Published Daily  

Basketball from a fans perspective

NBA expansion

The NBA is not expanding soon however deputy commissioner Mark Tatum did recently address the issue. The city he mentioned as a candidate for expansion was not Seattle or Las Vegas, it was Mexico City. In the past the NBA has scheduled exhibition and regular season games in the capital city of the nation. In addition the Capitaines de Ciudad de Mexico (Mexico City Captains) began play as an NBA G-League team this month. Of course the team must do well to determine the interest of the game in Mexico City.  City population would be a non-factor, it’s larger than New York City, that’s not to say every citizen would be attending NBA games.

Website sportsaspire.com list the 7 most popular sports in the nation and guess what’s missing…basketball. That’s certainly not intended to say there is little or no interest but probably the G-League team will be a better opportunity to make a judgement. Tatum places this prospect down the road a bit so its most likely the NBA will expand to Seattle and Las Vegas prior to seriously looking at Mexico City. Flight time is not what we might believe, as an example from Toronto to Mexico City is 5 hours and 15 minutes. Flying from Seattle to Mexico City is that same 5 hour and 15-minute flight. In this instance I looked at Toronto and future NBA city Seattle for travel times. The Texas cities along with New Orleans, Phoenix and Miami would be shorter flight times. 

What is it?

A new term has come into our lexicon (at least for me). We are hearing “generational” to describe an athlete. It’s been applied to the Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, it’s also been applied to unproven French phenom Victor Wembanyama. What exactly is considered a generation, I had to check a thesaurus for a definition? According to the thesaurus a generation is reported to be 25 years if that’s the case we might be stretching the use of the term a bit. As an example we’ve heard it said, “Wembanyama is the best NBA basketball prospect since LeBron James”.

Wemby as he’s nicknamed is 19-years old…LeBron will be 38 at the end of the year. That’s enough age difference LeBron could be his father but certainly not 25-years so what gives. I suppose it is simply meant to describe a Patrick Mahomes or Victor Wembanyama who appear to have more “tools” than athletes of their generation. In truth we could say LeBron had more tools than the classes of 2000 through 2005 but that’s only a statement of conjecture not actual fact. We use the term unicorn to describe a multi-talented basketball player, but we don’t use generational to describe them. In my view the two terms should never be mixed with the other.

A good start

Mizzou won its first game with Dennis Gates as head basketball coach, as indicated yesterday there were a winner over Southern Indiana 97-91. The first positive, the section at Mizzou Arena was devoid of students last season but practically full for this game. Other portions of the arena not so much as Mizzou Nation had little idea what to expect in this first game under Gates. Mizzou shot well from the floor however improvement is required from the 3-line.  Mizzou and Southern Indiana were even in all facets of the game except 3-point shooting. Southern Indiana shot a sizzling 50% from 3, this and the fact Mizzou appeared to relax allowed Southern Indiana back in the game. Mizzou won by 6 but had a 20-point lead at one time before eventually closing out the game. Despite the comeback let’s check a couple of areas, Mizzou had only 13 turnovers for the game.

Last season every game except two they had a greater number, in addition the defense forced Southern Indiana into 22 turnovers. Southern Indiana shot 15-30 from 3 (50%), few teams are going to shoot from 3 in a similar manner. One more bit from Gates, when SI came roaring back the coach said, “I could have switched from man to man to a zone, but I didn’t want to. He said, “It’s a teaching moment” which is a takeoff to me from Phil Jackson. The former Bulls and Laker coach rarely took time outs, his desire was for the team to figure out what they needed to do. Kobe Brown one of the three returnees led the way scoring 20 points and snatching 14 rebounds off the boards. It should be of note Brown grew an inch and now stands 6 foot 9, in addition he is relieved playing the point this season with two-point guards on the roster. Finally this piece, Gates indicated he would utilize his entire roster and that’s exactly what he did playing 11 members.     

Expectations  

Much has been written or reported over the airways the slow start for the Lakers. If we check the standings the team had a losing record last season despite having LeBron James and Anthony Davis for portions of the season. It’s the “other things” they failed to accomplish which saw them finish below .500. What about this season excepting the Lakers? The defending champion Warriors, the Nets, Clippers and Sixers were certainly projected to have better records than registered thus far. If we check the Sunday morning standings the Rockets, Pistons, Magic and Hornets all have below .500 records.

The expectation for these teams we suppose would have been different than the Warriors, Lakers and others. Expectations up or down can and do vary, while there are several teams playing much better than expected. Can we say the Cavs and Jazz at least to this point have exceeded expectations. The basis for all teams playing less than stellar basketball varies depending on a range of factors. Injuries certainly can be an issue in inadequate performance. Adjustments to a new coaching scheme or failure to adhere to the existing coach. By no means have I detailed all the reasons for a team’s inferior execution thus far, these are just a few random thoughts as to why teams fail to meet the expectations of management and much of the fan base.

Hold on a moment

We believed the news reports, Ime Udoka would become the Nets coach replacing Steve Nash. At this point interim coach Jacque Vaughn is still in the main chair and for now there appear no plans for him to slide over to the assistant coaches chair. Reports are circulating there is a holdup on the Udoka hire. We can only speculate at this point until we hear official word but here goes. Could there possibly be a Human Resources issue regarding the hire or maybe something else.

I’m unsure if other Celtics commented on the reported hiring but Marcus Smart did. “How can he (Udoka) go from suspended to coaching another team in the same season” or similar words? Maybe it’s something else with the drama surrounding Kyrie Irving continuing to suck all the air out of the room. In all likelihood you will probably have an information update prior to me, despite that fact I will attempt to bring everything up to date as soon as possible.