Initial Disclosures: Renaldo Balkman August 24, 2007
Posted by mb in initial disclosures series, renaldo balkman.2 comments
From New York City, this is Rockin’ Steady.
1. The Horror, The Horror
I was there:
The great thing about this moment is that no more than maybe 25 people in that crowd could have possibly known exactly who they were booing. For starters, the booing started so quickly that no one could’ve heard the Commish get “Balkman” out. Secondly, even if they had, no one knew who he was. Renaldo had not surfaced on any of the popular draft boards prior to the draft–draft boards whose projections covered both the first and second rounds. Nestled in my customary Isiah Thomas-related dread in the very rear of the theater, I began–after spending about three minutes piecing together what had happened–fully imagining a horrible clerical error, in which the Knicks had inadvertently drafted the long departed Ronaldo Blackman. In my mind, Anucha Browne Sanders was the person who, before leaving the Knicks organization, had once been in charge of making sure that the Knicks did not draft players whose names happened to sound like those of former Knicks. Without her eagle eye and rubber stamp, we were doomed to picking up players with names like “Don Parks” and “Anthony Greg” or, worse yet, simply trading up to take CBS News commentator Anthony Mason.
And so we booed, forgetting that the NBA Draft is the one facet of management Isiah Thomas is unquestionably good at. And quietly at first, something remarkable happened.
2. Kool Wit’ a K
I tend to group Knicks into two simple categories: “Part of the Solution” or “Part of the Problem.” This dates back to two years ago, when the Knicks hit the absolute nadir of their cap woes and I would spend the better part of my days fantasizing about who we could release or trade if we could afford it. Renaldo Balkman is, without a doubt, Part of the Solution. The defensive effort and athleticism and rebounding ability for a guy his size are only part of it. What intrigues me is his handle.
I remember Isiah promising prior to last season to instill more of a “Phoenix-style” offense in the Garden. (Query whether this happened at all). Renaldo Balkman has an incredibly rare skill among non-guards: the ability to rebound and, in one smooth motion, turn the ball upcourt and bring it up quickly across halfcourt. The decisions and execution after that point are still a bit on the mortifying side, but that someone as defensive-minded as Balkman even has that mentality and basic ability to start a break is incredibly promising. Balkman adds another dimension to offensive opportunism, a term most would understand to mean simply picking up garbage points around the basket. Balkman does this AND start garbage breaks, and I’ve never seen that precise combination of skills before. I see Balkman as an unexpectedly intriguing amphetamine-laced amalgam of Anthony Bonner and Charlie Ward. And I mean that in the best possible way. What kind of player do you get when you give THAT mix a couple seasons of experience, maybe tack on a consistent jumper? I have no idea. And I mean THAT in the best possible way as well.
It also helps that Renaldo is crazy. Not Marbury-crazy, but crazy enough. He is a good cheerleader, and wants to be your friend.
Tik-a-tee-tee! ‘Naldo is, in my mind, among the more intriguing things about this new season, and I worry that he won’t get the time to develop in NYK’s perpetual forward glut. (For what it’s worth–is there any position where there ISN’T some sort of glut?) Anyway, I will be very disappointed if we trade Renaldo for, you know, something stupid.
Initial Disclosures: The Delightful Madness of Stephon Marbury August 24, 2007
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UPDATE: So FreeDarko pretty much had the exact same thought process, right down to the invocation of Tracy Morgan. This is an astonishing and almost demoralizing coincidence. Maybe just don’t read this post, and wait for my parallels between David Lee and Norm MacDonald.
From New York City, this is Rockin’ Steady.
“They say that I’m crazy, but I’m crazy in love; that’s what it is.”
-Stephon Marbury
1. “That’s why they all say / There goes Astronaut Jones…”
Stephon Marbury’s utter batshit craziness crept up on me.
There were signs. At one point, while I was in college and Marbury was on the Nets, my friend Brian frantically IMed me to let me know that, in a curious development, the point guard had begun referring to himself in “the fourth person,” as someone named Starbury. I spent a full half hour debating the very idea of fourth-person reference, a concept I had never encountered but decided I rather liked. And I didn’t make much more of it than that.
There were little things after that. The odd interview nugget on those rare occasions when the Nets or Suns would make national television appearances. His philanthropic streak, rare among basketball players: he donated over a million dollars to Katrina relief efforts, and of course there was the $15 Starbury shoe, an idea so practical and socially aware that it probably should’ve prompted me to question his sanity. When the Knicks acquired Zach Randolph early this offseason, Stephon’s enthusiastic and ungrammatical reaction raised a single eyebrow, and only briefly. He conjured the mental image of a hardcourt-bound Manny Ramirez, only one who knows what sport he is playing and watches Sportscenter now and then.
I found this charming.
And then came Starbury’s answer to Crispin Glover on Letterman. Please, if you haven’t, watch the whole thing. We’ll still be here when it’s over.
And then, of course, there was this more recent episode, resolved (or finessed) just yesterday.
2. Watch Me Now
I, for one, welcome Marbury’s newfound insanity. I see it as a logical response to a basketball’s largely illogical response to him. The preferred basketball narrative concerning Marbury reads as follows:
a. Every time Marbury leaves a team, it gets better. See, e.g., Jason Kidd’s New Jersey Nets, Steve Nash’s Phoenix Suns.
b. This proves that Marbury is a selfish player.
Most who espouse this read are wholly unable to connect statement a to statement b in any non-tautological manner, and most are even more loathe to watch Stephon Marbury play and explain, as the game progresses, how this statement meshes with what transpires before them. In truth, Marbury has averaged an almost unprecedented 20 points and 8 assists for a reason, and has done so while decreasing his shot attempts over time. He is a prodigious penetrator who’s forays into the paint are often a team’s best scoring option. Even less appreciated fact: He is, for my money, the strongest point guard in the league, physically, and a pain for opposing point guards to cover (this is particularly true in playoff settings where the same guy has to cover him several times in a week–witness what Marbury did to the Spurs in their first round playoff series in Marbury’s last full Phoenix season). I’d like to see him post up every once in a while, a la Mark Jackson late in his career.
Sometimes, lightning strikes twice, and Kidd and Nash are among the best point guards ever to play the game. Consider contextual circumstances for each of those other episodes (the temporary ascendancy of Kenyon Martin and friends, the promotion and finally realized genius of Mike D’Antoni), and it’s even less surprising that the Nets and Suns improved after Marbury was traded.
The rap on Marbury continues uncorrected, and rhetorical convenience molds the collective memory regarding Coney Island’s finest. No one remembers how functional the (on-court) rapport between Marbury and Keith Van Horn was–on a playoff team–before the Knicks foolishly traded KVH for Tim Thomas. No one considers that Marbury and Kevin Garnett were about 16 years old when they experienced their growing pains as Timberwolves. And so on.
And so, Marbury has simply developed his own defense mechanism: Go mad. Say what you want, and have fun doing it, because no one will like you unless you win. Shun the non-Knick world–what care you what Knick fans think of your sanity? They won’t let themselves like you when you try to invade their “normal” space. Have fun and say and do what makes you happy, because a happy Stephon will be able to endure the mental and physical rigors of the 82 game marathon successfully. The nightly drive home from the Garden (or Purchase) is made more pleasant by taking the detour through Toontown, after all. Perhaps basketball and lunacy can fuse into something liberating and gorgeous.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
I pull hard for Stephon Marbury because his rap is undeserved and I like justice. I pull for him because I think he plays the game in a way that should, by any reasonable estimation, make teams better. And I pull for him because, deep down, I sense that he and I are kindred spirits…
Initial Disclosures: Zach Randolph August 22, 2007
Posted by mb in initial disclosures series, zach randolph.2 comments
From New York City, this is Rockin’ Steady.
1. Marion
This year, the Knicks made their mark on draft night by making what appeared to be a stunningly competent trade: Steve Francis and Channing Frye for Zach Randolph (give or take a spare part or two). The naysayers, unable to backpedal and abruptly shower Franchise or Frye with praise after years of contrary practice, instead opted to zero in on the following supposed knocks on Randolph:
1. Randolph is an evil “thug.”
2. Randolph and Eddy Curry are the exact same player, each useless without the ball, and thus the Knicks somehow managed to lose out here by acquiring a 20-10 man for a disgruntled and generally useless backcourt invalid and a “power” forward who looks and plays basketball like a version of me that had been subjected to the Mike Teavee treatment (the stretching afterwards, not the initial shrinking).
On the first topic, I had a bit of an interesting source of insight. A college acquaintance went to high school in Indiana with Randolph, and in fact tutored him in an attempt to get him to qualify to play NCAA basketball. I e-mailed Rob about our new acquisition, and it turned out he had already posted comments on the subject to Matt Yglesias’ political weblog. (Yglesias was also a college classmate, and the fact that he is now some sort of respected hero of the left wing blogosphere makes me giggle).
Rob had the following interesting things to say about Z:
I went to high school with Zach in Marion, IN (and then was in the same college class as Matthew Y., so I’m more snob than redneck klansman). I even tutored him a bit for the SAT. He came in with a 560 or something, and eventually scored 10 points below the NCAA cutoff of, I think, 820. He got a waiver to play at MSU–I think, because he had a learning disability that his mother was too proud to have formally diagnosed, and which would have nullified the cutoff anyway.
When I knew Zach, he was a very genial guy with little sense of self who just wanted to be liked. It’s strange to think of, for a guy of his size, but he would be what he thought others wanted to see. Which is a bad thing, when you’re in the kind of environment he grew up in–just google ‘Roger Randolph’ to see how his brother turned out. MSU and Izzo would have been great for him, except that he wasn’t anywhere near being prepared for college. The old Trail Blazers were about the worst situation he could have gone into.
His personality may have solidified by now (for the worse, apparently), but even if not, the Knicks don’t seem like a good situation for him, and neither does NYC.
Interesting, yes? There’s more:
When I tutored Zach, I was a Sr. and he was a Jr. We started with “negative times negative equals a positive,” which seemed pretty basic. Not even a glimmer of recognition. So we backed up a few more steps. For this, I got a couple indirect references in recruiting mags and eventually the Post… (“tutored by a Harvard-bound classmate”)
My mom is a speech therapist at an elementary school with several of Zach’s little nephews running around. Two of them are her students, and around major holidays, she hears about how Uncle Zach flies all of them to Portland and showers them with nice clothes, four-wheelers and pit bulls. She started to notice some inconsistencies in the stories, and figured out that one of the kids doesn’t actually get to go….evidently he’s only a second cousin or something. Poor kid.
So that’s something. Without sweating the details, Zach Randolph comes across as sympathetic and vulnerable. Which we all are, I guess, if you look closely enough.
What not all of us are is capable of putting up 25 and 10 on a nightly basis. This includes Eddy Curry. Observe:
The difference is in every one of those highlights that did not take place entirely within 7 feet of the basket (and in Z-Bo’s passing ability as well).
Moreover, I fail to understand why redundant effective scorers is such a bad thing. Curry crumpled some down the stretch because defenses collapsed on him in the paint. They won’t collapse quite so easily if he’s got a twin down there. And yes, neither of them play standout defense, but the +/- definitely works out in Randolph’s favor despite this. And even if they’re both defensive negatives… well, Rob’s already informed us what a negative times a negative equals, right?
My only misgiving about this trade is how it may effect David Lee. I’ll address this in another post.
2. ConfusingHoop.
Not long ago, the terrific TrueHoop posted an item that read as follows:
No one doubts that Zach Randolph can play basketball. But some say he’s a problem off the court, and he has had his run-ins. Is he a problem off the court? See for yourself.
What Henry Abbott was trying to say with that link, I understand, was that one could go to Z-Bo’s welcome party and observe his behavior firsthand–not that having a friend with a myspace page made Randolph trouble with a capital T. Well, so far, I’ve heard of no fallout from said party. My rose-colored view of the 2007-08 Knicks in this nascent stage makes me think that the party looked something like this.
It’s fun to dream.
