Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

THE BULLS ARE ON THE CLOCK!!!&@^*&%!

Have crueler words ever been spoken?

Lo, just weeks ago, I lived in a world where I thought it was only ESPN’s coverage of the NFL Draft that would induce a level of nausea that could only be rivaled by Rosie O’Donnell mating with a bean burrito. But when these six frightful words callously traversed my aural canal, I was faced with the grim reality that the social cancer that is the mock draft had infiltrated my beloved basketball.

Previously, I had come to terms my annual ritual of boycotting Sportscenter during the months leading up to the NFL Draft, that time of year when Mel Kiper puts anything and everything On the Clock!, from the Redskins to the Dolphins, and often even more surprising entities, such as his childhood pediatrician and Black Tuesday. As Dostoyevsky once wrote, man is a creature than can grow accustomed to anything, and I had grown accustomed to the exercise in futility that is the NFL Mock Draft.

Continue reading Column :: Huge Balls: “Mocking Mock Drafts”

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

Generally speaking, I would feel confident in saying that I am one of the most ardent followers of the NBA that you will come across. But I would never, EVER try to match NBA wits with anyone who was around to witness first hand the Celtics of the 60’s, the Lakers of the 80’s, or even the Bulls of the early 90’s because, regardless of how many books I read or how much ESPN Classic I watch, I’ve come to accept the fact that I’ll never be able to experience the game the way people did during basketball’s glory days. It’s like that scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Williams says to Matt Damon “I’m sure you can tell me all about Michelangelo…, but you can’t tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel.” Indeed I could go back and memorize every box score from the ’86 Finals, but I could never understand exactly what Larry Bird meant to the city of Boston.

Ever since it started to seem likely that we were in fact headed toward a Boston-L.A. match up in the Finals, I’ve been lamenting more and more that fact that I missed out on the original Lakers-Celtics. But somewhere along the line I realized that anyone under the age of 30 or so is in the same boat, which got me thinking, what’s in it for us?

It depends what you’re looking for.

If we’re talking about a young generation trying to claim its slice of the NBA’s historical pie, the conversation starts and ends with Kobe*. Given his current situation, very little is standing in the way of him becoming one of the top ten players of all time. Given the shear volume of his career due to entering the league at only 18, his stats alone will be staggering. But as the Lakers stand, with a few crafty roster moves, Kobe should be competing for championships until at least 2011. Just for fun, let’s say he wins any 2 titles over that span and joins the Five Ring Club. Throw out all of the Bill Russell and MJ tag-alongs, and all of a sudden it becomes increasingly difficult to argue against him as one of the greatest players of all time. Love him or hate him, Bryant has the chance to begin a push to be remembered as one of the top ten players of all time over the next two weeks, which, with that first MVP trophy already in hand, could for all intents and purposes make my generation the Kobe Bryant generation.

But if we’re talking about a young generation building on the legacy of those who have come and gone, it would be a mistake to consider this just another NBA Finals. For that reason, what I’m most looking forward to getting out of two weeks of Magic-Bird montages is simply a bit of historical illumination, just to catch a glimpse of the glory days I’ve only ever been able to read about. Instead of regretting never having seen Bird and Magic go toe to toe or missing out on the McHale-Rambis Clothesline, one should rather seize the opportunity to own a piece of a rivalry that supersedes any player or generation. Liken it to Yankees-Red Sox of 2004, if you will. It didn’t matter if you were there in 1918 when the Sox won it all, or in 1986 when they lost it all; it was special because it was still just Yankees-Sox. That idea that a rivalry can transcend players, coaches and even bridge generations is what makes this Finals so significant, even for those of us that weren’t around for the previous installments. And tonight for the first time in 20 years, it won’t be Kobe-Garnett or Kobe-Pierce, it will just be Lakers-Celtics.

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*One brief sidenote: if the Celtics do win this series and Garnett and Pierce end up with similar performances, would this not be one of the most historically significant Finals MVP decisions ever? Think about it. With a championship, KG will be cemented as one of the all time greats, but with a Finals MVP trophy, he immediately jumps into the top 20-25. Pierce has even more to gain. For him, the Finals MVP trophy could be the difference between being remembered as a good scorer or as a great player. Fortunately or unfortunately, neither player could care less about such a thing. If only it were Shaq and Kobe in a similar situation.

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

Nathaniel S. Butler/NBAE/Getty Images

Of the two conference semi-finals series that went seven games, neither had inspired a lot of hope for a well-played, closely contested series finale. After all, each game in the Spurs-Hornets series had been decided by double digits, and watching the first six games of Celtics-Cavs had simply been nausea-inducing on more than one occasion. But to the delight of myself and countless other fans, both games met, and, in the case of LeBron v. Paul Pierce, exceeded any realistic expectations for a Game 7.

Rave
LeBron v. Pierce

The NBA could have hoped for nothing better than the epic battle staged between LeBron James and Paul Pierce Sunday afternoon. It was a win-win situation for the league, at least for the guy responsible for the Eastern Conference Finals ad campaign. You either have LeBron versus the Pistons, in which case you show clip after clip of LeBron’s 48 Special from last year’s game five, or you have Celtics-Pistons, in which you incite memories of the glory days of the late eighties and Joe Dumars and Larry Bird. But even for the rest of us, the game was still a treat to watch, and will probably be remembered as the best mano-a-mano game of the season. Continue reading Column :: Huge Balls: “Game 7(s) Rants and Raves”

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

In the weeks leading up to the NBA playoffs this season, I shared a sentiment with Charles Barkley in that, as he stated during one of TNT’s Inside the NBA programs, “This is gon’ be the best playoffs ev’r.” Perhaps my expectations were too high, but so far I haven’t gotten what I had hoped for. I never thought the Suns-Spurs series would be over in five games. I never thought the best first round series would be Boston-Atlanta. And I certainly never anticipated being so distracted and disgusted at that standard of officiating that has cropped up this playoff season, part of which has been just bad officiating and part of which is due to how the league has chosen to handle certain situations, particularly the flagrant foul.

Continue reading Column:: Huge Balls: “Officiating in the NBA Playoffs”

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

Dallas Stars: Lost at the San Jose Sharks Friday 3-2 (OT); Beat the Sharks in Dallas Sunday 2-1 (4OT)

It’s only fitting that the ballsiest player on the team scored the ballsiest goal of the season for the Stars as the team advances to face the Detroit Red Wings in the Western Conference Finals after appearing on the brink of completing an historic collapse. I’m talking about Brendan Morrow, for those of you who didn’t weather the five and a half hours it took to decide a winner early Monday morning. Just as significant as the playoff implications this game held, though, is the fact that this game reminded us that hockey games needn’t be high scoring affairs to be exceedingly entertaining. As much as the league has tweaked the rules in recent years to allow for more scoring, games like this, in which two goaltenders go toe to toe for hours, are the ones that will be tagged as “instant classics” in the hockey world. If you had asked me three weeks ago how much hockey I had watched this season, an honest response would probably have been about six hours. But not only did I watch as much Sunday night, I was on the edge of my seat the whole game, as Turco and Nabokov made ridiculous save after ridiculous save. As of 2:43 Monday morning, there isn’t a YouTube video of the game winning goal. But to me this HUGE hit Brendan Morrow layed on some San Jose chump might as well have been the game winner. Video, as well as Rockets and Spurs weekend news, after the jump. Continue reading Columns:: Huge Balls: “Weekend Wrap: Stars Induce Multiple Heart Attacks, Insomnia”

Column: Huge Balls

     by Rob Stiller

**UPDATE** As of Thursday afternoon, the New York Post and Chicago Tribune are, respectively, reporting that the New York Knicks and Chicago Bulls are both interested in interviewing Avery Johnson and Mike D’Antoni in the next few days, assuming the latter becomes available.
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Upon their elimination from the NBA playoffs Tuesday night at the hands of the up-and-coming New Orleans Hornets, the down-and-going Dallas Mavericks officially embarked on their most significant offseason since 2004. But what is the appropriate course of action, and what will Mark Cuban and Donnie Nelson actually do to restore the Mavs to their elite status? At this point, there is no right answer, but big changes are clearly on the horizon, given the team’s dismissal of Avery Johnson Wednesday afternoon. There essentially exist three philosophical approaches that the organization could take, none of which are necessarily appealing to the fans, but all of which management will have to weigh in the coming weeks and months.

1. Stand pat
Probably the most distasteful approach to disgruntled Mavs fans everywhere is the possibility that Donnie and Cuban decide to give this group one last chance to make it to the top. And for a number of reasons, this scenario is a lot more likely than most sports media outlets would have you believe.

1. Cuban just signed off on one of the riskiest trades in franchise history, and Cubes isn’t the sort of guy that’s used to failure. And to clarify, trading Kidd now would be one big admission of failure. It certainly wouldn’t be difficult to sell the media on the “perhaps the team just didn’t have enough games together to find their chemistry will Kidd at the helm before the playoffs” explanation.
2. The team’s most valuable trade chip just caused a media raucous after discussing his affinity for smoking dro during the offseason, and compounded that with the worst playoff series of his career. Even if the Mavs are shopping Josh Howard, which, one can only assume they are, the logical move is to wait until next season when J-Ho has had a chance to remind the league exactly the Mavs were unwilling to part with him this season. Prematurely moving Howard would only hurt the Mavs and move them further away from the upper tier of the Western Conference.
3. The other big ticket item the Mavs have to work with, Jason Kidd’s expiring contract, will similarly increase in value the longer they hold on to it. That is, as next season’s trade deadline approaches, teams working to clear cap space for the 2010 LeBron James Sweepstakes would LOVE to take on Kidd’s 21.3 million (!) dollar expiring contract.
4. Beyond the two players already mentioned, the Mavs have a lot of undesirable (Terry, Stackhouse) or just plain bad (Dampier) contracts that are essentially immovable. That is, unless the team starts stripping parts and selling them off for pennies on the dollar in order to clear cap space down the road. Continue reading Column:: Huge Balls: “What this Summer May Hold for the Mavericks”