Chirs Sheridan's Daily Dime this morning suggested that the relationship between Detroit Pistons' coach Flip Saunders and Rasheed Wallace could be characterized by "hate." Later today, in his blog, Sheridan had this to say about 'Sheed's reaction:
"Rasheed Wallace was thrusting a bottle of orange soda straight at my chin after he came over to me this morning at the Pistons' practice facility for some civilized discourse regarding this morning's Daily Dime lead.
Of course, what constitutes civilized discourse is not the same to everyone.
So as I explained to Sheed that pointing a soda and screaming obscenities at me was not my preferred way to conduct an adult discussion, he kept yelling, "Did you ever hear the word 'hate' come out of my mouth?"
That was actually the second discussion I'd had on the subject in the course of a half-hour, the first coming when coach Flip Saunders patted me on the back and said he wished I had chosen a different word than "hate" to describe his less-than-ideal relationship with Wallace.
Fair enough.
I appreciate Sheridan amending his earlier column, but this is still a cheap shot in my opinion, a way for Sheridan to make himself part of the story. Write an over-the-top line about a player's relationship with a coach and then, when the player demonstrates he's actually aware of what you wrote and raises his voice to you about it, make that about his lack of self-control and, by extension, his character. It's cheap and it's an unfortunate by-product of celebrity journalism. (Generally speaking, by the way, I think Sheridan is very good).
In the blog entry, Sheridan also offers a possible reason for Wallace's drop in production and, relatedly, his strained relationship with his coach:
And it was later made known to me one big factor not to be ignored was how Saunders had replaced Larry Brown, a Wallace favorite who always used to say he had rarely met a player who wanted to be coached as badly as Rasheed. Saunders' biggest miscalculation, I'm told, has been in being too minimalist in his coaching approach to Wallace, giving him too much freedom on offense when he should be reigning him in.
I wondered about this particular explanation. Describing a player as having "too much freedom" suggests that the player is putting up alot of shots, like an Iverson or a Kobe (prior to this season). It wasn't my impression, though, that 'Sheed was doing this. Looking at his stats, my guess was confirmed: Wallace is averaging 11.2 field goal attempts per game this season. That's his lowest average attempts since the 1998-99 season, and his lowest per minute since the season before that. And, while Wallace has been taking more three point shots since Saunders took over last season, he's made a good percentage of those shots (35% plus), so that's not an offensive liability. His two-point field goal percentage has fallen off dramatically, but given the low number of shots he's taking, this is not the profile of a player who's suffering from not being "reigned in." If anything, the problem would be that the Pistons' offense utilizes Wallace less now than it did under Brown. In Brown's last year as head coach, Wallace averaged the second most shots per game on the team. This year, he's fourth in that category.
It's subtle, I know, but the phrase "reigning in" is part of a persistent reliance on moral/disciplinary categories to describe player performance, when the data suggest otherwise resulting in reporters substituting value judgments for evaluation.
I've seen this phenomenon with Stephon Marbury over the past two seasons. Marbury has long been accused of being a "me-first" player, a point guard who cares more about his offense than that of his teammates. Now, it's true that Marbury has, for most of his career, been a high-scoring point guard. And, because his teams have never been better than decent, his approach has been blamed for their lack of success.
Marbury's never been more under fire for his selfishness than over the past two seasons, especially during the debacle that was the 2005-06 campaign. And, that always struck me as puzzling. After all, what was most noteworthy to me about Marbury in Larry Brown's reign as Knicks head coach was that Marbury stopped shooting the basketball. After averaging between sixteen and nineteen shots a game over the previous seven seasons, Marbury averaged just under thirteen last year. And, this year, he's under 12. This a low total, lower than Steve Nash and lower than Jason Kidd.
We can talk all day about Marbury's sullenness, and the fact that when the Nets and then the Suns got rid of him and replaced him with Kidd and Nash respectively, his former teams went from mediocre to championship contenders. But selfish is not really the word to describe what's happened to Marbury the past two seasons. His game has fallen apart, it's true. But, he's been most criticized on nights when he's hardly shot the ball at all. Marbury is a gifted scorer and playmaker (he's averaged 20 points and eight assists a game over his entire career). Couldn't it be that very poor judgment by two successive coaches about how to use Marbury's talents is the real culprit, rather than Marbury's presumed behavioral issues?
It's late and I am fading, but speaking of Marbury, his shoe line has gotten some interesting notice this week. Selling three types of shoes, one pair of which sells for $9.98, Marbury's brand seems to be doing very well. Mark Cuban told the New York Post this week that the Starbury line should be regarded as the number one business story of 2006. Marbury must be a selfish bastard not to be hocking shoes for ten times more than what he's actually charging.
Here's a good Slate.com article on this issue : http://www.slate.com/id/2155116/
Also, a law professor has published on the impact of stereotypes of NBA players (especially prep-to-pro players) on the league's labor relations. An abstract is here : http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=878611
Posted by: Johnny Hatchett | January 20, 2007 at 12:20 PM