24 (Slightly Absurd) NBA Certainties for the 2014-15 Season

The following twenty-four NBA-related events will most certainly occur over the course of the next eight months. 

1. On October 30, Blake Griffin “retaliates” against Serge Ibaka‘s third take-down of the game by blowing him kisses. Later in the game, Glen Davis crushes Ibaka and then pins him to the court in a wrestling maneuver. Davis is suspended for five games, but coach Doc Rivers buys Davis a new Tesla for his troubles.

2. The Minnesota Timberwolves will not be all that exciting in general, but Ricky Rubio to Andrew Wiggins and Rubio to Zach LaVine lob passes will be a nice distraction from the standings. Coach Flip Saunders gives Rubio an ultimatum in mid-November: “Get to the free-throw more or we’ll all start calling you, “Marco.”

3. Milwaukee Bucks coach Jason Kidd comes out of retirement in late-November because he wants to, “Teach Jabari the pick-and-roll.” Jabari Parker continues to pick-and-pop but refuses to “roll.”

4. Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob introduces pre-game three-point contests involving Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and new coach Steve Kerr. The Warriors start selling tickets for the pre-game event only.

December

5. Philadelphia 76ers second round pick K.J. McDaniels becomes first NBA player to have a 10 block, 10 turnover game against the downtrodden Orlando Magic.

6. Chicago Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau embraces the fact he finally has a deep bench and plays everyone 25 minutes per game, saving them for the playoffs. Derrick Rose will play the entire season.

7. ESPN.com crashes for several days in mid-December due to advanced metrics malfunctioning and causing panic.

8. In a New Year’s Eve special, longtime TNT commentator Marv Albert has a breakdown. After months of rotating broadcast partners, Albert retires mid-season, forcing Ernie Johnson into an awkward play-by-play role. Back in the studio, Charles Barkley and Shaquille O’Neal won’t listen to Kenny Smith. Shaq keeps shouting, “Barbecued Chicken!” The ratings have never been better.

January

9.  The Boston Celtics take a league-record 53 three-pointers in a game against the Toronto Raptors, including 19 by Jared Sullinger. They make only 7. Sullinger finishes the game with 18 offensive rebounds.

10. LeBron James tells Dion Waiters that Waiters won’t be joining the Cleveland Cavs on their ten-day road trip in January, because he will be enrolled in anger management classes. Coach David Blatt simply nods in the background.

11. ESPN declares they will air every Cavs game from February 1 until the end of the season.

February

12. At the All-Star Break, the NBA announces the details of its new television deal on the salary cap, but the cap number keeps increasing every week, like it does with the Mega Millions. By June, the number is $140 million. Every team will have an inordinate amount of cap space and twelve assistant GMs will quit right before free agency begins in July, 2016.

13. The Houston Rockets beat the Los Angeles Lakers, 104-92. Only two Rockets score points in the game. James Harden gets 58. Dwight Howard scores 46. Kobe Bryant scores 31 points, taking 57 shots, in the least-efficient performance in league history. Lakers guard Jeremy Lin finally complains to the media about Kobe’s selfish ways. Rookie Julius Randle gets a DNP-CD from coach Byron Scott because he accidentally took a corner three-pointer the previous game. Phil Jackson‘s laughter can be heard from coast-to-coast.

14. The Indiana Pacers, who are averaging 64 points per game, trade away Roy Hibbert and David West to the Sacramento Kings for Ben McLemore and a future second-round pick. Larry Bird goes AWOL as soon as the season ends.

15. The Boston Celtics do not trade Rajon Rondo. Bill Simmons yells at Celtics GM Danny Ainge on The Grantland Basketball Hour. At 25-29, the Celtics make a run at the 8th seed in the weak Eastern Conference. In an ironic twist, the Celtics and Nets will fight it out for the final spot.

April

16. The Philadelphia 76ers play a regular season game in which the arena is completely empty. The television commentators leave the booth in protest early in the second quarter. The Sixers forfeit their final five home games, but refuse to refund those tickets to the 43 remaining season ticket holders. Instead, they barter with those fans, hoping to secure second round picks. Sixers GM Sam Hinkie sits down with SI’s Lee Jenkins in April, at the end of the Sixers 6-76 (fitting, isn’t it?) season. The tell-all essay is titled, “Vision 2020.” Sixers fans organize an event where they set fire to a pile of this issue of Sports Illustrated. Joel Embiid is asked to stop using Twitter by commissioner Adam Silver.

17. The Sacramento Kings win 44 games but finish 10th in the Western Conference. Owner Vivek Ranadive petitions for Sacramento to move to the Eastern Conference, but commissioner Silver stops answering Vivek’s texts. A blog is created: http://www.vivekstexts.com

18. The Memphis Grizzlies finish 6th in the West and end up taking the 3rd-seed San Antonio Spurs to Game 7, before losing the final game on two Zach Randolph missed free-throws.

May

19. After much debate, Seattle doesn’t get a franchise but they do get a new Chipotle restaurant.

20. In the middle of the Western Conference Semis between San Antonio and Oklahoma City, Kevin Durant announces he’s moving 5,000 of his closest friends and family to a newly built community outside of Oklahoma City. The rumors that he’s headed to Washington, D.C. persist anyway, because the NBA gossip bubble in the age of Twitter expands like a piece of Bubblicious.

21. The Washington Wizards and Charlotte Hornets finish 4th and 5th in the East. Paul Pierce and Lance Stephenson become involved in a staring match that lasts for 45 minutes at center court after the final buzzer of Game 1. Whichever team wins the evenly-matched series loses in 5 games to the Bulls in the East Semis.

22. The Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers meet in the Western Conference Semis. Steve Kerr and Doc Rivers both agree to do color commentary and let their assistants coach during the second quarter of each game.

23. In the Eastern Conference Finals, the Chicago Bulls beat the Cleveland Cavs in 6 games. Jimmy Butler does such a ridiculous job defending Kyrie Irving (holding him to 13% shooting for the series) that he is named series MVP.

June

24. The Chicago Bulls beat the Los Angeles Clippers in the NBA Finals in 7 games. Five of the games come down to the wire. Chris Paul retires (temporarily) out of frustration. Tom Thibodeau is named MVP, due to the fact that every member of the Bulls contributes roughly the same amount to the wins, and the voting ends in a seven-way tie.

***

SI’s Lee Jenkins Profile of Adam Silver is Worth Your Time. Here’s an Excerpt…

Writing for Sports Illustrated, Lee Jenkins has written a compelling, in-depth profile of new NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. Here’s the beginning:

Masawani Jere, a chief of the Ngoni tribe, presides over a village of 120 in Malawi, a small, landlocked nation in southeastern Africa. The village, called Emchakachakeni, sits on a hill at the edge of a forest. Most Malawians live in rural areas and work in agriculture. Many of the 6,000 Ngoni, descended from the Zulus of South Africa, are timber merchants. Those in Emchakachakeni own no televisions or computers. But their chief must maintain some connection with the modern world, so he has a BlackBerry, on which he created a Facebook account. When Jere logged in on the last day of April he was struck by a story that all his cyberfriends were discussing about the bold new NBA commissioner, who had permanently banished the league’s longest-tenured owner for making racist remarks on a leaked audiotape. “Oh, yes,” the chief thought as he scrolled through the commissioner’s forceful words. “This sounds just like Adam.”

Adam Silver is featured on the May 26 cover of Sports Illustrated.

Painting by Tim O’Brien; photo reference by Christian Petersen/Getty Images

In 1977, Jere went to a house party in Rye, N.Y. He was a sophomore at Rye High, having moved to Westchester County three years earlier, when his father became a counselor to Malawi’s United Nations ambassador. Jere was desperate to fit in at the new school, even though he couldn’t help but stand out. He was one of the few black students in his class. At the party, kids downed beers before heading off to The Rocky Horror Picture Show in New Rochelle. As Jere tried to blend in, a long-limbed, clear-eyed freshman introduced himself. “That was Adam Silver,” Jere recalls. “All we had in common is we were the two who weren’t drinking.”

Rye is a posh suburb of New York City, just shy of the Connecticut line, and among its 15,000 residents were wealthy corporate executives and investment bankers. Silver’s father, Ed, was one of the most prominent labor lawyers in New York City. His mother, Melba, was a teacher and community activist. Adam grew up in a large Georgian house with a formal garden about a block from Long Island Sound. At Rye High he was an A student, a class president, a member of the cross-country team and editor-in-chief of The Garnet & Black newspaper. He played the stock market with the help of a broker on Main Street who indulged his modest trades. Mas, as Jere is known, was a soccer star who struggled with schoolwork. But he and Silver had more in common than their backgrounds indicated.

When Silver was 10 his parents separated and his dad moved to an apartment in Manhattan. By the time he turned 14, his three older siblings were off to college, and his mom was spending winters in Boca Raton, Fla. He was alone in that big colonial, along with Mas, whose parents regularly traveled back to Malawi. “He took me in,” Mas says. “He became my brother, and I became his.” Adam tutored Mas in history and algebra. He invited him to concerts and sporting events in the city. He took him to fancy restaurants. He even sold Mas his car, a Volkswagen Scirocco, for $2,000 on a layaway plan. “Adam was really Mas’s guide through the American experience,” says Roy Bostock, a Rye resident and the former Yahoo chairman, who has been a mentor to Silver since he was a teenager.

Mas’s other guide was Regan Orillac, a class president one year younger. The trio would drive to the Rye Nature Center after school, grab Tiger’s Milk bars and frozen yogurt and head to Adam’s. They pored over New Yorker cartoons, deconstructed the Abscam scandal and listened to Earth Wind & Fire. They stayed up late picking at pistachios and watching Johnny Carson. “I’m Irish Catholic,” Orillac says. “Mas is African. Adam is Jewish. We were an odd group, but we made a little family.”

Melba Silver employed a housekeeper, Eudel Baker, during the day and rented a back unit to adults with the understanding that they’d keep an eye on her youngest son. She also opened a charge account for Adam at Playland Market, a mile away, but getting there presented logistical challenges: Adam, at 15, occasionally had to drive there without a license. “I think that whole experience gave Adam skills that other people may attain later,” Orillac says. “You don’t hem and haw. You don’t ask a thousand people for advice. You just get it done, because no one else is around to get it done.”

“He took me in,” Mas says of Silver. “He became my brother, and I became his.”

Adam was a cosmopolitan kid, as comfortable at Blind Brook Country Club for Easter brunch as at Carnegie Hall for the Spinners’ show. He once mimicked their act, pink tuxedo and all, for a school talent show. At Duke he introduced his freshman-year roommate to Al Green as well as to New York City mayor Ed Koch, who called their dorm looking for Ed Silver the day Adam moved in. “When we were all reading The Wall Street Journal for the market, Adam was reading the Journal and The New York Times for the market and the editorial page,” says Jim Zelter, the roommate, now a top executive at the private equity firm Apollo Global Management. Adam also had The Village Voice delivered to his campus mailbox.

In December 1983, Silver was a junior political science major visiting his mom in Boca Raton for winter break. Jere was a junior at Concordia College in suburban Bronxville, N.Y., eager to reconnect with old friends home for the holidays. Three nights before Christmas, Jere drove to a bar in New Rochelle with a high school buddy named Chris Pinto, who was premed at Johns Hopkins. According to Jere, they drank a few beers before returning to their neighborhood pub in Rye, The Maple Tree. They left after midnight: Jere, Pinto and a young woman Pinto had met inside. Jere and the woman reached the car first. “I was about to open the door,” Jere remembers, “and [she] said, ‘I’m not getting in the car with a n—–.’ ” Jere demanded an apology and looked around for Pinto, who was talking animatedly with two men on the other side of the street. A fight broke out, and Jere sprinted across the street to help, but the brawl left him bloodied and Pinto unconscious. The hoodlums ran away. An ambulance rushed Pinto to the hospital. He died several days later.

Jere was inconsolable, and, again, Silver was there. He flew up from Boca Raton, coaxed Jere to Pinto’s funeral and handed him a black blazer to wear. Jere blamed himself for Pinto’s death, and Silver explained that Jere too was an innocent victim. Jere never even learned what Pinto and the two men were fighting about. Detectives investigated the case and interviewed Jere and the alleged assailants, but a grand jury declined to hand down indictments. Jere underwent counseling. He nearly dropped out of college. In 1986 he moved back to Malawi, and Silver shipped him the Scirocco. Six years after that, Jere and his wife, Annie, had a son, whom they named Christopher. Silver sent the boy a Spalding basketball hoop, and he shot jumpers in the village. Now that boy is 22, and his father’s pal is recognized around the globe.

“Christopher,” Mas says, “has become a big fan of Adam Silver.”

*****

Fifteen floors above Fifth Avenue the commissioner sits in a modest conference room at the NBA’s Midtown headquarters, sipping a cup of coffee. His navy suit jacket is draped over a chair. His red-and-blue-striped tie hangs loose around his neck. The window behind him looks out eight blocks north to Central Park, where Silver walks every night with his Labrador retriever, Eydie. He is used to being recognized by NBA junkies, who for more than seven years watched him announce second-round draft picks as the deputy commissioner, but now he is approached by observers who wouldn’t know a post-up from a pin-down.

Silver does not seem tired, though he just returned the night before from Los Angeles, where he watched the Clippers play the Thunder at Staples Center in Game 4 of the Western Conference semifinals. It was his first trip to L.A. since April 29, when he announced he was banning Clippers owner Donald Sterling for life and vowed to force a sale of the franchise. Club employees swung by his seat in the lower bowl to thank him for ridding them of a wretched boss, who built a reputation as the worst owner in pro sports by bungling hires, skimping on contracts and heckling his own players. Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger, who sat with Silver, flashed back to the All-Star Game, which they attended together in New Orleans three months earlier. “The attention he got [in L.A.], the appreciation that was shown, the connection fans wanted to have with him, was completely different,” Iger says. Silver struggled to accept the adulation.

“This book is far from written,” he says in his first sit-down interview since he expelled Sterling. “I still feel I’m very much in the middle of it. I know what is appropriate here. I have no doubt. But it is one thing to have said what I said and another to execute it — to move the NBA through this chapter to a better place. I feel that obligation. I feel the weight of it on my shoulders.” Roughly three hours later Sterling will appear on CNN and issue perhaps the clumsiest public apology in history. The reality show continues.

Read More: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nba/news/20140520/adam-silver-nba-commissioner-donald-sterling/#ixzz32sCc6Qwb

Dave D’Alessandro Sheds Some Light: NBA Owners Are Not a Savory Group

Dave D’Alessandro, writing for the New Jersey Star-Ledger, discusses the NBA owners and the importance of NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s position: http://www.nj.com/ledgerdalessandro/index.ssf/2014/04/dalessandro_donald_sterlings_candid_moment_its_business_as_usual_and_nba_business_is_often_ugly.html

Adam Silver has a parade of laudable business partners that he inherited from his morally ambiguous predecessor, David Stern.

The new NBA commissioner has a business partner in Washington who doesn’t know the difference between a tax code and “class warfare,” who bribes bloggers, slugs fans, bulldozes the neighboring Chinatown population into Virginia so he can help put up more Hooters, and asserts that we should all be grateful for the honor of subsidizing his team.

He has a business partner in Orlando who is so righteous he has poured millions into anti-gay marriage initiatives, because gays “keep asking for favors” and “special treatment,” and marriage is “not vital to them, in my opinion.”

He has a business partner in Cleveland that made billions in the mortgage business, many of them by passing subprime loans along to the ultimate thieves, Countrywide, which greased the derivative machine that helped destroy the global economy.

He has a business partner in Oklahoma City who made his billions through fracking, which has been linked to everything from toxic drinking water to earthquakes to climate change, and then screwed landowners out of their royalties when business went bad.

He has a business partner in Brooklyn who is an oligarch, that special kind of patriot who uses political connections to grab billions in state-owned assets for micropennies on the dollar, leaving much of the population to starve in the feudal cesspool left behind.

And yes, he has a business partner in Los Angeles who is a slumlord that refused to rent to minorities because they are “not desirable tenants,” and because “black tenants smell and attract vermin,” and “Mexicans sit around and drink all day,” leading to a humongous settlement of a federal housing lawsuit; and who has some scary attitudes toward women, which has led to harassment suits and yet more settlements.

We’re not here to put Donald Sterling’s racism on a scale with other social sins practiced by Adam Silver’s business partners, which stretch from here to Seattle.

We can only remind you that everyone already knew that Sterling was a despicable human being. If you didn’t know it, you simply weren’t paying attention, or – like Stern and Silver and everyone else in the NBA – you chose not to care.

Racism is an indelible part of what he is. If he issues a thousand mea-culpas today, nothing changes that. He has stood courtside with a what-me-worry visage for decades, because he is part of a lunatic fraternity that always embraced him as a bit eccentric, but always One of Ours.

So we find this latest example of Sterling spewing his usual vile nonsense not even remotely interesting, or anything but redundant. This is Donald Sterling we’re talking about. What TMZ captured on tape is not a smoking gun. It is a longstanding business practice.

Yet his remarks have received a ton of attention, because the people who do business with him suddenly cannot overlook the fact that he is a public embarrassment and a risk to their virtuous enterprise.

(Pause here for eye-roll.)

Only two things really should vex these Men of Basketball.

One: They never denounced Sterling a decade ago, when his odious viewpoints were already a part of the public record – yet the players took his money, his partners shared in his largesse, and the fans subsidized his business.

Two: They don’t seem to care that all this evidence of bigotry was obtained via an egregious invasion of Donald the Clown’s privacy, which is a candor test that absolutely none of these Men of Basketball would be able to pass.

So, better late than never, we go to the torches and pitchforks. Donald has everyone fired up just by being the despicable human being that he is, so expect Silver to punish him for, essentially, free speech. He has the authority to do that within the framework of the NBA constitution – because, you know, Sterling’s latest behavior isn’t in the best interests of the league.

Just let the record show that until Saturday morning, it was just fine.

The public response was outrage, and, sure, mostly proportionate. As for the punishment, most of us scratch our heads like LeBron James, the league’s commercial colossus, who says, “There is no room for Donald Sterling in our league.”

Try to keep up, young fella. Clearly, there’s abundant room for all types in your league.

The other primary cash cow, Michael Jordan, was the only fellow owner who had the guts to speak up in the first 24 hours. But MJ, not exactly the world’s foremost expert on perspective, concluded his statement with, “In a league where the majority of players are African-American, we cannot and must not tolerate discrimination at any level.”

It wouldn’t matter if there was one black player, or two. Discrimination is intolerable, period. Unless one of your business partners is Donald Sterling.