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Pastimes : Basketball Junkie Forum (NBA) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wildstar who wrote (521)	4/11/2001 11:41:50 AM
From: Thomas M.	Respond to of 2232

I didn't really mean Whitsitt is a dunce overall, just that he seems to be panicking in these recent moves. I haven't followed his career very closely. But, from a distance he does remind me a bit of Braves' GM John Schuerholz - a cocky, self-promoting GM who has amazing resources, but can't build a championship team with them. The Blazers fell apart against the Lakers for a good reason - no leadership, no chemistry. Whitsitt brought in Pippen to lead them, even though he has never been a leader. Consequently, when Pippen disappears during the 4th quarter of Game 7 (no surprise), the GM has to take some blame. Just the fact that he rebuilt the team is not in and of itself a great credential for Whitsitt, simply because they have doubled the NBA salary cap. With that type of spending, one should expect a talented roster. And, the type of team he has built - a conglomeration of players with no rhyme or reason and no playing personality - doesn't show any particular managerial skill. In fact, I just remembered that Whisitt made a comment that it wasn't his fault that the team has bad chemistry, that it is the coach's job to get the players to play together. No, I have now convinced myself that Whisitt is a clown, that he doesn't understand what it takes to build a championship team, though I think he has a good eye for talent. Tom

To: Wildstar who wrote (521)	4/13/2001 11:18:14 AM
From: Thomas M.	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 2232

NBA enters the panic zone Mark Bradley - Staff Friday, April 13, 2001 The NBA differs from big-league baseball in that the NBA is willing to admit it has a problem. Baseball, as we know, will dither for decades over the most obvious point. But baseball's inherent reluctance to change can carry the occasional benefit. It can keep the sport from doing what the NBA has done, which is lose its mind. Pro basketball has become almost unwatchable. Nobody runs the floor. Nobody cuts to the basket. Everybody stands around. The formerly free-flowing game has devolved into a series of one-on-one (or two-on-two) skirmishes. TV ratings are down, and that scares this cable-ready league to death. So a blue-ribbon panel decided that jazzing up offense could best be done by allowing zone defense. All together now: Whaaaaaat? Zone defense is the sworn enemy of movement. Zone defense promotes even more standing around. The way offenses seek to attack a zone is by shooting over it. And this, remember, is the NBA, where the 3-point line is more testing than the collegiate arc and where nobody can shoot anyway. This is a solution? Get ready for games both in and from the 50s. Meaning the early 1950s, that Paleozoic Era before the NBA adopted the shot clock, and also the 50s as a team's point total after 48 minutes of work. Get ready for bad shooting and wholesale standing and a product of such surpassing aesthetics as to rival the XFL. Get ready for this perceived solution to become a failed one-year experiment that leaves blue-ribbon execs asking, "What in the name of Zelmo Beaty were we thinking?" Then get ready for even more corrections and overcorrections, because the NBA is desperate. This is a TV-driven league. Ticket prices are so high that only corporations can afford them, and one look at the splash of empty seats for games involving even the bigger teams shows that two tickets at courtside aren't the lure they once were. So the NBA studies its nose-diving Nielsens and tries to give non-viewers reason to tune back in, and all it can think to do is serve up a tasty zone. The NBA got big by pushing its names at the expense of the game. It was all Magic and Michael and Larry and Sir Charles, which was OK until those guys got old and quit playing. They left behind a league designed for star turns without the stars to take them. It's one thing for Michael Jordan to go one-on-five, quite another for Ron Mercer. The "isolation" plays that Jordan made work to spectacular effect now stand as just another reason to grab the clicker and see what's on A&E. So now the panicky NBA is treating the symptom. The league hasn't gone bad because of the lack of zones. It has gone bad because there are too many bad games between bad teams and bad players. What the NBA should do is trim the number of franchises to 24 and slice its regular season to 60 games and try to start the playoffs before everybody is too pooped to run another step. What the NBA should do is stop making millionaires of teenagers and let them learn their trade in a minor league that Isiah Thomas hasn't managed to bankrupt. What the NBA should do is address the core quality of its product, not the cosmetics.