It was a tale of two cities last night on NBA trade deadline night.
Literally.
The Memphis Grizzlies came to Oklahoma City to face the Thunder with the news that three of their better players had been traded earlier in the day including franchise face Marc Gasol. Fortunately for the Grizzlies they were facing the attention deficit disorder challenged Oklahoma City Thunder and somehow found themselves leading 53-51 at halftime.
It was the worst half of any NBA game I’ve witnessed so far this season. In fact I gonged it and didn’t watch the second half. For Billy Donovan’s Thunder which has now won nine of it last ten games this was rock bottom with me even though they won the game easily in the second half.
Memphis ran some hinky dink zone which a JV high school girls team might employ and the Thunder promptly fired off 28 first half three point shots despite the fact Memphis has no rim protector whatsoever. Plus, the fact the Grizzlies were despondent losing their teammates earlier in the day and they weren’t any good with them on the team before the trade deadline anyway.
I stopped, clicked over to TNT and watched what turned out to be rousing second half between the Lakers in Boston Celtics.
What a second half!
The Lakers with LeBron finally back in action and somewhat back in shape came back from 18 points down and beat the Celtics on a Rajon Rondo game winner at the buzzer.
Just a great second half of NBA hoops. This was a Lakers team which thought half of their team was possibly going to be traded earlier in the day to New Orleans for Anthony Davis. This was a Lakers team which was eviscerated earlier in the week by the Warriors. This is a Lakers team which has some work to do just to make the playoffs and played like a desperate team. Just a great game.
When I watch Boston and Oklahoma City play something is missing with both of these talented teams. I look at other coaches this year like Malone in Denver, Joerger in Sacramento, and Budenholzer in Milwaukee and I see teams having fun and playing with a chip on their collective shoulders. Young teams playing like they have a goal in mind.
I honestly don’t know what the goal is in Oklahoma City or Boston. At some point you pay and play to win a championship, right?
The season is two thirds over and neither team seems all that committed emotionally. I know its 82 games and you have to calibrate your energy, but both of these teams are young and deep with experienced point guards even though one is a peacock point guard Wild Thing. But still. Are these nice college coaches just too nice to elicit the talent out of their rosters?
Eddie Sutton used to have a great saying. It went something like this…”You know you’re watching a very good coaching job when you see a coach extract the maximum amount of juice out of a limited amount of pulp”. Much more juice needs to be extracted in Boston and Oklahoma City this basketball season from the two pleasant clean shaven college coaches.
I wonder if Sam Presti and Danny Ainge are threatened by overt strong willed head coaches who possess a strong outward personality? That’s always been my one knock on Presti…in that it appears he doesn’t want to hire the head coach who could handle his peacock point guard and take ‘his’ team at this point back to being championship relevant in the West.