Back by popular demand, here is our resident NBA guru, Josh “The Beast” Moore. Make sure you check him out at his home base, Eastern-Hemisphere, where, unlike me, he shows he knows a thing or two about something other than sports.
Yesterday the finalists for the HOF were announced and it honestly brought back a lot of good childhood memories and some bad, but for the most part it left me even more disgusted with the current state of professional basketball, you know the Nothing But Athletes league. I’d bet anything that half the current crop of the NBA don’t know who Hakeem Olajuwon is or who took that double nickel from Jordan and where it was played, consider that athlete’s greenspeak or moore-speak if will. In many ways when it comes to basketball, I can relate to disenfranchised conservatives like Ann Coulter, in the sense that the fundamental core of what I believe in has been invaded by populists. No one on the face of this earth can successfully argue that the game itself has changed for the better, this generation of professional basketball is producing coaches that have never played the game before or in the case of the Nets coach, was promoted from the mail room to company president, and guys like the head of player development for the clippers who was once a daytime soap star and is known, moonlighting as a serious basketball mind. The power structure of professional basketball is more concerned with getting the Masonic ring of inclusion into this super elite club than what’s right for the sport, and that is the problem. But I guess when you apply the rational that it’s all about money and there has never been anything pure about sports and that the last people to figure that out is the athletes, then it all adds up.
So in light of the naming of this year’s H.O.F finalists, I thought that it would only be fitting to (as always) briefly examine an era that by all accounts wasn’t a commercial or financial success but was the most loved era ever and the resume and skill set of one of the finalists and one of my favorite (undersized) centers of all time, Hakeem The Dream.
I can’t help but wonder where Olajuwon would fit in this new populist driven NBA. Would he be looked over because he’s not as athletic as say, oh, Chris Wilcox? Would he be a super talented piece to a garbage team of high schoolers that aren’t quite Lebron or Kobe , or would he be on a team full of untalented, overhyped college kids that were terribly failed by the win first era of college basketball? Who knows— Olajuwon was probably the least of the high flyers on his famous University of Houston team and was grossly overlooked from 1984 to 1994, when he won his first NBA title. The lack of presence of something similar to Olajuwon is very sad and largely in part to the inadequate/capitalistic factions in pro-basketball that I spoke about earlier.
Anyway, Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon was the type of professional athlete that’s obsolete today, with maybe the exception of a Tim Duncan in the sense that he was a very successful, athletic but not super athletic basketball savant that was very humble and played for the fans and not the advertisers. The Dream was the only man (not named Jordan) to win a championship in the 90’s that counted (99 didn’t count), which says a great deal about how good he was, considering that guys like Barkley, Ewing, David Robinson, and Karl Malone were in their prime during the first post Jordan era and his achievements also speaks volumes about what NBA player development once was. He is one of 8 players with 20k points and 12k rebounds, the all time leading shot blocker with 3,830, led the league in blocks twice, was the first person in NBA history to get 2,000 blocks and steals, had 14 triple doubles, one of only three players to record a quadruple double, named first team All NBA six times, second team three times, third team three times, made nine all defensive team, played in 12 all star games, 145 playoff games, won two playoff MVP awards, won one league MVP, and back to back world championships. Enough said…It’s good to see guys like that get honored before they die. If the NBA feels like they are running out of great basketball stories to tell then they should go back to the 90’s. Being a person that absolutely loves the game, it’s painful to see what the NBA is becoming, but man was it once special to watch and dream about because of guys like the dream.
This class of potential Hall of Famers is pretty loaded and I certainly hope they all get in. On a side note, if you’re ever visiting the basketball hall of fame somewhere on the first floor you can catch a glance of my 1996 high school national championship team. I was pretty skinny in that picture, so try not to laugh too hard.
NBA ALL STAR WEEKEND COVERAGE/NEWS!
Well there really is not much to cover at this point and I doubt that I will cover it or start a new post for it unless something crazy happens. Dwight Howard had a series of historical dunks, with the superman dunk being the most special of them all. He single handedly brought the Dunk contest back, it was great to have my son see that, seeing his reaction to it was really special.
I think I need to clear up my position on professional basketball for anyone that might be confused. I absolutely love the game of basketball, I love everything about it, teaching it, learning it, and playing it. If the system was truly a meritocracy and the game wasn’t truly the first real love of my life, then I’m sure I wouldn’t be nearly as disgusted with the political side of the game as I am.
So now on to other news, If Devean George is the reason this Jason Kidd trade don’t go down, then odds are he’ll never play on another NBA team again after this year, and rightfully so. This is just another example of Mr. Insignificant having an identity crisis and while I absolutely love the game, I have to say that something must be fundamentally wrong with the league when you see these types of situations of irrelevant guys happening more often. But what I think is funny is the fact that these are the so called good guys.
There was a major trade today involving the Kings and the Hawks that sent Mike Bibby to Atlanta for Anthony Johnson, Tyronn Lue, Lorenzen Wright, forward/center Shelden Williams and a second-round pick in the 2008 draft. Is it just me or does it seem like every time I talk about a situation, it comes true? Wasn’t I just talking about Bibby being dealt and Atlanta potentially doing something with the Nets in order to get some of their young talent that just haven’t jelled yet out of there? Josh-Stadamus, maybe? I think this trade is only good for Atlanta if they plan on dealing Bibby to a contender tomorrow for some more pieces and draft picks, otherwise they just picked him up for half a season, because if I’m correct his contract is up at the end of this year. If Bibby could end up in a Lakers uniform next year IT’S OVER FOR THE WEST! New Jersey still has some very interesting bargaining chip and if the trade goes through they have even more IMO. Maybe Dallas should be looking to see if they can get Mike Bibby, but that really wouldn’t solve their problems.
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