Category Archives: General Basketball
So there’s this. Via Scott:
Presumably there are other things happening in the world today besides the Georgetown Hoyas’ matchup with the Syracuse Orange this evening, but I can’t think of any.
I’m also struggling to determine if there’s something about this particular Hoyas club that makes them more likable than any I can remember, or if that’s just my mind playing tricks on me because they’re good and have not yet suffered the type of late-season collapse they’ve endure in most recent years.
But if there is something extra about them that I’m enjoying beyond just that they’re my alma mater’s basketball team and they’ve been steadily ranked among the top 20 teams in the nation for the past two month, I think Nicole Auerbach gets at it here: They seem particularly good at playing together.
Last year’s team graduated its two best players, guards Austin Freeman and Chris Wright. Freeman typically did most of his damage from the perimeter and Wright was more apt to slash and drive to the basket, though neither was so offensively limited. Both seemed streaky, both could take over games, and, as seniors, both were assertive.
Their departure left the team with merely three upperclassmen: senior guard Jason Clark, junior forward Hollis Thompson and senior center Henry Sims.
Clark is a 6’2″ third-year starter with arms that go down to his ankle. He’s strong on defense, he can shoot from anywhere and he makes layups in traffic. Thompson hits nearly half of his three-pointers and does a little bit of everything everywhere else. Neither seems wont to force the issue on offense.
Sims occasionally does, which is exceptionally weird to anyone who watched him play a brand of confused, tentative and often downright lousy basketball in sparing minutes the last few years. Something happened to Sims this offseason — a long talk with his mother, most say — and now he’s awesome. He bangs down jumpers from 18 feet and hits turnaround fadeaways over opposing seven-footers. And, like most Georgetown big men, he’s an excellent passer.
I’m getting into too many details here and I never intended that. The Hoyas also roll deep for the first time in a while, with an impressive freshman class led by Otto Porter and featuring a bunch of other dudes that seem to have at least one strong asset and one notable weakness, none of which probably matter much to you.
Point is, I’m pretty sure this Georgetown team actually is more fun to watch than previous incarnations. And I don’t mean to say they’re better for losing Wright and Freeman, their two best players, like how the Mets should traid David Wright because he’s unclutch or anything. But I think the departure of the assertive stars, the emergence of more passive ones and the influx of depth make the Hoyas more aesthetically interesting.
Which is to say: They pass the ball well, and frequently. Oh, and they play awesome defense. It’s enjoyable.
Unfortunately, Syracuse is good at everything except having its players pass their classes and being willing to stay in the Big East. Plus, given how hostile the Carrier Dome environment is to opposing fans, I could only imagine how difficult it must be to play a road game there. So this could suck.
Nike unveiled a new line of gray uniforms for a bunch of college hoops teams yesterday. Look at these wannabes:
Me, I’m a sucker for this look:
That’s right, I’m arguing for Georgetown’s dominion over an entire color.
You’ll have to indulge me for a second:
OHHHHHHHHHH!
Not sure if any of y’all saw the ninth-ranked Georgetown Hoyas come back from a 17-point deficit midway through the second half against No. 20 Marquette last night at the Verizon Center, but it ranks among the most awesome things that have ever awesomed.
The Hoyas, my alma mater’s basketball squad, are the only team I follow for which I currently maintain any legitimate short-term hope, what with the Jets embroiled in some Beltranian postseason locker-room turmoil and the Mets banking their offseason on Andres Torres, Corey Wimberley and a bunch of relievers that’ll probably be dealt in July if they meet with any success.
And being a Georgetown fan these past couple of years has been not unlike cheering the Mets in 2008, full of promise despite a clearly flawed team — but unencumbered the off-field fuss that has plagued the Mets since — and ultimately ending in heartbreak and disappointment. So when the Hoyas are winning as they have been winning since an early-season loss to Kansas in Hawaii — inspiring all sorts of fawning post-hoc analysis from around the Internet — I watch with some trepidation, knowing as I do that there are dozens of other college hoops teams off to awesome starts and hundreds of others vying for the ultimate prize, that fans of all but one will end up disappointed, that the Big East conference schedule is a bloodthirsty 1,500-pound grizzly of a bear and that all this dizzying post-holiday Hoya-fan exuberance can and likely will be destroyed at some point by a single injury to a key player or a prolonged shooting slump or one of those games where Seton Hall randomly refuses to miss three-pointers.
So though a loss to the nation’s 20-ranked team would hardly spell doom for my Hoyas in January, at some point in the second half I could hear the delusion train leaving the station last night with me still fumbling with my credit card at the ticket machine. I even took to my iPad for some NBA Jam, turning my attention briefly away from the chatter on ESPNU about the undersized Marquette team’s spirited play that somehow neglected to mention the obnoxious way those players seemed more dedicated to drawing fouls than making baskets.
Then, when all seemed bleak — and with Chris Paul heating up, no less — something… something just happened. After about 20 minutes of the Hoya freshmen playing like overwhelmed underclassmen, they yielded to the team’s few veterans.
And all of a sudden Jason Clark, a 6-2 senior guard with Inspector Gadget arms like a 7-footer, is grabbing loose balls and driving to the basket and the Hoyas are trimming the lead. Then Henry Sims, a 6-10 senior center and former top recruit who played laughable basketball until a stern talking-to from his mother refocused him this offseason, is blocking shots at one end of the court and hitting a beautiful fadeaway at the other, and the refs seem on to Marquette’s flop jig and now the difference is down to five. And now Hollis Thompson, a 6-8 junior forward who has never missed a big shot in his life, is nailing them down from all over the floor and the Eagles can’t get out of their own way, and the once-lost game is tied, and I’m punching the arms of my La-Z-Boy and making such a racket in my living room that my wife gets a little freaked out and leaves for a walk because it’s been a long time since she has seen me act this way.
By the time she comes back with cookies — cookies! — the Hoyas have won, 73-70.
Which is to say: OHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
That type of night. Let me enjoy this while it lasts, huh?
The Knicks signed Baron Davis today. Tommy Dee likes the deal, which is cool. I haven’t followed the NBA all that closely in years so I can’t tell you anything about it other than that Baron Davis is clearly that league’s foremost beard pioneer, so for that he should be celebrated. I saw him hailing a cab in Chelsea once and his beard was spectacular. It looked like this:
Shaq has a Shaq puppet.
David Stern referred to the recent breakdown in NBA labor negotiations as “the nuclear winter of the NBA.” Let’s see how it stacks up to the real thing:
| NBA Nuclear Winter | Actual Nuclear Winter | |
|---|---|---|
| Refers to | A season without NBA basketball | The atmospheric consequences of nuclear war |
| Causes | Impasse in negotiations between players’ union and owners | Dense smoke from nuclear explosions and burning urban areas rising into the stratosphere, blocking out the sun and prompting drastic drops in surface temperatures for years |
| Most noticeable effect | #LockoutLife | All agriculture becomes impossible for over a decade |
| Understated repercussion | Thousands of arena workers lose jobs in poor economy | Viggo Mortensen, blinded by desperation, steals Omar’s clothes |
| Most unfortunate consequence | Possible North American Tour for J.D. and the Straight Shot | Everyone on the planet starves to death and dies |
