Maybe the Eastern Conference isn’t that useless after all. This week’s top stories all come from the East: the good (the Detroit Pistons, no really), the bad (yet another fire sale) and the ugly (Kevin Garnett’s headbutt). Granted, this may be because “Western Conference: Still lots of really good teams” isn’t much of a headline.
Kevin Garnett head-butts Dwight Howard
In the first quarter of Monday night’s 113-99 Brooklyn Nets loss to the Houston Rockets, Brooklyn’s Kevin Garnett head-butted Houston’s Dwight Howard during an on-court fight. Garnett was assessed with a technical foul and rightfully ejected, although he didn’t exactly go quietly. In response, the league suspended Garnett for the Nets’ Wednesday night game against the Memphis Grizzlies and fined Howard $15,000 for pushing Garnett in the neck during the fracas.
It’s a well-earned suspension for Garnett, a decision so obvious that it feels like it doesn’t really lend itself to any actual, serious debate. Garnett’s head-butt was brutal and stupid and there is no place in the league for it. If anything the 38-year-old is lucky to escape with just getting dinged for a single game.
Garnett has always been known for his extreme on-court trolling, this is the man who once controversially provoked criticism by calling opponent Charlie Villanueva a “cancer patient.” Garnett has thrived on the borderline, and that’s meant occasionally going over it.
Recently, it feels like his behavior has been growing desperate. Last month he blew into David West’s ear, a copycat incident of an episode that probably cost Lance Stephenson money and offers this offseason. While that was merely embarrassing, it’s flat out troubling to see Garnett adding physical violence to the mix. Like Kobe Bryant’s “soft like Charmin” rant earlier this season, this head-butt feels like a veteran misdirecting his anger and frustration about how his career is ending.
Is Garnett determined to end his career in ignonomy like Zinedine Zidane at the 2006 World Cup? With the reportedly for-sale Nets falling into irrelevance, and Garnett likely to enter retirement at season’s end, it would be a shame if this ends up being our final lasting memory of the surefire Hall of Famer.
The Boston Celtics sell-off begins
From the moment that the Boston Celtics finally traded point guard Rajon Rondo, after countless rumors and false starts, it was clear that this would just be the first move made by a team finally looking towards the future at the expense of the present. On Friday, the Celtics continued to dismantle their current squad, jettison useful players and getting mostly future assets in return.
First, on Friday, the Celtics sent Brandan Wright, just picked up from the Dallas Mavericks in the Rondo trade, to the Phoenix Suns for a conditional first-round pick. Before the ink was dry on that deal, they started talks on a pact that would ship Jeff Green to the Memphis Grizzlies, one that eventually included the New Orleans Pelicans, a transaction eventually completed on Monday. (They also traded Jameer Nelson to the Denver Nuggets for Nate Robinson, presumably for “why the hell not?”-related reasons.)
The three-team deal was apparently so complicated that it took the entire weekend before the teams were able to finalize it. When the details were worked out, here’s where all the moving parts went: The Grizzlies sent Tayshaun Prince and his expiring contract to Boston and Quincy Pondexter to the Pelicans; the Grizzlies received Green from Boston and Russ Smith from New Orleans; in return, the Grizzlies sent a future first-round pick to the Celtics and a second-rounder to the Pelicans.
The Celtics received Austin Rivers from the Pelicans, but they plan to trade him, possibly to the Los Angeles Clippers. Why the Clippers? Well, former Celtics head coach Doc Rivers runs basketball operations there and he, as you may recall, is Austin Rivers’s father. Yes, this is one evil twin and torrid love affair from being a convoluted soap opera plot. That’s life in the NBA in the 21st century for you.
What the Celtics got back in the deal as far as current players is less important than the fact that they are completely committing to rebuilding process, officially joining the likes of the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks. As NBA.com’s Marc D’Amico notes, they’ve stockpiled a bounty of useful assets:
The C’s currently possess the rights to as many as 12 first-round picks in the next four drafts, including up to eight in the next two drafts. The final number of first-rounders that Boston will own is dependent upon conditions that are attached to many of the picks. Those conditions will also affect the number of second-round picks the Celtics will own over the next few drafts, but suffice to say, they own a lot of them.
While the big markets teams in the Eastern Conference blow things up, the arms race in the West just keeps heating up. It’s a trend that could only get worse if the Brooklyn Nets, as is rumored, decide to go in tear-down mode as well.
Vaguely ironic footnote: Having dropped all of its parts and announced itself as fully committed to rebuilding, the Celtics went out and defeated, of all teams, the Pelicans.
Go figure.
Pau powers the Chicago Bulls
Pau Gasol was supposed to be, well, not washed up but at least approaching his sell-by date. It turns out he just needed to escape from the sinking ship that is the Los Angeles Lakers. In the last few seasons with the Lakers, Gasol looked lost, overshadowed by the rise of younger brother Marc and looking not much like the player who helped the Lakers win their most recent title.
Then there was Saturday, when Gasol took over a Derrick Rose-less team and powered them to a 95-87 win over the Milwaukee Bucks. In the game, the 34-year-old managed to put up a career-high 46 points, stepping up and showing that, at least for a game, he can be the most dangerous player on the court. He’s been an offensive force for Chicago, obviously, but above that this might be one of his best defensive seasons.
His rejuvenation in Chicago, then, has been something of a surprise. Brought in to be a supporting player to help Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah, circumstances have opened things up to the point where he’s now the No. 2 option behind Jimmy Butler. Just like Tom Thibodeau drew it up in the offseason right? It doesn’t matter, the 26-12 Bulls, firmly ahead of both the Milwaukee Bucks and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Central Division, will take it.
Coming to the Bulls has given new life to Pau’s career, reminding us why Marc was considered the throw-in to trade that sent his older brother to Los Angeles. Now that there’s probably another All-Star Game start in his future, the two Gasols might just be facing off each other come February.
The ridiculousness of the Detroit Pistons
Everyone knew that the Pistons had the talent on their roster to be better than the team stuck near the bottom of the Eastern Conference standings for the first two months of the season. The problem, in fact, could have been that Detroit had way too much talent on their roster, or at the very least way too much of the same type of talent.
The 2014-15 Pistons began the season with a team stuffed with starters with established reputations and/or high upside skill sets that just couldn’t all play together: Josh Smith, Andre Drummond, Brandon Jennings and Greg Monroe. Forget being a good basketball team, changes would need to be made to transform them into a merely functional one.
So everyone knew they would be better when they figured out their lineup construction problem, but nobody really expected that the eventual (drastic) solution would lead to this much improvement, except maybe Stan Van Gundy. Since the team’s vice president and head coach made the shocking move to simply waive Smith and eat most of the remainder of his salary, the Pistons have won 9 of their last 10 games. Most recently Detroit beat the Raptors 114-111, a comeback victory that was probably their most impressive win since their one point win over the San Antonio Spurs last Tuesday.
The Pistons are now 14-24, which looks like an absolutely atrocious record unless one realizes that they only had five wins before the move to remove Smith, maybe the worst shooter in the league during his tenure with Detroit this season. Smith went to Houston and the Pistons went on a roll. Somehow, the Pistons find themselves only a few games out of a playoff spot.
There are some precedents here. The Memphis Grizzlies and the Raptors both went on to greater success after they waived Rudy Gay (who, it should be noted, has become a better player in his new team with the Sacramento Kings). Those results, however, took some time to fully pay off and were not as immediate and absurd as what’s going on in Detroit. We joke about curses of all the time, but Occam’s Razor is starting to suggest that there was some kind of black magic spell attached to Smith’s contract. (Be afraid Rockets fans.)
There’s not enough supernatural power in the world to keep the Pistons this red hot for too much longer. Statistics and the eye test both agree that regression is coming soon, but that shouldn’t take away the fun of watching one of the greatest “addition by subtraction” runs in recent basketball history.
Other things we’ve learned
• The Cleveland Cavaliers continue their “win-now” and/or ”desperate” moves (by trading two first-round picks to the Denver Nuggets for Timofey Mozgov. OK, one of those first round picks was the one they just received from the Oklahoma City Thunder for Dion Waiters, but come on Cleveland. This sounds like straight-up Knickery.
• The Portland Trail Blazers support of marriage equality sparked a Westboro Baptist Church protest, which itself attracted a counter-protest. Which became a dance party.
• Oh, and Trail Blazers forward Nicolas Batum, who is French, wore a “Je Suis Charlie” shirt in the warmups before a Trail Blazers/Miami Heat on Thursday night. That’s the 30-8 Trail Blazers this season, just quietly being awesome. We’re going to keep them submerged down here for a bit, just so we don’t disturb their momentum.
• The real reason for the Atlanta Hawks’ success? Their decision to hold “Tinder Swipe Night.” Hey, that explanation makes almost as much sense as the Josh Smith thing in Detroit.
• Every Move He Makes Department: On Sunday, LeBron James was just as confused about the Dez Bryant non-catch in this weekend’s Dallas Cowboys/Green Bay Packers game as the rest of us. On Monday, he watched his Ohio Buckeyes win the national championship in Texas. Last night, he returned to the Cavaliers lineup after missing eight games with injuries. It’s LeBron’s world and we just live in it.
• Former Dallas Mavericks star Roy Tarpley passed away on Friday at the age of 50. Tarpley was a top draft pick who showed flashes of greatness, but his basketball career was sadly derailed and eventually ended by his struggles with drug and alcohol abuse. Our condolences go out to those he left behind.
