Planet Utah

Window closed

As noted earlier, I did attend the game tonight...though only for the first half. My seat was rotten--a mere five rows from the top. But that's what you get when you buy a playoff ticket on Sunday for a game the following Tuesday. And THAT'S what you get when you're not certain until that Sunday that your team is even going to be around the following Tuesday. Anyway, I watched dutifully for the first half, drove to a sports bar during the third quarter, and watched the fourth quarter there. I wasn't able to live blog, but I did record my thoughts in real time. I'll share them with you now, in the order that they occurred to me:

• Shaq has no energy. He's just hanging around under the rim. Won't leave the area to save his life...or more important, to guard the guy with the ball.
• What the hell happened to Nash's shot in the last month? He's missing everything these days.
• Nash has four points and no assists as we approach the half. Not a good sign.
• Amare is just standing around flat-footed. He's not moving without the ball. How does he expect to score?
• Much to my surprise, the Suns are playing decent interior defense...no thanks to Shaq.
• It's hard not to see Shaq as a big liability in this game. He's not playing any defense, he's missing all of his field goal attempts, and he's clanging his free throws. His plus-minus must be horrid.
• Amare has never committed a foul in his life. Or at least that's what he'd tell you. He cries on every call. I realize that he doesn't get calls like your typical All Star, but maybe if he cried a little less the refs would give him a few more breaks.
• Tonight Shaq is playing like the guy all the trade-haters said he would be: old, lazy, slow, and grumpy.
• Amare has made no adjustments to the Spurs' tough defense. He's playing as if his buckets are going to come as easy as they do against Memphis or the Paper Clips. No, Stat, these are the defending world champs. You're going to have to earn your points.
• I've just watched my billionth commercial for the Bill Engvall show. First of all, I feel bad for Nancy Travis. She's cute and talented, but she ends up doing crap like this and "Becker." Also, after every completely pedestrian trailer for his show, Bill Engvall himself comes on and says, "TBS--very funny." Except that the ostensibly funny show snippets are so bad, they seem like a parody from the late, lamented "Ben Stiller Show." (Anybody remember that?)
• I have a new policy for NBA refs: if you're not sure what just happened, don't make a call. Just because a guy fell down doesn't mean that another guy fouled him. So unless you saw the foul FOR CERTAIN, just let 'em play.
• Manu's only got five points this late in the game? That scares me. He's bound to start lighting it up.
• Have you noticed how few good looks the Suns have had beyond the arc? That's Pop's defense for you.
• Hey, Amare, little reminder for you...when Steve Nash gets in among the big trees, he's probably gonna look to give you the ball. You should probably expect that. That way you won't bobble it and turn it over when he DOES give it to you. Have you really not figured that out by now? (Same goes for you, Shaq.)
  
• Fourth-quarter turnovers are killing the Suns. Credit the Spurs' defense.
• Why is Shaq on the floor with the Suns down by two? If I were Pop, I'd foul. Odds are, he's going to clang one, and you'll still be up by one (if not two).
• It's fitting that the Suns' season effectively ends on a Bowen defensive play on Nash.

And that's what I've got for you. I've been saying for years now (literally), that Mike D'Antoni's system will not win a championship. Though I've been wrong about some of the details along the way, I've been right about the fundamental point: offense doesn't win championships. No serious basketball fan can consider this team a title contender any longer.

The evidence is in. The window is closed. The trend is downward. The future is bleak. The time to start rebuilding is now.

Mike D, you're a good guy and a good coach, but you've done all you can do here. We wish you well.

Barack Obama, William Ayers, and Jeremiah Wright

To listen to Sean Hannity and Charles Krauthammer, you'd think that if you've got a friend like Jeremiah Wright or Bill Ayers, the only appropriate thing to do is sever all ties with them. (Krauthammer says that he wouldn't even shake Ayers' hand.) That Barack Obama has not done so, they say, is evidence of a serious character flaw.

I disagree. Among my current friends, acquaintances, business associates, and family members are people (adults) who have:

• cheated on their wives,
• beaten their wives,
• paid for sex with prostitutes,
• lied to business associates in order to make money,
• participated in the filming of pornography,
• accidentally shot someone while drunk,
• lied to women in order to sleep with them,
• stolen thousands of dollars' worth of merchandise from a retail store,
  
• referred to a newscaster as a "greasy Jew,"
  
• used the word "nigger" openly and repeatedly, and
• lied about being terminally ill.

And that's just what I could come up with off the top of my head in the span of about two minutes.

So, why don't I disown the people who have said and done the things in this list? Primarily because those things do not constitute the totality of the person. They reflect imperfections in an otherwise decent, though flawed, human being.  To describe this in Christian terms--though Christian theology isn't the basis for my attitude in this case--you can hate the sin but still love the sinner. Severing all relations with the person is hating the sin AND the sinner.

Clearly Barack Obama could have handled the relationships with Wright and Ayers--and the fallout from those relationships--better. But insisting that he should have invoked the "nuclear option"--terminating the relationships altogether--seems unreasonable, even inhumane, to me.

Suns/Spurs Game 5...And YOU are THERE

Okay, you won't actually be there, but I will be. I'm gonna be your eyes and ears. Wish I could live blog it... Don't think I can, but maybe I'll surprise you. In any case, I'll definitely have a report for you late Tuesday or early Wednesday.

Prediction: Spurs beat the Suns in a competitive contest. After the game, Greg Popovich announces that he and Manu Ginobili spent last summer building a time machine. In front of a gobsmacked press, Pop proceeds to spin the dial back to Sunday, April 28, 2008 and presses a big red button. The Spurs go back in time to Game 4, route the Suns, and sweep them the hell out of the playoffs.

Try somethin' crazy

I have never in my life--not once--asked a girl if I could kiss her. I just go in for the kiss if I think the time is right. If she's not feeling it, she'll let me know: she'll giggle as if I had just been kidding, turn her head so that I get the cheek, produce a restraining order, whatever. Point is, that's how I roll.

How does Mike 'Antoni roll? (You'll notice I'm spelling his name with no "D." Why? Because his basketball teams play no "D," i.e., defense. Same reason they used to refer to Jason Kidd as "Ason Kidd" -- no "J," i.e., no jump shot. I stole the "'Antoni" joke from some unfortunate slob on a Suns' blog.) Just in case you got lost in that extended parenthetical explanation, I'll ask the question again: How does Mike 'Antoni roll?

He wants his team to outscore you. It's the way he's played and coached all his life. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Just like me and my girl-kissing philosophy.

But what if Aluminum Mike did something crazy today and said (to himself), "Here we are, with access to the former and future world champion Spurs. They're the best there is. We've shown we can't beat them with offense. So, let's see what happens if we build a game plan entirely around defense. Let's say that our energy ratio today goes 70 percent defense, 30 percent offense, instead of the reverse. What would happen? Could we be more competitive? If the answer is 'yes,' then maybe we win. That gives us something to work with in the next game...heck, it gives us something to work with next year, too. If the answer is 'no,' well, we were gonna lose the series--and I was gonna lose my job--anyway. So, that's it. Today we're a defensive juggernaut, win, lose, or draw."

If 'Antoni does that, then when I'm at my game-watching venue (a place called Bikinis), I'm going to ask my waitress if I can kiss her. Maybe it will work out for both of us ('Antoni and me, not the waitress and me).

Footnote: I know you'll say, "He doesn't have the horses to play defense!" Actually, he doesn't have the horses to play GREAT defense. He does have the horses to play better-than-average defense. That's all I'm asking for.

Anklenote: What is this Bikinis I speak of? Bikinis is like Hooters, except that the girls wear bikini tops and cotton shorts rather than white t-shirts and nylon shorts. There's also a place here called Twin Peaks, at which the girls wear revealing clothing in a vaguely Pacific Northwest motif.

And which is my favorite? Well, when I'm in the mood to see women as nothing more than beer-delivering sex objects, I usually give Twin Peaks the nod. But today, for some reason, I'm in a Bikinis kinda mood...

Not close, and not getting closer

For the last few years, "we're close" (to a championship) has been the Suns' mantra. Truth is, we're not close, and we're getting further away every year. The team built to beat the Spurs can't even compete with the Spurs. (Boy, was I ever wrong about that...) Without dramatic change in personnel--on the floor, on the coaching staff, or both--there's no reason to expect anything different next year.

As frustrating as the Suns have been over the years, one thing they have never been is a stand-pat team. I'd expect to see big changes in the off season.

But what kind of changes? Well, the Suns are spending much more on payroll than they were when Robert Sarver took over. They've got one of the best point guards in the league (though I think we're finally seeing Nash in decline). They've got one of the best power forwards in the league. They've got an aging but still intimidating big man. They've got a shooting guard who's two years removed from being sixth man of the year. They've got a solid defender in Raja Bell. They've got a reliable veteran presence on both ends in Grant Hill. (Oh yeah, they've got some guys on the bench, too. We don't know that much about them because the coach never plays them. There's that one French guy--Doris Meow, I think--sometimes he plays like Michael Jordan, sometimes he plays like Michael Milken. Anyway...)

Point is, the Suns have lots of payroll and lots of talent. What they don't have are: a) a deep bench; b) good team defense; c) enough rebounds from their big men; or d) a system that can win in the playoffs.

What's it all mean? Goodbye, Mike D'Antoni. Hello, Larry Brown.

The "we're smarter than you" defense

Suns' coach Mike D'Antoni takes a lot of heat when his team under-performs. The common complaints are as follows:

• he doesn't emphasize defense/rebounding enough;
• he doesn't develop/play his bench enough;
• he's loyal to a fault with the players he likes;
• he tries to win games with sleight of hand, i.e., by putting the ball in the hands of Diaw and Barbosa rather than his stars.

After Game 1 against the Spurs, Aluminum Mike was also taking crap for not fouling before the Spurs could get off a three-pointer. Twice.

Generally, this is D'Antoni's defense to such criticisms: "You think that didn't occur to me? Look, this is my job. I do it 80 hours a week. Trust me, it occurred to me. If I thought it would help us win, I would do it."

That's a legitimate response if, say, you're Greg Popovich, and you've won four championships. Then, when your team doesn't foul Steve Nash in the second overtime with the Suns down by three, and Nash hits a three-pointer to tie it up again, you can say, "Well, maybe I should have made that call. But I've hung four championship banners NOT making that call, so I feel okay about it."

That should quiet the critics.

When D'Antoni says it, though, the correct response is this: "Well, maybe you need to think about it again. Two years ago, you went out in the conference finals. Last year, you went out in the conference semis. This year, you're at serious risk of going out in the first round. Your way of doing things appears to give you a good shot at regular season success, but a pretty slim chance of a strong playoff run. Why not try something different?"

Suns' future?

Tonight was a typical Suns/Spurs playoff match-up: Suns play just well enough to give you hope, and then end up caving to veteran players with veteran coaching.

Let's be honest here. The Spurs are world champs, playing with home-court advantage. If you were betting, you'd bet they'd win the series. (Okay, I wouldn't bet that way, but most sensible people would.)

But come on, Suns...if you're going to lose, at least lose in respectable fashion. You can't have players and coaches making rookie mistakes, as they did in Game 1. You can't have key role-players going 0-fer in Game 2. (Leandro Barbosa, that means you.) You can't melt under the Spurs' defensive pressure; you have to have a half-court offense that is capable of scoring with the shot clock below :08. Oh yeah, you also can't let Tony Parker score a billion points in the paint. I mean, seriously, ask yourself: how many points did Steve Nash and Leandro Barbosa score in the paint?

Despite all of that, there were two things to feel good about tonight: a) a couple of hard fouls on Ginobili and Parker in the lane, which is something I've always wanted to see from the Suns; and b) the fact that losing to the Spurs means we don't have to lose to the Lakers.

Once the Suns are excused from the playoffs, whether in this series or a later one, where does that leave them? I hope it leaves them with this conversation between Robert Sarver and Mike D'Antoni when the season is done: "Mike, I think you'd agree it was another disappointing season. I'd like you to have a full year with Shaq, though, just to see what you can do when you've got time to prepare with a genuine big man. But if we all end up being disappointed again at the end of next season, it will be time for sweeping changes in the organization. Those changes will start with a new head coach."

Outplayed or outcoached?

The Suns lost a game on Saturday that they should have won. The two key sequences played out identically. The Spurs were down by three, and they found an open shooter who hit a three to send it to overtime. (The Spurs won in the second overtime.)

In each sequence, there are two options for the Suns. First, you foul. Don't give them a chance to hit the three. Foul them before they can shoot, put their guy on the line, and then make them foul you and put you on the line. In other words, make it a free throw contest.

Obviously, Mike D'Antoni didn't make this call. I did make the call, however, as anyone within a quarter-mile of me at the time can tell you. D'Antoni didn't listen.

That takes us to the second option: do not leave anyone alone behind the three-point line, even if that means you give up an easy two-point bucket. Just be sure that if you DO give up that easy bucket, you don't foul the shooter.

In practice, this one can end up turning out the same way as the first one: you give the other guys an easy two points. In the first case, it's from the line. In this case, it's on a layup. But that's okay, because you're still up by one, and you've got the ball.

So, did D'Antoni call for option two? I think so, I hope so...but if he did, his team didn't execute. Now, when Finley hit his three, he slipped off of two screens, so you can see how he might have shaken even a tenacious defender. (Unfortunately, he was being chased by Leandro Barbosa, who can't even spell "defense" in Portuguese.) But when Duncan hit his three? To me it looked like no one thought he was worth guarding.

I'm tempted to say, "that's D'Antoni's fault," except for two considerations. First, that was an extremely low-percentage shot for Duncan, so guarding the other three-point threats was probably a reasonable call. (You can hear D'Antoni saying, "If Duncan ends up taking a three, then we've done our job." Actually, it's eerily reminiscent of that Game 1 the Suns stole from the Spurs in the Frank Johnson/Stephon Marbury era, when Amare--of all people--hit a three at the end of regulation.) Second, I have seen coaches during timeouts say, "No matter what you do, do NOT do X," or "...make sure you do Y," only to see players go ahead and do X or fail to do Y. It happens.

Did it happen on Saturday? We'll never know.

The one thing we DO know, however, is that D'Antoni did not call for option one -- the foul-'em-before-they-can-get-off-the-three approach. That clearly was a mistake (which I can say even without benefit of hindsight, having called for it before the plays happened). It's also one more bit of evidence that while Mike D'Antoni is a good coach, Pop is a great coach.

A word on Mary's behalf

I have a Jewish friend named Mary (for purposes of this post). She sometimes gets frustrated, even angry, with me when I write about Judaism. Mary would never put anything in the comment box, so I want to give her point of view equal time here.

I believe the crux of Mary's anger/argument is this: it's not fair to fault Judaism for failing to be something it doesn't even aspire to be, namely, historical truth. Judaism, Mary says, is a system for connecting people with God. (She wouldn't put it that way, but I lost her most recent email on this, so I'm doing my best.) Whether or not it's historically true/accurate doesn't really matter. What DOES matter is whether it's useful for helping people understand and commune with the divine. Accordingly, the lack of evidence for the historical accuracy of Judaism is not a legitimate grounds for criticism/skepticism.

(Gratuitous sports analogy: imagine we were talking about the Suns, and I said, "Shaq's an okay player, I guess, but he can't hit the three." If you knew anything about basketball, you'd say: "He's not supposed to hit the three, nimrod. He's a center. A big body. He lingers in and around the paint, blocks shots, grabs rebounds, and hits five-footers. He's not even supposed to BE outside the arc, let alone shoot from there. If you want to criticize him for other things, fine. But you can't really criticize him for his three-point shooting.")

My response to Mary? I'll give you another analogy.

You show me a detailed map purporting to give directions to the Fountain of Youth. It requires a lot of decoding, but if we COULD decode it, we'd be young forever.

Awesome...unless there's no Fountain of Youth. If that's the case, what good does the map do us? Now, you might tell me, "The person who drew the map actually saw the fountain with his own two eyes, so I know it exists." Then I would ask, "Really? And how do you know this person actually saw it?" And you would tell me, "Well, among my people, that's the tradition that's been handed down from generation to generation for a few thousand years." Then I would say, "Hmmm...that doesn't sound like that much to go on. I mean, no one who's still alive actually knows if this guy saw the fountain, or if he drew an accurate map, or if the map was copied and recopied accurately over thousands of years, or if the fountain is still there (assuming it ever was)." And then you would say, "Well, you might be right, but the quest for the fountain is the thing that gives my people its identy." And then I would say, "Okay, good for you...but that's probably not something I want to spend my time on."

Judaism's the same way for me. If it can't even help me get over the threshold question of whether God exists, what good does it do me? And even if I'm to assume that God does exist, how do I know that Judaism in any way accurately captures God's essence and man's relation to God? And if I can't have confidence in those things, again, why does Judaism deserve my attention as a legitimate, meaningful system for communing with God?

I suppose Mary's answer would be, "because it works." (Her answer would also be, "It's not just about God. It's also about how we deal with one another.")

I don't doubt that Judaism does work for many people. I just know it wouldn't work for me. The starting point for me has to be a (fairly large) kernel of truth. Otherwise, why would I pay attention?

Yes, I have been reading a lot about Islam recently

Can you tell? Anyway, I need to make another point in that vein.

Imagine that a Jew murdered a homosexual simply for being a homosexual. In the general outrage that followed, the Jew could refer everyone to Leviticus 20 and say, "This is what God demands. If the state refuses to enforce God's law, then God's people must enforce it."

Now, I'm as ignorant as I can be about how modern-day Jews deal with Leviticus 20 and other, similarly antiquated (in my view) parts of the Torah. I'm certain they DO have a way of dealing with them, though, so I don't want a bunch of comments from people saying, "Hey, the Talmud put this issue to bed about 1500 years ago." I don't doubt that. I also know, however, that there are Jews AND Christians who take the Bible text literally. I have personally met people, for example, who think the universe is only 10,000 years old, and who think that homosexuals should be put to death...because that's what the Bible tells them.

It occurs to me that this is really all that radical Muslims are...people who take the Quran and the related "Tradition" literally.

And why wouldn't you take the word of God literally, if indeed it is the word of God? If you had a radical Muslim sitting before you, and you couldn't persuade him that the Quran and Tradition were NOT the word of God, what argument would you make about why radical Muslims should not act on Quranic dictates and mandates? If God demands it, who are you to tell the radical Muslim that God is wrong?

I'm not trying to rationalize radical Muslim behavior here, nor am I engaging in an act of cultural relativism. I'm saying that while their behavior is crazy and abhorrent, I have no idea how to stop them from engaging in it without also getting them to abandon their religion.

That makes this a very difficult, and different, war. In the Cold War, when the eastern bloc finally abandoned communism, it was abandoning a secular ideology invented by men. If the radical Muslims are going to abandon Islam, that means abandoning what they consider the literal, unerring word of God.

Making that happen is a pretty tall mountain for the non-Muslim world to climb.

Footnote: I'm sure some readers will note other options -- killing all of the radical Muslims, or getting them to abandon their tactics without abandoning their religion. But I'm not sure how we do either of those things, either.