The Madness Begins

I can’t believe Temple got the #5 seed while Nova got a #2. Georgetown played really well down the stretch, by the way. That was a great Big East final.

I took my boys to the penn-cornell ivy league championship game in november. that was fun, at franklin field. i still can’t believe penn won at harvard.

cornell won the ivy over harvard barely, but they have to play temple in the first round, and temple is very, very good this year, that’s a bad draw for cornell. temple almost never loses in the first round of the ncaa. coming out of the bracket, temple has uphill all the way, but texas might actually beat kentucky, although john calipari has to be the best coach on the planet, he used to torture temple when he was at umass, he drove john chaney crazy.

also, i like richmond to win their first round game, and then upset villanova in the 2d round. richmond has a really good team and nova never plays well in the tournament. jay wright is a horrible tournament coach. richmond gave temple all they could handle inthe a10 final and richmond beat temple in the regular season. richmond is a great team this year, much better than a #7 seed. that’s a 2-7 matchup that’s bad for nova.

i was watching spike lee on 30-30 on espn on that reggie miller thing and 3 points.

first, reggie miller has to be the most overrated player in NBA history.  he could only do one thing, the three point jumper, and that was it.  He did it well, but he couldn’t pass, penetrate, dunk, rebound, run, steal or do any of the other things that an NBA Hall of Fame guy does.

second, Patrick Ewing, for all his greatness, came up short in two of the biggest games of his life, game 7 against Hakeem in the NBA finals, and the NCAA title game against Villanova in 1985, of which this is the 25th anniversary of Nova upsetting Georgetown, or Patrick Ewing choking unbelievably, depending on how you look at it.  Based on how awful Ewing was in his NBA finals against Hakeem, i’d bet Nova could have beaten Georgetown in a 7 game series, and, in fact, Nova did handle Georgetown if not outright beat them pretty well that season in Big East play.

Third, Spike Lee claimed “New York is the cradle of basketball.”

Uh, Spike, New York is the cradle of incredible wealth and incredible poverty, a lot of models and caviar and restaurants, and some good hoops players, but PHILLY is the cradle of liberty and hoops, pal.

ALL the great hoops players (and jazz players) have been from philly, not NY.  Earl the Pearl Monroe, Wilt the Stilt Chamberlain, Rasheed Wallace, Tyreke Evans, Kobe Bryant, the list is endless.

John Coltrane is from Philly.  Dizzy Gillespie grew up here.  Lee Morgan was from Philly.  Philly Jo Jones.  Hank Mobley, McCoy Tyner, Archie Shepp, Byard Lancaster, Mickey Roker, Bill Harris, Calvin Massey.  Are You Kidding Me?????

Philly is like the Jazz/Hoops capital of the earth.  Doesn’t anyone remember Grover Washington Jr playing the national anthem at Sixers games? and he was like the WORST sax guy ever to come out of philly!  and he was great!  but hey, he was no JOHN COLTRANE soloing for hours on soprano sax!

Dr. J played here for TWELVE YEARS.  He played in New York for four years.  New Yorkers like to remember that it was longer, but hey, too bad.

We were at the Palestra the other week and there were no less than several HUNDRED NBA all stars who played their high school ball in philly pasted on the walls there.  Maybe a thousand.  Maybe more.  I couldn’t count them all.  That doesn’t count the guys who were kept out of the league for gambling, or who blew out their knees, or just didn’t have the grades to go to college.

It’s not even close–Philly v. NY in hoops is like PROS V JOES–NY being the JOES.

Oh, and by the way, Alex Rodriguez took steroids and needed an instant replay to win the world series last year.

And I didn’t see him tying Reggie “Reggie Bar” Jackson’ HR record of 5 dingers in a World Series like Chase Utley did–and Chase being about 1/2 the size of Reggie, by the way, who was enormously strong and had arms like a bricklayer.

Hey, the Yankees are great.  But Philly’s got the Hoops.  Even the guys at Sports Center know it’s Philly when it comes to Hoops.

And when was the last time a NY university made it into the NCAA exactly?

Columbia never gets in.  NYU doesn’t have a team.  St. Johns has fallen off dramatically.  Syracuse is way upstate.  CCNY had its glory days when the court was surrounded by caged wire fences.

In all the years, NY had exactly one great player–Kareem Abdul Jabbar, aka Lew Alcindor.  But he hates NY.  He changed his name, became a Muslim, and never goes back to NY.  He’s become such an LA/Cali guy, you’d never know he was a NY guy to begin with.

But i loved the guy in Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee, doing kung fu and all.  Now that was awesome–way better than Wilt in that Conan movie.

–art k, philly

Detroit Should be Ashamed of Suspending AI

Detroit was embarrassingly bad against LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers, by far the worst performance of any playoff team.

Not only that, but the games were boring.

There was one player who might have at least made the games entertaining, and here I refer to ALLEN IVERSON who for some odd reason was sitting down by order of Detroit management.

AI has the second highest career playoff scoring average in NBA history—second only to Michael Jordan—and YOU SIT HIM DOWN FOR THE PLAYOFFS?

I should think that AI would have been a bit revved up to play LeBron James, only the best player in the league.

Even if Detroit went down in flames, I think we could have seen AI go off for 40 points in at least one of those playoff games.

He’s Allen Iverson, that’s what he does.

I’m not totally sure what narcotics or drugs Detroit is on, but sitting down your best scorer against the NBA’s best team in the playoffs is crazy.

I might note, Detroit had trouble scoring even 80 points most every game in the series—they had point totals like 78, 79, and so forth. Again, an Allen Iverson would have helped that tremendously.

Over and over, even hurt, Allen Iverson has always shown up for the playoffs and played big.

Commissioner David Stern should have stepped in here and required Detroit to produced Allen Iverson for the playoffs.

It’s embarrassing for the league and for the fans that we were denied the opportunity to see an Allen Iverson-LeBron James playoff series.

This is an insult to our intelligence and to us as fans.

No other matchup in the playoffs would have been as interesting or intriguing, except possibly watching Kobe Bryant against LeBron James in the finals.

Whenever AI went against LeBron James this winter in the regular season, he had an extraordinary game on a nationally televised Sunday afternoon game, he scored 30 or 40 points, I can’t recall how many.

But it’s easy enough to look up the game logs from the regular season:

November 19, 2008: Detroit 96, Cleveland 89. Iverson leading scorer for Detroit with 23 points, followed by Rasheed Wallace with 21 points. LeBron James and Mo Williams each with 25 points. Detroit outscores Cleveland 30-21 in the 4th quarter.

February 1, 2009: Cleveland 90, Detroit 80. Iverson leading scorer for Detroit with 22 points, followed by Rick Hamilton with 16 points. LeBron James goes off for 33 points in this game, Mo Williams scores 22. Detroit is winning after three quarters, but Cleveland takes Detroit down in the 4th quarter 32-14, coming from eight back to win by ten at the end. This was actually a great game where Iverson and James were dueling, and James just came up huge in the 4th quarter. This is what the playoffs might have been like between them.

February 22, 2009: Cleveland 99, Detroit 78. Iverson leading scorer for Detroit with 14 points, followed by Walter Hermann. It’s pretty clear AI is injured in this game. He only played about 26 minutes. Surprisingly, Delonte West (of St. Joe’s Philly fame) led Cleveland with 25 points, followed by LeBron James with 25. This game was a blowout. Cleveland broke out 31-17 in the first quarter and never looked back.

March 31, 2009: Cleveland 79, Detroit 73. Rick Hamilton leads Detroit with 13 points, playing almost 35 minutes, Iverson scores 11 points playing about 18 minutes. This is a weird game due to the low score. LeBron scores 25 for Cleveland, but no one else on the Cavs gets more than a dozen. A close game, but the Cavs win. Here, again, Iverson is hurt, plays limited minutes, but contributes offensively and keeps Detroit in the game.

SUMMARY: In four regular season games, Detroit won once, had two close games, and was only blown out once. Iverson was their leading scorer in three of those games, and was their second leading scorer in the fourth game, and in every game except perhaps the blowout game, made a huge impact on the game. It’s fair to infer, from the box scores, that if you took Iverson away from the Detroit Pistons, in a direct Cleveland-Detroit Playoff matchup, that Detroit would probably get blown out.

Actual results:

Game 1 April 18 Detroit Pistons 84 Cleveland Cavaliers 102
Game 2 April 21 Detroit Pistons 82 Cleveland Cavaliers 94
Game 3 April 24 Cleveland Cavaliers 79 Detroit Pistons 68
Game 4 April 26 Cleveland Cavaliers 99 Detroit Pistons 78

As you can see, Detroit not only lost four in a row, but they scored 84, 82, 68 and 78 points in those games, which is an average offensive output of only 78 points a game. That’s pretty horrible, especially when you’re giving up 102, 94, 79 and 99 points to the opposition.

Even though Detroit would have lost with AI, the playoffs would have been the LeBron-AI show instead of a pathetic rollover. Detroit should be ashamed of themselves.

Art Kyriazis
Philly/South Jersey
Home of the Philadelphia Phillies

PART TWO – WHY THE SPARTANS OF MICHIGAN STATE WILL WIN THE NCAA TITLE

1) Tom “Odysseus the Wise” Izzo is Italian, which means that he’s practically greek, which means he’s practically Spartan. On the way to the final four, in round two, the Spartans of Michigan State defeated the Trojans of USC. The Spartans defeated the Trojans. Funny how that battle always comes out the same, millennium after millennium. Michigan State baffled USC throughout with their famed “Trojan Horse” defense, with Raymar “Achilles” Morgan’s ally-oop, the Kalin “Ajax” Lucas’ give and go, the “Nestor” low post kickout and the “Odysseus” trick ball play. Magic “Homer Hercules Son of Zeus” Johnson sat on the coach’s side on the bench, singing their tale of triumph in fifteen syllable heroic poetic rap to all that would listen. Plus, their fans hectored the USC Trojans during the entire match, telling them to go back to Paris when they were from. Plus there was this blind guy Ty Reesias on the sideline predicting that USC would lose. Bottom Line: the Spartans could play the Trojans a thousand times, and the Spartans would always win. History is history. It’s not true that Brad Pitt was at the game doing research for his sequel to Troy, the movie. Besides which, Tom “Socrates Plato Aristotle” Izzo is one of the smartest and greatest coaches ever in NCAA history. Plus he probably has actual Spartan blood in him and he has the wisdom of a thousand greek philosophers, and can coach some ball.

2) East Lansing is a rocking college town. And Michigan State coeds are the most beautiful in all the land.

3) What in the world is a “Tar Heel”?

4) Most schools ban smoking in all buildings. At the University of North Carolina, smoking is required in all buildings. After all, tobacco pays for everything in North Carolina. In fact, babies are given their first cigarettes at age one in North Carolina per state custom. Also, cigarettes are given away at all UNC home games to undergrads.

5) “WE ARE SPARTANS!!!!”

6) Anyone who doesn’t believe the Spartans will win, is condemned to be thrown into the bottomless pit of King Leonidas.

7) Three hundred Spartans are worth two million Persians, and four millions UNC players.

8) Thermopylae save the Western World from Freedom, along with the Three Hundred Spartans, who obedient to their country’s laws, lie dead there. The Spartans of Michigan State will save the US from another Southern NCAA champion and give us a Big Ten Champion.

9) All Spartans are superior genetically, because the defective ones are thrown off the mountain at birth. This includes Michigan States hoops players.

10) The Spartans have a detailed conditioning program that starts from age four. You should see what the Michigan State Hoops players do.

11) The Spartans never lose a battle. This is well known. Michigan State hardly ever loses a ballgame that matters.

12) Michigan State is playing a home game. The Final Four and Championshiop Game are in Detroit.

13) Detroit has an immense Greek population, and many of them are Spartans. And they have a rocking Greektown. Spartans love to party after they kill their opponents.

14) East Lansing, Michigan is the coolest place on earth, and home of the Spartans of Michigan State.

15) Michigan is a sensible place full of sensible people.

16) Michigan gave us Bob Seger, Grand Funk Railroad, Kid Rock, Iggy Pop & the Stooges, and all of Motown.

17) North Carolina has given us nothing culturally, unless you want to count segregation as a cultural institution.

18) Izzo is very nearly Rizzo, Philly’s most beloved mayor ever. Frank Rizzo was cool. Tom Izzo is cool.

19) The Big Ten actually go to class and get degrees, unlike their brethren in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

20) Michigan State has beaten a series of excellent, higher ranked teams to get to the finals, including UConn, all of which are better than UNC.

21) Michigan State has a number of experienced seniors on its roster who have played together for a while. Again, this is a big advantage in this era of players leaving after a year or two for the pros.

22) This one is for King Leonidas, and also for the auto industry and the unemployed auto workers of Michigan.

23) Gov. Granholm of Michigan told the boys, come home victorious with your shields, or dead upon them.

24) The best reason the Spartans will win—they are unfraid to lose, unafraid of death, unafraid of anything, and totally playing with house money at this point.

25) Because this is America, and we root for the UNDERDOG. So what if the TAR HEELS have amassed an army of two million and the Spartans are but three hundred? What does this matter to the SPARTANS????? Did they not fight and win the moral battle at Thermopylae? Don’t they still make movies about those guys 3,000 years later?

My money’s on the SPARTANS!!!!!

P.S. What IS a Tar Heel?

–art kyriazis, philly/south jersey
home of the world champion phillies