Our Fab Five

With the predictability of some kid throwing a newspaper on a front lawn in the opening of a movie, on April 7, 2007, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette released its yearly list of the top local talents in men’s and women’s high school basketball. Many newspapers have this ritual, but this season in Pittsburgh was unique: with due respect for the players whose lives went in other directions, every player on the list was equipped with the skills to play professional sports.

The members of the men’s 2006-2007 "Fabulous Five" team were comprised of players from three local high schools: Aliquippa (in Beaver County, PA), Schenley (in the city of Pittsburgh), and Jeanette (in Westmoreland County, PA). I loved the goofy photo that the Post Gazette used to accompany the piece that year. It was far from the last good snapshot,but the effortlessly had the most simultaneous talent and silliness (silliness may be bested). I thought it'd be interesting about five years later to checkin on the guys from this picture – where all five of them remain in the media spotlight in either basketball or football.

I: Baldwin,The Kid on the Bus

While taking the "14" bus home one day, I recognized a sophomore wide receiver from the Pitt football team sitting close by: his name was Jonathan Baldwin, but to many he was just J.B. Since I doubt being noticed on public transit happens much to a sophomore wide receiver, I hope Baldwin was at least a little pleased to be recognized by a die-hard Pitt fan. I asked him about the upcoming season and if he felt it'd be a Heisman year.

"Oh yeahhhh," Baldwin replied, with the cockiness of someone who knew he was very, very good at the sport. Later on the route, as I got off the 14, his parting words were kind, familiar: "Peace, blood."

As I detailed in a negativedunkalectics entry months ago, the reality of that season ended with a crushing loss that may have eventually cost head coach Dave Wannstedt his job. Baldwin stayed for another season, in which the Pitt fan base split on their opinions of him. While half the fans seemed to think he gave up on his routes – and eventually the season itself – the other half believed he was another great Pitt player from Aliquippa (a legacy going back to Mike Ditka or earlier) who was stuck on a declining team with a mediocre quarterback. Either way, he left school for the NFL Draft in 2011 and ended up on the Kansas City Chiefs.

JB's career with the Chiefs began with a spat of gloom, as he allegedly injured himself in a locker room fight with a teammate, running back Thomas Jones. But since then, he appeared to settle in the lineup,and had a productive rookie campaign (21 receptions for 251 yards and a touchdown). For die-hard Pitt fans (all seven of us), there was a special moment when quarterback Tyler Palko completed his first pass to Baldwin, a duo I quickly named "the Route 60 connection," referring to the stretch of highway between their respective high schools in western Pennsylvania. The future for Baldwin seems like it could be bright, even if his attitude is continuously questioned because of his rough start. I will always root for a Quip.

II: "Due to his recovery from the shooting, Pope was not available to answer questions."

I still read Sports Illustrated in its tactile,magazine format every week. In their January 31, 2012 edition, Pablo Torre wrote an article on Herb Pope, the then-senior forward for the Aliquippa Quips who was unavailable to answer questions for the 2007 Post Gazette article because he had recently been shot after a party in his hometown. Years after the shooting, Torre writes a dark, but encouraging piece about Pope's recovery- he's now one of the stars of the Seton Hall Pirates - and the city of Aliquippa itself:

Yes, it can still be hard for Pope to see peers such as [Derrick] Rose and [Kevin] Love living their NBA dreams. But he's not wondering why his journey has taken much longer—not any more. "Those guys are where I'm trying to be," he says, grinning. "I'm just taking steps in the right direction." And even now, after twice defeating death, he's gotta lot more basketball to play.

With all that's happened to Pope, and as the last remaining NCAA player on this list (seemingly playing with a chip on his shoulder and a bit of attitude), the shape of where he is now as an NBA draft prospect is at least as important than where he's been.

III: Blair, The Perfect Landing

DeJuan Blair was the first Pittsburgh City League basketball player to be recruited onto the Pitt Panthers since Darrelle Porter in 1988. He also was arguably the best pro prospect at Pitt since that 1988 season as well,when eventual Knicks/Clippers forward Charles Smith was helping take the team to a top ten national ranking. Blair's high school (on the edge of the Oakland neighborhood where the University of Pittsburgh sits) went on to win a state championship with a group of kids from Pittsburgh's nearby Hill District neighborhood. The Hill is roughly best described as Pittsburgh's Harlem, with a black history nationally noted dating to the Harlem Renaissance era including a legacy of famous citizens who moved on to fame in civil rights activism, and arts such as photography, theater, and most of all, jazz.

Dejuan's grandmother eventually made the final decision that he would attend the University of Pittsburgh during a family reunion that she had invited Pitt coach Jamie Dixon to.

With Pittsburgh being a small town, you cross the paths of these local celebrities pretty often. Whether it was a friend who was his communications professor at Pitt (who noted Blair tried to quietly sneak into class once despite a posterior so large it was the subject of a New York Times piece), a sister who dated a friend of his (my dad and I were excited for the opportunity to finally have top level competition for back yard games), or a cashier who talked to me about playing ball with him in a summer league -- Blair remained grounded in Pittsburgh in an accessible way.

Meanwhile he also put together a great college basketball career, including a second place finish in the 2009 AP College Basketball Player of the Year voting (tied with Tyler Hansborough and behind Blake Griffin.) My fondest memories of this run included total domination of Connecticut's 7'3" center Hasheem Thabeet in every game the two matched up in.

Despite this domination of Thabeet (with whom he shared the2008-09 Big East Player of the Year award), draft night was very rough for DeJuan, due to concerns about his two ACL surgeries in high school. At the time, Andy Katz reported:

They [The Spurs] don't listen to anyone else but themselves, and their track record has usually proven to be right. "Our guys did our work,''Spurs general manager R.C. Buford said by phone late Thursday night. "[Blair] fills a huge need for us. He was our target, but we never dreamed he would be there at No. 37."

Despite the low draft number, it was the ideal landing spot for Blair: a coach and a big man ready to help him further develop his game in the NBA-crazed San Antonio. Since that night, Thabeet has been a legendary bust (the highest drafted player ever sent to the NBDL), while Blair's numbers and style point to somebody who could be a contributing player for years to come.

IV. Pryor, "Our long national nightmare" of college football corruption (isn't over)

The story of the “tattoo-gate”of Ohio State, including Buckeyes quarterback Terelle Pryor, has already been told ad nauseum. But the story of the Pryor that could have been hasn't been told as much (though to their credit, there is apiece over at Dime Magazine).

When Terrelle Pryor played high school basketball and football at Jeannette High School, he was a legend in a region known for idolizing sports stars only slightly more than various Orthodox Catholic saints. The county Pryor was raised in, Westmoreland, is the whitest county in the United States with at least 300,000 residents (nearly 97% white, according to the last Census.) Because of that alone, Pryor spent a lot of his early life looking around and seeing people who looked different then he did. He also probably saw himself as different because of his elite athletic abilities. The kid who comes around running a 4.3/4.4-40times growing into a 6'6" frame is going to be rare in any year – the fact he also played quarterback and small forward at high levels made him even more desired.

My strongest memory of his high school playing days was when I was at a rally to save the Aliquippa Community Hospital. A county commissioner I had a lot of respect for seemed to be in a bad mood. When we asked him what was wrong he recalled that he had been to the Aliquippa - Jeannette football game the night before. In the third quarter, the game was tied 48 all,until Pryor's Jayhawks rattled off a series of unanswered touchdowns, and ended up winning 70-48. People in Aliquippa aren't used to losing basketball or football games, but the commissioner could just sigh and lament, "Yeah, that Pryor is pretty good."

The college sports recruiting machine jumped on Pryor as soon as they could. After he watched Rich Rodriguez leave West Virginia for Michigan after the 13-9 debacle that cost them a national title shot, Pryor snubbed local powerhouse Penn State and became an Ohio State Buckeye. Around this time, the apparatus of college football took over. Pryor eventually was reportedly driving eight different vehicles during his three years at Ohio State.

Lost in the big-time football games and later corruption charges was Pryor's statement in his high school years that he'd rather end up in the NBA then the NFL because of reduced chance of injury. It’s possible that he never had the basketball skills to be an NBA player, but we'll never know because of how money and hubris affected him. At some point, Pryor insisted to his friends he was a surefire first round NFL draft pick even after it became clear to everyone else in the world that wouldn't happen.

Pryor eventually played his first NFL game against the Kansas City Chiefs, including his old rival Jonathan Baldwin. Pryor's first NFL play was nullified by a penalty. Terrelle Pryor may not be in "last chance" mode yet. But players signed to the Raiders often have to wonder if that stage of their career has come way too early, and it makes me wonder if the 18 year old Pryor was right about the NBA being his best option.

V: Kennedy, somewhere in between

D.J. Kennedy, mentioned above as a teammate with Blair at Schenely, decided to join St. John's – reportedly because he loved New York City. Kennedy put together an impressive career at St. John’s but perhaps gained most national attention when the Red Storm (honestly, to their credit), reported on Kennedy's ACL injury right before the seeding of the NCAA tournament in 2011:

"Honesty is really the best policy - it's really that simple and it's a good lesson for our players," Lavin said Friday. "I have the perspective to know what matters most in March is to have the team playing well. Region and seeding are overrated. Much of the time the brackets get turned upside down anyway."

In the wake of this, Kennedy is currently is on a roll with for the Erie Bayhawks, averaging 14 points, 7boards and 3 assists in about 35 minutes per game. The injury set back his NBA dreams for a bit, but I wouldn't bet against him moving up to the majors (which could be the Knicks!)

The alma mater of Kennedy and Blair, Schenley High School, has since closed due to the usual strains of life in the Rust Belt - budget problems, concerns with the building, and in a city whose enrollment in public schools has dropped from around 40,000 in the 1970s to around 25,000 today. Even as Western Pennsylvania somewhat regains its footing, enrollment is expected to fall through 2018, if not longer. A few academic programs remain in the old Schenley building, but there will be no more state championships for the Spartan basketball team.

Every time that Pittsburgh is named America's most livable city, it gives me a certain amount of pride. But there is also always a voice in my head reminding me it's not nearly as livable a city (or region) for African Americans, even if a fabulous group of five – all of whom grew up in poor to working class neighborhoods – were able to move on to various levels of sports stardom and provide some inspiration to those who watch them.

The Least Attended NBA Game Ever?

A few Sundays ago, the Bobcats played the Nets at the Prudential Center in an afternoon matinee that happened to be on at the same time as the Giants/49ers NFC championship game. Two of the worst teams in the NBA, playing in a lame duck arena, during the hometown football team's biggest game in four years? It was a perfect storm for an empty building. The announced attendance was 10,035, but that certainly involved some creative accounting. Nets blogger Devin Kharpertian, the only person who I can confirm attended the game, tweeted this picture and later mentioned that employees were bringing upper level patrons down to the lower level. We'll never know how many people were really there that afternoon (though a few years earlier, the Nets announced that 1,016 people attended a game vs the Bucks during a snowstorm). It does bring up an interesting question: what was the lowest single game attendance in NBA history?

Thanks to the amazing work of a retired Department of Defense employee named Dick Pfander, Basketball-Reference.com now has scans of every single box score in NBA history. Starting somewhere in 1962, the newspapers of record that Pfander collected began reporting attendance numbers on the bottom of their box scores. Just how poorly attended were some of these early NBA games? Could I possibly find the lowest single attendance in an NBA game? Though I did not go through each of the many thousands of box scores to get a definitive answer, the conclusion I arrived at was more than satisfying. And along the way I found a few other quirks that were worth noting.

I started with Wilt Chamberlain's 100 point game as a baseline, a game that was famously attended by only 4,124 people in Hershey, PA. With only my 20 years of watching the NBA as a reference, I assumed a low number like this was an anomaly. But as I digged through box scores going back to the 1960s, I found numbers like this closer to the norm, particularly if a team didn't play in New York, Boston, or L.A.

The first box score I found notable was from a game on April 5th, 1978 between the Atlanta Hawks and the Buffalo Braves. The attendance of 4,522 in Buffalo was not terribly low, but the paragraph above the box caught my eye. The last sentence in particular had some curious terminology: "Hapless Buffalo was limited to 12 markers in both the second and third periods". Markers? Contextual clues lead me to believe the writer either meant points or something to write on a dry erase board with, though 1 marker per quarter is more than enough for that.

Not to be detracted from my main goal of finding the most sparsely attended game, I decided to go back to the early '60s, when the Boston Celtics dominated the league and left little to be excited about in other markets. Unfortunately, this box score from December 10th, 1961 between the Philadelphia Warriors and the Chicago Packers did not include attendance, but made up for it with a pun that didn't register with me until I asked around ND HQ what it meant. Yes, Chamber(lain) Made 23 Shots Indeed. Even the New York Post is groaning.

In fact, Wilt's early career generally had little fanfare. On December 1st, 1964, Wilt dropped 56 on the Baltimore Bullets in a game attended by 1,929 people in San Francisco. On top of that, it was a 138-137 double overtime thriller!

This came on the heels of Wilt scoring 50 in a loss to the Detroit Pistons, which a whopping 1,429 people can say they saw (or could say they saw at one point, a lot of them are definitely dead now).

After trading Wilt to the 76ers later that season, Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli explained that the fans in San Francisco never learned to love Wilt and often came to see him lose. Ironically, the franchise would never have a player as good as Wilt again but would grow into one of the most loyal fanbases once the team moved to Oakland.

The only team from the early '60s that was supported less than the Warriors was the Detroit Pistons, who on December 27th, 1963 played a game against the 76ers in front of exactly 1,000 people (assuming they didn't just round up to the nearest 1,000).

I thought I found the lower bound when I stumbled upon this box score, but a little more digging showed how very wrong I was. It was a game the following season that ended up being the holy grail of poor attendance box scores. The Pistons were wrapping up a 31-49 campaign in March when they met with a post-Chamberlain trade Warriors team in their old stomping grounds of Fort Wayne, Indiana. 741 people were in attendance that night.

Even in the days of average attendances in the low 4 figures, this crowd was so paltry it made the headline of the Park City Daily News article about the game and was mocked in the pages of the Beaver County Times.

Unfortunately, these articles don't go much further into depth on why the attendance that day was particularly poor. The Pistons were still fighting for a playoff spot, but the Wilt-less Warriors were not much of a road draw. We can also speculate that a lot of Fort Wayne residents were still bitter that their franchise was moved away 8 years earlier and were not interested in supporting their homecoming, though a previous Pistons games in Fort Wayne that season drew significantly better. There may have also been a snowstorm or a big event to compete with in the area. Alas, the Johnny Appleseed Festival is always on the third week of September.

There probably was just a very special episode of Dr. Kildare on that night.

Visit http://basketball-reference.com for, you know, every box score of every game ever played or something.

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On Windows Closing

The put upon cheeriness, elementary school-level decorations, and skeleton crew of orderlies and nurses wearing antlers and Santa hats just made it worse. I appreciated the effort, of course, but if there is a day where nursing homes are less appealing than usual, it’s Christmas Eve. When I was little, my mom worked in places a lot like this. It isn’t that they’re inherently sad, or bad places to be. It's just that the circumstances for being there on that day were.

"Dad, we'll come by tomorrow to watch the Celtics game,” I said. “I just saw that Pierce isn't going to play, though. He has some sort of heel injury."

“Oh yeah,” he replied, from his bed. “I think I heard that.”

He hasn't heard that. My dad has been bouncing between emergency rooms, critical care facilities, and a nursing home since December 5, when my uncle found him passed out in the garage. He moved from the ER to critical care, spending most of his time there physically restrained and/or heavily sedated to deal with a prolonged bout with the DT's. It was later discovered that his hemoglobin count had fallen to three — not only had he had lost a lot of blood, but the blood that he had wasn't carrying oxygen to his brain. Between the sedation and the withdrawal, nobody in the hospital could notice that his brain was being asphyxiated, like a stroke in slow-motion. By the time he was moved to a nursing home, he'd lost the ability to operate a remote, let alone catch up on the Pierce injury update on SportsCenter. Christmas Eve was the first time I saw or spoke to him since Thanksgiving.

It is a strange time to be a Celtics fan. Rajon Rondo is one of the most uniquely talented and uniquely limited players in the NBA. Ray Allen's jump shot remains staggeringly beautiful, and the work he does running off screens remains astounding. Paul Pierce still has an array of stepbacks, upfakes and pull-up shots from the elbow. And Garnett remains the quarterback of the team’s strong defense, calling out switches, stepping out on pick and rolls and grabbing seven or eight rebounds a game. In short, the Celtics still look like the Celtics. But in this young season, it's abundantly clear that they are not the same Celtics that they were before. By the time my brothers and I wheeled my dad into the “family visiting room” and opened his Christmas presents for him, the Celtics were down 30-18 in the season opener.

When I was a little kid, I was pretty sure that my favorite teams would always be the best. While I remember, just barely, the Patriots losing to the Bears and the Red Sox losing to the Mets, those losses didn't seem catastrophic. I was disappointed, sure, but I also thought good teams stayed good – they'd just get 'em again next year, for sure. Besides, the Celtics would still have Larry Bird, the greatest basketball player alive. I remember going to see the Celtics play the Hawks at the Garden in 1986, and feeling like there was nothing better in the world than seeing that one team play basketball. A few years later, after we had moved from Boston to Pittsburgh, my dad and I watched Larry Bird smack his head off the parquet floor, and then come back to vanquish Chuck Person and the Pacers. Slowed by chronic back injuries, the guy could hardly walk, but nobody could beat him. He just stayed good until he was gone.

It was difficult to stay focused on the Christmas Day game. For one thing, the nursing home's television, a rear-projection behemoth that someone had certainly donated to the home years ago, was barely functional. For another matter, the Celtics' offense was barely functional, making the Knicks actually look like a competent basketball team. And since Dad doesn't see so well, and didn't really understand what was going on anyway, he spent most of the time yelling at my mother, tearfully pleading with us to take him home, or insisting he needed to go to the bathroom and yes, he can do it himself (no he didn't, no he can't). The Celtics lost on a last second shot, I think. Dad didn't know and I didn't care.

It's not as if this were some unexpected tragedy. A year ago, Dad was admitted to the hospital with blood pressure at 240/108. A few years before that he had his license revoked because of his vision loss. And there were promises of doctors and medications and stories of canceled appointments and new exercise regimens. Very few of them were true. I don't blame him for where he is today, not exactly. But I can't say this is a path he didn't have a part in choosing, either. I desperately want him to get better. But I know he probably will not.

For the Celtics, they too knew that this was coming. Ainge and Celtics ownership went all-in on Allen, Pierce and Garnett knowing that their contracts would take them toward the tail end of their careers. They received a championship banner for their efforts. The shot at a mini-dynasty was eradicated with KG's knee injury in 2009, and a series of bad free agent signings (Jermaine O'Neal), lousy draft picks (Gabe Pruitt), and curious trades failed to reinvigorate the team. The Celtics were never going to be title contenders in 2012, even before Jeff Green's heart surgery. Even Mike Gorman and Tommy Heinsohn, the team’s well-known local television commentators, seem different this season. During a stretch in early January where the C's lost six of seven, Tommy rarely mustered up the outrage to protest a HARRible call. “Tommy Points” were awarded sparingly. During an embarrassing loss to the Pacers, Heinsohn maligned ref Bennie Adams with a bizarre Weekend at Bernie's reference, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it. Shortly after, the Boston newspapers and sports radio shows were concocting “blow it up” strategies, even going so far as to list possible deals to trade the Captain, Paul Pierce. On Martin Luther King Day, Charles Barkley announced what we were all thinking: “The Celtics are cooked. I'm sorry, but they cooked.”

Aside from that 1986 team, this group of Celtics has been my favorite. I taped a quote from Kevin Garnett, “It's not hard to work hard,” on the wall of my library carrel while I wrote my dissertation. When I got rejections from job applications, I thought of Ray Allen, who responded to an interviewers question about a shooting slump by saying “I wasn't missing — the shots just didn't go in.” And I feel like I grew up with Paul Pierce — his transformation from moody, immature kid into a grown-ass man roughly mapped onto my own. Knowing that they wouldn't be together much longer, I went into this season thinking that I would just try to enjoy watching this group take one last go at it. But it has been hard to watch them struggle as much as they have. After an awful first half in Orlando that saw the Celtics go down by 30 points, forever the homer, Tommy announced that this was the most inept he'd seen the Celtics in a long time. He was right.

It has occurred to me, more than once, that Dad is already gone. The effects of cerebral hypoxia are generally irreversible. If he is able to walk again, or even operate a wheelchair, it will be because he re-trains his brain to function in a new way, not because he recovers his previous abilities. He can't talk to me on the phone. He has to be shifted in his bed so as not to develop bed sores. He is under-hydrated because he doesn't know to ask a nurse for water. According to the state of Pennsylvania, he no longer has the capacity to make his own decisions. Taking all this into account, it's hard not to feel as if it's all over but the shouting. But, I remind myself, he's definitively still here. He is in a bed in a nursing home in southwestern Pennsylvania. He still loves Oreos. He misses his dog. He cried when he saw me on Christmas. He's fighting clostridium difficile infections in his colon. He's trying to learn to walk again. Maybe he's changed, become angrier and more scared and more difficult to deal with... but he's not gone. My pretending he is might help me avoid dealing with how he is now, but it doesn't help him any.

Early in the second half against Orlando, Garnett sprinted across the baseline to swat a Dwight Howard fall away into the stands. Paul caught fire, Chris Wilcox got a dunk and rookie E'Twaun Moore drained a couple threes. Suddenly, the Celtics had it tied, Dwight Howard had begun crying to the refs, Pierce was Pierce, and the Celtics' defense was suffocating. After they won the game, there was Kevin Garnett talking to Craig Sager, all energy and intensity, it was a bar fight, a bar fight, a bar fight, and it was like anything was possible all over again. In the last 10 days, the Celtics lost Ray Allen to an ankle injury, Rajon Rondo to a sprained wrist, and Keyon Dooling and Jermaine O'Neal to... whatever. Improbably, though, the Celts won four in a row... then promptly choked in the fourth quarter to lose against the Cavs, at home. They're not going to be the same as they were. They're probably not going anywhere in the playoffs. But they're not gone. Not yet.

Photo by Keith Allison, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 license.

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Official Top 10 Authoritative Power Rankings (of Injured Players), Weird 2012 Season Edition

So, where were we? I would like to say that the last four weeks of games have been strange, but that seems a really obvious understatement. It has been difficult to enjoy watching games played by teams (Knicks, Celtics) that only a scant time ago, I took immense pleasure in covering on a nightly basis. I know that I’m not the only one who feels disappointed by the rushed, lackluster summary of the season so far. I’m going to eye roll the Sixers in first place of the Atlantic division as long as I can, and depending on what lies ahead, an asterisk may stand by the name of the eventual champion (but mostly only if it’s Philadelphia or ugh, Atlanta).

It’s unmistakable that this is a transition season, an upheaval of seeing the future arrive simultaneously with the past not yet behind us. In all of that, nearly every team is reporting an injury in their rotation. Our heroes are hobbled or dressed in their Sunday best on the sidelines. As we’re all aware of from playing NBA 2K12 during the lockout, even as these players return, their replacements will demand more respect (which is why Darren Collison is a starting point guard). But whose losses mean the most?

10. Dwyane Wade (squiggly ankle)

Wade has played squiggly for the first month of the season, and the Heat have performed well without his services, besting every opponent without him. This unbeaten streak has got to be a bummer for dear Dwyane, ever the competitor, but I wouldn’t fret – with games against Cleveland, Milwaukee, New York (known for their guards) and Detroit this week, he should rest on his chaise lounge with a book of crosswords and fondly recall the times when his absence meant a 40-game losing streak for his beloved Heat. He can compete again when they need him to.

9. Brook Lopez (stress fracture, right foot)

Honestly, I sort of forgot about Brook Lopez before I started writing this thing, and then I realized that the second (maybe?) best player on the Nets has been absent all season. The aging Mehmet Okur has played suitably in his absence, but with the living ten-ten breathing down his neck, what the Nets really need to get to .300 is a scoring big man like Lopez. Maybe in mid or late February he’ll return, and after several well-performing games at full strength, we can all remember how Robin Lopez is totally the worst.

8. Eric Gordon (sore knee, weird taste in film)

A couple of months ago, a friend of mine decided to bring the girl he was casually seeing to watch the new Michael Fassbender art-house film Shame. Who does that? Who in the hell thinks that’s a good idea? Needless to say, they’re not seeing each other anymore. On a similar note, the Hornets have won one game since 2012 began (out of twelve), and Eric Gordon has played two games this season. At least the poor hobbled viewers of Shame got to see some sad naked people.

7. Chris Paul (sore hamstring)

Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Randy Foye is starting for the Clippers again.

6. Andrea Bargnani (strained left calf)

Toronto has been awful this year, but as it’s been said repeatedly, that fault doesn’t necessarily go to Andrea Bargnani, who is having the best season of his career. It’s strange to watch the Raptors sans Bargs, mainly as their frontcourt had been built around his gaunt frame, and are now fronting two dudes who both do the same thing not very well. Dwane Casey’s return to head coaching had been a thing fabled by NBA diehards for many years, as his success as an assistant coach for the Mavericks led to perhaps unreasonable expectations, and his track record seems skewed without his best player being able to play. Home in Toronto, Bargnani recently discovered on an afternoon stroll that they sell cans of San Pellegrino Aranciata Rossa at the corner bodega, and just bought out their assuredly short supply.

5. Rajon Rondo (driver of the oldest car)

I’ve been driving the same car for an inexplicably long time, like way more time than anybody should ever drive one car. It’s in fair-to-grimy condition, but at the number of miles it has on the engine, I wouldn’t expect much of a trade when I finally get rid of it in a couple months. The last major repair I put into it were some new brakes and struts, and they seemed to be worth it at the time, but now I’m like, “Why did I even bother?” Sitting in a suit on the sidelines as his team struggles to beat the lowly Wizards, I can’t imagine Rondo’s thoughts veer away from the same principle.

4. Baron Davis (back)

There’s no parable to give to the Knicks this year. If his new team were doing well, Baron wouldn’t be on this list. But as he’s now the only hope for the impossible-to-watch New York Knicks and their front office staff, whose obsession with Carmelo Anthony (and Iman Shumpert for some horrid reason) have led them down a path to ruin. And honestly, Knicks fans, you reap what you sow when you’re so anxious for success to happily discard a Hall-of-Fame journeyman like Chauncey (or like… your whole fucking team last season) that you’re unwilling to look at the risks involved when you duplicate player weaknesses across the board. If Baron’s now-shattered point guard abilities can lighten the tempo, get the ball out of Carmelo’s hands, and make this disgusting team slightly more enjoyable to watch, then big ups: you deserve the seventh seed after all.

3. Manu Ginobili (broken hand)

I haven’t seen Manu Ginobili since he got injured, but I hope that when he comes back, he has a long gray beard full of twigs. Unfortunately for Manu, he’s been stuck at home watching Rob! and Man Up (R.I.P.), because that’s how highly American television networks think of men who aren’t already watching sports. It’s shameful, really.

Sometimes when he walks around his backyard at night, away from his home filled with the canned laughter of generationally-awful TV comedies, he looks up at the star-filled heavens and wonders aloud in his native tongue, curious the perspective of his loved ones in the southern hemisphere.

“¿Puede que me veas llorar?” he asks, and looking down at the splint on his hand, he hears only silence in return.

2. Zach Randolph (weird MCL)

Maybe it was when news sources revealed he was implicated as a “major supplier of marijuana” did Randolph decide to finally turn over a new leaf. That was the last rude thing I read about the guy, which is great, and even if he’s getting weird somewhere in his injury sabbatical, who cares?

The only bothersome thing of Good Guy Randolph is that I haven’t been able to find that classic video of “Zach Randolph Point Guard” in at least two years. It’s remarkable what Randolph has accomplished in Memphis, not only the resurgence of his own career but a franchise, etc. Remember when Memphis was so decimated by his injury that they traded for Marreese Speights? That was pretty strange. Either way, the Grizzlies have won six straight.

1. Michael Beasley (dropped out of life with bong in hand to cattle ranch in southern France).

The outstretched arms of Kevin Love, summoning the sun god Ra to take us all away to a paradise of slavery and dry heat, might represent our worst fears. What is more perpetually annoying than a white man with swagger? It’s like wearing two LaCoste shirts on top of each other. It speaks highly of Rick Adelman that in his mid-60s, he can still invigorate a long suffering franchise with the addition of only an adept point guard and an oft-injured undersized shooting guard.

But Beasley is the darling who we all miss, our friend tangled in the complications of his own disappointing career. Where are you now, our Super Cool Beas? Are you crossing the Atlantic on a steamship, bound to explore the Pyrenees in spring? Michael Beasley is currently emulating Karl Malone in more than just watching tapes of him play: he is reading field guides in his vast home’s west library, figuring out the art of cattle ranching for a new home near Pico Posets. The Wolves have deemed him redundant, and being able to start over with some youth still ahead is a gift not many of us receive.

Honorable mentions for this fake list go to Derrick Rose, Al Horford, Kwame Brown, Kobe's cybernetic body, and like half the league.

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Lockout Era Congratulations!

Even though the lockout's pushed Negative Dunkalectics into an informal hiatus, we've still got some great news. On Friday, McSweeney's announced its 2011 Column Contest Winners and Runners Up.

Among those honored was our very own David Hill! David's fantastic piece "Fading the Vig: A Gambler's Guide to Life" earned him the opportunity to contribute regularly to McSweeneys.net! Look for his first piece there soon; we'll be sure to let you know when it appears.

Congratulations David!

For exclusive commentary on basketball and culture, check out more Negative Dunkalectics, follow @negativedunks on Twitter, and become our fan on Facebook.