Sports Guy Blog: Shawn Marion

Sep. 27, 2007 | feedback

A few weeks ago, I flew to Vancouver, British Columbia, for an EA Sports shoot. The company was filming five NBA players, including Paul Pierce and Shawn Marion, in motion capture suits for "NBA Live 08," so EA offered me a chance to join them and become the first nonplayer to wear the suit. (I'm writing about this at some point, just not today.) I ended up spending a few hours hanging out with the players and going through all the mo-cap sequences with them. It was a very fun day and I even successfully executed a three-step handshake/hug with Delonte West.

Anyway, I knew Pierce was a good guy, but the scuttlebutt on Marion had always been that he was moody and enigmatic, one of those "I never get enough respect" guys who acted happy one day and slighted the next. In Vancouver, we caught him on a good day -- Marion was laughing and joking the whole time. There was only one unhappy moment: Someone asked Marion one of those, "Hey, you must be excited for the Suns season, huh?" questions and Marion brushed it off. Clearly, he didn't want to talk about the Phoenix Suns. At all. Like a little black cloud went over him for three seconds.

At the time, I thought Marion was ticked because he had landed in a few trade rumors during the summer. Tuesday, the Arizona Republic reported that Marion hadn't shown up for camp and planned on being the last Sun to report, always a big screw-you to the rest of the team. (For instance, every guy on the Celtics has been playing together in Waltham, Mass., for the past three weeks.) Today, we learned that Marion wants to be traded for that reason, as well as the fact that the Suns refused to discuss an extension for his contract (which ends in 2009). None of this is too surprising for three reasons: Marion and Amare Stoudemire have famously clashed over the years, Jack McCallum's book "Seven Seconds Or Less" documented Marion's frustrations about being underappreciated, and there was a ridiculous moment from ESPN The Magazine's Marion feature last spring that I wrote about in my MVP column:

18. Shawn Marion
We're penalizing him 10 spots for an exchange in ESPN The Magazine's recent feature about Marion's being underappreciated. And just for the record, I agree. He's the second-most indispensable Sun besides Nash, as well as the best defensive player in the league. Anyway, here's what happened after Chris Palmer asked him if he'd rather be an MVP candidate and a 30-point scorer on a lesser team, or continue to do what he's doing on the second-best team in basketball.

"Wow, that's interesting," he says thoughtfully, as if he's never entertained the prospect before. Marion pauses nearly 10 seconds to concentrate on the question. "I've never been asked that," he continues. "That would be an interesting situation to be in, to really show people what I can do. [Pause] But we'd be in the playoffs, right?"

(You bonehead! You get to play with Steve Nash! You're in the absolute perfect situation! Why don't you call Joe Johnson and ask him how Atlanta worked out, you bozo? Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!! I read that passage and nearly flipped out like Brooke did on the "Real World" after Davis brought up her double chin. Unbelievable. Shawn Marion should be high-fiving himself every morning that Nash and Mike D'Antoni passed through his life. ... Instead, he's debating the pros and cons of carrying a mediocre team? I give up. This league seems hopeless sometimes.)

Six months later, Marion wants out. Not exactly a shock. Since this is the No Balls Association, normally when a key player on a contending team pushes for an offseason trade, the team doesn't panic (translation: doesn't have the balls to do anything) and waits for him to settle down and reconsider once he starts playing in camp with his old teammates. That might not happen this time because new Suns GM Steve Kerr played on five championship teams and values chemistry as much as anyone. (We discussed this factor extensively in my podcast with him two months ago.) Kerr knows how an unhappy Marion could single-handedly kill Phoenix's season; hell, he nearly watched this happen when he was playing with a bitter Scottie Pippen on the '98 Bulls, only MJ played out of his mind and refused to allow Pippen's sulking to derail the team. (Eventually, Scottie came around.) Kerr also knows that every healthy Steve Nash season is like playing with the house's money at this point -- you can't screw around when your best player is 33 and suffers from chronic back problems. So there's some real urgency here.

Here's the biggest issue for Kerr: Nobody they could acquire in a trade would be a better fit for the Suns than Shawn Marion. Again, he's the second-most indispensable player on that team -- he doesn't care about scoring, plays two positions, gives them rebounding and defense, fits perfectly with Nash and never misses a game. Only Andrei Kirilenko could match Marion's overall impact, and he's a complete mess (as witnessed by his bizarre trade demands last week). On paper, it would be insane to trade Marion just to fix some chemistry issues.

But there's a second red flag that doesn't get mentioned with Marion, who turns turns 30 this season: He carried an insane workload over the past three years, including 96 games and 3,750 minutes in 2004-05, 101 games and 4,100 minutes (yikes!) in 2005-06, and 91 games and 3,500 minutes in 2006-07. That's nearly four seasons in three, and if you don't think big minutes and a gigantic playoff workload can age a player overnight, check out the careers of Walt Frazier and Jo Jo White. Marion's scoring average dropped from 21.8 points in 2005-06 to 17.8 last season; his rebounds dropped from 11.8 to 9.8; and his playoff numbers dropped from 20.4/11.7 to 16.9/10.4. Could you blame those dips on Amare Stoudemire's coming back from knee surgery, or could you blame them on Marion's getting older and starting to slip because he relies on his speed and athleticism so much? Impossible to say. In Game 5 of the Spurs series with Amare suspended, Marion slapped up a 24/17. So maybe Amare did affect his numbers. We won't know for sure until he gets traded somewhere else.

I only know three things ...

1. Marion's agent must be the same guy who convinced David Caruso to leave "NYPD Blue." At some point on his next team, Shawn Marion is going to feel like an idiot for pushing to get traded AWAY from Steve Nash and Mike D'Antoni. That's a mortal lock. Playing for the Suns makes Marion seem better than he actually is. Watch what happens if he gets traded.

2. Kirilenko is the only attainable player who represents close to full value for Marion (maybe 85-90 percent). Playing with Nash in a freewheeling style that takes advantage of his considerable skills, he's a mortal lock to turn his career around. Hell, anyone who watched the Warriors-Jazz series last spring knows that Kirilenko is trapped on the wrong team -- he's playing for the wrong coach in the wrong system, and any time the pace changes (like in that Warriors series), he becomes a different player. He's also three years younger than Marion and saves the Suns $3 million this season (money they could spend on a veteran buyout guy this winter). The only drawback other than the fact that he's coming off an atrocious (but explainable) season is Kirilenko's contract, which lasts until 2011 and carries a whopping $34 million price tag over the final two seasons. For a team that's terrified of the luxury tax like the Suns, those are some frightening numbers on paper.

3. Every other trade option could potentially kill Phoenix's title hopes. Perusing ESPN's Trade Machine, only seven teams could even pull off a realistic offer for Marion: Utah (for Kirilenko), Los Angeles Lakers (for Lamar Odom and a small contract to make the numbers work), Detroit (for Rasheed Wallace and a small contract), Washington (for Antawn Jamison and his expiring deal), Memphis (for Mike Miller, one more young guy and Stro Swift's expiring deal), Houston (for Shane Battier and expiring contracts) and New York (for a package of young players and expiring contracts highlighted by David Lee). You could rule out the last four destinations because Suns fans would freak if Marion was traded for 60-70 cents on the dollar, especially on the heels of the Kurt Thomas trade. I don't see Detroit's going over the luxury tax for a Sheed/Marion swap. The Odom deal would save money and solve chemistry issues, only another problem would be created because Odom has so much trouble staying on the floor -- he's missed 146 games in the past six seasons and played more than 64 games exactly twice.

Really, the only logical move for the Suns is Kirilenko. He solves their chemistry issues, replaces Marion's rebounding/shot-blocking/defense and gives them a ton of flexibility with lineups. (With the way AK47 protects the rim, Phoenix could even play him at center in a breakneck, "smallball deluxe" lineup that would have Don Nelson drooling in envy.) I'm in the minority here, but I think Kirilenko would make the All-Star team every February playing with Nash. For some reason, it reminds me of the "Basic Instinct" producers' finally casting Sharon Stone to be in an erotic thriller in 1991. She went 10 years without the right script, then it happened and she immediately became a mega-star. I feel the same way about Kirilenko. He's been trapped doing the wrong movies for the past five years.

Over everything else, I hope the Kirilenko-Marion swap happens for one reason: Steve Nash deserves to play in one NBA Finals before the end of his prime, but it won't happen with an unhappy Marion, just like Utah won't make the finals with an unhappy Kirilenko. Rarely does a straight-up deal make this much sense on paper, although Utah should throw in something extra to account for the slight upgrade (as well as the fact that Phoenix gets stuck with those last two years of Kirilenko's deal). I hope this trade happens in some form. For everyone's sake. Even for you, Shawn Marion, the guy who won't know how good he has it until it's too late.

(Of course, this is the NBA, so the trade probably won't happen. Alas.)

Sports Guy Blog: Greg Oden SLOTTED

Sep. 13, 2007 | feedback

Warning: Do not read this if you're a Portland Trail Blazers fan.

The three-word e-mail came this morning from someone who knows things: "Oden -- microfracture surgery."

My three-word response: "Oh. My. God."

It's one of the saddest stories in recent NBA history, regardless of how it turns out down the road: Not just that Portland took the wrong guy last June, but that the same city may have been screwed over twice. There was Bowie-over-MJ, and now, there might be Oden-over-Durant.

The Blazers' fans don't deserve this. They don't deserve the "Bowie 2.0" jokes, and they don't deserve to endure a season of Kevin Durant knife-in-the-stomach highlights when he's averaging 25 points a game on a bad Seattle team. On a larger scale, the double whammy of Bowie/Oden brings back memories of the day Reggie Lewis dropped dead seven summers after Lenny Bias' coke overdose. Obviously it's not as tragic because nobody died, but there was that same "Oh God, not again ..." feeling upon hearing the news. I know that feeling all too well. As a sports fan, there's nothing worse.

It's not like this story came out of the blue. Heading into the draft, there were concerns about Oden's long-term physical health and the fact his legs were different sizes. After his predraft physical with Portland, rumors spread that the Blazers were concerned about his knees, followed by a round of stories that they weren't concerned at all. I believed at the time the Oden-Durant thing was so close, ANY potential physical concerns should have swung the choice to Durant; that's one of the reasons I kept writing last June that Durant should be Portland's pick. Everyone kept writing Oden was a sure thing; if anything, Durant was the sure thing. He has a chance to become one of the greatest offensive players ever. That's his ceiling. We've never seen anyone remotely like him. Throw in his competitiveness and flair for the dramatic and I probably wrote more words arguing Durant's case than anything I've ever written for ESPN.com. Even for the team Portland had, Durant was the logical pick -- the Blazers could have kept Zach Randolph and played Durant at small forward instead of stupidly giving Randolph away.

From Portland's viewpoint, what worried me was Oden wasn't entirely a basketball decision. Clearly, his gregarious personality played a huge role -- the Blazers even said so -- and when he hammed it up at a local parade after the draft, you could see why they picked him. After the whole Jail Blazers debacle, they spent the next few years trying to upgrade the character of their team. Hence, the curious Martell Webster pick (sixth in the '05 draft???), the Brandon Roy/LaMarcus Aldridge picks (and the team shying away from Ty Thomas); the Randolph trade; Steve Francis' buyout and everything else. It's not like Durant is a bad guy -- he's actually a good guy, just shy and uncomfortable with the press -- but Oden's deadpan wit and constant smile off the court made him a more seductive pick for a franchise that was desperately trying to win back the citizens of Portland. Supposedly, they were also attracted to Oden because he's a loyal person who didn't care where he played, whereas Durant's motives were tougher to peg. In four years, if Durant evolved into a superstar and had the words of the wrong agent in his ear, would he bail on Portland to play for a big market? Could they take that chance?

So, Greg Oden was the "safe" pick.

Here's the irony of the whole thing: You know who would have won the good people of Portland back and gotten them excited about basketball again? A kick-ass superstar like Kevin Durant. That's why the Blazers should have taken the most talented player. And everything that happened after the draft helped Durant's case: Oden looked terrible in the summer league and dropped out of the Olympic tryouts because of exhaustion (a dubious reason for someone who's 19; we should have known right there). Meanwhile, Durant got better and better in summer league and knocked everyone's socks off during the Olympic tryouts, including a jaw-dropping performance in the Blue-White scrimmage on TV. Even before the story broke about Oden's surgery, I was 100 percent convinced Portland would regret passing on Durant. We'll see 20 more Odens before we see another Durant.

You could say "Those who ignore the mistakes of history are doomed to repeat them," and you might be right. But throwing aside all the videotapes, predraft interviews and workouts and everything else, there's this: At the ESPYS two months ago, I helped write jokes for Jimmy Kimmel, whose dressing room was backstage at the Kodak Theater and right off a hallway where celebrities were ushered in and out before and after the show. So, I watched every single athlete walk by at some point, and I swear, if I hadn't taken this summer off to write a book, I would have written about this story in a blog or something.

Anyway, when you see basketball players dressed in normal clothes, it's mesmerizing to watch them walk for two reasons: They're always much bigger in person, but they move so effortlessly that it's always strangely discombobulating to watch them walk, like they belong to another species or something. For instance, we all know one or two exceptionally tall people who don't play sports -- they always move gingerly, and their posture usually isn't that good, and everything about them says, "I wish I wasn't this tall." The best athletes in the NBA don't carry themselves like this. They glide. Everything moves effortlessly as they walk, and it's impossible to fully explain unless you've seen it. Even someone like Shaq glides across the room like he's the size of Steve Nash. They don't move like normal tall people.

So, before and after the show, I was vigilantly watching everyone stroll by for one reason: I wanted to see Oden and Durant walking in normal clothes. It was like the final piece of the "Durant vs. Oden" puzzle for me. As it turned out, I got to see Durant first -- he shuffled down the hallway, all 81 inches of him, looking like he was put on Earth to play sports for a living. No big surprise there. Even the biggest nonsports fan on the planet could watch Durant walk for 35 feet and think, "That guy was born to play basketball." Now, I needed Oden. We didn't see him before the show, and I didn't see him right afterward. Just when I was about to give up, a friend of mine said, "Yo, Oden just walked by."

I scurried down the hallway to see him. Lo and behold, Oden was walking by himself down the last stretch of the hallway, about 50 feet in all, right before the exit to head outside.

And you know what? He walked like a 50-year-old man. His posture was screwed up. He had the Fred Sanford walk going. If you saw him from behind and just studied his walk, you would have thought it was a retired player, someone like Patrick Ewing or Robert Parish. I couldn't believe it. I didn't stop talking about it the rest of the night. Greg Oden walked like a guy who had bad knees. If I were Portland's GM and watched Oden walk across the room, that would have been it for me. The next day, I even called my buddy Sully (who works for the Celtics) just to have the obligatory, "Yo, we might have dodged a bullet May 22; Greg Oden walks like a 50-year-old man" conversation.

Now, you could argue this is the single dumbest thing I've ever written, and you might even be right. Just know I have spent the past two months telling that Oden/ESPYS story to everyone who brought up the Oden-Durant thing to me. Sometimes in life, you just know with these things. And yeah, there's a chance he was already favoring his knee at the ESPYS, or he hurt his knee during summer league. There's also a chance his body doesn't carry its weight correctly and puts unnecessary stress on his legs and joints. ... You know, the exact same problem Sam Bowie had.

I hope I'm wrong. Portland needs Greg Oden to be good. The NBA needs Greg Oden to be good. On a personal note, I was legitimately excited to watch him play. Now he's gone for the season, and any NBA fan who doesn't cringe at the phrase "microfracture surgery" is lying their ass off. Amare Stoudemire came back, so there's hope for Blazers fans. Just don't tell me Greg Oden was the safe pick of the 2007 NBA draft. Two months ago, I wrote Durant was "the surest thing to come into the league since Jordan. Barring injury, he's going to be the league's next dominant forward."

That's what the Portland Trail Blazers passed up June 28, 2007. I thought it would haunt them some day. ... I just didn't know it would haunt them so soon.

Sports Guy Blog: ESPN Classic NBA slate

Sep. 7, 2007 | feedback

Good news for NBA junkies: Leading up to the 2007-08 season, ESPN Classic asked me to pick games for a limited seven-week run on Wednesday nights. So, I steered away from staples like the Bird-Dominique shootout and the MJ Flu Game and picked seven games that slipped through the cracks over the past two decades. If you love the NBA, watch these games so the ratings are good, and they'll keep letting me pick more of them. No, seriously. Do it for me.

Here's the schedule:

Sept. 12: Cleveland at Boston, Game 3, 1992
From Bird's final season, the spring when he was playing in a bulky back brace and spending nights in traction. In fact, he doesn't even play in this game. But this was a great series and none of the games ever get shown -- you had the Garden on its last legs, Mark Price and Reggie Lewis at their peaks, and a number of entertaining guys on both teams. (This Cavs team could have made a Utah-like run in the East if Price and Brad Daugherty had stayed healthy.) The energy in the building was particularly incredible for the Boston home games -- we knew it was the last run with Bird, Parish and McHale -- and this particular Celtics team was especially lovable. With Bird out of Game 3, every fan and player stepped up. It's the kind of thing that just doesn't happen any more in the Luxury Suite Era. Most importantly, everyone forgets about Lewis, who had 36 points and carried a crunch-time comeback in this one. We never see him on ESPN Classic or NBA-TV so that's why I picked this one.

Sept. 19: Seattle at Phoenix, Game 5, 1993
You can't go wrong with any game involving the '93 Suns, but this one features two superb matchups (Barkley in his prime vs. a young Shawn Kemp, KJ in his prime vs. a young GP) and Dan Majerle going nuts with a then-record eight 3s. Up until this point, the series sucked ... then Game 5 turned out to be a classic. By the way, anyone who thinks the NBA hasn't been diluted by expansion needs to check out the talent in this game: Barkley, KJ, Kemp, Payton, Majerle, Danny Ainge, Tom Chambers, Sam Perkins, Eddie Johnson, Ricky Pierce, Derrick McKey, Ced Ceballos, Nate McMillan, Dana Barros, Oliver Miller during his one skinny year, Richard Dumas during one of his drugs-free years ... holy crap.

Sept. 26: Golden State at L.A. Lakers, Game 2, 1991
The Lakers' last extended playoff run with Magic, G-State at the peak of the TMC Era, and if that's not enough, Chris Mullin and Magic both catch fire during the game. If I remember correctly, the final score ends up in the mid-120s, Mullin finishes with 45 and Magic finishes with 48 or 49 ... it's a legitimate shootout. Also, check out a pre-ACL injury Tim Hardaway when he literally couldn't be guarded; a goofy-but-effective Warriors bench that included Sarunas Marciulionis, Tom Tolbert, Rod Higgins and Mario Elie; a skinny Sam Perkins on the Lakers; and especially, how unstoppable Magic was in this game. Remember, this was his 13th NBA season and nobody could guard him. How long could he have been great if not for the HIV diagnosis?

Oct. 3: Chicago at New York, Game 3, 1996
Now we're entering the stretch of games that have never been seen on ESPN Classic or NBA TV before. This was an epic game involving the 72-win Bulls and a Knicks team that wasn't nearly as good, but they were still allowed to knock the Bulls around because the league hadn't totally cracked down on the flagrants and the intimidation stuff yet. In particular, Charles Oakley acts like a crazed bar bouncer in this game -- it's like his goal was to make Scottie Pippen cry. Meanwhile, MJ plays out of his mind and singlehandedly drags the Bulls into OT ... this was one of their three playoff defeats that year, but anyone who thinks LeBron James (or anyone else) compares to MJ in his prime needs to sit down and watch this game. Also, look at the guys that the '96 Bulls threw out in crunch-time (Bill Wennington???) and tell me you honestly believe this was the greatest team ever.

Oct. 10: Chicago at Detroit, Game 3, 1991
The Bulls break the Pistons to take a commanding 3-0 lead and control of the Eastern Conference for the rest of the decade. I haven't seen this game since it happened but remember it being inhumanly intense. These teams hated each other. Don't you miss the days when teams hated each other?

Oct. 17: Boston at Milwaukee, Game 4, 1986
The greatest team ever completes a sweep on the road and clinches a trip to the Finals ... unfortunately, the Lakers don't have the balls to show up. I haven't seen this game since it happened but specifically remember Bird ripping Milwaukee's hearts out with four 3s in the final quarter, including one last 3-pointer after the game had been decided just to make sure they were dead. The Legend was at his absolute peak this spring, as was Kevin McHale. By the way, in the '86 team video, they show the Celts re-entering their locker room after the game as a giddy Bill Walton keeps singing, "Larry Bird! Larry Bird!" and laughing in disbelief at the four 3s.

Oct. 24: Orlando at Chicago, Game 6, 1995

And you thought David Stern destroyed all the evidence of this game! Yup, this was the only time from 1991 to 1998 that MJ walked off the floor as a loser in a deciding playoff game ... although it happened with an asterisk because he was still in baseball shape, but still. Check out a loaded Magic team with Shaq, Penny, Horace Grant, Nick Anderson, Dennis Scott and Brian Shaw. Could they have been a dynasty if Anderson hadn't miss those four free throws in Game 1 of the Finals? We'll never know.