Hey KG, Have Fun Losing the 2008 NBA Finals!

Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll

There are numerous reports that Kevin Garnett has been traded to the Celtics for Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff, Sebastian Telfair, Ryan Gomes and a draft pick or two.

This is a trade that will work for both teams.  From Boston’s point of view, making the trade now instead of during the draft allowed them to send their #5 pick to Seattle instead of Minnesota which allowed them to add Ray Allen and KG.  I doubt that Danny Ainge planned it that way, but the Allen deal was only going to make them competitive, not put them over the top.  They still had a mismatched team of prospects and a couple of vets in the win now portion of their careers.  Now a triumvirate of KG, Paul Pierce and Allen will make them instant contenders for the next two or three seasons.  Their bench will be pretty thin, but with players like Glen Davis, Gabe Pruitt, Leon Powe, Allen Ray and a healthy Tony Allen it should be deep enough to get them by.

Minnesota had to make a deal.  There is not a trade in the world they could have pulled off leaving their fans saying, “Wow, I am so glad we traded KG, we got more than he was worth.  Great job Kevin!”  It would do no good to watch KG kill himself to end up 9th or 10th in the west again. They now have a nice young nucleus of Randy Foye, Gerald Green, Corey Brewer, Al Jefferson and Craig Smith.  Telfair is not a completely lost player.  In an up tempo system I think he can do quite well.  Believe it or not, the future in Minnesota looks brighter today than it did yesterday.  The key will be to get another GM in there to handle the rebuilding.  If they leave McHale in there to screw the team over again fans will burn down the Target Center or whatever it is called now.

From the Nuggets’ perspective for this season there is one less dog in the fight for the playoffs.  The division just got a little easier and they should be able to take advantage of Portland, Seattle and Minnesota all rebuilding at the same time, to get a few more ticks in the win column.  They were a combined 8-4 against those three teams last season, but hopefully this season can make it 11-1 or 10-2 at the worst.

From a league perspective the seepage of talent from West to East has picked up steam in the last month.  The East has added KG, Ray Allen, Rashard Lewis and Jason Richardson while the West has added Darko Milicic and Grant Hill.  A couple more offseasons like this one and the East will be much more competitive as a whole.

From a skeptical perspective I wonder if David Stern woke up this morning and saw the the media was still all over the Donaghy scandal and he placed a call to Danny and Kevin “recommending” they make a deal to put a new headline on the NBA home pages of the big Internet sites.  Add in the fact that baseball’s non-waiver trading deadline is tomorrow and it would be another example of Stern doing something to steal the spotlight from another sport.

In closing let me say this.  It has been great to watch KG battle over the years.  You always knew what you were getting into when Minnesota came to town.  He always made a game worth the price of admission.  Kevin, good luck and may the Celtics make it all the way to the 2008 NBA Finals where they can have the honor of losing to our Denver Nuggets.

David Stern Gone Wild!

Born a Nuggets Fan has moved to Pickaxe and Roll

Crank up the late night commercials with the drunk girls committing all kinds of debauchery.  Is David Stern looking into a camera in his office and slowly pulling up his dress shirt?  It is a possibility because we have another episode of David Stern Gone Wild queued up in the DVD player.

 

Anyway, I will try to keep from beating a dead horse, or a dead playoff season, but with the Nuggets out and the Jazz sitting in the Western Conference Finals (how the Sam Hill did that happen?) awaiting the winner of the Suns/Spurs series I have to write a little more about the suspension to Amare and Diaw. 

I just listened to David Stern’s performance on The Dan Patrick Show and I was pretty shocked at his demeanor.  He was very combative, disingenuous and sarcastic.  I have no idea how many other interviews he had done to that point, I am guessing not more than a handful, but he escalated the conversation to a contentious debate immediately.  I was impressed that Dan Patrick was able to maintain his composure.  Stern made the interview very difficult from start to finish. 

Patrick tried to make the point that this was not a couple of scrubs in a mid season game, but this was an All-NBA player had been suspended form a crucial playoff game.  Stern instantly mocked him saying that he will take note next time not to apply the rule to star players even though this is a valid point that.  The situation calls for a more significant look at the rule and how it should be applied. 

Stern did say that he was not pleased with the result of the penalty and he would be happy to work with owners to change the rule if the owners so desire.  He played the victim the entire time claiming that he had no choice but to follow the rule as it was written, which he believes leaves no room for interpretation. 

Stern seems to revel in the perception that he will do the “right” thing every time based on the rules.  It does not even matter if in the short term the consequences for his league are negative.  He knew he would take the bullet and this would be an unpopular decision.  In his mind he has stood up for what is right, but it is more about what he believes the sponsors of the league want to see.  This decision was about his view of himself and how he wants to be perceived by others than about the NBA and what is best for the fans that make the league go. 

It did take courage, in a masochistic way, to implement the rule based on a strict interpretation, but it would have also taken courage to decide that Amare and Diaw could play tonight.  Doing the right thing is not always doing the hard thing.  We could have all taken umbrage that the rule did indeed work and no one from either bench entered the altercation. 

It has been pointed out in many places that it is natural to stand up for your teammates, especially you small point guard with a bad back.  Add in the fact that the Spurs (Bruce Bowen) are doing all that can be done to rough up Nash and Amare and can nay of us blame Amare and Diaw for how they reacted?  Then in a split second, they realized that they could not rush onto the court and they returned to the bench.  Did what they do in any way threaten to heighten the tensions or escalate the altercation between the two teams?  Obviously it did not.

This decision is designed to make a statement that there is no place for violence in the NBA.  Stern believes that if they stick to the strict interpretation of this rule that players will learn to sit still with their hands in their laps when any potential brouhaha is simmering.  This position is preposterous.  If no suspension had been levied, would players instantly begin running away from the immediate vicinity of their bench in order to get involved in fights?  Of course not, and that is the bottom line of this argument.  Would we be heading down a slippery slope leading the NBA to lose control of its players?  A thousand times no. 

The rule has worked and continues to work.  It worked in New York when the Nuggets and Knicks got into it and it worked Monday in San Antonio, but apparently it did not work well enough for David Stern because Amare and Diaw got too close to being to close.

In my previous post I gave a couple of alternatives that the league could have chosen in order to avert this very situation, but in looking at the rule closer, my favorite one is not an option.  I wanted to see Amare and Diaw sit out the first game of next season, but the rule states that any suspension must be served the following game, unless enough players are suspended that the team cannot field the minimum of eight players.  Talk about no room for interpretation.

The two remaining logical alternatives that the league could have worked from are Amare and Diaw did not leave the immediate vicinity of the bench, or that this was not a true altercation as no fight took place.  Either one of those would have preserved the spirit of the law and allowed the game tonight to be played at full strength.  It is clear that the term “altercation” is open for interpretation because Stu Jackson claimed in a separate interview that when Tim Duncan was on the court there was no altercation between Francisco Elson and James Jones.  I am sure we could come up with a more vague word than altercation, but it would not be easy.

It is sad that the league could not realize that they could maintain the integrity of the rule and still allow the actions of Amare and Diaw to go unpunished.  Doing so would not have caused an eruption of bench clearing brawls nor would it have ushered in a new era of violence.  It just would have preserved this series that is about all we have left to enjoy in this playoff season.  Then again, maybe
Phoenix plays out of their minds tonight and pull off a true upset that will change the balance of power and signal an end to the Spurs era. 

I guess even without Amare we all better watch tonight, you never know when history might be made.  That is what is so great about sports even when commissioners go wild.