Information Please? Blue Ribbon Basketball ‘07-’08

First there was Street & Smith’s. (I still have my copy with Calvin Murphy from his Niagara days on the cover.) Then there were all the knock-offs: SI, Dick Vitale, etc. Then, down from heaven, came Blue Ribbon Basketball. The Old Testament begat The New Testament which begat The Bible. Now that’s all there is because when it comes to information on teams, players, conferences, the whos,, the hows, the whats in Division I Men’s Basketball, that’s all you need. Order yours, wait 3-4 days, call in sick and spend a day, then half a weekend with the book and salvation will be yours. (When the games begin, just make sure you keep the Big Book, i.e., Blue Ribbon, near the remote.) By the way, every Division I hoops’ office has it on a handy shelf, ready to reap its bounty. Guess that’s a pretty good endorsement.

Here’s an excellent excerpt from their web-site that tells you what goes on in the book:

How to Read Blue Ribbon Basketball Yearbook

Sample Top 25 School - Sample School

“The book is designed in two separate parts. The front contains an exhaustive analysis of Blue Ribbon’s preseason Top 25. These stories are anywhere from 4,000 to 5,500 words in length and broken up into distinct sections.

COACH AND PROGRAM sums up the state of the program and the head coach.

Next comes PROJECTED STARTERS, where Blue Ribbon writers do their best to predict what five players are likely to open the season in the starting lineup. This information isn’t pulled out of thin air, but usually based on a conversation with a team’s coach. KEY RESERVES follow, and finally, other players on the roster and recruits. At times, an incoming freshman or transfer will be projected as a starter.

The story begins its final descent with Questions and Answers, quick one- or two-sentence opinions of a team’s perceived weaknesses (Questions) and strengths (Answers).

Letter grades come next. These letter grades aren’t a comparison of a team against other teams in its conference or around the nation, but rather an analysis of its own strengths in four key areas: BACKCOURT, FRONTCOURT, BENCH/DEPTH and Intangibles.

Finally comes the BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS, several paragraphs that tie the entire package together and tries to forecast how a team should fare.

Mingled throughout the story are two graphic elements: the current schedule and the previous season’s results.

In addition to the Top 25 report, Blue Ribbon contains a full story, ranging from 1,000 to 2,500 words, on every other Division I team in the country. The book lists each conference alphabetically, and each school in the various conferences are listed alphabetically.

The stories differ from the Top 25 because they aren’t as exhaustive in terms of player analysis. But each are thorough, our information gleaned from thorough research and a conversation with the head coach.

The stories end with letter grades (see above) and the BLUE RIBBON ANALYSIS . . . “

Rooting for this Kid

How could you not be impressed with this kid? Though lots of college and pro athletes now know how to say the “right thing”, with Michael Conley it comes across as something he thought up, totally sincere.

Watch these clips and tell me you’re not rooting for this kid.

Bucks’ Workout

Ballhandling Drills

Skip Prosser

photo: The Baltimore Sun

Don’t know how many of you follow college basketball closely enough to know who Skip Prosser was or if you then noticed the very sad news that he passed away of an apparent heart attack on the Wake Forest campus a week or so ago. He was eulogized there at Wake Forest in a ceremony last week and then, again, more recently, where he began his head coaching career at Xavier University in Cincinnati.

College basketball coaches get to know a lot of other people in basketball: head coaches, assistants, ADs, players, former players, parents and friends from your own school and opponent’s schools. You meet when you’re out recruiting (weeks and weeks of that over the course of a year, a huge chunk coming in the summertime), scouting, before and after games, at the Final Four (which doubles as the coaches’ convention). Not having been a player of any repute, I got to know who I got to know mostly when I started coaching at Harvard. I was there seven years so shook a lot of hands, compared many notes on sidelines and in the stands at recruiting venues, drank a few beers with guys, bullshitted the hours away. Because I was new to the college ranks those first few years and, as I said, wasn’t a “name” guy, it was easy for other coaches, especially at “big-time” schools to, you know, blow me and other rookies off. As the years went by and as I got a little more established, coinciding, I suppose with my elevation to the top assistantship at Harvard and after having made some noise with a recruiting coup or two, it was a bit more comfortable to hang with the big boys. Still, as in anyone’s walk through life, certain people stood out, just for the simple fact that they made an effort to make you comfortable, made you feel like you belonged, that they were just like you and you them. That they were nothing special or, perhaps, that you were every bit as worthy. Skip Prosser went out of his way to help me find my comfortable place in the world of college basketball.

Nothing special really, but when so many others wouldn’t do this, you notice and you remember and you really appreciate it. After leaving Harvard, some DI schools paid me to do advance scouting for them. One such school, the University of San Francisco got in touch with me to go to a UMass game against Xavier. USF was playing UMass in a few weeks, wanted to get the scoop on plays, calls, tendencies. This was when John Calipari was coaching UMass and they had Marcus Camby, etc. Skip Prosser was an assistant at Xavier then and they were in the midst of a six year run to the NCAAs. Big-time. I knew his boss, Pete Gillen (Fordham/Notre Dame/Harvard connection), but barely and through mutual friends only. Nonetheless, I went up to Skip after the Xavier/UMass game in Amherst, introduced myself, told him that I was there to watch and scout UMass. He offered, and this was unheard of, to send me his scouting report from before their UMass game, as well as his follow-up report. Follow-up report! Generous and good, good-as-in it was the best and most comprehensive and eye opening thing I had ever read on a game of basketball. It changed my view of not only that game but all basketball games henceforth. It was very cool of him to do that, and he barely knew me. (Maybe the fact that they beat UMass made it easier!)

Later that year, as a guest of head coach Pete Gillen, I spent 3-4 days at Xavier watching their practices and going to a Xavier/Evansville (bitter rivals) game at the old Cincinnati Gardens. (The Musketeers won.) After one of the practices, a late afternoon affair, knowing that I was in town, alone, Skip asked me if I wanted to meet him out later for some dinner. Again, very cool and kind. I mean, why bother with the former assistant from Harvard? It was no surprise that when we went to a bar for a couple of beers later, everyone knew Skip and he had nothing but good words for everyone. Skip was the Good Prince of that town.

When you meet people like that, especially in a cutthroat world like college basketball, you hope that others take notice and try to become a little like that themselves. And when someone like that passes away, and the stories that are told about them are heard, again, you wish that it all somehow sinks in, that the kindness and openness, easy laugh and genuine smile, that robust, unmistakeable generosity of spirit is something that sinks way in, just stays with us. All those players and coaches, all those people who met Skip Prosser, myself included, are very, very lucky to have known him. And the good news is, a guy like that never really goes away.

What You Won’t See in Boston

Never Too Late Basketball Images, all rights reserved

In Portland last week to run an NTL Weekend Camp and what do we Bostonians see on I-84 East each day? Ouch!

I honked 5 times for the Celtics’ fifth pick, who, I predict, will never play with Paul Pierce.

Because Pierce won’t want to play with another “project”: Yi. Because he thinks that Green or Noah or Brewer will not be enough to make a difference; he’s correct there. And because management will have finally decided that they would rather trade Pierce while he’s still more marketable than he will be a year from now (approaching, then 31 y/o), than pair him with someone like Jermaine O’Neal or someone who, sans Al Jefferson (who they would have to give up), is just not good enough to get them anywhere interesting: second round of playoffs.

Pierce is petulant and thinks he is better than he really is. Is he, in fact, a top fifteen NBA player? (Lebron, Kobe, Duncan, Wade, T-Mac, Yao, KG, Bosh, Nash, Nowitzki, Amare, Brand, Carmelo, Boozer/Arenas/Dwight Howard/Iverson. Other than maybe Iverson, who would you not take straight up for Pierce? And there are probably a half dozen others.). Some contender surely must think they could use him. Rivers has had to kiss Pierce’s butt one time too many and for too long and will probably have convinced Ainge (if Ainge has a half a brain in his head and I think he does . . . barely) by now that Pierce has more value gone than staying. He serves no purpose here. He’d be better off somewhere else, too. Send him to Jerry Sloan, see how he likes it there.

Watch for major upheaval on the Celtics’ front. I mean, it’s gotta happen. But please let Pierce be gone and not Big Al. Please!

Technorati Tags: Celtics, NBADraft, Oden, Durant

Two Successful Coaches, Two (Seemingly) Opposing Styles

Who would you rather have your daughter play for? Stefanie Pemper, (”Mommy Lama”?) coach of the uber-winners at DIII dominant Bowdoin College (and a veteran coach of several NTL Weekend Camps) or Bill Laimbeer, coach of the resurgent and now undefeated two-time WNBA champ Detroit Shock?

Read the accompanying two articles (one copied, one linked) and let us know. Laimbeer vs. Pemper. Are they as dark-side-of-Mars, sunnyside-of-Venus as they seem?

“Aggressive, Infuriating and Successful”

OR

COLLEGE BASKETBALL; Blend at Bowdoin Is the Complete Player

By JOE DRAPE
Published in the NY Times: February 21, 2004

Coach Stefanie Pemper detests timeouts and rarely calls them. Forward Justine Pouravelis is an aspiring filmmaker, an opera buff and an honors student. Between games in the New England Small College Athletic Conference tournament, which begins Saturday, Alison Smith will perform in a campus production of ”The Vagina Monologues.”

But right now, the Bowdoin College Polar Bears have basketball on their minds. Sort of. They are divided into three teams — self-named the Mighty T’s, the Ferocious Ferraris and the Fire — for a regimen that resembles an Olympics of shooting, passing and defensive drills. Some faces are painted, ribbons dangle from ponytails, and cheers and chants echo inside Morrell Gymnasium. Winning the team spirit component is important.

Only after the exuberance gives way to the swoosh of nylon as one shot after another falls through the nets are the Bowdoin women recognizable as talented basketball players who have put up a 23-0 record and are ranked No. 1 in the N.C.A.A. Division III. They have done it without athletic scholarships and while balancing extracurricular activities and demanding classwork at Bowdoin, a liberal arts college of more than 1,600 students.

They have done it well. The team’s cumulative grade point average of 3.35 is higher than the 3.27 average of the student body. They have done it that way because they wanted to.

”I had decided not to play basketball in college,” said Pouravelis, a sophomore forward, who led her high school team to the Maine Class A championship, ”because I didn’t want it to get distorted into something I didn’t love anymore. But right here is about as pure as it gets.”
It was only after she was accepted to Bowdoin and met with Pemper that Pouravelis decided she could juggle her study of economics with her dream of being a cinematographer without missing the operas that come to Portland. She has averaged 7 points and 6 rebounds a game, but had as much fun creating a farewell film for the seniors. Pouravelis melded her passions and cut a highlight tape of them that she scored to the music of ”Carmina Burana” by the German composer Carl Orff.

It takes an eclectic and sometimes eccentric coach to mold bright, diverse personalities into a program with hardly any budget and a mission that demands that the players mirror the student body and participate in the college community.
Bowdoin found one in Pemper, a former Big Sky all-conference guard at Idaho State, where she was also an academic all-conference player. A former assistant at Harvard, she has compiled a 127-30 record over six seasons, won three conference titles and led the Polar Bears to three consecutive N.C.A.A. Division III tournaments, twice reaching the quarterfinals.

But the banners hanging in the gymnasium are not what impress Bowdoin College’s president, Barry Mills, the most about Pemper.
”She instills passion, confidence, poise and values in her players,” Mills said. ”She is all about teaching responsibility and making your own decisions.”

Pemper, 33, believes coaching is conducted during practices. Hers are crisply organized and competitive; shortly into the regimen, her players were bent over and breathing hard. She has also brought a Division I sensibility to the program, preparing typed and detailed notes on opponents. When the Polar Bears travel outside New England, they do so first-class.

Over the New Year’s holiday break, Pemper turned a trip to play Franklin & Marshall in Pennsylvania into a four-day field trip to New York, where the team went to a Broadway show and dined at a French restaurant. Pemper also designed a scavenger hunt for her players, which included getting their pictures taken in front of the Brooklyn Bridge, visiting a museum and eating a meal with the parents of the freshman Julia Loonin.

Besides avoiding timeouts, Pemper makes her players meet first at halftime to decide what adjustments they need to make for the second half. ”If I’m doing this right, they should be able to coach themselves,” Pemper said.

On the floor, the Polar Bears have achieved the program’s first undefeated season. They lead Division III in scoring defense, allowing only 44.7 points a game, and win by an average of 23.5 points, which is the nation’s fifth-best margin. They beat the nation’s No. 2 team and their in-state rival, Southern Maine, on the road, and have won two games in overtime — the last at Williams, where they had to erase a 20-point deficit.

But Pemper is more gratified by the balance her players show away from basketball. The senior Kristina Fugate missed part of last season to study abroad in South Africa and put her studies in government and biology to work over the summer examining invasive plants for the state of Maine. Erika Nickerson is a classics major and, like Pouravelis, is a Sarah and James Bowdoin scholar.

So when Smith approached her before the season about performing in ”The Vagina Monologues,” Pemper got out her calendar to help her make it work. Smith wanted to deepen her commitment to the V-Day movement, which raises awareness and money to combat violence against women. Pemper has moved next week’s practices to the afternoons so that Smith, her starting guard, will be able to rehearse at night. The conference tournament games are on Saturday and Sunday afternoon and do not conflict with the play’s evening performances.
”I’m not concerned about her missing meals or getting enough rest,” said Pemper, who will attend the play with her team. ”I trust that Alison, as a 20-year-old woman, can make a decision that is important to her and one that she can be proud of.”

Smith, a junior psychology major, says her seven-minute monologue is burned in her brain, as is the vision of the Polar Bears running through the conference and N.C.A.A. tournaments.

”I am branching out with the acting,” said Smith, who was named the Gatorade player of the year in Maine as a senior at Bangor High School. ”But the V-Day movement and basketball are both very important to me. We play serious basketball around here, but we’re also serious about life. It’s what Bowdoin is about. It’s what Stefanie is about.”

Technorati Tags: BillLaimbeer, DetroitShock, StefaniePemper, BowdoinCollege, CoachingStyles, MarsVenus

Hakeem Shows Yao Some “Dream” Post Moves

Came upon this video while checking out the head coaching status of my former Harvard bench mate (1985-89), Tom Thibodeau. (Interviewed recently by the Kings. His time is coming!)

This is a pretty good video because 1) there’s no annoying music attached to it; 2) Hakeem and Yao are taking the session seriously; 3) those post moves of Hakeem’s!!! Good Lord! Or Good Allah, or . . . whatever, they are sweet; 4) the advice Hakeem is giving to a 2nd team all-NBA center is so on-the-money (and related to an earlier “post” here at NTL Tips concerning, among other things, keeping the ball UP). Hakeem seems likeable, perceptive, genuinely engaged, enthusiastic even: a natural teacher.

The video.

Technorati Tags: HakeemTheDream, Yao, TomThibodeau, PostMoves

Tommy Amaker Comes to Harvard

Tommy Amaker, Carols Ororio/AP photo

Tommy Amaker, the former All-American point guard at Duke and the former head coach at Seton Hall and, most recently at Michigan, has accepted the head men’s basketball position at Harvard University. I think he will do well, and by “doing well” I mean but one thing, the only thing that counts: win Harvard’s first Ivy League Championship in men’s basketball. After sixteen years, I’m back to rooting for The Crimson.

Some stuff I know about Amaker:

The year before I joined the staff at Harvard (1983-84), Amaker, as a freshman, was on the Duke team that first cracked the top 20 under Coach K. Johnny Dawkins, later to be the College Player of the Year (and now top assistant at Duke) and Mark Alarie (also first team all-American) were sophomores. Jay Bilas, the insufferably correct college basketball analyst, was a junior. That year, they played Harvard at Harvard and after being down eight at one point rallied for a 86-83 win in what was the best game ever played at the old Briggs Cage. Dawkins had 30+ as did Harvard’s Ivy Player of the Year, Joe Carrabino. Two years later as part of the backcourt that Al McGuire called the “greatest backcourt in college basketball history”, Amaker with Dawkins led the Dukies to the championship game where they lost to Danny Manning and the Kansas Jayhawks. The next year, as Duke captain he was named the nation’s Defensive Player of the Year. From the guard position! He was that good.

That season, his senior year in which he captained Duke, I was an invitee of Coach K (whom I knew from working Duke’s camps and from our yearly, ahem, battles with Duke), at the first Duke practice of the season. They had a freshman that year, Phil Henderson, something of a loose cannon who never quite matured as a player but who was a great athlete and very good player. Henderson, a reed-thin 6′4″ from Chicago, is most famous for a down-the-lane, out-of-the-halfcourt offense, delirious, one-handed tomahawk dunk on and over and in the mug of Georgetown’s Alonzo Mourning, the most feared big-man defender in basketball. That dunk was replayed a gazillion times during March Madness. Anyway, at that first practice, Duke was doing a deny-the-wing player defensive drill where the coach has the ball out past the top of the key and the offensive wing player moves in and out to try to get open. Amaker was defending the athletic, effervescent, youthful Henderson. Henderson could not get open on the wing. Amaker-glue-Henderson. Usually the drill quits right there and the next two players come on. But Henderson started moving all over the halfcourt trying to get open, and Coach K let the scene play out. Coach K was teaching. (Imagine?) Henderson ran to the baseline and fired out, but he couldn’t shake his shadow. He hid in the corner and sprinted out. Not an inch of an opening. Henderson literally ran all over the halfcourt, like a startled, desperate chicken in a pen, looking for a way out, but it was like he was looking in a mirror and an image traced and tracked, almost to a synchronized swimming type perfection, his every move. That was amazing. Duke beat us by twelve that year in a game in which our point guard, yes, had more than a little trouble.

Amaker had no interest in playing pro ball, probably knew that his lack of shooting range and scoring punch made the odds a little long. (He was drafted by Seattle and might have played one year.) I always admired that (assumed) self-assessment and restraint. He went on to assist Coach K for nine years and then spent a few as head man at Seton Hall and four more at Michigan before being fired. Only one NCAA apearance in ten years might be cause for concern among some Harvard faithful. I say not to worry. Interesting, though, that in 2007 he winds up in Cambridge because in 1991, after my boss Pete Roby resigned, I was told, rather naively or stupidly, by an assistant AD who was going to be in charge of the hiring committee, that I, as the in-house top assistant, was “in the lead” for the job. That sounded good to me, but I didn’t really believe it. I immediately called Coach K to get advice and support and he told me that he’d have to check with Amaker first to see if Amaker was interested in the job before he threw his considerable weight behind me (which he soon did). Amaker was not interested, wanted to ride the waves to a bigger beach, I guess. Took on a little water in the swamps of New Jersey and more off the shores of Lake Michigan and here he is: Down by the Banks of the River Charles!

On a personal note, I used to talk with Amaker in the weight room at Duke when I was working the camps; likeable, thoughtful, generous guy. And when I left Harvard and had a couple of opportunities with coaches at different schools, Amaker (through Pete Gaudet, another Duke assistant with whom I was closer) gave me advice and feedback on the coaches and staffs I was considering joining. Again, thoughtful and willing to help.

Basically all he’s gotta do is recruit and recruit well. Princeton’s down and Penn graduated a lot, leaving a B-I-G opening. Recruit like Frank McLaughlin and, later, like Pete Roby and his staff did, keep expectations in check for a couple of years and not suffer some of the injuries and bad luck that we suffered. Get them fit to play relentless defense; be consistent in approach and message to the players. Reach out to former players and staff and students; and, then, “I’m a-wishin’ and a-hopin’ . . . ohhn, ohhn, Cambridge you’re my home!”

Technorati Tags: TommyAmaker, HarvardBasketball, CoachK, DukeBasketball

“Shutting It Down”

Paul Pierce Dives Out-of-Bounds (AP Photo/Chitose Suzuki)

Am I the only one who is put-off, I mean sickened, by this notion, this trend of not finishing out the season, this whole “I’m thinking about ’shutting it down’” for the rest of the schedule? I know, I know, I am old-school as it gets. These guys are commodities, worth millions, tens of millions in revenue and, thus, have to be protected. It still makes me sick.

Bad enough when it’s “Manny being Manny” but do we have to put up with “Paul being Paul”? I know Pierce had the beginning of what looked like it could have been a stress fracture, but they brought him back in due time and they certainly would not have brought him back if it risked further injury. He came back to play so they could win a game or two after the eighteen game “Voyage to the Bottom of the (NBA) Sea”, but, more than anything, to see if the “young players”: Jefferson, West, Rondo, could learn to adjust to playing with the “superstar”, the “franchise”, the snubbed “all-star”, the “classic case of a great player on a bad team”. Apparently they got their answer because looks like Paul is “shutting it down”.

Give me a break. It’s pathetic. I share some Celts’ season tickets and knew I was going to be out-of-the-country this past Sunday, the date of the Cavs in Boston. Emailed a friend: “want the tickets? LeBron and Pierce”? Ya, sure. (Sorry, Mike.)

You’re right, I’m old school. And to prove it, I conjure the ghost of Red Auerbach. What Would Red Say? WWRS? As a coach, obviously, Red never would have had to deal with such a scenario. Last place, going nowhere? “Should I sit Russ to see if we can avoid moving into 3rd-to-last and diminish our lottery pick status”? WWRS? He’d be on the phone to see who he could get for that “warrior” Pierce, he’d throw in the Celtic dancers and Lucky, to boot.

Glad my mother didn’t shut it down right when I was beginning to walk. Or my trig or calculus teacher vanished in mid-April. Or a farmer at the 32nd acre. Ted Williams played that last game when he could have sat and protected the .400 average. Didn’t he? Cannot imagine Magic sitting or Mo Cheeks or Bird, but then again, those comparisons are spurious because they were too good to let the teams they played on be as bad as Paul Pierce’s Celtics.

And these “sitters” all claim to “love the game”? If you love it, then you play it. I think of all the players who would do anything to be on that floor, the NBA floor, proving who they are as ballplayers. But, I suppose, they too would soon be corrupted by what passes as values in today’s pro game. A guy or girl at a pick-up game, waiting on the sideline, having yelled “winners” has more, way more, integrity.

Technorati Tags: PaulPierce, BostonCeltics, MannyRamirez, RedAuerbach

Pro Basketball Games in Foreign Places, Part Two

Before stepping back into The Madness, I wanted to get to Part Two of the Foreign Places thread. It doesn’t take a long look at the results of the World Basketball Championships to understand that hoops is global and has been for quite a long time. As fun as it is to watch old clips of Arvydas Sabonis’s passes from the post or admire Tony Parker’s forays down the lane or Lauren Jackson’s overall game, you really connect the game with the global village by getting on the court in foreign places (I’ve played some amazing - and some lousy - pick-up in Warsaw, Sydney and Rio). But if you don’t get the chance to play or watch a game in some far away locale, the next best thing is to hear from someone who has.

Alexander Wolff, former SI college hoops writer and now owner of the Vermont Frost Heaves of the nascent ABA, has had a great book out about playing hoops all over the world: Big Game, Small World. A great read.

This is one account that I’ve always favored because it was written by a former Never Too Late Basketball hooper in NYC, Christine Bader. She sits you right down next to her as she writes about going to a pro game in the Phillipines. (It also appears at the NTL web-site):

A Night of Basketball in Manila by Christine Bader

. . . Vendors are circling the stadium, sucking their teeth instead of shouting to hawk their chips, cookies, hot dogs, ice cream, water, juice, soda. (Um, where’s the beer?) One small Jumbotron is near the ceiling at one end of the stadium; the camera is on and unattended, focused on the legs of the scorer’s table.

The players come out to warm up for the first game. A smattering of applause. Most guys look to be between 5′10″ and 6′8″, with a few shorter point guards. This three-month season is the All-Filipino Cup; after the play-offs and a two-week break is the Commissioner’s Cup, which features the same teams, but each is allowed one “import” no taller than 6′8″. No one could explain to me how they determine eligibility. Genealogy checks? Citizenship? Do they ask to meet your parents? In any case, I finally find half-Filipinos who look less Filipino than I do. Three or four are half African-American, products of the former U.S. military presence here, I’m told. Some went to college in the states, ‘though none to hoops powerhouses.

While the players are warming up, one of the vendors stops next to me: “Autograph?” Sorry, I’m not signing any tonight. No, dummy, he’s offering to get you one of the players’ autographs, presumably for a small fee. Oh, no thanks. A minute later a fan goes courtside and asks one of the players to sign his program, which he does. Yet another scam avoided by the foreigner. . .

continue here

Technorati Tags: AmericanBasketballAssociation, AlexanderWolff, WorldBasketballChampionships, VermontFrostHeaves

Pro Basketball Games in Foreign Places, Part One

Wang Zhizhi, clippers.topbuzz.com

I recently got the DVR system from Comcast just so I’d never have to miss another game or program (even something like Showtime’s debut tonight of Ira Glass’s “This American Life”). Ellen, who set it up (who always sets these things up) said we seemed all-of-a-sudden to have more channels, a lot more channels. So, it was my duty this morning at 9:30am to investigate. All-in-one remote in hand, my search quickly ground to a halt at Channel 257, where, of all things, I came upon NBA Live. (Are we paying extra for this?) What was showing on NBA Live? The Chinese Basketball Association championship series between the Guangdong Tigers and the Bayi Army Rockets. What a beautiful morning, what a start to the day! The definition of must-see-hoops, I say. I was drawn to it in part because The Boston Globe mentioned the other day that Danny Ainge was there scouting players. So, where was Yi Jianlian and how good is he? (Projected top ten pick.)

I was feeling for Danny, scouting can be tough, you have to do a lot of imagining, projecting; there’s a lot going on out there. How will the player mature physically? How will he (or she) play in a particular system (your system)? How about when the competition is tougher, much tougher than the game he’s playing in? What are the weaknesses in his game and what are the prospects for improvement?

Added to that are the other distractions that can make it difficult to focus, to actually scout and do what you are there to do. For instance, you look at the coach of Guangdong and he’s wearing a beret. You are Danny Ainge, you are jetlagged, your team is going nowhere this year, your mind wanders: would Doc look better in a black beret or classic french, how about army green? I mean, Red had his cigar. Then there’s the distraction of two public address announcers, one for each team, leading cheers with the microphone! Shouting in Chinese. Rhythmic, joyful, it’s stand-up singing for your team! NBA exec or not, BYU be damned, Danny’s gotta find it hard not to join in. And the cheerleaders, those earnest broad-faced, well-scrubbed girls in their native dress, looking like they’re greeting a president coming off a plane. There were six million of them crammed onto the floor during time-outs.

The game announcers, though, were priceless. I began to suspect they were in studio (or someone’s basement) rather than there in person when one, the analyst (I’m sorry to say), said, “how much time would you say is left”? And the color commentator replied, not-so-authoritatively, “oh, maybe a little less than four minutes”.

Bayi Army Rockets trailed by 20 at one point but came back behind former (and probably future) NBAer, Wang Zhizhi, to top the Guangdong Tigers and prodigy, Yi Jianlian, 88-83. “The Tigers are down four with four seconds left. Do you think they can do it?” “Um, uh, I don’t know. Probably not.”

NBA Live. I love this channel!

Technorati Tags: YiLianjian, WangZhizhi, ChineseBasketballAssociation, DannyAinge