Reaction continues

Michael Grange, 03/04/08 at 4:26 PM EDT

A nice compilation of thoughts on the issue of the disappearing split second in Atlanta the other night just went up on truehoop.com and it's interesting stuff, but here's something to chew on:
 
The idea of Al Horford tipping the inbounds pass (and thus starting the clock) is interesting, but even if it's true, the  timing is still wonky, as it's pretty much impossible for the ball to hit Horford's hand and the get to Ford's hands in only a 1/10 of a second or less as the replays show.
 
As well, several people I talked to today who were courtside said at no time did any of the timekeepers or game officials raise the possibility of the ball having been tipped for the reason the clock started when it did. If that was the call at the time it seems like it would have been mentioned loud and clear by the officials on the spot.
 
There's no doubt human error is a legitimate factor in sports, but even allowing for that and saying c'est la vie, doesn't change the liklihood that Ford's basket was waved off incorrectly.

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Visiting the rule book

Michael Grange, 03/04/08 at 9:50 AM EDT

I was just about to look this up, but Chris Black saved me the trouble.

Here are some quotes from the relevant section of the NBA rule book regarding end-of-clock situations:
 
"If the high lob attempt is a distance from the basket whereby the ball must be controlled in mid-air, either one-handed or two-handed, a minimum of :00.3 is necessary for a field goal to score if successful" (relevant... the Raptors needed :00.3, they had 00.5)

Here's the key: "Regardless of when the horn or red light operates to signify the end of period, the officials will ultimately make the final decision whether to allow or disallow a successful field goal. THE CREW CHIEF MUST TAKE CHARGE OF THE SITUATION." (Their caps, not mine)

So that says, regardless of whether the clock was started early, it was (in theory) the officials' judgment call on whether to allow the basket or not.

Chris also makes this relevant point:
 
"Most people are making the argument that the clock started one tenth of a second too early on T.J. Ford's last-second lay up. However, if the clock started at 0.5 and had already changed to 0.4 before Ford had even caught it, then the bare minimum amount of time that had passed before Ford touched the ball was one tenth of a second. In reality, the time is much closer to two tenths of a second, because the clock turns to 0.3 almost instantly after Ford first touches the ball."

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More on Ford

Michael Grange, 03/04/08 at 9:43 AM EDT

Here's a photo that  seems to make the case pretty conclusively that the clock start too soon. The clock above the backboard shows the time at 0.4 seconds and the ball isn't yet in Ford's hands, indicating at least a tenth of a second had been burned off before Ford touched it -- more than enough to make the basket count.
 
According to Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the culprit here isn't the beleagured Atlanta game crew but referee Eric Lewis who was responsible for starting the clock with a device on his belt.
 
Thanks in both cases to Truehoop.com for the links.

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Wow. Bad call

Michael Grange, 03/04/08 at 7:38 AM EDT

One game, some things, v1.52

1. Wow. Bad call. Based on some slow-mo PVRing, the refs got the call correct on the release --  it looked like Ford's fingertips were just brushing the ball when the horn sounded, so on that basis the basket was no good. But the one angle from the floor at midcourt seems to show that the clock was already at 0.4 when T.J. caught the ball, which suggests the clock started early, if only by the smallest fraction, but enough to make the difference. As my man Chris Black wrote in an email last night: DO OVER?

2. It's amazing that this happened in Atlanta, or maybe to be expected. As emailer Dennis was quick to remind me last night, on Nov. 25 2006 the Raptors lost to the Hawks by four in a game where they failed to count a Ford lay-up early in the fourth quarter – you can see the sequence here on YouTube. And of course earlier this season the NBA office upheld Miami's protest where they argued that Shaq had been fouled out of the final moment of a game by mistake and even re-played the final moments of the game for the first time in forever.

3. On that basis alone the league should reverse this decision, if the video evidence is conclusive enough. If they can be sure the clock started before Ford caught the ball, it should go down as a Raptors win.

4.  That said, Ford can also wear goat horns for getting the Raptors in this mess in the first place. He might as well have handed the ball to Bibby and said “take a three” with 3.8 seconds left. Ford got rubbed off by the slightest of screens on the inbounds, though he may have been expecting Moon to switch. Regardless he had plenty of time to recover, but he simply lost sight of the ball – inexcusable considering it was an inbounds play and the ball wasn't going anywhere. In the instant he turned to see the ball Bibby just cuts behind him, catches the pass in the corner, wide-open. It's kind of shocking to see how badly an experienced professional player can mess up at such a key moment and out of a timeout, no less. Ford recovers to the ball, but he's too late. Bibby's feet are set and he's got the rim lined up, so Ford can't risk a foul in case Bibby is in the act of shooting. Bibby figures this out and calmly takes the shot knowing that Ford is playing shadow defence only. If Ford doesn't lose the ball, they never enter the ball to Bibby, or if they do Ford can foul him on the floor and the shot never gets taken.  If Ford does his job here ‘timer-gate' never happens; the Raptors win in regulation, plain and simple.

5. Mitchell takes his heat for his X's and O's sometimes, but the Raptors got a lay-up for Ford with 0.5 seconds left and another one for Bosh with 30 seconds to go in overtime, each out of timeouts.

6. Outside of Andre the Giant – and maybe Carlos Delfino – there is no human alive with a head larger than Zaza Pachulia's noggin. Here's a huge man whose head is so big it makes his shoulders look kind of narrow. If that head was on someone 5-10 instead of 6-10, they can't even stand up.

7. Kapono's avoidance of the three-point line is getting ridiculous. Late in the third quarter he cuts to the ball but never steps outside the line. He catches it and of course Bibby is right on him. So he pump fakes, dribbles and draws a charge. It seems so crazy. If he catches the ball outside the line only good things happen: 1) Bibby is a step further away, and Kapono is open for a three, which seems to be the whole point. 2) Bibby is still tight and now the floor is spread, leaving more room for his teammates or more room for Kapono to make a play with his dribble before running into traffic. 3) It allows him the option of pump-faking and taking a side-step while still outside the line. Peja does this all the time. The minute a 50-per-cent three-point shooter steps inside the line, the defence has done his job. Kapono not running outside the line for the catch is like a wide-receive running a nine-yard out when you need 10 yards for a first down.

8. Nice effort by Bargnani in the first half;  one of those bursts that keeps you believing, even though it's not always easy. My favourite move? An offensive rebound (it kind of bounced to him, but beggars can't be choosers) that he gathered, faked right, spun low and hard to his left for a jump hook. The ball didn't drop but it was a crisp, instinctive move, the correct play and proof of improvement than has often been hard to see this season. In the fourth, another strong move: catches the ball just outside the block; pump fakes and dribbles into the lane where he fakes again and takes a nice little fade in the lane. Again a miss – of course he only hand three points after haftime -- but again, the right play.

9. The Hawks are terrible defensively. The Raptors were 12-of-13 to start the third and might have taken two contested shots. As long as they passed the ball once they got an open shot, and they simply never covered Rasho; not once.

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A good move for more than just the NBA

Michael Grange, 02/04/08 at 2:18 PM EDT

A couple of thoughts now that Donnie Walsh is running the Knicks.

The first is that this is very good for the NBA, and for basketball fans. A hint of what the league can be like has been given with the revival of the Celtics and Lakers as championship contenders. This is nothing against New Orleans or Cleveland or even Toronto, but a sport is lifted when its iconic franchise thrive.

Define iconic as you feel fit, but most observers would tell you that the reason baseball has done so well despite a blizzard of bad news regarding its greatest chemists is that the Yankees and the Red Sox are in a rivalry that basically holds most of the eastern seaboard in rapture and can't help but drag in the more casual fan elsewhere.

Blue Jays games against the Yankees or Red Sox are a more exciting prospect because even an average fan knows something about the players involved and the storylines are there for the following. A sports fan can get into that pretty easily. It takes a baseball fan to get excited about the Blue Jays and Kansas City Royals, and how many of those are there, really.

The Knicks are a storied brand that has been dragged through manure, basically, for nearly a decade. Hiring Walsh – and more importantly – giving him the autonomy to build the franchise the way he sees fit vastly increases the chances of the Knicks becoming a team people talk about for the right reasons. It won't happen over night, but it's not necessarily going to take another 10 years to get there. And when they get close you know the Knicks will have the money to spend to add those extra pieces, whatever the cost. And when that happens the buzz in the league builds and it becomes more fun to be a basketball fan, plain and simple.

As for the Raptors things will continue to get more challenging. It was only last year these guys were the champions of the Titanic Division. Boston seemed lost; Philly even more so; the Knicks were worst of all and the Nets' window was closing by the day. Some luck and some progress and it wasn't hard to imagine a long string of Atlantic Division banners hanging at the Air Canada Centre. And while an Atlantic Division banner is a long way from a conference title, let alone an NBA Championship, you could do worse for building blocks with a young team.

Now the Raptors are full of question marks. Andrea Bargnani has given scant and sporadic evidence that he's going to be a home-grown all-star that would compliment Chris Bosh as part of a dynamic and gifted young front court; it's hard to call T.J. Ford a building block, and while Jose Calderon has had an impressive season his recent swoon doesn't inspire confidence that his 40-game surge be maintained over 80 games as a 35-minute-a-night.

And the now the Titanic is rising. Boston looks poised for another year or two of dominance; Philadelphia is the hot, young surprise team this year with cap space for the summer; the Nets remain a question mark but rumours that when they move to Brooklyn in 2009 LeBron will join them won't go away and now the Knicks seem to have finally pulled their head out of their a****,  and hired a proven executive and given him the power to do his job.

This is good for the NBA; not so good for the Raptors, unless you like competition.

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Don't silence The Coach

Michael Grange, 01/04/08 at 12:23 PM EDT

One Game, some things, v1.51?

1. For those of you who don't follow this stuff too closely, it's worth noting that Rogers Sportsnet is getting out of basketball coverage. In broad strokes, this means nothing. The games will all be shown somewhere, with TSN, CBC and The Score carrying the lion's share, depending on what Raptors TV does. 

But an unintended consequence is the possibility that Jack Armstrong's brand of Brooklynese will be heard a lot less around the Raptors than it is now. 

This, of course, would be a shame. If being a colour commentator is the art of making the complicated simple and the simple entertaining, Jack's got some game in his pallet.

Here's a few nuggets from last night's fourth quarter alone, as Jack picks up on set-ups by the Swirsk:

On the three-point play by Delfino that put the Raptors up five after Charlotte had cut it to three -- “Impact. Come off the bench; do something to help your team. Don't look for guys to get you shots, go get one yourself.”

And: “Using that pump fake because they [the long, young Bobcats] because they go for every fake.”

That's two sharp bits of basketball insight on a single play.

Or this, on an otherwise simple pick-and-roll where Bosh ended up driving from the wing and getting fouled on the lay-in. Not only did Jack quickly point out that Jared Dudley was late on his rotation, which he was; but he added another solid gem: “It's so important when you're the point guard to know when to give it up to the guy on the cut. It's so crucial to lead him into play.”

And Jack can do it defensively. When Dudley snuck past a snoozing Jamario Moon to catch a pass for a lay-up, I picked up the gaffe after a couple of efforts with my PVR. Jack's live take was dead on: “That hurt them early in the game too, those weak side cuts Chuck, from weak side to strong side. You have to bang cutters, see the man and the ball and pressure the pass.” The Raptors did none of those things and got beat for an easy lay-up.

If you're a basketball nerd this is good stuff. The former Niagara University head coach doesn't dress it up more than it needs to be – it really is just basketball – but most important plays in a game have a big ‘why' waiting to be answered and Jack delivers with remarkable consistency.

But he's funny and goofy too – he can't help it, he grew up listening to Phil Rizzuto announced his beloved Yankees -- and best of all he does it with a authentic New York accent.

Some things are made for New York accents, and talking basketball is one of them. Just as the British Open sounds when being announced by the BBC, a New York accent brings basketball in touch with the roots of the city game.

And for Canadians of a certain vintage, it is a little taste of Jack Donahue, the long-time national team coach and another entertaining Irish Catholic boy from New York who helped lend some authenticity to the game here.

Coach Donahue died of natural causes. Nothing as dramatic in the offing for Jack -- he'll likely turn to doing more than the 30 or so NCAA games he did this year for ESPN depending on what unfolds with the broadcasting situation here.

But here's hoping something gets worked out so the man they call The Coach isn't silenced in Toronto any time soon.

2. Humphries ahead of Bargnani in the rotation now? How is the Italian hot-house flower going to manage that? It's good move though. If he can't shoot – and Bargnani can't consistently – he's not helping in other areas, so Mitchell might as well see if he can get something else from someone else.

3. Kind of a funny moment in the first quarter. After a switch Ford found himself one-on-one against Dudley. But Humphries had tiny Ray Felton on his back in the post. Who would win the war of wills? Never bet against the guy with the ball. Ford angrily waved off Hump and took (and made) a fadeaway 15-footer.

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Unveiling my new favourite player

Michael Grange, 31/03/08 at 11:39 AM EDT

One game, some things, v1.50ish.

1. Here's one thing I noticed at various points of last night's game: Rasho and Bosh chatting at length about various strategies, I can only assume. And Rasho was doing most of the chatting. This is an obvious benefit to having Rasho back in the starting lineup in favour of Bargnani. I mean, there are several, such as Rasho being a better post defender and team defender; being a better rebounder; a better shooter and a better passer than Bargnani, if we're measuring actual performance. Aside from all that Rasho takes some of the leadership responsibilities off Bosh's shoulders by talking things over with him and lending a smart, experienced voice to the process. Not that it mattered much with Chris Paul doing his magic, but it seems a subtle yet important plus.

2. It's says a lot about Mo Pete that one of the reasons that Kapono got the start last night was because the Raptors coaching staff figured the slow-footed Raptor could hold his own on the suddenly slow-footed former Raptor. It's hard not be a fan of Peterson as a person, but if you're a spot-up shooter that runs the floor and your playing with Chris Paul and you are averaging a near career-low in points-per-36 minutes – 11.9, down from 15.1 last year – while shooting 41-per-cent from the field, you wonder -- are his best days are behind him as a 30-year-old?

3. I think I have a new favourite player. My bias has been and always will be guys who combine earned skill and competitiveness. Which isn't to say I'm not a big fan of guys who have remarkable athletic ability – who doesn't like watching Dwight Howard? – but I appreciate players who always have their game face on and have clearly figured out how to maximize their abilities for the NBA. So, with no further adieu, I announce David West is my new favourite player. He's a very good mid-range shooter who uses those skills to compliment a useful dribble-drive game, and he posts up ferociously. And defensively he's not shy about giving a little shove or knock and can cheat with the best when setting screens etc. Nice player.

4. Is Chris Paul God?

5. I have no idea what Linton Johnson's future here is, but in about five minutes of floor time he did some things that no one on the Raptors roster has done all season: he battled Bonzi Wells so hard for post position that Wells got frustrated, shoved him in the chest and began whining to the referees while on his way to missing two longer than normal turn-around jumpers; Johnson grabbed one defensive rebound by pushing Tyson Chandler under the basket so far the ball was out of the seven-footer's reach and then helped his teammates get a rebound by doing the same thing to West; twice he sprinted the floor in transition and went straight to the rim for an early post up; he drove from the short corner and drew a foul. Some of these things Jamario Moon just isn't wired or built to do, and there's things that Moon does that Johnson can't. But I think the never-ending disappointment with Joey Graham is that he has a pretty good dose of Moon's athleticism, but has never harnessed the kind of competitive spark that Johnson showed. If ever did, he would be a really good NBA player. But most are by now pretty convinced he won't, which suggests the seemingly ‘learned' habits Johnson showed might not be so easy to ‘learn' after all. In other words, the more I watch the more I'm convinced that hustle and fire are gifts just like leaping ability and size. The very best have it all.

 

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Trade Ford? For what, to who and how?

Michael Grange, 28/03/08 at 8:50 PM EDT

Really quick: Among the many comments and emails on Friday's column that the time had come to trade T.J. Ford were a few – understandably – wondering for what, to who and how. I can't claim any insight in this regard -- that's Colangelo's job, though off the top of my head the Heat might be looking for a good veteran point guard. Another scenario suggested to me was Donnie Walsh – who everyone is expecting to take the Knicks' president job – making a run at Ford for a team that needs a true point. For who? How about Jamal Crawford? If the Knicks end up hiring Scott Skiles as coach, it's unlikely Crawford would be well-received based on their days together with the Bulls in 2003-04, Skiles's first in Chicago and Crawford's last. The salaries match; the Knicks need a point guard. Crawford would give the Raptors an end-of-shot-clock scorer who can play both guard positions.

Stranger things have happened.

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Linton Johnson shouldn't unpack

Michael Grange, 28/03/08 at 12:46 PM EDT

Don't get comfortable: That's the message that Raptors head coach Sam Mitchell and President Bryan Colangelo seem to be sending to their team with the addition of Linton Johnson, who will be activated tonight against the New York Knicks.

“I tell my players all the time, what got you here doesn't necessarily keep you here and doesn't necessarily guarantee your minutes,” said Mitchell. “We're always looking.”

Johnson is a fifth-year NBA player who has played secondary roles on six teams, most recently with the Phoenix Suns on a pair of 10-day contracts.

A 6-foot-8 wing that was undrafted out of Tulane University, Johnson sees himself as a willing defender and rebounder.

If the Raptors collection of wing players interprets his presence as a comment on their own willingness to commit to the less glamorous side of the game, so be it, said Mitchell.

“Everyone can read into it what they want, but you know what, there's no guarantees,” said Mitchell. “It's on you. The contract gets you the money; it doesn't guarantee you anything else.

No one was singled out, but the fire might feel warmest under Jamario Moon and possibly Carlos Delfino, the two Raptors who play the bulk of the minutes at small forward and are looked upon to add rebounding and defence above all.

“It's not a message purposely being sent [to any one player] but if someone in that locker room perceives it has a message, then maybe they should wake up.”

And why Johnson?

“We're looking for defence, rebounding – those intangible things: getting on the floor for loose balls, bringing some grit and toughness to our basketball team. You can't keep asking for that. After a while of asking [if you don't get it] it's Bryan and my job go find it. We've been asking for that, but if it's not in their DNA, let's find someone for who it is in their DNA.”

 

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