Basketball from a fan’s perspective

Is there a deal in place

You might remember I wrote former Yankee and prospective Wolves owner A-Rod was captured more than once by the television camera recently. He was shown rooting for the Wolves to advance over the Nuggets in their playoff series. The first part is complete the Wolves beat the Nuggets and have advanced to the next round, the second round will be a slight bit more difficult. The second round is action off the court rather than on it.

 After an agreement was reached Wolves owner Glen Taylor claimed A-Rod and Marc Lore failed to meet the deadline for the final payment about $600 million to acquire the team. Taylor insisted the sale was off but apparently that is not quite the case. There is pending court arbitration to resolve the issue, my guess A-Rod will continue to appear at Wolves games until the “owner” of the team is determined. As you are aware I ain’t no attorney, I took shortcuts on this story in order to publish it for your consumption. I am sure there are media sources that go into far more detail than I did…seek them out for additional elements not covered here.

The "old" man

Kyrie Irving of the Mavs is 32-years old, without checking I’m sure he’s not the oldest player active in the playoffs. This however is a factor, Irving is the only remaining 30+ All Star caliber player remaining active at this stage, as for the others. Irving’s teammate and the clear leader of the team is Luka Doncic, he’s 25-years old. What about the Wolves, there is Ant Man 22 years of age and his teammate Karl-Anthony Towns 28 years old.

In the east we have the Pacers with 24-year-old Tyrese Haliburton at the point, Myles Turner with birthday 28 in March. As for the Celtics Jayson Tatum 26-years and Jaylen Brown 27 years old are the clear leaders of the Beantown crew. All four of the remaining teams have roster members past the age of 30, the exciting portion of this NBA playoff is seeing the youngsters take charge. Have we seen a changing of the guard in the playoffs? No LeBron or Steph sighting nor is there a Kawhi or Draymond to be found except at home.

Say what

I truly hope this is not me at any time, this is an actual headline I read. “The Wolves were built to beat the Nuggets,” my first thought was really, they were built to win. They were able to beat the Nuggets, which certainly was the case, to state the manner of the team’s construction was built for a specific team is ridiculous. The Wolves were built through draft choices and trades in the same vein of any other NBA team. Chris Finch was hired he assembled his staff and they began plans on becoming a winning team.

The intent was always to overcome the team in front of them. Once the playoffs began it became beating the Suns, it then became the Nuggets. There was no magic involved, win the game…win the series. Once again the Wolves were built to win, regardless of what occurs the balance of the playoffs keep that in mind. I don’t wish to “beat up” members of the media but sometimes I understand why coaches and players get upset. There are occasions when dumb statements or questions are asked of the media. The one below remains my all time favorite all these years later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atr60tR7Emo

“What do you want…what do you want?”

The headline is a sample of a conversation between my wife and me. It occurs at those times when deciding what to eat or where. In a similar vein that’s what’s occurred for me with you, I’ve said who I didn’t want as the next Laker coach without providing you names. Before I began naming names allow this brief departure, if we look at Darvin Ham he might have been a good hire initially however his first head coaching job saw him fall a bit short. That’s my reluctance with hiring a JJ Redick (no coaching experience) versus a Sam Cassell (assistant experience).

Redick and Cassell former NBA players come up short in my book, the list of impossible candidates include Pat Riley, Phil Jackson and Tyronn Lue. Any of the three named would be satisfactory however NONE are willing or able to assume the reigns as head coach. Who remains, how about Kenny Atkinson, Terry Stotts, Dave Joerger or James Borrego? Each of those named has spent time as a head coach although there might be questions on their resume they should be able to perform the task. There are other guys out there with extensive time as an NBA head coach. I wouldn’t hire Mike D’Antoni or George Karl, to me neither represents the future. They certainly had past success in the NBA but the game has probably passed them.

Bits n Pieces

Allow me to inform you of something that will not occur at least in the next few years. We have experienced a number of college teams changing conference affiliation over the last two years or so. Recently it was reported there was consideration for the Kansas Jayhawks to move into the SEC. Allow me to call that strictly a rumor for a key reason…football. SEC teams similar to others across the nation sometimes experience down years for their football programs. This is a basketball driven blog however the focus regarding this story involves football which pays for everything. Kansas finished with a 9-win season in 2023, prior to that it was 2008 the last time the school experienced a winning season. This story reminds me of a Big 10 one, it was rumored at one time the Big 10 also wanted Kansas too but passed due to their football program.

You are going to find this difficult to believe but it was true, if you’ve read this blog any length of time you are aware of bits of NBA history. Back then the NBA was a major league in name only, part of this was based on drug and racial issues in existence at the time. Between 1979-1981 the CBS Network the broadcast partner decided in favor of no weeknight playoff games in prime time. If a game were played at 7:30 or 8:00 p.m. it would be broadcast on a tape delay basis. Weekend games were a different matter, they were broadcast Saturday or Sunday afternoons. As for the weeknight games they were broadcast tape delayed after the nightly news and be shown 11:30 Eastern 10:30 p.m. Central Time.