eman, seems you've been watching bball for a long time (respect!) with that Frazier/Monroe reference. I had to google it. Frazier, Monroe prove that two can co-exist in one spot Two guys, one spot. It seems almost existential, a question of two people occupying the same place at the same time. In the NBA, though, it's just fundamental; teams typically prefer not to take the court with two point guards, two power forwards or two identical anythings. A week ago, I looked at a number of the NBA's current position redundancies, including Utah's Carlos Boozer and Paul Millsap, Chicago's Derrick Rose and Kirk Hinrich, Minnesota's Kevin Love and Al Jefferson and Portland's Andre Miller and Steve Blake. (Jose Calderon-Jarrett Jack in Toronto was the overlooked overlap cited most often by e-mailers.) This week, as promised, I'm offering several of the great crowded depth charts from NBA history and how those teams resolved them. Or not. Walt Frazier-Earl Monroe, Knicks, 1971-77 One was known widely as Pearl, though the handle most ballers preferred when talking, usually in terms of awe, about the Philadelphia playground legend was Black Jesus. The other fellow was Clyde, as rakish off the court as on. (His sharp suits and wide-brimmed hats earned him that movie moniker from Warren Beatty's character in Bonnie and Clyde. Now that's an "original gangsta'' for you.) But when Earl Monroe was traded to the Knicks in November 1971, joining or crowding Walt Frazier in what was dubbed the "Rolls-Royce backcourt,'' it was more than a clash of cool nicknames -- it was a showdown of styles. And team dominance. And if the town wasn't big enough for both of them ... well, they had a real problem, because this was New York. "People said we'd need two basketballs,'' Frazier told me last week. "But they didn't know the mutual respect we had as opponents, where we asked no quarter and gave no quarter. From that type of rivalry, you respect the other guy. We never trash-talked. "So when he came to the Knicks, actually, the credit goes to Earl. Because I didn't have to change my game -- he had to change. He told everybody it was my team. He had to become a team player. He was no longer the focus of the offense. He had to play defense. To his credit, he did. That was the character of Earl Monroe.'' The numbers are telling: In Monroe's 328 regular-season games with Baltimore prior to the trade, he averaged 23.7 points and 20.1 field-goal attempts. Three years into his Knicks tenure, hobbled a bit by injury, he was at 13.8 on 12.1 shots. Frazier, with an attack mode at both ends, continued to lead New York, averaging 21.6 points on 17.6 attempts. Yet the two Hall of Fame-bound guards meshed their games well enough to earn the Knicks' second NBA championship in 1973. Their record those first three seasons: 148-84. "Individual accolades were no longer utmost in our minds,'' Frazier said. "At that point, Earl had been an All-Star, he had done everything but win a title. Me, I had a title [and individual acclaim]. So it was just teamwork and trying to get another title.'' Over their next three seasons together, Frazier's scoring averages were 21.5, 19.1 and 17.4 ppg, while Monroe's rose to 20.1, 20.7 and 19.9. The team's record drooped to 118-128, and then Frazier was gone to finish his career in Cleveland. Still, something that had the potential to turn ugly was turned, by two classy pros, into a thing of basketball beauty. "It's all about ego, man,'' Frazier said. "You have to control your ego. It's as simple as that ... Yeah, I'm surprised and disappointed [when teams or players don't work things out]. The final stat they're going to throw at you is, did you win?" Frazier laughed. "The thing with Earl was, when he was having a good game, I gave him the ball and vice versa. Actually, I liked when he was having a good game, because then he had to throw it to me more.'' http://www.nba.com/2010/news/features/steve_aschburner/02/04/same.position.2/index.html I'd love for Beard/Lin to be the "Cadillac Backcourt" in Houston for a long while. Their "ego control" is already a given, they just need time to figure each other out. I made a thread on that article here http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=231020
Jocar, I'm not sure if this was meant to be intentional or not based on the recent article, but Frazier has already compared himself and Monroe to Jin and Harden. http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterocke...ays-meshing-lin-harden-just-a-matter-of-time/ He sees himself as Jeremy and Harden as Monroe.
He seems to be free of his own passivity finally. He's still raw, so growing pains were to be expected.
You'd also have to take into account that Frazier and Monroe when they met up were both fully-developed players. Lin has essentially only played 1 season's worth of NBA minutes, and needs to develop a better handle, spot up shooting, and tighten up his defense (plus work on his left hand), and Harden needs to figure out how to close out people and contest shots and deny passing lanes/funnel better. So not only are they trying to figure each other out, they're developing as players as well. But given all that, especially since NBA players are playing longer and longer (probably because of better medicine and newer fouling rules), a decade more of these two just sounds utterly awesome.
Now that Lin hopefully is playing more aggressively - and lets hope a bad game doesn't derail his new found confidence... I think what both these players need to do is move a bit more without the ball. Harden tends to stand around when Lin dribbles and vice versa. I understand the spacing issues...but once Harden man begins to collapse - wherever the double is coming from in fact, someone needs to cut to the basket fast. But other than that, some double pnr's and a bit more complexity to the offensive sets would be nice...our points come from a very uptempo style but i think our half court sets could work better if McHale took a page from Adelman.
Did anyone else see during the game last night how McHale wanted to sub Lin with TD, and Lin ran over to McHale and tapped him on the arm/shoulder and argued that he didn't want to come out (you can read his lips) but McHale said something to him (back was turned so couldn't see) and TD got in the game anyway? That was the first time I saw Lin protesting "benching"/substitution. Clearly it's the result of his new found confidence in his game.
I think he's clearly more comfortable with McHale than Sampson. Maybe he feels freer to discuss these things.
Which game was this? I want to download it. You remember when this happened in the game? Like 3rd quarter w/ 3:23 left or something?
This post right here is pretty pathetic. There's no substance to any of it. My turn to make an assumption. You finished watching the Norh Korea propaganda video in d&d forum before posting that.
What if he was asking if he should be in the huddle and McHale was like, "nah, you can sit"? What if he's all, "can I go on a bathroom break?" and McHale's like, "go for it"? What if he's asking if he can play more but McHale's like, "nah, the Dr's don't recommend more time, we're being careful about your knee"? You don't actually know because you're not actually in the huddle; did you know that most people who are pretending to talk in the background in movies say "apple banana"? Because the mouth movement approximate a conversation. I work as a video editor, and it's actually fairly easy to literally put 'other words in people's mouths' for various scenes, because the mouth movement is roughly the same.
are you talking about this? http://www.slideshare.net/LiatShamash/analysing-preliminary-lip-synching-task
See, this is just it, for that timeout situation; we get not only half the info because we can't see McHale, but there's nothing picked up on residual hearing, and knowledge of subject and awareness of context is all speculation. We're not actually in the lockerroom, we don't actually know Lin, or McHale, just their public personas, we don't actually know the context of the communication since the camera just cut to that shot and we don't see the lead up. Frankly, yes, media makes it SEEM as if we're really close and knowledgeable about a celebrity, but the honest fact is that fans don't have all the information. At most it's speculation that is built on the logic gotten from more speculation. Which, sorry for the rant I suppose, but I see too much of this from my work. It is super easy to change the audience's viewpoint of someone just via context, and ridiculously easy to distort perception if you have half a mind to it because all it takes is a half-truth that goes viral. And then people build on the half-truth thinking they 'know the celebrity/person/character', and then it snowballs.
