Swift

Finally, sadly, and perhaps inevitably, Robert Swift's professional basketball career finally fulfilled the potential promised by his surname:

Swift.

Who knows where the 7' enigma goes from here. As Jeff Evans from the Californian in Bakersfield reports, Swift's career with the Bakersfield Jam appears over, if you can call two games a career, that is. (via the PI)

A former number one selection of the Sonics (as if I had to remind anyone of that sad fact), Swift had left the team weeks ago to attend to personal matters in the Seattle area, but never contacted the team after his departure. Will Voigt, the Jam's head coach, commented, "the barn door's closed" in regard to Swift's status with the team, but he may as well have been commenting on Swift's professional basketball career as well.

Ironically, while Swift's NBA career ended with the Sonix, his final game was in Portland, as close to Seattle as the league comes these days. On April 13th, 2009, Swift played 15 minutes in a blowout loss to the Blazers, garnering 2 points, 2 fouls, 2 blocks, and 3 rebounds, a fitting epitaph to his uneventful (at least on the court) career.

Ask a typical Sonic fan their reaction to Swift's apparent retirement, and undoubtedly the response would be a grimace, followed by indifference. And that's probably all his career merited, given the rather weak numbers he put up as a member of the green and gold.

But you can't help but feel just a twinge of sadness at the way things played out for Robert Swift. Sure, the big redhead has a nice layer of paychecks to cushion his fall from the NBA, and I'm sure season-ticket holders won't be sending him any sympathy cards, but one has to shake one's head at the Sysiphean way his career played out. While his rookie season was a wash, he showed promise in 2005-06, and after demonstrating that promise was not a fluke in pre-season the following fall, he was rewarded with the starting job at center by Bob Hill.

Within days, Swift had destroyed his knee with a fluke injury against the Sacramento Kings during one of the final exhibition games.

Bizarrely, Swift's injury came the day after the Sonics' sale to Clay Bennett had been unanimously approved by NBA owners. In the span of 48 hours, Sonic fans had lost their starting center to injury, and their team to a handful of scumbags.

Three years later, and the view hasn't gotten too much better for either of us.

Where Supersonicsoul Solves the World's Problems

The past eighteen months I’ve taken to following soccer more closely; for multiple reasons, I suppose.

Obviously, the absence of the Sonics has cleared much-needed space in the attic of my brain so that I might fill it up with more useless information, and the availability of soccer to watch here in Canada only serves to exacerbate the situation. (And when I mean soccer, I mean, of course, the European leagues; if you watch soccer at all, you know that those leagues have it all over the American one in terms of competition, camerawork, analysis, and fields, or “pitches,” if you prefer).

And so it was late last season that I found myself listening on my car radio to a Premier League game between two cellar-dwelling clubs, both teams vying for the right to stay in the league and avoid relegation. In the NBA, it would have been a slumberthon of anonymous players and indifferent fans. In the EPL, it was a ferocious fight.

I’m not a fool, now. I know the NBA will never adopt the relegation strategy. It’s too Euro, too innovative, too implausible, too … too difficult to sell to a guy who just paid $410 million for a franchise. “What, you’re gonna make me play Albuquerque next year? And I don’t get Kobe, LBJ, or the Celtics on my schedule?”

Fair enough. But I got to thinking over the weekend, what can the NBA do to add some life to its end-of-season games that feature teams out of the playoffs?

Obviously, the draft lottery punishes rather than rewards teams for trying at the end of the season. Obviously, as any fan of a 18-54 team can tell you, this leads to a lot of mysterious ailments and puzzling coaching moves down the stretch – all of which may or may not pay off in the year to come. And, of course, all of which lead to mind-numbingly boring contests that have all the excitement of pre-season D-League game (wait, does the D-League have pre-season? is it still called the D-League? Are you bored now? There, now you know how it feels to watch Clippers-Bucks in March).

How, then, do we reward teams that need help, while at the same time put some life back into the last month or two of the season? Well, perhaps a modification of the draft lottery is in order.

Initially, I thought just flipping the order of ping-pong ball recipients might be the tonic. In other words, the team finishing closest to the playoffs would receive the most balls, and the bottom-dwellers would receive the fewest.

However, there is a major fly in that ointment, and it is this. The playoffs are simply not enough of an incentive for a team to resist dogging their late-season games.

Say, for example, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant were sitting out there waiting to be drafted, and your options as General Manager were:

1. Play hard and make the playoffs as an #8 seed, lose in the first round
2. Play lousy, don’t make the playoffs, get Oden/Durant

Which do you think the front office would prefer? Sure, the revenues generated by one or two extra home games are sweet, but not nearly as sweet as one of those two plums. Inevitably, you’d see teams tanking games to avoid the post-season, which is an even fouler bag of garbage than the one we’ve already got on our front porch.

So, the reverse-ping-pong-ball trick is a non-starter, but how about if we really made some changes, so that the teams just missing the playoffs still received the most ping-pong balls, but that teams qualifying for the playoffs received some as well? In this scenario, you could make the playoffs and conceivably still get a sweet piece of the draft pie.

Since we can assume that teams in the playoffs won’t try to tank games (in the name of Donaghy, we hope so, anyways), there’s no fear of a #8 seed purposely tanking games versus the #1 seed just so they can get a better shot at the next Jordan or Durant.

The playoff teams (#16 to #1) would receive ping-pong balls in the traditional way, with the lowest seed getting the most balls, but #17 to #31 would receive balls in the reverse order, with #17 getting the most, and #31 the least. How much #20 would get versus #14 would be open to negotiation, but I'm pretty confident some arrangement could be worked out.

I honestly can’t see the negative to the idea. Granted, it might seem unfair to teams that are at the bottom of the heap, but since when does America reward incompetence? (Too Easy). Clay Bennett & The Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds rape this franchise, and their reward is the #2 pick in the draft? David Robinson milks an injury and the Spurs get Tim Duncan? John Lucas manages the Cavaliers like he was still in drug rehab, and Cleveland gets LeBron? How is this system any better?

Admittedly, the end-of-season tanking isn’t the biggest problem facing the NBA at the moment, but it’s a problem nonetheless, and this solution would seem to alleviate it to a degree. Worth a shot, right?

Point Leaders: '00s

With all of these end of the decade lists popping up, and me being a quasi-dork, I naturally began thinking of different statistical categories from the past 10 years.

For example, which NBA teams had the most and fewest number of players who led them in various categories?

I'll start with points scored for today. Before I started looking at the numbers, I tried to guess who would have largest variety. In my mind I narrowed it down to four contenders: New York, the Clippers, Indiana, and Golden State. All four seemed to have the right combinations of oft-injured stars, front offices in constant flux, bad teams, and unhappy players ... sort of a perfect recipe for high turnover at the top.

Was I right? Take a look after the jump.




Well, somewhat. The Knicks were there, all right, as one of the five clubs who had six different players to lead the team in points scored in a season, but the other three contenders I thought of failed to join them. The other four "leaders" were Atlanta (not that surprising), New Orleans/Charlotte (ditto), Washington (should have thought of that), and Utah.

Utah is the most intriguing of this trivial pursuit, only because in the '90s, they had only one (mail)man lead them in scoring. But with Matt Harpring, Carlos Boozer, Mehmet Okur, Andrei Kirilenko, and Deron Williams joining Karl Malone, the Jazz made it to an easy half-dozen.

The teams with the fewest players were obvious: San Antonio, the Lakers, Minnesota, Dallas, Boston, and Philadelphia were all dominated by superstars, and I don't think the readers of this site need help in determining who those players were.

However, there was one additional fun bit of trivia unearthed; the following gentlemen led a team in scoring in the last ten years:

Shawn Kemp
Juwann Howard
Lee Nailon
Anthony Mason
Clifford Robinson

More Fun With Gary Payton

Be sure to check yesterday's video, but after you're done with that, go over to BetUS.com to see the latest one, and whatever you do, don't give up halfway through, because then you'll miss when Payton reaches off-camera for a mock O'Brien Trophy, apparently made from either wrapping paper or leftover Ferrero Rocher wrappers, then cradles it in his arms for no apparent reason.

Honestly, if I'm running a network that carries basketball, I'm putting Gary Payton in my studio, hiring Reggie Miller to sit next to him, and just letting it roll. Granted, they'd be off the air in 10 minutes for cursing, but it would still be the best 10 minutes in sports broadcasting history.

GP

I've watched this video at least five times, and I still can't figure out what that thing is behind Gary Payton's right shoulder. I have, however, narrowed it down to what I believe to be the three most likely possibilities, listed in reverse order of likeliness:

1. A video poker machine. The light (?) on the top is a dead giveaway, as are the buttons below the screen. I know what you're saying, "Why in the world would Gary Payton have a video poker machine in his living room, especially considering he lives in Las Vegas?" Asked and answered, my friend.

2. An entertainment unit from 1988. Less likely, but who knows, maybe he got it for winning Pac-10 Player of the Year back in the day and just never felt like parting with it. Kind of like the Christmas tree behind him.

3. A microwave. Least likely, but a possibility. Hey, you're The Glove, you're watching Chris Webber on TNT, you're wondering why the heck you ain't on TV, and your anger makes you hungry. Now, do you want to walk the 18 feet to the kitchen, or do you want to just take two steps to the microwave? I thought so.

Now That's a Scheduling Problem

You may have read today that Rick Adelman's a bit perturbed by his Houston team's schedule for the balance of 2009.

In a group of games he calls "a horrendous stretch," the Rockets will play four back-to-back contests in the span of two weeks (running his team's total to five B2B's in the month of December), which is doubly troubling because it's the holiday season, after all.

Of course, if Rick could remember back to his halcyon days of the late 1960s when he was a rookie guard for the San Diego Rockets, he might temper his rage a bit. Back in the 1968-69 campaign, Adelman's Rockets also played five back to backers in December, including one memorable stretch in which San Diego played at Los Angeles, at New York, at Cincinnati, at Milwaukee, then at New York again - all in the span of six nights.

Or, better still, he could have played for the Sonics in 1967-68, when Seattle was forced to play 12 games between December 15th and the 31st, including, are you ready for this, five games in five nights.

You read that right. In December 1968, the Sonics played Dec. 22 (New York), Dec. 23 (at San Francisco), Dec. 24 (San Francisco), Dec. 25 (at Cincinnati), and Dec. 26 (at Philadelphia). Five games, five nights, all during the holidays.

I think, if I remember correctly, the Sonics formed a Player's Union on the flight back from Philly, somewhere over Omaha.

Upsetting

Today marked the second of a two-part series from Neil Paine of Basketball Reference, wherein he looks at the biggest playoff upsets of all time.

You already know where this is going, don't you? I mean, the question isn't: Are the Sonics in the Top 50, but, rather, Where in the Top 50 are they?

And, of course, they're first. While the first part dealt with the biggest upsets in an individual game, today's episode detailed the biggest playoff series upsets (or calamities, depending upon one's point of view, I suppose).

Surprisingly, the biggest upset wasn't the Nuggets debacle from 1994 (it ranked a respectable fourth), but the loss to Los Angeles the following season. (You'll remember that as the Tacoma Dome Toilet Bowl).

If you feel like indulging in a little pain, feel free to take a look. And, if you're looking for a bright side to that dark cloud, ponder this: The same team that laid two of the five biggest eggs in NBA playoff history in consecutive seasons followed it up with a trip to the NBA Finals in the third year.

Okay, they lost the Finals, but at least they didn't fall on their faces for a third time, right?

Swift

The Seattle PI checks in with an update on former Sonic #1 pick Robert Swift, who has left his D-League team in Bakersfield to deal with a family matter in Seattle.

It's unknown when Swift will return, and I'll thank you for not making any jokes about the situation in the comments. Seriously, if he's leaving the team for family matters, it's obviously not a great situation.

Brandon's One Shining Moment

A few days before Thanksgiving, Henry Abbott of ESPN’s TrueHoop offered up a brief story about Portland guard Brandon Roy’s decision to isolate himself from his team during the national anthem.

As the team’s best and most well known player, Roy is ostensibly the leader of the Blazers, and drew criticism from a local Portland newspaper columnist (to whose name and column I choose not to link, because he is, to put it in the most kindest terms I can summon, a moron) for not being a team player.

Two issues came to the forefront, one blatant, one subtle:

1. Brandon Roy is a leader and a leader should stand alongside his troops.
2. Brandon Roy is not patriotic.

Roy’s response to the whole idea was, essentially, “Hey, it’s my deal, and it doesn’t seem to be bothering anyone.”

To which both writers pointed out – a lot of people are going to be bugged, which is, while unknowable, also possibly true. Abbott employed a metaphor about wedding rings to illuminate for Roy why the flag is important, and why people would be bugged by his actions.

Unfortunately for the two writers, it turns out that Brandon Roy’s father was … a Marine. Meaning, of course, that he knows better than either of them the significance of the American flag and the sacrifices associated with it and meaning, of course, that they have about as much right to, well, not lecture, exactly, but inform him of that significance as I do informing Hedo Turkoglu about the significance of Kemal Ataturk’s birthday.

Further, to the first point, that Roy is a leader, notably absent from either story was any quote from a member of the team about how Roy’s actions have affected “team chemistry” or any other such nonsense. In fact, the only quote in either story was from Coach Nate McMillan, who, while admitting he wouldn’t follow Roy’s example, noted it didn’t bother him, either.

So, in essence, we have a complete non-story, fabricated by a columnist who covered the exact same topic a year ago and came to the conclusion that it was just fine and dandy. Then, the non-story is picked up by a national writer who, while taking pains to point out that mandatory anthem observation is silly at best and tyranny at worst, nevertheless provided additional fuel to the fire. (And, to be fair, a number of other blogs and websites chimed in as well).

Thankfully, the story seems to have died an appropriate death, and Roy has continued to live his life without any sort of Abdul-Rauf-type of fallout. (Luckily for Roy, this story came to light when America was not on the verge of invading another country/being attacked by another country/etc, or else both he and the rest of us would have been forced to endure weeks of pundits extolling patriotism and Roy uttering half-hearted apologies, followed by his knitting a flag from used Blazers jerseys (Kevin Duckworth’s making up a large percentage) that he would then raise to the rafters at the Rose Garden and the fans would all clap and cheer and then promptly forget what they were so riled up about to begin with because Greg Oden had dropped yet another entry pass).

All of which leads us back to the Big Lesson we should all Learn From This: namely, that we (those who write about these sorts of topics) ought to take a small pause before penning stories about the relative morality or patriotism or motivations of individuals engaged in professional sports.

I can understand the motivations of the Portland columnist – he was trying to drum up interest in his pathetic column. And, I can understand the motivations of Henry Abbott. He’s an avowed Blazer fan, and Brandon Roy is The Guy on his team, so if a story such as this arises, then he’s interested, and he writes about it.

But consider the repercussions which could have followed: Here you have Brandon Roy, by all accounts a model citizen for the team, who prior to each game chooses to spend a few moments thinking about … well, it’s his business so I won’t bother to guess what it is, but I think we can assume it’s not about if he remembered to delete the Jenna Jameson movie he downloaded onto his laptop.

And, surrounding Roy, we have a team which apparently is unfazed by his actions, and a coach who is pleased with the performance of his player.

But by throwing their spotlight onto this subject, both Abbott and the other writers came close to forcing Roy to abandon his routine and join his teammates in lockstep as they Honored America prior to the game, not because they felt it was the right thing to do (because that would be tyrannical), but because they thought it was the most expedient thing to do.

In essence, then, Brandon Roy, son of a marine, had people tell him: Hey, we get it, Brandon, you like a few minutes of reflection before the game, and that’s cool, but you know what, a few people might be bothered by it, and their uncomfortableness is more important than anything.

Well, screw that. I want to see Brandon Roy to stand on the sidelines twittering (“Chk the crzy dude w/ the Sabonis jersey in 118”) during the anthem. I want to see Chris Anderson compare tattoos with a biker chick during the anthem.

But more than that, I want to see two things:

1) A little more consideration of the inherent importance of a story, and
2) A little more respect for what patriotism truly is

Patriotism, to me, is not 18,000 fans standing in unison. Patriotism is helping your neighbor move, it is educating yourself about the issues in your country, it is standing up for your fellow citizens, and it is a million other little and big things.

Yes, it would be expedient for Brandon Roy to follow his teammates and stand with them at the anthem, but since when is patriotism about expediency?

Further, by asking athletes to conform to a set guideline of Proper Etiquette, we are left with a generation of stars such as Tiger Woods and LeBron James, who never make any comments the slightest bit politically offensive, lest they alienate even one fan.

Maybe a bunch of conformist, hermetically sealed superstars is what today’s society wants, but it’s not what I want. I want someone like Brandon Roy, someone who thinks for himself rather than letting someone else do his thinking for him.

Seems more American to me, anyways.