Hey Dan Gilbert, Go Fuck Yourself!

Well, that didn't take long. The shameful, poorly reasoned, and grammatically incorrect screed from Cavs owner Dan Gilbert has already retroactively made Lebron's decision look like the height of class. In said screed, Gilbert threatens LeBron's Heat with the fact that, "I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE THAT THE CLEVELAND CAVALIERS WILL WIN AN NBA CHAMPIONSHIP BEFORE THE SELF-TITLED FORMER 'KING' WINS ONE" (his mentally unhinged caps). Adding, "You can take that to the bank." That's just the kind of brilliance you should expect from the guy who had seven years to try and keep King James and could only come up with Mo Williams as an incentive. I was quite disgruntled by the way James left and wish he had stayed, but that speaks more to my own perverse desires for sports figures to follow codes of "loyalty" and other nonsense than it does to any logically reasoned argument on my part (I'm just spitballing here, but there seems to be a really sick element to sports fandom in which we want a bunch of huge guys we'll never meet to live as personifications of our poorly fleshed out heroic ideals, ideals we ourselves don't ever approach; the fact that we then turn our collective scorn and vitriol on them as soon as they act human makes us crueler than the Romans were to the Gladiators, more like the Aztecs). If I had grown up in Cleveland I couldn't have waited to get out. Dude gave them seven years and they immediately commence to spit in his face? Fuck that. Fuck Gilbert, fuck jersey burning "fans," and fuck Ohio: there's probably a reason everybody not too fat to get out leaves. Go NAFTA and, in the relatively rare cases in which they play the Cavs, Go Heat!

Cs Section

Cavaliers-Celtics:

Finally, we're down to some actual teams in the East instead of... well, you know, the East. And we get what promised to be, before Garnett went down in SLC last year, the real finals for the years of 2009-2012: C vs C, Le-Bron vs. Three, a new rivalry to challlenge those of old, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame against Harvard. That's all ruined, but we still have what promises to be, short of the Eastern Conference Finals and actual Finals, one of this playoff season's best matchups.

Of course Boston is not what it used to be. Garnett went down and is no longer the monster that even McHale couldn't destroy. Pierce may or may not still be the not false. And Rasheed Wallace has taken the place of House, Powe, and Cassell. And Cleveland is not what it once was either. Since losing in 7 games to the Cs during their ascendent 2007-08 season, Cleveland has acquired 2 trophys for its King (and yours), 2 best records of the year, 1 ill-advised COY award, and the contracts of an aging, but still good center (some irish guy) as well as Antawn Jamison.

All these factors plus a LeBron that everyone says really wants it have conventional wisdom placing this series at 5 games. I think that that's a little to hard on the Celtics. First of all, although not capable of what they once were they can play defense better than most, a trait that tends to frustrate the Cavs, forcing them to rely too heavily on LeBron (as was seen in last year's Eastern Conference Finals). The Celtics are probably slightly underrated, too. People saw the Heat putting up much more of a fight, but the Celtics, like the Lakers in the West, still seem able to play hard and win in the playoffs, quickly quieting naysayers. The Celtics are tough, and the Cavaliers can be effected a little by toughness. Garnett knows how to talk shit and did so to great effect last time these two teams met (causing the Real LBJ to miss a three to win). Both teams do not like their opponents, but while the Cavs seem to shrug off this kind of hatred (or at worst, get rattled by it) the Celtics thrive on it. The type of gritty, grinding series these factors predict would seem to favor the Celtics over the Cavaliers. Of course, sloppy, solipsistic, sports psychology is a much worse determiner than points diferential, record, home-court, and having won the first game, so I still expect the Cs (Cavs) to win, but I expect them to get bruised, frustrated, and occasionally humiliated along the way.

Interesting Stories:

Last time these teams played in the playoffs the final game was a shootout between LeBron and Paul Pierce. While the King scored more points, the Truth's team won, and the man went on to be Finals MVP. I think that he will likely be a big factor in this series. So far he's been pretty quiet in the playoffs. If he can deliver in a few of these games, he might be able to dismantle the calm, cool, Cavs and force them to revert to their previous form, the LeBrons.

Not-Interesting Stories:

LeBron's elbow.

Prediction:

Cavaliers in 7 (Game 1, Game 3, Game 5, Game 7)

Bullish on the Cavs

Cavaliers-Bulls:
In predicting this series I have the advantage of having been camping this weekend, which (as camping is wont to do) limited my access to Cable TV and the internet. I was therefore unable to post on this series before it started. This was compounded by the fact that, by the time I got around to writing this, the second game of the series ended. Therefore, I definitively know that the Cavs are up 2 games to none and can use this information to predict what will happen next. But, though I'm no frequentist, I didn't need this wealth of information and can throw it away in making my prediction. I need only to study LeBron's face to know the Cavs will win in 4.

This particular Cleveland team is stronger than the one we saw last year. The addition of Shaquille O'Neal and Antawn Jamison make a team many had favored to win it all last year, even more favored. Add to this a rested LeBron, the stinging hunger of a team that lost when they were expected to win (ask the Lakers, if you can rouse them from their current nap), and an expiring contract that may mean this is everybody's (well, everybody except LeBron's) last chance and you get a team that is so motivated to win that they will be tempted to strangle the CityCorps kids who hold the American Flag just to get the game started. These Cavs are not happy. And their lack of happiness makes me think they will eat everyone in their path from Orlando and LA to, should the fools make the mistake of taking them on, the national guard.

In the other corner you have a team that doesn't really belong in the playoffs. Sure, they gave us last year's greatest series. But without John Salmons and Ben Gordon and their 33 ppg its a miracle these kids made the playoffs at all. A "miracle" that was only made possible by a season ending injury to Chris Bosh (we wish Bosh the best and hope his features aren't too altered by his stitches for reasons that will eventually become apparent). Sure Rose and Noah are talented. But they're only slightly more talented than the top two players on any NBA team -- every team does, after all, have a couple of insanely good players. Slightly better than the minimal standard, mixed with Del Negro's sub-par coaching, is not enough to go head to head against the league's best. Expect The Cavs to crush like that machine that crushes cars. And expect to see the Real LBJ move on and up, trying in vain to satisfy his unquenchable thirst for opponents' heads. Expect to check back in with Chicago in July when they woo Bosh and Boozer.

Interesting Stories:
This is likely to be one of the least interesting series this year; nevertheless, it will likely have its moments. If the Cavs are able to actually win a championship I expect a non-trivial amount of ink will be spilled on Shaq (with the tacit assumption that he agrees to retire). Assuming the Cavs actually get past the Magic, his should be one of the more interesting stories this team has to offer. But before he can be crowned 6th best player of all time (if they fail, he'll be stuck at 7th), he's got an early challenge in Joakim Noah. Seeing how he does against Chicago's favorite ugly center (sorry, we're Garnett fans) may be a good indicator of what he'll bring to the Cavs this post-season. Similarly, going head to head against Shaq will be a good way to test the young Noah's mettle on both ends of the court. So far the consensus seems to be that Shaq is back, but let's see if the pattern holds over the rest of the quickest of all playoff series.

Prediction:
Cavs in 4

2009/2010 NBA Schedule

The 2009/2010 NBA schedule is set to debut this Tuesday, August 4th. I will of course be among the throngs of NBA enthusiasts frantically downloading it as soon as the clock strikes the 1pm release date. But for those of you who won't even be able to make it through the start of another workweek without at least a hint of what is to come (or who can't care less and just want a general overview), here is a small taste of what you can expect.

Like last year, the season will open with a Boston/Cleveland match-up when the Celtics visit Cleveland on October 27th. It will also be the fourth time in six years that a Shaq-Kobe duo have taken the Christmas Day spotlight. While this may be a testament to Shaq's surprising longevity, it is also an indicator of a greater financial agenda.

With their golden ticket player, the mighty Cavaliers will take both of these prime spots ahead of an Orlando team that actually made the finals last year. Understandably, the schedule's construction is a 6 month undertaking beginning in early February, so maybe Matt Winick is still living in the land of pre-Eastern Conference Championship Puppet Land. Or maybe David Stern's feelings about small markets are showing. (Let's be honest, Stern would no rather down a bottle of tobasco than play host to a Denver-Orlando finals, or San Antonio-New Jersey for that matter).

In the end, perhaps it only makes sense for Stern to tend to his own and favor more commercially palatable programming. As part of a larger trend, NBA ratings and profits have been in decline for some time now. This was highlighted in 2006 when a rained-out NASCAR telecast embarassed the NBA with higher ratings than an ABC broadcast of the Lakers-Caveliers/Kobe-Lebron faceoff. In any case, check out the schedule for yourself on Tuesday and let me know what you think. What do you think about the state of financial sense and programming decisions in the NBA?

*As a side note, here is an interesting article regarding the NBA small market dilemma.

West Side to the East Side?

This is a bit of an obvious topic (the basketball world is not exactly on fire with news right now), but I think its one that's worthy of a little discussion time/maddeningly circular argumentation: namely, which nba conference -- the east or the west -- is currently posed to pop in the next, say, three to five years, foisting on the other conference the shame of having its fifth playoff seed ranked below the superior conference's ninth seed (or some similar embarrassment)? I think that there is a general folk feeling out there that the east's time in the sun is fast approaching. After all, last year saw the east capturing two of the three best records in the league (and that was with an injured Garnett), the emergence of the Cavaliers and LeBron's continued growth, the playoff birth of the Bulls and the Magic (or at least the birth of national media attention), and from what we've learned so far about trades and trade rumors several eastern teams (Boston, Miami, Orlando, Cavaliers?) are on the verge of building basketball machines with exactly the right fitting parts.

I'll give you the Celtics. As far as the Cavs go, I think the playoffs revealed their true colors. Mike Brown's coaching (which was, apparently, last year's best) seems to depend on LeBron playing one on five in every possession. The non LeBron squad melts away at the slightest hint of difficulty and the go to play, both in times of desperation and when the game's on the line, is to give LeBron the ball and have him run as fast as he can into anyone on defense. How Jordan like is that? Then there's the weakest flank of all, the Cavs' front office, who think that throwing an aging Shaq into the mix will save them (they weren't even beat by Dwight Howard, they were beat by threes, grrr). Moving on, you've got the Magic whose performance against the Lakers confirmed my longtime suspicion that they are no better than the Jazz of the east (perhaps worse). Ultimately they're just a team that got really hot in a couple of series (see also Warriors, '07). No one else from the east strikes me as worthy of mention (maybe we'll see what the Bulls do). Heat? Hawks? Sixers? Pistons? Wizards? They might as well all be the Knicks (see also Wariors, '09).

The west, on the other hand, has a ton of teams who are quite solid and suffered unpredictable injuries last year. Last year also witnessed the rise of the Blazers, the Rockets taking the Lakers to seven games while methodically shedding an all-star player a game, and Chauncey Billups exerting his calming influence on the Nuggets (without his presence this would be one of the above mentioned unmentionable east coast teams; even with his presence look how they fell apart in game 6). The West has the experience, the coaching, and the required Kobe blockers on each team. Though the Suns and Hornets may be falling apart, one gets the feeling that the Spurs and Rockets are so well run they'll be in the playoffs at least until the Nets move.

Its impossible to know what'll happen in the rest of the off season, let alone in three to five years. I probably haven't made my arguments with enough force and I've left a lot out. Nevertheless, I know in my heart of hearts that teams in the west know how to run basketball clubs and will always land on their feet. The fans demand it of them. In New York you can go to a broadway show, eat the food of any country, and dazzle yourself silly with any and every "entertainment" known to man. What is there to do in San Antonio, besides watch some ball? And when basketball is your only social outlet (as it is in many a western town) you better be ok.