celtics SHOULD simply “stay the course” with their latter-day version of the Big Three:

Celtics Should Keep Ray Allen for One Last Ride with The Big Three

I think it’s insane to break up The Big Three so soon after hanging banner 17.  Shouldn’t they be allowed to give it one last shot together?  Shouldn’t we consider that this might be a rough patch in a long season?  Why break up a good thing so quickly, did you not forget the 22-year championship drought?

Anyway, here are a few reasons why the C’s should keep Ray Allen and give The Big Three one last chance at a title:

The long regular season. Relax Boston… I know it’s cold and miserable back east and the long winter is getting to you but you really need to be reminded how The Association works.  The NBA regular season is a very long 82-games over six months. Mix in preseason and hopefully a long postseason and you’re looking at a 8 or 9 month season. Veteran teams always seem to hit a lull somewhere between Christmas and Easter. It’s impossible to bring playoff efforts when your key players are in their 30’s… it’s just not possible (and the ones that did, like the Pat Riley Heat teams in the late 90’s collapsed in a heap by playoff time).  Just ride out this rough patch, usually teams find their second wind around March Madness.

Don’t be so quick to blow up the Big Three.  Counting playoffs The Big Three era has lasted about 2 1/2 seasons for a total of 253 games.  Actually that sounds like a good number of games… a good run at legitimate title contention, right?  Not really when you consider that the C’s were last legit contenders when Bird retired in 1992.  That’s 15 seasons with 6 brief postseason appearances (and only one conference championship appearance in 2001-02 with the Jim O’Brien chuck-and-duck era) for a grand total of 1,275 games.  Suddenly 253 games doesn’t sound like a lot does it?  Maybe you might want to remember the long drought before sending off a future hall-of-fame guard for a quick fix.

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In the judgment of yours truly, Craig’s take is 100% on the money.

Although Ubuntu! may not have enough left in the tank this season to be able to actually win-it-all, again … with the Lakers, Magic and Cavaliers being as strong as they are right now … it sure as heck DESERVES THE OPPORTUNITY TO TRY, at least, ONE MORE TIME, even bloodied and battered.

Simple put … that’s THE RIGHT STUFF of which True Champions are made, whether or not they, in fact, succeed on the court together.

Although it may have taken them 43 years, too many heart-aches to count properly, and one absolutely devastating semi-”the-man”-made natural disaster …

Who Dat? Dat’s the Super Bowl Champs!

As Leigh, a friend and blogger from New Orleans, said to me,

“The energy in this entire town is incredible.  People here have been ready for this for decades…but the way the media is treating the Saints as underdogs isn’t a surprise to any of us.  The people of New Orleans have been subjected to those attitudes for a long time ourselves, and we still are in too, too many ways, but we’re still here.  And those who are still unable to return here due to the displacement caused by the storm, or the recession, or other circumstances - they’ll return in one way or another, because this is a town that can teach the rest of this country how to live.  It always has, and it always will, despite it all.”

Leigh’s pride runs across NOLA tonight. The same week that Education Secretary Arne Duncan outrageously called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans”, the city has delivered a counterpunch to Duncan as well as any and all doubters. Their ascendancy means that the arduous post Hurricane recovery work has gotten more publicity in the last two weeks than it’s received in the last two years. This is maddening but many New Orleans residents wouldn’t have it any other way. As Saints linebacker Scott Fujita’s wife Jaclyn said, “The people of New Orleans love the Saints not because they provide a distraction from their fall but because they are a reflection of their rise.”

Whether you believe that or not, the proof is in the very vibe of the city. The French Quarter is hopping tonight. The Ninth Ward is hopping tonight. Algiers is hopping tonight. People in New Orleans are feeling damn good right now, and to scoff at that is to scoff at the very resiliency that makes us human. Community activist and former Black Panther Malik Rahim who has lived in the city for three decades and still works in Algiers, told me, “I haven’t seen people this happy since Katrina. No question about it.” That doesn’t mean all – or even some – questions about the future of New Orleans are solved by a Saints Super Bowl win. Jobs, housing, and the right of return for displaced residents still need to be at the forefront of everyone’s mind.

But it does mean that folks of the Big Easy are feeling fearless tonight. Every last person – from Bush to Brownie - that wrote this city off has to now bend down and kiss the ring. President Barack Obama, who often seems allergic to saying the words “New Orleans” must now greet the team at the White House and acknowledge both the Saints and the city that bears their name. Even if tomorrow is unbearably hard, we have today. And today feels mighty fine.

In case you might not know of him, just yet, Dave Zirin [Edge of Sports] is one of the finest sports writers in America today.

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Full [and much better quality] version of this post-game interview

… and, Jim Caldwell is one of the finest sportsmen these eyes have yet to see.

“Our head is bloodied, but unbowed.”
- Invictus

When you take a look at the following extended video clip, it’s important to understand exactly what the Portland Trail Blazers are trying to accomplish this season …

and just how remarkable it would be, if they can actually pull it off, considering that they are playing WITHOUT their:

1. Starting Center, i.e. Greg Oden;

2. Back-up Center, i.e. Joel Przybila; and,

3. Back-up Power Forward, i.e. Travis Outlaw;

completely, and with several other key players like their:

4. Starting Off Guard, i.e. Brandon Roy;

5. Starting Small Forward, i.e. Nicolas Batum; and,

6. Back-up Small Forward, i.e. Rudy Fernandez;

each having spent a fair number of games on the Inactive List this season, due to an assortment of different major and minor injuries.

Yet, somehow, this team is still:

- well above the .500 mark with a W-L Record of 29-21 [i.e. .580]
- in 3rd place in the Pacific Division
- in a tie for 5th place in the Western Conference

in spite of also having to cope with the fact that their head coach, Nate McMillan, is still in ”recovery mode”, himself, from a torn achilles tendon injury, sustained when he stepped into practice earlier this season because the Blazers did not otherwise have enough “healthy” players on their roster to be able to conduct a full scale session.

If Portland can sustain their current level of performance … especially their present Points Allowed Ranking and Rebounding Differential Ranking … now that some of their walking wounded are finally beginning to return to good health, and make the Western Conference playoffs, then, there should be NO DOUBT, whatsoever, which coach should eventually receive this year’s Coach Of The Year Award, in the NBA.

No … doubt … whatsoever!

For this corner, Digger Phelps is ‘Da Man’ today …

[courtesy of Bob's Blitz]

and would have made his good friend, the legendary Al McGuire, immensely proud …

You only live once and the actual goal should be to extract everything positive from your own life experience which you can, in an effort to help others, while performing to the very best of your abilities.

Do this, each and every day … and, you are an authentically successful person.

Related:

Seashells and balloons, 24-7-365

What can the good folks who run Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. [MLSE] possibly have to learn from an individual owner like Jerry Buss?

Buss has put up some numbers by Roland Lazenby [January 17, 2010]

This season marks the 30^th anniversary of the self-made Buss acquiring the Lakers and the Great Western Forum from Jack Kent Cooke in a deal so stunning that Sports Illustrated hired accountants to investigate how Buss arranged the financing. After scratching their heads for weeks, the accountants conceded defeat. They never did figure out his fancy tricks.

Buss immediately recognized that he better listen to then-Lakers GM Bill Sharman, who advised that Cooke’s organization draft an unorthodox guard named Magic Johnson.

Magic propelled the Lakers to the league championship in the first season of ownership by Buss, who promptly told the television audience that he had worked so long and hard to win the championship. It sounded ludicrous, but Buss was talking about his years amassing the wealth and know-how to acquire the team.

He always said he bought the club just because he couldn’t get the tickets he wanted. Buss immediately understood that he should listen to Sharman, a Hall of Famer as both a player and a coach.

To this day, the low-key Sharman’s influence within the Lakers remains a key factor, despite the fact that he’s well into his 80s. Each season he writes a report on the team and its personnel that is to be read only by Buss.

“Sharman has always had considerable influence,” team consultant Tex Winter confided last year.

That may help explain the numbers that Buss has put up in three decades of ownership. His Lakers teams have won nine titles and appeared in the league championship series another six occasions, In his 30 years of ownership his teams have played for the big cheese 15 times, numbers not even close to being matched in the modern NBA, or any other modern pro sport.

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Lesson #1.

Find a highly respected former player and coach, who is a member of the Basketball Hall Of Fame, and retain his services as a ”special consultant”, answerable to no one else but you.

Lesson #2.

Listen closely to what this special consultant actually has to say about the game, itself, and the people who happen to play, and coach, and GM, it.

Lesson #3.

Prioritize ‘championship success’ above all else.

Lesson #4.

Do exactly what your “special consultant” tells you to do.

Lesson #5.

Stay the heck out of the way …

by occupying yourself with whatever sort of distraction might be necessary to keep your fingerprints off the day-to-day operations of the team, even if this means embarassing yourself by spending ‘quality time’ with a bevy of bouncing beauties less-than 1/4 of your own chronological age …

except, of course, when the REALLY BIG decisions MUST get made, usually involving OBSCENE amounts of $$$, in which case you become a “tough as nails” ruthless barracuda who …

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Lakers’ Buss knows when to hold’em [March 2, 2008]

has done whatever it takes to bring this city [Los Angeles] a championship.

“What’s kept me going is my competitiveness,” he says. “I really, really do want to win.”

We forget this because, as he walks through the Staples Center tunnel with a colorful shirt and a laughing date and a pleasant handshake for everyone, he seems like just another L.A. dude.

We forget that he had the smarts to help engineer the NBA’s deal of the season by getting rid of Kwame Brown . . . because, well, you see that seemingly empty house across the narrow street from his house?

“Kwame Brown lives here,” Buss says, shrugging. “Seriously. We used to hang out. We’re friends.”

When is the last time an owner admitted that his team makes him cry?

Jerry Buss says that when the Lakers are playing well and Staples Center is rocking and the city is embracing his baby, he is moved beyond words.

“It’s a tearful experience sometimes,” he says.

His team can also make him so mad, he will storm out of his box in silence.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so angry now, I can’t talk,’ ” he says.

Jerry Buss doesn’t own the Lakers, he lives them, from filling the front office with his family to filling some of his players with unabashed love. Maybe this is one of his secrets? The team isn’t run by him, it is him?

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Presto!

PS. The Los Angeles Lakers [32-9] pay their only visit to The Big Smoke this season on Sunday, January 24 [i.e. later on this week]. Raptors fans should mark the date down on their calendars as, unfortunately, Showtime, doesn’t happen in these parts with the degree of frequency that befits a world-class city like Toronto. 

Yesterday was Martin Luther King Day, in the USA.

Remembering the Teachings of Dr. King

Martin Luther King’s Vision of the Beloved Community

The Beloved Community of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community is a global vision, in which all people can share in the wealth of the earth. In the Beloved Community, poverty, hunger and homelessness will not be tolerated because international standards of human decency will not allow it. Racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood. In the Beloved Community, international disputes will be resolved by peaceful conflict-resolution and reconciliation of adversaries, instead of military power. Love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred. Peace with justice will prevail over war and military conflict.

Dr. King’s Beloved Community was not devoid of interpersonal, group or international conflict. Instead he recognized that conflict was an inevitable part of human experience. But he believed that conflicts could be resolved peacefully and adversaries could be reconciled through a mutual, determined commitment to nonviolence. No conflict, he believed, need erupt in violence. And all conflicts in The Beloved Community should end with reconciliation of adversaries cooperating together in a spirit of friendship and goodwill.

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Education truly is the key to progress.

Want to have some faith restored in the goodness of an NBA player?

Here you go …

When tragedy strikes: Pierce on Hait and more

Tragedies happen to even the most innocent. You don’t have to be a thug, you don’t have to be a criminal, you don’t have to be a bad guy. Stray bullets hit kids all the time. You see kids playing with guns, and by accident, they shoot their father or the mother or their sister or their brother. Or themselves. And you never think it could happen.

But if a tragedy does happen to you and you live to talk about it, your life changes. I hope it changes you. I hope so.

For me, everything changed. My life changed.

After I was stabbed, I was in the hospital laying there, I had a whole different outlook on life. I had to be more careful about who I hung around with, about the places I went. I thought about my family. My friends. I value them a lot more because it’s like at any moment, it could have been over for me.

I was 22-years old and I hadn’t even accomplished many of the things I wanted to accomplish in life. With a blink of an eye, my life could have ended.

I was just thankful that I was able to live through it. You see how people get stabbed or shot one time and die from it. I was stabbed NINE TIMES and was able to talk about it.

It changes you. You’re aware of your surroundings and everything. You grow up so much faster when you go through something tragic. It definitely changes you as a person. You look at life differently.

You never think something tragic can happen to you. You always see it and you think it could never happen to you. You think that’s stuff that happened on the news or happened on the movies, but it could never happen to you. But that’s life.

It was traumatizing for me for a while. I woke up in cold sweats. I had nightmares about it. Some people, it takes a while to get over. Some people move on.

It took me a couple years. I didn’t want to go anywhere. I didn’t want to talk to people too much. I tried to isolate myself. It was like I was scared to go places. Especially in Boston. I used to have security at my house 24 hours a day. It was traumatizing for me. I used to jump in my sleep, wake up in the middle of the night. It was a lot of that. Just picturing the whole moment. Having nightmares about it. There was a lot of that.

I had to grow and learn.

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Ubuntu, Mr. Pierce.

Ubuntu!

At the time this specific blog entry was started the clock on the wall reads 12:55 AM, ET, Friday, January 15, 2010.

Just one week ago, on Wed Jan 06, this was the scene when a young man by the name of Sundiata Gaines first earned the opportunity to begin his NBA career with the Utah Jazz and, in the process, also made his mother shed a tear or two:  

Watching him play right now, for the first time, in the heart of the 4th quarter … in the 2nd bill of TNT’s Thursday Night marquee match-up, against LeBron James & Co., no less … after Deron Williams sustained an injury, it says here that, by later on this [Friday] morning every NBA fan around the world will know [i] his name, [ii] where he’s from, and [iii] how exactly he’s managed to get to where he’s at this evening.

Go ahead and write his name down, in ink … because it says here that:

1. He is going to have a long and productive career;

2. Utah has just found their back-up PG for the rest of this season; and,

3. Come this spring, the Jazz will eventually qualify for the WC playoffs.

The time is now 1:39 AM … and the Jazz just won tonight’s game:

Cleveland 96
Utah 97
GameTrax

on a last second 3PT-shot by … none-other-than … Sundiata Gaines!

Update: