Inclinations and Hesitations
As I begin writing this post the Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons should be tipping off for Game Three of their Eastern Conference Finals series. As per my vow in a prior post, I haven't watched any of the games so far nor will I do so unless the Celtics win a road game, and thanks to the Pistons' victory in Game Two the Cs have to win at least one road game in this series if they want to advance to the NBA Finals. In any case, the series features two of the more intriguing NBA personalities of the last decade, two players who've caught my attention since I'm always on the lookout for that strange animal, the incredibly successful underachiever.
Rasheed Wallace has long been one of my favorite players in the league, but he's also one of the most disappointing - as disappointing as the most talented and important player on a championship team can be, by the unfair standards to which we hold our athletic heroes. Most suited to the 4-spot, able to log extended minutes at the 3 or the 5, Sheed has all the skills necessary to be one of the greatest bigs of all time, especially one of the greatest non-center bigs. He's not close, a borderline Hall of Famer at best. There's nobody in the league who's better at man defense on an opposing big (when the overrated Ben Wallace was his teammate and getting consideration as the Defensive Player of the Year, it was usually Sheed's job to guard the superior big man on the other team, letting Ben sag off of his man and play free agent help defense). He's also a skilled help defender and a highly intelligent one; stories from the year that Sheed joined the Pistons mid-season (and went on to win the title) have him vocally anchoring the defense by calling out the proper rotations and identifying the other team's plays. On the other end he has effective range out to the three point line to go with a strong post-game - not fabulous, but good enough because it features one unstoppable weapon, the Rasheed Wallace fadeaway turnaround jumper. The release point on the ball is somewhere around nine feet in the air falling away from you, and when it flies true it's one of (in my opinion) the prettiest shots in basketball, as well as being essentially unguardable. There's no athletic or skill-based reason why Rasheed shouldn't put up 25 points and 12 rebounds every night.
And yet - his career stats are 15 and 7, and this season he tossed up 12.7 and 6.6. Fundamentally, Rasheed Wallace shies away from being the focal point. He's happy being the most talented cog in a machine that doesn't rely on him to flex his talents. He floats out on the three point line, away from the heat of the action, and goes through long periods where he seems disengaged from the game (on offense, at least). He's capable of taking over the game and asserting himself as the most gifted and skilled player on his team (often on the floor) whenever he wants, but he rarely wants it. According to a Jemele Hill in a recent podcast with Bill Simmons, this is essentially what Wallace is like in his off-court life as well: capable of being engaging and charming but disinclined to be the center of attention, which is how Hill explains his well documented moodiness in the face of stories about his various charities, what a great teammate he is, and so forth. Wallace has every skill, but his personality won't let him dominate.
The other great underachiever (or so we think) in this series is Kevin Garnett, widely acclaimed as one of the great players of the modern era and generally presumed to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Garnett is, physically, even more gifted - with length, speed, explosiveness - than Wallace, and has the same apparent intelligence in his game. And unlike Wallace, Garnett is always trying as hard as he can. He's an unselfish player, and there are times when he shrinks from the ball (which we'll come to), but he's giving maximal effort all the time.
And yet - he's not nearly as good as he should be, and I'll insist this to the grave. With his physical abilities and knowledge of the game he should (also) be the greatest 4 of all time (and can also spend extended minutes at the 3 or the 5), but I don't think he's nearly maximalized his skillset in the way that Wallace has. Garnett is, in my opinion, a superior help defender (his fiery intensity and physical explosiveness are key advantages over Wallace in this regard) but a couple of shades off Wallace as a man defender. The clear deficiency is that he doesn't nearly have the complement of skills Sheed has on the offensive end, despite being a better ballhandler, just as long, and much quicker. His range isn't as strong as Wallace's, but Garnett is deadly out to 18 feet. It's in the post game that he lacks; whereas Wallace uses a rich arsenal of moves and goes to the fadeaway as his trump card, Garnett has a limited set of moves and uses his turnaround as a bailout weapon. When Garnett should dropstep and juke his way into a layup, he surrenders positions and fades from the basket. And he used to work for Kevin McHale, who had the greatest set of post moves in basketball history. Something is weird there.
(Actually, my pet theory is that the fledgling and poorly managed Minnesota Timberwolves didn't know what to do with him and wrecked him by abusing his versatility. Garnett was capable of doing so many things for that team and they absolutely called on him to do every single one of them: be the best post defender, be the lead on-the-ball defender in Flip Saunders' zone, be the primary scoring option around the basket, be the best jump shooter, be the guy who runs the offense...he was never given the opportunity to focus his skillset and develop it in a particular direction; he could have been the evolutionary Kevin McHale or the evolutionary Scottie Pippen, and he kind of came out as two-thirds one and one-third the other, except not clearly better than either [in my opinion; I imagine many would disagree].)
The more common knock on Garnett is that he shies away from The Moment and doesn't have the desire (or the reproductive glands) to take the big shot, or take over in crunch time and score on five straight posessions. This article by Simmons generously suggests that part of the reason is that Garnett has never really had the opportunity to learn how to handle himself in the moments of greatest pressure. Playing on those crappy Minnesota teams, he didn't have the opportunity to make season-defining plays because the Timberwolves just weren't going to be in those situations anyway. Tim Duncan won a title in his second year, and rookie Kobe was airballing huge shots in the playoffs, a key part of the learning curve to make him one of the great clutch players of all time. Garnett, Simmons points out elsewhere, also plays all-out all the time, whereas most NBA players have learned that the grind of an 82 game season plus playoffs is too tiring and they must necessarily conserve their energy until the games (or quarters) when it really matters. Rasheed Wallace playing to the peak of his abilities might be a better player than Kevin Garnett, but it's hard to say because Wallace only plays at his peak for two or three minute stretches; Garnett seems to fall short because he has nowhere to elevate to. We see the best of Garnett for 38 minutes or so a night, every night.
(Yes, I think there's such a thing as clutch. And, to be honest, I don't think it's a rising to the occasion nearly as much as it is the mental fortitude to not shrink from the occasion.)
There is something Wallace-ish, though, in that I feel like Garnett is disinclined to take the winning shot; he wants to not take the losing shot more than he wants to take the winning one. Part of his maniacal effort is wrapped up (like Wallace's apparent distaste for the spotlight) in a somewhat idealistic manifestation of basketball as a Team game (where Garnett derived this I don't know, but Wallace learned it from Dean Smith at UNC). Garnett is aggressively looking for the open man, just as he aggressively looks for the offensive board, and like his unflagging effort this stays constant from the first minute to the last. This is why if the Celtics win a title with this team I bet the Finals MVP will be (will have to be) Paul Pierce, who isn't nearly as talented but, when he flips the "go to the basket" switch, has the confidence and attitude to take matters into his own hands.
Just because it's floated into my head, there's some vague similarity here to George Benson. People can dispute whether George Benson is the greatest jazz guitarist of all time (he's not nearly my favorite, but I think he probably is the best) but he absolutely should be. By modern standards, his technical chops are frightening, but by the standards of the time he hit the scene Benson was untouchable, his phrasing and time are impeccable and (rarely for a jazz guitarist) he swings as hard as the greatest horn players, his harmonic imagination is probably the least part of his playing but still strong, and his melodic improvisations are accessible (when they're not blazing by so quickly that all the ear registers is a blur). If he's not the greatest jazz guitarist, it's a technical disqualification for having such a limited career (sort of how Bill Walton should have been one of the greatest centers of all time but needs to drop several spots down the list because injuries kept his career from bearing out the breadth of his talent). Benson turned, fairly early, to singing (actually, he was a singer before he focused on the guitar) and drifted into very lucrative and popular smooth jazz/r&b, and has been disinclined to play jazz on record (he still shows up as a guest on other people's bandstands) ever since. His jazz abilities are still important to him, because Benson has talked about sharing the stage with McCoy Tyner and freaking out because he'd let his jazz chops get so rusty, and ever since he's made a point of practicing and playing enough straight jazz to be able to dominate anywhere, anytime. But he doesn't make the records, and doesn't appear to want to. I don't begrudge him his aesthetic choices over the years - if he likes the music he makes then he likes it, and he should keep doing it - and if he's focused on the smooth stuff to make a bunch of money, I respect that without question, but: he's got lots of money now! And it's not as though he needs to exclusively do one thing or the other; there's no reason he can't record an album of jazz standards and then turnaround and tour on "Breezin'", and we know he still cares about jazz because of the aforementioned chops-maintenance, not to mention his eagerness to get on stage with current jazz greats to begin with...I don't get it. He has all the ability in the world, but he seems to have no interest in putting it out there for our enjoyment. I don't want to say that it's selfish, because the music is his to do with what he wants, but I find it perplexing to say the least.
Huh. A quick check online shows Boston up 18 at the half.
Rasheed Wallace has long been one of my favorite players in the league, but he's also one of the most disappointing - as disappointing as the most talented and important player on a championship team can be, by the unfair standards to which we hold our athletic heroes. Most suited to the 4-spot, able to log extended minutes at the 3 or the 5, Sheed has all the skills necessary to be one of the greatest bigs of all time, especially one of the greatest non-center bigs. He's not close, a borderline Hall of Famer at best. There's nobody in the league who's better at man defense on an opposing big (when the overrated Ben Wallace was his teammate and getting consideration as the Defensive Player of the Year, it was usually Sheed's job to guard the superior big man on the other team, letting Ben sag off of his man and play free agent help defense). He's also a skilled help defender and a highly intelligent one; stories from the year that Sheed joined the Pistons mid-season (and went on to win the title) have him vocally anchoring the defense by calling out the proper rotations and identifying the other team's plays. On the other end he has effective range out to the three point line to go with a strong post-game - not fabulous, but good enough because it features one unstoppable weapon, the Rasheed Wallace fadeaway turnaround jumper. The release point on the ball is somewhere around nine feet in the air falling away from you, and when it flies true it's one of (in my opinion) the prettiest shots in basketball, as well as being essentially unguardable. There's no athletic or skill-based reason why Rasheed shouldn't put up 25 points and 12 rebounds every night.
And yet - his career stats are 15 and 7, and this season he tossed up 12.7 and 6.6. Fundamentally, Rasheed Wallace shies away from being the focal point. He's happy being the most talented cog in a machine that doesn't rely on him to flex his talents. He floats out on the three point line, away from the heat of the action, and goes through long periods where he seems disengaged from the game (on offense, at least). He's capable of taking over the game and asserting himself as the most gifted and skilled player on his team (often on the floor) whenever he wants, but he rarely wants it. According to a Jemele Hill in a recent podcast with Bill Simmons, this is essentially what Wallace is like in his off-court life as well: capable of being engaging and charming but disinclined to be the center of attention, which is how Hill explains his well documented moodiness in the face of stories about his various charities, what a great teammate he is, and so forth. Wallace has every skill, but his personality won't let him dominate.
The other great underachiever (or so we think) in this series is Kevin Garnett, widely acclaimed as one of the great players of the modern era and generally presumed to be a first ballot Hall of Famer. Garnett is, physically, even more gifted - with length, speed, explosiveness - than Wallace, and has the same apparent intelligence in his game. And unlike Wallace, Garnett is always trying as hard as he can. He's an unselfish player, and there are times when he shrinks from the ball (which we'll come to), but he's giving maximal effort all the time.
And yet - he's not nearly as good as he should be, and I'll insist this to the grave. With his physical abilities and knowledge of the game he should (also) be the greatest 4 of all time (and can also spend extended minutes at the 3 or the 5), but I don't think he's nearly maximalized his skillset in the way that Wallace has. Garnett is, in my opinion, a superior help defender (his fiery intensity and physical explosiveness are key advantages over Wallace in this regard) but a couple of shades off Wallace as a man defender. The clear deficiency is that he doesn't nearly have the complement of skills Sheed has on the offensive end, despite being a better ballhandler, just as long, and much quicker. His range isn't as strong as Wallace's, but Garnett is deadly out to 18 feet. It's in the post game that he lacks; whereas Wallace uses a rich arsenal of moves and goes to the fadeaway as his trump card, Garnett has a limited set of moves and uses his turnaround as a bailout weapon. When Garnett should dropstep and juke his way into a layup, he surrenders positions and fades from the basket. And he used to work for Kevin McHale, who had the greatest set of post moves in basketball history. Something is weird there.
(Actually, my pet theory is that the fledgling and poorly managed Minnesota Timberwolves didn't know what to do with him and wrecked him by abusing his versatility. Garnett was capable of doing so many things for that team and they absolutely called on him to do every single one of them: be the best post defender, be the lead on-the-ball defender in Flip Saunders' zone, be the primary scoring option around the basket, be the best jump shooter, be the guy who runs the offense...he was never given the opportunity to focus his skillset and develop it in a particular direction; he could have been the evolutionary Kevin McHale or the evolutionary Scottie Pippen, and he kind of came out as two-thirds one and one-third the other, except not clearly better than either [in my opinion; I imagine many would disagree].)
The more common knock on Garnett is that he shies away from The Moment and doesn't have the desire (or the reproductive glands) to take the big shot, or take over in crunch time and score on five straight posessions. This article by Simmons generously suggests that part of the reason is that Garnett has never really had the opportunity to learn how to handle himself in the moments of greatest pressure. Playing on those crappy Minnesota teams, he didn't have the opportunity to make season-defining plays because the Timberwolves just weren't going to be in those situations anyway. Tim Duncan won a title in his second year, and rookie Kobe was airballing huge shots in the playoffs, a key part of the learning curve to make him one of the great clutch players of all time. Garnett, Simmons points out elsewhere, also plays all-out all the time, whereas most NBA players have learned that the grind of an 82 game season plus playoffs is too tiring and they must necessarily conserve their energy until the games (or quarters) when it really matters. Rasheed Wallace playing to the peak of his abilities might be a better player than Kevin Garnett, but it's hard to say because Wallace only plays at his peak for two or three minute stretches; Garnett seems to fall short because he has nowhere to elevate to. We see the best of Garnett for 38 minutes or so a night, every night.
(Yes, I think there's such a thing as clutch. And, to be honest, I don't think it's a rising to the occasion nearly as much as it is the mental fortitude to not shrink from the occasion.)
There is something Wallace-ish, though, in that I feel like Garnett is disinclined to take the winning shot; he wants to not take the losing shot more than he wants to take the winning one. Part of his maniacal effort is wrapped up (like Wallace's apparent distaste for the spotlight) in a somewhat idealistic manifestation of basketball as a Team game (where Garnett derived this I don't know, but Wallace learned it from Dean Smith at UNC). Garnett is aggressively looking for the open man, just as he aggressively looks for the offensive board, and like his unflagging effort this stays constant from the first minute to the last. This is why if the Celtics win a title with this team I bet the Finals MVP will be (will have to be) Paul Pierce, who isn't nearly as talented but, when he flips the "go to the basket" switch, has the confidence and attitude to take matters into his own hands.
Just because it's floated into my head, there's some vague similarity here to George Benson. People can dispute whether George Benson is the greatest jazz guitarist of all time (he's not nearly my favorite, but I think he probably is the best) but he absolutely should be. By modern standards, his technical chops are frightening, but by the standards of the time he hit the scene Benson was untouchable, his phrasing and time are impeccable and (rarely for a jazz guitarist) he swings as hard as the greatest horn players, his harmonic imagination is probably the least part of his playing but still strong, and his melodic improvisations are accessible (when they're not blazing by so quickly that all the ear registers is a blur). If he's not the greatest jazz guitarist, it's a technical disqualification for having such a limited career (sort of how Bill Walton should have been one of the greatest centers of all time but needs to drop several spots down the list because injuries kept his career from bearing out the breadth of his talent). Benson turned, fairly early, to singing (actually, he was a singer before he focused on the guitar) and drifted into very lucrative and popular smooth jazz/r&b, and has been disinclined to play jazz on record (he still shows up as a guest on other people's bandstands) ever since. His jazz abilities are still important to him, because Benson has talked about sharing the stage with McCoy Tyner and freaking out because he'd let his jazz chops get so rusty, and ever since he's made a point of practicing and playing enough straight jazz to be able to dominate anywhere, anytime. But he doesn't make the records, and doesn't appear to want to. I don't begrudge him his aesthetic choices over the years - if he likes the music he makes then he likes it, and he should keep doing it - and if he's focused on the smooth stuff to make a bunch of money, I respect that without question, but: he's got lots of money now! And it's not as though he needs to exclusively do one thing or the other; there's no reason he can't record an album of jazz standards and then turnaround and tour on "Breezin'", and we know he still cares about jazz because of the aforementioned chops-maintenance, not to mention his eagerness to get on stage with current jazz greats to begin with...I don't get it. He has all the ability in the world, but he seems to have no interest in putting it out there for our enjoyment. I don't want to say that it's selfish, because the music is his to do with what he wants, but I find it perplexing to say the least.
Huh. A quick check online shows Boston up 18 at the half.
Labels: Basketball, Music
posted by medrawt at
19:39
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