Is Ryan Gomes The Solution?

From Kevin Arnovitz’s piece over at ESPNLosAngeles.com:

Knowing one’s limitations as a player might be one of the least heralded attributes in basketball. It’s a quality that’s been absent on recent Clipper rosters, a primary reason the team has struggled to put up points despite plenty of competent scorers. But that acute awareness of his strengths and weakness is one of one Gomes’ defining traits as a player.”[The Clippers] aren’t looking for someone dominant at this position,” Gomes said. “Sure, if I average 18 points, seven rebounds, five assists, that’ll be wonderful. But I feel like my best quality is my knowledge of the game. I don’t think I’m going to wow you athletically, but I can dabble in a little bit of everything.”Gomes’ humility isn’t an aw-shucks brand of athlete-speak and isn’t born out of a lack of confidence. He’s just far too versed in basketball to peddle anything other than devout truths, and he loves talking about the game. Gomes is happy to discuss his move to Los Angeles, the apartment he’s rented for himself, his wife, young daughter and mother-in-law. But what gets Gomes going, what he really loves to schmooze about is chalk-talk. 

Ask him why the Timberwolves struggled in the triangle, and he’ll tell you the specific point in the sequence when defenses anticipated the action and clamped down on the offense. Ask him how his good friend Al Jefferson will fare in Utah’s flex offense, and he’ll speak in detail about how Jefferson will flourish and which reads will prove most difficult for the big man. Ask him about the particulars of his game as an NBA small forward, and Gomes is an open book. 

“I’m not going to back guys down,” Gomes said. “But I’m going to turn, face up and use my quickness — get fouled, get to the rim, shoot my jumper.” 

Since he came into the league from Providence College, Gomes has been tagged as the dreaded “tweener” — a player who straddles the small and power forward positions. The Clippers plan to use Gomes as a small forward, which he’s played the past two seasons in Minnesota. Gomes readily acknowledges that he’s not a prototypical 3. He’s confident in his ability to play strong, straight-up, one-on-one defense, but that certain assignments give him problems. 

“At the 3, there are some nights where it might not work in my favor,” Gomes said. “But Carmelo [Anthony], I think I can guard him. I can guard guys like [Al] Thornton. I think I can do a solid job on [Paul] Pierce. I can guard guys who face up and attack you one-on-one. [Ron] Artest is a perfect matchup for me. 

“Where I have limitations is with guys who get their shots by running off screens. [Kevin] Durant. A guy like Jason Richardson is tough for me.” 

Gomes conveys a refreshing self-awareness that could be mistaken for self-deprecation. Coaches and general managers often characterize a player as a “glue guy,” but few NBA veterans are comfortable enough in their own skin to tout their intangible qualities as their strongest assets. 

“You have to find a niche,” Gomes said. “Find something you do well to stick around in this league. That’s the case for all of us except for those 30 who can do everything. For the rest of us it’s about finding a way — knowledge of the game, smarts, those little things.”

To read more on Gomes and his approach to the game, go here.

The Silver Lining

What was the worst part of Donald Sterling’s comments yesterday?

It’s the offseason. This is the one time of year Clippers’ fans can be overly optimistic without those pesky losses clubbing them over the head again and again, crushing their spirits. Fresh uniforms, fresh faces, and a fresh start. That should have been the feeling derived from yesterday, but it wasn’t. Fans know the dark cloud that hovers over the franchise hasn’t gone anywhere, but in the offseason they’re not typically forced to look up at it.

Sorry Randy Foye, but your owner doesn’t know your name and probably couldn’t pick you out of a lineup. Apologies to you as well, Ryan Gomes. If it were up to him, you wouldn’t be a Clipper. The same goes for you, DeAndre Jordan. You’ve been here a month Vinny Del Negro, and the owner is already questioning your taste in personnel.

So what do you do with that blatant display of disrespect, Vinny Del Negro?

Pick up a marker and put everything Sterling said on the whiteboard in the locker room. Underline it and leave it there for the whole team to see, all year long.

You’ve been praised by many for your ability to motivate, and while you probably don’t need a whole lot of material to fire up the troops, you’ve got plenty of ammunition now.

No one believes in you. Your owner doesn’t believe in you. He doesn’t even want you to be here.

Strange as it sounds, this media disaster can be used as a rallying point, the words that band the team together. After all, nothing unites a group like a common enemy. It’s a little unorthodox to have that enemy be your owner, but it isn’t unprecedented.

Major League's Lou Brown: A Master Motivator

The owner doesn’t want you, doesn’t like you, and doesn’t think you’re a good basketball player.

You’ve got 82 games to prove him wrong. Make them count.

The Curse Has a Name

Regarding comments made by Donald T. Sterling to T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times, here’s my post over at TrueHoop:

Try to imagine you’re at a business gathering, maybe a trade show. Your boss holds court in one corner of the room. He’s surrounded by people who are insiders in your industry — some of whom know you personally, while others are only vaguely familiar with your work.

The next morning you find out through a third party who doesn’t even work for your company that your boss told those insiders he has no idea why the company hired you (only he called you “Whatshisname.”).

Or maybe your boss told the circle you have lousy taste in personnel and couldn’t attract the real comers in the field, even though that was your job. Your boss complained about how his investments in capital improvement would attract better talent, only you couldn’t close.

The irony of Sterling’s griping about his organization’s inability to lure top talent is almost too obvious to acknowledge. You might agree with Sterling that the signings of Gomes and Foye represents a failure for the franchise this summer. You might hold Clippers general manager Neil Olshey accountable for that, or head coach Vinny Del Negro for his input in those choices. I think Olshey exercised discipline and deployed a sound long-term strategy given the circumstances — Sterling being one of the primary circumstances. Intelligent people can disagree about how the Clippers fared this summer in the marketplace. But whichever side of the argument you fall on, there isn’t a reasonable excuse in the world for what Sterling did to Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro.

The Clippers’ curse isn’t a supernatural phenomenon. It has a name, a face and an unfortunate history of personal failure.

Over the past few years, I’ve gotten to know a lot of people who work for the Clippers. They work across the organization in sales, marketing, communications, digital media and basketball operations. These are professional people who are proud of their work — and they should be because every day they do a solid job for a brand that few people think very much of. Yet they do the work, some of them with a sincere hope that one day they’ll be able to say that they had something to do with the moment the Clippers became an entity that mattered in Los Angeles and in the NBA.

Although I haven’t met Foye, last week I visited with Gomes for the first time one-on-one. I found a thoughtful professional. A very measured executive for one of the league’s most well-respected franchises told me that Gomes is one of the best people involved in professional basketball. Olshey is eager to do his job well. He’s always courteous, has pretty decent taste in basketball players and is a more creative dealmaker than he’s been allowed to be. Del Negro has been with the team for only five weeks, but has brought the kind of charisma and exuberance that vaulted him to the top of Sterling’s list of coaching candidates.

Whether Gomes, Foye, Olshey and Del Negro are basketball geniuses or likable doesn’t really matter. As employees of the Los Angeles Clippers, they all warrant Sterling’s basic respect, which ultimately requires so little of such a blessed, wealthy man. All Sterling has to do when asked about his employees in polite company is offer an endorsement — or, at the very least, not publicly humiliate them. That’s his only ambassadorial duty as team owner on a day when the Clippers introduce the media to some minor stylistic tweaks on their uniforms.

Imagine it’s your world again. We return just as you’ve found out your boss was trashing you to people outside your company. Now ask yourself:

Is this a place you want to work?

Some New Threads for The Clips

Do people still say threads? No? Oh. Well let’s just move on.

The basic motif remains the same, though there are some new stylistic flourishes. “Los Angeles” will appear on the primary red away jersey, which used to have “Clippers” in script.

In another change, Baron Davis is going back to No. 5 this season.

Of course, the unveiling couldn’t be complete without Blake interviewing DeAndre on his thoughts on the new uniforms. Here’s the video, courtesy of Clippers.com:

Let’s hear it in the comments section: What do you think about the new jerseys? I’d tell you how I feel, but I’m the one asking the questions.

Heroes and Villains

Being a fan of the NBA was much easier as a kid.

I remember sprawling out in front of the television and getting goosebumps listening to the Bulls’ starting lineup get announced. Like every other kid on the planet, I was a diehard Michael Jordan fan. I would head out to the hoop in front of my driveway and practice my hanging right-to-left hand layups and my turnaround baseline jumpers until I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. When I was lucky my dad and I would take turns “being Jordan”, firing up jumper after jumper while the rebounder was relegated to Scottie Pippen status. All I wanted to do, all I ever wanted to do, was be like Mike.

Jordan was more of a superhero than anything else, conquering villains like the aptly named “Bad Boys” of Detroit and the unbearable New York Knicks. He was the good guy, and it didn’t seem coincidental that he was almost always victorious. Life as a fan back then was easy, simple.

Just as my own life started to get confusing, with the whole growing up and the loss of innocence and whatnot, the NBA mirrored that for me. When Jordan retired there were multiple guys vying for hero status, some of them the same players I had just painted as villains.  The NBA was all of the sudden very grey — gone were the days of black and white, of good and bad. When Jordan retired he left millions of fans disenfranchised in a way, all of us searching for a replacement for the man who simply could never be replaced.

While everyone looked for the next Jordan, a villain emerged in Kobe Bryant.

Suddenly I no longer needed a hero because I had found a villain. The fog had cleared — my heroes were anyone who could take out Kobe Bryant. Iverson stepping over Lue was one of the happiest moments of my life. Horry at the top of the key, one of the worst. All of that emotion, including the newly discovered love for the Clippers, came from rooting against one man. Without him, it wouldn’t have meant much of anything at all.

We demand loyalty out of our basketball heroes, however unreasonable that may be to ask in today’s game. So when LeBron James ripped out the hearts of an entire city on national television, he did more than just lose hundreds of thousands of supporters — he changed the entire landscape of the NBA. In a time where players give canned responses and rarely step out of their carefully crafted media personas, LeBron James willingly villified himself, and let everyone bare ”witness” to it.  We now know this: The NBA will never be grey as long as LeBron James is around.

Regardless of who ends up challenging LeBron, the league is in better shape for what happened this summer. Fans need to identify first and foremost, and the easier it is to differentiate who is on what side of the battle between good and evil, the better.

While LeBron sits on his self-appointed throne and holds court, egging the world on in the process, there’s a guy in Orlando who meets the nickname requirement waiting on the other side of the line for him. And another one in Oklahoma City. And you never know… that kid killing himself on the sand dunes, time and time again until he can’t feel his legs anymore? He may get his chance one day to be the hero too.

Only one thing is for certain – we’ll be watching.

At Long Last, Blake Griffin

ESPN.com’s panel of 93 NBA prognosticators was asked…

Which returning or new player are you most eager to see?

The correct answer in this guard-driven league is John Wall? Or maybe marquee veteran players like Yao Ming or Gilbert Arenas?  Or a curio like DeMarcus Cousins?

None of the above:

Griffin hasn’t logged a single regular-season minute as an NBA player, but there are things he knows that rookies like John Wall can’t possibly understand yet.

Griffin has seen the hype machine up close, that stream of gratification that accompanies a No. 1 overall pick. It’s a phenomenon that’s both flattering and, at the same time, bizarre. In Griffin’s worldview, praise should be reserved for accomplishment, not expectation. Yet before he ever put on a Los Angeles Clippers jersey, Griffin was already regarded as the franchise’s savior. When he finally wore that uniform at 2009 summer league in Las Vegas, Griffin fed that machine even more, averaging 19.2 points and 10.8 rebounds in 34.6 minutes per game.

He’s also endured the monotony of the NBA routine that catches many rookies by surprise. The rookie wall is as much a mental effect as it is a physical symptom. For Griffin, it was both. In the Clippers’ final preseason game last October, Griffin unleashed a thunderous dunk that fractured his left patella. He immediately began a grueling treatment and rehab regimen that he conformed to faithfully and with precision.

Last winter, Griffin described that process as tunneling his way out of jail. “It’s killing me,” Griffin said back then. “But it’s good that it’s killing me.”

For Griffin, the physical component of the rehab wasn’t the hard part. It was the isolation that accompanied the daily grind. While teammates were practicing and running drills, Griffin was confined to the treatment room or away visiting a specialist. Griffin was still a presence at the Clippers’ training facility Playa Vista, but a more peripheral one than he wanted to be. When word came down in January that despite his diligence he’d miss the remainder of the season, Griffin was crushed.

Even though he was in street clothes behind the Clippers’ bench last season, Griffin had a front-row seat for the league’s daily tedium and, at times, his team’s turmoil.

“I couldn’t play, but I could watch and I think that’s important,” Griffin said. “I’ve seen the game plan and I think that gives me a little bit of an advantage.”

Griffin watched the Clippers flirt with success, only to see things veer off course. He was there when former Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy and point guard Baron Davis jawed on the sideline. Griffin studied the measured leadership of the locker room’s elder statesman, Marcus Camby, only to witness Camby being shipped off to Portland after the Clippers’ season disintegrated. Griffin has fulfilled his rookie hazing abuse. The days of wearing a pink knapsack and schlepping donuts for the vets are over.

All that’s left now is the playing.

“I was talking to Coach [Vinny] Del Negro, and the first thing he said was, ‘I don’t look at you as a rookie. You’ve gone through this,’” Griffin said. “That’s the mindset I have. I’m not going into this like it’s my first year. But at the same time, I have to prove to everyone I can play.”

That’s the challenge ahead for Griffin: He has all the responsibilities and expectations that come with being a veteran, without any of the professional on-court experience. Last season was supposed to be the consummation of his young lifetime of work, but it spiraled into an exercise of managing frustration. This season, Griffin arrives as a mystery guest. Some of those eager to see him play, particularly in Clipper Nación, have visions of Amare Stoudemire with rebounding and defense. Others might be rubberneckers, skeptics who see Sam Bowie and Greg Oden under the cloud of the Clippers’ history.

But the person most eager to see Blake Griffin suit up and play NBA basketball?

That would be Blake Griffin.

“There’s been so much more fuel added to my fire,” Griffin said. “I’m even more excited than last year because things change when something is taken away from you.”