Write On Sports LLC - "Postal Service" by Mark T.R. Donohue

Postal Service

2006-11-16 16:09:45 | By: Mark T.R. Donohue

The biggest stars in the NBA are now, and always have been, perimeter players. The league’s logo is a silhouette of a point guard, not a power forward. It doesn’t take a master analyst to figure out why this is.

Watching a swingman break his guy down with a crossover, blast between two helpless defenders, and ram the ball home makes for a much more exciting highlight than a little back-to-the-basket baby hook from the right block. Rule changes cutting down on hand checks outside and allowing zone defense would seem to have tipped the scale even further in the little guys’ favor the past few years.

Yet it’s more important than ever to have players who can score down low in your half-court offense. If you look at the NBA standings this week, most of the surprising starts, both good and bad, can be traced back to the presence or absence of a dominating post player.

It’s beyond obvious to say that Miami isn’t as good of a team when Shaq doesn’t show up, but that’s only the most blatant example. Utah is out to the hottest start in the West because Carlos Boozer is simply destroying people (21.1 points, 12.6 boards). Portland, expected to be the early leaders in the Greg Oden sweepstakes, are nearly .500 because Zach Randolph is dropping almost thirty a night. Lakers fans are talking seriously about a conference finals run due to the emergence of Andrew Bynum down low.

And it works both ways. Memphis without Pau Gasol are close to winless. It’s full-on panic time in Denver with Kenyon Martin out for the year and Nene again hobbled. The Bulls, despite the addition of Ben Wallace, are off to an indifferent start; with Ben Gordon’s J not dropping, Wallace and P.J. Brown are helpless to pick up the scoring slack. The Eastern Conference as a whole is pathetically limited in low-post options. If I’m in Orlando with Dwight Howard, or even in Toronto with Chris Bosh, I’m feeling really upbeat about the future right now. For the contenders in the East, championship chances hinge not on LeBron or Vince but on Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Nenad Krstic.

Assuming my logic holds, we should be able to tell which of the surprise teams so far are for real by looking for the big guy. Are Utah and Orlando legit? You bet they are. I have my doubts about Atlanta and the Hornets, staked out to good early records thanks to hot streaks from outside shooters Joe Johnson and Peja Stojakovic. I love Chris Paul, but is New Orleans going to be able to match a team like San Antonio basket for basket down the stretch in a game with jump shooter David West and offenseless Tyson Chandler at the 4 and the 5?

No, they’re not, but I have a pretty good idea who is. Watch out for the Houston Rockets this season. It’s early, but it looks like this might be the year when Yao finally surpasses Tim Duncan as the best player in Texas and therefore the best player in the NBA. Yao has been simply terrifying early. If you didn’t see him torch Shaq last week, you missed the arrival of the long-rumored Dark Yao, the ruthless, elbow-throwing, 30-and-15 machine.

Hard to say how the chips are going to fall this early on, but a Spurs-Rockets Western Conference Finals would be an inside man’s dream come true. (And probably the second-least appealing possibility from a TV ratings perspective, next to an apocalyptic Utah-San Antonio showdown.) For what it’s worth, Houston also has the best assortment of post-up wing players in the game with Shane Battier, the still-acclimating Bonzi Wells, and even T-Mac, assuming the pain in his back ever eases up.

If Houston is the most underrated championship contenders in the league right now, Cleveland have to be the most overrated. I am not a believer in Drew Gooden in the half court, and Big Z looks like a relic out there right now. They certainly have a puncher’s chance to make the Finals since the handful of East teams that do have inside games (Indiana, Detroit) have other problems, but I can’t see how they could avoid being thrashed by a West champ that plays inside-out, be it San Antonio, Houston, Utah, the Clippers, or even the Lakers.

I wouldn’t put it past LeBron to switch to center and dominate like Magic in the ’80 Finals – hell, at this point, if LeBron announced he was retiring to concentrate on his tennis game, I would expect to see him taking Roger Federer in straight sets at next year’s Wimbledon – but the problem there is that the Cavs already need LeBron to play point guard in crunch time, and I don’t see how even King James can run the pick and roll with himself.

I haven’t said a word about Dallas yet, which is a little surprising considering they had a 2-0 lead in last season’s Finals. Obviously in that case the team’s lack of a traditional post presence cost them as Shaq and Wade ran riot. I don’t know what to think about the Mavs yet. I never do.

Dirk Nowitkzi is such a unique player that it’s difficult to criticize him for not playing with his back to the basket very often. The whole point of trying to run your offense through the low post is getting lots and lots of high percentage shots, and a Dirk fadeaway from the free throw line is a higher percentage shot than a lot of players’ lay-ups. That said, it would be interesting to see how Jason Terry, Devin Harris, and Josh Howard (who’s out hurt right now, the major reason Dallas is only 3-4) would operate with the clearer lanes to the rim that a dominant low-post game can produce. Well, you never know, maybe DeSagana Diop will suddenly develop a skyhook. It could happen.

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