Game 11

Friday, January 13, 2012
Game 11: Wells Fargo Center
Sixers 120, Wizards 89

PHILADELPHIA — There is nothing as intoxicating as promise. Better yet, there was nothing as great as the unknown. Nearly 20 years ago basketball fans were drunk off the idea of a Eastern European basketball player plying his trade in the NBA with the best players in the game. In fact, the thought of this great unknown playing on the same team as Michael Jordan was like the formation of some sort of super team.

But for every Robert Altman ensemble piece, there is an Ishtar lurking stage right. To that regard, Toni Kukoc wasn’t exactly an NBA flop, but he wasn’t the Jordan of Europe, either. No, Kukoc was a decent NBA player… nothing more or nothing less.

In 13 NBA seasons, Kukoc averaged 11.6 points per game. At 6-foot-10 he became the stereotype for the Euro-styled basketball player. He was tall, but rarely went down to the low post. Instead, he worked out on the perimeter where he could be a playmaker—he was the quintessential point forward.

After earning three rings as the second scorer on those epic Bulls teams, Kukoc landed in Philadelphia in a three-way trade involving the Sixers, Bulls and Warriors and names like John Starks, Bruce Bowen, Larry Hughes and Billy Owens. It was a pretty exciting time for Sixers’ fans because coach Larry Brown was turning things around and Kukoc seemed to be ready to encore his act as the other scoring option with Allen Iverson.

The thing is, however, Iverson always preferred to work alone.

Kukoc lasted just 90 games with the Sixers (including the playoffs) and was dealt away to Atlanta for Dikembe Mutombo. In other words, Kukoc was integral in helping the Sixers win the Eastern Conference in 2001.

More than that, Kukoc could be the last of the great unknowns. Because of the proliferation of the media, players like Kukoc, Arvydas Sabonis, Oscar Schmidt, Sarunas Marciulionis, etc. are no longer unknowns.

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.

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.

Um... your town is cool, too?

Note: Variations of this essay have been posted on this space in the past, but since the hacky, trite, tired “city rip” pieces are en vogue, we reworked it and we present it again like new. Sorry, folks, if it makes you feel good about putting down another civic body, you have other issues… you know, besides being a hack.

THE TOWN FORMERLY KNOWN AS ANGRYVILLE — They handle defeat well in Chicago. After all, the Blackhawks, White Sox and especially the Cubs have taught them well. Just think how good at losing they’d be if Portland would have done the right thing and drafted Michael Jordan.

But in Chicago they don't mope, freak out, or litter the field with D-sized batteries during the action. They really don't even complain, to be perfectly frank. Actually, they're used to it.

They just go home. They leave early and fight traffic. They put the crippling defeats out of their minds by skipping work to play in the sun. They just forget about it as they frolic in those glorious public parks beneath sculptures created by Picasso and Oprah with cool drinks and lots of pretty friends.

Loss? Nah, they don't deal with it at all in Chicago. Who has the time? They actually have a beach in the city in Chicago. Life is good and they pick up the trash off the streets, too. Nice place Chicago… it helps them swallow defeat so well.

In Philadelphia we know loss all too well. It's in our DNA. It's intense... no wait, that's wrong. It's intensity.

At least it was.

Back in the old days we all woke up before the dawn just as the rage had regrouped so we could wipe the bitter-tasting bile that has encrusted the corners of our mouths with the outer black sleeve of our spittle-coated Motorhead t-shirts. Then we dragged our sorry asses off the couch where we collapsed just 45 minutes earlier and instinctively thrust a middle finger at the rest of the world.

The day had begun in Philadelphia. The fury must be unleashed. We lost again.

But there is always a fleeting moment — one that usually occurs in the time it takes to get from one knee to a standing position after unfolding oneself from the couch — when stock is taken. A moment, as fast as a flap of a hummingbird's wing, enters our twisted and angry heads:

World weary. Saddened by my years on the road. Seen a lot. Done a lot. Loss? Yeah, I know loss. I know loss with its friends sorrow, fury and death. Yes, loss and me are like this... we're partners as we walk on the dusty trail of life.

But something happened in October of 2008 when Brad Lidge threw that slider past Eric Hinske. Beneath that tiney, porcupine-like exterior, glimpses into our souls were exposed. There was warmth, fear, insecurity...

Victory?

Yes, victory. The Phillies won the World Series. The Flyers are going to the Stanley Cup (yeah, I said it). Both of these things are happening barely months apart. Kind of like it was 1980-81 all over again.

Is Bruce Springsteen still as popular as he was during the dawn of the Reagan Administration? Oh yeah, here in the dawn of the Obama Administration, an adapted Chicagoan no less, Springsteen is playing halftime at the Super Bowl.

In the old days during the B.C. Era[1], Chicago was a place that made it easy to look down upon with our sad, wretched lives of angry and failed dreams. In Chicago, with their manicured parks, gourmet restaurants, unimpeded gentrification, high-brow universities and gleaming skyscrapers the rest of us calls it the city of big shoulders. It burned down and rose again—bigger, better, cleaner, friendlier.

It gets cold and windy, true, but they take that in stride, too.

Those were the places Philly fans showed up en masse to watch our teams fight for our civic pride. Back in the old, B.C. Era, they saw us coming. We stuck out with that crippled walk of defeat, clenched jaws of stress and disgust, fists balled up and middle fingers erect. When we took the exit ramp off the boulevard of broken dreams to enter these happy, little towns, the local authorities were ready. They had been tipped off ahead of time and were prepared to set up a dragnet at a moment's notice.

But those condescending attitudes and the arrogance in which those people flit through life so carefree and cheery no longer sting. We don't turn them back with our jealousy and resentment. No, instead we take the hackery in stride. The mockery and stereotypes don't hurt any longer.

It's just one of those annoying things that championship cities are used to.

Hey, who knows... maybe there is a bit of respect coming our way? Oh sure, they still trot out the golden oldies:

Boo Santa. Cheer injuries. Snowballs at the Cowboys. Batteries for J.D. Drew. Cheesesteaks. Cracked bells. Anger and passion. Rocky Balboa.

But try this out... sportswriters are afraid of Philadelphians. At least that's (kind of) the contention of one mainstreamer writing for one of those new-fangled web sites.

Really? Uh... nice! So maybe this means that now that the proverbial shoe is on the proverbial other foot, the whole hacky city rip thing is finished? Instead maybe they'll write about the actual ballclubs instead of all the clichés?

Think so?

Of course not.

During the Phillies' run Charlie Manuel was often prophetic, but never more than when he said:

“Winning is hard. Nothing about winning comes easy,” the wizened sage of a baseball manager said. “... believe me, there's a price you pay for winning, too.”

That price can sometimes mean dignity, self-respect and the ability to think clearly.

We're inside the looking glass, people. The Phillies won, the Flyers need two more games...

All things considered, it ain't all that bad to be in Philadelphia. Let them say what they want because we win now. Someday we might even get used to it.

---

[1] B.C. is "Before Championship(s)"

Heavy is the crown

Blame Twitter. Or better yet, blame those bleep-stirrers that like to say outrageous things just for the sake of saying them. Heck, blame ESPN or whatever other breathless corporate monolith placed in charge of propaganda or sports discourse.

Actually, blame society. Yeah, you know who you are…

In an age of knee-jerk punditry and instant history, we’re supposed to swallow the worst in an athlete even before the corpse of a season grows cold. In this case, because the Boston Celtics are a better team than the Cleveland Cavaliers and knocked them out of the playoffs in six games of the Eastern Conference Semifinals last night, that whole “LeBron James is a loser who is leaving Cleveland” stuff is flying around like dandelion spores in a wind tunnel.

Oh yes, based on Cleveland’s early ouster, LeBron’s entire basketball legacy—and maybe even his worth as a human being—has been defined by a bunch of nonsense. Sure, the fact is LeBron James has not won an NBA title. However, to label him as a fraud, loser or worse, not only lacks perspective or responsibility, but it’s also plain stupid.

Again, you know who you are.

Nevertheless, here we are. This is an age in sports where the only thing that matters (after the endorsements and salary digits, of course) is the number of championships one has. Sure, there is plenty of weight to that premise and it’s fair to rate Bill Russell higher than Wilt Chamberlain because of the number of championships won. But that’s as far as it goes.

See, winning championships in sports is not a singular activity. There’s a whole bunch that goes into it and that doesn’t even include the uncontrollable forces. Luck and timing is huge. In fact, there are teams that won championships by accident. For instance, look at the 2006 St. Louis Cardinals, the 2003 Florida Marlins or the 1994/1995 Houston Rockets. Don’t forget about the 1978 Washington Bullets, either.

So don’t go labeling LeBron a fraud or loser just because his teams haven’t been good enough. The same thing goes for Ernie Banks, Ted Williams, Dan Marino, John Stockton, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing, Ty Cobb, Barry Sanders, Elgin Baylor or Dick Butkus.

Sometimes it’s not all about one guy. Other times, believe it or not, it takes a team to win a championship. So LeBron hasn’t won a title yet… big deal. The fact is he has just completed his seventh season in the NBA and is just 25 years old. He has two MVP Awards, two All-Star Game MVPs, a scoring title, two Olympic medals and one Finals appearance.

What did you have at age 25?  Debt? An inflated sense of entitlement and worth? A clue?

Answers: Yes, yes, no.

Throughout his life James has often been compared to Michael Jordan. Hell, they both even wore/wear No. 23 on the court. So what was Michael Jordan doing at age 25? By that point he was five years into his NBA career with one MVP Award and one trip past the second round of the playoffs. Take away the endorsement deals, the scoring titles and the Olympic medal and there wasn’t much to Jordan’s career at the same age as James.

And yet no one called Jordan a fraud or a loser. Far from it. People saw that Jordan was coached by Doug Collins on a team in which tired, old Dave Corzine, Orlando Woolridge and Brad Sellers got tons of minutes and realized changes had to happen. When Horace Grant, Scottie Pippen and Bill Cartwright finally emerged, it all started to come together.

So why isn’t it the same with LeBron? Mike Brown is his coach, a guy whose main job seems to be telling his players what time the next game starts. Somehow the Cavs made it to the Finals in 2007 with a team where James was complimented with the likes of Larry Hughes, Anderson Varejao, Drew Gooden and (gasp!) Eric Snow. The top man off the bench was Donyell Marshall.

Yep… anyone want to reexamine James’ body of work now?

Obviously something has to give for James and whether that happens for him in Cleveland, New York, Chicago or Los Angeles is the great unknown. But make no mistake about it… James isn’t going to win a title until he’s surrounded by the right players. No one expected Barkley to win it all with Hersey Hawkins or Armon Gillam, did they? Why is so much expected from James?

Workin' for the weekend

Unless you’ve seen it in-person and with slow-motioninstant replays, there probably isn’t much to grab the casual fan about the NBA’s dunk contest anymore. More than simply getting caught into the over-saturation of the modern media, it’s seems as if the dunk contest is a victim of its own success.

Blame Dominique Wilkins, Spud Webb, Doc and Michael Jordan.

Sure, the dunks still push the envelope a bit and the contestants are as athletic and innovative as ever, it’s just when one has seen Doc leaping off one leg from the foul line with the afro blowing in the breeze, and Jordan getting horizontal and looking down on the rim before he throws it through, well, everything else is kind of blah. That’s a shame, too, because dunking a ball still is one of those great feats for dudes like me.

Unrequited athletic goals: run marathon fast enough to qualify for the Olympic Trials and dunk a basketball on a regulation hoop.

Oh, but they’ll be dunkin’ ‘em tonight in Dallas. Instead of a multi-leveled scoring system with elimination rounds in a veritable tournament of dunkitude, tonight’s competition will have just five contestants, which seems like the perfect amount. However, the casual fan might not know who a few of the guys are.

One of the contestants is two-time dunk champion Nate Robinson of the Knicks. Robinson, as some might remember, is the 5-foot-9 guard who jumped over 5-foot-3 ex-champ, Spud Webb, in the 2006 competition and was declared the winner. It didn’t matter that the Sixers’ Andre Iguodala was the better dunker in the competition because the 5-foot-9 dude jumped over the 5-foot-3 guy. Meanwhile, Iguodala dunked one from the out-of-bounds side of the baseline while behind the backboard. There is no way Robinson could have performed a dunk like Iguodala’s and I’m pretty sure Iggy wouldn’t even need a running start to leap over Spud Webb.

Here’s the thing about the modern-day dunk contest that may be its flaw: who are these guys?

Yeah, we know who Nate Robinson is because he won the dunk contest twice. Yet when it comes to his play with the Knicks, Robinson is an OK player for a bad team. In fact, the best thing about Robinson as far as the Knicks are concerned is that he can be a free agent at the end of the season.

That’s certainly not a knock on Robinson’s abilities. Coming off the bench for the Knicks, Robinson still gets more than 13 points a game in 24 minutes. Yes, Robinson is flawed, but he’s not the Knicks biggest problem.

He’s just the dunk contest’s problem.

Admit it, Robinson is only in the competition because he’s 5-foot-9. That’s it. There’s no other appeal to having Robinson in there other than he’s small. That’s the same reason for Spud Webb’s appeal, too. He was 5-foot-3, which is shorter than just about every adult male in the country unless they are professional jockeys or coxswains. So putting the little guy in to dunk against the big fellas is part of the show. It’s cool, it looks impressive, but it’s kind of like going to the freak show to watch the dude hammer nails into his nose. Who cares that Dominique had better dunks than Spud Webb way back when?

Robinson says he’s going to win this year, too, which would make him the most decorated dunker in the slam dunk contest ever. That’s more than Jordan, Dominique, Harold Minor [1]and Jason Richardson.  However, Shannon Brown of the Lakers appears to be the favorite of the pundits who wax on about such things. Ironically, Brown is the same age as Miner was when the Cavs waived him after just 19 games in 1996.

And there’s the rub—Robinson, Brown along with Gerald Wallace, Eric Gordon and DeMar DeRozan are the dunkers in Dallas, and undoubtedly all of them can go all out because there isn’t an All-Star in the bunch. There’s no LeBron, no Kobe, no Dwight Howard or even Kevin Durant. It’s almost the same deal in the three-point shootout, though All-Stars Paul Pierce and Chauncey Billups will be firing them up. Still, it’s doubtful Pierce will walk into the locker room with the other contestants and start talking trash or ask, “Which one of you guys is going for second?”[2]

Here’s all you need to know about the modern-day NBA All-Star weekend… while the big stars like LeBron and Kobe are wearing their best tailored suit and sitting on the sidelines, Jason Kapono is cleaning up in the three-point shootout. Yes, Jason Kapono won it twice in a row when he was (2007 and 2008) playing for the Heat and the Raptors. Yet for one reason or another Kapono can’t get off the bench for the Sixers this season.

How does that happen? Kapono is shooting 38 percent on just 79 three-pointer attempts this season. And who wants to see him shoot the ball for the three-point title or in game action with the Sixers?

C'mon LeBron... just dunk some for us.

---

[1] Harold Miner had the ignominy of being nicknamed, “Baby Jordan.” Isn’t that awful? It’s especially awful considering that Minor couldn’t play a lick. “Baby Jordan” lasted just four seasons in the NBA with the Heat and Cavs, but won two dunk contests. Sounds like he was spreading himself a little thin—instead of dunking maybe he should have been working on other things.

[2] Was there ever a better bit of PG-level bit of trash talk ever? You’d never know it, but everyone says Bird was the greatest trash talker in the history of the game. One ex-player from that era told me that Bird sometimes would start in on the trash talk when going through the layup line. My favorite was a bit he used to give to Charles Barkley: “Hey fat boy, how late were you out last night?”What could Barkley say to that? He knew where he was and how late he was there.

Living in Kobe's (and Phil's) world

Wild and unparalleled success in sports is an odd thing to witness up close. So too is TMZ-like celebrity complete with television crews and boom mics (literally) chronicling every single step a guy takes on his way home from work.

Actually, it’s probably true of watching elite-level success in any occupation though it seems doubtful that there is celebrity attached to a top surgeon not on Oprah or CNN. Chances are a big-time scientist does not ever have to worry about being mobbed by adoring fans at the mall.
 
But for guys like Phil Jackson and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers, success is usually a very strange thing. In fact, it seems as if there is something about both men that makes others do things they wouldn’t normally do in hope of being noticed. Oh yes, Kobe and Phil make regular folks act brave.

Think about it—if you saw Jackson or Kobe on the street chances are you might shout something to them, or even stop and ask a question. Better yet, you might even ask for an autograph or a handshake. And yes, this is odd. It is especially odd because no matter what Jackson or Bryant have accomplished, they must be accountable to complete strangers.
 
Who do you have to be accountable to?
 
Yes, with great power comes great responsibility… or whatever it is that Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben taught us. The rules are different successful sports stars whether they like it or not.
 
For instance, look at Jackson. At 5:30 p.m. on Friday afternoon he was obligated to answer some question from the Los Angeles and Philly media on topics that he probably never contemplated. Like had he ever thought about the significance of owning the all-time record for victories in Lakers’ history? After all, with the 98-91victory over the 76ers at the Wachovia Center on Friday night, Jackson needs one more win to tie Pat Riley with 533 regular-season victories.
 
Does Jackson think about that kind of stuff?
 
“No.”

Not in the least?

“It’s just a matter of hanging around and showing up to work. That’s 90 percent of it… who said that, Woody Allen?”

Indeed that was Woody Allen who astutely pointed out that 90 percent of life was just showing up. The other 10 percent, perhaps, is left for answering questions and filling out paperwork.
 
Jackson is the only person in North American professional sports to win 10 championships as a coach. Certainly it helps that all he had to do was “show up” and coach a pair of teams with players Michael Jordan, Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal, but Jackson also won an 11th title as a coach of the CBA's Albany Patroons when his star was Frankie J. Sanders.

The J. stood for "Jumpshot."

Still, after six titles with Jordan and the Bulls and four in Los Angeles, Jackson is asked to ponder which team he should most be linked to.
 
Again, it’s doubtful Jackson has ever mulled an answer to anything remotely close to that question. After all, his legacy is pretty safe with both franchises.
 
“There's a generation of people that identify with the Showtime Lakers of the ‘80s and similarly with the '90s Chicago teams,” Jackson said. “I don't know if you can say we're the dominant team of this decade, but we're pretty close. So I'm sure there's a whole generation of kids who see me only as the Lakers coach. They're not familiar with the Bulls at all.”

Yeah, yeah… which is it, Bulls or Lakers?

“I'd have made the jacket with both sides—one side the Lakers, one side the Bulls,” Jackson smiled.
 
Jackson, though, comes from a time when the art of thoughtful give-and-take was part of being a living and breathing person. It actually mattered what people thought about certain topics whether they were an athlete or not. Sure, guys like Jackson were always asked for their opinions on a bunch of subjects simply because he’s famous and famous people, for some reason, have opinions that matter more than others. It’s the same deal with all the Lakers, because, as forward/reality-TV star Lamar Odom said, “Everyone on this team is Hollywood.”

Odom is right about that, but when it comes to the Lakers there’s one star shinier than the rest.

Now I heard stories about Michael Jordan’s days in Chicago where the reporters that covered the team rarely got a chance to stand next to the guy they were writing about. Sometimes, the stories go, they had a chance to shout questions at him as if he were a president walking across the South Lawn to Marine One. Most of the time Jordan planted himself in the middle of the practice gym or locker room and he was engulfed by cameras and recorders. He was in the middle of that pile up somewhere and the only hope for a lot of writers was to hear one little nugget or word from the man himself.

Toward the end when Jordan was playing for the Wizards, he moved his post-game tête-à-tête to a conference room where questions were shouted as if he were some Hollywood diva ensnared in some controversy. Cameras flashed and shouted voices collided in midair and made an awful mess of white noise. Sometimes Spike Lee was waiting in the wings.

That wasn’t quite the case with Kobe on Friday night at the Wachovia Center, though between the snap shots from camera phones and the boom-mic men blindly walking backwards, it would have been easy for someone to get run over.

All that just to hear what a kid from Lower Merion Township had to say about basketball.

Actually, the brunt of the questioning was focused on the back-and-forth scoring showdown between Bryant and Allen Iverson during the third quarter of Friday night’s action. Suddenly, for a handful of minutes, it was as if it was 2001 again for Iverson. For Bryant, however, it was just another Friday night. Nevertheless, the awful truth that no one really wanted to admit—especially Bryant—was that as soon as the Lakers’ star switched over to guard Iverson, the show stopped.

There is only so much room in the spotlight.

“He’s a scorer, he and I both,” Bryant said. “That’s what we do. We can score when we’re 70 years old.”

These days Bryant does a little more.

“It’s evident that he is one of the best ever to do it,” Iverson said. “He goes out there night in and night out and plays the same way every night.”

And every night he gets wrapped in a cocoon of otherworldliness. People steel up some nerve and get brave. They ask questions and snap pictures. They want to ask questions and hear answers no matter how mundane they are.

They want a moment where someone spectacular shows some humanness no matter how bizarre the setting really is.

This Time Jordan Really is Finished

Michael Jordan spent Wednesday afternoon playing 18 at Pine Valley, so by the time the fourth quarter rolled around he was pretty tired and content to watch his career wind down from the Wizards' bench. Tight and tired from a long NBA season and a round at one of the toughest golf courses in America, Jordan stretched out like an old man sitting on rocking chair on the front porch watching the world go by.

Nevertheless, no one in Philadelphia cared about his contentment. They wanted to say goodbye.

But gods don't answer letters... or do they?

"I said, 'Michael, I played here, I've at least got to be able to come back to this city. You have to go in,'" Wizards coach Doug Collins said. "He was so stiff and I said, 'Go in for a minute or whatever, let it get the ovation, whatever.'"

Jordan took his victory lap, got fouled and made his last two foul shots as flashbulbs lit up the First Union Center. Then, he exited the NBA forever.

And it is forever.

"Yeah, I just kind of got that feeling. Now I guess it hits me that I am not going to be in a uniform anymore, and that's not a terrible feeling," His Airness said. "It's not terrible. It's something that I have come to grips with and it's time. It's time. I have seen a lot of people say, 'My first time.' My second time.' This is the final retirement. You don't have to worry about me putting on another uniform, and I feel it. I feel it. I welcome the time away from the game."

The itch, as he once said, has been scratched.

And why not? The greatest player who ever lived deserves to stage as many comebacks as he likes. If he wants to play for the Lakers two years from now when he's 42, good for him. If he is going to keep playing, we're going to keep watching.

But this is it. After Wednesday night's regular-season finale in the First Union Center this fact was obvious. No, his skills haven't eroded that much — he's still the best player on his team and is typically one of the best players on the floor night-in and night-out. His jumper is still smooth and his release is lightning quick. He still has the imagination to make passes that most players can't see and make the moves to penetrate to the hoop.

Nor did he say he was "99.9 percent sure" this retirement was certain. He didn't have to. His body language told the story.

No, he doesn't looked like a tired old man, he just looks tired, period. Kind of like a guy who works 12 hours a day, six days a week with no support or feedback from his boss. He knows if he wants something done, he's going to have to do it himself without much help from anyone else. That will make anyone tired, even if he is Superman.

A surgically repaired knee, coupled with a long NBA season and teammates who don't play like they care will wear on the best of them. After all, it's not like he's passing it to Scottie Pippen, John Paxson or even Steve Kerr anymore. He has to go to war with Kwane Brown who played Wednesday night's game on autopilot, and Jerry Stackhouse and Larry Hughes who are only concerned about Jerry Stackhouse and Larry Hughes. Who needs that?

Yeah, it's easy to see why now is the time to get out. It's much different than it was when he won all those championships in Chicago.

"Everybody understood that winning attitude, everybody understood the dedication that it took to give up parts of yourself. I am trying to get these kids to understand that now, where you have to give up some of that selfishness, so that everybody else can showcase and bond and everybody shines. That's tough for some people," Jordan said. "I was taught that in North Carolina, obviously. Once I got into the pros and everything was thrown at me so fast, it was tough for me to become unselfish in some respects and let Scottie Pippen and Bill Cartwright and some of these guys step to the forefront and gain some of that notoriety."

But the biggest reason why this is it is because he's flat-out tired. Physically tired. Bone-weary tired. He has nothing more to give and nothing more to take. He has the championships, the MVPs and gold medals. The only thing left was a love for the game. That is the reason why he came back and it is the reason he stayed as long as he did with the Wizards.

"There's nothing else [he would] rather do. I think that really sums him up more than anything else," Collins said. "We can take out all the adjectives and everything but I think you can make it very simple: [He] loves to play the game and [would] love to play it everyday if he could."

Now when he plays it will be against his sons, whom he says are basketball fanatics. He'll spend more time playing golf at places like Pine Valley and hanging out with his friends Tiger and Charles and enjoying a good cigar. He won't have a plane to catch so he'll be able to take his time at home and be a father and husband. And oh yeah, there's a basketball team to run if he wants.

However, he'll never get over his first love. The one with a passion so hot that people couldn't take their eyes off him. Jordan has probably been on TV more than any president going back to Ronald Reagan. His posters and jump-man silhouette are in more homes than General Electric. People want to be close to him just because he loved something a whole lot.

"I never knew where my ending was going to be, but I once said that I won't be playing at the age of 40. Well, here I am, playing at the age of 40," he said. "It's like trying to determine how long you are going to love a person. Love is a very delicate thing; once you love it, you never lose the love for the game, you never know when you can walk away from it. And I tried a couple of times, obviously, for different reasons. But I've come to grips now, that as much as I love the game, there are other components that need my love, my attention, and I can easily walk away."

But before he sails off into the sunset, and we get to watch him dash up and down the court one last time, we think about what he meant to us. Not just the fans that buy the sneakers, the shirts and the very expensive tickets, but the regular people who are thrilled just to be in the same building as him and stare at his chiseled physique and scream when he walks by. How can we, the mortals, articulate that?

Those of us who remember him as a college freshman sinking that shot against Georgetown in the 1982 NCAA Finals or the guy who took off from the foul line and actually flew in the air, when we were just school kids, thought he was Superman. Later, when we had grown up a bit and saw him score 36 in the NBA Finals stricken with the flu and then hold that follow through after sinking the game-winning shot to win another title the last time he retired, we knew he was otherworldly.

We just don't know how to tell him thanks.

"I remember my dad talking about Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth, and I remember how in love with Jackie Robinson I became growing up in Brooklyn," Sixers coach Larry Brown said. "I even walked like him, and then my son got to see Michael and spend time with him, and he's going to be able to say the same thing I said about Jackie.

"Hopefully, our league will do what they did with Gretzky and Jackie Robinson and every time you walk into an arena, you will see No. 23 and everybody will realize what an impact he had on our sport."

Said Allen Iverson: "He was a guy that gave me the vision, made me want to play basketball. If I never saw Michael Jordan play a basketball game, then [I] might not ever be in the NBA. He's meant everything to me and he has meant everything to all the rest of the guys in the league and he's meant a lot to you all as well."

So how would Jordan like to be remembered?

"Just as a guy who loved the game," he said. "You can see the past, determination, and just the way that I played the game. I never, never took the game for granted. I was very true to the game and the game was very true to me. It was just that simple."

Maybe two words are the best way for him to be remembered:

The Greatest.

E-mail John R. Finger