Western Conference Championship and a small etc.

Part of me was trying to support my wife's Oklahoma roots by cheering for the Thunder. But the roots of my basketball psyche exalted when the Spurs won. I like the Thunder. They're a talented bunch of players, but it seems to me that they relied way too much on their athleticism and not enough on strategy. The Spurs understood that athleticism will not prevail unless there is a consistent strategy that will allow for your team to stay in the game if speed and attacking stops working. By strategy, I'm not talking about defense. Both teams played D damn well and bruisingly hard. In the end, the Thunder's propensity to rely on the quick shot, quick attack didn't work as well as the Spurs patient three to five pass patient attack. Is this Scott Brook's fault? To a certain degree, yes. He decided to use all his attack players at the same time. Guys like Sefolosha and Collison, reliable journey men, disappeared from the rotation. By the fourth quarter, he'd made his bed, and had to lie in it -  and pull the covers up over his head.

ETC: What the FBI was thinking approaching Phil Mickelson at the Memorial? Were they intentionally trying to rattle him while he was participating in a golf tournament?  That is such a cheap shot. I can't imagine when I was playing in the NBA, what something like that, FBI agents coming into the locker room or to my hotel room before a game, would have done to my concentration. I'm reasonably sure I wouldn't have been able to go out on the court and play at the right level. So, unless the news article was incorrect, the FBI owes Lefty an apology, but I don't suppose the men in gray do a lot of that.  Phil, let's hope you're not an inside trader. If you are/were, as an athlete you should have known better. Athletes don't cheat.

The World Cup is soon upon us from Brazil, the home of the greatest soccer (football) player that ever was, Pele. I remember watching him in a match in North Africa when I was on a coaching trip in the summer of 1965. The bicycle kick? You've all heard of it, but Pele, in that match, did it the opposite way, somersaulting forward and kicking the ball into the goal with the back of his heel. Insane move.

Here's a poem about soccer

A Boy Juggling a Soccer Ball  by   Christopher Merrill

   after practice: right foot
to left foot, stepping forward and back,
   to right foot and left foot,
and left foot up to his thigh, holding
   it on his thigh, as he twists
around in a circle, until it rolls
   down the inside of his leg,
like a tickle of sweat, not catching
   and tapping on the soft
side of his foot, and juggling
   once, twice, three times,
hopping on one foot like a jump-roper
   in the gym, now  trapping
and holding the ball in midair,
   balancing it on the instep
of his weak left foot, stepping forward
   and forward and back, then
lifting it overhead until it hangs there
   and squaring off his body,
he keeps the ball aloft with a nudge
   of his neck, heading it
from side to side, softer and softer,
   like a dying refrain,
until the ball, slowing, balances
   itself on his hairline,
the hot sun and sweat filling his eyes
   as he jiggles this way
and that, then flicking it up gently,
   hunching his shoulders
and tilting his head back, he traps it
   in the hollow of his neck
and bending at the waist, sees his shadow,
   his dangling T-shirt, the bent
blades of brown grass in summer heat;
   and relaxing the ball slipping
down his back . . . and missing his foot.

   He wheels around, he marches
over the ball, as f it were a rock
   he stumbled into, and pressing
his left foot against it, he pushes it
   against the inside of his right
until it pops into the air, is heeled
   over his head - the rainbow! -
and settle on his extended thigh before
   rolling over his knee and down
his shin, so he can juggle it again
   from his left foot to his right foot
- and right foot to left foot to thigh -
   as he wanders, on the last day
of summer, around the empty field.

Analytics and etc

When I was a 3rd grader, my teacher at Grant Elementary School in San Francisco, Mrs. Rosen, lined all of her students at the chalk board (yes, real black chalk boards) and had us do addition and subtraction problems that she called out to us in her gruff voice to write on the board. She would time us, then walk down the line observing our figures. If a student got a problem wrong, she'd take her hand, gently place it on the back of his or her head and slam said tiny head hard into the chalkboard. Ouch! That's me, yelling as I inevitably did my sums wrong. From those days on, I have never been good at math or any subject related to mathematics.

Which leads me to the subject of analytics in basketball. It's math. Okay, so it's statistics. That's just math in disguise. I've done some research, and I guess I get it. Useful, but only in the right hands. By that I mean in the hands of people who have the sport in their blood and can "see" "feel" a player's skill and enthusiasm for the game. If it were up to me, evaluating a player, I would only take into account how that player performs in the fourth quarter of tight games, in playoff/championship games (high school, college, or pro). I've seen too many players in the NBA who play well in the first three quarters and disappear in the crucial fourth.

And, I would definitely pay as much attention to my instincts as to the analytics. For example, I don't need stats to tell me that Carmelo  Anthony, no matter what he does, will never be a winner. And I don't need stats to know young Kawhi Leanard of the Spurs, not nearly as gifted as Carmelo, will always be a winner.

The ETC

Stick Aldon Smith in jail for a year, so he can sober up and meditate on how close he is to losing his chance to live the decent life of an athlete. It's high time high schools, colleges and the pros start practicing Tough Love.

While the NBA playoffs are exciting, let's not forget there's a good chance the State of California might soon have a Triple Crown winner, in California Chrome.

Here's a little poem about horses: A traditional Navajo song.

My horse has a hoof like a striped agate
His fetlock is like a fine eagle plume.
His legs are like quick lightning
My horse has a tail like a trailing black cloud.
The Holy Wind moves through his hair

Steve Kerr

Congratulations to the Warriors for selecting a smart basketball mind to replace Mark Jackson, who I never thought possessed a particularly smart basketball mind, not dumb by any means, but nothing that had me standing up on the edge of my seat like the cartoon movie critic, clapping and cheering.

 Jackson did a good job for the Warriors, but good is not excellent. As a retired English teacher, I'd give Jackson a solid B. However, what the Warriors need is a coach who will earn an A. Kerr might be that guy.

I only hope that Coach Kerr understands the significance of Coach Phil Jackson's choice of assistant coaches when Phil started his first season with the Chicago Bulls by wisely selecting Tex Winters and Johnny Bach, two of the brightest basketball coaches in the business with tons of roundball experience.

I've already used this excerpt from a longer poem by Edward Hirsch, but I'll use it again, since it is profound and is at the heart of good coaching.

". . . a constellation of  players
Shinning under his favorite word,
Execution . . . "

Mark Jackson.

I see in the sports news that the Warrior players support Mark Jackson as rumors have been floating around that his job is on the line. Warrior administration should take these player endorsements seriously, but not too seriously. From what I've seen of the Warriors the last three seasons, I have no problem believing that Jackson is a good coach. Note, that I did not say a great coach. No doubt good coaches can become great coaches. Sometimes it takes a while to figure things out. In Mark Jackson, one needs reminding, while he is clearly on the hot seat, that he had no experience coaching on any level before he was hired to perform on the highest level, a mere three years ago and may require some more time before reaching his coaching potential. There have been a lot of coaches that started without any prior coaching experience: Lenny Wilkens, for example, had to suffer losing in Portland before he won a championship in Seattle. It took Jerry Sloan a long time to turn out a winning team. Larry Brown's early teams, the Carolina Cougars and Denver Nuggets (ABA/NBA) played well (like the Warriors) but never won.

So, what is it about Jackson's coaching that troubles me? First: Inconsistent defense and what seems to me a lack of a solid defensive strategy. Jackson came in preaching D. He needs to walk his talk.  It's not that the Warriors don't play D, it's that they don't play D consistently. The team's emphasis, as in the past under Don Nelson, remains on the offense, not to the same silly degree as under Nelson, thank god, but still wearisomely there as the Warrior's approach to the game, i.e: let's get up and down the court and out score our opponents. Second: Turnovers. This speaks for itself, a team can't turn the ball over as much as the Warriors do, and expect to win big. Okay, with as much offense as the Warriors have, there's a good chance they'll via for a playoff spot every year. But can they make it to the Western Division Finals? To the NBA Finals. Win the NBA title.

If a team doesn't value the ball and does not play smart aggressive defense, it can only succeed to a modest level, never to greatness.

Klay Thompson recently said, "I love playing for coach. He makes it so fun to go to work everyday. . ." I wonder if any of the San Antonio Spurs have fun at practices? I wonder if the Celtic practices under Doc Rivers were fun. Could Pat Riley's players (Miami and LA Lakers) say they had fun at practices? I'm thinking of all the great coaches: Doctor Jack Ramsey, Phil Jackson, Red Aurebach, Bill Sharman, Alex Hannum. Having played for Sharman and Hannum, I can assure you that practices were not fun, instructive and exhausting, yes, but almost never FUN.

What is the one persistent thread that all great coaches possess? They set the bar high and hold their players accountable for mistakes.

Could it be that to reach the next level and head for greatness, the Warrior players need to have less Fun?

It's not surprising to me that in teaching, on any level, from elementary through college, when students are asked to name their favorite teachers, the easiest teachers, the "fun" teachers were never the ones selected. The teachers they remember as the best were always the ones who demanded the most, teachers they respected, but did not necessarily like.

This blog may sound like a criticism of Coach Mark Jackson. It's not, not entirely. Under his leadership, the Warriors are far more competitive than they have been in recent years. That is to Jackson's credit. But the bar must be higher. Both he and his players have to jump higher to hurdle that bar, and that will take hard, tireless, work, not fun.

Who needs fun in the NBA anyway? I'll take a championship over fun any day.

Let's hear it for J.B. Holmes, having recovered from brain surgery and numerous physical injuries, he won the Wells Fargo Championship. Great shot of his wife planting a $1,242,000 kiss on her husband in this morning's sports page.

Also a nice article about Gregg Popovich teaching WNBA All-Star Becky Hammon about coaching. Are we talking a female NBA coach in the future?

A poem about golf by me from my latest book of Poetry: Sweat: New and Collected Poems About Sports

Confession

To George and Gary,my teammates and golfers
and all other friends that I've bad-mouthed
for playing a sport I ridiculed, I apologize.
I'm older now. I have learned to appreciate
a sport played in silence, where the slightest
sound from the gallery is frowned upon, where,
if it were possible, birds would be forbidden
to sing while a player is teeing off or measuring
a putt. Gentlemen, I'm no longer enamored
of crowd noises, the bellowing of athletes
drawing attention to themselves, the circus
acts at half-time, rockets firing into the sky
at football games, of loud music, loud fans
rising around and around the stadium
like giant second hands. I yearn for the peace
of grassy dog-legs right or left, the silent
sandtraps, wind whispering through the trees.

Why Are We So Astonished?

Donald Sterling has been an out-of- the- closet Racist all his life, so why didn't the NBA do something about him long ago? Could it possibly be that Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Coach Doc Rivers and other African Americans employed by Stirling never heard even the slightest rumors about their boss? Didn't Elgin Baylor warn the general public and the NBA about Sterling's "Plantation Mentality" years ago? And, what in God's name, was the Southern California Chapter of the NAACP thinking that it was going to honor Sterling with a Life Time Achievement Award? Is this the same Sterling who wouldn't allow people of color to rent his apartments?

Talk about bizzare. This man has been a public bigot all his life and only now are we coming to grips with him.

Our country, in so many ways a great country, is still a long way away from racial equality. It has been a state by state slog. We tell yourselves the coasts do better about race, then a guy like Sterling raises his slimy head. How many Sterlings are there left in the United States? Way more than we'd like to think, I'm afraid.

When will racial prejudice end? I don't know, but I'm sure that at least the next three generations, starting with Sterling's generation, people in their 80's and 70's and the two following generations (my wife's and the baby boomers) must die off before the X generation has a chance to make the world color blind.

We human beings will be color blind to race only when we look at each other's skin color the way portrait painters do. They pay more attention to undertones, chroma, high lights and shadows than the skin's primary color, which is obvious. And all color is beautiful.

Adam Silver's tenure as commissioner of the NBA will be decided by how quickly and how forcefully he acts in resolving the Donald Sterling fiasco. If he prevaricates even slightly, he might as well resign.

So, as this grotesque Sterling story swirls around us, here is a poem I wrote for one of the great African American players of all time, Hall of Fame center, Hakeem Olajuwon of the Houston Rockets.

Hakeem Olajuwon

    Aka, Hakeem the Dream

In Africa each morning practice starts
with warm-ups. The youngest on the team,
perhaps sixteen, always the first waiting for me,
sits in the thin shade below the backboard,
reading the latest article about Hakeem.
We stretch ham-strings, then slow jog
around the court. He keeps pace, all the while
talking about The Dream. "Dis doc," he says,      *Listen up
"With The Dream we would defeat Senegal
and be champions of West Africa.
Que pensez vous, entraineur? What do I think?     *What do you think coach?
I can't think about anything other than the red
and smoky sun rising over the opposite basket,
the heat already sweating my shirt, and how
the rains suddenly begin half way through practice.
I shag his jump shots, the ones he swears
are like Hakeem's. He says he too will attend
The University of Houston, later play in the NBA.
"Vous m'assistez?" But his shots are ugly, too flat;      *"Will you help/assist me?
they lack the back-spin, the softness of the Dream's.
I nod my head, whatever I can do - my best shot.
I am in the country of Burkina Fasso.
Its name means Land of Up-Right People.