Roger Federer is often called the greatest tennis player of all time. Federer is only 27 years old, and with 13 Grand Slam titles, so he almost certainly will break Pete Sampras’ record of 14. What bothers me is that Federer’s dominance of the sport over the last few years has people claiming he is the greatest player of all-time. Why are people so quick to say that whoever is on top today is the best, forgetting about yesterday? All I’m saying, is give Pete a chance. Sampras won 7 Wimbledons; Federer has 5. Neither won the French Open. Both players had a great rivalry – Sampras had Andre Agassi and Federer had Rafael Nadal. However, Sampras was 4-1 vs. Agassi in Grand Slam finals while Federer is 2-4 so far vs. Nadal in finals. The two players’ careers were remarkably similar, but Pete still has the most Grand Slam titles. So you can say Federer is a truly great champion but at least say Sampras was just as great.
Best Tennis Player Ever: Sampras or Federer?
December 4, 2008Michael, Magic, Larry…and Dr. J
December 4, 2008It always bothers me when people talk about Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan as the three players who revitalized the NBA in the 1980s, and Dr. J doesn’t get as much respect. Of course, Julius Erving played some of his best years in the ABA in the mid 70s and then in the NBA in the late 70s. Erving had already peaked by the early 80s but was still a great player. I believe that Dr. J was just as great a player as Bird overall.
Both were great scorers – Dr. J created his own shot while Bird was more of a jump shooter. Both were good rebounders. Bird was a better passer, but Dr. J was a better defender. But this idea that Magic, Bird and Jordan should be mentioned as a triumvirate without including Dr. J is not right. Dr. J changed the way the game was played. Bird did too, as a great passing forward, but Dr. J was Michael Jordan before MJ.
Jordan was clearly the best of the four, Magic was second, also changing the way the game was played as a tall point guard who could make great no-look passes and run the floor. While Bird won three NBA championships to Erving’s one, Erving’s teams made three other appearances in the NBA finals and won two ABA championships. I maintain that Dr. J should be considered on the same level as Bird, and was even more influential than Bird in the acrobatic way he played the game above the rim.
Windows vs. Apple
December 4, 2008Well, this one isn’t too original, and when I state in my intro paragraph about my blog that some of my entries may be frightfully boring, here’s an example. Anyway, I’m finally switching from Windows to Mac computers. A few years ago I had a Windows PC crash with all my data on it. Apparently this is fairly common. When I went to find out how much it would cost to recover my data, the answer was $1200. And that’s with no guarantee that they’d get any of it back. Then I got a new computer from Worst Buy in Rockville, Maryland. It needed two hard drives replaced and the DVD drive replaced, it had problems four separate times, and I didn’t have it from August through the beginning of November except for the few times I had it back from the Geek Squad.
At least I had another Windows pc, a laptop. Of course, this one got so hot that I burned myself. Also, the left click button on the mouse sometimes clicks on whatever it’s on without me touching it. That’s right, if the cursor is over the “send” button on an email message for example, it might send it even if I don’t touch the mouse. And, the cursor jumps from one place to another so sometimes I can’t write more than two words without losing my spot. Sometimes it doesn’t shut down right either. Anyway, I haven’t had a chance to take the laptop in for repair. Because I need a computer! Usually a car repair can be done in a day but a computer takes a month???
Back to the desktop PC – the customer service representatives acted as if the computer being in the shop for the better part of three months was no big deal, and they were rude along the whole way. I’ve never even used a Mac, but it can’t be any worse than Windows.
Lakers-Celtics Rivalry
December 4, 2008The L.A. Lakers-Boston Celtics matchup in the 2008 NBA Finals reminded us of the great Lakers-Celtics rivalry of the 1980s. The games in the 1980s were spectacular and those teams made the NBA more popular than ever. But the media seem to forget that the Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers also had a great rivalry in the 1980s. In fact, the Lakers and Sixers played each other in the NBA finals the same number of times (three) that the Lakers and Celtics played each other in the finals. It just seems like the Lakers and Celtics played each other more often, because the Lakers won five championships in the 80s, the Celtics won three, and the Sixers had one.
Speaking of the Celtics, hearing about Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen being called the “Big Three” and being compared with the “Big Three” of the Celtics in the 1980s also gets tiresome. Not because the current Celtics stars don’t stack up – they do, talent-wise (whether they could beat the 80s Celtics is debatable). But the Celtics of the 1980s were more than just the Big Three of Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish. As much as I rooted against them (and I hated them like I hated the Dallas Cowboys, New York Yankees, UNC basketball and Duke basketball), I have to admit that they had other players who were equally as important as Parish. Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge were just as important as Parish, especially since the Celtics already had great front court players in Bird and McHale. (Slam Magazine agrees that Parish wasn’t so much better than Dennis Johnson – on its top 75 NBA players of all time as of 2003, Johnson comes in at 63 whereas Parish was 56th).
Back to the Lakers. The teams of Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neil, who won three consecutive championships from 2000 to 2002, were nowhere near as good as the Lakers of the 1980s. In 2002, the Sacramento Kings were a better team than the Kobe-Shaq Lakers, but the referees called the infamous Game 6 of the Western Conference finals overwhelmingly in favor of L.A., awarding the Lakers 27 free throw attempts in the fourth quarter to the Kings nine. Most fans know that something wasn’t right in that game.
But less memorable was the fact that two years earlier, the Lakers beat the Portland Trail Blazers in game 7 of the Western Conference Finals after being down by 15. Of course, the Lakers played great and the Blazers choked. However, at the same time there were a whole lot of bad calls made against the Blazers, probably because the NBA wanted the more glamorous, big market Lakers to advance. The Lakers were granted 37 free throws in that game while the Blazers got 16. You can only argue so much that the team that penetrates more gets more favorable calls because the 37-16 disparity was too great.
Back to the point, though, that not only were two of Shaq and Kobe’s championships possibly tainted, but they simply wouldn’t have stacked up against Magic, Kareem, James Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron Scott and A.C. Green. Finally, the teams the Kobe-Shaq Lakers beat – the New Jersey Nets, 76ers, and Indiana Pacers were not teams for the ages, and in 2004 they lost to the good but not great Detroit Pistons. Meanwhile, in the 80s, the Lakers beat Dr. J’s Sixers twice, Bird’s Celtics twice, and Isaiah Thomas’ Pistons once.
Hire Jeff Van Gundy to Coach the Washington Wizards
December 3, 2008On November 24, I was sitting at my laptop putting some of the final touches on the first set of entries for my blog. I decided that I needed to write that the Washington Wizards should fire coach Eddie Jordan and hire Jeff Van Gundy. Then, on Sportscenter, I saw that the Wizards had just fired Jordan after his team’s 1-10 start and replaced him with interim head coach Ed Tapscott, who last was a head coach in 1990 for American University.
Jordan did a good job overall, leading the Wizards to the playoffs in each of the last four seasons although the Wizards only advanced past the first round of the playoffs once, and that was in his second year. However, in his 6th season with the team, the Wizards apparently tuned Jordan out, and needed to get rid of a losing attitude. Injured all-star Gilbert Arenas said it wouldn’t be so bad if the Wizards reached the lottery. “If this is one of those years we don’t make the playoffs, we’re one of those teams that’s in last place the whole year — you know that’s what happened to San Antonio and that’s how they got Tim Duncan. If that happens with us, it’s for the better.”
This attitude of sacrificing the present for the future is a loser mindset. The Bullets already tried that around 1990 after most of the 80s being, you guessed it, just like the last 5 years – right around .500 with a bunch of playoff appearances. It took the franchise a decade and a half to recover. Those mediocre teams in the 80s were viewed as failures because the Bullets had won the NBA championship in 1978 and appeared in the finals three other times in the 70s. In the 1980s, the Wizards were remarkably consistent, winning between 39 and 43 games each year except once, making the playoffs 7 out of 10 years.
So the Bullets tried to rebuild and went for the lottery. The idea is to have a bad record, then get lucky and draft a Patrick Ewing, Tim Duncan, or Shaquille O’Neal. Sometimes it works. In the Bullets’ case, it didn’t. What resulted was missing the playoffs 15 of the next 16 seasons. Thanks, Gilbert, but trying to win is a better option.
After the awful 90s, making the playoffs each of the past four seasons didn’t seem so bad, but the results were not much better than they were in the mid 80s. Mediocrity has become acceptable in Washington because it seemed good when compared with the long playoff drought that preceded it. There hasn’t been one column about Jordan’s status as coach in the past month in the Washington Post. In most other cities, they would’ve been calling for the coach to be fired by now. At 1-10, though, Jordan had to go.
The Wizards have three all-stars – Gilbert Arenas, Caron Butler, and Antawn Jamison. Sure, Gilbert is injured and so is starting center Brendan Haywood, but every NBA team has injuries. The fact is that Eton Thomas is not a huge dropoff from Haywood. They also have good veteran role players – Antonio Daniels, DeShawn Stephenson and Darius Songaila, plus young talent in Nick Young, Andray Blatche, Oleksiy Pecherov, and Javale McGee. Defense has been a problem with this team for a while – meaning several years.
Former Knicks and Rockets coach Van Gundy has a .575 winning percentage and led his teams to the playoffs in 9 out of 10 full seasons. True, he had Patrick Ewing with the Knicks and Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady with the Rockets, but 9 of 10 is good – 15 of 16 is even better if you count his years as an assistant with the Knicks, so he’s been around a lot of winning basketball for a lot of years, including appearances in the finals and conference finals.
JVG would add defense and accountability to the Wizards. I never thought I’d be calling for this brand of basketball, which in the 90s for the Knicks was awful, boring, slow down, fouling, no rhythm, constant free throws basketball. But I’d rather win ugly than lose pretty. If JVG and Gilbert can get along, it can work. It’s a big if because McGrady didn’t like JVG at the end. But who do you want running your team, the players, or the coach? Defense is an attitude. Former Wizard Richard Hamilton was awful on defense in DC. Then when Hamilton he went to Detroit, he became decent, even above average on D to go with his great jump shooting ability.
Other possibilities could be Flip Saunders or Avery Johnson.
Saunders knows the Eastern Conference, having coached the Detroit Pistons each of the last three years. He has a lifetime winning percentage of .597. His teams made the playoffs 11 times in 13 seasons, although with Minnesota they only made it out of the first round once (getting to the conference finals), and with Detroit they never made it to the finals (though they did get to the conference finals three years in a row).
Avery Johnson had a ridiculous winning percentage of .735 as the coach of the Dallas Mavericks from 2004 to 2008. He led the Mavs to the NBA finals in 2006 when they should have beaten the Miami Heat after a 2-0 lead, then led Dallas to a record of 67-15 the following year though they were upset by the Golden State Warriors in the playoffs. Johnson also emphasizes defense.
If Tapscott does well, I say keep him for a while, but JVG has the experience and the emphasis on defense and rebounding. I’m just not sure that Tapscott, having only coached at a small Division I university, and 18 years ago at that, will be able to sustain getting the best out of the Wiz after an initial emotional lift that may last a month or two, or even until the end of the season. We did see Bernie Bickerstaff, though, take over for Jim Lynam in 1997 and lead the Bullets to the playoffs that season, though the Wiz tuned Bickerstaff out a couple of seasons later. Players usually respect coaches who either played in the NBA (Johnson has the edge there), have won (Johnson, JVG and Saunders have all been deep into the playoffs), or have high profiles (JVG has been an ESPN commentator for two seasons now). Tapscott doesn’t fall into any of these categories, though he has been around the NBA a long time as a scout, executive, and assistant coach. I’m just worried the millionaire players won’t respect him as much as they should. I believe that Grunfeld plans to hire a coach sometime during the season unless the Wizards really respond to Tapscott.
Ironically, Wizards General Manager Ernie Grunfeld was fired as GM of the Knicks in 1999 after he lost a power struggle with JVG. I may be unrealistic in thinking that they could work together, but sometimes rivals years later respect each other and will both do anything it takes to win.
One final comment. I heard superagent David Falk rip Abe Pollin for firing Eddie Jordan. Falk is Michael Jordan’s agent and was obviously critical of the way Pollin let MJ go as President of the Wizards in 2003. It looks like Falk is holding a grudge. Today on WTEM, the DC sports radio station, Falk said Pollin made the move to fire Eddie Jordan because of his age and the fact that he wants to win now. First of all, I’m not sure of that. Grunfeld was hired two weeks after Eddie Jordan was, so Eddie Jordan wasn’t Grunfeld’s choice. I think it was largely Grunfeld’s decision to fire Eddie Jordan.
Falk said Abe is the only constant in the last 30 years since the Bullets’ last championship, implying that he is the only reason that the Wizards haven’t won a title since then. The fact is that there are a lot of teams who haven’t won a championship since then. Only 9 franchises have won the title since the Bullets did. Do you think the Bulls won 6 titles in the 1990s because of owner Jerry Reinsdorf? Pollin doesn’t have too many years left, but Falk still has to criticize him and hold a grudge for the contentious negotiations that ultimately resulted in Falk’s client Juwan Howard, the definition of a mediocre player, getting a 100 million dollar contract from the Wizards, which set the franchise back for more than 5 years.
Ernie, forget your pride and give JVG a call.
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