Man, the first quarter last night was a thing of beauty for the Utah Jazz — and basketball purists. The Jazz sliced and diced the Portland Trail Blazers, spread them out, isolated them and cut them up, laying them bare at both ends of the court in front of about 20,000 people.

Seriously, the new buzz words for the past several seasons in the NBA are cliches by now… all I’ve heard lately from teams is how they need to find players who can “create their own shot.” Yeah, well… I’m old-school. I admit that. But I remember when basketball was a beautiful team game –when it was systems that created shots. And that’s what I saw from the Jazz last night.

Jerry Sloan has never been coach of the year? What a joke. He’s one of the last holdouts who plays the game the right way, who has a system at both ends of the court and sticks to it — and makes sure his players do, too.

Did you see the Jazz just handing the ball to a player last night, asking him to go one-on-one to get a shot? And it’s not as if they couldn’t do that, either. Deron Williams could do it any time. But he works within a proven system that provides great shots for everyone — and Williams has no trouble getting his within that system.

Rick Adelman does this. So do Phil Jackson and Larry Brown. They understand that moving the ball, moving bodies and demanding that players be disciplined within a team framework is critical to winning basketball. For all you young people who think basketball is nothing but isolations and clear outs, who think you win by just handing the ball to your best guy and staying out of his way — well, get your hands on a video of last night’s game.

A lot of fans think that just because John Stockton and Karl Malone were in Utah so long running pick-and-rolls, that what Utah does is pretty predictable. But no way. Even in those days, the Jazz would come at that play in so many different ways, from so many different angles. You’d have to stop all sorts of back cuts, off-the-ball screens and player movement before they got to that play.

And you wonder why Malone and Stockton stuck around for almost two decades, playing in nearly every single game that whole time? Well, they were never asked to carry the same load that a Brandon Roy carries on a nightly basis — the task of taking the ball in the middle of the floor and constantly trying to beat multiple defenders on the way to the basket.

I get so frustrated with people who think that’s how you play winning basketball.

Look, last season the Houston Rockets ate the Blazers alive in the playoffs — and Portland came away saying it needed one more player, in addition to Brandon Roy, who could get his own shot. Meanwhile, the Blazers had been carved up by a team with NO players who could get their own shot but instead played a team game, stayed within a structured group of sets, ran plays, worked to get each other open.

Is nobody paying attention to this? Your system is supposed to get you shots, too — but it doesn’t happen here very much.

And at the other end of the court, well, it’s the same thing. For most of the first half, the Trail Blazers couldn’t get an open look. They had trouble getting to the basket and getting open threes. The Jazz got out to Portland’s guards while still being able to seal off the inside as well as anyone the Blazers have played.

Rudy Fernandez, Andre Miller, Martell Webster and Steve Blake combined to go 8 for 39 from the field. Jerryd Bayless was 5 for 12, but made that many only because he was relentless in his pursuit of cheap buckets late in the game when the issue was decided.

In the second half, things became a little more equal because Carlos Boozer left in the middle of the third quarter with a calf strain, right about the time Williams went to the bench with his fourth foul and Utah was pretty bad at the foul line. Besides, the trailing team, especially at home, always gets that run in the second half.

(By the way, it was a typical LaMarcus Aldridge game — great statistics at the end of the night but if you were watching the game, you wouldn’t like what you saw. For most of the night, Boozer just annihilated him. If he hadn’t gotten hurt, he’d have thrown Aldridge off the Broadway Bridge by the fourth quarter.)

But don’t let that obscure what happened in this game. The Jazz gave the Trail Blazers a very big lesson on how the game is supposed to be played. And it’s real important that everyone understand that.

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Tags: Brandon Roy, Carlos Boozer, Deron Williams, Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, Jerry Sloan, Larry Brown, NBA, Phil Jackson, Portland Trail Blazers, Rick Adelman, Utah Jazz

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You know, I wasn’t all that upset about him bringing the guns into the locker room. I mean, NBA players with guns doesn’t alarm me much. I’m used to it. It’s what they do.

But the whole pre-game thing, with the fingers as pistols? He’s an idiot. He doesn’t get it. He’s never learned that basic fact — to play the game, you have to play the game. Understand?

You can not agree with the rules, but you still have to play by the rules. That’s the way it is in real life — no matter how talented you are. At some point, you have to play by the rules.

He’s in some serious hot water now. He’s given David Stern all the ammunition (no pun intended) he needs to suspend him for a very long time. And perhaps given the Washington Wizards enough reason to void his ridiculous contract.

Can you imagine putting a long-term deal worth something in the neighborhood of $100 million in jeopardy for a pre-game stunt that you figure might get a laugh out of your teammates?

What a fool this man is.

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Tags: David Stern, Dwight Jaynes, Gilbert Arenas, NBA, Washington Wizards

Ben Golliver at Blazers Edge is one of those guys who knows where to find great statistics and has the time to seek them out. That stuff comes in real handy at times.

My suspicion for a while now was that the Trail Blazers seem to have to rush a lot of shots up at the very bottom of the shot clock. So often, somebody has to force something when that sucker says :01. Ben was able to find the numbers and it was worse that I thought.

The available stats are with :04 and under showing on the timer. I’m sure if you could find :02 it would be even worse. The Blazers are having to take way too many of those shots and they’re one of the worst teams in the league at making them. That’s a real deadly combination, folks. Or as Ben says:

I think it’s fair to call this a critical problem right now.

An understatement. And it’s also indicative of a poorly designed offense that’s even more poorly executed. This is a serious coaching problem.

Thanks for doing my dirty work, Ben!

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Tags: Ben Golliver, Blazers Edge, Dwight Jaynes, NBA, shot clock

Let’s leave it to Pete Vecsey, who minces no words (as usual), to best summarize the whole situation, particularly if you have some doubts about whether this guy fixed games or not. If y0u have an interest in Donaghy and his story, this is a must read. Here are a couple of juicy excerpts:

According to James “Ba Ba” (as in Black Sheep, I assume) Battista, who owned up to HBO upon being freed from jail, his partner in crime, once he won a couple of games, got paid 5G every time Donaghy handicapped correctly. When somehow he misread the alleged vendettas by colleagues toward certain players, coaches, owners and religious zealots, losses were on Battistas’ dime.

“That’s how I suckered him in,” Battista bragged to Bryant Gumbel, as if Donaghy ever once in his sociopath existence needed extra incentive to continue doing anything illegal or immoral. “We were using my money. He couldn’t lose.”

At one point, Gumbel asked Battista if Donaghy fixed games. A pause and a wicked little smile later, he replied, “Let me just say, all I care about is winning. We won games.”

Again Gumbel asked if Donaghy fixed games, “No comment.”

If that wasn’t enough of an indictment, Battista later revealed Donaghy also gave him picks on games he didn’t referee.

“But I got tired of losing those,” Battista said. “I told him, ‘Just give me the games you’re working.’”

The insinuation is unambiguous.

Yeah, you say, but the FBI found no evidence that Donaghy fixed games. Read this:

Too bad Phil Scala, the FBI’s lead sleuth, and Lawrence Pedowitz, hired by the NBA as an independent investigator, didn’t get the message, because Battista never spoke to them. Left to reach a conclusion by interviewing people not directly involved in the scandal and from watching tape of Donaghy’s games, both got duped into believing he never allowed his wager to alter his work.

How overjoyed do you figure David Stern was by Pedowitz’s judgment? Proving Donaghy affected an outcome or 37, or at the very least affected the margin of said outcome(s), would have stained the league’s image far worse and lingered much longer

And:

Think of all the money that would have to be given back, not to mention the possible return of a championship trophy. Whoops, you’re right, I got confused with the NCAA. The NBA might only have been forced to revise standings . . . and teams who felt jobbed out of a tournament spot might have been tempted to sue for playoff shares.

As for self-prompting Scala, since retired, he became so mesmerized by Donaghy’s con job, the seemingly self-promoter wrote the forward to his book and is said to be writing his own on the case.

Somehow I suspect Efrem Zimbalist Jr. wouldn’t approve.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, NBA, Peter Vecsey, Tim Donaghy

I’ve mentioned him before but now that he’s out on a dual media campaign to (a) sell his new book, and (b) once again try to convince people that he didn’t actually manipulate game outcomes, it’s time for another brief post.

– First, anyone who has watched the NBA for a while understands that certain referees don’t get along with certain players or even certain teams. It goes way back to the days when the league lost control of its officials to the referees’ union. They were allowed to roam the country like some sort of roving cops — dispensing their own brand of justice. But I don’t know how many outcomes that actually affected. Not really too many, most likely.

– Second, it takes a lot of ego to referee basketball, or any other sport. If you’re going to take a lot of heat, you have to have an ego to stand up to it. (Kind of like being a sports columnist or commentator). If you have a lot of ego, it leads to confrontations with people who challenge you. Sometimes grudges spring from such things.

– Third, this doesn’t happen just in the NBA. Did you play high-school or college sports? I’m telling you, you’re a very unique player if you didn’t have at least one referee, umpire or game official who, when he came on the scene before the game, someone didn’t roll his eyes and say, “Uh-Oh, look who’s here. We never win when that guy (referees, umpires, etc.).” It’s just the way it is. You don’t have to be an NBA official to carry grudges into games. And you don’t have to be an NBA fan to be paranoid about certain game officials.

– Donaghy certainly knew enough about all the inside stuff, all the league mandates, all the gossip, etc., to give him a betting edge.

– All that said, the edge Donaghy had was nowhere near enough to allow him to win 80 percent or even 70 percent of his bets. No way. I believe the guy bet on the games he officiated and manipulated the outcome of those games. He was a fixer, pure and simple, and ought to be doing time for it. There is NO DOUBT in my mind. I also believe him to be a liar and a sociopath.

– By his own admission, he was addicted to gambling. People in that position would not hesitate for a second to do whatever was necessary to make sure they won the bet. If the FBI believes he didn’t fix games it is either naive, stupid or frightened to charge him because of lack of evidence. I’d guess the latter.

– And a final thought — credibility of referees is one of the biggest problems the NBA has. It must do better than it has to provide transparency about the selection, discipline and evaluation of its referees.

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Tags: NBA, Referees, Tim Donaghy

I think people underestimate how difficult it is to keep quick guards out of the lane on defense these days in the NBA. The rules have been changed to legislate against it. Just as they’ve been changed over the last several years to detract from the influence of big players.

In the old days, strong guards could defend quick guards by using hand checking. In many cases, players could make up for a lack of quickness by controlling an offensive player with their hands — think Terry Porter. That man did a terrific job of staying in front of quick players using his smarts and strength.

But rules change. Now you’re not allowed to put a hand on a player if you’re above the foul line. And coaches who expect players to be able to control a quick guard by themselves are often the victim of unrealistic expectations — unless they’re asking Rajon Rondo to do it. He’s about the only one in the league I’ve seen who seems to have consistent success at it.

NBA point guards are elite athletes and expecting a defender who doesn’t know which direction a dribbler is headed to stay in front of  him is borderline ridiculous. It’s like expecting a defensive back, by himself, to blanket Randy Moss on a pass pattern.

And don’t expect a ton of help from your big man, either. Those days are just about over. During the last few decades, a lot of the new rules have conspired to make it difficult for big men to have the impact they used to have on games, at both ends of the floor.

The first rule change aimed at the big guy was the three-point field goal.

When all shots were worth two points, it only made sense that the closer you get to the basket, the better your chances of scoring and the more efficient your offense was.  The mantra was always “get it in deep to the big guy” and the big guy always got a lot of shots.  Shots from distance were frowned upon in most cases in those days — it’s what you did when you couldn’t get inside or what you did to loosen the defense so you could get the ball inside.

That philosophy died hard, as veteran coaches clung to old ideas. It’s taken a long time for many of them to understand the value of three-point shots and the simple mathematics of being able to shoot a lower percentage of them and still net more points than if you shot a bunch of two-point shots at a higher percentage.

The three-point goal has turned a lot of big men into perimeter players. And at the same time, the illegal defense rules have kept the big guy from lurking in the lane like a goaltender on defense. I can remember Wilt Chamberlain and Bill Russell and Nate Thurmond, all great shot blockers, just camping out in the lane. Believe me, you didn’t want to go in there when they were lurking.

In most cases, they didn’t have to stray far from the pivotmen (now there’s an antiquated term) they were guarding because he was almost always strictly a low-post player who hung around the basket.

But now, if you hang in the lane, you’re going to give up a technical foul for being in the key three seconds — on defense! And besides, the big man on the other team is always pulling you away from the basket because he wants to shoot from distance just like the guards.

So what is a defensive team to do about guard penetration?

Help defense! Not help from big men, either, but rotation help. Beat one man and someone else has to be there. There are many systems to handle this but they all require alert defenders who will tirelessly rotate to people who aren’t “their man” to keep the opposing team from getting inside.

And at the same time, they must have enough energy to close out on the three-point shooters. It’s a difficult concept to teach and even more difficult to get players to accomplish.

It’s why only the elite teams seem to be able to do it. But it’s also why only a few teams have a serious shot at winning a championship. If you don’t defend in the NBA,  you can’t consistently beat the teams that do.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, NBA, team defense

Surprise team in the NBA? Phoenix? Well, maybe. But at least the Suns have Steve Nash. It’s Houston, hands down. Even when losing, like last night against the Los Angeles Lakers in overtime, the Rockets have been impressive.

Can this team, which isn’t tall, isn’t deep and isn’t really all that talented keep it up?

In a word, no. It can’t. Teams like that — that are undersized every night and not very deep — usually wear down or get hurt as the season moves along. It’s the price you pay for going to war every night against the physical power that the NBA brings in almost every game.

The Rockets need to continue to shoot very well from the three-point line to continue their offensive success, too. I’m not believing that they can continue to do that. It’s very difficult.

On the whole, this team’s start is a tribute to Rick Adelman’s continued ability to make the best out of the personnel he’s given. He’s one of the best I’ve ever seen. If this team finishes at or above the .500 mark in the tough Western Conference, he should go straight to the Hall of Fame.

That’s not a .500 roster.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, Houston Rockets, NBA, Rick Adelman

Wow. This one really caught me by surprise:

Walton, in a statement: “As I return after a grueling multi-year, life-threatening, life-changing ordeal with back problems, it is time to dedicate the rest of my life to service. … Thanks everybody — for everything.”

Good luck, Bill. You’ll be a success in whatever you choose to do.

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Tags: Bill Walton, broadcasting, Dwight Jaynes, ESPN, NBA

I will preface this by saying that anyone who has watched the NBA for as long as I have has seen some very strange things. Officiating at times that is inexplicable. I go back to a call in Game 6 of the Finals when the Blazers were playing at Chicago, holding a big lead at the opening of the fourth quarter and Danny Ainge made a steal. The Blazers were headed for an easy basket that would have upped an already large lead.

An official, one I’ve always suspected of carrying grudges, arbitrarily dispensing justice, etc., made a phantom call on Ainge and the entire complexion of the game changed. I never thought that call was made under the direction of someone in the league office in New York. I never expected that David Stern had the official on remote control.

And yeah, that Game 6 between the Lakers and Kings — one of the biggest heists I’ve ever watched. Criminal. Now that one really stunk.

But I’ve known Dick Bavetta for 25 years and it’s hard for me to imagine him bragging to another official that he’s the league’s “go-to guy” for arranging game outcomes. And it’s difficult for me to believe that even with all the goofy stuff I’ve seen, the the league itself is responsible for deciding games and winners.

I’ve always just assumed it was rogue officials with grudges. Bad officiating by bad people. Even bad officiating by good officials and good people. It happens. And really, every league has bad guys and bad officials. Every profession has bad people. It’s just the way it works. And yes, even good officials make mistakes and bad calls.

You may not think so from your armchair, but it’s an impossible job.

But you can’t blame every loss on officials. Come on, that Western Conference Finals Game 7 between the Lakers and Blazers? Portland missed 11 straight shots at one point in that fourth quarter. Dick Bavetta, as far as I can remember, didn’t take any of them.

Bad officiating happens in all sports. Doesn’t anybody remember Eric Gregg’s strike zone in that playoff game between the Marlins and Braves? Tim McClellan this season in the playoffs? NFL referees who look at a replay and still can’t get it right? You just have to accept it, as hard as it is. Even good officials make bad calls.

I believe Tim Donaghy is a sociopath. I think he probably is correct on some of the things he apparently wrote in that book. But I think he also recognized exactly how to appeal to NBA fans’ worst nightmares. He knew exactly what to say to appeal to every conspiracy theorist out there.

He’s playing to your worst nightmare. He is trying to make a few bucks off the burned fragments of a disgraced career. I think his book might make for very interesting reading. But fiction often is.

At some point a publisher will take a chance on it and you can bet I’ll be among the first to read it. But will I believe every word? I doubt it.

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Tags: Dwight Jaynes, NBA, Referees, Tim Donaghy

I have learned today from two sources that telecasts of  Portland Trail Blazer games may finally be accessible to a much wider audience this season, even though there’s no word of any sort of immediate resolution in the battle between Comcast and the satellite TV companies.

During the offseason, the NBA apparently decided that teams could make live telecasts of their games available on their web sites, but left it up to individual teams to decide whether to do it. And what I’ve heard is that the Trail Blazers have already decided to stream all their games live this season on their web site.

I’m not sure how that impacts the relationship between Comcast Sportsnet and the Trail Blazers, but  it’s well known that the Trail Blazers have been frustrated that their games have not been available to a wider audience than just those with cable TV connections. Comcast has been negotiating with Directv and Dish Network for more than two years, trying to reach an agreement that would allow Comcast Sportsnet Northwest to be available via satellite. But no deal has been made and such a deal does not seem imminent.

There were several web sites last season that pirated the signal of Trail Blazer telecasts and aired them on the Internet. The NBA has attempted to halt that piracy with varying degrees of success.

Major League Baseball has opened up a solid revenue stream by making its games available for a price on the Internet. All MLB games throughout the season and in the postseason are available — for a price – on the web.

No word yet on what the NBA or the Blazers will set as the cost  of watching the games, whether they’d be available on a per-game basis or only on a season basis.

The Trail Blazers Tuesday refused comment on this story.

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Tags: Comcast Sportsnet, Directv, Dish Network, Dwight Jaynes, NBA, Portland Trail Blazers