NBA Finals

Though there will be no Lakers, Celtics or Spurs on the court the NBA Finals should be pretty compelling basketball.

The star players on both teams, namely Dirk Nowitzki and LeBron James, have been scintillating of late, both doing what star players are supposed to do: make plays when their teams need them.

Like most people in these united States I did not like the way James left and embarrassed his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers.  But the guy has been pretty impressive in the playoffs.  It's hard to know where to begin in talking about a player as talented - and big - as James.  His size and agility allow him to make impressive basketball plays all over the floor. 

Against the Bulls he blocked shots late, hit big threes, made passes to win game 5 down the stretch - after struggling with his shot for three and a half quarters.  He's physically impressive just standing there, but James' determination and will and mental toughness was more impressive - especially down the stretch.  

As you can tell, I was impressed.

Contrast James' play with Derrick Rose, who was panicky in the last 5 minutes instead of confident and fouled Dwayne Wade as he made a three-point shot late.  I expect his performance in this series - where he lacked confidence in his teammates and could not take over a game by himself  - to help his development.

Coincidentally, the same thing happened to Michael Jordan.  He only started to win championships when he figured out the balancing act between taking over a game and trusting his teammates.  Easy to forget that the Bulls won a couple of championships thanks to big shots by John Paxson and Steve Kerr, guys Jordan found open - and trusted to take and make big shots.

Rose seems like the kind of guy who WILL figure it out - and become a real monster when he does.  But he hasn't yet, and that was evident late in every Bulls loss to the Heat. 

Of course, up till now neither James nor Nowitzki has figured it out either, at least neither have won a championship.  But both guys are playing at an extraordinarily high level.  It will be fun to see if both can keep it up and carry their team to a championship, and thus earn a place in the pantheon of truly elite basketball players.

FYI, in my opinion the list of truly elite basketball players - guys who have won championships and are still dominant is: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Garnett, Tim Duncan, and perhaps Dwayne Wade.

[Interesting to see how aging this list is.  If Nowitzki, James, or Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant, win a championship the torch will have been passed.  Shaq should also be on that list, but he's practically retired.]

Therein lies the key to this series: Wade. The Mavs resemble the Bulls in that they have a dominant player with a nice ensemble that plays tough D.  However, if Jason Kidd (who could join the elite list if the Mavs win the title?), Jason Terry, and others on the deep Dallas roster step up they could win the franchise's first championship. 

But will any of those guys play as well as Wade?  Probably not, so though I want to see Brendan Haywood get a ring, it's hard to pick a one-superstar team beating a team with two.  Nowitzki may get enough help from Kidd, Tyson Chandler and others, but with Wade helping James it's hard to see the Heat failing to win their NBA championship. 

But James is the bottom line.  He is playing at such a high level, both mentally and physically, it's folly to pick against him.   

A few more hoops notes, then it's time to leave the coffee shop for work:

• The playoffs have certainly exposed Duke grad Carlos Boozer as a titanic fraud.  He was at his Dookish 'best' last night both in terms of his foul on James and his complete disappearance in a game his team really needed.  I used to think he had a nice game but he seems to have peaked a few years ago and no longer seems worthy of 35 minutes a game.
• One other Duke note: the NCAA announced a rule change that would no longer allow a player to draw a charge by standing under the basket.  As it is now in the NBA, the NCAA will draw a circle under the basket where a defensive player can not stand to draw a charging foul.  That 'strategy' has long been a staple of Duke's philosophy: 'just stand here like a statue and wait for the ball handler to show up'  (in my opinion an un-American 'reward' for inaction).  So if you're wondering, that sound you just heard was Mike Krzyzewski's heart breaking. 
• One more side note about a Mavs-Heat final.  What would be more insufferable? The Heat winning a championship after staging that goofy and childish dance party/press conference to introduce James and Chris Bosh last summer, or the goofy and childish antics of Mark Cuban if the Mavericks win?  Discuss!

Anarchy

Is it ironic to write about anarchy, especially if you are not using spray paint?

I'm a few days late blogging on this topic, one that bookended the Saturday Washington Post. Of course, Greece was once again on the front page with an article on the rise of the anarchist movement in Europe but especially in the motherland.

Though a punk rocker from way back, at least 1981, I was never into anarchy that much. It might have been okay for the U.K. and the Sex Pistols, but I was too much of a socialist punk rocker, with a soft spot for government programs and public projects funded by progressive taxation (so maybe I was a Keynesian punk rocker) to see the appeal of anarchy as an ideology or world view.

The irony here is that many punks in England, especially the Pistols, hated the welfare state and it's leveling and blandness (even the national health service!).  There were other punks, like The Clash, who were more leftist/Marxists/populists/etc.  and in the U.S. most punks of that era were very left, following the anti-corporate, anti-Reagan, and anti-hippie credo of The Dead Kennedys and others (I may be overgeneralizing here, but that was my experience).

So I liked the state too much to be an anarchist, but also you simply can't trust anarchy, and more importantly the mob mentality that usually accompanies it.  I can't imagine anarchy is the best way to accomplish anything progressive, so it's odd to think it's popularity is on the rise in Europe.

One of the great political paradoxes is 'without order there is no freedom."  Or justice for that matter.  The rule of law, just law, is more important and more liberating than anarchy. 

A vivid example of that truism was also in The Post on Saturday, in my main man Colbert King's column on the Freedom Riders.   King brutally reminded us the cost of anarchy. In the south in the 50s and 60s there was anarchy.  The mob ruled, the police looked the other way, and in the anarchy that followed African-Americans and members of the civil rights movement were terrorized.  

His column is just one, small, snap shot of how the white power structure reacted to the civil rights movement, and took advantage of the lack of the rule of law, of anarchy.  

A year ago anarchists in Greece fire bombed a bank, killing 3 employees including a pregnant woman.  That incident prompted Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou to state "protest is one thing, murder is another."

The U.S. has learned a lot from the Greeks.  Greek youth, the most active participants in the 'We won't pay' movement, have plenty of reasons to have little-to-no faith in Greek political structure. But they should learn from the U.S. in this case.  

All the great leftist victories in the U.S., from winning the Civil War to labor to civil rights, have relied on citizens insisting on a just application of the law and our democratic values.  Despite the anarchy, the civil rights movement eventually won (legall; within 10 years legal racism had been defeated).  But it was a disciplined, organized movement. 

The 'We won't pay' movement and others like them should focus on organizing around democratic values, not on promoting anarchy.

Big DC Sports Day

Hard to pick out the bigger story: Jayson Werth hitting a home run - with runners on base no less - or the Wizards changing their jerseys to look more like the old Bullets ones.

Werth was joined by Laynce Nix in hitting a three-run homer in last night's 7-6 win over the Braves in Atlanta.  The two three-run blasts helped Jason Marquis win his 100th career game. 

It may have also marked the first time that two players whose first names both include useless Ys have homered in the same game.  

As for the new Wizards unis, I'm not crazy about them.  On the plus the side, I like the new lower case font and that they kept a DC logo.  The one homage to Bullets that I do like is the hand reaching for or shooting the ball at the top of the lower case 'd.'  I also like the basketball logo with the Washington Monument in it.

Now I like the red, white and blue.  For instance, it looks awesome on a flag, particularly a waving flag with stars and stripes.  

But it looks cheesy on the old Bullets uni, and still looks cheesy now.  I think the main reason it looks so bad is the way the horizontal stripes dominate the top of the jersey.  It just looks bad, especially when it's worn by a player.

Want proof?  Check out the sullen looks on John Wall and Jordan Crawford at yesterday's unveiling.

Another Williams in the ACC

At least another ROY Williams protege as Maryland hired Mark Turgeon to succeed recently retired legend GARY Williams. 

I think Maryland got this one right, and not just because Turgeon is a former Kansas player and assistant to both 'ol Roy and Larry Brown.  He seems to be the kind of hard working young coach who has recruited and won at places - Wichita and College Station - that are challenging locales.  And though he is relatively young, 46, he has a long track record at two biggish schools (Wichita State and Texas A&M) unlike recent ACC hires like Dave Leito, Tony Bennett, or Frank Haith.

In general there seems to have been a nice upgrade in the ACC coaching ranks, with Brad Brownell at Clemson, Brian Gregory at Georgia Tech, and now Turgeon; I'm not as crazy about Wake's coach or Mark Gottfried at State or hiring a 62-year old Jim Larranga at the U).

One last thing.  In today's Post Mike Wise thinks hiring Turgeon is settling on someone not named Jay Wright (one final four though good looking), Jamie Dixon (zero final fours but also good looking) or Sean Miller (no final fours).  His column is another reminder how reading that guy is a waste of time.

The Post sports page is transitioning, with no more Kornheiser or Wilbon but it still - thankfully - has a still excellent Tom Boswell - and The Slouch on Monday!  Jason Reid, a former Dodgers beat writer, has been a great addition but Wise generally stinks while excelling at writing smug and self conscious columns that generally lack insight or wit, and stay with you for as long as it takes to recycle the paper. 

Back to Gary Williams

The retirement of Gary Williams was ALMOST as big a story in DC as was the killing of Osama bin Laden.  In fact, it may have been more bipartisan, since Williams was a fairly well known Republican and is friends with former Republican Maryland governor Bob Ehrlich, and Republicans hated giving the President credit for bringing bin Laden to justice.

Even if he is a Republican, one has to respect Gary Williams' career at Maryland.  It's easy to forget how bad Maryland basketball was when Williams took over his alma mater's basketball program.  Not only did Williams come back to a school that was on probation and was still haunted by the 1984 cocaine death of Len Bias, he gave up a choice job at a big time school, the Ohio State University.  

He loved Maryland enough to leave a school most coaches would dream of retiring from to take over a program in the toilet.  Have to respect that kind of loyalty and - though it's a cliche - school spirit.

And you have to respect - maybe not agree but respect - his stubborn refusal to recruit kids associated with AAU teams, posses, and hangers on.  Instead of pursuing local superstars like Kevin Durant, Rudy Gay and Ty Lawson (just 3 of the great local players who grew up within 20 minutes of College Park) Williams favored 'coaching up' non-blue chip players like Juan Dixon and Lonnie Baxter, guys who won him  and his school a national championship in 2002.  

In retrospect, Williams probably should have recruited more kids like Durant and Lawson, two generally modest kids (unlike Gay, who played for an almost notorious AAU team in high school) instead of relying on developing diamonds in the rough like Dixon.  After all, a reliance on those players resulted in Maryland falling on semi-hard times since 2002, missing the NCAA tournament more times than they made it since winning it all. 

But we're quibbling now.  Williams left a great job to rescue his alma mater's basketball program, and though he didn't turn College Park in the "UCLA of the East" he did win a national championship while doing it his way.  Not a bad summation of any career.

A few more hoops notes

One notable player Williams developed was Drew Nicholas, a reserve on the 2002 team and a second-team All-ACC player his senior year in College Park.  Over the weekend Nicholas helped lead Greek-favorite team Panathinaikos to the 2011 Euroleague championship over Maccabi of Israel.  It was Pana's sixth Euroleague title, signifying the best professional team on the Continent, and third in the last 5 years.

The 'Octopus Man,' Dimitri Diamantidis,  was named both the Euroleague AND Euroleague Final Four most valuable player.  Diamantidis had double-doubles in both of Panathinaikos' final four wins over the weekend.   He's now in his late 20s, but of all the modern Greek basketball players he would have been a good-to-great NBA player.  Diamantidis is a long, athletic player and can run the point and hit some threes, but who would have made his mark in the League as a defender, kind of a Hellenic Stacey Augman or James Posey or Luol Deng.

Nicholas scored 14 points and led an 11-3 run in the third quarter to give the Greens a lead they would not relinquish on their way to the title.   Panathinaikos was lead by Mike Batiste's 17 points; Batiste played at Arizona State and had a cup of coffee with the Memphis Grizzlies before landing in Greece.

Another former Grizzlies player, Antonis Fotsis, had a nice game including a nasty dunk during the Nicholas-led run in the third.  I wish Fotsis had staying in the League more than one year; athletically he could have stuck around but he has thrived in Athens with Panathinaikos - and has won three championships there.

Of course, who currently plays for the Grizzlies?  Greivis Vasquez, a gritty and under-talented high school player who went on to win ACC player of the year, a non-blue chip player currently earning a living hooping it up in the NBA playoffs, developed by Gary Williams.

Gary Williams and Osama bin Laden

Two huge stories in DC this week.  

I don't have much to add to the Osama bin Laden story.  I'm happy we got him, and ecstatic that Obama got him in particular.  It's hard to overstate how significant decapitating Al QaedaOsama was good at putting together such an effective network.   is; I imagine putting together that kind of terrorist network is hard to do (ditto building the Third Reich, or maintaining Jim Crow for 75 years, wiping out Native American culture, etc.), and that for all his venality

We should not expect Al Qaeda to wither and die, but the good news is Osama should be hard to replace.  

And the way Obama and the U.S. pursued Osama - instructing the CIA to reinvigorate the search for Osama once he took office, walking back leads on possible Al Qaeda couriers, putting the house in Pakistan under surveillance starting in August, then pulling the trigger on the mission to get Osama over the weekend - displays the kind of competent  executive leadership this nation often lacks.

Great work, and great news for the country, the planet, and the President.

As big as getting Osama, the Gary Williams retirement is almost as big of news here in Washington.  More on that later.