The best versus the worst NBA franchise
by meercatjohn on Jul 13, 2009 3:21 PM PDT
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PrintMost of you may not care about basketball but it is a sport that Eric and I follow very closely. Being a fan of USC and the Dodgers, he is of course your basic go with the winner and so is a fan of the best basketball franchise since 1971. The Raiders fandom keeps him grounded with their desperate attempts to matter so he does have one weakness.
I on the other hand outgrew my love for a winning franchise and instead have hung my hat with the worst sports franchise in history for reasons I still do not understand.
Starting today that is all going to change as our own SB Nation Steve Perrin will be live blogging the birth of the next Tampa Bay losers to winners story, as the winners of the Blake Griffin lottery take on the current World Champions in the first Summer League game featuring our version of Evan Longoria.This is usually the highlight of a Clipper season, with all the euphoria of a new season quickly dashed by the reality of actually playing the game. This year will be different. This year you need to get on the bandwagon now because we won't have room for you in December.
Speaking of Evan Longoria the LA Times did a nice writeup on him today. It is amazing that this guy
Ignored in the draft out of high school, Longoria didn't receive so much as a scholarship offer after his senior year at Bellflower's St. John Bosco High. So he went to Rio Hondo College in Whittier.
has already played in the World Series and has two all-star performances while barely playing 200 games.
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Longoria is the second-best player ever to come out of Bosco
The first being Nomar, but Longoria is certainly on his way to passing him.
Nomar was drafted out of HS though, 5th round by the Brewers in 1991.
I’m still steamed that the Lakers failed to cover Tim Thomas in 2006 and his stupid open three. If he misses that, the city of LA would have finally had it’s showdown.
For the record, USC was fairly ordinary in the mid-1980s when I started following them (brother & uncle got MBAs there). My Dodger fandom was family-ingrained from the formative years, so I didn’t have much of a choice there.
As far as NFL football, I got Rams and Raiders games on TV in Palm Springs, so I had a choice to make. I really liked Eric Dickerson, but Marcus Allen made my choice quite easy. Then, along came Bo, which cemented the Raiders fandom.
the Kwame Brown flyby
may be the most infamous LA sports moment in this decade
by bucknellbruin on Jul 13, 2009 4:21 PM PDT up reply actions
I agree
I felt robbed when the Lakers were not able to convert a 3 – 1 series lead into a Laker/Clipper match up. Shaun was playing the best basketball he may ever play and it was heady times. Staples center was rocking like you would not believe.
I could understand picking Marcus Allen over Dickerson. However on the same note, that is when I totally became a Anti-Davis fan when he wouldn’t play Allen to get revenge. Davis may have the biggest ego of every owner who ever owned a team. Given the way he treated your USC player I’m amazed you became a fan instead of hating him and his team.
It was tough
but I was young, and since I fell in love with Bo Jackson I was blinded to the mistreatment of Allen.
by Eric Stephen on Jul 13, 2009 4:33 PM PDT up reply actions
When I first started following football
The AFL/NFL merger was still pretty new – the first Super Bowl I remember seeing was IV – and it was cool amongst my friends to root for the local Rams (the Fearsome Foursome et al.) and pick an AFL team to root for. I picked the Raiders. The silver and black was awesome to me, they had a team full of characters and the throw deep philosophy was fun to watch – heck, their QB was called the Mad Bomber! Like Phil, the Davis/Allen feud, really soured me on Al, and by the time he and his team departed it was good riddance from me. But it was a fun run at the time.
Dunleavy
Phil or mwhite06,
What is your take on Mike Dunleavy? I know Bill Simmons has been over the top in his distaste for Dunleavy as both a coach and GM; is he off base?
I do know that I love watching Baron Davis play, and any team led by him will be fun to watch. It seems that Davis and whomever is the coach will need to be on the same page for them to succeed. Can that happen with Dunleavy?
Dunleavy
I’m not nearly as insanely hateful as Bill Simmons is or most of the Clipper fans I know are. On the one hand, he does some stuff that is just baffling to me. Player rotation, plays he draws up at the end of the game, etc. On the other hand, the guy was responsible for taking the Clippers nearly to the Western Conference finals a few years ago. Plus, his draft history has been fairly solid, particularly recently. Griffin fell into his lap, but otherwise he’s drafted Gordon, Thornton, DeAndre Jordan all in the last three years which could make the core of this team with Griffin for years to come. Of course I can’t neglect to mention the Koralev draft where he picked Koralev who was an enormous bust (it happens.)
I wouldn’t mind seeing Dunleavy gone, at least as a head coach, but I am happy to point out that the coaches trotted out before Dunleavy were far more incompent. Case in point, Alvin Gentry became the head coach of the Phoenix Suns midseason last year; the same Alvin Gentry who preceded Dunleavy as the head coach of the Clippers and was/is a much worse coach.
As for the Baron Davis thing, I’m not too sure those two can work together. That being said, Baron should take a lot of responsibility for the mess last year. He pulled an Andruw Jones by showing up too fat last year and he couldn’t even dunk anymore (seriously, I don’t think I saw him dunk at all last year.) I don’t personally care if the Cippers have an uptempo offense or not. Many basketball people would argue that slow boring offenses (the Spurs) are more succesful anyway and that was certainly true for the Clips. The best year we had was 2006 when running an ISO offense to Kaman and Brand. And before the Clippers won the draft lottery, I was completely content to build the team around Zach Randolph (a guy who its been pointed out at CN that I had a “man-crush” on) rather than Baron anyway. Zach was a guy in his prime (still only 28) who had an elite skill set for scoring in the paint. I’m not so sure Baron’s career isn’t over anyway. We’ll see if they run this year, as they actually have the personnel to do it, and we’ll see how succesful (success with be determined by growth an improvement considering the age of the team) the team is. If they try and fail, this could signal the end of both Baron and Dunleavy’s career.
by Michael White on Jul 13, 2009 4:38 PM PDT up reply actions
I hate Dunleavey
It may be the players but other then when Samwise was here they constantly misplay the last moments of every game that Dunleavy is part of. You have Jackson who lets the players play the game and then you have Dunleavey the ultimate control freak who takes no responsibility when his team fail to perform.
Plus he’s boring with a boring playbook. On the other side I do like his GM moves since he took over. The only real move I hated is when he behind us drafting Korolev instead of Granger. I was so pissed that night, I almost broke my computer banging out my frustration on a Clipper blog.
Every year he says he’s going to run but then never does and blames it on the players. If he doesn’t run with these greyhounds he’s never going to. I hold out hope he can coach this team into the playoffs but I have no hope he can coach these guys into greatness.
so is Dunleavy kind of the Del Harris mold? Good for a certain stage of development, but not necessarily for the final hurdle.
by Eric Stephen on Jul 13, 2009 4:35 PM PDT up reply actions
I think the answer is that Dunleavy should stay as a GM. His deals and drafts lately have been flawless IMO. He just needs to be done as a coach.
by Michael White on Jul 13, 2009 4:42 PM PDT up reply actions
I'd say yes
and I don’t think his ego would allow him to give up coaching and just become a GM. He really thinks he’s a great coach.
No real room
To talk Clips/Lakes as a Pacer fan, but I did enjoy watching Eric Gordon’s progression last season. I love the Clippers talent, but I don’t know if it’s all on Dunleavy, or if B.DiddyxZ-Bo had their fair share, but I hope they get it figured out for this season. They’re not a sixty loss team and I hate to see them wallow with the talent they have.
You got yours
When Gordon drilled the game tying three in Indy last year to eventually win them the game. The first thing out of my mouth when that shot went down was, “Dammit, Eric. You couldn’t hit a single shot for the last two months of the college season, but you go and drill clutch three pointers against your hometown team!? Where was this in the tournament!?”
And we can’t go owing half the league (and Toronto twice) for passing on Granger. Haha. That’s the bed you guys made. But I do thank you kindly for taking…uh, what’s his name? Korolev? He do well last year? Didn’t really hear much from him.
NBA Champions - your Los Angeles Lakers
In the NBA the downside can come as rapidly as a missle once a player is on the wrong side of thirty, so Laker’s remaining window isn’t huge, but they should have another two or three runs in them. Phil Jackson took on the challenge of Dennis Rodman in Chicago and he (with a little help from that Jordan guy) continued to win rings; how can he turn down the chance to reform (or at least partially harness) another bad boy, Ron Artest, and try for another back-to-back?
Just trying to break up the Clips talk a little.
This is a Clipper thread:)
Griffin hasn’t missed a shot from the field yet.
Patience is for those who die waiting for something to happen
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