Results 1 to 7 of 7
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    Guards like Kyrie: Are the Worth the Risk of a High One?

    I have long thought no. If your intent is to drum up interest, build a fan base, fine. If you really want to make noise, even when a strong supporting cast is assembled, fool's gold. Why, these lanky guys who dance not only to get into the lane but also to finish wind up hurt, and will miss substantial parts of the season. I am not even sure it's the behemouths who guard the rim. It might well be a combination of the speed of the game, the number of games, and the speed, strength and smarts of their one on one defenders, together with the shot blockers inside. Dancing (changing directions) in breathtaking ways in the League will take its toll. We've seen it with Paul, Kyrie, Curry and I'd say Wall but he's got as many problems when he's playing as when the's not, and I'm sure that there are others I'm not remembering in the lanky dancer categories. We see that it even infects the well built dances, Dwilliams and now Rose.

    What good are these terrific talents if they are in street cloths like you and me when it counts? About as much as you and me. I think it's a huge misstake to try to build a franchise around one of these guys. As an attraction to draw attention and fans to build a moribund fan base, get your team on national TV a few times, have other teams take your club half seriously, sure. You want to contend, nope.

    So, who would I go to to play the point? Guys who shoot jump shots both outside and inside the three line, are organizers of an offense, who go to the basket without sharp cuts, and lead the break. They see an opening that is likely to get them to the rim and often finish unimpeded, they go. Otherwise, they allow one of the forwards, or a strongly built two guard to dance. Think Kidd and Billips here. Most teams that build an offense around such players have coaches that devise offenses not built around dancing. Straight paths to the rim, jump shots, and a pull back between the legs to either set up the timing and space for a jump shot or catch a defender closing, that makes it easier to go by him. Once inside the defender, the defense begins to react and the guy with the ball gets rid of it to players well positioned to shoot or initiate once again, unless there are clearouts--I'm thinking Parker here.

    Let dancers,ball magicians do their thing on runouts but, when they do, have distribution be the primary option unless the path to the basket is obvious and too much at risk behavior, twists and turns that not only pose obvious hreats to a blown out knee, but also draw a bg towards them and, by catching them by surprise, get banged in unintentional and odd ways.

    I, in fact, am much more favor of teams that don't feature a point at all; there are at least three such offenses that can be identified by name--one, the Triangle features a talented three or even two as the innitiator. Then there are points who might occupy the ball but do not take it to the rim often and then only when they have an open path. They are primarily three shooters who also choose where and by whom the offensive attack is chosen and initiated.

    So, will Rivers be a high one pick, probably as a ticket seller yes. He has shown an ability to dance, get clobbered, and come up smilin and asking for more. Just might be the exception to my rule.
    Last edited by greybeard; 04-07-2012 at 09:53 AM.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.

    "How many times can a man turn his head . . . ."

    It's unfortunate, this injury to Derick Rose, this torn ACL. Unfortunate, but not surprising, though young men like Rose block it all out. Injuries pile up, and all they can ask, all that we will ask, is when are they coming back. Rose, I'd like to believe, is seeing the costs of his at risk style of play from a different perspective now. After all, he knows to a certainty that his gift to dazzle is of no use to him now, and had has to have seriuos doubts that it ever will. Oh, he'll return to play, when the doctors pronounce him ready, without a single word about moderating his style of play. As for those with the gold who call the shots, and the GMs and coaches who carry them out, what's the chance that they give this guy's longterm well-being even a moment's thought. The talking heads who once played know first-hand what Rose is looking at, but stand silent as this madness yet again plays itself out.

    This story is an old one, and everybody knows it:

    Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
    Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
    Everybody knows that the war is over
    Everybody knows the good guys lost
    Everybody knows the fight was fixed
    The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
    That's how it goes
    Everybody knows

    Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
    Everybody knows that the captain lied
    Everybody's got this broken feeling
    Like their father or their dog just died

    Everybody's talking to their pockets
    Everybody wants a box of chocolates
    And a long stem rose
    Everybody knows


    That's how it goes
    Everybody knows

    Leonard Cohen. I wish Rose the best.
    Last edited by greybeard; 04-29-2012 at 03:56 PM.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    New York
    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post
    It's unfortunate, this injury to Derick Rose, this torn ACL. Unfortunate, but not surprising, though young men like Rose block it all out. Injuries pile up, and all they can ask, all that we will ask, is when are they coming back. Rose, I'd like to believe, is seeing the costs of his at risk style of play from a different perspective now. After all, he knows to a certainty that his gift to dazzle is of no use to him now, and had has to have seriuos doubts that it ever will. Oh, he'll return to play, when the doctors pronounce him ready, without a single word about moderating his style of play. As for those with the gold who call the shots, and the GMs and coaches who carry them out, what's the chance that they give this guy's longterm well-being even a moment's thought. The talking heads who once played know first-hand what Rose is looking at, but stand silent as this madness yet again plays itself out.

    This story is an old one, and everybody knows it:
    No doubt D-Rose is accumulating some injuries that will affect his mobility and quality of life in the decades ahead. But he's also accumulating a ginormous cash-mountain; Rose made eight figures this year. He will continue to do so well into his thirties. That has an effect on quality of life as well. For $10 million, I would let someone take a barber's razor and cut my ACL clean through.

    The injuries incurred by basketball, by tennis, by various semi-punishing sports that do not involve head trauma or attacks to the spine, these are just not in the same zip code of perilous as football, hockey, boxing, etc. Rose is not going to suffer early dementia, and he's not going to be put in a wheelchair or suffer amputations. Moreover, it's worth remembering that most jobs will shorten your life somehow. For example, everyone has been talking about the new study that claims people who sit a lot die sooner, regardless of their exercise level. Tough break, office jockies! Never mind if you, say, work in a needle factory or uranium mine. Life is full of compromise. Someone as blessed by Fortune as Rose need not be the man for whom Leonard Cohen dirges are trotted out.

    Also, "those with the gold who call the shots, and the GMs and coaches who carry them out"? Name me one member of Chicago's power structure who's like totally fine and sanguine with how things turned out last night.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    Undisclosed
    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post

    Leonard Cohen. I wish Rose the best.
    Everybody knows that you live forever, if . . . ah, nevermind.

    (The Duhks do a great version of this song, btw).

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Feb 2009
    Location
    Nashville
    On a related note, Adidas is probably not having the best weekend.

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Washington, D.C.
    Quote Originally Posted by Des Esseintes View Post
    No doubt D-Rose is accumulating some injuries that will affect his mobility and quality of life in the decades ahead. But he's also accumulating a ginormous cash-mountain; Rose made eight figures this year. He will continue to do so well into his thirties. That has an effect on quality of life as well. For $10 million, I would let someone take a barber's razor and cut my ACL clean through.

    The injuries incurred by basketball, by tennis, by various semi-punishing sports that do not involve head trauma or attacks to the spine, these are just not in the same zip code of perilous as football, hockey, boxing, etc. Rose is not going to suffer early dementia, and he's not going to be put in a wheelchair or suffer amputations. Moreover, it's worth remembering that most jobs will shorten your life somehow. For example, everyone has been talking about the new study that claims people who sit a lot die sooner, regardless of their exercise level. Tough break, office jockies! Never mind if you, say, work in a needle factory or uranium mine. Life is full of compromise. Someone as blessed by Fortune as Rose need not be the man for whom Leonard Cohen dirges are trotted out.

    Also, "those with the gold who call the shots, and the GMs and coaches who carry them out"? Name me one member of Chicago's power structure who's like totally fine and sanguine with how things turned out last night.
    Fair answers, but I think a step to blithe.

    First, Rose could have made multiple millions by playing differently, more safely but no less effectively from the perspective of winning. He could have been an important piece of the Bulls, and gotten paid incredibly well for it. One could argue, and I would, that Chicago would have had a much better chance to win if Rose did not try to dazzle, if he did occupy the ball so much, if he did the little things that a star player can do to contribute greatly to team-oriented play that can win championships, lots of them. San Antonio has done it with Duncan playing a miminalist style and Parker doing the same.

    Seond, Rose's problems involve more an a simple torn ACL (are they ever simple). He's had to have been making adjustments to avoid a flair up of that bad injury to his back. Twists in the spine locked up vertebrae, frozen sacrums, etc. have a way of hanging around; they necessarily impede movements the average Joe can make, having all sorts of implications for how you carry yoursel and what adjustments you need to make to even come close to replicating in action what your mind sees. Timing is impacted, actions are altered, force that otherwise would be transmitted easily through the skeleton to perform what you want gets stuck and causes sharp pain; the adjustments one makes causes strain elsewhere, and something goes POP, in Rose's case his hamstring and, when he did not heed the second warning, the ACL followed.

    Look, Tiger played through two micro fractures in his fibia, or was it his knee cap, tore his ACL, and played on to glory, for what well might be his last time. Swing changes, putting stroke changes, he's still got that knee, and then its his Achilles, and something almost always pop up, get caught, cause a twinge, and the Tiger that once was can't be that anymore.

    So, we're not just talking about way down the road, we just might be looking at a ruined career. Sure he'll come back But, playing with the elan, freedom, enjoyment and potency as before, sadly I can't imagine it. They'll pay him for a while, theyhave to, right, but the money will not replace what Rose has lost, not in old age, but now. What price joy, what price doing what you love but not in the way, not nearly in the way, that you'd like. This guy took a risk that he had no reason to, and has debased a body, and in the process leaves the brilliance his mind embodies locked within itself. Bad choice from my perspective. As I said, probably Rose has been thinking that too.

    The owners don't drive the bus, really. What's the little, in the pros not so little, circle around the rim about? Don't tell me that it makes it safer for guys to finish. It requires them to do what it takes to get to that spot. The gifted ones, the creative ones, the one's who can dance, cut and swerve in manners and at speeds that defy imagine, do. That is what the bosses' want. That's what brings in the gold by filing the stands, by upping the cable contracts. How else do they play with the game to facilitate, no demand all this? When was the last time you saw prime time attackers of the basket get called for carrying the ball, and that's what they do, I'm not talking about palming the ball, I'm talking about halding the ball from the side in a pregnant pause that permits them to outime and blow past their immediate defender. Everyone talks on this Board about defenders "who can stay in front of the ball." Not possible to do if the dribbler on the move, can cup it and pause for as long as he wishes, a second will do, making a defender guess when and in which way the guy with the ball will go. You put that weapon in Rose's hands, you open the space around the basket to producing a certain defensive foul no matter how easy it would have been to have been positioned there waiting, and you say that he with the gold does not shape the game? We disgree.

    BTW, you think that the GM and coach at Cleveland don't sleep better at night because Kyrie is out there dancing. Once the hook is in, so what if the kid goes down with a knee, with an achillies, and is out for extended periods. The fans have hope and they will come. The dazzle tells them that they have something worth waiting for, worth rooting for, worth identifying with as if they were teenagers and we were talking about the high school team. So, the GMs and coaches do their job; they get the dancer who can bring in the fans, construct an offense that calls on him to do it on every possession, and then hope in silence that the guy don't get beat up too much.

    Finally, I agree with you that a tsumani is coming and the costs are unimaginable. No one knows what sitting in front of a computer for 8 plus hours a day, day-in and day-out, for a lifetime of work will do to human beings. Will the nature of what it means to be human change. Will the intellegence that informs how we be and the matrixes merge to such a degree that the brain will lose the qualities that make it distinctly human. (pretty deep, eh). For what it's worth, not that I actually understand what i just said, I'm pretty sure that the answer has to be Yes. Physical problems? Without a brain to move it, who needs a body.

    It's been fun, and you might well have had the more realistic take on all this. But, I have to say I'm a bit perplexed--your arguments that there are other job-related injuries that are much more significant--where exactly do they leave us? Oh, I get it, basketball injuries to people earning millions, in that context, there's nothing to talk about. By that logic, there is no reason to talk about anythng. "Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you boy, we're on the eve of destruction."
    Last edited by greybeard; 04-29-2012 at 11:17 PM.

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Dec 2009
    Location
    New York
    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post
    First, Rose could have made multiple millions by playing differently, more safely but no less effectively from the perspective of winning. He could have been an important piece of the Bulls, and gotten paid incredibly well for it. One could argue, and I would, that Chicago would have had a much better chance to win if Rose did not try to dazzle, if he did occupy the ball so much, if he did the little things that a star player can do to contribute greatly to team-oriented play that can win championships, lots of them. San Antonio has done it with Duncan playing a miminalist style and Parker doing the same.
    I don't think this statement is true. It's pretty generally accepted that for a point guard to be elite in the NBA, he must do two of three things: get to the line, shoot prolifically from deep, or create. Derrick Rose is a special, special player, but let's recall what makes him fantastic. He is not a great shooter. He does not possess great court vision. Last year he transformed from a good, if mildly overrated, point guard into a legitimate MVP candidate. His jump in part resulted from an early season hot streak from three that may have been ephemeral, but the majority of his (offensive) growth was an ability to get to the line. Rose has always been able to take shots at the rim, but only recently has he looked for contact. This newfound willingness to manufacture points from free throws boosted his efficiency to elite levels. If Rose had never started playing to contact, there is no way he could have been as valuable to his team as he was last year. He'll never be a good enough shooter to compensate for lost points at the free throw line. He'll never have the preternatural vision to get assists for his teammates from the perimeter. To be at his best, Rose needs to be collapsing defenses and taking it to the cup. It's true that this style of play is inherently riskier than Steve Nash's, but, to paraphrase our former Secretary of Defense, a player must maximize the talents he has, not the talents he wishes he had.

    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post
    So, we're not just talking about way down the road, we just might be looking at a ruined career. Sure he'll come back But, playing with the elan, freedom, enjoyment and potency as before, sadly I can't imagine it. They'll pay him for a while, theyhave to, right, but the money will not replace what Rose has lost, not in old age, but now. What price joy, what price doing what you love but not in the way, not nearly in the way, that you'd like. This guy took a risk that he had no reason to, and has debased a body, and in the process leaves the brilliance his mind embodies locked within itself. Bad choice from my perspective. As I said, probably Rose has been thinking that too.
    No, not a bad choice. If you play a sport, you assume a non-zero risk that you will suffer serious injury. That's what it means to be an athlete. Between Adidas and the Chicago Bulls, Rose is UNDER CONTRACT to make $340 million dollars over the next fourteen years. Let that sink in for a sec. Do you honestly think even this morning that D-Rose is thinking, "Man, I wish I played basketball a totally different way than I do. This style of play has brought me nothing but hurt"? Because I do not. He got injured, as guys (and gals) will do from time to time. It doesn't mean he was doing something wrong. It means he got unlucky. Happily, he has one third of a billion dollars to make himself feel better.

    Quote Originally Posted by greybeard View Post
    It's been fun, and you might well have had the more realistic take on all this. But, I have to say I'm a bit perplexed--your arguments that there are other job-related injuries that are much more significant--where exactly do they leave us? Oh, I get it, basketball injuries to people earning millions, in that context, there's nothing to talk about. By that logic, there is no reason to talk about anythng. "Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you boy, we're on the eve of destruction."
    No, that is not my point, not at all. Your post was about poor exploited Derrick Rose and how he wasn't making rational decisions and how the money men were making fortunes off his mangled body. You included Leonard Effing Cohen singing about loaded dice, as if the subject were the Cripple Creek Strike or the Haymarket Affair. Look, you want to talk about NFL scrapheapers who are running down the field on kick coverage and getting themselves murdered? I'm with you. That's exploitation. Minor league hockey enforcers who at 45 can't remember their children's names due to concussion-related symptoms? I think that's a terrifying problem, and we should discuss it. Shells-of-themselves boxers who can only speak in disjointed feathery whispers? Exploitation. The beast that is our appetite for sport has produced disgusting casualties. But come on: torn-MCL Derrick Rose and his unspendable pile of dollars and the cane he may or may not someday need are not comparable. To do so is an insult to those who suffer from truly dire sports-related illnesses and possess little in the way of resources to combat them. Turn down the music.

Similar Threads

  1. Replies: 5
    Last Post: 12-03-2010, 05:42 AM
  2. ACC Point Guards
    By BlueintheFace in forum Elizabeth King Forum
    Replies: 10
    Last Post: 01-30-2008, 04:28 PM
  3. Point Guards
    By Bluedawg in forum Elizabeth King Forum
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 11-09-2007, 03:45 PM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •