World Peace

Grantland has a great post by Jonathan Abrams about The Malice at the Palace … essentially a collection of thoughts by several of those who were there and (more or less) directly involved with the fracas.

One of the big takeaways is that the Malice was a fairly common NBA scenario that ran totally out of control because of the unusual volatility of one of the main participants (Ron Artest, a.k.a Metta World Peace) as well as the abdication of responsibility by those who are charged with keeping the order in such situations (first and foremost the game officials, who had let the game get totally out of hand even before Artest decided to deliver his “message” to Ben Wallace).  The fact is that crowd violence is never too far out of the equation in these situations - I remember that whenever I went to watch away basketball games in high school I always had my tire iron handy under the front seat of my car - and if even one level of security broke down, then you were right on the edge of something nasty.  Something nasty, like the Malice at the Palace.

At the end of the day, if the officials had started calling technicals and kicking people out as soon as the hard fouls started, none of this would have happened.  If Mike Brown would have gotten World Peace off the court right away, none of this would have happened.  If the Palace had a sufficiently large and competent security force, none of this would have happened.  And if the Pacers would have just headed into the locker room instead of responding to the taunts of the Pistons and the fans, none of this would have happened.  At the very root of the problem is the violence on the court which, if not contained, can ignite a flame that’s not so easy to extinguish.

So here we are, 7+ years later.  Ron Artest has won a championship, publicly apologized for imploding what was clearly a championship-caliber team, gone through years of therapy, become a poster boy for facing emotional issues, and changed his name to Metta World Peace.  Jermaine O’Neal, the leader of the Pacers at the time, not only had to see his most realistic shot at a ring disappear, but had to leave a team and a city that he genuinely loved.  And the Pacers have only this season struggled back to relevance behind a team that Larry Bird had to rebuild not only to win on the court, but to regain respect off court.

It is World Peace specifically that has undergone the biggest transformation: he has gone to being as impulsive and moody as an angry 13-year-old to a man who tries his best to be a good citizen in the world (hence the name change).  Along the way, it’s clear that he lost a lot of the edge that made him perhaps the best defender of his generation, and now his refusal to march to the same drumbeats as everybody has the narrative painting him as a laughable eccentric, whereas before he was a dangerous loose cannon.  But even if he has lost his edge on the court*, it’s not too hard to see that Metta World Peace has a better life off the court.

We continually praise athletes for their ruthlessness and single-minded purpose between the lines, and then criticize them for the very same characteristics off court.  Witness Michael Jordan’s Hall of Fame acceptance speech: why was anybody surprised that he is a petty and vindictive little man?  These are exactly the kind of things we praised him for as an athlete.  Why are we surprised that so many athletes, from Kobe to Brett Favre to Ben Roethlisberger and on and on and on, don’t think the rules apply to them when we continually tell them that, indeed, the rules don’t apply?  And here we have Ron Artest, a man clearly on his way to self-destruction: his demons made him a very good, albeit dangerous, basketball player.  So he plays, day in and day out, with the fuse lit on his powder keg, and we expect people like Mike Brown, Larry Bird, Rick Carlisle, Chuck Person, etc., to tamp it out after the whistle blows.  We expect him to be a demon on the court, and with the flip of a switch, be completely normal off it.  When he did blow, we excoriate him, turn him into a pariah, say that he’s exactly what’s wrong with the game. 

So our devil, our scapegoat, begins to take his life seriously.  He wants to change, he wants to be a better person.  And, he is successful, to a very large degree: he becomes less violent on court, less malevolent off court.  He raffles off his hard won championship ring for the benefit of mental health issues.  He becomes a poster boy for dealing with mental health issues.  He changes his name to Metta World Peace.  He becomes a better person.

So how do we celebrate the transformed personhood of Metta World Peace?  By making him a laughingstock.  By pointing to him as an eccentric has-been.  By making him a joke.  Don’t get me wrong: there’s a lot that’s funny about Mr. World Peace.  My wife and I continually post our favorite Ron Artest/Metta World Peace quotes on each other’s facebook walls.  But I laugh because I find him a genuinely funny and interesting guy, not because I consider him a joke**. 

The temple of sports punditry, on the other hand, has different ideas.  Ron Artest was a dangerous, out-of-control thug.  Metta World Peace is a soft-hearted, soft-headed goofball.  Artest/World Peace is not what he is, he is what he is not.

Which brings me all the way around to the source of this post, today’s Asshole of the Day***:

That’s right, Skip Bayless.  I try hard to avoid him, but every so often I get sucked in.  And I always have to pay.

So today, Bayless is discussing the need for the Lakers to retaliate against the Heat for the hard foul that D. Wade hammered Kobe with in the All Star game.  He actually said “Metta World Peace needs to change back to Metta World War” (??!!).

Yes, I know.  He was only trying to be clever (he really needs to stop trying, he never will be anything close to clever).  But essentially, he was saying that World Peace needs to revert back to his old violent self to help teach the Heat a lesson.

Let me restate that.  When Ron Artest was violent on the court back in 2004, he was a despicable human being who should have been kicked out of basketball for life.  He was everything that was wrong with the game, and people were suggesting in all seriousness that Artest and his ilk were bad people destroying sports and, by extension, our culture.  But, just this once, Skip Bayless sees a need for evil to return.  Skip Bayless is asking the very person who started the Malice at the Palace to repeat the specific action that precipitated the brawl to begin with.  And he does so with the implicit backing of the sports media as a whole … or indeed, of sports culture as a whole, since we have made very little effort to repudiate the narratives of assholes like Bayless.

And here is the secret of the Malice at the Palace, among other things: we are the problem. Not Ron Artest, not the Pistons or the Pacers or the crowd at Auburn Hills, not the officials or security or the “thug” culture of the NBA, not even Skip Bayless and the narrative of the Sports Media Empire.  No, we are the problem.

We are the problem because we participate in regressive narratives like the mainstream narratives of sport.  We are an even greater problem, because we allow these regressive narratives to stand in for our larger cultural narratives (i.e., Metta World Peace is a failure in life because his personality change makes him a less effective basketball player than he used to be).  We are the problem because these narratives that we foster poison our culture as a whole (one look at American politics tells you that).  This problem is bigger than just sports; it is a cultural problem.  And we are that problem.

We can change; we have to change.  And we can start by not succumbing to ridiculous narratives, even on things as ostensibly superficial as sports or pop culture.  Just say no to the idiots.

Break the narrative.

____________________

*  Until this year, I would not have conceded that: Phil Jackson’s role for World Peace took away much of what made him such a good player.  However, I would have guessed that reuniting with Mike Brown this year would have seen him return to old form, and it hasn’t.  It is starting to become clear that the demonic intensity of the old Ron Artest isn’t part of the new World Peace, and he is only a decent role player without that intensity.

**  If asked which professional athlete I would like to spend a day with, I wouldn’t have to think for a second: Metta World Peace is my man.  Only Rasheed Wallace - a man, incidentally, that faces some of the same public approbation as MWP - and Steve Nash even come close. 

***  Then again, I haven’t heard any Republican presidential candidates speechifyin’ today, so there’s still a chance that any one of a number of lunatics could steal this title.

I Know It's Early, But . . .

Famous last words, 'cause you know that whenever you see that sentence, the speaker is just about to totally ignore the fact that "it's early" and go ahead to make a rash proclamation from that shaky base.  Just like when somebody says "no disrespect, but . . . " they're about to disrespect somebody.  Or when they say "taking nothing away from _____", they're about to take away from _____.


Dwyane ("The Typo") Wade, after losing to the Pacers:

"The Indiana Pacers -- and take nothing away from them -- but they don't have a lot of playmakers," Wade said. "Their offense is their playmaker and they do a great job of it, but that's why they play the style of ball they play. That's not LeBron James, Chris Bosh, and Dwyane Wade. That's not our games so we have to figure out with our games and our strengths what to do and that's not us. Yeah, we move the ball and we have offensive sets to get the ball moving, but we're not trying to play like the Indiana Pacers."

Uh, yeah.  They just kicked your ass.  Are you really asking for more?


The implication is that the Pacers play team ball because they have no choice.  Well, that's true (sort of: I wouldn't put Granger in the class of James, Wade, Bryant, or Durant, but he's right there in that second tier with guys like Rose, pre-injury Roy, etc.), but isn't it starting to become clear that you need to be more like the Pacers?  Everybody has said it, including you yourself: there's only one ball.  All you "playmakers" need to become "playmakers" in the real sense - that is, do the little detail-oriented fundamentals-based dirty work it takes to get the job done every single second you are on the floor.  It's not even really clear to me that James and Bosh know how to do that, but at least they have excuses, James having had no college coach and Bosh having had it little better with Rick Barnes, but you had a good coach (Tom Crean), so at least you were taught.  Have you forgotten what it takes?


Then there's this:

"You see guys playing above their heads; there's no secret about it," said Wade, who noted that he feels a bigger bull's eye on the team this season compared to when the Heat were defending champs. "Teams are playing very well against us. There's a lot of things that we have that go against us at times, but we'll figure it out. It's understandable. We understand that we're a team that everyone wants to beat. When they finally do that, it's their playoff game. It's their biggest win of the year possibly, unless they beat the Lakers. I don't think it's going to get too much bigger, so we are not really worried about that."

Well, yeah, except for the fact that the Pacers beat you with their B- game, not their A game.  You may have had an insanely off night, going 1 of 15 from the floor, but Granger wasn't much better at 6 of 21.  We'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that maybe you shoot a tick under 50%, which you normally do, and additionally leave Granger with his atrocious shooting.  That's a twelve-point swing, and guess what?  You still lose by four.  And, not only did Granger have a bad shooting night, but the Pacers' second most important player, Roy Hibbert, only played 21 minutes because of foul trouble.  So: the Pacers beat you with their top scorer shooting 28.57% from the floor and their vital post defender on the bench for almost half the game.  Doesn't seem like the P were playing "above their heads" to me.


Dwyane, you just need to shut the hell up and play.  You and Bron both.

*          *          *          *          *

I'm not jumping to unreasonable conclusions here: if the Heat play up to their full potential, and the Pacers play up to theirs, the Heat win 10 out of 10 (well, nine out of 10, because there's always the chance that the Pacers do this).  And yes, the Heat took a dump on their home floor Monday.  But it's not as clear cut as that: the Heat didn't just lose this game, the Pacers won it.

And yes, that's the source of my early Pacerish optimism: there are things happening here that haven't happened here in a long, long time.  My optimism has its caution, and I'm careful not to expect too much in the won/loss column yet, but there are definitely things that a drawing my attention:

1. They are showing signs of being able to play defense.  Not shut down defense, mind you, but they're closing down the expressway to the iron, and generally contesting jump shots (except against the Heat, when they just totally collapsed in and offered engraved invitations to the King and the Typo to beat them from 25 feet and out).  They are more and more maintaining decent defensive positioning, and generally making things a little more difficult than they have any time since the O'Neal/Artest/Foster era.  And, with Roy Hibbert emerging as a legitimate shot blocker, guys like McBob and Psycho T can play close, pesky defense, and if (when) they get beat off the bounce, they just turn their men in toward Hibbert, and he is actually capable of erasing a few of their mistakes.  Like I said, they're not the mid-aughts Pacers or Pistons, but at least now you have to work a little to score on them.
2. And speaking of pesky, so far this year, the effort has been there pretty consistently there.  Nobody is wondering around like they're lost.  Again, part of it is the personality of guys like Hansbrough and McRoberts, who have to go big or go home . . . but, beyond that, it's clear that Jim O'Brien doesn't let anyone on the floor who's not willing to go all out, all the time.  Mistakes they will grudgingly live with (not many - for, as the Typo intimated, the Pacer's margin for error is almost non-existent), but not flying around will get you benched until you earn your way back in.
3. Jim O'Brien's motion offense, though very far from being a finished product, is starting to pay off.  Now, instead of just running down the court and chucking up a shot, the Pacers actually look for the best shooter in the best situation AND actually take steps to achieve that situation.  As a result, everyone is starting to look a little bit better on the offensive end . . . especially T J Ford, who, after a failing grade as the primary point guard last year, is coming around as an important catalyst for the offense off the bench.
4. And speaking of O'Brien, it seems like he is finally starting to realize some sort of vision for the team.  Going into this season, O'Brien seemed like a dead man walking, even if the Pacers managed to profit from the ill fortune of others (here I'm casting my eyes in the direction of New York, New Jersey, Philly, Washington, and Cleveland) and shuffle backwards into the playoffs.  But now, more than just exhorting a ragtag group of nobodies to the upper echelons of mediocrity, it seems possible (just possible!) that O'Brien has a vision of how to instill some sort of personality into that motley crew, and further, that he has a program that, given players with the right combination of talent and work ethic, could get the Pacers back to where they were in the Reggie Miller era.

After losing a heartbreaker to the Thunder (there are no more moral victories in Indy), The P stand at 7 -7, which is hardly a world-beater, given their relatively easy schedule so far.  And yet, there is the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel, low in candle power though it may be.  For the first time, it seems like maybe, just maybe, this team can be built up instead of blown up.  Certainly there will need to be major improvements, and it is clear that the focal point of the team has yet to arrive (Granger is really good, better than most people think he is - even the ones who think he's good - but, he's Robin, not Batman), but we have here something that the Heat definitely don't have: a good supporting cast.  So far, it is a supporting cast in search of a star, but there is really something here that can be built on.

We know the job of a ball team and its front office . . . or do we?  Answer number one would seem to be to WIN GAMES, but in these days of economic chaos and the capitalization of every last element of our lives, including our sporting endeavors, the main job of a team is to SELL TICKETS.  Of course, winning games makes selling tickets much easier, but it is not the be-all and end-all of a franchise's new reality.  As much as I loved the O'Neal-era Pacers, I was in the minority in this fan base.  Oh, the fans would have gotten behind them if they would have realized their pre-brawl promise, but that support would have been shallow.  Say what you want about Rick Carlisle, but that was an ugly, nasty team.  It had to be an ugly, nasty team to compete with its arch-nemesis Detroit.  It was what was called for at the time.  But the Good, the Bad, and the Crazy always had a short leash with Indiana fans.  And since the debacle at Auburn Hills, the P have been a hard sell, especially after Reggie finally hung it up.

Indiana is the most basketball-savvy fan base around, bar none.  It's not that they prefer high school and college basketball over the pro game, it's just that they have so many choices of top-notch basketball at so many different levels, they're not going to pay attention to a bush-league operation . . . I mean, for Christ's sake, even if you leave the Big Ten and IU and Purdue out of it, you have a Butler team that competes with the big boys year in and year out, and even easy tickets like the University of Indianapolis (alma mater of the Spur's George Hill) and IUPUI can buy you first rate hoop action, and that doesn't even include occasional fits from teams like Evansville, Ball State, and Indiana State, or a top-notch roundball league like the Big East rotating through South Bend, even if the Irish themselves are rather unspectacular and workman-like . . . and then there's the best high school basketball in the nation, and that includes all those trendy East Coast basketball academies.  No, the average Indiana ball fan won't put up with bullshit, because there's quality to be had around every corner.

So how do you serve that fan base?  Good ball.  That simple.  Indiana fans have been resistant to the pro game mainly because of the recent drive-and-kick nature of the pro offense (the very "style of ball" that the Typo is referring to as the anti-Pacers style of ball favored by himself and his Heat boys club).  There is a certain beauty to the one-on-one game of a true basketball genius - I think, in spite of the racial overtones of the anti-NBA sentiment around here, and in spite of the different tastes of the local roundball aficionados, Allen Iverson in his prime would have been well received in Indianapolis - but these days, the drive-and-kick game has completely lost its aesthetic appeal.  Derek Rose is exhibit A in that respect: there is no denying that  he is conscientious, studious, and driven, and there is no denying that he wants to do what's best for his team, and ultimately, there is no denying that his game is first-rate.  But: his game is ugly and uninteresting.  He throws himself at the iron like a chaotic missile, with no grace or art.  In the rare instances he is stopped cold, he kicks it out to a shooter - some guy standing around watching the action - to try to finish the play.  Now, when the driver has some real game to display on the way to the hoop, this approach is fine and enjoyable, but this has led (at the college level as well as the pro level) to an offense where you get a baller with just enough game that you need more than one defender to shut him down on the way to the hole trying to draw the defense into the lane so he can kick to some shooters on the edge.  BORING.  

Contra the drive-and-kick, we have the motion offense.  These days, everyone wants their turn for a solo (is that not the whole offense of the Heat at this point?  Wade and Bron taking turns, and getting Bosh involved when they remember?), but there is more . . . it's like jazz, and I don't make this comparison lightly.  Letting Coltrane run wild while Sanders or Dolphy, along with Tyner, are hanging out on the wings waiting for a kick is one thing, because it's freaking COLTRANE, after all.  And the more chaotic, Don Nelson/Golden State approach, with everyone throwing themselves willy-nilly into the chaos of an offensive possession like the brothers Ayler with Sunny Murray as a trailer, always has a certain car-crash appeal.  But there is nothing to compare to the breathlessness of a free-flowing group improvisation, like Ornette's Free Jazz, with everybody carrying the weight.  It can be free flowing like Steve Nash running the floor with Amar'e and the crew, or it can be orchestrated and disciplined Mingus-style like the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers, one of the best teams in the history of basketball.  Or, there can be the charts of varying complexity that are always run as they should be, like every other Bob Knight team that didn't include Isaiah Thomas.  The thing is this: there is a beauty in the complexity of interplay that is lost in today's drive-and-kick offense.  Hoosiers may not give a shit about jazz, but they do give a shit about hoop and its aesthetic dimension, even if the average Hoosier wouldn't know aesthetics if it bit him in the ass.

Which, in a long roundabout, brings me back to this year's Pacers.  Indiana fans will support a team that tries to run a complex, disciplined game, even if they are not particularly successful in doing it.  If the the old-school dynamics are there, if the hustle and the effort are there, if the game has some sophistication, then the average Hoosier ball fan will credit the effort and patiently wait for the payoff.  Running isolations for Jermaine O'Neal* would have been long-term acceptable only if it lofted a banner in the rafters of Conseco Fieldhouse . . . nothing short of that was acceptable, certainly not the Artest freakout, the gangsterisms of Tinsley and Jackson, or the inability of the second generation of the Miller era to get the job done.  No, the average hoosier looks to roundball for aesthetic fulfillment, and he demands sophistication . . . details big and small, like the '87 Hoosiers flouting conventional wisdom and running with UNLV, just a little slower to keep the game at their tempo, not UNLV's; like ultra-conservative Bobby Knight debuting the first big hybrid guard in '76 with Bobby Wilkerson; like Butler neutralizing the K State guard's brutal full-court pressure by having their 6' 10" power forward Gordon Heyward bring the ball up the court (and any time they tried to take him on, he just kicked it back to the guards who exploited the mismatch): like the standard bearers of the old ABA, a flexible, dynamic bunch that included such HOF worthy people as workhorse pivot Mel Daniels, silky smooth Roger Brown, prototype power forward Big Mac George McGinnis, and more; like one of the five greatest ballers of all time, the very Larry Legend that currently runs the Pacers, and whose credit with the faithful is vast, though moving toward its end . . . 

This Pacers crew can earn that love: for while the bar is unbelievably high, there is much credit given for having your heart in the right place.

_____________________

*  Incidentally, Jermaine tweeted earlier this year that he wanted to retire a Pacer.  I very, very much want this to happen.  I know that the fanbase will never be reconciled with Ron Artest, but I really think that the implosion of that Pacers team robbed O'Neal of his rightful place in the Pacer pantheon.  I don't know that we necessarily hoist his number 7 into the rafters with McGinnis's 30, Reggie's 31, Daniels's 34, Brown's 35, or Slick Leonard's blue polyester sports coat, but I think that, when he decides to retire, we sign him, have a Jermaine O'Neal Day at Conseco, and then let him go on his way.  It's only fitting.

Best Sports Press Conference Ever

People who know me how much I love Ron Artest. I'm genuinely happy that he has a ring. This video is the best sports press conference I have ever seen.



Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing. Not only is it vastly entertaining, it is genuinely touching at points. Among other things, it's really interesting how his years with the Pacers are always close to the front of his mind.

As one of the comments to the video said, how can you not love this guy?

Sympathy for Agent Zero

I'm not in the habit of feeling sorry for spoiled millionaires, but Gilbert Arenas's tumble from grace seems to merit more than the usual "just another NBA thug" dismissal.

As of today, Arenas has pleaded guilty to felony gun possession. He has been suspended indefinitely by the NBA. Formerly the face of the Washington Wizards, his image has been purged from all of the franchise's publicity. It seems to be a forgone conclusion that his stratospheric contract will be voided for cause. It also seems likely that the player's union won't put up more than a token fight on his behalf, since they need to save all their chips for the upcoming collective bargaining agreement negotiations with the owners. Arenas is far too talented to be filed away forever, but the question remains: when will we see him again, and how far will he be diminished, both personally and professionally?

Arenas is not a thug. He is a spoiled, clueless idiot, but he is not a thug. He is a gifted athlete that has been shielded his entire life from the consequences of his decisions. He is, even more than most athletes, completely unaware of behavior in context . . . a notorious practical joker, it was initially reported (and never completely refuted) that the display of weaponry that got him into trouble had a practical joke at its core.

Arenas looked stunned as he entered the courtroom the other day. He looked stunned as he left. He had that gape-jawed "what the hell is going on here" look in every media shot from that day. Perhaps this is his come-to-Jesus moment, the moment he finally, for the first time, gets it. Or maybe he'll just recast himself as the victim, and continue to live in his own private world, away from any kind of responsibility.

And, while we can't absolve Arenas of responsibility for his actions (that's the problem in the first place, isn't it?), we do have to acknowledge the responsibility that we have in the matter. We cheer the cheats when they win for our teams, we overlook bad behavior as long as the victories are coming. We insulate our athletes and tell them they are special - until they do something so egregious that we can't overlook it, then we dump them straight into the garbage.

I like Agent Zero; I hope he can reconcile with his situation and find his way back into the NBA, and the sooner the better. He really seems to be a decent guy, and he's definitely entertaining. And frankly, given the chaos of opinion over guns in American culture, I can understand, at least to a small degree, Arenas's confusion in this matter: this kind of behavior in the hills of Kentucky would barely raise an eyebrow.

* * * * *

Lost in the noise surrounding the Arenas story is the end of the line for another troubled NBA career: Shawne Williams was cut from the lowly Nets just before heading back to Memphis to face drug charges.

Williams was the first round pick for Pacers in 2006, and quickly found himself afoul of the law. Along with Ron Artest, Stephen Jackson, and Jamal Tinsley, he became the poster boy for the supposed moral demise of the beloved Reggie Miller-era Pacers. He was traded to the Mavericks in 2008, where he was asked to leave the team after police talked to the Mavericks front office about some troubling behavior on Williams's part.

I remember Larry Bird commenting, during one of Williams's suspensions while playing with the Pacers, that Shawne was a good kid who hung out with the wrong crowd. Current Pacers coach Jim O'Brien expressed sympathy for Williams as well. His subsequent employers (Mark Cuban and Kiki Vandeweghe) had no such consideration.

Of the troubled Pacers forever marked by the Auburn Hills brawl, only Jackson and Artest have maintained their career paths . . . ironic, considering Artest and Jackson were the most active players in the brawl. The Pacers franchise crashed and burned, and Larry Bird (responsible for getting and retaining most of the players who caused all the trouble) holds on to his job solely based on his status as an Indiana basketball legend. Jermaine O'Neal has never been the same since. Tinsley, after frequent gunplay around Indy, was exiled by the Pacers, and when he finally became a free agent, no one called. Williams, with more potential than Tinsley, nevertheless still finds himself out of basketball, likely never to return.

Artest and Jackson, despite always eccentric and sometimes troubling behavior, still manage to hold it together just enough to stay in the NBA. It is, perhaps, because both Ron-Ron and Captain Jack honestly try to "be good", though neither one really seems to know how. The good seems to counterbalance the bad with these two guys. That doesn't seem to be the case with Williams or Tinsley.

Or maybe it's just because Artest and Jackson get it done on the court well enough that they get just a little more leeway for their foibles off the court. As a fan of both players, I'm not willing to concede that fact, but neither can I dismiss it.

I Know Better

. . . than to get too excited, but the rebuilt/reborn post-Auburn Hills Pacers are now 4-3, and winning the "guts" battle night in and night out. Tonight, they went into New Jersey (who, to be fair, are not good, and missing Devon Harris to boot), and won pretty easily WITHOUT Danny Granger (25.3 ppg), Mike Dunleavy (19.1 ppg last year, yet to play this year), and Troy Murphy (9.2 rpg). 2008 so far has been T J Ford's coming out party - he's the pro everyone thought he would be all those years ago at Texas, before that horrific fall in Milwaukee almost paralyzed him. Tonight, the Mighty Mite's line looked like this: 18 points (7-14 from the field, 4-5 from the line), 8 rebounds (??!! - he's barely 6' & 165 lbs.), 9 assists, 3 steals, and a whole bunch of deflections (a stat the Pacers track that doesn't show up in most box scores). He's making a beleaguered Larry Bird look like a genius so far.

For those of you not tracking the NBA this year, Larry Legend finally cleaned out the remnants of the O'Neal/Artest team that imploded at the Palace in Auburn Hills November 19, 2004 . . . the infamous brawl that destroyed the team on the brink of its rise to the top of the NBA. Bird and then-team president Donnie Walsh gambled by sticking with their talented team the next year, which turned out to be a bad idea, since Artest once again imploded. Gone are the crazies (Artest, Jackson), the thugs or those-who-have-thugs-in-their-orbit (Tinsley, Williams . . . though Williams is, by all accounts, a very nice kid who doesn't use the word "no" when it comes to his posse), and the good (Jermaine O'Neal, one of the true citizens of the NBA who gave his best years to the P). This year, Bird made the purge final by moving O'Neal to Toronto for Ford and, when no one would trade anything (anything at all!) for Tinsley, telling him to go home & collect his paycheck until his contract runs out (technically, he's still on the roster, but he's pointedly "not welcome" around the Pacer's facilities). Only Jeff Foster remains from that ill-fated 2004-2005 team, the team that should have finally won Reggie Miller his ring.

Bird caught a fair amount of heat for acquiring Ford, given T J's history of injuries, but I never understood why. First of all, O'Neal's recent injury history isn't much better; and secondly, he really didn't have much choice. Moving "huge upside" in the form of Jaryd Bayless (who will indeed become a full grown man with the Blazers in a few years) for Jarrett Jack was also controversial, but Jack is tank of a point who is the perfect rugged foil to Ford's perceived fragility. That, plus it's a nice offensive changeup to throw at a defense - you spend most of the first half chasing Ford all over the court, then Jack comes in and starts running right at (and over) you, posting you up like he's Wilt (or, more accurately, Mark Jackson) in the point. On top of that, you've got a coach on his third strike (Jim O'Brien, who couldn't agree with Danny Ainge on how best to clean up Rick Pitino's mess in Boston, and then couldn't gain the dubious blessing of Billie King in Philly), a Dukie (Josh McRoberts) who gives you serious value in limited minutes, Travis Deiner launching jumpers from Monument Circle (and doing a reasonable job spelling the point as well), Roy Hibbert being 7 foot, etc. Things should be interesting when Dunleavy gets back, especially since Granger has stepped up to be a real scoring threat - a real 25/5/3 guy. If Dunleavy can keep up around 18 a game, and Ford can be a double/double guy, then things look interesting for this newly "scrappy" squad. The ceiling here is playoffs & a gutsy performance therein. Nothing more, nothing less.

Talking about playing basketball "the right way" is dodgy, because there's a trap door into the culture wars there . . . but, there is a right way to play basketball (many, actually), & the Pacers are doing it. So far, so good. Here's to seeing the P in the playoffs this year, and not having to settle for a first round exit next.

* * * * *

Greg Oden debuted tonight and looked like Tree Rollins with arthritis. It's still early, though.

Uhm, don't look now, but the Hawks are really good. Can this last? Remember, they didn't knock the Pacers out of the playoffs last year until the second to last game of the season. And then, they up and took the (eventual champs) Celtics to the final game of the series, a series which saved Mike Woodson's job. Right now, they look one step below the Celtics and one step above the Cavs and the Pistons in the East. I would be surprised if that held, but only a little.

There was a fight in the Houston/Phoenix game tonight. The big surprise? Artest wasn't involved.

Speaking of the Rockets, they may be very dangerous as some point. Or, they may remain the same mess they are right now. The fact is, Artest has never fully gelled with any team, and as much as I hope it happens (I am a huge fan of Ron-Ron), I don't see it. Unfortunately, this may be his last chance, barring a late career "triumph of the will over diminished skills" resurrection into relevance. Come to think of it, if I were a betting man, that's where my money would ride.

Shaq hit two free throws in a row tonight. Saw it with my own eyes, or I wouldn't have believed it. Actually, he's looked very good tonight, almost like his old self. Phoenix may figure out how to use the Big Narc after all.

Well, that's it. That Motorhead post is coming very soon.