Basketball (And Other Things) Read online

  9. This is such a great list of bodies to collect on your way to winning a ring; all Hall of Famers, all listed in the NBA’s 50 Greatest Players of All Time.

  10. A weird aside: 45 is the number he chose to wear when he returned from his first retirement because he said 23 was the last number his father saw him wear before he was murdered.

  11. If you want to swap him out with 1991 Jordan, I understand.

  12. He had a .614 true shooting percentage, which measures two-point shots, three-point shots, and free throws together. Bonus: He had the best rebounding and assists seasons of his career here, too.

  13. Bonus: His playoffs BPM of 12.8 in 1989 was the best by any player since Kareem in 1977.

  WHO’S YOUR FRANKENPLAYER MADE OUT OF?

  An aside: The intro to this chapter is a recollection of an event that happened over 25 years ago. I’m going to write it without researching or fact-checking anything beforehand. When I’m done, I’ll go back and add footnotes to it to show what parts I got correct and what parts I got wrong.

  I vaguely remember accidentally watching a movie when I was in elementary school called Frankenhooker. I don’t think it was pornography,1 but there was definitely nudity in it.2 The premise of the movie was: A guy’s girlfriend3 gets run over by a lawn mower4 and chopped into pieces. He is too brokenhearted to accept the loss, so he comes up with a plan: He plots to kill several prostitutes5 and use their body parts to rebuild his girlfriend.6 He goes to where all the prostitutes hang out, arranges to have them come to his house7 for a sex party,8 then chops them all up.9 After that, he stitches all the appropriate parts together, hooks the corpse puzzle up to a machine, uses a thunderstorm to jolt her full of electricity, then she comes to life like how it happened with Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.10 That’s the movie. It was wildly inappropriate for a child to watch,11 but I’m glad that I did because now a retelling of it serves as the intro for this chapter, which is a thing where the goal is to take a bunch of different parts of different basketball players and stitch them together and make a Frankenplayer.

  This is mostly a fun exercise, but there are still a couple of rules that need to be followed.

  • THE MICHAEL JORDAN RULE: You are only allowed to pick a player for a category once. So, say, if you decide you want to have World B. Free’s jump shot for the Jump Shot category, that means you can’t use him for the Hair category or Name category. This rule exists mostly to just prevent you from saying something like, “Give me Steph Curry’s jumper and then divide all the rest of the categories up between Michael Jordan and LeBron James.”

  • THE SKIP 2 MY LOU RULE: For a player to be eligible to be included in the Frankenplayer, he has to have played at least 10 games in the NBA. (Skip 2 My Lou is the streetball alter ego of Rafer Alston, who played in the NBA for 11 years.)

  • THE PEAK PLAYER RULE: This one is less a rule and more of a general guideline, but: If a player is chosen for a particular category, you can assume it’s meant as When He Was At His Peak. In cases where a specific year is necessary, it’ll be noted.

  Several of the categories are things where you can take just a straight measurement and not need much else beyond that, so let’s burn through those first. For Vertical Leap, give me Zach LaVine, a two-time Slam Dunk contest champion who recorded a 46-inch vertical in 2014. For Hands, it’d probably be best to just go with a pair of the biggest, so I’m taking small forward Giannis Antetokounmpo’s, whose hands measure a foot in length from the tip of the thumb to the tip of the pinky. For First-Step Speed, let’s go with Stephon Marbury, mostly because I remember reading a 2005 profile of point guard Steve Nash by Chuck Klosterman where the explosiveness of Stephon Marbury, who was then a point guard with the Suns, was described as “physically palpable when he blows past people; it feels like wind.” And for End-To-End Speed, let’s go with 2009 Toney Douglas, who ran the ¾ court sprint time at the NBA Draft Combine in 3.03 seconds, which is the fastest on record.12

  NAME

  This is a critical category. If we’re building a basketball megapower player, he needs to have a basketball megapower name. “Stromile Swift” is great, but not intimidating enough. “Detlef Schrempf” has always been a personal favorite of mine, but I can admit that it doesn’t have the class or regality of a “World B. Free” or even “Metta World Peace.” “Fat Lever” and “Frank Brickowski” are the reverse of what we’re looking for, as are “Mookie Blaylock” and “Bimbo Coles.” “Tree Rollins” is good, but sounds a little too immobile to be perfect. “Sleepy Floyd” is cool, but maybe a little too cool, if that makes sense. “Speedy Claxton” is fun, but ultimately it sounds like something you’d call a chubby child. “Jamario Moon” is a solid possibility, and certainly in the class with “Magic Johnson.” “Chauncey Billups” is secretly a great name, too. None of them is the best one, though. Because the best name belongs to God Shammgod, a streetball legend who played 20 games with the Washington Wizards during the 1998 season. He gets the nod here.

  HAIR

  Four ways to go here. You can go Beautiful Pristine, and pick someone whose hair was iconic in a classic way, like Allen Iverson’s cornrows or Artis Gilmore’s Afro and muttonchops. You can go Time Capsule Pristine, and pick someone whose hair was iconic in an era-specific way, like when Anthony Mason got “Knicks” shaved into the side of his head in the ’90s or when Bill Walton had an unkempt hippie ponytail in the ’70s. You can go Awful Pristine, and pick someone whose hair was iconic in the ugliest way possible, like when Drew Gooden had all of his head bald save for a tiny square at the nape of his neck or any time Dennis Rodman did anything after 1993. Or you can go Aging Man Pristine, and go with someone whose hair was iconic in a very pragmatic way, like Clyde Drexler when he was very surely going bald in 1992 or Nate Thurmond when his hairline was at the back of his head in 1975. I’m going Nate Thurmond. I want my Frankenplayer to look like a dockworker from the ’70s.

  VISION

  Give me Jason Kidd’s vision here. Jason Kidd saw angles and eventualities better than anyone I’ve ever watched play basketball. The best was during a Nets–Knicks game in the early 2000s when, after tapping the ball away from Knicks point guard Howard Eisley to force a steal, Kidd picked it up, threw it up ahead of a Knicks player toward Lucious Harris, but did so low enough and with enough side-spin on it that the spin caused the ball to shoot left after hitting the ground, in effect bending around the defender. It was like Angelina Jolie bending the bullet path in Wanted, except but real life.

  FOREHEAD13

  Paul George from the Pacers has an especially tidy forehead. I’ll take his from any year, makes no difference. (Having a tidy forehead is only a weird thing to notice until you’ve noticed it, after which it becomes impossible to notice anything else.) (Damian Lillard also has a nice forehead, so if George’s is already spoken for then Lillard’s is fine.)

  CHIN

  Early in the 1985 season, the Celtics and the Sixers played each other. During the game, Dr. J and Larry Bird got into a fight, only it was a fight in half the sense of the word, because Moses Malone and Charles Barkley, then teammates of Dr. J, held Bird while Dr. J fired off three solid shots to the jaw. Somehow, Larry Bird did not die, or even get knocked out, or even get knocked down. Larry Bird’s chin is made of adamantium.

  SHOULDERS

  2010 Dwight Howard’s shoulders looked like bowling balls.

  ARM MUSCULATURE

  You could go 1992 David Robinson. Or maybe 2004 Ben Wallace. Either of those would be fine selections, for sure. I think I want 2007 Andre Iguodala’s arms, though.

  WINGSPAN

  Manute Bol had a wingspan of 8'6", if you can even believe that. Easy pick here.

  PENIS

  There are three ways to handle the penis situation.14 The first is you say that you’ll choose Wilt Chamberlain’s penis because it’s the most infamous NBA penis (in his 1991 book, A View from Above, Wilt claimed that he’d slept with 20,000 different women in his life). His penis
was probably very durable. The second is that you lean the opposite direction, and you say that you’ll choose A.C. Green’s penis, who remained a virgin for the duration of his NBA career (1985–2001). His penis was probably very pristine. The third is that you go in blind and just choose a penis that’s never been in the news but you assume would be attractive (Serge Ibaka, or maybe J.J. Redick). I think I go pristine. It has to be A.C. Green here.

  FINISHING IN THE LANE ABILITY

  Beginning in 2013, the NBA began tracking “drives,” which get defined as “any touch that starts at least 20 feet from the hoop and is dribbled within 10 feet of the hoop and excludes fast breaks.” From then to 2016, Steph Curry had the highest field goal percentage at 54.0 percent.15 Under him is Tony Parker at 53.3 percent. And then third is Goran Dragic. I’m tempted to pick Dragic here because his name sounds almost like Dragon, and I’m inclined to always lean toward the guy named Dragon in any situation.16 But I’m stepping over him to get to Parker for this category. He gets the pick over Curry because (1) Steph has the added benefit of guys charging at him hard to get him off the three-point line, which makes it at least a tad easier for him to get to the rim than for Parker, who has never been a three-point threat,17 and (2) since the NBA began keeping tabs on this in 2013, that means an In-His-Prime Steph is getting measured against a Too-Old Tony Parker. So give me 200618 Tony Parker.19

  SHOOTING ABILITY

  This one needs to be broken up into three different subcategories: Catch and Shoot, Come off the Pick and Shoot, and Pull-Up off the Dribble and Shoot. Give me 2015 Klay Thompson for Catch and Shoot.20 Give me 1998 Reggie Miller for Come off the Pick and Shoot.21 Give me 2016 Steph Curry22 for Pull-Up off the Dribble and Shoot. If it can only be one, though, then I suppose it has to be Steph, who, if you mush all of those subcategories into one, his cumulative score is probably the highest.

  THE ABILITY TO PROTECT THE PAINT

  Give me the 1994 version of Hakeem Olajuwon. He averaged four blocks per game over the course of the playoffs that year. There are players who averaged more blocks per game over the course of a season than that,23 but I’ll generally take what someone does in the playoffs over what someone does during the regular season. And to be sure, there are even a handful who averaged more blocks per game over a playoff run,24 but nobody ever averaged higher than that WHILE winning a championship. So give me Hakeem.

  Let’s finish with a bunch of quick ones:

  Give me Shaquille O’Neal’s power around the rim, Richard Hamilton’s endurance, Brandon Knight’s willingness to step in front of a train,25 Dirk Nowitzki’s one-footed fadeaway,26 Jason Williams’s flair, Gary Payton’s trash-talking ability, Kawhi Leonard’s on-the-ball defense, Jerry Stackhouse’s affinity for on-court fistfights, Charles Oakley’s toughness, Bill Laimbeer’s smirk, John Stockton’s sturdiness with the ball, Michael Jordan’s ability to recognize what needs to happen during a game and also his ability to do it, anybody but Kobe Bryant’s nickname, Anfernee Hardaway’s lankiness, Dominique Wilkins’s ferocity during dunks, LeBron James’s doeverythingness, Wilt Chamberlain’s rebounding ability, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring consistency, Scottie Pippen’s nose, Russell Westbrook’s pettiness, Shawn Kemp’s celebrations, Bill Russell’s rings, Charles Barkley’s readiness to throw someone through a window, Isiah Thomas’s nasty streak, David Robinson’s divinity, Kevin McHale’s low post game, Patrick Ewing’s mustache, Kirk Hinrich’s accessories, Chris Paul’s inner anger, DeMarcus Cousins’s outer anger, Tim Duncan’s in-game demeanor, and J.R. Smith’s postgame demeanor.

  Take all those pieces, stitch them together, and there you go: that’s my Frankenplayer.

  1. Correct. Not pornography.

  2. Very correct.

  3. Incorrect. She was the guy’s fiancée.

  4. Correct. Note: The lawn mower was a gift for the guy’s father. What’s more, the guy, who’s very smart but who’s kind of a loser, had rigged the lawn mower so that it would operate via remote control. The fiancée was showing the dad how it worked when she accidentally remote controlled it right TF over herself.

  5. Correct.

  6. Half-correct: He’s going to rebuild his fiancée.

  7. Incorrect. He has them go to a motel.

  8. Incorrect. He tells them they’ll be participating in a beauty pageant for his brother.

  9. Incorrect. He actually came up with a very deadly version of cocaine. He decided he couldn’t go through with killing them and was planning to leave, but then one of the prostitutes found the death cocaine and so they all started doing it. Somehow, it caused them to explode. Exploding prostitutes seems like a thing you wouldn’t forget, but I did.

  10. All correct. And I should mention here that he’d kept a few of her parts after they’d gotten scattered around by the lawn mower, the most important of which was her head.

  11. Very correct.

  12. To be clear: Two guys have run it faster: Jereme Richmond in 2011 and Marcus Thornton in 2015 both ran it in 3.02 seconds. Neither of them made the NBA, though, so they’re out. It should also be noted that a lot of the top tier drafts elect not to do some of the Draft Combine drills, the sprint being one of them. But for comparison: John Wall, regularly considered one of the fastest current-era players, ran it in 3.14.

  13. This section is assuming we’ve ended up deciding against the Nate Thurmond hair.

  14. If somebody ever actually did make an X-rated version of Frankenhooker, this sentence would probably be in it.

  15. This particular leaderboard is only considering players 6’3” and under with at least 600 field goal attempts off drives over that time frame.

  16. I am very excited for the Dragan Bender era.

  17. He’s a career 32 percent shooter from there.

  18. Since 2000, no short player (6'3" or under) has made more shots at the basket in a season than Tony Parker did during the 2006 season (330). Second is Russell Westbrook (324 in 2016). Third is Stephon Marbury (308 in 2002). Fourth is Allen Iverson (298 in 2005).

  19. Rod Strickland, a fireball point guard who played in the league for 17 seasons, shot 64.4 percent at the rim during his last five seasons. I have absolutely no problem with swapping Parker out for Strickland, if need be.

  20. My favorite record in the NBA is Klay Thompson scoring 37 points in the third quarter of a January game against the Kings in 2015. He shot 100 percent from the field and free throw line, including 9/9 from three (it could’ve been 10/10 but a foul was called on his 10th before he shot it). And he didn’t even take his first shot until the 9:44 mark, which means he averaged nearly 4 points a minute. I’ve watched the highlight video of that quarter at least 40 times. It’s never not impressive.

  21. That’s the year he shoved Jordan to get free for the game-winning three in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals.

  22. The greatest shooting season for any player of all time.

  23. Mark Eaton, a 7'4" mountain who played for the Jazz for 11 seasons, averaged 5.56 blocks per game during the 1985 season. That’s the highest of all time.

  24. Mark Eaton averaged 5.8 blocks per game for the Jazz during their 1985 playoff run (it only lasted 5 games). Manute Bol did the same thing over the same number of games for the Bullets during their 1986 run.

  25. Or in front of DeAndre Jordan.

  26. Taking it over Kareem’s sky hook and Tim Hardaway’s crossover.

  WHO’S THE GREATEST DUNKER IN NBA HISTORY?

  This is a broader/trickier/sneakier question to try and answer than maybe you’re thinking. There are just so many subcategories that you can get sucked into, or caught up in, or transfixed by, or some combination of all three of those things, and so what happens is you end up answering it without really answering it, or answering it with qualifiers, which is the same as not really answering it. I mean:

  • Should THE GREATEST DUNKER be the one who turned the dunk1 from a high percentage shot into graceful artistry? The first guy who seemed less like he was jumping an
d more like he was writing poetry, or conducting a symphony, or making abstract art, or making love? If yes, then it’s Julius Erving, a man who played basketball with such poise and intoxicating coolness that he was allowed to become a fake doctor2 because of it.

  • Should THE GREATEST DUNKER be the one who was the most aggressively athletic and intimidating? The one who dunked it the way a great white shark attacks a seal? The one who dunked it so demonstrably that you were absolutely sure he was going to be awarded more than the traditional two points for it? The one who, when he planted his two feet into the hardwood for liftoff, launched himself upward with so much force that it felt like he for sure had to have just committed a felony against the ground? Because then it’s Dominique Wilkins.3

  • Should someone be considered THE GREATEST DUNKER simply because he was the one who dunked it the most often (Shaquille O’Neal4)? Or the one who was the first to ever do it in a game (Jack Inglis did a version of it in the 1910s,5 and Joe Fortenberry is said to have done the first real dunk in a real game in 1936)? Or the one who revolutionized the act by turning it from a statement play into a personal brand, which is what Michael Jordan did.

  • Should THE GREATEST DUNKER be the one who dominated an NBA Dunk Contest? Or maybe one who used the best prop during a Dunk Contest? Blake Griffin jumped over the hood of a Kia and dunked it during the 2011 NBA Dunk Contest while a choir stood at halfcourt and sang R. Kelly’s “I Believe I Can Fly.” At the 2009 Dunk Contest, Dwight Howard went into an actual phone booth he’d had brought to the arena, came out wearing a Superman cape, then dunked it on a goal that was 12 feet tall. Gerald Green, a sinewy grasshopper with bionic legs, had a teammate climb up a ladder at the 2008 NBA Dunk Contest, balance a birthday cupcake on the back of the rim, stick a candle in it, light the candle, climb off the ladder, then throw a bounce alley-oop pass. Green ran up, jumped, caught the ball on his way to the rim, paused in midair, BLEW OUT THE FUCKING CANDLE, then dunked it.