Len Bias: 25 years later

Note: This was written five years ago and it seems like a good idea to rework it again given it has been exactly a quarter century since Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose.  Twenty-five years …

Twenty-five years.

Think about all that can happen in the space of 25 years. Friends come and go, and milestones are recognized and passed. Sometimes, even, lifetimes are lived, and always it seems like everything had happened in just a fleeting moment. Blink and it’s gone.

Time marches on. It always does.

In sports, 25 years is more than a lifetime and longer than an era. It’s forever and the number of players that every franchise in every sport has seen make through multiple decades of service can be counted on one hand.

It’s been exactly 25 years since Len Bias died of a cocaine overdose (June 19, 1986) less than two days after he had been selected by the Boston Celtics as the No. 2 overall pick in the NBA Draft. Bias was the great college basketball player from the University of Maryland, but more than that he was billed as the next great Boston Celtics All-Star. He had once-in-a-lifetime talent and was headed for a team that had Hall of Famers like Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson as well as Robert Parish and Danny Ainge, so clearly Bias had the world by the tail.

Only he didn’t.

Bias’ death was at the time, according to Celtics great Larry Bird, “The cruelest thing ever.”

It certainly seemed that way at the time. With the aid of time and distance we learned that Bias and his university had a several other significant problems and the cocaine abuse was just the tip of the iceberg. Bias had been flunking out of school and was known to keep company with a few unsavory characters, including Brian Tribble, the convicted cocaine dealer who is said to have supplied the dose that killed him.

Ultimately, Tribble was cleared of any wrongdoing in Bias’ death, but Maryland coach Lefty Driesell’s reputation remains sullied in the aftermath of his star players’ death. Meanwhile, we’ve learned that Bias wasn’t exactly a novice cocaine user either. It as Bias’ leased sports car undercover cops saw cruising a notorious drug neighborhood on Montana Avenue in Washington, D.C. Later, Tribble admitted that he and Bias were recreational cocaine users, but no one knew.

How could we? Bias was in that rarefied air of the greatest players to come through a new era of basketball. His contemporary, Michael Jordan, had just won the rookie of the year award and seemed poised to renew a rivalry with Bias for years to come.

It was perfect. The story was already written.

Actually, in 25 years there has been a lot more damage and disgrace than growth, but that’s the way it goes when a star is extinguished long before his time.

And “star” is the only way to describe Bias. He was to be the next great star of the NBA – not like Karl Malone or Charles Barkley, who were also on the way up at the time – but instead like the guys who only needed one name.

Michael, Magic, Larry…

And Lenny.

Not in this lifetime.

For those who grew up in the ‘80s and lived for basketball the way the devout love the gospels, Len Bias was The Truth. Not privy to all of the scouting reports or the 24-hour inundation of sports and analysis, we only had one player to compare Bias to, and that was the guy from Carolina who was the ACC Player of the Year before him.

Comparisons are always odious, especially when everyone knows who Michael Jordan is and what he accomplished, and Bias, amongst today’s live-for-the-now sports mindset, is largely forgotten. Sure, us newly-minted old-timers mark time by Bias’ death and can recall in great detail the way the air smelled or how the sun shined the moment when we heard the news, but there are kids who love the game just as much as we did who never knew what Bias did or who we was.

Of course there is a legacy. As collegiate players, Bias, Patrick Ewing and David Robinson remain the best I have ever seen. Like Jordan, Bias could play forward and guard, but at the same age, Lenny was a far better shooter. He also was stronger and meaner and a more explosive leaper.

People always talked about Jordan and his competitiveness and how he forced his teammates to become better players. It’s all part of his legend. But Bias played with a nastiness that made Jordan seem meek. All Bias highlights include the game at Carolina where he scored a basket then swiped the inbounds pass and in one motion dunked it while ducking his head beneath the rim. His other move was a devastating baseline jumper that not only was impossible to block like Kareem’s skyhook, but it also was like money in the bank. That baseline shot just carved out opponents’ hearts.

Sadly, though, no one remembers anything about the way Len Bias played. They just remember the end and the aftermath. It’s one thing to be the most infamous cautionary tale in sports, but to also be the impetus for sometimes draconian and knee-jerk drug laws just might be the hardest truth of all of it.

But not the hardest tragedy because four years later Jay Bias, Len’s younger brother, was shot and killed at a shopping mall when a jealous man thought he was flirting with his girlfriend. Could you believe two tragedies for one family—one more absurd than the other?

Still, long before Sept. 11, or the O.J. circus, and a handful of years before the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union crumbled; Len Bias’ death was people of my age’s Kennedy Assassination. I can still remember it like it was yesterday. I remember where I was standing when my mom and sister came running outside to tell me the news. I remember how the sky looked and how the sun felt. I remember the way the evergreen bush next to the driveway felt when I touched it and pulled a little red berry off of it.

I remember the local TV sportscaster delivering the news in his attempt at solemnity opposed to his typical wacky sports guy shtick. I remember mowing the grass in the backyard and wondering whether any one would ever wear No. 30 for the Celtics again.

I remember the drive home with my mom, sister and grandmother from Rehoboth Beach the day before and hearing the news in the Rehoboth Mall that he had been selected with the second pick in the NBA Draft. I remember Red Auerbach’s creepy laugh beneath those oversized glasses when his Celtics and the Sixers were the only two who hadn’t been called in that year’s draft lottery. Sure, the Celtics ended up with the No. 2 pick behind the Sixers, but Red knew Harold Katz would figure out a way to mess it up.

Who could have guessed that Jeff Ruland ended up more productive for the 76ers than Len Bias for the Celtics?

Twenty-five years later we wonder where the time went and how to make the news sting a little less. Twenty-five years can seem like an eternity or a blink of an eye. But make no mistake, 22 years is far too young to die.

And 25 years is too long to wonder, what if…

This is where the real LeBron needs to show up

Contrary to popular, knee-jerk opinion, no legacies have been defined. It takes a much longer body of work to create things like epitaphs, legacies or whatever else it is we sports fans like to drone on about. These are complicated things that take depth to speak about with any type of substance.

In other words, don't cry for LeBron James—not that anyone was or will. He's just 26-years old and largely viewed as the most talented basketball player on the planet. He's also teamed with Dwyane Wade, another one of the most talented ballplayers in the world, so one would assume his best days are in the future.

So if LeBron is the type to think about such things as legacies and his place in the pantheon of NBA greats, he has to know that it's how a player comes back that proves his mettle.

It’s the Buddhist proverb that goes: fall down seven times stand up eight. LeBron just has to stand up once.

That's the tricky part. After the Dallas Mavericks sent the Miami Heat and LeBron into a summer sure to be filled with second-guessing, Magic Johnson came on TV to talk about how he dedicated himself to the game after his Lakers lost the Celtics in seven games during the 1984 Finals. Even though Magic had won an NCAA national title and two NBA titles in less than five years, it wasn't until he lost that he says he, "got it." In losing Magic knew what it took to win.

From Jackie McMullen's, When the Game was Ours:

“It was the worst night of my life,” Magic said. “I told myself, ‘Don't ever forget how this feels.’”

The 1984 NBA Finals could be ground zero for when the league took off into the stratosphere. Not only was it the first time the Larry Bird-led Celtics and Magic's Lakers met in the finals, but also it was the last time the NBA played a season without Michael Jordan. Better yet, it didn't hurt that the series was one the greatest ever played and actually made the pre-series hype seem as if it wasn't hyped up enough. For seven games both teams punched and counterpunched—sometimes literally. After the clubs split the first two games with the Celtics taking Game 2 in overtime because of costly mistakes by Magic and James Worthy, the Lakers trounced the Celtics in Game 3 by 33 points.

Game 3 was the epitome of Lakers Showtime. They sprinted past the Celtics as if they were standing still, turning even the most mundane of missed shots into transition baskets that resulted in dunks and layups.

But afterwards, two things happened. Bird stood in front of the throng of media in the crush of the post game deconstruction and said that the Celtics played like "a bunch of sissies." The next day during a film session where all of their mistakes were placed on display, Celtics’ coach K.C. Jones gave the simple edict that turned the series on its head:

No more layups. Then this happened:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X7r6vXeOfyQ]

The series changed with that one, dirty play from Kevin McHale. Of course Bird still had to play MVP-type basketball the rest of the way, but the die had been cast and one of the greatest seven-game series ever played unfolded.

Still, Bird knew that there was no resting on victory, either. Magic said he wanted the pain of defeat to linger so he could learn from it while Bird, with his second ring in five seasons understood that victory had a price. Again, from McMullen’s When the Game was Ours:

The morning after Boston’s celebration, Bird finally went home for a little shuteye. Around midafternoon, Buckner, who was experiencing his first-ever NBA title, drove to Bird’s Brookline home with the hope of celebrating all over again. Dinah informed Buckner that Larry wasn’t there.

“He was out running,” Buckner said. “When he got back, I said to him, ‘Man, what are you doing?’”

Bird looked at him quizzically before he answered.

“I’m getting ready for next year,” he said.

Make no mistake about it, LeBron’s issues have nothing to do with the sideshow silliness that dogged him ever since he staged that ill-advised, The Decision followed by a pep rally in which he promised a veritable Miami dynasty. For a guy who never won anything, well, ever, it was a pretty ballsy move. Worse, the soap opera-aspect didn’t die after the series, either. When asked about the schadenfreude aspect his life has taken, James really suggested that he pitied the regular people out there with their mundane lives.

Really. Check out a bit from Adrian Wojnarowski’s column on Yahoo! after Game 6:

This is still Dwyane Wade’s town, and probably Wade’s team. One Eastern Conference star said, “Right now all he’s doing is helping D-Wade get his second ring.”

To hear James suggest that the world will have to return to its sad, little ordinary lives and he’ll still get to be LeBron James late Sunday night was a window into his warped, fragile psyche. It was sad, and portends to how disconnected to the world he truly is.

“They have to wake up and have the same life that they had before they woke up today … the same personal problems,” James said. “I’m going to continue to live the way that I want to live. … But they have to get back to the real world at some point.”

There’s nothing real about James’ world, and never has been. He’s a prisoner of a life that his sycophants and enablers and our sporting culture has created for him. He’s rich and talented and something of a tortured soul. He’s the flawed superstar for these flawed times. He’s a creation of a basketball breeding ground full of such twisted priorities and warped principles. Almost every person who’s ever had to work closely with him, who has spent significant time, who’s watched him belittle and bully people, told me they were rooting hard against him. That’s sad, and that’s something he doesn’t understand and probably never will.

That still gets back to the sideshow side of things. The truth is James’ problems all come from basketball. If he wants to quiet the doubters or prove his greatness, it doesn’t come when the tattoo is finally affixed or the checks are cashed. It comes when a man is true to his art. If there was one thing that was proven in the NBA Finals it was that James’ game is still a work in progress.

Oh sure, LeBron is the most talented player in the game, but that doesn’t mean he’s the smartest or even the best player in the NBA. During the finals against Dallas he disappeared in the fourth quarter, failing to move to the ball. When he did get his hands on it, he was content to fire up long jumpers where he was barely a threat. He scored 16 points in the fourth quarter during the series and attempted just 20 foul shots in the six games. Those are fine stats if you are J.J. Barea, but not if you have “The Chosen One” tattooed across your coat rack-like shoulders.

In the finale, there were two non-plays that stood out as evidence that James doesn’t understand his place in the Heat’s halfcourt offense and they occurred right on top of each other. One was when James found himself guarded by Mavs’ point guard Jason Kidd. With a good five inches of height on Kidd, all James had to do was back him down to the low block, post up and feast off that for a basket. Or, if the Mavericks chose to double down on James on the post, a man would be open and there was a 50-50 chance it could be Wade or Chris Bosh.

Needless to say, those aren’t bad odds.

Instead, James kicked the ball out before drifting away from the post where he could position himself around the three-point line. You know, the spot where he could do the least amount of damage.

Shortly after this, James was guarded by six-foot guard Barea, a player whom he had an advantage of nine-inches in height and approximately 70 pounds in weight. This wasn’t a mismatch, it was a gimme. But rather than score over little Barea, James was whistled for an offensive foul while attempting to back him down. Worse, he was credited with a turnover, too.

Still, two chances with the ball against smaller guards like Kidd and Barea and James didn’t attempt a shot, committed a foul and turned over the ball.

Nope, that stuff has nothing to do with arrogance or the soap opera-like scrutiny he lives under. That’s just bad, bad basketball. Here, don’t listen to me… let someone who knows what they’re talking about explain it.

“If I’m LeBron, I’m going home this summer and I’m getting on the low block and I’m working everyday on a right-hand jump hook and a turnaround jump shot,” former NBA champion with the Bulls and Phoenix GM, Steve Kerr said as a guest on the Dan Patrick Show. “If you followed what happened during the series when he went down there, they had some success. In the fourth quarter he went down there, Dallas brought the double, he swung it to Mario Chalmers for a three. Next time they don’t double and he turns on Shawn Marion and lays it in. It was like the easiest thing you’ve ever seen and yet they couldn’t do a steady diet of it because he’s not ­comfortable down there. That’s the next step for him and it’s tough for LeBron because of all the scrutiny and all the criticism and the attention.

“But he has to cut through all of that and get to the core of what is wrong which is basketball. It’s basketball-related. He’s flawed as a basketball player and he has to address those issues.”

Maybe the difference between LeBron and the all-time greats is they knew they had to work to correct those shortcomings. They had to add new wrinkles to their games and take away what doesn’t work. Look at Jordan, who went from a Doctor J clone to become the most complete player ever. Magic went 0 for 21 from three-point range in 1982-83 and made just 58 three-pointers in his first nine seasons in the league. However, in the final three seasons of his career he made 245 threes.

Finally, it was always said that Bird couldn’t leap over the lines and needed a sun dial to time his sprints up and down the floor, but he led the NBA in defensive win shares in four of his first seven years in the league.

Indeed, the all-time greats were driven by the game and obsessed with improving all the time. That’s how things like legacies are defined.

Clearly, LeBron has some work to do.

Finally coming clean

NEW YORK — Let’s just get it out of the way at the top… Lance Armstrong is going down and he is going down hard. It’s not unreasonable to believe that jail time could be involved for the seven-time Tour de France champion when the government concludes its investigation.

See, the United States federal government does not like it when a person lies to them. It is quirky that way.

But the thing the government dislikes the most is when it doesn’t get a cut of what it believes it has coming. You know, it wants to wet its beak with a tiny bit of the proceeds as tribute for signing off on that whole Bill of Rights thing. Freedom isn’t free, as they say. It costs a mandated percentage of your yearly income unless you make so much money that you can pay an accountant to talk them down.

Think about it… when Michael Vick went to jail for nearly two years it wasn’t so much as for the dog fighting ring he was operating as it was because he didn’t pay a royalty. He served 21 months in prison for felony conspiracy in interstate commerce, which is a fancy way of saying he didn’t cut the government a slice.

What does this have to do with Lance Armstrong? Well, everything, of course. If the guy was riding for a team sponsored by the United States Postal Service, a government agency, and used the equipment supplied to him to sell for performance-enhancing drugs, well, that’s trouble. In fact, it was alleged last year by his former wing man, Floyd Landis, that Team USPS funded its drug habit by selling its equipment. This was realized, according to the accusations, when Landis wanted a training bike and couldn’t get one.

That training bike was injected as EPO.

Regardless, that’s not what this is all about. When word came out that Armstrong’s closest teammates, George Hincappie and Tyler Hamilton, testified for the federal grand jury it was pretty damning. It meant that the United States feels it had been defrauded.

Of course no one is really thinking about this as a case of fraud, though that’s clearly the undercurrent of the latest bit of cycling and doping news. After all, three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond called it at the very beginning. In 2001, shortly before Armstrong threatened to defame LeMond, the first American to win the Tour said:

"If Armstrong's clean, it's the greatest comeback. And if he's not, then it's the greatest fraud."

Actually, LeMond got it both right. Armstrong created both the greatest comeback and perpetrated the greatest fraud. His fight against cancer and the Livestrong campaign very could be the greatest and/or most important foundation founded by an athlete. It’s meaningful work that helps millions and worthy of respect and support.

Who cares if the face of the organization is a fraud, arrogant and vindictive? Or who cares that the seven-time Tour de France champion was the most powerful man in the sport and able to circumvent everything all while pulling the strings of other athletes’ livelihoods and reputations?

Case in point was the time when LeMond was critical of Armstrong’s work with renowned physician/charlatan, Dr. Michele Ferrari. Essentially, LeMond was told to never open his mouth.

"[Armstrong] basically said 'I could find 10 people that will say you took EPO'... The week after, I got multiple people that were on Lance ... Lance's camp, basically saying 'you better be quiet,' and I was quiet for three years. I have a business ... I have bikes that are sold ... and I was told that my sales might not be doing too well if ... just the publicity, the negative publicity."

Armstrong knows all too well about negative publicity. He knows it almost as well as he understands how to bend public opinion with arguments based solely on semantics, public relations and twisted facts that can never been proven. Claims of doping have followed Armstrong for more than a decade, seemingly starting with writer David Walsh who has authored several books detailing systematic and organizational doping. Through all of that, Armstrong’s minions remained steadfast in their defense of him and moved to discredit the writer when all along they knew what was going on. Perhaps the first of the inner circle to call Armstrong a doper was Betsy Andreu, wife of former teammate Frankie Andreu.

Betsy claimed she heard Armstrong tell his doctors in 1996 while undergoing cancer treatment that he took EPO, human growth hormone and steroids. Armstrong claimed that Betsy Andreu confused this with post-chemotherapy treatments where he took the drugs to help boost his red blood cells. However, in 2006 Andreu admitted that he used EPO during the 1999 Tour de France when he was riding as the “super domestique” for Armstrong on the USPS team.

It was shortly after Andreu’s admission that I spoke with Landis about Armstrong and possible secrets he might be hiding. At first the question was couched that perhaps Armstrong, one of the most famous athletes in the world, had a secret tattoo or webbed feet or something relatively benign. Instead, the response from Landis seemed to indicate that Armstrong was a jerk. Re-reading the question and answer after so many have come forward about Armstrong’s alleged doping is fascinating.

“I don’t think I know anything that anyone else knows. People have perceptions of him that might not be very accurate, but I don’t know any details that they wouldn’t know. The guy is obsessed. With whatever he does he is obsessed, and whatever he does he wants to be the best at it.

“Ultimately, he doesn’t have a lot of close friends because of it and he winds up not being the nicest guy. But that doesn’t make him a doper. That doesn’t make him a cheater. It might make him someone you don’t want to be around, but that doesn’t mean he took advantage of anyone else or that he deserves the harassment some people are giving him, like in the Walsh book.”

Not even three years later Landis said that in addition to not being a nice person, Armstrong was indeed a doper and a cheater and very well could deserve some harassment.

Doping is the name of the game
It would be tough to find any rational person to believe Armstrong’s fairy tale these days. Though he is still admired and folks still steadfastly support his cancer foundation, his continued claims that he did not dope during the course of his seven victories in the Tour de France is laughable.

The fact remains that Armstrong likely passed the drug tests because he knew how to work the system very well. The old parallel is that doping in cycling is like stealing signs or throwing spitballs in baseball—it’s only cheating if someone gets caught.

Still, to some who were clean and not quite able to reach that level of the ultra elites, it’s understandable to see why doping is offensive. If all it takes is hard training mixed with some chemistry as opposed to hard work, yeah, it stinks.

But that doesn’t make those who are clean any less naïve. The fact is cycling has always been a living chemistry lab where riders were never shy about finding an edge even if it spat in the face of the spirit of the sport. Maybe it’s human nature to cheat?

The first documented case of doping in cycling dates back to 1886 where the drugs of choice were cocaine, caffeine and strychnine. In 1896, a rider named Choppy Warburton was banned from the sport after claims of massive doping in that years' Bordeaux–Paris race. As a coach, ol’ Choppy was accused of implementing doping programs for his charges. A quick Google search of Choppy and early doping cases reveals this nugget:

“Choppy has been firmly identified as the instigator of drug-taking in the sport [cycling] in the 19th century.”

As early as the 1930s, doping in cycling was so complete that to combat it the Tour de France organizers informed the riders that they would no longer supply drugs. Still, race organizers could not have been too serious since the first anti-doping law in France did not come until the 1960s.

Regardless, it wasn’t until the past decade where the sport instituted tougher tests and even went so far as to suspend riders even when they had not flunked tests. At the same time, the measures taken on by the anti-doping agencies are both inept and draconian often seeming that the testers want to suspend as many athletes as possible to make up for lost time.

Even so, no one believes that the sport will ever really be clean. There will always be something to drink, eat, absorb or inject for the rider looking for an edge or maybe, simply, survival. The adage is that the dopers will always be one step ahead of the testers. Perhaps even there is something so new that it can’t be detected by any blood, urine or DNA test.

Then again, maybe not. Perhaps someone like Armstrong is both a hero and a villain? He very well could be the model and the cautionary tale.

The game that wasn't

Note: Here's what happened... to anticipate the end of a game, we writerly types work ahead. That's how newspaper guys beat their deadlines and how us web dudes get stories online seconds after the final pitch. Needless to say, this practice can often create headaches if an unforeseen rally or comeback occurs.

In those situations it's not unusual to hear someone shout across the press box, "REWRITE!" That's actually old-timey talk, but it has a better ring to it than, "Highlight, delete!"

So on Wednesday night I had been working ahead and put together a skeleton of a story to fo as soon as the Phillies-Reds game was to end in the 10th inning. The plan was to send the story, gather some quotes and sprinkle them in while changing around some of the details that reflect the mood of the team or the scene in the clubhouse.

Since the Phillies' clubhouse is typically a ghost town after games, that leaves us with cobbling together a quote or two.

Anyway, before Ryan Howard belted a solo home run to tie the game in the 10th before it went to 19 innings and the wee hours of the morning, I came up with this story -- compare it to the one I filed after 3 a.m.

This one is about the game that never really happened.

Wednesday, May 25, 2011

By John R. Finger
CSNPhilly.com

If there is one thing the Phillies’ pitchers learned about the first three games of the four-game set is that when Jay Bruce strolls to the plate, they should run and hide.

Just run and hide.

For the second night in a row, Bruce came up in a key spot with the game on the line only to deliver a crushing base hit. Actually, in Wednesday night’s 4-3 victory over the Phillies, Bruce had two clutch hits in the late innings.

One to tie and one to win.

The game-winner was a solo homer off reliever Antonio Bastardo that barely cleared the chain-linked fence above the out-of-town scoreboard. That shot—Bruce’s 13^th of the season and second of the series—was the one that sent most of the sellout crowd at the Bank scurrying for the exits.

Regardless, it was Bruce’s other big hit on Wednesday night that did the most damage.

It was a situation that Roy Halladay has been through a few times since joining the Phillies, yet always seemed to come out alright on the other side.

With one out with the bases loaded in a two-run game and the heart of the Reds’ order due up in Wednesday night’s tilt at the Bank, Halladay was in a precarious spot, but not one that had too many folks worried. After all, this was Roy Halladay on the mound. Who cared if the Reds had already bashed out 10 hits in the seventh inning?

So after putting away cleanup hitter Scott Rolen on four pitches, Halladay got ahead quickly on Jay Bruce with three fastballs. The end was one pitch away for Halladay and the Phillies. No way was Halladay going to give up a two-run lead with two outs and two strikes on a hitter.

But Bruce wasn’t just some ordinary hitter. In fact, he may be the hottest hitter going these days. Not only did he have 13 hits and nine RBIs in his last 26 at-bats heading into that showdown against Halladay, but also clubbed a bases-loaded double with two outs in the ninth inning of a tie game just the night before.

Bruce got out in front of the two-strike changeup ever-so slightly — just enough to bounce the ball away from the grasp of second baseman Wilson Valdez and into right field for the game-tying single.

That shows just how good Bruce has been. If he can wrst away a two-run lead from Halladay, with the way he has been pitching, then maybe that run and hide advice isn't too far off.

Up next: The Phillies close out the four-game series with the Reds, as well as the nine-game homestand, on Thursday afternoon with a 1:05 p.m. start. Cliff Lee (3-4, 3.38) will take the mound against righthander Homer Bailey (3-1, 2.08).

Lee is coming off his first win in more than a month where he spun a five-hitter with 10 strikeouts in a 2-0 victory over the Texas Rangers. In eight career starts against the Reds, lee is 4-2 with a 4.69 ERA, however, last June the lefty tossed a complete-game shutout while pitching for the Mariners.

Andre Iguodala eats his vegetables... and you should, too

MIAMI — There is an interesting interview with Andre Iguodala in a recent edition of the magazine, Food Republic, a slick-looking periodical about epicurean pursuits. It seems to be for those types who use the term, “foodie,” without irony and look to Anthony Bourdain as some sort of righteous hipster.

In other words, it’s a magazine not found at the corner newsstand.

Anyway, it’s not often that pro athletes from Philadelphia talk to slick-looking magazines about their personal chefs or healthy eating habits. Even though it’s not uncommon for non-baseball athletes to be progressive in the training room and training table, it’s decidedly a non-Philadelphian thing. Certainly the folks who shell out ridiculous amounts of cash for the tickets aren’t used to turning over the daily menu to the in-home chef.

Still, the interesting part of the interview wasn’t that Iguodala employs a personal chef or knew early on in his NBA career that his diet and performance were linked. That’s just smart and if anything, “smart” is a pretty good adjective to use when describing Iguodala. No, the interesting part was when Iguodala revealed he liked vegetables when he was a kid.

Really… a kid who liked vegetables?

Well, I was weird as a child. I would eat broccoli raw. I would eat cauliflower raw. I also used to love salads. So, yeah, I’ve always liked vegetables.

Maybe that’s not as weird as it sounds. After all, some kids actually like vegetables. In fact, I remember asking for and wanting to eat spinach specifically because of what it did for Popeye. However, I was quite upset to learn that spinach was not sold at the supermarket in cans and I couldn’t squeeze the middle of one, pop the top and have the spinach fly into my mouth as I wreaked havoc in the neighborhood.

Nope, things are never how they look on TV.

Thing is, kids rarely admit to liking vegetables even when they are all grown up. That is, as Iguodala explained, weird.

Then again, it doesn’t take a long time spent around the Philadelphia 76ers do understand that Iguodala is different. Actually, check out the picture on the right… if there was ever a photo that perfectly revealed the man, there it is. He’s serious, put together perfectly with a Burberry tie knotted just so, with the blue blazer revealing the proper amount of cuff from his shirt. No wrinkles, nothing rumpled and the creases exactly where they should be. Serious, professional, to the point.

That’s Iguodala.

And maybe that’s why after an excellent season of gritty, nuanced basketball, folks still haven’t warmed up to the Sixers’ best player. Even though he’s played for seven seasons with the Sixers after being drafted with the ninth-overall pick in 2004, he’s still an enigma—inscrutable even. Though he comes from Springfield, Ill. just like scruffy and popular ex-Phillies outfielder, Jayson Werth, he’s more akin to fellow Illinoisan, Donovan McNabb. At least it seems that way in how he’s perceived.

Case in point came during the postgame press conference at American Airlines Arena on Wednesday night after the Sixers had been eliminated by the Heat. When asked, point blank, if he wanted to return to the Sixers for the 2011-12 season, Iguodala gave a rather McNabbian response:

“It’s always been a dream of mine to play ball for one team. This has been a great ride so far. I’m really looking forward to the summer, letting my body recuperate. I want to get back to 100 percent. I’m looking forward to next year being my best year in the league.

“I always wanted to be in one place, be comfortable in one spot. I still feel the same way, being able to put a stamp on not only my career, but the Philadelphia 76ers record book. I want to keep climbing the charts with some of the greatest basketball players ever. Just for my name to be brought up as having some of the most steals in team history is something I always thought about. I want to continue to climb the charts and take this team to the next level.”

In that setting, Iguodala was presented with a yes or no question. He could have said, “Yes, of course I want to play for the Sixers next season. What a silly question.” But that’s the easy answer. For those who watch him on the floor, doing things the easy way isn’t Iguodala’s modus operandi. Things are much more complicated than yes or no, sometimes. There are shades of grey in even the simplest answer and though Iguodala is contracted to play for the Sixers for the next three years, crazier things have happened.

Think about it… think the San Antonio Spurs could use a guy like Iguodala on a veteran-laden team? How about a young team like Memphis? Imagine Iguodala and Tony Allen playing defense on the same team. Or maybe Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and Iguodala in Oklahoma City? How about Dallas with Dirk Nowitzki or L.A. with Kobe? It’s almost unfair.

That’s the thing, though. There are no easy answers with Iguodala. Even the easy idea that Iguodala is the perfect second or third piece on a contending team the way Scottie Pippen was with Michael Jordan is not as simple as it sounds. Yes, perhaps as a lockdown defender on an established club would be the perfect setting for him, but then again, it sounds like a pretty good place for anyone. Who wouldn’t want to be on a team where the task is to simply perform your best skill and that’s it? Sign me up!

It seems as if Iguodala is the landing point for where reality and perception fight. No nothing fans and media types cite his salary as excessive, yet it barely cracks the top 40 of all NBA players. Quick, name 40 players you’d take ahead of Iguodala…

Give up. You can’t do it.

It seems as if Iguodala’s perceived unpopularity comes from his personality. He’s neither boisterous nor zany. He’s not one to suffer fools as evidenced in the 2006 Dunk Contest where he pulled off the most impressive and nuanced dunk of the show only to lose to Nate Robertson because he’s short and a better story. Rather than grin-and-bear it, Iguodala hasn’t appeared in another competition figuring there are better ways to have one’s time wasted.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6z9-l4hnMM]

Iguodala is all nuance and professionalism. There are all the things we can see like the fact that heading into this year he had missed just six games in six seasons and played in 252 regular-season games in a row. He’s led the league not only in games by playing in all 82 in five of his seven seasons, but also minutes played and average minutes per game. The dude plays the game and he's rare in that he's a ridiculously talented athlete with instatiable hard-nosed/blue-collar chops, too. He's the best of both worlds and he shows up and goes to work.

He earns his pay.

This year, his offensive stats dipped off only because he ceded some of the load to his teammates. With Elton Brand, Iguodala was the leader of the Sixers, helping Doug Collins further a system that raised the win total 27 games over last year.

The numbers were down, but in the realm of advanced metrics, Iguodala was charting the best Win Shares per 48 minutes, assist percentage, the best defensive rating and best rate of turnovers given in a season for his career at stages of the season. 

Though he is just one of two players in the NBA to average at least 14 points, five rebounds and six assists a game this season (LeBron James is the other), Iguodala’s value is on defense. According to advanced metrics from 82games.com, the Sixers are a much better team because of Iguodala’s defense. When he was in the lineup during the regular season, the Sixers were above average in holding down the oppositions shooting percentages and forcing turnovers. Without him, the Sixers were worse than the league average.

Iguodala has three years left on his contract and has relented on carrying the offense, but ideally it could better serve the team to identify its go-to man down the stretch.

These facts might have been lost in the black and white, but not to those who really pay close attention.

“I think Andre with his defense and his leadership has been terrific,” Collins said. “He’s averaging about 15 [points] a game, but he had two of the best defensive plays that I’ve seen all year long the other night against Dallas. Unfortunately, we did not convert, but Andre is a playmaker for us. He’s a rebounder, he’s a defender and I think he’s been terrific. 

“I never judge a guy like that based on his statistics. I judge him by the value to his team and how well he plays and if he gives you a chance to win. When we were 3-13 it was his voice that did the most. He said, ‘Guys, hang in there. We’re close.’ That voice helped us battle through that and get us through to where we are today.”

Nevertheless, Iguodala was again inscrutable during the playoffs against the Miami Heat. He struggled during the first two games of the series registering as many points (9) as turnovers. In Game 3 Iguodala had 10 assists and 10 points, but shot just 3 for 10 and played much poorly than the stats suggest.

However, in games 3 and 4, he scored 38 points, including 18 during the second half of the season finale where he nearly stole the game from the Heat. In Game 5 he grabbed 10 rebounds, shot 10 for 14 and helped hold LeBron James to his lowest playoff output.

“He is a very good player,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Iguodala. “He is so unique in terms of how many things he does to impact the game. He is such a good defender, he’s long and he moves his feet. Also, he is a very good rebounder and an intelligent defender. Offensively, I think he gets judged on how many points he scores. He does so many other things.”   

Of course, injuries finally caught up to Iguodala in part because he played for Team USA in last summer’s World Championships. Over the final two months of the season Iguodala played through tendinitis (or chondromalacia) the bared resemblance to the same injury that has sidelined Chase Utley. The difference is Iguodala has been accountable to the fans and teammates by actually facing the media, thus, he doesn’t put unfair pressure on his coaches or teammates to answer questions for him. The injuries were a factor late in the season.

But the injuries will heal. In the meantime we’re still scratching our heads over hard answers to easy questions—a place where Iguodala might be at his most compelling. That’s where he is a bit of a rarity in sports in that he is a truth teller. He’s immune to cliché (well, as much as possible) and actually answers questions. Want an answer? Iguodala has one. And though it could be off the mark like some of his long-range jumpers, he’s always provocative. For instance, take his relationship with rookie Evan Turner where a personality clash may have kept the players at odds during the season. When asked about it, Iguodala presented a thoughtful, honest answer

“Evan and I have had a pretty interesting year together — good and bad,” Iguodala said. “We’ve always tried to lean on each other. Over the past week we really bonded and I was happy to see him be in position to do something good and follow through with it.

“I’ve been saying all year that he’s a confidence guy and when his confidence is high, he plays really well. When his confidence is down, he has a lot of self doubt and he doesn’t believe in himself,” Iguodala explained. “But we all know he can play ball and we’ve had many arguments throughout the year in regard to talents and he’s going to prove a lot of people wrong.

“We had a chance to sit down and we had dinner together and were together for about three hours. We just reflected on the whole year and things that happened and what could have changed and things that made us better people or held us back a little bit. It was a good chat.”

When do athletes ever talk like that? It’s kind of like when asked a simple question about whether he will return to the Sixers next year and instead chooses to discuss the legacy he hopes to build.

“I always think about that, keep climbing the charts with some of the greatest basketball players ever — Dr. J, Maurice Cheeks, Bobby Jones, Hal Greer, Wilt Chamberlain. The franchise has been here forever. And just for my name to be brought up for the guy with the most steals in team history is something I've always thought about,” Iguodala said. “I want to continue to climb the charts and take the team to the next level.”

No, Iguodala is not like most of the athletes that have come through town. He seems to be a strange mix of Charles Barkley and Scott Rolen mixed together. Could it be that the best description is “evolved” more than weird? Either way, he’s right about one thing …

You should eat your vegetables.

Only as good as your last shot

There is nothing as sad or depraved than a man in the depths of a shooting slump. Sometimes it feels like locking your keys in the car or repeatedly punching yourself in the face… by accident. Eventually, it becomes so frustrating that each missed shot or rebound that turns to a change of possession is like a free fall where a ripcord is just a millimeter out of reach.

Yes, a shooting slump is like falling from the sky. Shots that might have splashed through the net with that sonorous, swish! are replaced with soft deflections off the rim that barely sail far enough for a long rebound. After the ball nicks the iron, that’s it. No more chances.

But that’s not where it gets frustrating. Through no discernible reason, sometimes the ball doesn’t go where it’s supposed to. Even though the form is the same, the touch and rotation is no different than any other shot, but for some stupid reason something is off.

Could it be the humidity? Maybe someone opened a door to get into the gym and a breeze knocked the ball off its target?

Whatever the reason, a shooting slump sucks. It sucks to watch and it sucks to go through. Don’t believe me, get ready for a couple of stories. One comes from a high-school hot shot who once believed he was the best shooter walking the earth, and the other is about a budding NBA star that once filled it up for 54 to set the single-game scoring record for Kentucky.

First things first, though. A shooter in basketball is a special breed. They aren’t like the big men that coaches and the media go crazy for because of the gift of height and build. Everyone loves the big man, because they can be taught to do things no one else can do. See, it’s not like a pitching coach like Rich Dubee for the Phillies who’s main job, essentially, is to shut up, stay out of the way and make sure his ace pitchers know what time the bus leaves for the ballpark. For instance, do you think Kareem was given that sky hook when he was Lew Alcindor or was he taught it because he was so much bigger than the other kids at school?

Think anyone else at young Lew’s school was taught a sky hook?

Anyway, a shooter has to work constantly. A shot is built from trial and error and then honed trough maddening, psychotic repetition. And then, the shooter has to figure out a way to get off the shots. That’s because even on the schoolyard, the shooter is identified and singled out. Shooters, after all, are the home run hitters. They are the ninjas of the game, typically blending in until sides are chosen and the first attempts at the hoop are up. See, a shooter is like a black belt in karate who gets into a back alley brawl in that he must identify himself. It’s only fair for some poor sap to know what he’s up against and if it’s a black belt standing across from him, last-minute negotiation might be in order.

A shooter can carve your eyes out if he isn’t identified early, so the sporting thing is to get the word out.

But once the game begins, negotiation on the court is conducted like a chess match. When the shooter is identified, the defense must make its move. Against a guy with a midrange shot, a zone could be pushed out past the key, or, old-fashioned man-to-man could be the call. However, if the guy had range like Reggie Miller, Larry Bird or Chris Mullin, some sort of gimmicky box-and-one might be the best defense. As the standard thinking goes, it’s fine to be beaten because the opposition had a better scheme or moves, but not if the ball was going to be kicked out to some guy standing away from the fray who can drop them in from 25 feet.

That’s like an overhand right that you see coming, but can’t do anything about.

But to miss shots—shots that normally would go down like turning on the faucet, well, that’s different.

“When you miss a lot of shots it can be demoralizing,” said 76ers head coach Doug Collins. “It takes a little bit of your spirit away.”

Collins knows because he was a shooter. In parts of eight NBA seasons covering 415 regular-season and 32 playoff games, Collins scored 18.2 points per game. That comes to more than 7,400 points in an era before there was such a thing as a three-pointer. In fact, of the 6,375 shots Collins took in official NBA games, only one was a three-pointer. What this means is Collins knew how to put the ball in the basket. “Scoring the ball,” as he calls it. Give it to him and he’ll generally figure out a way to get two points out of it.

That goes for the famous game during the 1972 Olympics where it appeared as if Collins had sunk the game-winning foul shots to win the gold medal game against the Soviet Union. Technically, the Soviets were awarded the gold medal, but they really didn’t win it—at t least not honorably, anyway. Because after two in-bounds plays and two do-overs, Collins was poised to be the hero and win that championship. He nearly had to be knocked out in order for it to happen, but those two foul shots with three seconds left appeared to seal the gold medal for the U.S.A.

Watching the many documentaries about the ’72 Olympics and particularly the gold medal basketball game, one can watch Collins steal a pass at midcourt, race to the basket for a layup and then get smashed in the basket support.

Collins told Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith in 1992 that U.S. head coach Hank Iba came running to his aid as he was lying on the court, dazed by the blow he had just absorbed. So too did assistant coach John Bach, who told Iba that they were going to have to find someone to shoot the free throws for Collins. 

“But coach Hank Iba says, ‘If Doug can walk, he'll shoot,’ ” Collins told Smith. “That electrified me. The coach believed in me.” 

Collins made both shots, putting the U.S. ahead, 50-49, with three seconds left. 

The Soviets inbounded, but the clock was stopped with one second remaining, amid a dispute over whether or not the Russians had called a timeout. 

Three seconds were placed back on the clock. The Soviets inbounded again, but this time a horn sounded after a single second ticked off, apparently ending the game. The U.S. players celebrated, but the horn had gone off because there had been a timing error... for some reason 50 seconds had been placed on the clock. 

So the Soviets inbounded once more. And this time they scored on a court-length pass to win at the buzzer. They were given three chances to beat the U.S., and thanks to some help from the officials and the Olympic brass, they did it. Collins told us that during the confusion he remembered watching the referees fight over the ball while arguing with each other in languages they didn’t understand.

If Collins had missed one of the foul shots and the game had gone to overtime, maybe the ending would have been different. Maybe the U.S. team wears down the Soviets in the extra frame and wins the gold without controversy. What if?

Whatever. Shooters don’t ever try to miss. The misses will come and when they do they will feel like daggers.

***

Anyway, there was a hot-shot kid who felt that if the ball was in his hands anywhere past the half court line that he was a threat to score. Truth is the kid spent all his free time hoisting up shots at a backyard basket. In the morning he dressed, ate and dashed off to score just so he would have extra time to shoot in the schoolyard before the rest of his classmates arrived. After school, he would run home, toss his backpack in the house, and head for the backyard hoop. Sometimes there would be other kids to play with, but that was unusual. The kid’s appetite for the game and the solace he found in the routine was insatiable. Making baskets made him feel good and it got to the point where he felt like he could do it better than anyone in the world.

There were a few public displays that he was pretty good, too. For instance, in a sixth grade CYO game, the kid scored all but two of his teams’ baskets. There were top of the key shots which would have counted for three points in later years, but were rightly recognized as a long bomb for a sixth-grader. Then there were shots from the corners with three defenders draped all over him. Those high-arching shots seemed to be a homing device zeroed in on the space just over the lip of the rim, and when they splashed through touching nothing but the net it sounded like a bomb had detonated.

Swish!

Later that year, the kid participated in the annual sixth-grade hot shot competition where each shooter had a minute to rack up as many points from various spots on the floor. To qualify for the championship round to take place on the court at halftime of a game at the city high school, the kid scored so many points that the officials didn’t believe him. When his classmates explained that, yes, the kid made 36 baskets in a minute, the head of the competition accused them of a conspiracy.

Thirty-six shots in a minute? Hell, the kid did that routinely by himself at the backyard hoop. Thirty-six was what he called a “soft” record in that it was better than what anyone else could do, but not unbreakable.

So with the ability to shoot, a growth spurt that pushed him to 6-foot-1 by the ninth grade, and an eighth-grade CYO season that ended with a buzzer-beater from the elbow in the league championship, the kid expected to shoot his way onto the varsity team in high school. Quickly, that’s where the kid learned that there was more to the game than just “scoring the ball.” As it turned out, high school coaches liked defense better than offense. Actually, the coaches loved defense and often had posters and t-shirts printed up espousing the virtues of good defense. They had little time for hotdog freshmen who liked to shoot the ball as often as possible. Moreover, they had very little patience when the kid missed two or three shots in a row on consecutive trips up the floor.

“Kid,” the coach called out, “you better start making those shots. You better start making those shots if you want to play on this team.”

The kid never heard that kind of talk before. After all, most coaches tolerated his misses because he made so many shots. Like the time he scored 17 points in the first quarter of a 28-minute game, he needed to take 15 shots. No matter how it’s examined, that’s some serious gunning.

But to hear the words, you better start making those shots if you want to play… that planted a seed of doubt. To that point he never thought about making shots, he just did it. Now what had been second nature was something that had an outside force attached to it. There was an end result—pressure—and it was a weird feeling.

***

“The main thing is confidence—just working on making shots,” said Sixers’ guard Jodie Meeks. “Once that’s down I made sure I knew how to shoot and made sure my mechanics were right.”

Meeks is a shooter, and a pretty good one at that. Better yet, Meeks fits the profile of the quiet schoolyard assassin who until he starts burying shot after shot, no one knows if he can play. Meeks is listed at 6-foot-4 and a shade over 200 pounds, but that might be cheating an inch or two. Just 23-years old, Meeks looks younger with a face and attitude not yet hardened by years on the road and lots of late-night room service.

Truth is, Meeks looks like a lot of shooters he followed when he was a kid in Norcross, Ga.

“Reggie Miller, Rip Hamilton, Michael Jordan,” Meeks answered when asked which shooters he followed. “I’d go outside with my dad and work on my shooting and he’d kind of tell me how to play.”

Actually, Meeks has a look that helped him blend in when he was an undergrad at Kentucky. After two seasons where he averaged a little more than 8 points per game, Meeks went for nearly 24 points a game in his third year at the school. In one, Meeks broke the school record held by Hall of Famer Dan Issel when he scored 54 points, 30 of those points came on three-pointers. The 54-point game was the best in the nation during the 2008-09 season and his 46 and 45-point efforts were the second and third highest scoring games of the college season.

It was the ability to shoot that made Meeks skip his last season of eligibility and enter the NBA Draft, though it was also the draft where he learned that there was a lot more to the game than just being able to “score the ball.” When his name was finally called by Milwaukee at the draft in June of 2009, there were only 19 picks remaining and of those 19, only seven of those players saw a tick of NBA playing time.

However, Meeks also learned that a little perseverance and the ability to shoot the ball can create a lot of opportunities, too. Traded from Milwaukee to Philadelphia at midseason, the asking price was just Royal Ivey, Primoz Brezec and a second-round pick. When it comes down to it, the Ivey, Brezec and a second-round pick for Meeks could go down as one of general manager Ed Stefanski’s shrewdest moves, though it didn’t seem like that at first.

Meeks was just another player dotting the stat sheet in a lost year for the Sixers last season. Yet when Collins took over at the start of this season, Meeks was inactive for the first six games of the season. Imagine how that must have felt… the biggest scorer in the country as a junior apparently was only good enough to be a second-round pick. Then, to get traded by the team that drafted him for the proverbial bag of balls, only to start a new season with a new coach on the bench in a suit instead of a uniform, the self-doubt was understandable.

But Meeks shot his way off the bench and into the starting lineup. Better yet, by the end of the season Collins was asking himself, “What was I thinking.”

“He missed the first six games because I wasn’t smart enough to dress him,” Collins said.

“Jodie has been amazing. He’s still just scratching the surface. His next growth will be being able to play pick-and-roll. Right now I have limited that for him because I don’t think he’s very comfortable doing that and making decisions, but in the summer, he can get in the gym and learn to play off the dribble and expand his game.”

He sat, waiting to get a chance he could only hope would come.

“It wasn’t very confusing. When I got traded I was happy to be here and thankful I was in a situation where they liked me,” Meeks said. I knew eventually I would get a chance. My whole life I’ve been the guy who helped the team by shooting.”

Meeks made 138 three-pointers this season and averaged a little better than 10 points per game. His 89.4 percent foul shooting was fifth-best in the NBA, and, according to the advanced metrics, the Sixers were four points better per 100 possessions when Meeks was on the floor rather than off it. That’s fairly significant considering that the Sixers were only 1.5 points per game better than the opposition in 2010-11.

“It’s hard to get him off the floor now,” Collins said. “His shooting, his toughness, his energy—when he’s out on the floor with the quickness that he brings, [he] can cover a lot of spots on the floor.”

That’s what a shooter does. Oh sure, Meeks gets out-muscled by the bigger 2-guards in the league and his defense is still in development. But when a guy shoots nearly 40 percent from beyond the three-point arc, it gets attention.

When the shots stopped falling, though, things didn’t go so well for the Sixers. Meeks closed out the season shooting 3-for-27 from three-point range. That offset a stretch where he went 19 straight games with a three-pointer and made 31 of 64.

But then he started missing them and there was no real reason why. He was open, his form was as true and solid as ever, it’s just that the ball would start to go down before popping out. There was even a three-pointer at the end of a game against New York that if it would have dropped, Meeks would have given the Sixers a back-breaking four-point lead. Instead, the Knicks rebounded the shot after it seemed to touch the twine and had enough left for a late rally.

Fortunately for Meeks, he was told to keep shooting. Not once was he looking over his shoulder wondering when Collins would be there with the hook.

“I told Jodie I used to tell [former Bulls’ guard] John Paxson, unless you’ve missed five shots, you haven’t taken enough, because I always feel that way about good shooters,” Collins said.

“All [Meeks] has to do is keep shooting,” said Andre Iguodala, who has been a mentor to Meeks this season. “He could be 0 for 100, but we’ll stick him in there and throw it to him again. He’s been a huge factor for us, and in order for him to be effective on the team he has to have confidence. It’s just about that. He had a good look, and it went in and out. It’s a fine line between winning and losing. If another goes down then you’re talking about something different.”  

So after closing the season with a shooting slump in which the Sixers dropped five of their final six games, Meeks is finding his stroke. In his first two playoff games, the guard made 3 of 5 three-pointers, but only 3 of his 8 two-pointers.

He has at least two more games to figure it out.

***

“I honestly believe poor shooting [can be] debilitating,” Collins said. “If you ever played in the game where you keep getting the shots and you can’t make them, it takes a lot out of you.”

It can, as Collins said, crush your spirit.

By the time the kid was into his high school career, the coach was completely fed up. He didn’t want a backyard shooter at all, but knew they had value. For instance, there was the time the coach had the kid check into a game just as a technical foul was to be called on the opposition. When it happened, the coach had the kid shoot the foul shots and then immediately pulled him out of the game.

For those scoring at home that’s two points without a second ticking off the clock.

Another time the coach tore into the kid for passing up an open 16-footer on the wing to drive and dish off to a teammate for a basket. He didn’t care about the basket, just that the kid broke some unknown edict against dribbling the ball.

“Your job is to shoot the open shot and nothing else. Don’t dribble. You catch it, shoot or pass and then get back and play defense,” the coach shouted. “That’s all you’re here to do—shoot an open shot. That’s it.”

He wasn’t finished. There was something about the kid’s ability to make shot after shot that drove the coach mad. Something about a kid who grew to 6-foot-1 by the ninth grade only to never gain another inch of height, speed or coordination. It wasn’t the kid’s fault… sometimes people peak early.

“That goes for all you white guys… just shoot open shots like you’re in your parents’ driveway. Don’t drive. The black kids drive. Yeah, there are the rules—white kids shoot the jumpers, and the black kids drive to the basket.”

“What about the Puerto Ricans,” asked the point guard, Julio Garcia.

“You Puerto Ricans,” said the coach without missing a beat, “can go work on my car.”

The ‘80s… apparently this type of thinking straight out of Welcome Back Kotter was still en vogue. But it wasn’t as spirit crushing as a handful of missed shots in garbage time of a blowout victory. The fact was the coach seethed when the kid missed some shots late in the game that had been decided by halftime. It was an act of selfishness, the coach believed, where the kid was just trying to put his name in the book. To the kid, it was nothing more than firing up an open shot in a game that was already put to bed.

Hell, the kid thought the white kids were supposed to shoot the open shots.

“I know what you were thinking. You thought, hey, I’m finally in the game, I’m going to get mine. I’m going to take my shots and score some points and screw everyone else,” the coach seethed while looking into a mirror above the locker room sink. “You’re not helping yourself or the team. You’re just out there for yourself. That’s why you took all of those shots.”

Before the kid could respond, with tears streaming down his cheeks, the coach tucked his black comb into his back pocket, took one more look into the mirror, and walked out of the locker room.

Yes, missed shots can take away a bit of one’s spirit. It can be demoralizing, too. Then again, it’s always a matter of moments until that next shot comes around. A shooter is always one shot away from going on a hot streak.

After all, made shots are contagious, too. A shooter is always one away from being the difference.

Manny being Manny was always predictable

So, are we supposed to be surprised by Manny Ramirez at this point? After all, that whole Manny being Manny bit was passé at least two teams ago.

Indeed, if Manny being Manny, he’s predictable.

Yawn!

Really, how could anyone be surprised with the way in which Manny finally met his demise, and for those who believe it came on Friday with his sudden retirement and an apparent second drug-test violation. The truth is Manny was exposed not by his first failed drug test, but by his stat ledger. When he returned from his 50-game ban in 2009, it turned out that Ramirez was just a good hitter.

He wasn’t anything more than that—good, not great.

“Might have been running out of bullets,” said Ramirez’s former batting coach, Charlie Manuel. “Father Time was catching up to him.”

Yeah, Father Time can be a real pain in the ass. He’s one of those miserable old dudes that needs punched in the face daily just to be kept in line. But even then Father Time doesn’t take the hint and eventually has his way. Even Jamie Moyer, the one ballplayer who seemed to organically fight back for the most extraordinarily, finally caught the haymaker that put him down. Though Moyer says he’s going to rehab from Tommy John surgery and try and catch on somewhere in 2012, it’s safe to say that he will be the first 49-year old in sports history to make a comeback after reconstructive surgery.

Chances are Moyer might gain a few ticks on the ol’ fastball after the surgery.

Not Manny, though. He won’t be coming back ever again without first serving the time of his suspension as outlined in the collective bargaining agreement. Actually, based on some of the reporting from the first time Ramirez drew a suspension for PEDs, the info seemed to suggest that he was a serial abuser. Here’s what we wrote the first time Manny went down in May of 2009:

A new report by ESPN’s Mark Fainaru-Wada and T.J. Quinn that Ramirez had a testosterone to epitestosterone ratio between 4:1 and 10:1. That leads some experts to suggest that he was using synthetic testosterone, a conclusion reached when one considers that people naturally produce testosterone and epitestosterone, typically at a ratio of 1:1. Anything at 4:1 and above is flagged by MLB.

The report indicates that Ramirez’s representatives argue against the synthetic testosterone, instead saying the player used DHEA. In baseball DHEA is not banned, however, it is in other sports. For instance, last month well-known cyclist Tyler Hamilton tested positive for DHEA, which is an ingredient in some vitamin supplements used to treat depression.

Hamilton copped to knowingly using DHEA and instead of fighting the positive test, he retired.

Meanwhile, experts have questioned whether the HCG Ramirez said he took for a “health issue” could cause such a large spike in the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio.

According to the story:

The synthetic testosterone in Ramirez's body could not have come from the hCG, according to doping experts, and so suddenly Ramirez had two drugs to answer for. Worse still for the ballplayer, MLB now had a document showing he had been prescribed a banned substance. This was iron-clad evidence that could secure a 50-game suspension.

So yes, it appears as if Ramirez has been caught red-handed. Now the question is, how long has he being using whatever it is he was using?

Whatever. Hand-wringing about baseball players using drugs has become quite odious. The truth is baseball has had a serious drug problem since the beginning of the game. Still, Major League Baseball continues to push alcohol and accept major sponsorship dollars from drug beer companies and with a straight face claims it will stamp out performance-enhancing drug use.

So yeah, whatever, pusher man.

See, the thing with Manny wasn’t the cheating as much as it was the fact he was a pig. He always will be remembered as a guy who played for the numbers. That’s all of the numbers, too. Manny wanted RBIs, homers, OPS, and dollar signs. That’s all he was after. At no point did this stand out more than after the 2008 season when he held the Dodgers hostage for $25 million per season only to be caught doping shortly after the 2009 season started.

It seemed that rather than make adjustments in his game, Manny wanted to continue to be Manny with shortcuts. Oh, it was fine when he was surrounded by real ballplayers that were interested in a little metric called “wins.” With those types of players, Manny could pursue his numbers with a total disregard for things he did not find interesting.

Defense? Whatever. Team cohesiveness? Eh, as long as his teammates ran the bases hard so he could pile up those RBIs.

This isn’t to doubt the brilliance of Manny Ramirez’s hitting. Nope, not at all. Truth is, some very well-respected baseball writers will explain in painstaking detail how good Ramirez was. Of course, was, is the operative word. Even those smart writers would have a tough time arguing for the idea that Ramirez was misunderstood in some way. He wasn’t. Ramirez was no artist sacrificing for his craft no matter what clichés are trotted out by his teammates and coaches.

He was, as suggested by one baseball executive, “a pig,” grubbing at whatever he could get.

But we’re not going to deny the man’s talent. His plate appearances were events at Dodger Stadium, until the act got old and even the hokey Hollywood types were bored by him. His career stats line up with the likes of Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Frank Robinson and Reggie Jackson. Before drug suspensions meant a slap a vote totals in Hall of Fame elections, Ramirez was in. He still might be when his time on the ballot comes in five years, but who knows.

It’s hard to place value on baseball statistics and the Hall of Fame when one considers the variables. On one side we have guys like Ramirez, Mark McGwire and Barry Bonds posting inexplicable power stats with the seeming aid of PEDs.

On the other side, Ty Cobb and Babe Ruth played in a game where they never had to face certain qualified ballplayers because of the color of their skin. What would the Babe’s numbers look like if he faced Satchel Paige? Would it be Josh Gibson or someone else who battled for the home run crown every year?

If it comes down between the racist or the steroid user, give me the needle.  

One of us?

The fascinating part about this was just how close Ramirez might have been to joining the Phillies. See, before he was traded to the Dodgers from the Red Sox, the Phillies and general manager Pat Gillick had a bit of a man-crush on Manny.

According to information gathered after the fact, Gillick says there were discussions about getting Ramirez at the July trading deadline in 2008. Here’s what I wrote in July of 2009 about it:

A year ago we were in Washington wondering what was going to happen. The Phillies were supposedly involved in the bargaining for Manny Ramirez as well as a handful of relief pitchers as the trading deadline approached. Ultimately, nothing happened, but that didn’t make the day any less fun.

Shane Victorino, a player who was rumored to be the chip in some of those supposed deals, put on a show by pretending to sweat out the final minutes to the deadline. The reality, as we learned, was that the talk was just a lot of hot air. However, in looking back at quotes from then-GM Pat Gillick, the Phillies nearly made some deals.

One of those was, indeed, Manny Ramirez.

“I think at some point we had a good feeling about it,” Gillick said after the deadline had passed a year ago.

Good? How good?

“We were talking,” Gillick said then. “We were involved. We just couldn't get where they wanted to be, and we couldn't get where we wanted to be. So it was just one of those things.”

“Good” and “talking” are such ambiguous terms. The truth is some people talk about doing things that make them feel good all the time, but instead end up following the same old patterns day in and day out.

Plus, everyone’s interpretation of “talk” isn’t always the same. For instance, it would be interesting to hear if Boston GM Theo Epstein had the same “good feeling” about sending Ramirez to the Phillies, but in the end it turned out to be “just one of those things.”

In retrospect, the Phillies were better off without Ramirez. They have three All-Stars in the outfield and the worst thing that happened to any of them was an extended trip to the disabled list for Raul Ibanez.

Otherwise, smooth sailing.

What a nightmare the past couple of days/years would have been if Ramirez had joined the Phillies instead of the Dodgers. Or maybe not… maybe a trade to the Phillies would have been like sending the Delorean back five minutes early to change the time continuum. Maybe Manny gets it together in Philly?

OK, probably not. 

The Shot Doctor is in

Word spread around the camp like a brush fire. As soon as one kid at the Wally Walker basketball camp at Millersville University heard the news, it was all the true believers could do to contain themselves. After all, they had seen it before. They had seen the magic and knew that it was real.

Incredibly real.

This guy can stand all the way on the other side of the court and take a normal shot and it will go in. He bounces it in! He takes a shot and it bounces in!

Truth is I couldn’t quite wrap my head around it. How could a guy shoot a shot from the opposite foul line and bounce it in? No, not bank shot, but a bounce shot. From 80-feet away.

But who was the guy? Some coach? Some coach we had never heard of because in our little world of kids off at sleepaway basketball camp in the early 1980s, we thought only of the big time. It was Wally Walker’s camp and he already had two NBA championship rings with Portland and Seattle, was MVP of the ACC Tournament for the University of Virginia, a top five overall draft pick, and was washed up all before the age of 30.

So we waited for Marc Iavaroni from the world champion 76ers and watched demonstrations on how to best score points. Wally Walker ran an offense camp for us junior high kids, probably because everyone likes scoring and shooting. No, not everyone can score or shoot—even some of the best players out there struggle from time to time, but what we were about to see was someone who really liked to shoot and probably could do it better than any person on the planet.

Herb Magee was the best shooter I had ever seen hold a basketball. That’s the way it was when I was in sixth grade and I imagine Herb can still stick them from any spot on the floor. In fact, I’ll be willing to wager that Herb Magee, the coach for Philadelphia University with more wins than any college coach who ever lived, can bounce one in from the opposite foul line.

Magee was elected to the basketball’s Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame on Monday, a huge honor for a Division-II college coach, but also one that was long overdue. After starring for West Catholic High with Jimmy Lynam, Magee went to Philadelphia Textile (later renamed Philadelphia University) where he set the school record for scoring. After graduation, Magee was drafted by the Boston Celtics, but instead he chose to stay in Philadelphia and coach at his alma mater.

Since 1967, Magee has been the main man at Philly U., piling up 922 wins, 30 20-win seasons, and a National Championship in 1970. Also, Magee works with NBA players on honing their shot and the Sixers’ Evan Turner will be his next project this summer. A few years back, Larry Bird, yes, Larry Bird, one of the greatest shooters ever, asked Magee to work with his Indiana Pacers.

Of course he’ll take the time in August to be inducted in the Hall of Fame along with Dennis Rodman, Chris Mullin, Tex Winter, Tara VanDerveer, Artis Gilmore, Arvydas Sabonis, Teresa Edwards, Reece “Goose” Tatum and Tom “Satch” Sanders.

“This is the highlight of a career, an individual award,” Magee said from Houston on Monday where he was introduced along with the latest class of Hall of Famers. “Certainly winning a national championship was the highlight of my coaching career. But as far as individual, this takes precedent over [Phillies president] David Montgomery. I'll have to apologize to Dave when I see him, but if he wants me to do it again, I'll do it.”

But back to the 1980s…

Now when Herb showed up at camp he didn’t walk into the gym and just start gunning from all over the place. No way. He was there to teach us the proper shooting technique, which started with form. There was a proper way to shoot a ball and telltale signs if it was done correctly. For instance, a shooter was doing it right if his shooting hand was covered with dirt, but the palm, where the ball never touched if held correctly, should be clean.

Dirty schoolyard, dirty ball, dirty hands, but clean palm—a shooter never had a dirty palm.

Then again, a shooter was always known on the schoolyard. Shooters, after all, are the home run hitters. They are the ninjas of the game, typically blending in until sides are chosen and the first attempts at the hoop are up. See, a shooter is like a black belt in karate who gets into a back alley brawl in that he must identify himself. It’s only fair, after all, for some poor sap to know what he’s up against and if it’s a black belt standing across from him, last-minute negotiation might be in order.

Of course negotiation on the court is conducted like a chess match. When the shooter is identified, the defense must make its move. Against a guy with a midrange shot, a zone could be pushed out past the key, or, old-fashioned man-to-man could be the call. However, if the guy had range like Reggie Miller or Chris Mullin, some sort of gimmicky box-and-one might be the best defense. As the standard thinking goes, it’s fine to be beaten because the opposition had a better scheme or moves, but not if the ball was going to be kicked out to some guy standing away from the fray who can drop them in from 25 feet.

That’s like an overhand right that you see coming, but can’t do anything about.

As one of those black belts who fantasized about a foot of open space that gave enough breathing room to squeeze off a 20-footer, Herb Magee was mesmerizing. With just a right hand he set the ball just so and buried shot after shot from inside the key. Slowly, after the ball ripped through the net and spun back to him after bouncing on the floor, Magee took steps back. Nothing changed. He held the ball in his right hand, released it, followed through as it arced like a rainbow and ripped through the twine.

Swish!

But as shot after shot went through, never even nicking the iron, Herb really showed us what made a good shooter. Oh yes, the form and technique was important, but confidence was paramount. We saw that oh-so subtly as Magee shot without looking at the basket and talked to the other campers. Mostly the jokey chatter was about the manner in which he was going to make the shot, all while making cracks about girlfriends, pre-Air Jordan era sneakers, and anything else that kids thought was funny.

These kids knew funny, too. Actually, they knew how to talk trash better than they knew funny. See, the kids I spent the week with in the Millersville dorms were from Columbia, Pa., a town the reeked of the underdog that had pushed around far too much for its own good. It was sewn into the history of Columbia, which when it was founded, wasn’t called Columbia at all.

It actually changed its name to Columbia with the hope that people would like it better.

Back when the Continental Congress was figuring out where to locate the permanent capital, a little down in Pennsylvania called Wright’s Ferry decided to lobby for the gig. Figuring its location along the banks of the mighty Susquehanna River that separates York and Lancaster counties was perfectly located and easy for delegates from the other colonies, Wright’s Ferry challenged for the privilege to be capital.

First things first… Wright’s Ferry had to do something about its name. It needed something catchy or something that befit a burgeoning nation. Therefore, in 1789 Wright’s Ferry changed its name to Columbia.

Perfect, huh? With a name like Columbia, how could the little town on the western edge of Lancaster County go wrong?

Location? Check.

Infrastructure? Check.

People of influence on its side like George Washington? Check.

Name? Done, done, done and done.

Let's build the capitol dome.

Nevertheless, southern states Maryland and Virginia carved out a rectangle of unwanted swamp land along the Anacostia and Potomac rivers not too far from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Next thing the folks in Columbia, Pa. knew the District of Columbia had edged it out by one vote and the rest is history. Some influence that George Washington had, huh?

Anyway, since it had the name and the location, Columbia attempted to become the capital of Pennsylvania. Again, it had the location, the name but maybe not the influential supporters. Instead, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania went with the more centrally located Harrisburg to be the seat of its government.

Since then, Columbia became most well known for burning down the bridge connecting it to Wrightsville in York County (called the Wright's Ferry bridge - picture above) to ward off the approaching Confederate Army in 1864. As a result of this act, the Confederates and Union armies got together in Gettysburg for one of the bloodiest battles of the Civil War.

And perhaps once again, Columbia missed out on centuries worth of tourists and historical fame.

But they played some pretty good basketball in Columbia, too. They were tough kids and what they lacked in size and ability, they made up for with anger and competitiveness. It was never easy to play against those Columbia kids, because they weren’t smart enough to realize they weren’t as good as other teams. Besides, they were kids who usually went up against bigger schools in the Lancaster-Lebanon League, which served it well when it was time for the Double-A state playoffs. In 1987, Columbia High won the state championship with some of the kids at Wally Walker’s basketball camp with me—the same kids that told me all about Herb Magee’s shooting before he showed up.

He bounces it in from the opposite side of the court…

Still, I couldn’t figure it out. Just how did he bounce it in and when was he going to do it? He already amazed with shots from half court, shots from the corner while looking away, shots from the other side of the basket… shots from standing in the bleachers that only touched the net and looked perfect from set to release.

Finally, he was standing at the other foul line and with a little leap into the air and he let it go with perfect rotation and the arc so high that the ball could have drawn rain.

But the shot looked like it was going to be short. From 80 feet, Magee’s shot landed a few feet in front of the foul line he was shooting at. However, like out of a dream, the ball bounced off the floor and toward the rim as if Magee was shooting those one-handers from the paint.

Yep, swish. Bounced it in from 80.

As far as I was concerned, Herb Magee should have been put into the Hall of Fame on the spot. 

Dennis Rodman could have been better

It’s kind of ironic to note that Dennis Rodman was a second-round pick of the 1986 NBA Draft. The fascinating part about this that in the most doomed draft in history, some unknown dude from some college called Southeastern Oklahoma State University would go on to have the best NBA career.

To look at the 1986 NBA Draft in the moment was to see the deepest and most talented collection of players assembled at one specific time and place. And yet between the death, personal destruction, addiction and the misplaced expectation, the entire group seems linked as if some sort of perverse Shakespearean tragedy.

How could so much go so wrong for so many people?

Just look at the list of names of young men who were headed for the NBA during June of 1986. At the top of the list were Brad Daugherty and Len Bias. Daugherty, of course, was supposed to be drafted by the 76ers, but, as the legend goes, former team owner Harold Katz had the No. 1 pick over to house to play some hoops on his indoor court and thought he was, “soft.” Because of that, Katz traded the rights to Daugherty, Moses Malone and Terry Catledge, the draft picks that turned out to be Georgetown/UNLV product Anthony Jones and Harvey Grant, only to get back Roy Hinson, Jeff Ruland and Cliff Robinson.

It very easily was the worst day of trading by the Sixers, ever, and that’s before we figure in the fact that Daugherty averaged 19 points and 10 rebounds a game for his entire career.

The story of Bias, of course, we all know all too well. Of course the one part of Bias’ death that is often overlooked in the long form pieces and documentaries is that without him, the Celtics were in disarray for a solid decade. Moreover, his death also sacrificed significant chunks of the careers of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale, whose declines came much quicker than if they had Bias to lean on.  

There were others, too. The No. 3 pick, Chris Washburn, lasted just 72 NBA games over three seasons and struggled with addiction for more than a decade. Big East superstars Pearl Washington and Walter Berry turned out to be casualties of the east-coast hype machine, while top 10 selections Kenny Walker, Roy Tarpley, Brad Sellers and Johnny Dawkins, had middling careers in the league, at best.

Even some of the players drafted behind Rodman were met with tragedy. Drazen Petrovic was killed in a car accident on the Autobahn nearly a decade before his posthumous induction into the Hall of Fame. Three years ago, Portland’s big man Kevin Duckworth died of congestive heart failure at age 44.

The 1986 Draft was so bizarre that one of its best standouts, Arvydas Sabonis, had to wait for Glasnost in order to make his way to America almost 10 years after he was taken as the last pick of the first round. By the time he got to the league he was already at the end of his prime and had many wondering what might have been.

But then that’s the overreaching theme of the entire mix from ’86.

So this was the backdrop from which Dennis Rodman entered the league. Moreover, given the demons he battled off the court it’s amazing that the one player from that draft to play a complete career and then gain induction to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is The Worm, Dennis Rodman.

According to reports as well as Rodman himself, the 6-foot-7 defensive and rebounding specialist got the votes needed amongst the 12 finalists to gain enshrinement. Word is Tex Winter also will be a Hall of Famer, along with Chris Mullin and former Sixers player and coach, Maurice Cheeks. Philadelphia University head coach and shooting guru, Herb Magee, was one of the 12 finalists. Considering Magee has more wins in NCAA basketball than any coach in history, he has a pretty strong shot to get in, too.

The official announcement is scheduled for noon on Monday.

Nevertheless, the election of Rodman is what most folks will talk and debate about until his enshrinement. He’s one of those players whose career stats both work for and against him. Sure, he led the league in rebounding average seven times, grabbed more than 13 per game over 14 seasons and owns five of the best eight rebounding seasons in the modern era, with the other three posted by Hall of Famers Malone, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Elvin Hayes. Rodman was the defensive player of the year twice, all-defense first team seven times, a two-time All-Star and a five-time NBA champ.

If defense, rebounding and championships matter, Rodman’s penchant for doing the dirty work should be enough to get him in. With Detroit and Chicago, teams that were contenders with strong leaders, i.e., Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan, Rodman was the perfect teammate and ultimate team player.

Rodman was not an all-around player, though. He was a specialist on one side of the court, but when his team had the ball he was largely useless except for fighting for offensive boards. He scored little more than seven points per game and had one season where he averaged double-digits in scoring. In the rare chance that Rodman actually had to shoot a jumper, his form looked like a catapult or slingshot than a pure, smooth jump shot.

Worse, there were two seasons with San Antonio where Rodman’s antics on the floor may have sabotaged the team’s chances at a title. It wasn’t until the Spurs got rid of Rodman and rebuilt the roster—and drafted Tim Duncan—that they won three titles in seven seasons.

“He was annoying,” Spurs teammate and Hall-of-Famer, David Robinson said. “He just would be in your shorts all the time, always there with you. He was a very, very strong guy—a little bit undersized at times, but he never let it stop him. He had relentless energy, and he had no fear.”

It was also around that time when Rodman began his makeover. In fact, he was one of the first NBA players to turn his body into a canvass of tattoos, a now ubiquitous fashion trend in pro sports. He also piled up the technical fouls at an alarming rate and often led the league in that category until Rasheed Wallace came around. But not even Wallace was as combustible as Rodman, who earned fines and suspensions for head-butting a ref, kicking a cameraman, and taking off from the Bulls before a game in the NBA Finals in order to wrestle with Hulk Hogan.

There was even some sort of fling with Madonna.

“I just took the chance to be my own man … I just said: ‘If you don’t like it, kiss my ass.’ Most people around the country, or around the world, are basically working people who want to be free, who want to be themselves. They look at me and see someone trying to do that... I'm the guy who's showing people, hey, it's all right to be different. And I think they feel: ‘Let’s go and see this guy entertain us.’”

But unlike his gritty work on the floor and glass, Rodman’s sideshow antics and outbursts seemed contrived and even a bit phony. Despite his rebellious image, Rodman seemed used up and on some sort of money grab with books and appearances in wedding dresses or shotgun marriages in Vegas. People who didn’t know anything about basketball knew who Rodman was and assumed he was better than he really was because of all the media exposure. In reality, it was an act.

It seemed like more than anything Rodman needed attention—maybe even more so than something substantive.

Still, when his head was right and Thomas or Jordan had him focused, Rodman won big games. During the 1996 Finals, he could have been the series MVP by grabbing 20 and 19 rebounds in games 2 and 6 with a record 11 offensive boards in both games. After the series, Seattle’s coach George Karl said Rodman won those two games all by himself.

It would be nice if Rodman is most remembered for how he played or the fact that he grabbed more available rebounds than any player in NBA history. He could play when he wasn’t distracted or had some other outside motivation and distractions. When he had his uniform No. 10 retired by the Pistons last weekend, Rodman admitted he could have been better. During the press conference at the ceremony in Detroit, Rodman said he “didn’t deserve to have the number retired” since he could have done so much more.

“I didn't fully understand the value I had for this organization,” he said.

Was he valuable enough to warrant election to the Hall of Fame? Apparently so.

Could he have been even better?

Definitely so.

Iguodala's pep talk was the turning point

Always the optimist, Doug Collins says he never got down when the Sixers struggled to a 3-13 start the first month of the season. Still, even the half-full view often left the coach with some doubts.

Whatever doubts Collins might have had disappeared for good on Friday night when his club clinched a playoff spot with a 25-point win over the New Jersey Nets at the Center. From 3-13 to 40-36 in a little more than four months takes a lot of believe insomething.

Belief and stubbornness, Collins said.

“I wasn’t sure,” Collins said after the 115-90 victory, “but I hadn’t given up hope. We weren’t going to change what we were doing because we believed in what we were doing. I believe that if you do things that are worth doing that good things will happen. We weren’t going to change.”

Still, there was a moment early on when everything just sort of came together. Part light bulb and part pep talk, the turning point of the season came after a tough loss in Miami the day after Thanksgiving when Andre Iguodala got the team together and gave them a very simple message…

“We’re close,” he told his teammates. “Let’s stick together.”

From that point, the Sixers have gone 37-23 and are the one team in the Eastern Conference that the heavyweights want to avoid in the first round of the playoffs.

Still, did Iguodala realize then that his words would resonate so profoundly? 

“With some of the personalities we have it’s all about confidence,” Iguodala said. “Some of the guys play well based off if the ball is going in the hole for them or not. If the ball is not going in the hole the guy’s confidence can get shot. We had just lost to Miami and we played well, so I felt I had to reiterate to the guys that if we continue to play at that level we’ll beat the majority of the teams in the league and we’ll be alright. Since then, we’ve been doing that.”

What Iguodala’s words did was show the younger guys on the team that just because they were 3-13 that the season wasn’t over. Though it seemed as if the Sixers couldn’t wait for the year to end last season when they only won 27 games with a coach in Eddie Jordan that just didn’t mesh well with the ballclub, it would have been easy for a poor start to demoralize the team.

However, with an active roster comprised of six players with three or fewer years of experience and just five guys over the age of 24, Iguodala’s speech and Elton Brand to support was gigantic.

“For the guys to know that I was 100 percent on board and trying and Andre was on board and trying, it showed that we weren’t giving up on the season even though we were 3-13,” Brand said. 

Brand and Iguodala have coached and prodded the team in areas where it could be difficult for Collins to do so. For instance, after the overtime loss to Sacramento where a few players were out late the night before the noontime game, Collins turned the policing over to Brand and Iguodala and, once again, it worked.

The Sixers have ripped off three straight wins since.

Then again, maybe it goes deeper than just leadership. Though he’s finishing his fourth year in the league and is headed to the postseason for the third time, Thad Young is still just 23. As such, he says last season left him with a lot of bitterness and was an experience he did not want to repeat. After all, he was far too young to be a jaded NBA vet.

But Young explained that the necessary changes from last year had been made and appear to be the big difference.

“We feel like we’ve taken strides and leaps from the beginning of the season until now. I think we’re a contender, a real contender and we can do something really special here,” Young said.

Of course that feeling that Young described had a starting point and it all goes back to that game in Miami.

“It was definitely a turning point. ‘Dre and E.B. have been talking all year and saying that we’re always one step away or that we need a few more things to work on,” Young said. “We’re still not quite there, but we’re definitely a much better team now.”

So from 3-13 to 40-36 and from doormat to a team that makes the opposition feel as if they are trying to handle mercury in so short of time is a pretty big deal and points to the effort the Sixers have put in. Yet, more than that it shows how much the teammates believe in each other and understand leadership when it arises.

No, the Sixers probably won’t be favored to win in the first round, but at the very least they did something this season.

“At the end of the day it’s all about making the playoffs,” Collins said.

Long suffering Elton Brand finally gets second chance at playoffs

There aren’t a whole lot of details that Elton Brand remembers from his last trip to the NBA playoffs except for one important one…

“It was too short,” Brand said.

Five years ago with the Los Angeles Clippers, Brand carried his team to the seventh game of the Western Conference semifinals against the Phoenix Suns where his 36-point performance just wasn’t enough to advance. In fact, with Brand averaging 31 points, 10 rebounds and more than 45 minutes per game in the series, there wasn’t much more he could have done for his Clippers.

Had Brand and the Clippers won Game 7, he certainly would have been the toast of Tinseltown since the Lakers had already lost to the Suns in the previous round. Still, his best memory of his lone playoff appearance is quite pure and it has to do with the basics of why people play the game.

“The excitement and how hard everybody plays – it’s amazing,” Brand said. “Then to win a series and put another team down, that’s what I’ll remember.”

But as fate would have it, Brand hasn’t been back to the playoffs since. More notably, who would have guessed that in 11 NBA seasons headed into the 2010-11 campaign that the 2005-06 Clippers would be the only winning team Brand played for.

Until now, that is.

Wednesday night’s 108-97 victory over the Houston Rockets at the Center all but sewed up a spot for the 76ers in the postseason. The worst the team can do is tie for the No. 8 seed, but of course the Sixers would have to lose the last seven games of the season and the Charlotte Bobcats would have to win out. The chances of that happening are less than one percent.

So with a stomach illness, a dislocated finger and “busted up” hands, Brand is getting another chance and Sixers coach Doug Collins couldn’t be happier.

“For E.B., if there is ever a guy who embodies what Philadelphia is all about, it’s Elton Brand,” Collins said before Wednesday’s game. “He’s an undersized power player who gives you his heart and soul every night and is playing with two busted hands. All he wants to do is win and that’s what this city is all about, so for E.B. it would be fantastic.” 

Nevertheless, after a storied collegiate career where he was the National Player of the Year, took Duke to the championship game and was the No. 1 overall pick of the 1999 NBA draft, Brand hasn’t had the same success as a pro. Just to make it even more frustrating, injuries kept Brand out of nearly every game of the 2007-08 season in his last year with the Clippers and all but 29 games the following year with the Sixers.

After a disappointing season where former coach Eddie Jordan often buried Brand during the fourth quarter of tight games, it seemed as if he was destined to have one of those star-crossed NBA careers.

Until now, that is.

“Elton is a champion. That’s why Elton is not consumed with scoring 20 points – he wants to win,” Collins said. “That’s why it would be great for me to be a part of something like that for him knowing what he went through here for a couple of seasons. I went through it for a year when I broke my foot my first year I was another busted first-round draft pick and it drives you to new heights.”

It’s more than that, though. Collins often defers to Brand and Andre Iguodala in self-policing matters. In fact, Brand spoke to his teammates after last Sunday’s overtime loss to Sacramento when some of the players had been out the night before at the Lil’ Wayne concert. 

In that instance Brand told his teammates about personal responsibility and focus, a point that was driven home by the fact that he played 28 minutes on Wednesday night even though he was struggling with a stomach illness. Truth is, the stomach bug bothered Brand so much that Collins made a special point to talk to his fellow No. 1 overall pick and thank him for the effort.

“You look at us right now and see how far everyone has come and E.B. has been the one guy from start to finish who has been like running water – you know what you’re getting from him every night,” Collins said.

Still, five years between playoff appearances in the NBA seems like a lifetime. Moreover, for a player of Brand’s pedigree to get there just twice in 12 years is almost unfathomable. Better yet, to comb through the records of some of the all-times greats of the game shows just how unique Brand is in this regard. 

Can Brand believe that it’s taken five years for him to get back to the postseason or that he’s been there only twice in 12 seasons?

“Absolutely not,” he said. “The way the season started, it was like, ‘Here we go again.’ But now to be [virtually in the playoffs] and to be an intregral part of it, it feels good. Knowing that we can get even better is what is exciting to me.

“This is special for me to get back there.”

Sixers stand with their closer

There was a moment during the 2009 baseball season when the easy move for manager Charlie Manuel would have simply been for him to sit down Brad Lidge as his closer. In fact, it was set up perfectly for Manuel to pull the plug on Lidge after a late-September game in Miami where the closer gave up two runs on three hits and a walk to give one away.

But Manuel would not bail on his guy despite the 11 blown saves and an ERA closing in on 8. Why would he?

“These are our guys. We’ll stick with him,” Manuel said before a game in Milwaukee that year. “Lidge has to do it. Between him and [Ryan] Madson, they’ve got to get it done.  ... We’ve just got to get better.”

Of course Manuel said he wasn’t going to depose Lidge as the closer even though he used him just four times over the final 11 games and pushed Madson into the two save chances the team had down the stretch. In other words, Lidge was the closer even though Madson was pitching the ninth inning. That’s what is called “managing” and Manuel had been around long enough to know that if he lost Lidge in late 2009, he might not ever get him back.

Apparently loyalty is a character flaw in the eyes of most sports fans.

Just look at how folks are up in arms about Sixers’ coach Doug Collins putting the ball in Andre Iguodala’s hands at the end of tight game. To steal some baseball jargon, Iguodala is the Sixers’ closer and in a tied game with the clock winding down, it’s up to him to get the team some points any way possible.

“The ball’s going to be in his hands,” Collins said after Sunday’s 114-111 overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings.

Iguodala had the ball with seven seconds left in Sunday’s game and the Sixers trailing by two points. Viewed as the team’s best “playmaker,” this made perfect sense. Iguodala could penetrate, look for an open man, pull up for a jumper or drive to the hoop. It’s nothing new and since Allen Iverson left town, Iguodala has been the closer and succeeded at a better rate than the other A.I.

Actually, according to the advanced metrics that measure such things, Iguodala is 16^th in the NBA since 2006 in “clutch” points, which account for performance with five minutes to go in the fourth quarter or overtime when neither team ahead by more than five points. Interestingly, Iguodala rated better than All-Stars Carmelo Anthony, Dwyane Wade and Vince Carter.

This season Iguodala’s scoring average in clutch time has dipped nearly 20 points with Lou Williams leading the club with 28.4 points in clutch time. However, based on other advanced stats, Iguodala is still the man to have the ball when it’s on the line. A look at turnovers, shooting percentage and the inscrutable plus-minus, Collins is right to give the ball to Iguodala. Failing that, Elton Brand is the next-best option.

Reality and statistics seldom mesh, though[1]. That’s when perception takes over and often that does nothing more than unfairly marginalize a player. In this area, perception might as well be Iguodala’s middle name.

In some circles, Iguodala is a poor player because he has a “superstar salary” and not a superstar game. The reality is that notion is just plain stupid. Iguodala barely cracks the top 40 in the NBA in annual salary and isn’t even the highest paid player on the Sixers. Is he one of the top 40 players in the league? Yeah, probably. Is he the best player on the team?

Do we have to answer that?

Take a look at Sunday’s game, too. Iguodala drove to the hoop in the closing seconds and missed a layup, but drew a foul and was awarded two foul shots with a chance to tie the game. So where is the failure in that? It’s hard to fault the “closer” for dictating the action and drawing a foul in the closing seconds of a tight game. Where it hurts is that Iguodala missed the back end of the foul shots and needed Williams’ 30-foot bomb at the buzzer to bail him out, but as far as the work part goes, yeah, Iguodala did that.

He did exactly what Collins hoped.

“He’s going to drive [to] the basket, he’s going to make a play for us, he’s going to get fouled or he’s going to score,” Collins explained. “He has the size to see up over the top of people, and after [opponents are] smothering that pick-and-roll, I feel good that he can make a play out of that.”

Like Manuel, Collins knows that removing his closer can create a chain reaction that may cause more harm in the long term. Egos are fragile in any work place so sometimes the boss needs to lose a battle or two in order to win the war.

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[1] When it comes to the advanced metrics revolution in sports, basketball comes the closest to truly measuring the value of a player. Actually, when compared to baseball it’s not even close. After games in the NBA, coaches and players pour over the stat sheet, looking for nuggets of information that might offer an insight to performance. With the Sixers, Doug Collins lives by points off turnovers and second-chance points. He also talks about forcing the opposition to take shots “in the yard,” which is to say, no three-pointers and no shots in the paint. Going old school, during my high school days at McCaskey in Lancaster, Pa., we determined a player had a decent game if he scored more points than shots attempted. I’m not sure that figures into the world of advanced metrics, but in terms of stats having a value, it worked for us.

Long-range forecast: Could Greg Oden land in Philly?

From time to time we like to offer a suggestion or two regarding player personnel to the pro sports teams in the city. No, it’s never a major undertaking because, frankly, it’s neither our place nor money on the line. In fact, some might believe it’s a little untoward for folks like me to offer such suggestions unsolicited.

But aside from their standing as privately held corporations, pro sports clubs are also a public trust. Because of that I don’t feel particularly guilty about inserting my two cents where no one asked.

Hey, just because it’s a sports team that doesn’t make it OK to be rude.

Anyway, in the past we suggested it might be one of those trendy low-risk/high-reward moves for the Phillies to make a move for Barry Bonds, Jim Thome, Roy Oswalt and Pedro Martinez. We also suggested at one point or another that trading away Cole Hamels or Jayson Werth was worth investigating, too. Of those offerings, we were the first to broach the ideas on grabbing Pedro, Thome and Bonds and dealing Werth, while the others (Oswalt and Hamels) came from within the organization.

So, honk! Honk!

Apropos of nothing, we think it would be a good idea to bring back Pedro if for no other reason than to give the press someone interesting to shoot the breeze with. Not only was Pedro a genius on the mound and the veritable right-handed Koufax, but he also was a top-notch storyteller and a fun guy to have around. Better yet, his Louis Vuitton man-purse was truly fashion forward.

Additionally, we rightly suggested to the 76ers that it would be a really good idea to draft Evan Turner with the No. 2 overall pick last June instead of trading away the selection for Jeff Ruland. So, yes, you’re welcome for that one.

The point? Oh yeah, that…

Obviously, the Sixers have had a pretty nice season and could be a surprise team next month when the playoffs begin. The word on the street is though they probably won’t advance past the first round, no team really wants to face the Sixers in a seven-game series. The team’s youthful energy and inexperience just might be advantages in some regard simply because the players on the team don’t have a track record of failure.

In other words, it might be an upset if the Sixers move past the first round of the playoffs, but it won’t be a surprise.

Of course the Sixers are a flawed team, too. No doubt that fact came to light during the 114-111 overtime loss to the 20-52 Sacramento Kings in which Doug Collins’ gang coughed up an early, double-digit lead. The most difficult part about the loss was it came in the first game of a back-to-back which wraps up on Monday night against the Eastern Conference-leading Chicago Bulls. No, it wasn’t quite a must-win for the Sixers, but it may as well have been.

Still, it’s never too early to come up with ideas on how to improve the ballclub even though the way in which the NBA will conduct its business is still unknown. Chances are there will be a lockout this summer and the current salary cap and the way free agents are bid for could change. If the NBA and the players association does the American thing and eliminates a salary cap[1], then there is no excuse for the 76ers to sit idly by when free agents hit the market.

But for arguments sake, let’s assume everything remains relatively the same. With that in mind, the most interesting potential free agent this summer could be Portland’s Greg Oden.

Remember him?

Oden, of course, just might be the most hard-luck top draft pick in pro sports history. Selected as the top pick of the 2007 NBA Draft after one season at Ohio State, Oden missed what was to be his rookie season when he underwent microfracture surgery on his right knee. He made it through 61 games in 2008-09 averaging nearly nine points and seven rebounds with a handful of big-time games before an injury to his left knee ended his season.

The 2009-2010 season started out with a lot of promise where Oden had a 20-rebound game and was averaging more than 11 points and nearly nine boards per game until his fractured his left patella after just 21 games. That left knee injury never really recovered and in November the Trail Blazers announced Oden was to have microfracture surgery on his left knee.

Once again, done for the year.

Nevertheless, Oden could be a free agent this summer if the Blazers choose not to exercise an $8.7 million qualifying offer. If instead the Blazers choose not to make the offer, Oden hits the open market and is available to any team that wants him.

So we say, Hey Sixers… why not?

Oden could turn out to be the poster child of low-risk, high-reward pickups if Portland allows him to walk, or, maybe in his case, limp. But really, what do we know about Oden? Can he play? Is he damaged to the point where he will never play a full season?

Who knows?

What is known is Oden was a No. 1 overall pick after just one season of college ball. Even though he has missed parts of the last four seasons and has played the equivalent of one full NBA season and, just 23, would be wrapping up his rookie season if he exhausted all of his eligibility at Ohio State. If he were to join the current Sixers’ roster, Oden is younger than rookie Craig Brackins, two-year veteran Jodie Meeks as well as three-year pro Marreese Speights. Meanwhile, Oden was a year ahead of Evan Turner at Ohio State and would have been classmates with Spencer Hawes and Thad Young.

Clearly, Oden would fit right in with the youthful core of the team. Better yet, the Sixers need some size to go with the solid backcourt and wing players. At 7-feet tall, Oden is a true big man the team has missed for a long time.

As for his fragility, the duel surgeries on both knees shouldn’t be limiting. In fact, microfracture surgery seems to be the Tommy John surgery of the NBA where guys like Jason Kidd, Allan Houston, Kenyon Martin, Tracy McGrady, John Stockton, Chris Webber and Amar'e Stoudemire have undergone the procedure and returned without missing a beat. However, Penny Hardaway and Jamaal Mashburn had the surgery yet did not regain their old form.

Nevertheless, stories in The Oregonian indicate the Blazers will make the qualifying offer to Oden simply to save face. After all, Portland took Oden ahead of Kevin Durant in the draft and have paid out nearly $21.8 million in salary to their top pick over the past four years.

Besides, are the Blazers ready to be struck by lightning twice? As everyone remembers, the Blazers took injury-prone big man Sam Bowie with the No. 2 overall pick and had him for all of 139 games over four years, instead of taking Michael Jordan. Durant isn’t quite Jordan-esque yet, but he’s on the right path.

Whether Oden can catch up—and where that takes place—is the interesting part.

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[1] Never going to happen.

Thad Young gets back to basics

Thaddeus Young was struggling. One look at the game-by-game logs revealed as much. Though his scoring average had steadily been climbing from month-to-month, Young didn’t make a shot in 20 minutes during the ugly loss in Milwaukee on March 12. 

Sixers’ coach Doug Collins noticed Young was missing something during the games against Utah and the Clippers, using him for just 13 minutes during the game in Los Angeles. The fear, says Collins, was that Young was getting run down.

“Thad went through a two or three game period where I was worried that he was tired,” Collins said.

So rather than bury Young on the bench until he regained his snap, Collins had a better idea. On an off day in Sacramento, the coach got a gym and sent Young and a handful of his teammates out to play 3-on-3. No pressure, no whistles, no scrimmages or anything resembling a regular basketball game—the task was for Young to play pickup hoops with some of his friends.

Guess what? It worked.

“Actually, the [assistant coach] Michael Curry and the coaches took Thad and some guys out to just play some up-and-down basketball and they wanted Thad to handle the ball and finish shots during the games,” Collins explained. “So they went over and played and [Curry] came back and said, ‘Thad had a great day, he was in a great rhythm.’ Then he finished that trip very strong.”

After that day in Sacramento, Young’s play improved and so did his energy level. In 23 minutes against the Kings he grabbed 10 rebounds and scored nine points despite shooting just 4-for-12. However, with Andre Iguodala on the bench for the game against Portland last Saturday night, Young scored 19 points on 9-for-11 shooting with six rebounds in 27 minutes.

Apparently all it took was breaking the game down to the basics for Young to find what he’d been missing. It makes sense, too, if you think about it. Though this is his fourth season in the NBA, Young is still just 22 and if he had stayed at Georgia Tech to play all four seasons, he’d be a rookie in the league this year.

Instead, basketball had been a job for Young when he was still a teenager and though he may be a veteran in the league in terms of experience, every once in a while he still needs to strip the game down to its essence and just play.

“We went to the gym—me, Marreese [Speights], Evan Turner,Craig Brackins, Coach Curry and Coach McKie—and we got in there and just played,” Young said. “We played 3-on-3 just to get me back in the groove. Sometimes that’s what you need to get a feel for the ball and to get you a feel for the court and the gym to get you back in a rhythm.”

In Wednesday night’s victory over the Hawks, Young was the best player on the floor. As the first player off the bench, Young scored 16 points on 12 shots, blocked a couple of shots and caused all sorts of trouble for the Hawks in the paint. Most telling was the fact that Collins kept Young in the game for all 12 minutes of the fourth quarter. 

Better yet, Collins said Young was an instant shot of energy when he was in the game, especially after stoppages in play. With the Hawks holding a lead throughout Wednesday’s game, which they built to 11 points in the fourth quarter, Young and fellow reserve Lou Williams proved to be the catalysts of the Sixers’ 11-0 run to start the final quarter.

“He gives us a speed and a quickness advantage,” Collins said, noting that Young would likely be a starter on another team. “We came out of three or four timeouts [on Wednesday night against the Hawks] where he scored every time. … As a coach it makes you feel so good when you can score coming out of a timeout.”

So maybe Collins’ plan worked?

“Any time you have a day off you want to do something,” Young said. “The other guys went to lift and the six of us went to the gym to play some 3-on-3 to get ourselves back in rhythm.”

Meanwhile, with Andre Iguodala again questionable with right knee tendonitis for Friday’s game in Miami, Collins will need Young to be the spark.

Collins winning without a championship

It’s not often that one is in the presence of a first-person witness to a truly historical moment. Your grandfather might have been there for D-Day or the Battle of the Bulge, however, not only are the numbers of members of the “Greatest Generation” dwindling, but also those guys weren’t always keen on taking about what they saw.

Otherwise, your parents (like most of us) saw historical moments from in front of the television where it was safe and there were beverages nearby. Maybe in the modern day folks follow flashpoints of time on a mobile device with a Twitter app where they can dig through the information as it is reported. That just might be the highest point of historical participation these days.

But Doug Collins, the coach of the 76ers, has seen some things. In fact, when Collins was just 21 in 1972, before he had been drafted as the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA by the Sixers and in the ABA by both the Nuggets and Nets, he was in the Olympic Village in Munich when an Arab terrorist group known as Black September, captured Israeli athletes and ultimately massacred them.

Two days after the massacre, Collins and his U.S. teammates played Italy in semifinal round of the Olympic tournament, which set up the gold medal game against the Soviets a few days later.

Imagine being 21-years old with a year of college left and having to play in the gold medal Olympic basketball game for your country not even a week after a terrorist group stormed the compound where you were living and killed the members of the Israeli contingent… now imagine being that guy and playing in the most infamous basketball game of all-time—a game in which it appeared you had scored the game-winning points on two foul shots with three seconds left.

Doug Collins knows about that. He lived it. He was there.

We talked about 1972 very briefly with Collins on Monday afternoon following the Sixers practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine, but the subject was brought up only after something the coach said about his current ballclub and how it might be the best coaching experience of his career. Considering Collins coached Michael Jordan in his third season in the league and then again for his final two seasons in Washington. But as far as championships go, Collins was the predecessor to the run the Bulls had with Phil Jackson and took over Detroit when the Bad Boys had been broken up.

Collins, as he pointed out, had never won a championship.

“I’m a guy who always loved being around young players because I always enjoyed the teaching aspect and there is nothing I get more fulfillment from than watching young players grow up and get better and go on to have really great careers,” Collins said. “I get as much satisfaction out of that than some guys do lifting up a championship trophy. I think there are different levels of success and I’ve never been a champion. I’ve always felt like I’ve been a winner, but I’ve never stood up as the last guy and held up the trophy. But somewhere along the line I’ve helped some guys to be able to do that and that’s what I try to do.”

He was right. In 1977, Collins and Julius Erving carried the scoring load as the Sixers took a 2-0 lead over Portland in the NBA Finals. Collins scored 30 in Game 1, but then had to get stitches in Game 2 after Darryl Dawkins’ punch meant for Bob Gross caught Collins’ face. From there the Sixers proceeded to lose four in a row.

The Sixers didn’t make it back to the Finals until 1980, but by then Collins’ career was owned by injuries and he didn’t appear in the playoffs and he decided to retire after just 12 games in the 1980-81 season.

But Collins didn’t mention 1972. Sure, technically the Soviets were awarded the gold medal, but they really didn’t win it—at t least not honorably, anyway, because after two in-bounds plays and two do-overs, Collins was poised to be the hero and win that championship. He nearly had to knocked out in order for it to happen, but those two foul shots with three seconds left appeared to seal the gold medal for the U.S.A.

Watching the many documentaries about the ’72 Olympics and particularly the gold medal basketball game, one can watch Collins steal a pass at midcourt, race to the basket for a layup and then get smashed in the basket support.

Collins told Sports Illustrated’s Gary Smith in 1992 that U.S. head coach Hank Iba came running to his aid as he was lying on the court, dazed by the blow he had just absorbed. So too did assistant coach John Bach, who told Iba that they were going to have to find someone to shoot the free throws for Collins. 

“But coach Hank Iba says, ‘If Doug can walk, he'll shoot,’ ” Collins told Smith. “That electrified me. The coach believed in me.” 

Collins made both shots, putting the U.S. ahead, 50-49, with three seconds left. 

The Soviets inbounded, but the clock was stopped with one second remaining, amid a dispute over whether or not the Russians had called a timeout. 

Three seconds were placed back on the clock. The Soviets inbounded again, but this time a horn sounded after a single second ticked off, apparently ending the game. The U.S. players celebrated, but the horn had gone off because there had been a timing error... for some reason 50 seconds had been placed on the clock. 

So the Soviets inbounded once more. And this time they scored on a court-length pass to win at the buzzer. They were given three chances to beat the U.S., and thanks to some help from the officials and the Olympic brass, they did it. Collins told us that during the confusion he remembered watching the referees fight over the ball while arguing with each other in languages they didn’t understand.

Still, did Collins consider it a championship? Should I ask knowing that the U.S. team boycotted the medal ceremony and still convene for votes to decide if they should accept the medal? Collins could still harbor bitterness noting that his singular heroic moment was erased for a reason that had never been properly explained or deciphered. Besides, who wants to relive a negative moment? Simply losing a regular-season NBA ballgame is hard enough on some folks, but to have the Olympic gold medal robbed not even a week after a terrorist attack in which innocent people were killed for no good reason, well, that’s not the easiest topic to discuss.

“You don’t count ’72?” I asked.

Doug smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said he did not.

“I didn’t get to stand there at the end and have the medal placed around my neck,” he said.

Yeah, but that was a formality. Besides, the team had been unified for nearly 40 years in telling the Olympic committee that they can keep the silver medal because they earned gold. By taking a stand that nearly everyone agrees with should embolden the U.S. team that they were the champions after all.

Nope.

“Have you ever seen the silver medal?” I asked about the most famous silver medal never claimed. I knew that the team had refused to accept it, but did they at least get a look at what they were turning down? What did it look like?

“I don’t even know where it is,” Collins said. “It’s not my medal.”

Actually, the 12 silver medals are in the same place they have been since 1972 in a bank vault in Switzerland. Collins claimed to not know though he remembered everything else about the aftermath of that game and an experience he said was “burned in (his) brain.”

He also told us that he will never vote to accept the medal. Not ever. In fact, Collins said, his Olympic teammate Kenny Davis has it written into his will that his children cannot claim the medal after his death. Silver? No thanks.

 “I got a tape of the last minute; I watched it over and over,” he was quoted as saying. “The world wasn’t a fairy tale, after all. You know what it did? It prepared me for the NBA, where your heart gets broken every other day. It prepared me for life.” 

There is talk of potentially awarding duel gold medals for the 1972 finalists in a manner like in the 2002 ice skating controversy, but that’s just talk for now. Either way, Collins has his medal… for now.

Working for NBC during the 2008 Olympics, Collins was on the sidelines calling the gold medal game between the U.S.A. and Spain, while his son Chris was part of head coach Mike Krzyzewski’s staff. During the run up to the Olympics, Collins spoke to the “Redeem Team,” specifically about what happened in 1972 before the current Olympians had been born. Actually, Chris Collins heard the story for the first time during those pre-Olympic talks, too.

But when it was all over in Beijing and the U.S.A. had reclaimed the gold medal, Collins finally felt what it was like to have it draped around his neck.

Collins’ son gave his dad the gold medal.

“He put it around my neck and said, ‘This is 36 years too late.’” 

Bimbo misses out

Merchandise keeps us in line

Common sense says it's by design

-          Traditional

If the television program Mad Men has taught us anything, it’s that sometimes selling out can be artistic too. That starving artist bit… bah! It takes a real craftsman to take something utterly useless and turn it into something that everyone must have.

Take the plate appearances by Single-A minor league outfielder Bryce Harper of the Hagerstown Suns, for instance. Whenever the slugging high school dropout steps to the plate for the Washington Nationals’ affiliate, the P.A. announcer at Suns games will read a prepared statement:

“Now batting, Bryce Harper, brought to you by Miss Utility, reminding you to call 811 before you dig…”

Look, if you’re going to dig a hole, no matter what the circumstance, it’s a good idea to make a call or two. After all, there are zoning laws in most communities designed to keep folks away from trouble. Say you’re out in the yard digging a hole, just having a day out, and then all of a sudden a water pipe bursts, or underground wires are disturbed, or worse, a time capsule is disturbed long before it’s to be unearthed.

We can’t have that.

Nevertheless, we understand that the folks at Miss Utility are looking out for the people in Hagerstown, Md., and if they can make a buck or two off your potential hole-digging excursions, all the better. But it takes money to make money — or something like that. Besides, this isn’t about Miss Utility or the trench at the property line. No, this is about Bryce Harper and commerce and forward thinking.

As the Miss Utility people wrote in an email to Dan Steinberg over at the D.C. Sports Bog/Washington Post:

“They jumped at the opportunity to be connected with the top prospect in Major League Baseball, knowing that the window of opportunity as a nonprofit to be associated with an athlete of this caliber is very limited,” reads the e-mail accompanying the press release about Miss Utility sponsoring Bryce Harper’s Hagerstown at-bats. All of which I love typing.

Of course, the forethought of Miss Utility illustrates an amazing array of missed opportunities here in Philadelphia. Yeah, sure, the Bimbo Bread company has plastered its logo front and center on the front of the Philadelphia Union’s kits, but let’s take a moment to reflect on Bimbo’s incredible error of foresight…

Where were they when Pat Burrell was in town? Just imagine this nugget from Dan Baker:

“Now batting, brought to you by Beeem-bo, Pat Burrell …”

Too easy? Of course it is. However, why is it that a company in Hagerstown came up with the idea of sponsoring plate appearances before a big league team/company? Oh, the big league teams might trot out something like “purity” of the game with a straight face as if they haven’t already sold every square inch of the ballpark built with public funds as for why they won’t sell in-game announcements, but let’s face it, it’s coming. Considering the Phillies have already milked every dime out of Citizens Bank Park short of raising ticket prices to Yankee Stadium levels and only sell the last legal drug until the seventh inning, this could be the way to go.

Think about it… selling plate appearance sponsorships could be the difference in buying Michael Young to play second base for the short term.

Holy Moses

If you were lucky enough to watch Moses Malone play on a regular basis, there was nothing about it that looked easy. He wasn’t what anyone would label graceful and because he had relatively small hands for a 6-foot-10 guy, Moses always seemed to be clinging to the ball with extra might.

Add in the fact that Moses was covered with a drenching sweat seconds after the opening tip and it added to the image of a guy busting it out there. He was no force of nature like many NBA superstars we have seen, but he brought a rare championship to Philadelphia and became one of the NBA’s all-time 50 greatest players through force of will.

More than anything, Moses was a rebounder. He’d park himself on the low block and run a tip drill when a ball came off the rim. If the ball didn’t go in after one of his tips, he’d get it again… and again until the play was finished. Considering he broke in with the Utah Stars straight out of Petersburg, Va. high school in 1974 and didn’t retire until 1995 just illustrates the point.

Maybe the best explanation how Moses acquired his style for no-fluff and tenacious basketball comes from the fact that as a high school kid he often was allowed to play pickup games with the inmates at the nearby prison. If that doesn’t teach a guy how to be tough…

Kevin Love, the big man for the Minnesota Timberwolves, has a knack for rebounding just like Moses. He learned his craft a little differently, though. The son of NBA/ABA player, Stan Love, and nephew of Beach Boys singer, Mike Love, the younger Love didn’t hone his game playing against prisoners. Instead, he went to UCLA for one season and spent last summer with Team USA in the World Championships. In Moses’ day, only college players could be on international teams and since he grew up in poverty in a single-parent home, the goal was to get some money.

Nevertheless, with a league-leading 15.5 rebounds per game to go with nearly 21 points per game, Love’s numbers mirror some of those posted by Moses during his career with the 76ers. Of course those pertain only to the regular season because Love hasn’t been to the playoffs yet. That means he hasn’t made any boasts like Moses in predicting three straight sweeps like he did with “fo’, fo’, fo’,” during the Sixers’ run in 1983.

However, like Moses in 1978-79, Love is piling up some ridiculous feats. Back then for the Houston Rockets, Moses notched at least 10 points and 10 rebounds in 50 straight games to set the (modern day) all-time record for such a thing. Wilt Chamberlain registered 227 straight double-doubles during the NBA's statistical dark ages. That was back when a guy like Wilt could average 50.4 points per game (1962) and lead the league in assists another season (1968). Better yet, Wilt is the only player in NBA history to get a double triple-double when he got 24 points, 26 rebounds and 21 assists in a game for the Sixers in the 1968 season,

In other words, we're counting Moses' 50 straight double-doubles as the modern day record.

So, during the '78-'79 season, Moses got nearly 25 points and 18 rebounds per game during the regular season and then 24.5 points and 20 rebounds during the playoffs to win his first of three MVP awards.

Think about 50 straight double-doubles for a second… that means no nights off, no mailing it in and no resting on a back-to-back or even a stretch where the Rockets spent a weekend with games in Phoenix, Portland and Seattle on three straight nights. Better yet, Moses pulled off the feat despite playing on the same team as noted ball hogs Rick Barry and Calvin Murphy.

Love got his 49^th straight double-double in the 111-100 loss in Philadelphia on Friday night, finishing the game with 21 points and 23 boards on the heels of a 20-20 effort two nights prior. He will attempt to tie Moses’ record on Saturday in Washington against one of his dad’s old teams and where the Hall-of-Famer he gets his middle name from, Wesley Unseld.

“That Kevin Love is amazing,” said Sixers’ coach Doug Collins, a contemporary of Moses and Love’s dad. “He’s a special player.”

“He reminds me a bit of Charles Oakley, a guy I coached, in that he’s not a great leaper, but he has incredible hands and a great feel for where the ball is coming off the rim. There’s a knack for offensive rebounding and knowing where the ball is going to come off and he goes out and gets it. He rebounds his own area and goes out and gets the ball.”

Certainly Love’s streak is impressive and the uncanny consistency is certainly can be labeled as “old school” as his game. But considering that Love is the only player for Minnesota to appear in every game, he is the focus of the entire game plan. Love will get his points, but also will get his rebounds because there isn’t anyone else there. Of course, he will face more trick defenses and double teams than most players, but is the game as tough now as it was when Moses was getting double-doubles?

Surely it’s tough to compare eras and players born generations apart, but 50 straight double-doubles for Moses has to marked up for inflation… right?

Regardless, Elton Brand will have his hands full with Love tonight even though he was held to 16 and 13 last month when the Sixers went to Minnesota.

“A lot of people talk about his rebounding, but he’s a real good shooter,” said Brand, acknowledging Love’s 42.3 shooting percentage beyond the arc. “He can shoot, he’s a good passer and he’s a good all-around player.”

Love, a center, has made 80 three-pointers this season. Moses never did that.

“The thing that is shocking to me is how he shoots the three ball,” Collins said. “He steps out there and has a great feel for the game, his passing is terrific, and he is having a great, great season.”

Moreover, thanks to Love we’re talking about Moses Malone again and thinking about how much fun it was to watch him play.

Despite numbers, Iguodala may be having best year

To put it mildly, it really has been an interesting season for Sixers’ forward, Andre Iguodala. He has missed games with an injury, struggled with his shot from time to time, and been a consistent source of fuel for the rumor mill.

In fact, most close observers of the 76ers fall on the side of trade/no-trade argument with very little middle ground when it comes to Iguodala, often citing the remaining years and money on his current deal as the grounds for moving and/or keeping him.

Shoot, to hear Iguodala describe it, his season has been nothing but a struggle. This season, he has missed 12 of the Sixers’ 60 games after missing a grand total of six games and playing in 252 consecutive games in his first six seasons in the league. His shooting percentage dipped last season and has remained low, while his foul-shooting percentage is at a career low. Most noticeable, of course, is the scoring average, which has dipped three whole points per game from 17.1 last season (and a high of 19.9 in 2008) to 14.1 this season.

“It’s been up and down, but I really just try to look at it from a team standpoint,” Iguodala explained after Thursday’s practice at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. “We started slow when we were trying to find what our niche was and different roles. Then, we started to win and we continued that trend of playing good basketball.”

But there’s a lot more to Iguodala than that. In the realm of advanced metrics, Iguodala is charting the best Win Shares per 48 minutes, assist percentage, the best defensive rating and best rate of turnovers given in a season for his career. 

As head coach Doug Collins explains it, Iguodala just might be having the best season of his career.

“I think Andre with his defense and his leadership has been terrific,” Collins said. “He’s averaging about 15 [points] a game, but he had two of the best defensive plays that I’ve seen all year long the other night against Dallas. Unfortunately, we did not convert, but Andre is a playmaker for us. He’s a rebounder, he’s a defender and I think he’s been terrific. 

“I never judge a guy like that based on his statistics. I judge him by the value to his team and how well he plays and if he gives you a chance to win. When we were 3-13 it was his voice that did the most. He said, ‘Guys, hang in there. We’re close.’ That voice helped us battle through that and get us through to where we are today.”

More than anything else, it has been Iguodala’s defense that has sparked the Sixers’ turnaround. Whether it’s conscious or not, Iguodala has taken fewer shots – especially from behind the three-point arc – ceding some to up-and-comers like Jodie Meeks, Jrue Holiday and Lou Williams. 

Offensively, Iguodala has put aside his contract and ego in order to get the kids involved more.

“I’ve been trying to be a leader and do what I can to make some of the guys become better,” Iguodala said.

Where he has made the team better, however, is on the other end of the court, where Iguodala’s most important effort hasn’t gone unnoticed. Collins has encouraged Iguodala to continue the role he carved out for himself last summer playing for Team USA in the World Championships, where he was the team’s shutdown defender. With Kevin Durant the team’s top scorer and an NBA All-Star like Derrick Rose commanding the ball, Iguodala’s contribution was to guard the opposition’s best scorer in order to make life tough.

In fact, that has been his job with the Sixers, too. With Iguodala hanging all over him, Kobe Bryant hit just three of 11 shots from the field against the Sixers in December. Meanwhile, the Sixers won a tough game in Cleveland last weekend despite the fact that Iguodala didn’t score during the second half.

They say the NBA is all about defense right now and Iguodala is one of the best in the league in that regard.

“If you would talk to the best scorers in the league that he’s guarded and say who is one of the toughest guys you have to go against, they would say, Andre Iguodala,” Collins said, noting that Iguodala is the Sixers’ modern-day Bobby Jones.

“He’s played well against the likes of Paul Pierce, which has given us a very good chance to hang in there with Boston. We have played some of the better teams very well and it’s because of the job he does against the key people.”

Still, the trade talk persists around Iguodala, even though the Sixers have turned into a team that no one wants to see in the first round of the playoffs. They are a team with nine players age 23 or younger, with Iguodala the elder statesman on the team at age 27.

Iguodala is coming into his own on the court, but away from it some wonder why he’s still with the Sixers.

“What happens in business and in sports – it could be an executive or whatever – is that you look at the bottom line of a person’s paycheck and you expect X number of numbers. And I think a lot of players in this league you place a value not of numbers, but their presence and who they are,” Collins explained. “They could be on a rotation off the ball where you get into another spot where a guy couldn’t get, so now that play gets blown up and it wins the game. But there is no stat for that.

“From a coaching standpoint, you understand what he brings. I love what Andre does for us.”

Collins says Iguodala reminds him of another player he coached when he was with the Chicago Bulls.

“[Iguodala is] an intangible man. I’ve coached guys like that. Scottie Pippen was an intangibles man. Grant Hill is another,” Collins said. “They will throw up numbers, but they are also All-Defense and ‘Dre plays both ends of the floor. He’s our best individual defender on the team that is pretty good defensive team because we play really good team defense.” 

So is it possible for a player to seemingly struggle yet make bigger contributions to the team that can be measured? If so, that’s what Iguodala is doing this season.

Triple trouble

Typically, I do not believe that a person can judge an athlete or a performance in a game based on just stats. Games are much more complicated than what mere numbers can reveal, and no one can deny that.

Besides, it’s the stories and the nuance of the games that makes them great—not the numbers.

However, if there is one statistic that fascinates me is the triple-double. After all, the triple-double, often, is the pinnacle of all basketball accomplishments. To get double-digits in points, assists and rebounds, or even blocks or steals, is the mark that a ballplayer had a really good game.

Besides, only a certain type of player can notch a triple-double. For instance, Karl Malone was not going to get a triple-double. The same goes for Kobe Bryant, though Kobe certainly has a few under his belt. Some players don’t like to pass the ball, while others don’t pass the ball well.

Regardless, a triple-double is a true indicator of the all-around player. Typically, players don’t get them by accident. In other words, all of a sudden a player isn’t going to “get hot” and mess around to get a triple-double.

If it could be labeled as such, the triple-double is the most organic of all statistical phenomenons, yet they never sneak up on anyone. If someone is an assist or a rebound or two away from a triple-double, everyone in the gym knows it and they keep track. A triple-double is like a hand grenade in that when it is about to blow, it makes some noise. That's the way it seemed when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson used to get them.

Nevertheless, if there ever was a quiet triple-double that quietly slipped by a few folks, it happened on Tuesday night at the Center. That’s where Jason Kidd—Mr. Triple-Double himself—notched another one on the final shot and rebound of the game. Truth is there were a handful of folks sitting on press row who had to look at the stat sheet twice after the game before asking, “Wait… Jason Kidd had a triple-double?”

Call Kidd the triple-double ninja.

Kidd had 13 points with 13 assists and 10 rebounds in the Mavericks’ 101-93 victory over the 76ers despite sitting on the bench for a chunk of the second half. Closing in on his 38^th birthday, Mavs’ coach Rick Carlisle smartly allows Kidd to pace himself because even though he might not be as spry as he once was, he still is a threat when the game is on the line. A savvy point guard is one thing, but a point guard like Kidd who is experienced, smart and able to notch a triple-double without much notice is something else altogether.

“When I used to announce, I said I always felt he played with a rear view mirror,” Sixers’ coach Doug Collins said about Kidd. “He not only saw what was going on in front of him, he also saw what was going on behind him. He’s not afraid to make a mistake with the ball. He reminds me a bit of Brett Favre. He’ll throw it in there. Sometimes he’ll turn it over, but he’s not afraid to do that.”

Against the Sixers, Kidd had those 13 assists against zero turnovers. He had eight assists in the first quarter and 12 of them after three quarters. Kidd went into double-digits in scoring during the final quarter, too, but piled on in the scoring column with a clutch three-pointer with 2:59 left in the game, followed by a couple of foul shots with 40 seconds remaining to help salt the game away. When Andre Iguodala missed a long jumper in the waning seconds, Kidd was right on the spot for an easy rebound.

It just might have been the stealthiest triple-double of his career. Either that or he just has a knack for filling out the stat sheet.

Now in his 18^th season in the league, Kidd has 107 career triple-doubles. Heading into this season that averaged out to a little more than 6.1 of them per year, which doesn’t include the playoffs, where he has notched 11. He only has two triple-doubles this season (the seventh of his career against the Sixers), which leads one to believe that Kidd will finish his career with the third-most of all time, ranking behind Oscar Robertson (181) and Magic Johnson (138). Amongst active players, Lebron James is behind Kidd with 31. Johnson, of course, was one of the greatest two-way guards ever. At 6-foot-9, Magic ran the point and posted up on the low block, where smaller guards had no hope of stopping him.

Robertson, meanwhile, averaged a triple-double during the 1961-62 season for the Cincinnati Royals before folks even knew what it was he was doing. That season Robertson averaged 30.8 points, 11.4 assists and 12.5 rebounds per game, making him the only player ever to pull off the feat. He almost did it during his rookie season, too, going for 30.5 points, 10.1 boards and 9.7 assists per game in 1960-61 and again in 1962-63 when The Big O came seven rebounds away from the triple-double average.

Magic came 29 rebounds and 37 assists away from doing it in 1981-82 and 107 rebounds away from pulling it off in 1982-83.

The closest Kidd ever came to pulling off an Oscar Robertson was 2007-08 when he got 10.8 points, 10.1 assists and 7.5 assists. Those were pretty good numbers, but nowhere near what Robertson and Magic did. However, Kidd, Magic and Wilt Chamberlain are the only players in history to average a triple-double throughout multiple playoff series when he did it during the 2007 postseason.

Meanwhile, after getting his latest triple-double, Kidd just kind of shrugged it off.

“Just trying to help my guys. I just tried to come back and help rebound the ball,” he said.

You know, another triple-double. Ho hum.

As far as records go, Kidd is not the oldest player to get a triple-double. Though he turns 38 in three weeks, Karl Malone, strangely, did it when he was 40 and playing for the Lakers.

Maybe that’s something for Kidd to stick around for?

Best trades ever: Sixers get Wilt

Believe it or not, there are some solid advanced metrics to measure the effectiveness of basketball players. In fact, some of the stats are similar to those used by sabremetrics devotees with baseball, only with basketball the folks who tout the movement aren’t as militant.

Look, the math is still way too difficult and there is no formula to measure the way a basketball player can cut off the baseline from an opponent, but hey, basketball stat heads don’t act like Glenn Beck in front of the chalkboard the way baseball stat heads do often.

Nevertheless, with the NBA trade deadline slipping past quietly in Philadelphia, it’s worth noting that the 76ers (not the Warriors) have pulled off some of the best midseason trades in NBA history. According to the good folks at Basketball-Reference, the Sixers were the benefactors of  receiving the best player in a midseason trade in NBA history.

They worked out the math and everything.

That player, of course, was Wilt Chamberlain, who was traded from the San Francisco Warriors to the Sixers for Connie Dierking, Paul Neumann, Lee Shaffer and cash (try putting that one in the trade machine). Wilt was averaging 38.9 points and 23.5 rebounds in the first 38 games of the 1964-65 season for the Warriors, which came to a 19.1 three-year weighted win share.

No, there were no bonus points for the fact that it was Wilt Chamberlain.

Here’s the formula I don’t understand used to determine the worth of the player:

3yr Weighted Avg = 0.6 * WS82_Y + 0.3 * WS82_Y-1 + 0.1 * WS82_Y-2

Yeah, I don’t get it either. Nevertheless, the Sixers also got Dikembe Mutombo on a snowy, February day in 2001, which rates as the 14th best player received for a 9.2 three-year weighted win share. Sure, the Sixers lost Theo Ratliff in that deal, but with Dikembe the team got to the Finals for the first time since 1983.

There was also the Mike Gminski trade for Roy Hinson and Tim McCormick in 1988 at No. 60 (6.4) and the Andre Miller (6.1) for Allen Iverson (7.8) deal that was listed at No. 76 for the Sixers and may have worked out better for Philly than Denver.

Interestingly, the Sixers have not sent away too many statistically great players during the season. They just wait to get the No. 1 pick in the 1986 draft and give away Hall of Famers for that. Nevertheless, early in the 1971-72 season, the Sixers sent Archie Clark (10.8) at No. 5 to the Baltimore Bullets for Fred Carter and Kevin Loughery. It’s doubtful one could point to the Clarke trade as the impetus to the 9-72 season in 1972-73 since Clark played just one game the season before. However, Clark could have helped the ’72-73 Sixers to double-digit wins.

So, with the blockbusters that went down in the Atlantic Division this week, it’s worth mentioning that the Knicks appear have been the big winners not because they got Carmelo Anthony from Denver, but because they got Chauncey Billups. New New Jersey point guard Deron Williams isn’t too far behind, but it’s worth noting that Billups just might be the best player traded twice during a season...

Take that, Adrian Dantley!