Into the Unknown, Again

For all of the slow-motion, frustratingly lonely and tragic dumpster fires of 2020, there has been a deceptively fast and infinitely welcome lead-up to the new and now current NBA season. Yes, exiguous readers, it’s here and now and will soon burgeon past preseason play to the real enchilada.

The futility of attempting yet another sporadic reboot of a dormant basketball blog is painfully clear. Its moment slipped away long ago, summers of a decade past seem ever more distant now. In 2010, Phil Jackson was beginning his final year as the Lakers’ head coach and Slava Medvedenko was three years out of the league. I wrote about anything and everything under the guise of hoops, from my dog Otis—gone these many years—to the Sages, also long gone. I used a black format with a white font during the portal’s nascent days.

I wanted to make it personal. And, I wanted it to be read. Oh, how I’d plant my links on other sites’ comment pages, or laboriously ping to the far corners of the earth with search engines that no longer exist. Independent basketball journals were flourishing then and the culture felt more connected. Or perhaps it still is and I no longer am.

This past season was uniquely interrupted, truncated and endlessly analyzed. It came to an end after 96 days in the Walt Disney World Bubble. The confetti dropped and piped-in noise ratcheted up to a banshee wail. Pixilated spectator images laughed and cried, affixed to a stretch of giant screens, as players celebrated on the court below in an oddly juxtaposed yet somehow endearing semblance of what was once taken for normal. The Los Angeles Lakers were crowned World Champions after ten long years. And suddenly the grand experiment was over, players and coaches and staff heading home like astronauts returning from a space oddity to a world that must have felt very different and strange. Left behind was an army of health workers packing up their test kits, steam cleaners advancing across garish hotel carpets, cooks and servers, security guards and shipping clerks, invisible camera operators and digital technicians packing massive equipment bags and leaving en-masse. And the memories of player vlogs, when those were what we had to acclimate to a strange new world.

A couple months have passed and once again, we’re heading into the unknown. Training camp is shorter and somewhat later, with two preseason games played to date and another looming on Wednesday. The Lakers are back in their own environment, both the UCLA Health Training Center in El Segundo and Staples downtown. But if anything, it can seem even weirder—a carefully crafted capsule that was nearly akin to a video game in structure has been replaced by cavernous and nearly empty sports arenas that have not been adjusted to scale. The punctiliously controlled Disney setting was remarkably free from a deadly contagion that flared back and forth across the outside nation, spreading in the simplest and most organic of ways—human contact and interaction. Now, the NBA will try its best to contain things on the fly, as teams hit the road again, albeit in a structured and complicated format intended to minimize travel and exposure, and best deduced by swiping a slide rule across a PDF printout.

The team also went through changes during a compressed NBA draft/free agency period, with Danny Green, Avery Bradley, Rajon Rondo, Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee exiting stage left, and Marc Gasol, Montrezl Harrell, Dennis Schröder, Wesley Matthews and Alfonzo McKinnie arriving stage right. All-in-all, a decent haul, augmented by the respective extension and re-signing of megastars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and the retention/re-signing of the remainder of last season’s supporting cast.

Among the early storylines were a double beat-down of the Los Angeles Clippers as James and Davis rested, with new players impressing on alternate nights, including sophomore Talen Horton-Tucker going supernova like the next Big Thing. Last year’s No. 46 draft pick resembles a human fire hydrant with extraordinarily long gadget arms and legs, a preternatural savvy and the chops to play both ends of the floor with a grounded ferocity that belies his age and experience. On the second of two nights, the 20-year-old from the Windy City dropped 33 points, 10 boards, four dimes and four steals, matching up against the likes of Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. At this rate he’ll be stealing thunder from fan favorite Alex Caruso, which is just fine—they both possess a team-first grind mentality that leaves room for all and all for one.

Despite the sum of the Lakers’ star power, depth and found-again championship swag, we can’t yet foresee how the impending season will play out. This is true under the most stable of circumstances and it is doubly indubitable with the vagaries of the Covid-19 era. Thirty teams along with their accompanying personnel structures, are now in wholly different environments compared to the novel summer bubble. Throw in new players, shortened conditioning regimes and the potential for injury—a constant bugaboo for ballers under the best of circumstances—and the prospect for change in any number of ways increases exponentially.

Still, it has been evident through just two exhibitions, that this is a mature squad that benefits from veteran leadership both on the floor and on the sidelines. Management and the coaching staff deserve more than a brief nod, and if this latest web restart persists beyond the immediate moment, that nod might turn to outright headbanging. Perhaps Frank Vogel can take an existential trip to Flathead Lake, and a meeting of the minds with the ZenMaster among the juniper and pine, the wild roses and brittle fern. Until then, these 1,000 words will serve as yet another bookmark in an oft-interrupted journey that began with the quixotic search for a Ukrainian power forward who vanished as unexpectedly as he appeared, a quest more figurative than literal.  

You say you know but you don’t know, unceasing change turns the circle of life and you can return to a place but not a place in time. Don’t forget to keep your head warm this winter, the lights are still flickering at Searching for Slava.

 

LA Lakers: A Decade Ends and Another Begins

After an indeterminably long summer, a roster overhaul and endless anticipation and speculation, the Los Angeles Lakers blasted into the regular NBA season, showing early strength and lengthy winning streaks that turned to signs of mortality as 2019 drew to a close. Case in point: a four game losing streak that caused heads to spin, holiday joy to ebb and trade machine fantasies to rise lazily from the complacency of a season in progress that looked nearly unstoppable for about two months.

But despite some peaks and valleys, the team is still leading in the West and will end the decade at 26-7, off a pair of back-to-back wins. At its best, this year’s edition has been a vet-heavy Goliath that steamrolls human asphalt in its path. But flies in the ointment have certainly been revealed—2020 will tell if a finer-tuned monster will emerge.

The Lakers last reached the postseason in 2013. Countless players have passed through the doors since then, along with three head coaches (four if you count Bernie Bickerstaff’s five interim efforts; five if you count Mike Brown’s final gasps to kick off the 2012-13 season and six if you include current HC Frank Vogel). Toss in multiple training staff turnovers, two general managers and two team presidents, the last being Magic Johnson who threw in the towel during an impromptu resignation/heartfelt tell-all to reporters prior to the start of the last game of last season, aka the team’s sixth consecutive losing frame. Years of downward plunges, endless injuries, annual trips to the lottery, the acquisition of LeBron James and a passing parade of scintillating young talent that was consistently frittered away until finally, almost as an incongruous last gasp—Los Angeles pulled the trigger on a trade for Anthony Davis. There was a moment last June, when the roster consisted solely of James, Davis and Kyle Kuzma—the latter being the sole survivor of all the young dudes who walked through the door during countless teen spirit rebuilds.

Credit goes to Rob Pelinka who waited out the Kawhi Leonard sweepstakes, and, after getting burned by the Claw as the vast majority of remaining free agents waltzed elsewhere, managed to put together a roster of credible bodies. There would be one last gut punch over the summer when DeMarcus Cousins blew out his ACL during a pickup game, leaving Lakers management to sort through the scrapheap of leftover big men, settling on a minimum unguaranteed contract to Dwight Howard—the only current Lakers to have played on the last Purple and Gold roster to taste the playoffs, seven long years ago.

Overbaked days of summer and the drone of cicadas fade away and the welcome cool gives way to drudging gray and cities of hacking flu/colds. The confessional’s eponymous muse comes to Los Angeles now and then for retirement ceremonies but mostly stays in his native Ukraine—a place now thrust into the forefront of our national discourse. But for a seminal biscuit-in-a-bucket-chucker, it’s simply terra firma and a place to coach youth basketball for the nation’s state run sports system. 

Searching for Slava began in 2010 as a whim, an ode to the mighty Medvedenko and an attempt to meld creative writing exercises with a beloved sport. It was an era of basketball blogging adventurism but the FreeDarkos of the world mostly fell to the side, replaced by other sports models or not replaced at all.

The current Lakers feel like a throwback in more ways than one. The Howard experiment has delivered pleasant results this far in. A guy who torched every bridge behind him until little was left ahead, has settled into an effort-intensive role. He and starter JaVale McGee evoke traditional big man schemes in measured minutes, a two-headed monster so to speak, seguing into small ball units with Davis sliding up to the 5. It’s all part of a decently managed rotation that uses more bodies on the floor than has been the norm in the modern NBA. A case in point is the phalanx of guards and wings, none of whom are stars, but are snapped neatly in and out of place like human Lego pieces.

There have been injuries to be sure—there are always injuries. Avery Bradley’s hairline fracture, Kuzma’s foot stress reaction, and Rajon Rondo’s calf and hamstring issues have resulted in multiple games missed, while Davis’ nagging sore shoulder has been mostly managed day-to-day. But physical maladies haven’t been as draconian as seasons past, and they also haven’t slowed the train’s chugging forward progress in any real demonstrable manner.

Going hand-in-hand with the number of veteran bodies is Vogel’s allocation of playing time. Every Laker not named James and Davis has seen a reduction in individual stats from previous seasons. There was early anticipation for a breakout third season for Kuzma but the dual superstar-driven model hasn’t truly benefited a still-developing scoring talent who previously shined through a more freewheeling game plan and a whole lot more touches.

Bradley, Danny Green, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Kuzma, Rondo, Alex Caruso, Howard and McGee have been playing in a range of 16 to 25 minutes so far this season, with none except Kuz averaging double figures. But they manage to fill in spaces like pencil marks on a Scantron test, and as weeks turn to months, some in the pack have been emerging. KCP, in particular, had a strong December with increased confidence and consistency, both as a starter and off the bench. Caruso, the kid from College Station, has also been a steadying presence, doing all the little things that matter and often in crunch time. His Achilles heel continues to be over-deference when open shots are presented.

 

Ultimately, it’s left to James and Davis to be the clear and obvious stars, far outpacing all others in scoring yet dedicated to defensive effort as well as the art of sharing. James leads the NBA in assists per game while Davis has been at or near the top of the league in blocks all season, not to mention filling up stat sheets across the board. The sum total effort is not unreminiscent of Phil Jackson’s star driven turns backed by solid veteran role players. Even so, there is not the level of drama or newspaper headline intrigue that often accompanied those particular halcyon days. Indeed, Vogel—himself a longtime admirer of the Zen master—keeps an even and affable keel, as the team itself keeps churning out wins. If and when the offense does starts kicking into more advanced sets, it could resemble a perfect storm of explosive weather fronts, all coming together to blow straight into the NBA Finals and beyond.

It seems hard to reconcile that nearly half an NBA season has passed in the blink of an eye, when a summer of waiting seems so recent. It may be indicative of a fleeting and transient period that will continue to accelerate. This is not a bad thing, considering that losing spells often drag on for an eternity. It is a healthy hope, that successes come fast and frequent once again, to be devoured in the moment and quickly digested before the next feast appears on our collective plates. If that seems greedy or presumptive so be it. Six years of defeat would have any fan grasping for hope.

A decade ends and another begins. The team with the best record in the West kicks off 2020 with a New Year’s Day game against the 10th place Phoenix Suns. Meanwhile, Searching for Slava pokes its head out of a frozen burrow, looks for a shadow and ducks back down again.