Points in the Paint 12.03.08
Posted by Rob Bonnette on 12.03.2008
The New York situation, plus award time!
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week's edition of Points in the Paint. I hope everyone did well on Turkey Day, but now it's time to burn off what you put on so hit that treadmill! This week, the big topic for me is the New York situation. No, not the Lebron in 2010 situation. The other one. The Stephon Marbury situation. And I have a little bit on Greg Oden and Devin Harris. Let's go!
More Knicks Drama!
And now we have another episode in the ‘As the Knicks Burn' saga. Former starting point guard Stephon Marbury, now languishing in permanent limbo, got suspended and fined by the team for allegedly refusing to play. From the Knicks front office standpoint, Marbury refused to play when finally offered an opportunity. Marbury is denying, claiming that he wanted back in and was rebuffed by coach Mike D'Antoni and GM Donnie Walsh. OK, so either somebody misinterpreted someone else's words or somebody's lying. Either way, it just doesn't look good. Each man has his own role in this mess, so let's examine them all"
Marbury: The biggest crime he committed, in my opinion, is conducting himself in such a way any charge thrown at him by his coach or GM seems plausible. Now I have no idea what type of person he is – he's done more than his share of goodwill away from the court but has reportedly been a jerk to his employers and co-workers almost from they day he arrived in the league. Steph has been in the league since 1996, so as a player he is what he is at this point. He can score with the best of them, has point guard skills but not enough of a point guard mentality on a nightly basis. In other words, while Chris Paul can have a five point, fifteen assist night without even trying Marbury always had to contort his game to pull such a thing off. The 25 point, five assist game, on the other hand, has never been a problem. But, like I said, he is who he is at this point. You don't bring him in unless you're willing to tailor your team's offensive schemes to what he does best. But anyway, getting back to the conduct thing. I have no idea how much crap he's made people put up with over the years, but apparently it's enough that his bosses feel they can make charges against him without suffering any public backlash for it, and that ultimately reflects bad on him. And the fact the Quentin Richardson, his own teammate more or less said ‘he's dead to me' to a reporter lets us know everything we need.
Walsh: Donnie was brought in to clean the mess that Isaiah Thomas made during his awful run as coach and GM there. The Knicks had become bad on the court and unreliable off of it, so Walsh had to do something to change things up. Priority number one was dumping as many bad contracts as possible while bringing in expiring deals to free up space for 2010, and getting rid of any ‘bad guys' in the process. Hence the deals that shipped out Zach Randolph and Jamal Crawford, and brought Al Harrington, Tim Thomas, and Cutino Mobley. It also means letting Marbury walk after this year. What I don't get here is why do they have to humiliate the man like this? Let him play, and then let him leave. I can understand not using Eddy Curry. What he gives you with his scoring is more than canceled out with his lack of rebounding, inability to get up and down the floor with any urgency, and lack of defense. But Marbury isn't that bad at all. Are they afraid that if Marbury plays well and they sneak into the playoffs that people might want them to re-sign him at $20 million per season? Donnie, take it from a die hard Knicks fan: I don't care if Marbury was MVP, I still wouldn't want you to bring him back next season for $20 million-plus.
D'Antoni: It looks to me like D'Antoni is combining his own suspicions with whatever Walsh fed him and decided it was best to sit Marbury down. I get it that he's not in your long term plans, and that you don't see any benefit to playing him, but come on. Don't insult the man by coming to him only when you need a warm body to put in a uniform so you can have the required eight players for a game. If you had no intention of giving him minutes, then don't jerk his chain either.
It looks like a resolution may be on the horizon. Rumor has it that they're finally discussing a buyout of some kind. What took them so long? If they'd acted in good faith and treated him like a tradeable asset and not some cancer, they may have actually been able to trade him somewhere. But instead they decided to bury him publicly and now they're going to buy him out for $20 million and get nothing in return. Really shrewd move, Donnie. You could have at least dealt him for cash considerations or a couple of second round picks. Now where does Stpeh land? Who knows. It would need to be a team with some serious heavy hitters in the locker room to keep his persona from taking over and taking the team south if things started to go bad. Either that or a ad team that just wants to entertain and will let him fire away and gets his 20-plus points per game. How about Minnesota?
The Greg Oden roller coaster!
I don't think I've seen such a fluctuation in opinion on any one player ever. In two years time he's gone from the next big thing at center to the next cursed Portland center (following in the footsteps of Bill Walton and Sam Bowie) to a bum who was going to suck big time to a total enigma that no one can figure out anymore. Some are ready to dismiss him as another Ben Wallace type, all rebounds and defense but little to no offense while others are still trying to give him a chance to develop offensively. I definitely see some major inconsistency in his offense; he's scored everywhere from zero points to 22 in the twelve games he's played so far, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it. He's scored in double figures six times, single digits five times and zero once, and the team has gone 4-2 both when he did and did not score more than ten points. The only discernable thing at this point is that he's done well offensively against teams with no known defensive presence in the paint, and that the teams with low post defense tend to shut him down. Again, the man has only played twelve games, so it's not like we have a major body or work to rely on. He's obviously got some confidence building to do in his own game, and will need a full season to try to get more assertive. By season's end we should have a good idea what kind of force he'll be. If I had to make a prediction I'd go with something along the lines of Vlade Divac, numbers wise. If the Blazers don't cut him off offensively there's no reason he can't turn into a reliable double-double guy. Will he be dominant? I don't think so, but I'm more than willing to change that view if his play demands it.
The Devin Harris Show!
OK, who expected this? Devin Harris is averaging a career high 25 points and six assists a game for New Jersey, and is coming of back to back games where he scored 34, then 47 points. 47 points from Devin Harris? That is just ludicrous. And he hasn't turned into some inaccurate gunner either; he's shooting 48 percent from the floor, and his team is 9-7 for the season so far, including 9-4 with him playing. So he's not just scoring more, he's doing it in winning fashion. And no one saw this coming. As of last season Harris was a good but not great point guard in the league, able to do several things adequately but nothing great. He scored in the teens, shot a good percentage, and dished out a fair number of assists. He was known for his end to end speed and was not much of an outside shooter. That's about it, really. All in all, he was good enough to start on a contending team but needed to be the third or fourth best player, not the star. Now he's playing like the lead dog for the Nets, a complete reversal. It could be that he's reaching his basketball prime at the same moment he's gotten his best opportunity to shine. In Dallas his offensive opportunities were limited because he had to defer to Dirk Nowitzki, Jason Terry, Josh Howard, and Jerry Stackhouse; there were always at least two guys on the floor who were higher than him on the offensive totem pole. Now he only has Vince Carter to take a backseat to, and since Vince has never been the type to be the alpha male Harris is free to fire away. Dallas's loss is New Jersey's gain. I think you're definitely looking at a contender for most improved player here. More on that next week.
Awards Forecast
On my final note for the week, here's what the awards race is looking like in my book. Rookie of the Year, barring some major collapse, is Derrick Rose. Even if he gets hurt now and misses the rest of the season can anyone honestly make a different choice? Uhh, no. I mentioned Harris earlier Most Improved; now I don't think he's really the most improved player but the award is often given to the guy with the most astonishing increase in numbers, and that's him right now. Now as far as who actually is the most improved? Give me Thaddeus Young of the Sixers for right now. Sixth Man I'd give to Andrei Kirilenko in Utah or Lamar Odom. I never give out Defensive Player of the Year; I don't get to see enough action to really make a judgment there. Coach of the Year I'd award to Gregg Popovich; it's early on but he had to get his team to weather that storm of being without both Tony Parker and Manu Ginobli, and they did it. And MVP? King James of course. Now that Kobe was finally given his due last season, the door is open for Lebron to get this thing multiple times without pissing anyone off. He's got the number, the wins, and the skills. He deserves it; I can't even think about giving it to Kobe, who has Pau Gasol, Odom, and Andrew Bynum to run with now. He isn't carrying anything this year.
OK that's it for this week. Next week I will hopefully return to my favorite topic: bashing guys with great potential and no shot of realizing it! Until then….
