Quick Thoughts

1.    Atlanta Aeries:    Right around the January each season, we like take stock at the teams that came out of nowhere and examine how they are excelling and whether the improved play will continue.  Last year, we had quite a few teams go from .500 to contention and we ended up with three teams going from .500 to the 50-win plateau (Boston, New Orleans, and Orlando).  This year, a few teams are looking improved (Cleveland, Denver, Portland) but there is only one team, Atlanta, that has gone from also-ran to potential 50-game winner.  While the Hawks looked nice in the playoffs and had some nice young players, essentially they were 37-win team, and NBA history is littered with young eight seeds that looked respectable in the playoffs and fizzled out the following season (see e.g., 1993-94 Heat and Nuggets, 1996-97 Wizards, 1997-98 Nets, 2002-03 Suns).  Throw on top of the poor record thhe fact that the Hawks let Josh Childress walk and the other off-season turmoil (Josh Smith reluctantly returned to the fold as a restricted free agent) and there was reason to expect stagnation or regression.  Well, the Hawks have looked very good.  They are currently 22-11 and could be even better if they could actually beat the mediocre Nets (Atlanta is 0-3 so far against Jersey this year).  How has Atlanta improved?  Check out the team numbers from the past two seasons:

Quick Thoughts

1.    The Race for Home Court:    For better or for worse, the themes of NBA seasons tend to take shape very early and then we all have to wait until May/June two find out how the conflict will play out.  Sure, there are fun little surprises that might matter for future seasons but, ultimately, question of title contention is less than mysterious.  This year, for the most part, is no different.  Let’s take our review of the title contenders we forecasted coming into the season (Boston, Detroit, and the Lakers) and where they are now:

Quick Thoughts

1.    CP3 and Steals:    Just a few days ago, Chris Paul set the records for the most consecutive games with a steal, breaking Alvin Robertson’s record from 1985.  Giving such an accomplishment proper weight is a difficult thing to do.  On the one hand, steals are clearly a good thing and the fact that a player gets a lot of steals is a good indicator of value.  On the other hand, steals are often overstated in assessing the worth of a defender.  The best example counterexample is Joe Dumars, who never stole much (high was 1.1 spg) but was a very good defender in his younger years.  Indeed, the best stealers per game are quite a mix of lockdown defenders and specialists.   Other random league leaders including Rick Barry, M.L. Carr, Gerald Wallace, Larry Hughes, Kendall Gill, and Baron Davis. 

Transactions 12/5-12/16

Charlotte Bobcats 

12/10    Trade Jason Richardson, Jared Dudley and a 2010 second-round pick to Phoenix for Raja Bell, Boris Diaw and Sean Singletary

12/12    Sign Juwan Howard 

Another fun Larry Brown trade!  If you give Brown control, he’ll do some whacky things.  On paper, trading Richardson for Bell and Diaw makes little sense.  Richardson is the best player and the money isn’t even necessarily better for Charlotte (Richardson has two years at $28 million after this year while Bell has one year and $5.3 million left and Diaw has three years and $27 million).  But Brown has his wants.  The most prominent example of this occurred when Brown went to the Pacers in 1993 and he famously traded Detlef Schrempf for Derrick McKey.  Though the team improved after the deal, I’m not sure if that was a good trade for the Pacers or that McKey actually “caused” the improvement.  Still, Brown’s system demanded defenders over scorers and it worked in Indiana.  Similarly in Philly in 1998, Brown amassed all sorts of tepid offensive player who could defend (Eric Snow, Aaron McKie, George Lynch) and he traded Jerry Stackhouse (who was a young star) for Theo Ratliff (who was then just a back up for the Pistons) and also improved.  So, Brown’s trades, no matter how whacky, usually ultimately work.  There is a big distinction here.  The Pacers had Rik Smits and Reggie Miller to score and the Sixers had Allen Iverson.  In this case, however, Bobcats don’t have even one bona fide scorer, let alone two, to lean on.  As such, I’m skeptical here until we see otherwise. 

Sloan’s Run

Recently, we looked at the fact that P.J. Carlesimo had only one win as a Oklahoma City Thunder coach and reviewed each franchise’s least successful coaches.  Just so you don’t think we dwell only on depressing things like coaches being fired, it bears noting that Jerry Sloan is now in his twentieth year of coaching and going pretty strong.  Sloan’s years in Utah are marked mostly by success and a rage that few other coaches can match.  But how did we come to have Sloan in Utah?  Do we remember the back story?

When Sloan took over as head coach in early 1988-89, he replaced a famous Utah personality and coach in Frank Layden, who was widely credited for turning the franchise around.  Layden had coached the Jazz for most of their Utah existence (about seven years) and had just taken the Magic Johnson Lakers to seven games in the playoffs in 1987-88.  There was young core in John Stockton and Karl Malone at their peaks and plenty of other good players (Thurl Bailey, Darrell Griffith, Mark Eaton).  Most coaches would’ve kept coaching such a promising team as long as they could.  Why did Layden quit?  According to Michael C. Lewis in “To the Brink”: “The job was no longer fun for [Layden], and he believed the referees were out to get him.  So Layden handed the team over to the man he had groomed for it, his top assistant coach, Jerry Sloan….” 

Transactions: 11/22-12/5 (Coaching Change Edition)

Oklahoma City Thunder 

11/22    Fire P.J. Carlesimo and name Scott Brooks interim head coach 

Not much has happened in the NBA on the transaction front the last few weeks except for a good old fashioned coaching dump off.  In each of the three cases of coach firings, the terminations do not seem to be no-brainers.  All three teams have played poorly, compared to even modest expectations.  Yet there are clear mitigating factors in each instance.  Starting with P.J., we know the knock…the team wasn’t winning and they were afraid that Kevin Durant was not developing.  In terms of the youngsters, both Jeff Green and Durant actually look a bit better than last year so far.  The real problem was blow out losses all over the place.  Of course, it’s not clear how the Thunder can hope to win with the current roster.  When a team accumulates cap room and youngsters, it generally loses a lot and badly.  The Sonics are a bad defensive team (24th in defensive efficiency) and a horrible offensive team (last in offensive efficiency) to boot.  While I’m not a huge Carlesimo fan, Phil Jackson or Red Auerbach would stink coaching this team too.  As for Brooks, he was a heady player but we have no idea how he’ll be ultimately as a coach.  In the short term, it seems like he’ll be in the exact same boat as Carlesimo, taking lumps with chance for modest improvement near the end of the year.  While Thunder management doesn’t really have to worry about being fair to its coaches, this job is rigged for failure in the short term and any deck shuffling is only meant to distract the fans.