When the Warriors are the Warriors at their best, they are always one second ahead of their opponents. One second doesn't sound like much, but add up what it means on each pass and it represents the difference between the ball reaching the hand of the shooter before the opponent can close out efficiently. If a team is one second ahead of its opponent on offense, and the opponent is one second behind on its offensive end, a winning time differential exist that is devoutly to be wished. This is why the passing game is so important, and the iso game, no matter how skilled the iso player is is not. I love Kawhi Leonard, but he holds on to the ball too long. No way, you say! Not by Kyrie Erving standards, for sure, but still too long, perhaps a second too long, and as the poet Robert Frost says, "that can make all the difference." Winning in the NBA depends on seconds. Every second that does not lead to a basket is a wasted second. A player catches the ball with space to shoot, he hesitates a second. He's lost the advantage. A coach hesitates calling a time out, one second, two seconds. The play he draws up might have worked had he been faster on the draw. The NBA today is two fast gunslingers facing each other on the street of Showdown, U.S.A. The team that clears leather the fastest wins.
Etc:
Got to love Steve Kerr's T-shirt of 60 Minutes: VOTE FOR OUR LIVES. Right on, Coach!
Are the Raiders nuts signing Richie Incoginito? The Sacramento Bee sport page listed Incognito's multitudinous infractions: spitting on opponents, bullying teammates, fighting in practice, willfully attempting to hurt opponents, the beat goes on and on, but what they left out, and to me, what will hurt the Raiders the most is that he [Incognito] was accused by Yannick Ngakoue, the African-American defensive end of the Jaguars.of using racial slurs, To my way of thinking one racial slur is as good as 100 racial slurs. It mean you are a racist. On a team where 80% of your teammates are African-Americans, this does not bode well for team harmony. Or, perhaps, the Raiders' cocky little coach Jon Gruden, thinks he can make such vile behavior disappear.
Nice baseball poem by Linda Pastan
When you tried to tell me
baseball was a metaphor
for life: the long, dusty travail
around the bases, for instance,
to try to go home again,
the sacrifice for which you win
approval but not applause;
the way the light closes down
in the last days of the season -
I didn't believe you.
It's just a way of passing
the time, I said.
And you said: that's it.
Yes.
