The Book of Basketball (36 page)

13.
Dallas got suckered by a textbook contract run: for the last 3 months of ’04, Damp averaged a 13–13 and 2 blocks, highlighted by back-to-back 19–21 and 16–25 games in the final week. Take away ’04 and his career average is an 8–7. Good guy.

14.
Charles Smith played for Boston a year later and threw up enough bricks to build a three-bedroom condo in Charlestown. Another underrated mistake: cutting Glen Rice and Sean Elliott, which reared its ugly head when Hawkins got hurt in Seoul and Richmond was suddenly the team’s only reliable shooter. And on top of it, they cut Kerr despite an international three-point line. John Thompson, everybody!

15.
Let’s chisel this on Thompson’s Hall of Fame plaque: SCREWED UP ’88 OLYMPICS, COST USA GOLD right above the spot where it says HAD MOURNING AND MUTOMBO AT SAME TIME,

16.
My favorite awful Chris Wallace moves: tying up Boston’s cap space for three years with an alcoholic making the max (Vin Baker); taking Denver’s 11th pick in ’01 when he could have kept rolling that pick over, then picking Kedrick Brown; trading a number one for Juan Carlos Navarro; trading Joe Johnson and a number one for Rodney Rogers and Tony Delk without signing Rogers to an extension first; picking Joe Forte over Tony Parker; spending $21 million on Darko Milicic; giving away Gasol in a garage sale and getting his younger brother, which was like trading Sly Stallone in 1988 for 3 young character actors and Frank; buying
Broadcast.com
from Mark Cuban for 3 billion. Yeah, I know he didn’t do the last one, but it just
seemed
like something he would have done.

17.
Hold on, I’m not done with Wallace. My buddy House and I ran into him in a Boston bar after I slammed the Baker deal on ESPN.com. He tried to explain the logic, which was nice of him—but the explanation ended up being so brainless that House pretended to go piss and never came back. The highlight: when Wallace claimed Shammond Williams was the key to the deal. When I asked why Wallace didn’t at least swap first-rounders with Seattle once over the next five years—which they would have done because, you know, they were desperate to get Baker and all—Wallace briefly had a look on his face like, “Shit, why didn’t I think of that?” It was surreal. Thank God I had a witness in House.

18.
How you know an event qualifies: Will you always remember where you watched it? (Check.) Did you know history was being made? (Check.) Would you have fought anyone who tried to change the channel? (Check.) Did your head start to ache after a while? (Check.) Did your stomach feel funny? (Check.) Did you end up watching about four hours too long? (Check.) Were there a few “can you believe this”–type phone calls along the way? (Check.) Did you say “I can’t believe this” at least fifty times? (Check.)

19.
That game is the NBA’s version of the 18 missing minutes of the Watergate tapes. If you try to watch it, you could die like the characters in
The Ring.

20.
The lowlights: Reggie Miller retired; O’Neal morphed into an overpaid underachiever with a bad attitude and was sent packing to Toronto; Jackson and Jamaal Tinsley were peripherally involved in a strip club shooting; their fans grew to loathe the postmelee team so passionately that the Pacers panicked and sent Al Harrington and Jackson to Golden State for a Mike Dunleavy/Troy Murphy pu-pu contract platter; and they lost a reported $30 million in 2009 and might be a threat to relocate. Not even the Basketball Jesus can save them.

21.
I don’t think they win the ’04, ’05 or ’07 titles with Kidd. He peaked in ’02 and ’03 and would have been blamed if they
didn’t
win, which only would have made things worse.

22.
Well, unless you’re Mark Cuban—he gave up two number ones and $11 million for the right to pay Kidd three times as much as Devin Harris (a 2009 All-Star).

23.
Orlando never got properly skewered for this one. Who overpays for an NBA star recovering from a fractured ankle? I hope every wannabe GM learns one lesson from this book: don’t mess with broken feet and broken ankles.

24.
I’m wired differently: I would have been like, “Good luck, everybody! Thanks for the memories!”

25.
A great parallel: Billy Corgan started out just as fast as Cobain; by 2001, he was an egocentric bald guy who made music nobody bought. Nobody cares that Smashing Pumpkins vs. Nirvana was a semilegitimate argument in 1994, or that the 12 best Pumpkin songs might be better than the best 12 Nirvana songs. The fact remains, Nirvana came first and paved the way. It’s like comparing David Thompson to Dr. J. The stats might back you up, but you still can’t do it.

26.
My dad still complains about the refs in Game 4, when the Knicks rallied from a 16-point deficit with help from Jack Madden and Jake O’Donnell and won in double OT. Heinsohn chased the refs into the MSG tunnel afterward. When Madden screwed the ’91 Celtics on a bogus offensive goaltending call to end the Detroit series, my dad yelped, “Jack Madden hates us! He’s been screwing us ever since you were born!”

27.
This one gnaws at me. Bird was riding the biggest hot streak of his career: back-to-back buzzer-beaters in January, the 60-point game and memorable ass-whuppings of Cleveland and Detroit in the Playoffs. He showed up for practice before Game 3 of the Philly series with a heavily bandaged right index finger and started throwing up bricks. Averaging a 30–10 on 52 percent shooting before Game 3, the Legend floundered to a 21–7 with 40 percent shooting for his last 9 playoff games. Both the
Globe
and
Herald
connected the dots that summer, reporting that between Games 2 and 3 of the Philly series, Bird got into a fight at a Boston bar called Chelsea’s and punched out a bartender named Mike Harlow (eventually settling out of court with him). So much for the ’85 title. Mike Harlow came thissssssssss close to getting his own what-if in this chapter.

28.
I mistakenly attempted the “fourth person singular tense,” as perfected by Will Leitch during his reign as
Deadspin
editor. We don’t know why he wrote that way, but we always found it interesting.

29.
The smoking gun: Kobe was represented by Rob Pelinka, who orchestrated Carlos Boozer’s sleazy move from Cleveland to Utah.

30.
Devil’s advocate view: maybe Kobe just realized, “What the hell am I doing? It’s the Clippers! Am I crazy?”

31.
During the ’80 season, idiot Cavs owner Ted Stepien traded Butch Lee and his ’82 number one for an ’80 number one (destined to suck since the Lakers were a top-four team) and Don Ford, a run-of-the-mill swingman who looked like a cross between Craig Ehlo and Ted McGinley. With the exception of Mike Bratz, there has never been a worse player traded for a franchise-altering number one.

32.
Worthy averaged a 16–6 and shot 57 percent as a UNC senior; Wilkins averaged a 21–8 and shot 53 percent as a University of Georgia junior. ’Nique got knocked out of the Final Four; Worthy shined in the title game with a 28–17.

33.
Worthy could have played with Bizarro Worthy (Tom Chambers) on the ’83 Clips. I will explain.

34.
Yes, I wrote this at the time. Repeatedly. For anyone reading this book from 2030 on, the guy Atlanta took instead was a forward named Marvin Williams who couldn’t start for UNC the previous year. I thought this was a bad sign.

35.
In consecutive drafts, Hawks GM Billy Knight took Marvin Williams over Paul and Shelden Williams over Brandon Roy. There’s a 17 percent chance he just sold you this book at an Atlanta Borders or Barnes & Noble. Tall, late ’40s, black, seemed sad … was that him?

36.
I would have said “next decade” but supposedly Roy’s knee ligaments are made out of this book. By the way, there’s a 98.5 percent chance that “What if Portland had taken Durant over Oden?” will crack
The Second Book of Basketball
in 2016.

37.
Remember when the Texans took Mario Williams over Reggie Bush and everyone gave them copious amounts of shit? It was the best thing that ever happened to Williams; he killed himself to prove everyone wrong. NBA examples along the same lines: Paul, Karl Malone, MJ, Paul Pierce, Rashard Lewis and Caron Butler. Most underrated example: Tom Brady.

38.
Even weirder: the Knicks bought Bob McAdoo from Buffalo 20 games into the season and gave him the same money they would have given to Doc. Huh? Wilt flirted with a Knicks comeback that same summer—potentially, the Knicks could have trotted out Wilt, Haywood, Doc, Frazier and Monroe.

39.
This also ranks among the great what-ifs if you were a dealer living in Manhattan in the early ’80s. No Micheal Ray in New York?

40.
This was like Marbury for Kidd, only with the Russian roulette aspect of “each guy has battled serious coke/alcohol problems and will either make or break our franchise.” And yes, the Warriors were broken. They dumped him to Jersey for Sleepy Floyd four months later.

41.
Hold on, this gets better. Your 2005 NBA Executive of the Year? That’s right, Mr. Bryan Colangelo! I love the NBA.

42.
I’m not totally absolving Johnson here. So they dicked him around a little. When you’re playing with Steve Nash, do you know what that means?
You’re playing with Steve Nash! Why
give that up unless you have to?

43.
They downgraded from Deng or Iguodala to Rondo to Fernandez to nothing … which means they traded a number seven pick in a loaded draft for $4.9 million, less than they paid Banks to sit on their bench in ’07. Well done!

44.
My buddy JackO and I have been joking about that workout for years. Unless Penny was making half-court shots while stepping on broken glass and swinging his genitals like a lasso, there’s no effing way that one workout should have swayed the Magic from a Webber/Shaq combo. None.

45.
I hate the Magic, Jazz, the Heat and everyone else for the whole “It feels funny using ‘they’ when you write about a team whose name doesn’t end in an
s
” conundrum.

46.
Poor Carter ended up signing a two-year, $1.5 million deal with San Antonio, with Duffy’s agency repaying Carter the lost wages from the Miami deal. One of my top-12 can’t-be-proven NBA conspiracy theories ever: Miami paid Duffy to “forget” to send that letter.

47.
When the Lakers re-signed Kobe that summer, a secret handshake promise to trade Shaq ASAP was part of the deal. I know this for a fact. Let’s just say I had a few drinks with the right person once.

48.
I took this section from a February ’08 column. Within ninety minutes of it being posted, an enterprising reader made a homemade version of the ad and posted it on YouTube. I’ve never been prouder.

49.
Browne Sanders was the fellow Knicks employee who sued Isiah for sexual harassment and won. Isiah could have settled out of court but couldn’t even pull that deal off.

50.
During the Browne Sanders lawsuit, it was revealed that Stephon Marbury had boinked a female MSG intern named Kathleen Decker outside a strip club in his SUV.
The Daily News
showed a picture of the SUV on its front page with the headline, “Truck party!” Basically, the name for my 2007–8 fantasy hoops team fell out of the sky. Also, Decker’s father won the 2007 Most Horrified Dad ESPY.

51.
“Wait a second, there’s a Jack Twyman section?” you ask. You’re fuckin’-A right there’s a Jack Twyman section!

52.
You have to love a draft that had two of the top 20 what-ifs playing off the same scenario. I hope you fledgling GMs learned something in this chapter: don’t trade number one picks five years down the road for guys like Don Ford and Otis Thorpe. By the way, the guy who made those trades and helped kill professional basketball in Vancouver—Stu Jackson—was improbably hired by Stern and given a perplexing amount of power this decade. I had two different connected NBA friends inadvertently make the same joke: if Stern is Michael Corleone, Stu is definitely Fredo. In Fredo’s defense, I don’t think even he could have ruined basketball in Vancouver that quickly. Either way, I hope Stu turns down every one of Stern’s invitations to go fishing.