“The ship be sinking”
The grammar of course is incorrect, the above phrase was uttered by long-ago Knick Michael Ray Richardson back in the ‘80‘s. He made the statement at the time the Knicks were going through a rough stretch of play. We could fast-forward to 2013 and apply it to the other New York team----the Nets. Injuries have contributed to poor play recently but Lawrence Frank. Most of us probably believed there would be a learning curve for Jason Kidd to cease playing one week and coaching the next. He (or the front office) hired veteran coaches including Frank. I believed there might be an adjustment required because Kidd had once been Frank’s point guard. The Nets announced Frank has been re-assigned other duties; in addition he will no longer attend team practice. We can read between the lines, was there a conflict between the coach and Frank?

UMass basketball
Did you know Julius Erving, i.e. Dr. J. played his college ball at UMass? Basketball fans can cite chapter and verse of his Hall of Fame career few are familiar with the school he attended. There may be a reason; the Amherst campus has probably distinguished itself more for academics than basketball. From 1988 through 1996 under John Calipari the basketball team was quite competitive. After Calipari left the program competed but flew beneath the radar of most. Coach Derek Kellogg arrived on the scene in 2008 and has slowly re-built the program. UMass had a losing record in his first two seasons but has won 20+ games the last two seasons. The Minutemen are 7-0 and ranked number 21, the first appearance in the Top 25 since 1998. 

"What in the wide world of sports is a goin on here?"
Movie fans will recognize the line uttered by Taggert the Slim Pickins bad guy in the 1974 movie Blazing Saddles. We could make the same declaration, have you checked the Eastern Conference standings lately? As this is published the Pacers and the Heat are the only two teams above .500. Injuries have really impacted several of the teams including the Knicks and Nets. As for the Celtics, 76ers and Cavs they are young teams struggling to learn how to win. 
 
Only one
The tallest skilled guard anyone had witnessed in the NBA up to 1979 was 6-5 Oscar Robertson. The term combo guard is used frequently in today’s vernacular; Robertson was probably the first although he was identified as a point guard. If we just look at Robertson’s shot total we might have the impression Robertson was more a shooter than a distributor of the ball. In his second NBA season (1961-1962) Robertson averaged 30.8 ppg, 11.4 assists and 12.5 rebounds a game. In 1977 Michigan State recruited a taller lanky 6-9 215 pound guard from Lansing (MI) named Ervin Johnson nicknamed Magic. We could state he was almost the polar opposite of Robertson; more a distributor of the basketball than shooter.

Magic was never blessed with terrific foot speed or a great defender, he made up in other areas of the game by working hard. He wasn’t a good shooter when he arrived in the NBA yet ended his career with a .520 percentage. He raised his 3-point shooting from a low of .226 to a high of .384 which led the NBA in the 1989-1990 season. It’s my belief if Johnson had not contracted the HIV virus he might have retired the all-time NBA assist leader. Magic averaged 11.2 assists per game over the course of his 13 year NBA career, his playoff average a whooping 12.3 assists per game. Almost single-handily “Magic” Johnson was directly responsible for “Showtime” era basketball in Los Angeles.

You can’t receive what you want
Conference versus conference play has been in effect during the early season. One of those is the Big XII versus SEC; Mizzou played West Virginia last night. Oh how I wish Kansas had been forced to play Mizzou, you remember Bill Self had stated “he’d never play Mizzou again.” The basis for his statement occurred at the time Mizzou left the Big XII for the SEC.