The Joy of Six: the NBA's hard menc

 
1) Bill Laimbeer

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.
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“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, U.C.L.A. Basketball Star, Dies at 62

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.

Lovetron beckons: legendary dunk artist Darryl Dawkins dies at 58

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 and Minnesota searching for answers as WNBA playoffs loom

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.
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“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.”

LSU Tigers star Ben Simmons: ‘I definitely want to be the No 1 pick'

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.”