@Austin – in that scenariao, Dime IS part of the problem…true a guy putting up 20 and 10′s is going to get the first look…HOWEVER, I know of plenty of times that a guy gets an offer because in looking at the “big-dog” the recruiter/scout sees the glue guy…I used to use the expression “Let the big-dog eat” cuz he going to get everybody seen…like the old Dematha squads: Just by “making” the varsity team you were going to get an offer like you said…I think part of the frustration/epiphany is that “we” the older ex-hoopers see the game deteriating into a me, me, me scenario…on ALL levels…blame HS, AAU, NCAA, ESPN, NBA all of it…fundementals are NOT being taught as much anymore…it’s ISO and use athletic ability to overcome…thats fine, but what happens if that don’t work…you got PG’s who can’t effectively run the team, posts who can’t perform a simple drop-step to the lane, shooters with ATROCIOUS form, slashers who can’t finish with their off hands and just run over defenders, can’t perform a simple shot fake or jab step w/o traveling, defenders who can’t blockout properly or play simple help-side defense, let alone understand the principles of rotation and man-to-man defense

AB

I must be different than average fan then, cause I love watching the Sloan coached Jazz, San Antonio, Chicago’s defense, and even celtics (though I hate them) just because I like to see disciplined, textbook basketball.

Even right now, though I LOVE some of the stuff he does, I can’t stand watching Blake Griffin solely because of his free throw shooting and bad attitude lately. I absolutely hate playing with motherfuckers who don’t know the game, and don’t make high percentage plays, therefore I hate watching it.

Give me technical perfection over meaningless flash any day of the week.

I watched a little bit of the last few minutes of Clippers and Mavericks last night. It’s probably just me, but I think Blake Griffin should have taken control of the last few possesions, taken Dirk 1-on-1 down in the block and hit Dirk with a post move or two and cram. I couldn’t believe seeing Blake literally scared of taken the ball, being a man, and putting the clips on his back. The least he could have done is create some offense, pulled a double team to him and look for a cutter, and make the right pass or the nice assist … OR SOMETHING. Don’t just get the pass from Chris Paul, glance at Dirk, and throw the ball back and hope someone else can get it done. The Clippers lost because of cold feet when it was critical for someone to show up in the clutch.

Jay

you can’t compare way you played when you were kid and when you grow up. and yes, we all tried to emulate our favorite players but to emulate tough fadeaway with your tongue out and to ignore your teammates, just stand in corner and screm: gimme ball and move! are different things. like i’ve said from time to time we all take bad shots but we still try to play within team concept. with youngsters i played, most of them would rather loose a kidney than pass the ball or set a pick (and setting a pick for a guy without the ball requires capital punishment).

@kyballer312 — Dime is absolutely part of the problem, as is SLAM and ESPN and the NBA itself; pretty much every communication/media outlet responsible for putting basketball on your TV and on your browser. I’m still part of the sports media machine, and I put some of the blame on myself too. We only feature the end of the play instead of showing how it develops, and only promote the guys who put up big highlights and big stats (or are just big personalities).

Part of the blame goes to us and part goes to the public, who helps dictate what they want to see. I’m pretty sure ESPN didn’t just up and decide to cut SportsCenter from 40 minutes worth of actual highlights in a 60-minute show down to 15 minutes of highlights — meaning you end up cutting out a key jumper in favor of another dunk — they likely did market research and the response from viewers said they didn’t have the attention span to sit through all those highlights.

My thing is, it shouldn’t have to be all-in or all-out. Ideally we’d be able to feature the highlight-makers but also have time for the guys who play “the right way.”

You’re right that the big dog gets the rest of the guys seen, but that’s only AFTER the recruiter woos the big dog and makes a scholarship offer. So the big dog gets to go to Kentucky and the role player goes to Western Kentucky because the UK coach tipped off his buddy at WKU. That’s cool and all, but how many 15-year-old kids are dreaming at night of playing for Western Kentucky? And isn’t that because us adults NEVER talk about WKU and show 25 Kentucky games a year on TV?

I also don’t think the game is deteriorating as much as we’re putting the Golden Era on too high a pedestal. Back in the NBA in the ’80s or ’90s or whatever you consider the Golden Era, there were plenty of PGs who didn’t run an offense well, guys with poor shooting form, bigs who were soft.

We’ve just romanticized it to where it sounds like EVERY point guard was great and EVERY big was a badass and EVERY shooter was hitting at least 45% from three. People act like Larry Bird never missed and Dennis Rodman never got boxed out and Magic never turned the ball over. You don’t think Jordan was ever “me-me-me”? How about Calvin Murphy and George Gervin and Pistol Pete and Karl Malone and Alex English? Those dudes shot the ball just as much if not more than Carmelo and Westbrook and Iverson and Kobe.

The game has always had, and will always have, it’s low-IQ athletes and it’s high-IQ basketball players. And it will have those special players who combine both traits AND perform in crunch time. I think the biggest difference is that we see so much more of the game (League Pass, cable, DVR, etc.) and we have so many more outlets to talk about it (Internet, sports radio, 24-hour sports TV), that we have more time/opportunity to nit-pick and criticize.

Damn… you people play with adults who play that way?? BAHAHAHA! You poor souls.

@ AB

Melo, or any player, should certainly not hold back his best skill, but I think the problem is so many young pro athletes ASSERT their own alleged “best skill” by sacrificing other facets of the game. Absolutely Melo is a scorer, and that’s what he should be looking to do on the floor, but if his focus to get buckets blinds him from the fact that his domination of the ball may sometimes hurt the team, then it doesn’t matter how good of a scorer he is.

Also, looking for assists and buckets are fundamentally different…if a PG is creating easy buckets for his teammates, god bless him for keeping track of that. And if a scorer is getting easy buckets by himself all day, I say keep attacking until they figure out a way to stop you. But if a scorer is keeping tally of his points while shutting out his teammates just to pad his stats, that’s a different story.

It’s difficult to call someone trying to get 15 assists “selfish,” unless he ignores wide open layups to pass the ball to a guy getting triple teamed so he can maybe get a dime.

I call it the Murphy Effect. I played with this dude who never understood how to play. The thing is, you can be flashy and effective. You can play ball and still have highlights. Dime spent all summer on Wall and Jennings and they are garbage. You have Bad Porn and you have Durant. If you get on a team with Durant, of course you want him shooting!!! If you get on a team with Bad Porn (still the best thing Dime has ever done) he is just shooting everything. The bottom line is Murphy didn’t understand that on a 2 on 1 break, if you pass the ball and the defender comes, you get it back. He also would be unprepared to catch a pass on a 2 on 1 break. Then there were the UCTLN (Useless Crossover That Leads Nowhere) and FPTCPTDE (Finger Point To Call Plays That Don’t Exist) while 3 guys are wide open under the basket. Those dudes are annoying as hell.

The reason women’s basketball isn’t popular is because there aren’t any highlights. The reason why Blake Griffin is on every night is because a couple of other guys make the right play to put him in that position. Swap Jennings for CP and watch what happens. Or swap Jennings and Wall for guys like Nash and Kidd and Rondo. We see what happens when Melo leaves a team. We know that Tyreke Evans hasn’t gotten it. Maggette. We know those guys can get theirs, but we know that the team will be less than the sum of it’s parts.

Yeah, I pretty much skipped all of the comments except 63

@AB, People criticize Carmelo for only caring about scoring because he does so outside of the normal flow of the offense. If a WR runs a combo route with 2 other WRs, but constantly breaks his route off to get into an open area just to pad his stats, it is selfish. True, his job is to get open and catch the ball but the play wasn’t designed for him, he was a decoy used to set up a better play. He can be the best open field player but that doesn’t mean we are throwing 3 consecutive bubble screens his direction.

A player going out to just get stats for the sake of getting stats is selfish. What if Chris Paul gambles on EVERY pass just to go and get steals. Is that selfish? Yes, because if/when he misses he puts the rest of the team at a disadvantage. If Mcgee wanted to get 15 blocks in a game and kept leaving his man just to contest EVERY shot, that puts the other players at a disadvantage because now they have to cover for him.

Even though some aspect of the game is your best skill, there is a time and a place for you to use it. Lets say, Melo is on the wing, the defense is scrambling, Melo receives the kick out with a guy closing in, does he simply pump fake-dribble-shoot or kick to the even more wide open teammate in the corner? Melo is more than likely the better scorer but his teammate hs the better shot on this play. You can just about bank on Melo holding the ball, jab-stepping, and then hitting a long pull up 2.

@First&Foremost — I look at it like this: There are five key elements to basketball, and a team must do all of them (at least marginally) well in order to win in most settings: Dribbling, passing, rebounding, defending and scoring.

A passing specialist will never be called selfish for putting up 12 assists with 0 points and 0 rebounds. Rebounders will never be called selfish for grabbing 12 boards with 0 points and 0 assists. Defensive specialists will never be called selfish for locking his man up but not taking any shots. People will say he has a one-dimensional game, but nobody will act like he’s being one-dimensional on PURPOSE, like it’s a flaw in his character rather than a shortcoming in his skill set.

But let a scoring specialist score 24 points with 0 assists and 0 rebounds. Not only is he being called one-dimensional, he’s also being called selfish. It automatically becomes a judgment of his character, like he doesn’t WANT to pass the ball or rebound the ball and that he’s choosing to be a bad teammate by being one-dimensional in the facet of the game that happens to literally determine the winner and loser.

Why is that? I don’t think it’s because people want to see a game where each starter scores 12 points. I think it’s because those who aren’t scoring secretly (or not) want to be scoring. It stems from that guy at the playground who tells himself “I’m a good teammate, I set screens and play D,” but in reality he just wants to score as many points as possible. He just can’t, either because he’s not getting the ball or because he doesn’t have the skills. Why else would that one facet of the game get such a negative label against the other four facets?

@AB

I was going to rip you a new one (Pause) until i read post #60.

So i see what you’re saying. But i don’t 100% agree.

As a coach, I have coached boys and girls. The drastic change was in two areas, Athleticism and feel for the game. They were the same HS class. Many of the boys watched a lot of basketball so their feel for the game was 10xs higher than the girls. Their athleticism also. The girls had more desire to win by far and they listened much better. With the boys there would be games where we were much better 1-12 than the other team. But somehow, one guy…just one guy who was bigger, stronger, faster, or can shoot lights out, would change the entire game around. The boys would lose focus and confidence and therefore more times than not we’d be out of it.
on the girls side it’s the exact opposite. If we played against a girl who was athletically superior but her team wasn’t as good, we’d wipe the floor with them. Because no matter how athletic she was, she wasn’t on a boys level (i.e. Lebron) where she was dunking and clearing peoples heads for rebounds.

So what i learned was that athleticism has kinda ruined the IQ for boys. While the lack of superior athleticism has forced the girls game to play a lot more fundamental. Seriously, the girls would be like remote control robots that would do EXACTLY what i tell them to do. The boys were like dogs off the leash. sometimes they’d listen, but most times they were freestyling and running off instincts.

@yoda — If you’re getting 15-15-10 versus this guy’s 30-2-2, of course I’ll say you played the more effective game. You’re basically comparing Magic Johnson to Alex English, and I’m sure most of us will take Magic in that scenario.

BUT … that doesn’t always mean English (or Melo, or Westbrook, etc.) is hurting his team by scoring as much as he does. And it doesn’t mean that we should be saying guys like Mickael Pietrus getting 7-5-4 are more valuable because “he does more than just score.” And it doesn’t mean English is a bad teammate because he does what he does best to put his team in a position to win.

Another problem is that we expect superstars to do EVERYTHING. Dwight Howard can be the best rebounder and interior defensive presence in the NBA, and people are complaining because he doesn’t have more offensive moves. Kobe scores more than anybody in this generation and willingly takes on some tough defensive assignments, and people complain because he isn’t passing more. Jason Kidd came into the league running offenses to perfection and rebounding AND playing tough D, and people complained because he wasn’t hitting threes. LeBron is scoring 26-29 points a game, getting 7 boards and 7 dimes and a couple steals AND playing tough D, AND now scoring in the post, and people complain because he’s not scoring “the right way” in the post.

One man can only do so much. If you wanna get mad at somebody for New York losing a game in which Carmelo has 28-7-3, how about getting mad at the other 11 guys or the coach? Why put it all on one player?

@yoda — OK, I see that. I suppose I automatically correlate the playground to the NBA because what are we doing on the playground if not mimicking the NBA? (Or putting on a dumbed-down version of the NBA.) Also because a lot of people were talking about younger players, presumably the ones who grow up to be NBA players.

@silky — I think you still have specialists in the NBA, they just don’t enter the league as specialists.

Ronnie Brewer was getting buckets at Arkansas, but after being in the NBA for a while he found his niche as a defensive specialist, so that’s what he is now. Had he been a defensive specialist at Arkansas, like you said, it would’ve been harder for him to get noticed. There are a bunch of guys in the league like that.

^^^ That is an interesting way to look at it.

And it’s not isolated to collegiate sports, either. Right now Justin Lin is the talk of the sports world, but pretty soon people are gonna be going at him hard about his funky jump shot and his ability to go left. And before you know it, everyone will be saying that his game is too Asian because he crashes into people every time he drives.

@AB
i didnt say there was none left…just alot less. guys don’t look for niches the way they used to. there are alot of reasons; sense of entitlement, lack of fundamentals, get mine mentality and fewer opportunities because multi tool players are more highly valued.

watching the tsn pregame for raps/knicks- still cant believe the hype and coverage. super lintendo vs calderon will be a nice lil back and forth tonight. excited to see amare on a well run p&r again

AB

Guys who you describe who get 24/0/0 and no one says they are selfish are like Jason Kapono or Mo Williams. They aren’t stars (don’t bring up that allstar selection Mo has), they are expected to come into the game and score a few points. THEY are specialized scorers. The guys who you say people get on for not having an aspect of their game are STARS, or in some cases SUPERSTARS. HUGE difference between a Bruce Bowen and a Tim Duncan, as far as expectations go. I want Bruce to come in, injure a guy or two, hit a corner 3, then get the fuck out of here. Tim Duncan, I want him to put my team on his shoulders and get me a championship. HUGE difference.

Melo, he is apparently a star, and sometimes considered a superstar. If he wants to be JUST a scorer, and be selfish like that, hurt the team to get his stats, then let the guy get paid like JJ Redick or Matt Bonner. The guy is getting paid to get his team wins, but he denies his team wins with his selfishness. It’s all about expectations…

lin. oh. my.

I see someone is STILL arguing for Carmelo.

Stop it.

It’s a lost cause.

Come on now. This is poetic justice at its finest.

A kid working hard to learn the game, and now KILLING teams, and more recently, literally killing a team with a game winner.

Then there’s fucking goof who could score 30. I would tell you his other skill sets… but, ummm, that’s just about it.

The twist? They’re on the fucking same team. The kid has been embraced by everyone after being a nobody for years. The goof has already been doubted, and basically, people are talking bout trading him so that he won’t fucking mess the team’s offense and their winning ways.

Defending Melo? Stop it.

IT’S A LOST CAUSE.

And the LINSANITY continues! It is just unbelievable that the Knicks are winning with this guy outta nowhere. I know the story should be getting played out by now, but the streak continues and so does the hype. One more win and NY is back to .500. Normally a .500 record wouldn’t be too impressive, but when their batting 1.000 with him in the lineup it has to mean something. ESPN said there were huge contigents from the Chinese and Taiwanese Youth Basketball Associations in attendance along with a sell out crowd. This guy is single-handedly bringing Basketball back to the masses; he’s a one-man economic recovery. I gotta repost this in tomorrow’s smack because there aint much more to say other than this is…
LINSANE!

no need for that lowblow trollne1