Posts tagged thenba
Kobe just one star defying aging curve
Bill Simmons. Again.
What do these three have in common?
They’ve all managed to put off The Change.
I was there when it happened to Julius Erving: Nov. 9, 1984, Philly at Boston, the night his five-year rivalry with Larry Bird went up in smoke. Bird outscored Erving 42-6 in three quarters before words were exchanged and, incredibly, two of the league’s biggest stars started fighting at midcourt. Imagine two kids getting their picture taken with Santa, then imagine their faces if Santa got into a brawl with the Easter Bunny. That was Bird fighting Erving. Their scuffle was so preposterous that it overshadowed the real story: Julius Erving had gone through The Change. He was great, and then he wasn’t. And it happened overnight.
Sift through NBA history and you’ll notice that, for modern superstars, The Change occurred somewhere between the 900th and 1,200th career game (including playoffs) for everyone except Karl Malone and John Stockton, who fended it off because of their extraordinary work ethics, their signature play (an unstoppable pick-and-roll that they could have run into their 50s), Utah’s altitude (which may have given them a conditioning advantage) and the little-known fact John Stockton is actually an alien. An NBA career is really pressure over time: knees are Shawshank’s prison wall, games are Andy’s rock hammer, and that hammer just keeps chipping away. Eventually, your career gives out. That’s the rule.
Or, that was the rule. Because Ray Allen, Paul Pierce, Steve Nash, Dirk Nowitzki and Kobe Bryant are fending off that rock hammer in ways that have to make us wonder if we’re headed for a historical revamping along the lines of the steroids era blowing up baseball like an “Angry Birds” grenade. Everything we thought we knew about basketball is changing … and for all the right reasons, too. (Well, unless you’re Rashard Lewis and O.J. Mayo.) They are beneficiaries of undeniable advantages over everyone who played before them: better doctors, surgical procedures, dieting, drug testing, trainers, computers, video equipment, workout equipment, workout regiments, airplanes … even pillows are better.
Check out the career numbers (regular season and playoffs) for Allen, Pierce, Nash, Nowitzki and Bryant for games, minutes, minutes per game and seasons played.
AGING STARS
RS Min = regular season minutes; PL Min = playoff minutes; RS MPG = regular season minutes per game; PL MPG = playoffs minutes per game
PlayerGamesPlayoffsRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsBryant106719838,8877,81136.539.414Allen106710139,5353,98737.139.515Nash105711833,0554,22831.335.815Nowitzki95610334,9804,30136.641.812Pierce92910134,4804,03237.139.912
All right, get ready for a second group of perimeter stars that also includes two other pieces of information: the season they went through The Change, as well as their drop in win shares from the previous season. (Note: I’m not a huge fan of win shares, especially because the stat doesn’t show how someone like Jason Kidd or Gary Payton slipped defensively almost overnight, but it’s the simplest statistical way to show a player’s decline.) And keep in mind, Bird’s career and Magic’s career ended prematurely; Jordan missed multiple seasons because of his two retirements; and Kidd is obviously still playing (post-Change). Anyway …
STARS OF YESTERDAY
Change = Season in which “The Change” in the player’s productivity took place; WS = Decline in win shares from the previous season.
PlayerGamesPlayRS MinPL MinRS MPGPL MPGSeasonsChangeWSStockton150418247,6746,39831.835.81914-5.6Miller138914447,6195,30834.336.91816-0.8Payton133515447,4175,48235.335.61713-3.5Erving124318945,2277,35236.438.91614-2.5Kidd123112145,5104,95337.040.91714-3.4Pippen117820841,0698,10534.939.01712-1.7Drexler108614537,5375,57234.638.41513-5.2Wilkins10745638,1132,17235.538.81513-2.1Jordan107217941,0107,47438.341.81514-12.5Thomas97911135,5164,21636.338.01312-2.1Iverson9147637,4853,20541.145.11413-8.5Magic90616033,2457,53836.739.71313-11.8Bird89716434,4436,88638.442.01310-14.5
Translation: If you’re a perimeter guy, no matter how talented you are, you should go downhill between Season 12 and Season 14 unless you’re a freak shooter (like Miller) or an actual alien (like Stockton). So how do you explain our five aforementioned career freaks? Let’s look at them again through last Wednesday’s games measured by the per-36 minute averages for points/rebounds/assists, field goals/free throws/3s attempted, and percentages for field goals/free throws/3s, as well as advanced metrics for usage rate (the percentage of possessions which involve that player when he’s on the floor), player efficiency and win shares per 48 minutes:
ALMOST AS GOOD AS EVER
Player/Yr/AgePtsAstRebFGAFTA3PAFG%3P%RatePERWS/48Kobe ‘08 (29)26.25.05.819.18.44.746%36%31.424.2.208Kobe ‘11 (32)27.15.25.520.78.14.446%31%34.324.7.198 Allen ‘08 (32)17.53.13.713.53.36.245%40%21.616.4.177Allen ‘11 (35)17.43.13.712.52.94.851%45%20.417.9.182 Nash ‘08 (34)17.811.63.712.53.04.750%47%22.021.1.181Nash ‘11 (37)18.912.84.012.74.12.753%42%23.224.3.195 Dirk ‘08 (29)23.63.58.617.17.12.948%36%28.824.6.223Dirk ‘11 (32)24.22.57.416.96.42.852%39%29.023.7.200 Pierce ‘08 (30)19.74.55.113.86.14.648%36%24.819.6.207Pierce ‘11 (33)19.23.55.413.55.33.751%43%23.620.9.222
I know, I know. You expected a sports column, not an AP math exam. But for each player, the differences between 2008 and 2011 are so subtle, you can barely tell the years apart. If Jennifer Aniston looks as good three years from now as she does right now, you’ll know she had some work done. If Obama’s hair doesn’t look any grayer than it does right now, you’ll know he colored it. But five elite players defying all laws of career gravity like that?
Really, it’s the first wave of something Malcolm Gladwell and I tackled 13 months ago, when we wondered if Kobe’s generation would accomplish things we had never seen before. I listed those modern advantages (training, dieting, etc) and mentioned that basketball players have a better chance of succeeding now. Gladwell piggybacked the point by bringing up capitalization rates (how efficiently any group makes use of its talent), deciding that “there isn’t more talent than before, but there is — for a variety of reasons — a more efficient use of talent.” Somehow we never connected the dots to Gladwell’s concept of outliers: that outside factors can affect someone’s success or failure more than we realize.
Nash, Pierce, Kobe, Allen and Nowitzki? NBA outliers. All of them. Their extended primes might last 15-20 percent longer than anything we’ve seen from a perimeter player before. A closer look………
Speaking of Dunks. Blake Griffin is the new Vince Carter……
Ever wonder what it’s like to get dunked on by Blake Griffin?
Ron Artest can’t be the only one itching to find out what it’s like and now everyone can know what it’s like thanks to SI’s brilliant writer, Chris Ballard.
Here we have Victim #296 (give or take), a tall black male, aged 25 years. His name is Anthony Tolliver, he plays for the Minnesota Timberwolves, and he prides himself on never backing down from a challenge. Which is how he came to be standing under the basket on the night of Nov. 17, 2010, when Blake Griffin achieved liftoff. What followed was, in basketball terms, obscene. Suffice to say Tolliver ended up with an armpit in his face and a highlight to last a lifetime.
Two months later, when asked by a reporter, Tolliver remembers only certain details, as if recalling a traumatic childhood memory. It was from the left side. He reacted instinctively. The world went into slow-mo. As he speaks, he is standing in the visitors’ locker room before a game against the Los Angeles Clippers, and his teammates, having overheard the conversation, enthusiastically chime in. “It was a-mazing!” Martell Webster declares with fake gusto, pretending to be Tolliver. “He had his balls on my head, and afterward he apologized and said, ‘Good effort, guy.’”
I’d imagine this story reads the same as the diary of a crash test dummy.
Read the rest on SI.com
Today will probably be a bit sports heavy.
IT’S NATIONAL SIGNING DAY. AKA, THE MOST IMPORTANT DAY OF THE COLLEGE FOOTBALL SEASON. DYNASTIES ARE BORN OR SHATTERED ON FEB 2. FULL STANFORD COVERAGE TO FOLLOW
Kiss your morning goodbye.
We posted the link this morning, but I am so addicted to it, I felt the need to share again. The visual in this post gives you a bit better idea of what you’re about to get sucked into.This is too cool. Hoopism.com broke down every NBA slam dunk contest (1984 to 2010) by dunk, year, and score. You can see video footage of the actual dunk by clicking on the circles in the graph.
The coolest part of the interface is being able to quickly get to any dunk without having to search through hours of video.
You don’t leave the page to see the videos. Click the pic and check it out.
The NBA/The All Star Game/More Bill Simmons
2 Separate items.
I never thought the 1987 NBA All-Star Game could be topped. On its 20th anniversary, my retroactive running diary included this paragraph:
“For the love of God, LOOK at those lineups again. You had Magic and Bird in their absolute primes. You had MJ during the season when he won the dunk contest, averaged 37 a game and put himself on the map as The Next Great Guy. You had Barkley and Hakeem in their breakout seasons. You had Isiah, McHale, Parish, Worthy and Nique at their absolute peaks. You had Moses, Kareem, English, Cheeks and Walter Davis with something left in the tank. You had Doctor J in his final All-Star appearance. You had six guys who ended up making the NBA’s ‘Top 50’ list on the bench to start the game. You had John Stockton, Joe Dumars, Patrick Ewing, Fat Lever, Clyde Drexler, Terry Cummings, Sidney Moncrief and Karl Malone watching from home because THEY WEREN’T GOOD ENOUGH TO BE INVITED. Will we ever see anything approaching this again? I say no.”
Fast-forward 24 years: Thanks to a talent boon and modern science extending the primes of players who should have been more washed up than the “Fockers” franchise by now, next month’s All-Star Game will absolutely approach “this.” We won’t see three of the best five players ever at their peaks or soon-to-be-peaks, but put it this way: The great Tim Duncan is looming as the worst All-Star on a 2011 team. That’s when I’m forced to break one of my steadfast rules (“Never waste a column on All-Star selections”) and break this baby down.
Here we go …
Q: You’re really wasting a column on this? When was the last time anyone truly cared about the NBA All-Star Game?
A: I’ve attended every All-Star Weekend since 2004 but skipped Sunday’s game three of those times. Why? I’m old enough to remember when the game mattered. I hate watching half-assed basketball. I hate seeing something potentially meaningful be squandered. Ideally, the game should showcase the league’s biggest stars, entertain its fans and take something of a snapshot of that specific season.
Who is that season’s alpha dog? Which players absolutely have to play at crunch time? Which young guys have vaulted into The Discussion? Which older guys are fading from The Discussion? Which guys have a game that translates into any situation, and conversely, which guys wouldn’t be that fun to play with?
So why hasn’t the game been doing that? Our last meaningful one happened in 2001, when a new generation of franchise guys tried to seize control of the post-Jordan era. All of them were looking for the upper hand like Marlo after Avon went to the clink. Kobe wanted to show that he wasn’t just riding Shaq’s coattails. Ex-teammates Vince and T-Mac wanted to prove they didn’t need each other. Duncan, C-Webb and Garnett were vying for the “Best Power Forward Alive” crown; same for Kidd and Payton and the “Best Point Guard Alive” title. Iverson wanted to show everyone that the league now belonged to him. Marbury and Allen wanted to prove they were franchise guys. Throw in the magic of Chocolate City (that year’s host), and everyone went hard. Iverson won the MVP; Kobe emerged as the West’s crunch-time alpha dog; and in the fourth quarter, the East erased a 21-point deficit and ended up winning thanks to two gigantic 3-pointers from … (wait for it) … Stephon Marbury!
Ten years later, the box score doubles as a snapshot of the ensuing decade: The West was almost comically loaded; the East had waaaaaaaaaay too much riding on Iverson, Marbury, McGrady, Allen and Jermaine O’Neal; and there just weren’t enough up-and-coming stars. It’s no wonder the league swooned from 2002 to 2007. The All-Star Game teaches us more than you’d think. This year, it’s going to teach us that the league is obscenely loaded right now.
Dustin (NY)
Most likely to throw a crippling INT this week? Mark Sanchez or Jay Cutler?
Bill Simmons (12:18 PM)
I’d say Cutler - he’ll throw you at least 2 a game, you just have to hold onto them. That was Seattle’s biggest misfire last week, dropping the goal line INT he gave them. KC Joyner did a nice job of breaking down Cutler’s possible flimsiness this week (Insider only): http://insider.espn.go.com/nfl/playoffs/2010/insider/columns/story?columnist=joyner_kc&id=6038319
Booray - An Insider’s Guide
A (tongue in cheek) guide to NBA players’ favorite card game.
Thanks to reader Scott.
Look At This Fucking Hoopster; Or, The Decline Of Western Civilization
Previously we noticed the uptick in hipsters wearing NBA jerseys and asked for your help in exposing more of these monsters. You did not disappoint. So click around and just look at these fucking hoopsters.
New Simmons:Welcome to the All-LeBron sound-off
That didn’t take long. More funny/sad/insightful reaction to LeBron. Or as Simmons calls it, the LeBacle.
LeBron.
::shakes head:::
I haven’t see a hand overplayed this badly since MacArthur crossed the 38th parallel. Best excerpt below (h/t Adam).
We are already fools for caring about athletes considerably more than they care about us. We know this, and we do it anyway. We just like sports. We keep watching for moments like Donovan’s goal against Algeria, and we keep caring through thick and thin for moments like Roberts’ Steal and Tracy Porter’s interception. We put up with all the sobering stuff because that’s the price you pay — for every Gordon Hayward half-court shot, or USA-Canada gold-medal game, there are 20 Michael Vicks and Ben Roethlisbergers. Last night didn’t make me like sports any less — my guard has been up since 1996 — it just reinforced all the things I already didn’t like.
For LeBron not to understand what he was doing — or even worse, not to care — made me quickly turn off the television, find my kids, give them their nightly bath and try to forget the sports atrocity that I had just witnessed. He just couldn’t have handled it worse. Never in my life can I remember someone swinging from likable to unlikable that quickly. I will forgive him some day because I like watching him play basketball, and whether you’re rooting for or against him, his alliance with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in Miami created one the greatest “Holy s—-, how is this going to play out?????” scenarios in recent sports history. Sports are supposed to be fun, and eventually, this will become fun — for everyone but people in Cleveland — because we finally have a Yankees of basketball.
But I will never, ever, not in a million years, understand why it had to play out that way. If LeBron James is the future of sports, then I shudder for the future.
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