If you have read previous blogs you know that I am a Detroit Pistons fan and I will be through thick and thin. Right now is definitely thin. Last night the Pistons lost their fourth straight game. While the loss was disappointing it was not surprising. This season Pistons fans have had to endure more losing than we are accustomed to.
In the National Basketball Association each team plays 82 regular season games. If a team wins 50 of those games then they have really accomplished something and are probably regarded as one of the league's top teams. The Pistons have won at least 50 games in each of the last seven seasons. During that span they made it to the Eastern Conference Finals six times, the NBA Finals twice, and won the NBA Championship once in 2004. Just last season they finished with the league's second best overall record at 59 wins and 23 losses. This season has been an entirely different story so far. As of right right now we are approximately two-thirds of the way into the season and the Pistons have lost 25 games. They have already lost double the number of home games this year than they did all of last year. In November they lost three straight games and I thought the world had ended. That was before they lost five straight in January and you can imagine what I thought happened to the world then. Currently, they are on a four game losing streak with an absolutely brutal schedule up ahead. Their next seven games are against playoff bound teams with five of them on the road.
Despite all this, they have had a couple of bright spots this season. One occurred in late December and early January when they won seven in a row. The other occurred when they started the season by winning their first four games. What happened between then and now to put the Pistons in such an unenviable position? They pulled off a blockbuster trade that sent Chauncey Billups to the Denver Nuggets in exchange for Allen Iverson. Coming into this season Iverson had the third highest scoring average in NBA history. Adding someone like that can only make your team better, right? Apparently not. Chauncey Billups had been the Pistons' team captain for the last six years and won the Most Valuable Player award in that 2004 NBA Championship. Taking him out of the mix, regardless of who replaced him, was going to put the team in major transition mode. I had a bad feeling the day that this trade happened, but can one player really cause the team to plummet so fast? Probably not. Another factor is that they have a rookie head coach in Michael Curry. I do not think that Michael Curry is a bad coach by any means. He has not been a head coach in this league long enough to be judged anyway. Any rookie head coach of an NBA team is going to have his rough patches. I guess it's the "nature of the business" as they say.
Despite all the disappointing aspects of this season, there are certainly some positives. If the regular season ended today the Pistons would still be in the playoffs. They have shown signs of brilliance by beating five of the league's top six teams at various points. And fortunately, the future is brighter than the present. They have a core of very talented players with lots of time left in this league and come this summer they will have $20 million to spend to add even more talent to that core. You have to take the good with the bad and the Pistons have been so good for so long that the bad was bound to happen sooner or later. However, there is still more basketball to be played this season. You never know, maybe they will surprise everybody. In the immortal words of Chris Berman, "that's why they play the game."
Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts
Showing posts with label basketball. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Walt Williams
Not many are familiar with the name Walter Allen Williams today. He is a retired gentleman living in Brownwood, Texas, the place of his birth, who volunteers for the city recreation department. Each Saturday during basketball season he controls the scoreboard for youth basketball games. It was here that a met him about a year ago because I am a referee for these basketball games. He is a nice, fun guy who is easy to talk to and has plenty of wisdom. But there is much more to Walt Williams than he lets on. You may be more familiar with the name if you were a Major League Baseball fan in the 1960s and 70s.
Williams played in the MLB from 1964 to 1975. He played for the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees. He was commonly referred to as "no neck" because he was short (5' 6") and had an incredibly muscular physique (over 30 years after his playing days he still has that muscular physique). He was known as being a very popular, fan-friendly kind of player with an infectious personality. Oh yeah, he was no slouch as a ballplayer either. Williams played outfield and committed just 19 errors in 565 games for an almost unheard of .981 fielding percentage. In 1969 he played for the Chicago White Sox and boasted a batting average of .304, sixth best in the American League. That season he had a strikeout rate of once every 14.3 at bats making him the 5th most difficult player to strike out. On May 31, 1970 he got five hits, two RBIs, and scored five runs in a 22-13 win over the Boston Red Sox. For his playing career Williams appeared in 842 games, got 640 hits, 33 home runs, 173 RBIs, 284 runs, and had a lifetime batting average of .270. In 1988 he was an assistant coach for the White Sox. Last year when I asked him about his baseball playing days he just kind of shrugged and said, "in college I was better at basketball."
Speaking of basketball, today Walt Williams told me a pretty interesting story. Nancy Lieberman is a basketball hall of famer and one of, if not the, best women's basketball player in history. In 1975 while playing with the New York Yankees, Williams said in an interview that he really liked playing one-on-one basketball and that he had never lost a game. Nancy Lieberman, who was living in Brooklyn, New York and had recently been named to the USA Women's Olympic Basketball Team, got word of this and challenged him to a game of one-on-one. Williams accepted and they ended playing in front of over 4,000 fans in New York City. I asked him who won and he looked up at me, paused, and said very matter-of-factly, "I've still never lost a game of one-on-one." I laughed. Later on, between games, we shot baskets together. He's still got a pretty good shot for a 65 year old former pro baseball player. Actually, Walt Williams has a pretty good shot for anyone.
Williams played in the MLB from 1964 to 1975. He played for the Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, and New York Yankees. He was commonly referred to as "no neck" because he was short (5' 6") and had an incredibly muscular physique (over 30 years after his playing days he still has that muscular physique). He was known as being a very popular, fan-friendly kind of player with an infectious personality. Oh yeah, he was no slouch as a ballplayer either. Williams played outfield and committed just 19 errors in 565 games for an almost unheard of .981 fielding percentage. In 1969 he played for the Chicago White Sox and boasted a batting average of .304, sixth best in the American League. That season he had a strikeout rate of once every 14.3 at bats making him the 5th most difficult player to strike out. On May 31, 1970 he got five hits, two RBIs, and scored five runs in a 22-13 win over the Boston Red Sox. For his playing career Williams appeared in 842 games, got 640 hits, 33 home runs, 173 RBIs, 284 runs, and had a lifetime batting average of .270. In 1988 he was an assistant coach for the White Sox. Last year when I asked him about his baseball playing days he just kind of shrugged and said, "in college I was better at basketball."
Speaking of basketball, today Walt Williams told me a pretty interesting story. Nancy Lieberman is a basketball hall of famer and one of, if not the, best women's basketball player in history. In 1975 while playing with the New York Yankees, Williams said in an interview that he really liked playing one-on-one basketball and that he had never lost a game. Nancy Lieberman, who was living in Brooklyn, New York and had recently been named to the USA Women's Olympic Basketball Team, got word of this and challenged him to a game of one-on-one. Williams accepted and they ended playing in front of over 4,000 fans in New York City. I asked him who won and he looked up at me, paused, and said very matter-of-factly, "I've still never lost a game of one-on-one." I laughed. Later on, between games, we shot baskets together. He's still got a pretty good shot for a 65 year old former pro baseball player. Actually, Walt Williams has a pretty good shot for anyone.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Making the Connection from Brownwood to Detroit
As you will find out from subsequent entries I am an avid sports fan and my favorite sport is basketball. When I was first learning how to walk ages ago, I believe I was also learning how to dribble a basketball at the same time. My parents quickly learned of my ingenuity as I could turn any hand held item into a ball of some sort. At the age of seven I witnessed my first NBA Finals series as the Hakeem Olajuwon led Houston Rockets defeated the New York Knicks four games to three in 1994. I remember my first Slam magazine which featured a story about Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament playing a pickup game with Dennis Rodman. It also featured an excerpt from the book Fab Five by Mitch Albom, a book that would later become one of my favorites of all-time. As soon as my family had access to the internet in the mid '90s I became a basketball historian reading everthing I possibly could on the sport. I watched games constantly keeping up with players' stats and projecting what the statistical outcome would be. My dad attributes my having a profiency in math to this. You see, being a sports fan does have its academic benefits!
This is a little background, now let's flash forward to today. I am a Detroit Pistons fanatic. How did someone from Brownwood, Texas become such an enormous fan of a team in Detroit, Michigan? I was born in Lake Charles, Louisianna where my dad was the horn teacher at McNeese State University. My dad's time at NcNeese St. coincided with that of college basketball star Joe Dumars. Dumars attented McNeese St. from 1981-1985 and in the summer of 1985 he was selected with the 18th pick of the NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons. There he was part of the "Bad Boys" who won NBA championships in 1989 and '90 and was named MVP of the '89 NBA Finals. Dumars played for the Pistons his entire career and upon his retirement in 1999, he became one of the few players in NBA history to play over 1,000 games with the same team. Dumars then became the President of Basketball Operations for the Pistons and currently still holds that position. Needless to say, one my proudest moments as a Pistons fan was in the summer of 2004 when Detroit won the NBA championship by upsetting the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers in a David vs. Goliath type battle. This happened in large part because of some major trades orchestrated by Dumars to assemble that championship team. In 2006 Joe Dumars was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As I was first getting into basketball in the early '90s Dumars was in the prime of his playing career. When my dad told me about his connection with Dumars I decided I was going to root for the team he was on, the Detroit Pistons, and I have ever since.
There you have it. The circular relationship from Lake Charles to Brownwood to Detroit is now connected to explain my fanaticism for the Detroit Pistons in my own little sports world. If you don't give a flip about sports or basketball it's okay. It is just one of my many interests and I will write about many different subjects as they come to me. Go Pistons!
This is a little background, now let's flash forward to today. I am a Detroit Pistons fanatic. How did someone from Brownwood, Texas become such an enormous fan of a team in Detroit, Michigan? I was born in Lake Charles, Louisianna where my dad was the horn teacher at McNeese State University. My dad's time at NcNeese St. coincided with that of college basketball star Joe Dumars. Dumars attented McNeese St. from 1981-1985 and in the summer of 1985 he was selected with the 18th pick of the NBA draft by the Detroit Pistons. There he was part of the "Bad Boys" who won NBA championships in 1989 and '90 and was named MVP of the '89 NBA Finals. Dumars played for the Pistons his entire career and upon his retirement in 1999, he became one of the few players in NBA history to play over 1,000 games with the same team. Dumars then became the President of Basketball Operations for the Pistons and currently still holds that position. Needless to say, one my proudest moments as a Pistons fan was in the summer of 2004 when Detroit won the NBA championship by upsetting the heavily favored Los Angeles Lakers in a David vs. Goliath type battle. This happened in large part because of some major trades orchestrated by Dumars to assemble that championship team. In 2006 Joe Dumars was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame. As I was first getting into basketball in the early '90s Dumars was in the prime of his playing career. When my dad told me about his connection with Dumars I decided I was going to root for the team he was on, the Detroit Pistons, and I have ever since.
There you have it. The circular relationship from Lake Charles to Brownwood to Detroit is now connected to explain my fanaticism for the Detroit Pistons in my own little sports world. If you don't give a flip about sports or basketball it's okay. It is just one of my many interests and I will write about many different subjects as they come to me. Go Pistons!
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