The English language is a funny thing. You'd think that big word catalog called "the dictionary" would give us all we would need to express ourselves. Instead, we rely on a cache of sayings that work as short cuts to tell the story. Ridiculous images like elephants in our rooms replace straight-forward talk like "we need to talk about something."
Of all of our expressions, one of my favorites is "let's be honest," as in, "let's be honest: we both know you didn't wash your hands," or "let's be honest: you aren't going to get a workout with North Carolina no matter how many times you send Roy Williams that tape of your dribbling drills in the driveway." "Let's be honest" cuts right to the chase; in spite of all of the nonsense that preceded it, it introduces the real truth. And most of all, "let's be honest" let's everyone else know they're full of it.
Well, we're nearly to the halfway point of the NBA season and it's time to stop fooling ourselves. Here's my dose of honesty at the NBA's mid-point.
Let's be honest ... You still don't want to see the Boston Celtics in the playoffs. Yes, they've looked old and lifeless since they lost to the Lakers on Christmas. But you don't think they're saving something for April, May, and June?
Remember, this team played the NBA's longest season ever last year (109 games!) and features three guys who were all drafted before LeBron James started high school. They're old, but not dead.
Let's be honest ... LeBron has the MVP mostly wrapped up, and that speaks to how worthless the award is. Oh, LeBron is certainly the player who contributes the most toward winning of any player in the league this year. But he was last year, too. And the year before. The MVP has become a silly wrapper that shrouds writers' need to create narratives for the season.
Last year, Dirk Nowitzki courageously makes another run at the season after their embarrassing upset the year before. MVP. In 2000-01, Allen Iverson keeps his nose clean and lifts the Sixers from mediocrity. MVP.
The MVP meant something until the late-1990s. The writers used to have no problem giving the same guy three in a row. Bill Russell had three in a row. Wilt Chamberlain had three in a row. Larry Bird had three in a row. Nobody other than Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan won for a six-year span. Now the award looks like the Heisman Trophy; we'll give you one for a good season, but you better blow us away the next year to have any chance.
For the MVP's first 37 years, 11 times the award was given to the same guy as the year before (a repeat). That's just less than 30 percent. In the last 15 years (beginning with Charles Barkley's bad-to-good narrative in 1992-93), the MVP has been a repeat just twice, about 13 percent of the time. Should I be shocked that Shaq, one of the five most dominating interior players in the league's history, has just one MVP? It's a meaningless award.
Let's be honest ... Speaking of LeBron, there are only two places he may be playing basketball at the end of 2010: New York or Cleveland. If it's about winning, as he says it is, he'll stay in Cleveland. If it's about personal numbers and legacy, he'll have a tough choice to make. If it's about coach Mike D'Antoni's up-tempo system or an infatuation with being Gotham's Batman on the court and Bruce Wayne in the clubs, then it'll be New York.
Apologies to New Jersey, Dallas, Miami, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles (twice), the entire continent of Europe, and whatever team on Mars has the rights to Marvin the Martian. But it was fun while it lasted, right?
Isn't that the biggest story of the summer of 2010 that nobody is talking about? With all of these teams shooting to have massive cap space at that time, the dominoes will be falling all around. For instance, won't this summer's free agent crop be cheaper to harvest for teams not in the 2010 derby? Won't there be some value there? And considering nearly half the league has gutted its roster in some way to make a run at this, will teams be scrambling to throw max contracts at the undeserving scraps once LeBron, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, and Amare Stoudemire come off the market? There could be some crippled franchises once this thing plays out.
Let's be honest ... "Slumdog Millionaire" would be one of the weakest Best Picture winners in Oscar history. Don't get me wrong, I really liked this movie. The story and its mechanics were very original and well executed. But the buzz propelling "Slumdog" comes off as a little too self-satisfied for me. Would the same story set in the United States with American actors be nearly as popular? I think it would be just as well received publicly, but I also think some of the critical fascination with it for awards season is pretentious cross-cultural mania. And congrats on the Golden Globe.
Let's be honest ... The All-Star Weekend Dunk Contest isn't dead, but it's in a coma. The Dunk Contest will never die, because frankly, would couldn't watch world-class athletes throw down tomahawk dunks for hours at a time? But I see three major flaws that will continue to damper the event.
First, an infusion of stars would help greatly. With very sincere apologies to Dwight Howard, he's not Kobe, LeBron, Jordan, or Dr. J. Let's say Nike, Gatorade, or whoever else might be interested in sponsorship put up a pool of $1 million or more. Do you think LeBron and Kobe might find the time to participate then? And with that much on the line, wouldn't the intensity be ramped up? Stars + cash. I'm not reinventing the wheel here.
Secondly, the bar has been pushed very high. In the event's early years, a Dee Brown could win by dunking with his forearm covering his eyes. Now? He'd have to do that with a birthday cake with lit candles on his head just to get out of the first round. Howard impressed with his Superman cape dunk last year; I say we encourage the continued use of props.
Lastly, the NBA has adjusted the rules so we won't have to see Nate Robinson attempt the same dunk 15 times before he makes it, but we can tighten the rules up some more. As it is now, contestants get two minutes and then two final attempts after that. But how about this: the two minutes still apply, but each dunker can only try each dunk twice. So that sick helicopter leap from a two story scaffold into a shark tank reverse jam you're working on? You can try it twice, but if you miss both, you can't try it again. No matter how cool a dunk is, once we've seen the lead up 10 times, it's going to be a letdown to see the final product.
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