Mike’s Take
Mike’s Take: All-Star 2012 Eastern Conference Reserve Picks
Saturday, February 4th, 2012Mike’s Take: All-Star 2012 Western Conference Reserve Picks
Saturday, February 4th, 2012Mike’s Take: 2011 NCAA Championship
Monday, April 4th, 2011Like last year’s NCAA Championship, we have a classic matchup between a basketball powerhouse from a big school in a major conference, Connecticut, and a darling, mid-major team with the small school image, Butler, who has already pulled off a number of upsets in this tournament. One thing both teams have in common is that neither was expected to make it this far.
UConn is a very young squad with a roster full of gifted athletes, a number of them top recruits from across the country. The Huskies bounced back from a mediocre regular season and wound up playing their best ball when it counted most, winning five games in five days to capture their seventh Big East championship. Led by superstar junior Kemba Walker, Jim Calhoun’s squad has continued its winning ways throughout the NCAA tournament.
After falling just one basket shy of the title to Duke last season, America’s favorite underdog has earned its second consecutive chance at winning an NCAA Championship. It’s remarkable that Butler has made it back to the Finals again after losing one of their key guys. The first Bulldog to be selected in the 2011 NBA Draft since 1950, forward Gordon Hayward was drafted ninth overall by the Utah Jazz after commanding Butler’s NCAA campaign his sophomore season. Their continued success is a tribute to Butler’s program, to head coach Brad Stevens and to his coaching staff. Butler has a great mental toughness about them. They also have some talented players who may have slipped under the radar until now, but ultimately Butler has been successful because they play so well together as a team.
Tonight we’re going to enjoy a very intense, low-scoring game. But, whereas the Blue Devils were the overwhelming favorites in the 2010 Finals, most won’t be surprised if the Bulldogs wind up winning the championship that eluded them last year.
Mike’s Take: Global NBA
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011Foreign Policy Digest’s South Asia Regional Editor Mahanth Joishy asked me to discuss the globalization of the NBA and the influence of international players on the league. Here’s an excerpt from our Q & A session:
FPD: I recently read that there are approximately 80 international basketball players from over 30 countries in the NBA. I’d guess there are many hundreds more on the radar screen of NBA scouts. Many are all-star caliber players: Dirk Nowitzki of Germany, Yao Ming of China, and of course Steve Nash from Canada, via South Africa. Do you believe this trend of bringing in foreign talent will continue to grow?
Yes, I think this trend will continue to grow, because the pool of talent is beginning to diminish here in the United States, which in turn has watered down our product somewhat. Nowadays, many players are turning pro after one year in college, before they are close to maturing to the point that they will eventually get to. So scouts will continue to look at international players who have perhaps been playing as pros since they were 15 or 16 years old, and have therefore matured at an earlier age. A player who has four, five, six years of pro experience under his belt and enters the NBA as a 23- or 24-year-old rookie can help contribute more quickly than one who leaves college after one year and has only 35 collegiate games under his belt and isn’t physically ready to handle the demands of the NBA. So yes, NBA teams will continue to look outside the United States for talent.
FPD: There is the oft-repeated stereotype that European players have better fundamentals, such as long-range shooting and passing, though they’re not always as “well-fed” or flashy at dunking, due to differences in training mentality. Is this true?
Yes, I would agree that European players generally have better fundamentals than American players. One reason for that is that their game has always been more of a perimeter shooting game than the drive-it-and-dunk-it type game that we have here due to the speed, quickness, athleticism, and ball-handling abilities that we have in so many players in the United States. In other countries, their ball-handling skills have developed more recently and have gotten to a different level over the last 5-10 years.
Another factor is that they play only two games a week in Europe, as opposed to three or four games a week in the NBA, which affords them more practice time. It’s not unusual for European teams to have three practices in a day. One practice will be used to work on the skill areas: dribbling, passing, and shooting. Another will be for strength and conditioning. And the last will focus on playing the game itself. And when they have skills training, they do it with all the positions. That’s why so many of their big guys are good shooters. You haven’t had as many great low-post scoring players in international competition, which has something to do with the trapezoidal lane, which they are working to change. They are trying to make it the same as the NBA’s rectangular lane, so it’s consistent in international play.
FPD: Which country or region of the world may represent the next hotbed of undiscovered basketball talent, in your opinion?
It could be China, based on its population size and the growing interest in the sport. They have over 1.3 billion people, including a wealth of young men close to or over seven feet tall in the country. And they also have a great passion for the game now. Yao Ming certainly did a lot to promote the sport of basketball and upgrade the NBA’s image in that country. Now that the Chinese have had more exposure to basketball and understand what it’s all about, the sport has caught on. The Latin countries, such as Brazil and Argentina, also have a great passion for basketball now. And countries that have historically been very good are those that were part of the former Yugoslavia and former USSR. They have always had excellent teams.
FPD: It seems like national teams from other nations, such as Spain, Argentina, or Lithuania, are catching up with the US. What will the United States national team have to do better to continue to win at the highest levels of international competition, such as the Olympics or the FIBA world championships, and avoid disappointing upsets?
The United States national team will have to continue to get commitments from the best American players to go and compete, just as they did in the 2008 Olympics and in the 2010 FIBA World Championships. For the Olympics, they got top NBA players, such as Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Dwight Howard, and Dwyane Wade to play for Team USA. And the young guys who had been their understudies when training and preparing for the Olympics, such as Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Derrick Rose and Kevin Love all made a commitment to compete in the FIBA World Championships in Istanbul, and we wound up winning the title. So that’s what it will take: the continued commitment from our best players to still be a part of our national team.
Click here to read the rest of our interview on Foreign Policy Digest.
Mike’s Take: As the Whistle Blows
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Just a few minutes after Stephen Jackson incurred a technical for reacting to a non-call in last night’s Nets-Bobcats matchup, teammate Shaun Livingston was zapped with a T when he hit his arm to indicate that Brook Lopez had made contact with more than the ball when he blocked Livingston’s jump shot. This used to be an acceptable practice, but officials won’t tolerate any backtalk this season, be it verbal or physical. With the NBA’s new quick trigger policy on technical fouls in effect, all displays of dissent are punishable by the almighty technical foul.
Officials don’t want to hear any protests or see any demonstrative actions in response to a call or non-call. They emphasized this point at the annual referee meeting back in September when the league announced that the guidelines for technical fouls have been expanded to include “overt” player reactions to referee calls. Whether a player throws an air punch or cracks an incredulous smile, the referees have been instructed to hit him with a technical right away. There are observers at games making sure the refs do their jobs and enforce the new rules that have been put into place. And so the refs have been complying: During the 2010-11 preseason technicals were called at a rate of 2.42 per game vs. 1.76 per game in 2009-10.
I have mixed feelings about the new policy. On the one hand, players must respect the officials and their decisions. Blatant shows of disrespect or attempts to intimidate officials cannot be tolerated. Given the fast-paced nature of basketball, officials have an extremely tough job to do. And by and large they do it well. In fact, according to league managers their percentage of accuracy is in the high nineties.
I understand that over the years players have gotten increasingly vocal and oftentimes carried away with how many times they protest calls during the course of a game, as if nobody’s fouling. If you want to see on-court dramatics elevated to an art form, watch the European competitions and how players gesticulate and flop from start to finish. While some audience members may enjoy the theatrics, many fans consider it poor sportsmanship and have little patience for whiners on the court. When players complain about every other call it reflects poorly on the league and can interrupt the flow of the game.
Likewise, stopping play to whistle a technical can also disrupt the rhythm and pace of a game. And what makes the NBA game so great is the passion and emotion that the players bring to the court night in and night out. If players are forced to become emotionless in games in order to abstain from reacting to calls, people will start saying they don’t care. But it’s not that they don’t care, they just can’t show that they care.
You also have to consider the practical implications of this crackdown. A player can rack up a couple technicals in no time and his team could lose a key player for a night and wind up losing the game because a guy raised his hands. You have to wonder about suspensions that might take place during the critical back stretch because a player may have overreacted to a few calls too many during the long regular season (the 16th technical foul results in a one-game suspension, followed by another one-game suspension for every two additional techs thereafter).
Officials have to be careful about how far they take the zero-tolerance approach, and the new mandate must be monitored closely. Perhaps the officials are coming down particularly hard early in the season in order to drive their point home and hopefully condition the players to be more respectful. They may ease up as we come to the playoffs.
I think players need to play with emotion. That’s what makes this game so great. If not handled correctly, this emphasis on respecting the game could ultimately squelch the fire that ignites players and fans alike.
