LeBron James has said in the past that he is tired of being compared to Michael Jordan, but the new deal he signed on Monday means that he may well be seen as stepping into Jordan’s shoes, or more specifically, his Air Jordans.
James has just signed a lifetime deal with Nike, which will potentially earn the Cleveland Cavaliers superstar more than $60m (£40m) a year. Like Jordan, James has been working with the company since his youth, signing his first $90m deal with them when he was just out of high school after a bidding war between Nike, Adidas and Reebok.
“I’m just grateful that Nike and [Nike co-founder] Phil Knight and everyone over there just believed in a skinny 18-year-old kid from Akron, Ohio,” James told reporters on Monday.
So what does a contract for life involve and who gets them? Karl Lagerfeld is said to be so important to Chanel that he has one with the label. Ditto Annie Leibovitz, whose contract with Vanity Fair publisher Condé Nast is supposedly worth $5m a year. Jordan, who first signed a deal in 1984, has been working successfully with Nike for 12 years since his retirement. His Air Jordan line sold $2.5bn worth of shoes in 2012, and Jordan is thought to earn $100m a year thanks to the range. David Beckham, meanwhile, will make more than $160m from the lifetime contract with Adidas that he signed in 2003.
David Abrutyn, an executive vice president at the media marketing agency Bruin Sports Capital, says that the deal reflects James’s importance to the company. “They are very purposefully defining that they have done a lifetime deal with LeBron and I think that speaks volumes about what he means for their business,” he says. “I’m sure if you talked to the people at Nike they would tell you that of the thousands of athletes they represent, more than a few of them have asked for a lifetime deal.” He says that it is likely to be Nike’s biggest deal since its “de facto” lifetime contract with Jordan.
The world of sponsorship hasn’t always been plain sailing for Nike, whose shareholders were reported to have lost tens of millions of dollars after standing by Tiger Woods during his infidelity scandal. Lance Armstrong and Oscar Pistorius, who lost their Nike sponsorship in 2012 and 2013 respectively, have also caused headaches for the company.
Despite this, Abrutyn thinks that Nike envisages this deal being successful, perhaps even to the grave. “As with Jordan, what you’re seeing here is a reflection of the business that LeBron helped drive,” he says. In other words, nice work if you can get it.
The funniest thing about the basketball’s biggest tough guys is that away from the game they could be very nice. It’s just when they got on the court something took over. They were rugged, fierce and willing to throw anyone out of the way. And few men in professional basketball played that role better than the center of the late 1980s and early 90s Detroit Pistons.
Perhaps you have to consider the setting with Laimbeer. He was the muscle on a team called the Bad Boys. He had no choice but to be rough. Fortunately, he had no trouble fitting the role. At 6ft 11in, with thick shoulders and dark eyes, he looked mean. When he wore clear plastic mask as he often did, the scowl was even worse. Whether real or not he appeared to enjoy driving an elbow in an opponent’s side.
Perhaps Dennis Rodman (we’ll get to him in a bit) summed it up best in his book As Bad As I Want To Be when he wrote: “He was more than a thug but that’s what he’ll be remembered for.” He was a four-time All-Star, once led the NBA in rebounding and averaged nearly 10 boards a game for his career – but that’s not what people will recall. Instead, when they think of Laimbeer they will think of him for moments like this. That escalated quickly.
Ironically, Laimbeer has become an outstanding women’s basketball coach with three WNBA titles in 11 years – all with the Detroit Shock. To see him now as coach of the New York Liberty, laughing on the sidelines, imploring his players to hurry up the court you have to wonder: Is this the same guy? 2) Xavier McDaniel
With a nickname like the X-Man how can you not be a tough guy? The essence of McDaniel can be summed up in a single photograph. In the picture, McDaniel, then with the Seattle SuperSonics, has Lakers guard Wes Matthews pinned against the scorer’s table and is choking him. Matthews’ eyes are wide with shock and his mouth is open as if gasping for air.
McDaniel also had a handful of memorable confrontations with the Chicago Bulls, and Michael Jordan in particular, when he played for the Knicks in the 1990s. Though he started off as a big scorer with the Sonics in the 80s, he came to fit best in a role as a reserve willing to set heavy screens, make a defensive stop, get a rebound and generally annoy opposing players and coaches.
The X-Man was always one of the game’s more interesting players. In keeping with the theme, he named his son Xavier and his daughter Xylina. He also dabbled in television with an appearance on Married With Children and a handful of reality shows. But his finest screen performance was in the movie Singles, which might be the best athlete cameo ever.
3) Maurice Lucas
So much of professional basketball history is centered around the modern era we don’t pay enough attention to the past. Since Lucas played in the 1970s there’s isn’t as much video evidence of his career as there is for contemporary players, but there was a tine when the last person you wanted to tussle with on the court was the man they called: “The Enforcer.”
He played for seven teams in 14 years, which doesn’t say enough about how dominant a player he was on the floor. While he averaged 14.4 points and 8.8 rebounds in his NBA career he was best known for using his 6ft, 9in, 250lb body to clear players away from the basket. To understand how powerful Lucas was as a player, Bill Walton named his son Luke after Lucas – in part, a testament to the role Lucas played in helping Walton and the Portland Trail Blazers to the NBA title in 1977. Advertisement
“He really liked being the enforcer-type player,” Portland’s coach in those days, Jack Ramsey, said after Lucas died in 2010. “A great rebounder. A great outlet passer. Then he could score on the post, make jump shots on the perimeter. But mostly it was his physical persona that he carried with him that made us a different team.”
Perhaps Lucas is best remembered for his role in this fight with Darryl Dawkins in the 1977 NBA Finals. “More than anything else in my career, I’ve been reminded of that incident and reminded of the fact that I was a real physical player,” he later said. “I’m not reminded of the fact that I was the leading scorer on those teams that I played on. But the old saying goes, ‘As long as they remember you, you can’t be mad.’”
4) Dennis Rodman
In later years Rodman became such a sideshow it is easy to forget the ferocious rebounder and defender who played alongside Laimbeer in Detroit and helped the Pistons establish their relentless reputation as much as anyone. He won five NBA titles, was twice the league’s defensive player of the year and was named to the all-defensive team seven times.
Of course, he is rarely glorified for these things. Instead, he is best known for wearing a wedding dress, his celebrity pals and multi-colored hairstyles. In many ways, he became bigger after basketball than he ever was as a player. This is unfortunate.
Nobody was better at stopping another team’s top scorer than Rodman. A lot of this came from an intense desire to be great at basketball. Not even considered for his high school team in Dallas, he gave the game a try after school when he suddenly grew several inches. While other players had been heavily recruited by big college programs, he went from working at the Dallas-Fort Worth airport to junior college, to little-known Southeastern Oklahoma State. So when he finally made the NBA at 25 he was determined to stay.
If that meant fighting his way through the league then that was what he would do. But to win five championships in what was essentially a 13-year NBA career says something about how good a defender and rebounder he really was.
5) Charles Barkley
To see him now on television, laughing through the halftime show, is to not remember how rough, aggressive and downright irrepressible he was as a player. One doesn’t average nearly 12 rebounds a game as a 6ft 5in forward and not be tough.
After establishing himself as a star over eight seasons with the Philadelphia 76ers, he won the MVP in 1993 in his first season with the Phoenix Suns and came within two wins of the NBA title that would forever elude him. Getting him away from the basket was impossible, he took his 252lbs that gave him the nickname ‘The Round Mound of Rebound’ and knocked people away. He was as good at grabbing a rebound and laying it back in as he was as shooting a fadeaway jumper. In some ways he was probably best with three players around him.
But he was also a polarizing player. He tussled with several opponents, shouted at fans and seemed to operate without a filter. When Nike introduced a commercial campaign in which he declared “I am not a role model”, people were furious. Why couldn’t he learn to behave?
That was Barkley. His most notorious incident might have been the time in 1991 when he spit at a fan in New Jersey, missing the man with his saliva and hitting a little girl instead. He was fined $10,000 and suspended. He apologized to the girl and later said the incident was his greatest regret.
6) Charles Oakley
Though his career roughly shadowed Barkley’s, this Charles was not as famous. He was three inches taller than Barkley and not nearly the accomplished scorer and yet he might have been the most aggressive player of his era. If Isiah Thomas had Laimbeer and Rodman, Michael Jordan had Oakley in his early years.
Oakley served as the young Jordan’s protector, clearing away big defenders and showing little regard for those who did not appreciate his ferocity. But it was after Oakley was traded to the Knicks in 1988 that he became widely known for his aggressiveness, especially against Chicago and Miami. This 1996 fight with Barkley embodies Oakley’s 10-year career in New York.
He could also score, averaging in double figures several times, but since he played most of his career in the NBA’s Eastern Conference he was usually needed to protect teammates, get rebounds and clear opponents away from the basket. He played this role perfectly. He never got the Knicks to an elusive title but he came close and became an essential stopper on a team built for defense first.
Dave Meyers, who led U.C.L.A. to the 1975 N.C.A.A. basketball championship as the team’s lone senior in John Wooden’s final season as coach, and who was later part of the trade that sent Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to the Los Angeles Lakers, died on Friday at his home in Temecula, Calif. He was 62.
His death was announced by U.C.L.A., which said the cause was cancer.
Meyers, a 6-foot-8 forward, led U.C.L.A. in scoring with 18.3 points a game and in rebounding with 7.9 a game in his final season, helping the Bruins to a 28-3 record. He had 24 points and 11 rebounds in U.C.L.A.’s 92-85 victory over Kentucky in the N.C.A.A. title game, which was played in his hometown, San Diego.
He was chosen by the Lakers as the second overall pick in the 1975 N.B.A. draft. (David Thompson of North Carolina State was drafted first, by the Atlanta Hawks, although he instead signed with the Virginia Squires of the rival A.B.A.)
Shortly after the draft, Meyers was part of a blockbuster trade: He was sent, along with Junior Bridgeman, Brian Winters and Elmore Smith, to the Milwaukee Bucks for Abdul-Jabbar — who was already a three-time most valuable player and who is now widely regarded as one of the greatest players in N.B.A. history — and Walt Wesley.
Meyers played well for Milwaukee, averaging 11.2 points and 6.3 rebounds a game, but retired after four seasons.
David William Meyers was born on April 21, 1953, in San Diego. His survivors include his wife of 40 years, Linda; a daughter, Crystal; a son, Sean; his mother, Pat; three brothers, Mark, Jeff and Bobby; and five sisters, Ann Meyers Drysdale, Patty Meyers, Cathy Meyers, Susan Meyers and Coleen Lindsey.
Ann Meyers Drysdale was also a star basketball player at U.C.L.A. and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993.
Darryl Dawkins of the Philadelphia 76ers dunks during a 1980 playoff game against the Atlanta Hawks.
Photograph: Rusty Kennedy/AP
The biggest surprise about Darryl Dawkins’s death on Thursday is that it came at age 58. He always seemed destined to either die early or live on forever.
We were lucky that Dawkins came along before sports was ruined by image-makers and professional basketball athletes dared to show personality. Few men made basketball more fun then the 6ft 11in center for the Philadelphia 76ers, New Jersey Nets, Detroit Pistons and whatever minor league team was willing to extend his career long after it had burned out in the NBA.
Dawkins died Thursday in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania hospital. No cause was of death was given, an inglorious end to an oversized life. Darryl Dawkins’s ferocious dunks became his calling card.
He claimed to have come from a planet called Lovetron and called named himself Chocolate Thunder, claiming the nickname was given him by Stevie Wonder. He was also Dr Dunkenstein and Sir Slam. The nicknames forever changed depending on how he felt. And when he dunked basketballs he did so with a ferociousness few had ever seen. Today, players regularly battle to see who can dunk the hardest, but the late 1970s when Chocolate Thunder roamed the courts, Dawkins was slamming the ball through rims in a way other players never dreamed.
Twice, he broke backboards dunking in games. Each time he shattered the glass into little shards that looked like tiny bits of ice strewn around the court. The NBA introduced collapsible rims not long after that, leaving Dr Dunkenstein to perform more traditional assaults on basketball rims.
Dawkins so loved his dunks that he often named them. His first backboard-breaking dunk deserved an outrageous nickname, therefore he called it: The Chocolate-Thunder-Flying, Robinzine-Crying, Teeth-Shaking, Glass-Breaking, Rump-Roasting, Bun-Toasting, Wham-Bam, Glass-Breaker-I-Am-Jam. Others were comparatively subtle even if they seemed just as ridiculous. Who could forget the In-Your-Face-Disgrace? Or the Spine-Chiller-Supreme?
But for all the laughs and outlandish dunks Dawkins did not have the dominating career many assumed for him when he came to the league straight from high school in 1975. He was the fifth overall pick in the draft that year and helped the Sixers make three NBA finals before his trade to New Jersey in 1982.
For his NBA career he averaged 12.0 points and 6.1 rebounds a game. Decent numbers but not the kind of Hall of Fame career his immense talent said he should have had. He seemed a player who should have gone to college, maybe maturing before coming to the NBA. Instead, he had to learn as a pro, struggling through his first few seasons. When he finally established himself, injuries kept him from basketball greatness.
He drifted for several years, floating through Italy and the Continental Basketball Association and even had a brief run with the Harlem Globetrotters, not fully retiring from basketball until 2000.
Still, few players can say they left a mark – literally – on the game and inspired perhaps the biggest equipment change in 50 years with collapsible rims.
Not bad for a kid from Lovetron who never went to college.
Maya Moore drives to the basket during Friday’s game at Madison Square Garden.
Photograph: Joel Plummer/ZUMA Press/Corbis
There’s a cognitive dissonance in asking what’s wrong with the Minnesota Lynx, who entered Friday night’s game against the New York Liberty with a 19-9 record, best in the WNBA.
But it is universal: the Lynx are performing short both the standard the team itself set since 2011, also known as the Maya Moore Era. And the Lynx weren’t merely supposed to excel in 2015, but dominate after a midseason trade brought star center Sylvia Fowles to town.
A 19-9 record looks less glamorous in the franchise index, considering the Lynx have never lost as many as 10 games with Moore. A 7-6 mark since Fowles came to town put the Lynx superteam talk on hold, even more following an 81-68 loss to the Liberty Friday in which the Lynx never really challenged late.
Even the MVP campaign of Moore, fourth in the league in Player Efficiency Rating at 25.5 and ninth in the league un Defensive Rating, has been filled with questions over an uncharacteristic drop in her shooting percentage.
So while the Lynx have an undeniable collection of elite talent – Moore and Fowles only begin the list of Olympians on the roster, from Lindsay Whalen to Seimone Augustus, Rebekkah Brunson to Asjha Jones, a full majority of the team USA Basketball veterans – turning a champion on paper into a force within a hugely competitive league hasn’t been simple.
And remember, too, the new combination of talent means the Lynx are trying to win differently: the offensive force with solid defense is morphing into a team that wins defensively with just enough offense instead.
“We are different,” Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said, standing at midcourt an hour before Friday night’s showdown. “A big part of our offense came through elbow actions. And my starting post players now, it’s not really their forte. So we look a little different, and certain lineups, we look a certain way, and we sub and look another way. Advertisement
“It’s different, and four of my nine rotation players haven’t been Lynx before. This is a bigger picture for us than people realize. There’s years past, you can’t help measuring us against past years. Luckily, our players realize our measuring stick is this season, against the other teams in the league, right now.”
The changing cast, emphasized by the three-team deal that brought Fowles to the Lynx, is reflected in the team emphases. The DRating of 95.9 for the Lynx is 2015 is second in the league, trailing only the Liberty, who are playing at a historic pace. But the ORating is 101.6, just fourth in the league and well off the pace of either Lynx WNBA championship teams from 2011 or 2013.
“If our offense isn’t going to be as high-powered, than our defense has to be better than it’s been,” Reeve said it simply.
So the statistical benchmarks have changed. The Lynx are grabbing 76.8% of the available defensive rebounds, good for second in the league, and easily the best mark for the Lynx since Moore entered the league. A lot of that happened before Fowles, the second-best defensive rebounder in the history of the league. And yet, for Reeve, that emphasis needs to intensify over the final few games of the regular season and playoffs.
“Efficiency on offense is down,” Reeve said. “We’re turning the ball over too much. Our field goal percentage is down. So now we’re in transition defense a lot. And that’s creating problems for us at the other end. And quite frankly, that’s creating frustration, a lack of focus on finishing plays.”
The personification of that drop in field goal percentage – which, again, has cratered the Lynx all the way down to ... second-best in the league – is Moore, whose field goal percentage dropped from 48.1% last year to just 41.9% this year entering Friday’s game. It’s otherwise been a vintage Moore season. The reigning MVP is actually defending at a career-best rate, with a DRating of 93, while all her other rate stats are stable. Moore even captured the all star game MVP last month, scoring 30 in the win. But the shots simply aren’t falling the way they have in the past, and Moore has a pretty good idea why.
“The way I get my shots happens before I touch the ball,” Moore said. “And it’s a great mindset for me to have, and it’s the way I was taught to play basketball. You do a lot of cutting and screening, and you get easier shots. So that doesn’t necessarily come to pass when I’m catching in tough spots, or trying to create myself a lot more.”
Put another way, teammates more familiar with what Moore likes and where she’s going at any moment will help find her more easily. But that takes time.
It didn’t happen much on Friday night. Moore shot 8-for-20, mostly on shots she created herself, with hands in her face. If this were simply the result of facing the Liberty, it would be one thing. But Reeve pointed out this has become the new normal for her team.
Unsurprisingly, the need for more consistent, effortless communication on the offensive end carries over to defense, where conversation between teammates is central to any defensive unit.
“Getting everybody connected is our main issue on defense,” Moore said. “To make sure everybody’s defensive instincts are together.”
Moore, though, is the best she’s ever been at that end, to the point that Reeve has been working with her to figure out ways she can conserve energy on defensive tactics that don’t ultimately benefit the team as much – Reeve pointed out Moore’s charging to meet her opponent at midcourt, giving her that much more ground to cover without appreciably changing the task of the offensive team, or extra gambling for steals.
So what exactly does it look like when these Minnesota Lynx, not the championship teams of the recent past, reach their potential?
“These guys know when it feels good,” Reeve said. “When you’re moving in sync. We have a lot of possessions where we have maybe two players over here, and then these three over here,” and Reeve gestured toward the front court, “one over here, the other on top of the other one, and there’s not a recognition of, you’ve got to move jointly. And it’s the same on defense.”
That’s asking a lot of any team – again, forgetting that this is a Lynx team that’s clinched a playoff berth already and has the inside track on home court advantage throughout the playoffs through all the challenges – and Reeve sees approximately two weeks left to figure out the rest.
“By the time the playoffs start – we play September 11, and how we feel at the end of that game is going to determine a lot,” Reeve said. “So we have a six-game season. That’s how we look at it. And this is game 1, getting that rhythm. It’s going to be hard to do.
“And this team needs some signature wins, where we can say ‘Oh, that was hard.’ Because sometimes when you win, and people talk about you in a certain way, you start believing that it isn’t hard. And it’s always been hard to win games in this league. It was never easy for us, and I think some of that has crept in for us.”
So Reeve shifted some tactics, “change course” as she put it. Even with the best record in the West. Because to her, the Lynx are not a championship team the way they are going.
“Because staying the course wasn’t working. And some of it is a mindset, not Xs and Os. I’d say more than half of it is a mindset. And I’ll know when they get it. The outside thinks whatever, that we should win every game. And we know we have a little ways to go. And we’re going to work hard to get there. I think we can. We have great leaders.”
The leader among leaders, Moore, echoed Reeve. She said she is certain she and her teammates have figured out what is necessary to be “as great as we know we can be.” There’s still plenty of season left.
“Being great every year is a challenge,” Moore said, “And it’s a challenge we haven’t lost yet.”
From slumber parties to the heights of global basketball, Dante Exum and Ben Simmons have shared quite the journey since meeting over a decade ago. Once regulars on the courts of Melbourne, the Australian duo are now excelling in the US: the former a rising talent with the Utah Jazz (notwithstanding recent injury misfortune), the latter a college player widely tipped to be the No 1 draft pick in 2016. Despite busy schedules and the distance between them, they remain close friends.
Ben Simmons has been settling into Baton Rouge life.
Photograph: Kelly Kline/Getty Images
“I usually call Dante every month,” recent Louisiana State University addition Simmons says following a training session. “We met when I was seven and have been really good mates ever since. We grew up together: training, having sleepovers, playing on the same team.”
The pair share many similarities. Both were born in Melbourne to American fathers whose pursuit of the basketball dream led them to Australia, where they became team-mates at the Melbourne Tigers. Exum and Simmons both spent time at the Australian Institute of Sport, a national basketball academy, while each possesses a not dissimilar mix of envious physical attributes.
There is, though, one stark difference: Simmons will never be an ‘international man of mystery’. Unlike his friend, a largely unknown quantity when he was drafted at No 5 in 2014, Simmons will have been scrutinised from every angle by the time he nominates for the NBA.
At present, these assessments points to one thing: Simmons being the most sought after player at the draft’s 2016 edition.
The 19-year-old’s rare combination of size, speed and ball-handling has scouts salivating, and a quick look at the innumerable highlight compilations on YouTube provide ample justification. Despite standing at 6ft 10in, Simmons is as confident running the floor or leading transition play as he is finishing under the basket – Sports Illustrated aptly described him as a “point center”.
The list of accolades earned by Simmons is similarly impressive: in 2015 he was Gatorade National Player of the Year, Naismith Prep Player of the Year and starred in the McDonald’s All-American game. With past Naismith winners including LeBron James and Kevin Love, Simmons is already in rarefied company.
But the path from high school awards to NBA success is littered with pitfalls, and Simmons is aware of the challenges ahead. While he defiantly declares: “I definitely want to be the No 1 pick – I’m always going to back myself over someone else,” he quickly acknowledges that “there is lots of work to do and much more pressure to come.”
Pressure – whether from the team, media, fans, or within – is a difficult beast. Chatting to the Guardian not long after being drafted, Simmons’ friend Exum looked slightly jaded, and spoke candidly about the intense media spotlight. Although Simmons has had a longer adjustment period, thanks to his decision to play on the American school circuit rather than remain at the less-visible Australian Institute of Sport, he admits to having mixed feelings about dealing with the hype.
“It gets easier day-by-day, but it becomes harder long term: the better you get, the more attention that is focused on you,” Simmons observes. “I’m fine with it, though: it’s all part of the experience.”
One factor keeping Simmons firmly rooted is his strong family network. As the youngest of six children and with an ex-professional providing fatherly guidance, Simmons has an effective barrier against an over-inflated ego. His godfather and now assistant coach at LSU, David Patrick, joked recently that “at home, he’s ranked nothing,” and Simmons shares this sentiment.
“I’m just Ben at the end of the day,” he laughs. “My family have always been there to support me – they have never put me on a pedestal and said I was this or that. Whenever I’m with them, I’m back to being the youngest in the family.”
Simmons also enjoys the support of a broader network at LSU, including alumnus Shaquille O’Neal. The four-time NBA champion described the college’s new recruit as “the best player in the world”, and even had time to pass on his best wishes via telephone.
“I spoke with him for a few minutes on the day I signed,” explains Simmons. “He just said congratulations and welcomed me to the family. It is awesome to know that he’s always there for me to ask questions.”
Having now officially joined LSU – almost nine months after he put pen to paper and took O’Neal’s call – Simmons has been busy settling into Baton Rouge life. In between summer school: “I have been taking kinesiology [the study of human movement], but I would like to major in sports management”, a controversial new marketing campaign and training sessions, Simmons has been preparing his colleagues for their pre-season visit to Australia (they departed last week).
“The team is looking great: we are still building up chemistry, but by the time we leave we will be ready to play,” he says. “I have been telling my team-mates about Australia every day! I haven’t been back in a year, so am really excited.”
Simmons does not, however, harbor particularly fond memories of his last trip home. After training with Australia’s national team before the Fiba World Cup, he was a surprise omission from the final Boomers squad. Asked whether he put this disappointment to good effect, Simmons responds bluntly.
“I did not really use it as motivation because I felt like I should have been on the team – I didn’t have any doubts about it,” he declares. “I walked away knowing that I was definitely a good player, but I had to focus on my next step. I just kept playing and working on my game.”
Despite this sour experience, Simmons retains a desire to play for the national team, perhaps as early as next year in Rio de Janeiro. With an exciting mix of young talent and a collection of experienced NBA regulars, the Boomers could mount a serious challenge to perennial favourites USA.
“Playing at the Olympics has always been a dream of mine,” Simmons admits. “But as soon as college finishes I might be focusing on the draft, or if not another season at LSU – so I have to take it one day at a time. But I would definitely go to the Olympics if I was healthy and fresh enough to perform.”
If Simmons is available and selected, one likely team-mate in Brazil will be the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Matthew Dellavedova. The pair trained together during last year’s pre-World Cup camp, before Dellavedova had burst into the collective consciousness, and Simmons speaks glowingly of Australian basketball’s man of the moment.
“It is always good to train with someone of his calibre,” he notes. “It has been great to see him succeed and compete with the top players. For him to get to the level and do really well is just awesome.”
Rewind a further year to 2013, and Dellavedova was without a club after going undrafted, Exum was still at school, and the hype surrounding Simmons had only just begun to surface. In a small arena in Canberra, all three shared the floor in a game against New Zealand, only days following Exum and Simmons’ national team debut. That fixture may have seemed inconsequential at the time, but it represented a major step as the duo sought to fulfil a shared basketball dream.
As kids, Exum and Simmons would often discuss their aspirations of playing professionally. Yet even these two self-assured and confident young men could not possibly have predicted the progress each would make towards basketball stardom.
“We have always talked about playing in the NBA, and now I just have to do my part,” says Simmons. “Playing against Dante – or with him – would be amazing.”
LeBron James was outstanding in the NBA finals but could not lead his team to the championship.
Photograph: Kevin C Cox/Getty Images
LeBron James will saddle up again for the Cleveland Cavaliers after agreeing a two-year contract with the team, according to ESPN. The deal is understood to be worth up to $46.9m, with the second year a player option.
James had not talked to any other teams during free agency, and was never expected to leave his hometown team. Rather, any negotiations on James’s part are to maintain flexible contracts to take advantage of rising salary caps.
The move reaffirms James’s target of winning an NBA championship with the Cavaliers. He came agonizingly close last month, as the Cavs went down 4-2 to the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals. The last two times James was a free agent he moved teams – from the Cavaliers to Miami Heat in 2010 before a return to Cleveland in 2014.
Another of the Cavaliers’ stars, Kevin Love, says his new five-year, $113.2m contract with the team is “inked and official”. Love said he had met with James before free agency to discuss the team’s future, with forward Tristan Thompson also expected to complete a deal in the coming days. Kevin Love stays at Cleveland Cavaliers citing 'unfinished business' Read more
“I expressed this to LeBron and he’d been through it a couple of times now — I can actually go wherever I want and pick the team I want to play for,” Love said on Thursday.
“But every time I went through the different scenarios I always came out at the same place, and that was to be in Cleveland and try to win championships. I would be able to really help this team win and going forward make a very big impact on this team and on this city, trying to bring a championship or championships.”
The 2015 NBA finals saw the Golden State Warriors clinch their first title in
40 years – and the series was officially confirmed as the highest rated on TV
since 1998, when the Bulls triumphed in Michael Jordan’s final season with
Chicago.
Nearly 20m people, on average, watched the Warriors-Cavaliers series on ABC,
the highest viewership in 17 years, when 29m tuned in to watch Jordan’s Bulls
beat the Utah Jazz in dramatic style.
Cleveland’s LeBron James drives on the Warriors’ Stephen Curry during Tuesday’s Game 6.
Photograph: Ken Blaze/USA Today Sports
Tuesday night’s game, when Golden State won 105-97 in Cleveland to seal a
four-games-to-two series victory, was the most watched Game 6 in ABC’s history,
scoring 23.2m viewers, according to Nielsen.
The previous best in the post-Jordan era came in 2001, when the Shaquille
O’Neal-led LA Lakers defeated the Philadelphia 76ers four games to one, and
18.9m viewers watched. Sunday’s Game 6 at the Quicken Loans Arena was also the
most watched finals game since 2013, when LeBron James notched 37 points in Game
7 against the Spurs to give Miami their second straight championship.
The NBA has failed to replicate the TV ratings it enjoyed in the 1990s, a run
that spiked with Bulls-Suns in 1993 and peaked with Jordan’s Chicago finale in
1998. In that series, broadcast on NBC, the Bulls beat the Jazz in six games.
Jordan hit a 20ft jumper to give Chicago an 87-86 lead with seconds remaining,
and then John Stockton missed a three-pointer to give the Bulls the title. The
game-winner, Jordan’s final shot in a Bulls uniform, is widely acknowledged as
one of the most memorable plays in NBA history.
Television ratings plunged after Jordan retired. Some fans blame the 1998-99
lockout, which wiped out 32 games of the following season and caused many
viewers to switch off. The 1999 Knicks-Spurs series did not rate well on TV.
This season’s finals was also the best rated since it moved to ABC in 2003 –
and the closest the NBA has come to the huge audiences it
enjoyed in the 1980s and 90s.
The Cleveland Cavaliers need to win both remaining games to clinch the NBA
title, but LeBron James is confident his team can do it. Why? Because he’s the
best player in the world.
The Cavs lost 91-104 in Game 5 in Oakland on Sunday night, after the Golden
State Warriors accelerated away from their opponents in the fourth quarter.
Steph Curry scored 37 points and made seven three-pointers to put Golden State
3-2 up in the series – and just one win from a first NBA championship in 40
years.
But James, who produced another scintillating performance at the Oracle
Arena, assisting in 70 of the Cavs’ 91 points, has backed his team to come back
on Tuesday night in Cleveland. “I feel confident because I’m the best player in
the world,” James said on Sunday night. “It’s that simple.”
James, a four-time MVP, had 40 points, 14 rebounds and 11 assists in game
five, becoming only the second player to record a 40-point triple-double in the
championship finals after Jerry West in 1969. James, in this finals series, is
averaging 36.6 points per game.
Cavs coach David Blatt was gushing in his praise of his main man: “LeBron has
been tremendous - [that is] even an understatement for how he’s played in the
series. Under the current set of circumstances, that’s what we’ve got to get,
and he’s bringing it. You don’t see that every day, what he’s doing. You’ve got
to take your hat off to him.”
The Warriors will try to win their first title since 1975 on Tuesday night in
Cleveland at the Quicken Loans Arena. Game 7, if necessary, would be in Oakland
on Friday night. But LeBron said his team weren’t thinking about Friday.
“We’re going home with a game six and we’ve got enough to win it,” James
said. “We protect home, we come [back to Oakland]. We’ll worry about Tuesday
first. But if we protect home like we’re capable of doing, we force a Game
7.”
Golden State coach Steve Kerr had only admiration for his star, Curry: “I
thought from the very beginning when they went small, had their shooters out
there, I thought: this is Steph’s night.
“This is going to be a big one for him because he has all that room. He took
over the game down the stretch and was fantastic.”
“We didn’t turn it over, we were patient,” Warriors shooting guard Klay
Thompson said. “And two words: Stephen Curry.”
The rare MBA in the
NBA, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey not only embraces inflammatory
statements, he offers them up with gusto. The inventor of the revered MIT Sloan
Sports Analytics Conference and driving force behind the new wave of analytical
player evaluation, Morey is a data-driven GM and an engaging Twitter presence
whose vibrant personality has an irreverent flair. He’s candid enough to compare
being an NBA general manager to being a gynecologist (“You never get tired of
it”) and publicly deride prominent media personalities for questioning his
philosophies (see: Barkley, Charles). Last week, perhaps for kicks, he claimed
his Rockets can beat any team in a seven-game series.
So when Morey said “If
James Harden weren’t on our team, we’d be nowhere,” as the primary reason his
hirsute star player should be named Most Valuable Player, it wasn’t on the
greatest hits of Morey-isms. His simplistic reasoning was, however, quite unlike
Daryl Morey. Inherent bias aside, Morey has staked his reputation as one of the
game’s most progressive general managers because of his aggressive roster
reconstructions and acute data crunching. Claiming Harden should win MVP for
being the primary arbiter for his team’s 53 wins wasn’t just trivializing the
ethos of the award, it was an indirect indictment of himself.
Golden State Warriors
guard Stephen Curry is this year’s NBA MVP. The race shouldn’t be close. To
believe that requires a hearty embrace of the analytical whirlwind consuming the
NBA – on another day, we’ll discuss Sam Hinkie’s Philadelphia 76ers – with a
healthy dose of skepticism of how those stats are manipulated. But above all,
anointing Harden the top player ahead of Curry betrays Morey’s beloved
metrics.
The Warriors sit at
63-15 with a 35-2 home record, arguably the most dominant NBA regular season
since the 1996 Chicago Bulls finished 72-10. (To all you weary Lakers fans, go
ahead and make your case.) Along with a stunning average margin of victory of
10.2 points (the Spurs rank second at 6.4), the Warriors entered last weekend
riding a 12-game winning streak with nine of those wins coming by 13 points or
more. Most of those have come with their star players (Curry, Klay Thompson)
resting in the fourth quarter. If the games aren’t won by halftime, they’re won
in the third quarter, and Curry is the engine behind their offensive
brilliance.
If you prefer to keep
your head out of the data sheet and fixed on the television, Curry offers plenty
of MVP credentials. He bombs threes from across the Bay, his dribbling skills
appear to be honed from sorcery, and his no-look passes recall the likes Isiah
Thomas and Magic Johnson. He’s Wayne Gretzky without the skates. I’d link to his
highlights, but the YouTube rabbit hole that awaits would keep you from
finishing the article.
Take this humiliation
of Los Angeles Clippers’ star Chris Paul on Monday night.
Stephen Curry and the clip that launched a
thousand memes.
Even Paul was
impressed enough to post one of the resulting memes on his own Instagram.
Tune into any Warriors
game in the first half and notice opposing defenses try to surround Curry at the
top of the perimeter, only to leave his teammates open in the corner, on the
elbow of the key or in the post. His versatility has helped unlock career-best
seasons from budding stars like Thompson, now one of the NBA’s most feared
offensive threats, and journeymen like Marresse Speights, who two years ago was
unceremoniously released by a Cleveland team that finished 24-58. When Curry has
the ball, they have a better chance to score. And he’s already the most feared
shooter in the NBA. Curry’s spindly constitution and lateral agility keep
defenses permanently on their heels. If they lunge, he’ll bolt by them for a
close-range shot. If they sag off, he’ll knock down a three-pointer. Not since
Steve Nash’s MVP seasons in Phoenix has a point guard helmed an offense with
such fluidity, and more importantly, speed.
Curry
is the real MVP. Photograph: AP
Here’s where the
argument gets a bit stat-heavy. Be patient. We’ll make it through together.
The Warriors average
slightly over 100 possessions per game, the quickest pace in the NBA. Logically,
that’s a risky gambit. More possessions offer more opportunities for points as
well as turnovers. Under Curry’s direction (predominantly), the Warriors are
averaging 19.8 assists per game (tops in the NBA) against 13 turnovers, a
staggeringly good ratio eclipsed only by the Clippers, whose offense is guided
by an eight-time All-Star in Paul. Curry himself is averaging 7.7 per game while
reducing his turnover percentage (turnovers per 100 plays) by almost two per
game from last season. Thus, Curry is not only distributing the ball to players
with a high likelihood of scoring, he’s protecting it better than he has in his
career.
Perhaps most shocking
is that Curry, sometimes criticized as a weak defender, is a key part of a unit
that leads the NBA in defensive rating (measured by points allowed per 100
possessions). Lest you think that’s due to Golden State’s burly interior
defenders, the perimeter defenders are holding opponents to 33.6% from
three-point range, good for fifth in the NBA. Curry isn’t a defensive liability.
And if he still is, then coach Steve Kerr has minimized opponents’ chances to
exploit him.
Harden, the only
reasonable challenger* to Curry in the MVP race – the Pelicans’ Anthony Davis
would be another if not for a midseason injury – has compiled an outstanding
season with 10 40-point games, markedly improved defense, decreased turnovers
and countless clutch baskets. His dizzying crossover dribble and step-back
jumper have established him as one of the game’s finest individual scorers, and
his notoriously lazy defense appears to be a bygone criticism, with Houston a
top-five team in defensive efficiency. His true shooting percentage (a measure
of efficiency that calculates 2-point shots, 3-point shots and free throws) sits
at 60.7, his offensive rating (an estimate of how many points the player
produces per 100 possessions) sits at 118.5, and his team has won 53 games.
These are MVP credentials.
Curry ranks better
Harden in all of those categories and more.
For further proof,
peek into their shot charts.
Curry’s shot chart indicates proficiency from all spots
on the floor. Illustration: StatMuse
Harden’s chart reflects Illustration: Statmuse
Curry is shooting far
above league average virtually everywhere on the floor. The only places he isn’t
is right around the bucket, where percentages are already high.
So if you seek an
abstract, a case to present to your friends, then I offer this: Stephen Curry
eclipses James Harden in every relevant offensive statistical category outside
of points per game. He makes up for that loss with his passing. He orchestrates
the NBA’s superlative offense while aiding the league’s best statistical
defense. He is the most exciting player to watch in the NBA, and one of its
finest ambassadors. He’s played over 300 fewer minutes than Harden because he’s
often controls the first three quarters of the game and allows himself to rest
during the fourth. If you think that’s due to Kerr and the Golden State front
office’s savvy roster construction, fine; but the offense never reaches this
kind of efficiency and dominance without Curry’s presence and direction.
When Kerr was asked
about Morey’s hamfisted Harden campaign, the affable coach answered “We have
bigger things to worry about.”
Kerr knows he has the
league MVP. Now it’s on the voting committee to let Curry hoist the trophy.
* Yes, I ignored
Russell Westbrook as an MVP candidate and will continue to do so. No MVP
struggles to get his team to the playoffs no matter how many gaudy
triple-doubles he has. He’s had a wonderful individual season, but doesn’t come
close to affecting his team the way Curry, Harden, Davis or even his injured
teammate Kevin Durant does.
It was a warm Saturday
afternoon, Match of the Day, May 1973. A huge crowd had packed into the Sydney
Cricket Ground to see South Sydney Rabbitohs against St George.
A titanic battle
between two great rivals saw the scores locked at 11-11, and with just three
minutes remaining South Sydney were granted a penalty on the halfway line. Eric
Simms, arguably rugby league’s greatest goal-kicker, couldn’t make the distance.
Rabbitohs captain Bob McCarthy took a gamble and threw the ball to the 21-year-
old rookie Claude Williams.
A strapping young
Wiradjuri Aboriginal man with a smile as broad as his shoulders, a shock of wavy
black hair and a Zapata moustache, Williams was a surprise inclusion in the
starting line-up. According to the match report in the Sydney Morning Herald, he
was “hardly sighted in general play”, but Williams nonchalantly caught
McCarthy’s pass and slowly fashioned a kicking mound out of the turf.
“The crowd were
getting impatient, but I needed to build it high to make the distance,”
remembers Williams. “I wasn’t nervous, because it was so far out nobody expected
me to make it.”
How the sports pages
reacted to that kick.Photograph: Claude Williams
After a long run-up,
Williams put his right boot firmly through the ball and sent it sailing
majestically between the uprights to a rapturous roar from the Rabbitohs
supporters. The first man to embrace him was Simms, and in the dressing room
after the match, Channel Nine television personality and fanatical Rabbitohs fan
Don Lane grabbed him by the collar, drew him close and planted a kiss firmly on
his forehead. “Thank God Bobby gave Claude the kick,” said Simms, “I never would
have made it that far.” Williams was asked to appear on rugby league’s weekly
television show. A star, it seemed, was in the making.
“I never went on that
program,” says Williams. For all the accolades he received in the press after
the winning kick, his memory is of returning to work on the Monday. A storeman
at a cosmetics company in Surry Hills, he was feted by his colleagues. “I walked
in and all of them came round to our section and said ‘good onya Claude,
fantastic kick’. You know for me, it was no big deal. I was never one to blow my
own trumpet or act the poser. I had confidence in myself, but I didn’t talk
myself up.”
It’s characteristic of
Williams that he skipped the scheduled television appearance to spend the day
with his mate and two girls on a harbour ferry. “You know, it was in the paper
about me scoring that kick,” he says. “My mate was telling the girls that I was
the bloke that scored the kick. I was just 21, a shy kind of kid, in those days
I wasn’t a talker. I wasn’t confident speaking to the media – in those days
there was no media training. I never had that experience and confidence to get
in front of a TV camera and talk about it. There weren’t too many players who
were media savvy in those days.”
Self-promoter he was
not, but from a young age Claude Williams was destined to be a sportsman. At 15
he was opening both the bowling and the batting for the Sydney Cricket Club in
the AW Green Shield competition. Indeed several years before that kick for the
Rabbitohs, he made his debut at the SCG in a City vs Country representative
cricket match. “It was like hallowed turf,” he remembers fondly.
The Sydney Cricket Ground - where it all started
for Williams.Photograph: Claude
Williams
Rugby league, however,
became the focus after Williams helped Zetland win the 1969 C grade grand final
against La Perouse at Redfern Oval. As Williams tells it, the legendary
Rabbitohs captain John Sattler picked him out of the pack, silencing the rowdy
dressing room as he entered to congratulate them on their victory.
“I was sitting in the
corner of the change room, and he came over, put his hand over and said, ‘Hi,
I’m John Sattler’. I was a really quiet kid in those days, you know I was very
reserved and introverted. I said ‘Yes, how are you John, I’m Claude’. He said,
‘Yes, I know who you are Claude, I just watched you play and I was very
impressed with your game. I’m here to ask you if you’d like to play senior grade
next year.’.
Williams’s father
encouraged his son to seize the opportunity. “I was in two minds,” he says. “I
was only 16, and it wasn’t as if I lacked confidence, but I thought I wouldn’t
mind playing another year or two and mature a bit. But Dad said, ‘No I think you
should give it a go.’” His father, of course, was the iconic country and western
singer Claude ‘Candy’ Williams. Mates with the great Aboriginal leaders Chika
Dixon and Charlie Perkins and a regular performer at the Foundation for
Aboriginal Affairs, Candy was a star in his own right, yet he could be found at
all of his son’s matches, no matter the level.
It was the kind of
support that Williams needed, but didn’t get from rugby league. In one Rabbitohs
game, when he lined up against a childhood hero, Williams was shocked by what he
heard. “I was on the wing, I got the ball and as I ran inside he yelled out
‘kill that black cunt!’ I thought, fuck! It sort of threw me. It stung me. It
really hurt inside – it affected me that. When he got the ball I’d chase him to
try and get a square-up, but he was quick and I never got the chance.”
Williams only played a
handful of top-flight rugby league matches, but he refuses to dwell on the
possibilities. He freely admits that Clive Churchill’s Rabbitohs – “that
fantastic team” he calls them – was near impossible to break into as a young
player.
“The career depends on
what you produce on the field,” he says firmly when I ask him whether he lacked
the requisite streak of self-interest. And the racism? “It was just as bad for
the Chinese,” he says. “They were called chinks, the Europeans – the Italians
and the Greeks – they were called wogs and dagoes, so they copped it just as
much.”
Williams leads celebrations on Souths’ bench,
flanked by Clive Churchill and John Sattler. Photograph: Claude Williams
Williams walked away
from rugby league to pursue his great love – basketball. From a multitalented
family (his first cousin Harry was the first Indigenous man to represent the
Socceroos at a World Cup in 1974), throughout his short career at the Rabbitohs
he had moonlighted as a guard with Eastern Suburbs in Sydney’s premier
basketball competition. Monday and Friday basketball training bookended
Wednesday night games, while Tuesdays, Thursdays and weekends were dedicated to
rugby league. “My whole week – basically six days – was taken up with basketball
or rugby league,” he says. All, of course, while drawing his wage on the factory
floor.
In 1974 and 1975
Williams was selected for the New South Wales basketball team in the Nationals,
but his contract with South Sydney prevented him from participating. “I wasn’t
getting paid much, but I was still contracted,” he explains. “For two years I
said, ‘I can’t go, I’m sorry.’”
Walking away from
rugby league to pursue a career in basketball might have seemed like a step
backwards, but it connected him to something far bigger than sport.
Williams felt more at
home on the basketball court than on the football field.Photograph: Claude Williams
The 1970s was a time
of enormous change in the consciousness of Indigenous people. A group of young
black radicals including Gary Foley, Bruce McGuiness, Paul Coe, Bob Maza, Denis
Walker and Bobbi Sykes were at the crest of a new Black Power movement in
Brisbane, Redfern and Fitzroy. Black empowerment was the call,
self-determination was the aim. Williams was never involved in the politics –
“mate, I was too busy playing sport,” he grins – however just as the nascent
Aboriginal Black Power movement looked to the United States for inspiration and
fraternal support, Williams was influenced by a trip to the west coast of
America.
Basketball took him
places where rugby league couldn’t. In 1977 Williams travelled to America,
Canada and Hawaii with the NSW Basketball team. The bumper crowds, marching
bands, orchestras and cheerleaders of college basketball were a shock to the
Australians, but for Williams the off-court action was just as enlightening.
“They thought we were
English,” he says. “I found the African Americans knew a little bit about
Aboriginal Australia, and when I spoke to them it was like an instant bond. Like
we’d come from the same footsteps – there was an instant respect. It was the
same with the African American players in the NBL, I used to connect with them
stronger than most. They had a higher respect for me as an Aboriginal man.”
Returning home,
Williams landed a job as a clerk with the council and played with the City of
Sydney Astronauts in the early seasons of the National Basketball League, which
was launched in 1979. The bulging lump that protrudes from the knuckle on his
right hand is a war scar testament to his rough and ready style of play. By
1983, the Astronauts became the Sydney SuperSonics, and the legendary American
import Owen Wells signed on as player-coach. Wells fired a rocket up Australian
basketball, and with Williams in the team, lead the SuperSonics to a
record-breaking 16-game winning streak.
Williams, the centre of attention on the Sydney
SuperSonics’ bench.Photograph: Claude
Williams
“We connected over
music,” says Williams. “He was into a lot of jazz – he was different, most of
the African Americans who came out were all r&b. In the dressing rooms it
was always ghetto blasters with the latest r&b and soul music, but not many
were into jazz. Owen was highly intelligent, highly educated and knew his music.
He was very stylish and classy – an inspiration to his team-mates.”
As Williams recounts
memories of his old friend, it’s hard to ignore the influence. The wild hair of
Williams’s youth has given way to a slicker short-back-and-sides, and his
handlebar moustache has been trimmed down to a thin pencil above his upper lip.
A comb is always handy in his bag. Gold jewellery adorns his fingers and neck,
several rubber bracelets with the words “Deadly Vibe” wrap around each wrist,
and he’s wearing a Miles Davis t-shirt. He’s equally comfortable discussing the
finer points of Betty Davis, The Undisputed Truth or The Isley Brothers at Lazy
Bones Lounge in Marrickville as he is playing snooker in local competitions.
In 1987, Williams
became Wells’s assistant coach and as they travelled around the country they
roomed together, sharing basketball tactics and listening to Blue Train by John
Coltrane. Their friendship was an intellectual bond. After 101 NBL games,
Williams was ready for a new challenge.
The composition of
Sydney basketball was set to change for a third time within a decade. In October
1987, the owner of the SuperSonics, Mike Wrublewski, formed a new franchise
called the Sydney Kings. A merger of the SuperSonics and the West Sydney
Westars, the press reported the Kings would be “the saviour of basketball in
this city”.
A portrait of Claude Williams, taken at the
National Centre of Indigenous Excellence in March, 2015.Photograph: Phat Ngo for Guardian Australia
Williams was appointed
as head coach, becoming one of just a few Australians to take the reigns of an
NBL team and the first and only Aboriginal basketball coach. Rugby league
commentator and historian Brad Cooke reckons Williams was the second Aboriginal
coach in any elite sport (Arthur Beetson coached Easts in rugby league in the
1970s).
Williams played the
role of front-man, commenting in 1987 that the creation of the Sydney Kings was
“a positive step that we are united”. The reality, however, was rather
different. The “one team, one city” concept had been advocated for years by
Wrublewski, but it was only after mounting financial losses that West Sydney
agreed to the idea. The rivalry inevitably seeped from board level into the
dressing room. In one infamous incident, team-mates Damien Keogh and Marc Ridlen
– formerly of the Westars and SuperSonics respectively – almost came to blows in
a match against Illawarra Hawks.
If coaching is all
about managing delicate egos, Williams’s job to funnel the players of two teams
into one entity was a crash course in diplomacy. “The better players would be
used to playing lots of minutes,” he says. “I was a first year head coach, I had
all the strategies in place and I knew exactly what I wanted. It wasn’t
particularly the team I wanted – I didn’t have carte blanche. There was a
compromise between the two clubs with the selection of players. I knew it would
take time for the chemistry to develop.”
As the season wore on
and results failed to go their way, the Sydney Morning Heraldbasketball journalist Ian Cockerill concluded: “Although the Kings have
assembled a squad of brilliant individuals this year they have failed to congeal
as a team and appear in danger of missing the play-offs.”
Miss the finals they
did, and by season’s end Williams had accepted an offer from Newcastle Falcons.
Wrublewski was notorious for his hands-on, passionate approach, but Williams was
continually frustrated by the intrusion of board members in the coaching of the
team. His two seasons at Newcastle, however, weren’t much better. “Like a lot of
coaches I personally found it difficult to communicate with board members who
are businessmen, not basketballers,” he says.
A little over two
decades on since his last involvement in top-flight sport, it seems Claude
Williams is remembered in flashes and snippets. Few of the basketball and rugby
league scribes of the day recall the man, although they all remember the name.
There’s bits and pieces on the Sydney Kings website, and of course a few
mentions on basketball and rugby league websites.
‘South Sydney’s lively young utility back’,
according to this newspaper report, with Rabbitohs coach Clive Churchill.
Photograph: Claude Williams
One of these sites,
Rebel Rabbitohs, is particularly revealing. ABC journalist Andrew Denton – a man
who led the charge for South Sydney to be returned to the NRL in 2001 – tells
his favourite childhood memory of listening to the legendary rugby league radio
commentator Frank Hyde calling Williams’s goal-kick in 1973. “A couple of years
ago I saw Andrew on the corner of Oxford and Crown Street,” says Williams. “I
was going to go up to him and introduce myself, but he approached me and
mentioned the kick. We had a good chat.”
Like many Indigenous
athletes of yore, Williams is best remembered among his own people – recognised
as one of the “Black Diamonds” in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
Sports Hall of Fame. He comes from a long line of luminaries from the Wiradjuri
nation, including Linda Burney, Paul Coe, Mum Shirl, Anita Heiss, Stan Grant,
Wally Carr, Evonne Goolagong-Cawley and David Peachey.
Yet Cooke, who used to
run a boxing program with Williams on Koori Radio, reckons he’s been
under-utilised by the community. “My best memory of Claude, apart from being the
legend and a Black Diamond, was from a boxing trip to Vegas in 2009,” he says.
“He went from being an “Uncle” and a godlike figure to getting excited for
interviews with legends of boxing like [Muhammad Ali’s biographer] Thomas Hauser
and Roberto Duran. He talked to Roberto about his fight against the Aboriginal
boxer Hector Thompson.”
For the best part of a
decade Williams travelled around Australia running basketball programs for
Aboriginal kids with Vibe Australia, and he helped Aboriginal people find work
during the 2000 Sydney Olympics as an Indigenous liaison officer at Stadium
Australia.
When there’s an event
in Sydney’s Aboriginal community, you’ll find Williams there. In 2006, while he
was running the boxing radio program, a plaque was unveiled in Glebe to
commemorate the great Aboriginal middleweight boxer Dave Sands. The plaque, said
Williams in his speech as MC, “is a symbol of our commitment to remember and
celebrate the great heroes in our community”. In February, he addressed the
crowd at Redfern’s National Centre of Indigenous Excellence to mark the
anniversary of the Australian Government’s apology to the Stolen Generation.
The National Centre of
Indigenous Excellence turned five this month, and “Uncle Claude” works in the
after-school program and the Deadly Young leaders program. He was born just up
the road in Camperdown, and you’ll find him every other week in his old stomping
ground with his good mate Tony Mundine. Tony, of course, is the father of one of
Australia’s greatest sportsmen, Anthony, a man who has also traversed two
different sports with great success. There are links and deep roots in these
friendships – shared memories, shared histories and shared goals. “I want to
give back to these kids and this community,” says Williams. “It’s a
challenge.”
Basketball remains a
burning passion, and Williams hopes to return to coaching sooner rather than
later. Like a tactics junkie needing his fix, to this day he’ll watch college
basketball over NBA, where the coaching and strategy is more pronounced. “It’s
the greatest game I’ve ever played,” he says. “Basketball is an intelligent game
– there’s individual skill and the technical side.”
For a man that has
been at the top of his game in rugby league, basketball and junior cricket,
incredibly there remains one lingering regret. At 15, while he was at Cleveland
Street High School, he was scouted by the NSW Lawn Tennis Association to join
their elite program at White City in Paddington. “I was excited, and to be
honest, in my heart, that’s what I wanted,” he says.
Cost was the barrier
to entry, and the exorbitant fee was out of the family budget. His dream was
dashed. “I’d have to say if there’s any regrets, that would be the biggest ever
in my life, that I wasn’t able to play tennis,” says Williams. “I honestly think
I wouldn’t have played cricket, rugby league or basketball. I believed I was the
best. I still know to this day that if I could’ve followed that path I could’ve
gone all the way.”
The New England Patriots have won the Super Bowl. Spring Training is still a
month away, as is March Madness. That means you now have no valid excuse for
turning your attention to the NBA. Well, OK, other than being a Knicks or Lakers
fan. Here’s this week’s biggest basketball stories. The Atlanta Hawks win
streak ends at 19 games
January marked a turning point for the Atlanta Hawks, as the question
surrounding the team went from “are the Hawks real?” to “are the Hawks really
the best team in the East?” They went 17-0 in the month of January, an
immaculate record that helped solidify their status as the favorites to win the
Eastern Conference.
In fact, it would eventually take Anthony Davis going full on Anthony Davis
to finally stop them. He scored 29 points and snagged 13 rebounds in Monday
night’s New Orleans Pelicans’ 115-100 victory over the Hawks, snapping their win
streak at a franchise-record 19 games. Even with that loss, the Hawks 40-7
record puts them seven games ahead of the second place Toronto Raptors in the
Eastern Conference standings. No shame in being beaten by the best.
With the East up in the air after LeBron James’s return to the Cleveland
Cavaliers, there was always a chance that an upstart team would capitalize on
the opportunity and separate itself from the rest of the pack. It’s just that
nobody suspected it would be the Hawks, especially not after an offseason where
the only headlines they made were those involving their controlling owner and
general manager being pushed out the door after making racially insensitive
remarks.
Instead, the star-less Hawks have been playing near-flawless team basketball
and are actually drawing in fans. As Yahoo! Sports’ Jay Busbee reports:
Hawks attendance, always a league joke, is higher than it’s been in five
years, and nearing capacity levels. The team touts its increased merchandise
sales as a sign of fans’ loyalty beyond just showing up. A demographic
cross-section that cuts across age, race and gender now fills Philips Arena. A
Hawks game is now a destination, not an obligation.
Maybe the “league joke” line is a key to how many of us missed what the Hawks
were poised to do. Sometimes those of us who write about the game are so quick
to go for the easy punchlines that we don’t actually see the teams and players
that are actually playing. It’s why it took far too long for us to write about
how the Golden State Warriors had transformed into one of the best defensive
teams in the league or admit that Monta Ellis has become an all-star caliber
player with the Dallas Mavericks.
And it’s why that many, including this writer, just assumed during this
summer that this Hawks team was destined for another first round playoff exit,
played in a half-empty arena and broadcast exclusively on NBA TV. Instead they
are now playing like a team that believes it can make the NBA Finals and,
amazingly, they may be right. The NBA All-Star reserves were
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Coaches around the NBA kept the success of the Atlanta Hawks in mind when
they made their votes for the 2015 All-Star reserves. When the lineups were
announced on Thursday, Hawks Al Horford, Jeff Teague and Paul Millsap all made
the cut for the Eastern Conference. Even then there were discussions about
whether or not Atlanta was sufficiently represented, as Kyle Korver, who might
be having the best shooting season of anybody in the NBA, missed the final
cut.
Korver has a case, but it’s easy to understand why he didn’t make it. The
All-Star Game roster will always be tilted in favor of the bigger names, even
when its the coaches and not the fans who do the voting. Yes, maybe this
season’s edition of the Miami Heat really didn’t deserve to be represented by
both Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade (who might miss the game with a hamstring
injury) but it’s not a huge travesty that they get a little extra push after
four straight years of representing the East in the NBA Finals.
And yes, perhaps the Cleveland Cavaliers’ slow start should have precluded
the presence of guard Kyrie Irving, but Irving’s pivotal role in their recent
turnaround has made it difficult to argue against the selection. That just
leaves the Chicago Bulls’ Jimmy Butler, who arguably has had a good enough year
to start the All-Star Game.
So apologies to Korver, but for the most egregious snub this year we turn to
the 2015 Western Conference All-Star roster which, somehow, will not include
Damian Lillard of the Portland Trail Blazers. Yes, the voters had a much tougher
job in the West, which is stacked with great teams with rosters overflowing with
great talent, but it’s still annoying that maybe the most clutch performer in
the league didn’t get an invite. Even when a move had to be made to replace
injured Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant, voted in by fans to be a starter,
commissioner Adam Silver picked the Sacramento Kings’ DeMarcus Cousins to fill
the spot in the lineup.
While Lillard has vowed not to forget the snub, it should appease him a bit
that at least teammate LaMarcus Aldridge will be representing Portland in the
All-Star Game. Aldridge will join the Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook
and Kevin Durant, the San Antonio Spurs’ Tim Duncan, the Houston Rockets’ James
Harden, the Los Angeles Clippers’ Chris Paul and the Golden State Warriors’ Klay
Thompson among the Western Conference all-star reserves.
Admitting that Lillard was snubbed means removing one of the above players
from the list, and they all deserve to make the trip to New York. Perhaps the
real problem lies in the fact that the Western Conference right now is too
loaded with talent to be properly represented by the current NBA structure.
Unlike the discussion about revamping the playoff structure, there seems to
be a relatively simple solution here. Silver has said he’s open to the idea of
expanding the All-Star rosters which, honestly, feels like something of a
no-brainer considering the absolute surplus of amazing basketball players out
there.
This isn’t the Pro Bowl in the NFL, where somehow an Andy Dalton makes the
roster every year, or the MLB All-Star Game where the rules end up forcing
coaches to include a player from every team, even the Arizona Diamondbacks.
There’s no good reason that there’s no room for Lillard or Korver on the NBA
All-Star roster. The Injury Report
The Western Conference is so brutal that it seems quite likely that the final
seedings will be determined by which contending teams end the season with the
fewest major injuries. If so, this has been a bad week for the Houston Rockets
and the Dallas Mavericks.
In Houston, Dwight Howard is out indefinitely with a right knee injury. The
good news for the Rockets is that they have been playing consistently with or
without their star center, who has been missing games or playing hurt throughout
much of the season.
Can that continue though? Can the Rockets system keep humming even without
the Last Of The “True” Centers on the floor? Can James Harden channel his inner
Kevin Durant and keep up his MVP caliber of play long enough for Howard to get
right? Or is this line of questioning just blatant concern trolling from those
of us who find the Rockets’ style of play annoying and hate the fact that it
seems to be working?
Meanwhile the Mavericks’ decision to go all-in and trade away valuable bench
assets in exchange for Boston Celtics point guard Rajon Rondo has hit a pretty
major snag. Rondo will be out indefinitely after an eye injury suffered in a
collision with his own team-mate, Richard Jefferson. It’s yet another freak
injury in a career that seems to be full of them for Rondo, and Dallas has to
hope that the point guard’s unique stubbornness means that he will be back on
the court sooner rather than later.
Oh there is good news in the Western Conference though: Ricky Rubio made his
return to the Minnesota Timberwolves lineup on Monday after missing most of the
season with an ankle injury. Since this is Minnesota, Rubio’s return won’t
really make much of a difference in the standings, the Timberwolves fell to the
Mavericks in his first game back, but still: the game is more fun when Rubio’s
around. The Cleveland Cavaliers can’t lose, Kevin Love can’t win
When the New Orleans Pelicans handed the Atlanta Hawks their first loss of
2015, that meant that the Cleveland Cavaliers now had the NBA’s longest active
winning streak. The Cavaliers have won their last 11 games and maybe, just
maybe, are finally start to coalesce into something resembling the team they
should be on paper.
The biggest reason that the Cavaliers have started to put things together has
been that LeBron James has looked more like himself after that two week stretch
of missed games. The second biggest reason is that Kyrie Irving has been
justifying his All-Star selection. When the Cavaliers played against the
Portland Trail Blazers last Wednesday, Irving put up a career high 55 points in
the 99-94 Cleveland victory.
Power forward Kevin Love has not been getting the same amount of credit. It’s
been a bad week for Love, in fact. First he didn’t make the All-Star team, while
Klay Thompson, the Golden State Warriors player he could have been traded for
during the offseason break breezed in.
Then, in his first game playing in Minnesota since being traded, the
Timberwolves organization declined to give him the traditional video tribute,
preferring to honor Mike Miller instead (although Timberwolves head coach Flip
Saunders was not amused at the prank). Finally, in the midst of the Cavaliers
going on their first huge win streak, the main headlines are all about … LeBron
James maybe sorta kinda calling him out for being too passive. One shudders to
think of the atrocious Love puns that would be making the headlines if the
Cavaliers were on an 11 game losing streak. Other things we’ve learned
• Admission: If the Cavaliers were struggling my atrocious Kevin Love pun
would have been either “Love will tear us apart” or “Love --> building on
fire.”
• The biggest transaction of the previous week has been the Oklahoma City
Thunder signing Nick Collison to a two-year extension. No, not the sexiest of
weeks for industry gossip fodder. Nobody could have even floated a Brook Lopez
trade rumor or something?
• A writer once predicted that Sacramento Kings center DeMarcus Cousins would
be arrested in five years’ time. Five years later, Cousins called him out.
Awesome.
• Because we’re obligated to include at least one Super Bowl related item
this week: The great Jackie MacMullan wonders if the New England Patriots are
the San Antonio Spurs of the NFL. Now I’m trying to imagine Gregg Popovich and
Bill Belichick in the same press conference. It would be like a Samuel Beckett
play except without all the warmth and cheer.
• Dunk of the week: Damian Lillard states his all-star case to a receptive
Rudy Gobert.
