Whether You Like It Or Not, Kobe Ends His Career His Way

This was late in the night of June 8, 2002. Less than an hour earlier, Tyson, as he would put it, had his nose bone smashed into his brainpan by Lennox Lewis, an erudite Brit who happened to be 6-foot-5 and 250 pounds when he was the heavyweight champion of the world, and the possessor of a murderous right hand.

That night, Lewis’ right did its ominous work. It connected with Tyson’s nose bone, which went into his brainpan, which caused him that temporary short circuit between the brain and the body that culminates in a boxer being knocked out. That it was Tyson being knocked down — knocked out — did not matter to Lewis’ right hand, nor did it give that hand any pause.

A decade earlier, Tyson had been the baddest man on the planet, the undisputed and most feared heavyweight champion since Sonny Liston. I don’t mean feared the way a lot of people feared Muhammad Ali when he first announced he was a “Black Muslim” following the teachings of Elijah Muhammad. I mean physical fear of a human being and what he could do to you.

People — boxers, professional boxers — were scared that Tyson would hurt them. Really hurt them. And, with good reason: most of his fights didn’t last more than a round or two. (Exhibit A: one Michael Spinks, pre-Tyson fight.) And for five years, Tyson was invincible, impregnable.

“These fellas,” Tyson said after dispatching another hapless heavyweight, circa 1987 or so. “How dare they challenge me with their somewhat primitive skills? They’re just as good as dead.”

Anyway, this went on and on, until Tyson, like Alexander, had no more worlds left to conquer — at least not in the States. So, he went to Japan for a quick fight and a quick payday.

Which is where Buster Douglas cleaned his clock.

And from that moment on, Tyson wasn’t the baddest man on the planet any more.

He won fights, but he lost some, too. The cloak of invincibility was gone. And by 2002, he was done — barely a contender, much less a champion. But he kept fighting, mainly because he owed people money, to be sure. But also because it’s what he did for a living.

But after Lewis’ right knocked him out, Tyson granted an postfight interview in his dressing room. He had his baby daughter in his arms. He was as content as could be. He was gracious and smiled and apologized to Lewis for saying before the fight that he wanted to eat his children. There was no shame or embarrassment in having his nose bone smashed into his brainpan, and getting knocked out.

They die in public, the great ones, for that is how they lived. There is no hiding, no shirking from what must happen. They must be vanquished, totally, for their success and dominance to have any meaning. No one can understand what it is to truly be humbled — humiliated — than the one who lorded over others so completely.

And that’s why there is no shame that Kobe Bryant, at 37, in what he officially announced via The Players Tribune on Sunday will be his last NBA season, is going out like this. It is neither an embarrassment to him nor a tarnishing of his athletic legacy that he’s shooting 30.5 percent (67 of 220) from the floor.

It is a tribute to his abilities and mental toughness that he continues. He knows better than any of those who mock him daily on Twitter how much he’s lost the last couple of years to injuries, and age. He doesn’t need (in)validation from the masses. He knew how much he’d lost physically five years ago, before you knew it, when he could still camouflage it.

“There’s so much beauty in the pain of this thing,” Bryant said Sunday night, after the Pacers game. “It sounds really weird to say that. But I appreciate the really, really tough times as much as much as I appreciate the great times. It’s important to go through that progression. Because that’s when you really learn about yourself.”

There are no shortcuts to being great, truly great, and that means not taking them when you are no longer great as well. So Bryant planned to lift Monday morning, and get in the first of his three stretches on the day, and then practice, and do it again the next day.

“I’ve worked so hard,” he said, “and continue to work really, really hard, even though I’ve played like (expletive). I’ve worked really, really hard to try not to play like crap. I just do everything that I possibly can. And I feel good about that.”

It is impossible not to write about Bryant without writing about Michael Jordan, whom he idolized growing up, to the point where many thought he was mimicking Jordan’s speech patterns, as well as his jumper. For Jordan was also ridiculed — though in a slightly quieter, pre-Twitter era — when he came out of retirement to play for the Wizards in 2001. Why do this, columnists shrieked. You’ll ruin your legacy.

Which was the problem.

It’s his legacy, not yours.

As with Jordan (who didn’t play all that bad in two seasons in a Washington Wizards uniform, except he was no longer Michael Jordan), Bryant has earned the right to end his career any damn way he wants to. If he wants to chuck 25 shots a night and make five, and the Lakers don’t care, so be it. It’s their team, and it’s his body. He doesn’t “owe” you anything, other than his best effort, which no one can say he’s not giving.

What was most telling, to me, about Jordan’s comeback was the knowledge that he had before he began it — he had no way of winning a championship with the Wizards, and winning championships was the whole reason for his being as a basketball player. It’s what he spent seven years trying to achieve in Chicago, and then six years trying to defend, sandwiched around his baseball hiatus. And yet, he came back and played, anyway.

If Jeannie Buss or Jim Buss think Bryant was embarrassing or hurting the Lakers brand in any way by stumbling to the finish line, they would have let coach Byron Scott know by now. (For that matter, Scott would have let Bryant know.) They know that Bryant’s presence has enriched (literally) their lives a hundred fold, that he’s brought all of them so many positives that the negative of the end of his career pales in comparison.

It is why they gave him the $48 million deal two years ago. He’d earned it.

It will not damage the development of DeAngelo Russell or Jordan Clarkson or Julius Randle to play with Bryant for a year. It will help them, immensely. (As for the losing, you realize it’s in the Lakers’ self-interest to lose a lot this year, right?)

As for Bryant … some of y’all have the memory of peat moss.

Bryant was the baddest man walking in the NBA for years and years, the driving force behind the Lakers’ resurgence, who teamed with Shaquille O’Neal for three straight championships, then with Pau Gasol for a couple more. (There was, of course, coach Phil Jackson to make it all work on both occasions, along with several outstanding teammates.) Five rings gives you immunity from anyone else’s brilliant ideas about how you should finish what they could never dream of achieving.

“Kobe was my Jordan, watching him win championships,” Indiana’s Paul George told reporters in L.A. Sunday. “When I was growing up, that’s who I idolized.”

George was polite enough not to point out that, less than an hour earlier, he’d cleaned Bryant’s clock, with 39 points.

No one gives a damn that Willie Mays, for example, hit .211 in his final season as a major league player with the New York Mets in 1973, when he was 42. Nobody cares about that. They remember Mays catching Vic Wertz’s line drive to centerin the 1954 World Series. They remember the 11 Gold Gloves and 2 league MVP awards. They remember the “Say Hey Kid”, not the washed up old man.

No one remembers Johnny Unitas, at 38, in a San Diego Chargers uniform. They remember him leading the Baltimore Colts to the 1958 NFL Championship.

No one remembers Bobby Orr ending his career with the Chicago Blackhawks. They remember him flying through the air for the Boston Bruins to win the 1970 Stanley Cup. Nobody remembers Ali’s last fight, against Trevor Berbick, in 1981. (Actually, Rick Fox does; his dad took him to the fight when he was a kid.)

And even if you do, so what?

Bryant came into the league shooting airballs; he’ll leave shooting them. That’s the athlete’s life — green going in, gray going out. The greatest ones, the ones who have succeeded the most, achieved so much with their will, are the ones who will always, always believe there is a way out, a way to beat Father Time.

“I continue to push,” Bryant said. “I continue to try. That never stops … I don’t quit. I keep pushing and pushing and pushing and see if I can figure this damned thing out, you know what I mean? And that’s just, that’s who I am. I would never just capitulate to it. I accept it, I understand it, and now I’m trying to figure out how to get around it. And I’ll try my best, and I’ll keep on, keep on going.”

He will start the farewell tour on Tuesday in Philadelphia, where he played at nearby Lower Merion High School, and the tributes will continue all week, all season, in arena after arena, where fans won’t care if they see Kobe Bryant go 4-for-20, as long as they get to see him.

They closed their eyes when Elvis was in his 40s, badly overweight but still wearing those ridiculous jumpsuits, because it wasn’t about whether Elvis could still sing by then, it’s what he did all those nights they weren’t there, and could only listen to his records, or watch him on TV, and imagine what it was like.

Bryant will play 66 more games, and go on to be wildly successful doing whatever he decides to do next, and in time, no one will remember the last years of his playing career, when he was old and couldn’t play anymore. They’ll remember him when he scored 81 against the Toronto Raptors, or dominated the San Antonio Spurs, or went off against the Indiana Pacers in The Finals, and they’ll celebrate his athletic life, not its death.

DRIBBLES

They weren’t meaningless games to his team — in the sad sack Eastern Conference, a 33-43 team still had a chance at the playoffs. But the Indiana Pacers were a team adrift and reaching in vain for its old identity, which had growth threadbare and toothless. No one was worried about the Pacers anymore, concerned with how to attack their once-impregnable defense. And, sadly, no one was scared of Paul George anymore — a once-great scorer consigned to the dust bin of highlight shows.

But the last six games of the 2014-15 season had much more meaning for the team and for George than they knew then.

“That was the turning point,” George said last week.

He was sitting at his locker, once again a man to be feared around the league, having been blessed during the offseason by Larry Bird with that gift which has liberated the likes of Stephen Curry and James Harden, Kyle Korver and Kyle Lowry, Russell Westbrook and John Wall.

The gift of space.

Look around the Pacers. There is no Roy Hibbert, who needed touches in the paint as all big men want. There is no David West, whose resume and character demanded he be placed at the elbow, where he had done work for more than a decade, the last four seasons in loyal service as Indiana’s leader and conscience.

There’s just space.

And George is filling it.

This morning, George is tied for third in the league in scoring (with Russell Westbrook) at 27.2 points per game, trailing only Curry and Harden. He’s leading the Pacers with 8.1 rebounds per game and maintaining a top-20 defensive rating for the Pacers, who are again a top-five defense even without Hibbert’s paint protection.

George is currently shooting 45.5 percent on 3-pointers, a better percentage than Curry and Korver. His PER of 25.5 is a career high. And he’s doing so on a Pacers team that is playing smaller and letting the threes fly.

He can do so now because of those six games then, a half-dozen appearances in a forgotten season. But those 91 minutes allowed George to cross a mental Rubicon. When they were over, he was no longer the guy recovering from that horrific compound leg fracture suffered in August, 2014, while scrimmaging as a member of USA Basketball in Las Vegas.

He was a basketball player again.

“Because to start this year out, my mind was shifted elsewhere,” George said. “I wasn’t worried about coming back, trying to get healthy. I knew what I could do on the court, given those six games, and it was all about just trying to find my way back to who I was. That’s why I came out aggressive in the preseason. It wasn’t just because I was feeling good. I wanted to get it all back.”

George didn’t just want to return to the floor full-time. He wanted to again be an All-Star, the franchise player that got a max deal from the Pacers in 2013. And the Pacers have given him the best chance to do so by following the league-wide trend of downsizing, going with four smalls and center Ian Mahinmi.

It was a plan that Bird espoused publicly after last season, and carried out by sending Hibbert to the Lakers, and signing free agent guard Monta Ellis, who now teams with George Hill to give Indiana three players ball-handlers and shot-makers on the floor. (West, famously, walked away from the $12 million the Pacers owed him for this season to play in San Antonio.) And that means teams can’t load up on George when he has the ball, at the top of the key or on the wings.

And with no Hibbert or West on the floor, George is on the attack. In space, he can go left or right, can use his midrange game with lethal efficiency or stay safely behind the arc. And he’s regained the quickness that gave him blow-by ability before the injury.

And, despite injuries to Hill, Rodney Stuckey and first-round pick Myles Turner, the Pacers have gotten off to a solid 11-5 start, just behind the Cavaliers in the Central.

“I think he’s playing in a different system,” Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. “We’re not throwing it into West and Hibbert 30 times a game. You’ve got big guys that he’s out there playing with that only want to screen for him and get him the ball. Monta Ellis, I think, helps, with his playmaking and creating, finding him stuff on the weakside … he’s playing with four guards out there. There’s more space for him to go to work. He’s tougher to guard. The whole league has been doing it for years, and he’s finally tasting it for the first time.”

But the idea of going small was new in Indiana, which had earned its rep as a physical, big-boy team that laid the wood on people in making back-to-back Eastern Conference finals appearances against Miami.

That team came unglued, though, with Lance Stephenson wearing out his welcome, Hibbert losing his intimidation factor and West growing weary of being the adult in the room all the time. The lack of chemistry was crystallized by Hibbert saying in early 2014 that there were “some selfish dudes” in the Pacers’ locker room. They had run their course. And with George out of the lineup most of last season, the Pacers missed the playoffs for the first time in five years.

Bird’s original idea was that George would play power forward, where he could take advantage of matchups with much slower fours. But George balked at the idea of banging night after night in the paint trying to secure rebounds, or playing behind 240-pound bruisers.

“I would say it bothered me a little bit,” George allows. “I was like, man, I worked so hard to get back, playing the three, and now you’re putting me at a new position. You guys don’t trust me? So it took some time to get that through my head. But now, everything is working out fine, and I’m happy with what we’ve got going right now.”

Into the breach stepped veteran C.J. Miles, who agreed to play the four and allow George to stay at the three. With Miles, who’s played the two and three most of his career, the Pacers still get the mismatches at the four they wanted for George, but allow George the peace of mind of staying at his old spot.

“He really was the lifesaver of this,” George said. “He took it upon himself to be like, ‘you know, P, you’re special at the three. Just go back to playing your position, (and) if need be, the 3-4. If anything, we can always switch. So you’re not really going to guard the four all game.’ He was like, man, I’ll take it.”

The Warriors are so difficult to beat not only because they have Curry and Klay Thompson, but because they have the ultimate Swiss Army Knife in Draymond Green — who helps facilitate the offense when defenses take the ball out of Curry’s hands, who can guard every position on defense and who’s making threes at a ridiculous clip. He allows Golden State to play small and defend at a championship level.

Miles is 6-foot-6 and 235 pounds. But he says he will be able to handle the load at the four after changing his body during the offseason. Miles is also shooting a career best (45.1 percent) on threes.

“I’m at the right size right now,” Miles said. “I’m still athletic, still fast, still can get up and down the floor. And I spent the summer getting in position where I could still be strong and do that. I stayed in Indiana, locked myself in the gym. I stayed there all summer. And the biggest thing was to lean myself out. I didn’t know I was going to be playing the four the whole time like I’m doing now. But it worked out. I put myself in position to be strong and still not get too small.”

The duo was on fierce display in Washington last week, combining to make 15 of 17 3-pointers to hold off the Wizards. George finished with 40 points; Miles, 32. On Friday, George scored 15 of his 33 in the fourth quarter to lead the Pacers over the Bulls. Indy was 23rd in the league in offensive rating last season; this year, they’re currently 11th.

“We’re dependent on the fact that you can’t leave a regular four man out there,” Miles said. “I played my (former) position at the 2-3 (for) 10 years now. I know how to move, I know how to find gaps. I’m not just a standstill guy. You can’t just run at me and hope I don’t shoot it. I can go by the guy. I can do a lot of different things. And that’s another thing I worked on, to be sharper with that, be sharper downhill, not to dance with the ball, but just be one dribble, two dribbles to get to where I need to go.”

Miles has done quality work throughout his career. In Utah, he became a rotation player for former Jazz coach Jerry Sloan after coming out of high school. He was an occasional starter in Cleveland during the non-LeBron years in 2012 and ’13. And he did quality work last season for the Pacers, playing a then-career best 26 minutes per game. Indy went after Ellis early in free agency, and got him for three years and $44 million. It soon became a given, though, that Miles would be a full-time starter this season — something he hasn’t done since 2008-09.

“He earned it in the summer,” Vogel said. “He worked harder than maybe anybody we’ve seen in the offseason. In my 19 years there have been some guys who’ve had great summers or committed summers, but he was the guy who led the charge this summer. He had a great second half of the year last year, and Larry and I just kind of penciled him in, if we were going to go to the small lineup, then he’s the starter. It was his job to lose.”

The Pacers have ridden their forwards offensively while the backcourt gets its footing. Hill, one of the most improved players in the league last season, is just coming back from a respiratory infection. Ellis is shooting just 41 percent overall and 21 percent on 3-pointers. But even when not making shots, his presence on the floor opens things up for George and Miles.

“Last year was tough,” Miles said. “We had a lot of injuries at that point in time. I was just out there running off of every screen, trying to get a shot off, because we didn’t have a lot of things going on at the time. To have George come back, to have P, P healthy, to have Monta here, it just makes my job easy. Even if we played the traditional lineup when I’m out there, there’s just so much space.”

George also had a busy offseason. Instead of spending his whole summer in his hometown of Los Angeles, where he trains in the offseason, George was back in Indianapolis for good by the second week of August, where he spent the rest of the summer working out and getting runs in with the Pacers’ young guys — Turner, second-rounder Joseph Young, and centers Rakeem Christmas andShayne Whittington.

“It was hard to trade L.A. for Indy,” George said. “But I had to make a real decision. If I wanted to take this year serious, I was going to have to give that up. So I came back early. I was in there every day, lifting, conditioning, working with the young guys. I just wanted to establish that leadership role early.”

His defensive chops are coming back as well. George’s return gives Indy it’s first-team all NBA Defensive Team player from 2013-14, a premier wing defender that doesn’t need help against the league’s elite scorers.

“All along, we felt like when we played against the Durants and the LeBrons, Paul would be on those guys, and C.J. would be on the floor, and just battle or double-team or whatever,” Vogel said. “But Paul wasn’t comfortable even guarding the Ryan Andersons of the world. Because it’s different. You’re guarding the screener on pick and rolls, and you’re boxing out. He’s the same guy, but he’s better getting an athletic jump. It’s just one of those things that we said up front with Paul, we’re going to see what it looks like, and we think it could be really good, and we’ll tweak it however we have to tweak it.”

Mahinmi has protected the front of the rim pretty well over the years in his prior stops in San Antonio and Dallas, but he’s never been a full-time starter until now (Turner will be out another month or so after breaking his thumb and suffering ligament damage in early November). So far, he’s been able to avoid foul trouble while giving the Pacers a different look in their screen and roll coverages.

Hibbert often used his mastery of the verticality rule to clog the paint while not fouling. Mahinmi can get out on the screen-roll and trap or wall off the ballhandler, yet still get back in time to catch the roll man.

The defense has held up so far. The Pacers are third in the league in defensive rating (95.5), trailing only San Antonio and Miami, and are fourth in points allowed. They’re eighth in the league in opponent three-point percentage allowed (.328), 11th in overall opponent field goal percentage (.434).

But to become elite defensively, the Pacers will have to master switching, which Golden State does every night, seemingly without problems. There’s no way teams aren’t going to challenge Miles’ ability to handle bigger post players.

“We really pride ourselves on guarding straight up, and not relying (on) the switching,” George said. “But, it’s hard. Now, we’re working, on, we still want to be a straight-up, guard your man team. But there’s going to be moments when it’s just not possible, especially playing against a team like (Washington), where you’re trying to be in the gap, but they’re back screening, or they’re cutting. You almost have to switch everything. When the time calls for it, we’ll guard guys straight up, but when we’ve got to switch, we’ve got to go with it.”

The talking needs to get better.

“We try not to switch as much,” center Jordan Hill said, “but when it’s necessary, we’ve definitely got to call it out. We slack on (communicating) a little bit. It’s just getting better every game. Sometimes we’ll talk and it won’t be loud enough, it won’t be soon enough. It’ll be too late.”

Since losing their first three games, Indy is 11-2. They’ll get tested this week with road games at the Clippers and Jazz, and a week from Tuesday, their doppleganger — Golden State — will be at Banker’s Life Fieldhouse.

“They’re playing incredible basketball,” Miles said of the Warriors’ small lineup. “It’s what we’re trying to get to. But we feel like we can do the same thing. And at the same time, if we needed to, Ian’s minutes don’t have to get cut tremendously, because he moves well. Draymond’s extremely talented at that position, but Ian can play enough minutes to hold down the fort. You have to match up with him at some point. But it’s not like we have to take him out of the game.”

Sunday night, George got to play against his childhood idol, Kobe Bryant, who announced officially earlier in the day that he was indeed retiring at season’s end. Bryant got through most of two decades of NBA pounding without significant injuries. George was just 24 when he shattered his leg, putting his career on hold just when it was beginning to blossom.

As Bryant says goodbye, George continues to say hello. In so many ways, the numbness is finally subsiding.

“I definitely feel like this is the rebirth,” George said. “I got a second chance, you know? Again, I feel like this (past) year was beneficial sitting out, just learning. I just look at the game different now.”

TOP O’ THE WORLD, MA!

(previous rank in brackets; last week’s record in parenthesis)

1) Golden State [1] (3-0): Draymond Green posts consecutive triple-doubles, Friday against the Suns and Saturday against the Kings. It was the first time a Warriors player had back-to-back TDs since … Wilt, in 1964.

2) San Antonio [2] (4-0): I’m sure coach Gregg Popovich is all broken up that the Warriors are getting all of the attention around the Association, while his old, broken-down team is 14-3, having won five games in a row and 11 of its last 12.

3) Cleveland [3] (3-1): Real question, not trolling: how will Kevin Love, who looks like he’s in a good rhythm now, adjust when Kyrie Irving gets back on the floor?

4) Oklahoma City [5] (3-0): Allowed just 91.7 points per game in three blowout wins. They boast a season-high four-game win streak going into road games this week at Atlanta and Miami.

5) Miami [10] (2-1): Heat is now second in the league in defensive rating, behind San Antonio. Per NBA.com/Stats, the Heat’s five-man lineup of Goran Dragic, Dwyane Wade, Justise Winslow, Luol Deng and Hassan Whiteside is number one among units that have played 50 or more minutes together this season in Defensive Rating (79.1 points per 100 possessions).

6) Atlanta [4] (2-2): Don’t know what’s going on with Dennis Schroeder.

7) Indiana [12] (3-0): Now, Hack-a-Mahinmi rears its ugly head. Once you start this ridiculous notion, you can’t stop it.

8) Dallas [6] (1-2): Dirk Nowitzki now 206 points from passing Shaquille O’Neal for sixth place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. The Diggler has 28,391 career points in 17 seasons.

9) Utah [13] (2-1): Time to make hay: 13 of next 18 games at home, starting with tonight’s tilt against the defending champs.

10) Memphis [14] (3-1): Grizzlies are just 3-6 against upper echelon teams (Golden State, San Antonio, Cleveland, OKC, Atlanta, Dallas, Clippers) so far this season.

11) Chicago [7] (1-1): Nine of the next 10 at United Center after Bulls went 2-2 on annual Circus Trip.

12) Toronto [8] (2-1): Bismack Biyombo very solid (11 points, 12 rebounds) in Raptors’ win last week over Cleveland. Needs to be more consistent on offense to continue earning more minutes in Jonas Valanciunas’ absence.

13) L.A. Clippers [9] (3-1): Lance Stephenson finally out of mothballs.

14) Phoenix [11] (1-3): 2014 first-rounder T.J. Warren rapidly coming on.

15) Charlotte [NR] (3-1): Seven straight home wins at the New Hive before Friday’s loss to Cleveland.

Dropped out: Washington [15]

TEAM OF THE WEEK

Golden State (3-0): Warriors’ current average margin of victory of 16 points per game would be the biggest in league history if it holds up, beating the 12.28 average margin of the 1971-72 Lakers — the team that went 69-13 and set the all-time record for consecutive wins during a season with 33.

TEAM OF THE WEAK

Washington (0-3): Love Marcin Gortat, but the present “negativity” surrounding the Wizards is because they’re playing so poorly, and with such little energy in the last couple of weeks. It’s late November, not late March

NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT …

For what should every team be thankful?

As Uncle Bud polishes off the last of the leftovers this morning, it’s a good time to reflect on how preposterously blessed we all are, in one way or another. Some people have great wealth; others have the love of a good man or woman; others are close to God; others live by the sea and are calmed by the rolling of the waves.

We all have something. And so do each of the 30 NBA teams, whether they know it or not:

ATLANTA: A wickedly talented front office and public relations staff, which makes the Hawks’ Twitter feed a must-read every game night.

BOSTON: Forced patience, which precluded GM Danny Ainge from making the blockbuster deals he wanted, but gave coach Brad Stevens more talent with which to work.

BROOKLYN: Being in a city where their struggles are around number 3,407,181 on the Sports Priority List.

CHARLOTTE: Every team makes mistakes. At least this one gets around to fixing them. (This one, as well.)

CHICAGO: The world’s most ridiculously loyal fan base http://espn.go.com/nba/attendance, which fills up United Center game after game, season after season.

CLEVELAND: Savannah James’ homesickness.

DALLAS: Jorg-Werner and Helga Nowitzki, who not only imbued their son with terrific genes (Jorg-Werner was a handball player; Helga played basketball), but, clearly, a grounded personality as well. Dirk Nowitzki has never once seriously considered free agency during his 17 NBA seasons, and took a significant pay cut two years ago so his team could add other players. Oh, and he’s the greatest player in franchise history.

DENVER: Vivek Ranadive.

DETROIT: The single best NSFW line a coach uttered in the year 2015 (and, yes, the year 2015 still has a month left. That’s how confident we are that Stan Van Gundy’s exhortation to his team with a tenth of a second left against San Antonio will stand the test of time).

GOLDEN STATE: Zamst ankle braces, preferred by discerning MVPs everywhere.

HOUSTON: GM Daryl Morey has his detractors, but never let it be said that he won’t sift though every and any piece of information, intelligence and statistic to make the Rockets better.

INDIANA: Young bones heal faster.

L.A. CLIPPERS: Primitive communications that reached the intended target thousands of miles away, while getting past the vast communications networks favored by billionaires.

L.A. LAKERS: Hey, win or lose…and lose…and lose…you go outside afterward and it’s probably 70 and clear and you’re still in Cali, amirite?

MEMPHIS: The Wanderlust gene, which apparently can only be in one basketball playing brother at a time — while the other remains happy and content where he is.

MIAMI: You live in Miami. Shut up.

MILWAUKEE: He turns 21 this week. He has brothers who may be better than he is. And he jumps like a king taking pawns three spots away in checkers. Feel the Giannis.

MINNESOTA: Institutional memory.

NEW ORLEANS: Quality pens that are available at high-end stationery stores throughout the French Quarter, which can be used to sign any number of documents.

NEW YORK: Amnesia. Everybody was thrilled about Phil Jackson’s decisionson Draft night, right? I can’t remember.

OKLAHOMA CITY: He likes you. He really likes you. And he’ll call. Really. Don’t sit by the phone, waiting. He’ll call.

ORLANDO: A veritable plethora (thanks, Howard!) of quality stylists in the Greater Central Florida Business District.

PHILADELPHIA: Calendars. 2016 — The Year That Supposedly Will Make All of This Pain Worthwhile — is just a month away.

PHOENIX: The Suns aren’t where they want to be yet, but they’ve got two really good pieces in Brandon Knight and Eric Bledsoe.

PORTLAND: After Greg Oden and Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge, the whole, sad recent history … they still have Damian Lillard.

SACRAMENTO: Forty-one nights of NBA basketball, every year. You earned that. And you’ll get to do it in a new building very soon.

SAN ANTONIO: The Lucky Machine, the incredible contraption built in the late 1990s that has, somehow, allowed the Spurs to continue putting together championship teams, and has produced pro sports’ best organization for two decades. How fortunate the Spurs are to have a Lucky Machine. But why didn’t they make another Lucky Machine, or a dozen Lucky Machines, and sell them to other teams for a lot of money? They aren’t very bright down there. Just Lucky, I guess.

TORONTO: Masai Ujiri, God love him and his passionate beliefs in his teamand his city.

UTAH: Coach Quin Snyder, who is going to start winning big in a very short while.

WASHINGTON: A fortnight of playoff memories, courtesy of the Truth. (Even the ones that didn’t count were epic.)

AND NOBODY ASKED YOU, EITHER…

Pay no attention to the GM behind the curtain. From John Looney:

I’ve read or heard about the Sixers great “ponzi scheme” countless times.

Aren’t people ultimately upset with 2 factors: 1) no media access to the “recluse” Hinkie, his staff and their thinking; and 2) Hinkie, a Stanford MBA grad, is too smart and too good at his job to be losing?

In particular with the second part of this, if David Kahn were doing the same thing as the Sixers, everyone would just blow it off as incompetence.

It appears that the real mistake in all of this (because as you outlined in your column earlier this week, the Sixers have a bright future with the plethora of high upcoming lottery picks in addition to Okafor and Noel) is that the Sixers didn’t hire a front-man who acts as an imbecile in the press while Hinkie and his staff do their rebuild.

I don’t think people in Philly give a rip whether Hinkie is Trump-like accessible or talks as often as Greta Garbo (kids! Ask your grandparents who Greta Garbo was). They only care if the Sixers win. But I do think you make a valid point, John: no doubt Kahn would be getting universally barbecued if he was overseeing a similar operation. You may well be right that Hinkie’s resume (BTW, Kahn is no dummy himself; he was an English major at UCLA and has a law degree from NYU) is keeping some of the heat off of him. I think it’s also that he comes from a team in Houston that has had a lot of success being somewhat unconventional in how it built its team, and so Hinkie gets a little bit of the benefit of the doubt in Philly.

I thought he had those really long arms to help push his friends forward. FromLee Wynn:

Why is there so much aversion to Phil Jackson’s “coaching tree” in the NBA? Looking at Popovich/Mike Budenholzer, Doc Rivers/Tom Thibodeau and even Pat Riley/Erik Spoelstra (not counting Byron Scott), we see the opportunities and successes of other lineages but not the same for great people such as Jim Cleamons, Kurt Rambis and Phil Hamblen. Jackson had to be the GM to pull the like-minded Derek Fisher in. (Since Steve Kerr is a Phil/Pop hybrid, could we count him??) I would like to think that there are owners who would love to replicate that success, but what’s the problem? Is it their inheritance of bad rosters/cultures? Phil’s “team over management” philosophy in winning championships?

A good question, Lee. Brian Shaw got a shot, of course, with the Denver Nuggets that didn’t work out, and maybe he’ll get another look in a few years. Both Cleamons and Rambis got shots with other teams (Cleamons with the Mavericks; Rambis with the Timberwolves, after an interim stint with the Lakers), but they didn’t get second shots, which was a little surprising. I have never heard any specific aversion to bringing in Phil disciples, though I do suspect teams aren’t crazy about trying to sell the merits of the triangle to today’s players.

In which I again play Grandpa, and tell you to get off my lawn. From Karol Milcarz:

As the Warriors got off to such a hot start (16-0 as of writing), the comparisons to the best Bulls team of the nineties came about. And so did the “ping pong” of arguments on which team is better and why. I probably won’t be wrong but the vast majority of voices (that took side) were rather favoring the legendary 1995-1996 Bulls team. It has led me to ask a following question: why “the old” has to always be better than ‘the new”, and why one who wants to say “Warriors would likely beat those Bulls” looks like a total lunatic and the other stating “Bulls would sweep them easily” looks like a voice of reason?

In all the love a lot of people give to the NBA of the 90’s, is it totally reasonable to highlight the “toughness”, “handchecking” and “game for real men” slogans”, while making light of the progress that has happened in the game of NBA basketball in the last 20 years?

So many people point out that Michael would average 40 or more in today’s game because there’s no hand-checking. Why, though, do these arguments not point out that hand-checking was disallowed before 1994-95 and using forearms to impede offensive player before 97-98 (so before/during 2nd three-peat)? Obviously, if I’m not mistaken, you could use more hip, shoulder for a “check” right until 2005-2006 but truth be told, this “hand-checking” argument has always been “in the headlines.”

On the contrary, nobody seems to say that illegal defense rule was impeding teams from playing much of team defense we know today and favoring guys like Jordan to play iso and give them space they wouldn’t have today. So, in my mind, if we acknowledge Jordan would ridicule today’s defenders, we just take “pros” we like (no hand-checking, softness in today’s game, the way game’s officiated) and we sweep the “cons” (no illegal defense ergo lot better team defense, pace of the game, quickness and athleticism of players today) under the rug. Wouldn’t the Warriors be able to “Tony Allen” Ron Harper or Dennis or Luc and collapse on MJ and Scottie? And hey, Scottie had never been a great shooter. It seems so easy to go nostalgic and rave about the olden days but is it common sense or is it sentiment that doesn’t care about common sense?

Are we playing using ’90s rules, or today’s? If the ’90s, there’s no doubt — the Bulls would destroy the Warriors and everyone else from this era. But if we’re playing with today’s rules, Golden State would have a very good chance of winning. I still think Chicago would win, because the Bulls would not get into an up and down, fast-pace game with the Warriors, and they would make Klay Thompson or Curry work too hard on defense — one of them would have to guard Jordan or Pippen. Plus, Scottie was so smart defensively. (In addition, why do you assume that Horace Grant isn’t on this Bulls’ team? He won three rings.) It would be fun, and I’m sure Steph would have a couple of 30-40 point games. But my money would still be on Chicago.

MVP WATCH

(last week’s averages in parentheses)

1) Stephen Curry (28 ppg, 4.7 rpg, 7.7 apg, .521 FG, .947 FT): Leading the league in scoring and sitting out fourth quarters.

2) LeBron James (22.5 ppg, 8.5 rpg, 7.8 apg, .431 FG, .852 FT): James reportedly told J.R. Smith to shelve the hoverboard that almost ran over Warriors Coach Steve Kerr during The Finals last season.

3) Russell Westbrook (20.3 ppg, 5.7 rpg, 8.7 apg, .500 FG, .870 FT):The new Slim Shady!

4) Kawhi Leonard (24.3 ppg, 8.8 rpg, 4.3 apg, .587 FG, 1.000 FT):Against the Atlanta Hawks — a 60-win team from a year ago that made the Eastern Conference finals last spring — Leonard went for 22 and 7, and was a sublime +32 Saturday night.

5) Paul George (37.3 ppg, 6.7 rpg, 2.3 apg, .547 FG, .867 FT): Just beasting on folks right now, with an ability to score in the clutch as well.

Dropped out: Blake Griffin, Andre Drummond

BY THE NUMBERS

7 — Eastern Conference teams with winning records so far this season against the Western Conference (Toronto, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Charlotte and Orlando). All of the East’s current eight playoff teams have winning records. http://stats.nba.com/standings?ls=iref:nba:gnav#!/11/30/2015 The last team in the east to be the eighth seed in the playoffs with a winning record in a non-lockout season (the 76ers were 35-31 in the lockout shortened 2011-12 season; Chicago was 41-41 in 2009-10) was the New Jersey Nets, who went 42-40 in 2004-05. By contrast, the last Western Conference team that made the playoffs in a non-lockout season with a losing record was the Clippers, who went 36-46 — in 1996-97.

5 — Points scored by the Denver Nuggets in the third quarter of Saturday’s loss in Dallas, the third-lowest point total in a third quarter in league history. The Mavs scored just two points in the third quarter of an 87-80 loss to the Lakers on April 6, 1997; Buffalo scored only four in the third quarter of a 91-63 loss to Milwaukee on Oct. 21, 1972. (Yes, the regular season used to start the second week of October. Get this: The Finals in 1973 ended on May 10!)

18 — Consecutive home wins by the San Antonio over Atlanta after the Spurs routed the Hawks Saturday. It was also the Spurs’ 10th straight win overall over Atlanta as well. The Hawks haven’t won in San Antonio since February 15, 1997, when they won 109-89 in the Alamodome. Atlanta’s leading scorer that night?: my Turner colleague Steve Smith, with 25 points.

I’M FEELIN’ …

1) Insert Generic Sentence on how there aren’t words to properly describe not only how dominant the Warriors are playing, but how much fun they are to watch and how good they are for the league here.

2) KYR: Know Your Relatives.

3) With all of the unrelentingly awful news we hear every day around the world, it’s easy to forget that there are a lot of people around the country who spend a large chunk of their Thanksgiving Day in service to others. Thank you.

4) Very glad he let bygones be bygones — especially in time for the release date.

5) Happy Birthday to my decidedly better half, whom I love and respect more than I could possibly detail in public.

NOT FEELIN’ …

1) That Jahlil Okafor should not be in clubs that serve alcohol when he is not yet legally allowed to drink is a given. And before you say ‘why wasn’t team security with him?,’ take a second and think — would it be smart for the Sixers to condone underage drinking by having one of their employees sitting in the VIP lounge with the 19-year-old? There is only so much a team can do to protect a player from himself. But the team can and should help their rookie make better decisions. He needs guidance. Not a chaperone — just someone who can tell him what it’s like to have all that heat and light on you, and how to avoid feeling cornered. Someone like Elton Brand, the former Sixer and all-time professional good guy, would make a lot of sense here, either in a formal or informal capacity. Okafor said all the contrite things in a series of Tweets Sunday, but he has to walk the walk now.

2) It’s on you, John Wall. It’s on you.

3) This is a good time to go over this once again: no matter how cute they appear to be, they’re lions. And if you take those collars/leashes off, they’ll prove it to you.

4) Have I mentioned how horrible Black Friday is, on every level?

5) RIP, Coach Lewis. There was no more exciting team — ever — than Guy Lewis’s Phi Slama Jama teams at the University of Houshttp://www.chron.com/sports/cougars/article/Legendary-UH-basketball-coach-Guy-V-Lewis-dies-6658864.phpton in the early ’80s, featuring Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwon (he was Akeem back then) and a seemingly endless series of athletic, amazing dunking teammates — Benny Anders, Larry Michaeux, Michael Young, and so on. That team was shut out in consecutive years in 1983 and ’84 in the national title game. But Lewis’s breaking the color barrier at U of H by recruiting Elvin Hayes and Don Chaney in the ’60s was a far, far more important achievement than winning a national title.

THEY SAID IT

“You can’t teach the beast. It’s either in you or it isn’t. You can’t just go to the store and buy a six-pack of beast. It don’t work like that.”

— Kevin Garnett, to ESPN.com’s Jackie MacMullan, in another of her typically wonderfully reported stories, this one a profile of the soon-to-be Hall of Famer in his last days in Minnesota as a mentor for Karl-Anthony Towns.

“We’ve got a really great team, we’ve got some great guys back. Reggie’s doing well in Detroit. We had a rough ending last year with Reggie, but I can just think about when he first got here how hard he worked, how great of a teammate he is, and every guy wants an opportunity.”

— Kevin Durant, talking about the return of former teammate Reggie Jacksonto Oklahoma City last week for the first time since the Thunder traded Jackson to Detroit last year. Jackson was unhappy in OKC with both the extension offer the Thunder made him before the deal and his role going forward with Russell Westbrook locked in as the starter at the point for the foreseeable future.

“What I see the most when I watch Steph is the incredible coordination he has with his arms, his legs and the way he handles the ball. We don’t use a ball, you know. We use a woman. But the way he dribbles the ball is the way we handle a woman on stage.”

— Ballet dancer Tomas Domitro, to The New York Times, comparing the artistry of Stephen Curry with the basketball and how male ballet dancers support female dancers on jumps or lifts.