Coach's Corner
By Andy "Coach" Cotton, Fri., April 9, 1999
At 5:00, I'm soothed and comforted to see it's getting dark. Dark means it's time to go home. Dark means things might be cooking. A few hours later it's time to go to bed. DST's an abomination. 5:00 in DST creates only guilt; like I should be doing something fun (or at least productive) with all that daylight I've been given. At 6:30 it's still 107º outside. What am I supposed to do with myself? Some guys are exercising. Neighbors are mowing lawns for the barbecue at 9:00. Kids seem to be having fun, though even as a tot I didn't appreciate this change. I liked walking home from playing at 6:00 in the growing dusk. The lights are on at home. It looks warm and happy. Dinner's ready. Maybe mom won't make me eat peas. I don't want more daytime.
When I see the Portland Trailblazers -- fret not, the transition's coming -- with a league-best 25-6 record and the Orlando Magic close behind, my first reaction is mild surprise. Impressive records from surprising teams, but then, the season's barely 25% finished. There's a long way to go. Then the bewildering reality strikes: like daylight savings, my internal NBA clock hasn't adjusted; the short season's almost finished. There are fewer than 15 games left. The playoffs are upon us!
The '99 mini season has been everything it was cracked up -- or down -- to be. The competition has often been incredibly ragged. We were warned to expect terrible shooting early in the season. With all the players eating pizza and walking their dogs instead of having a normal training camp, it was going to take a while for the guys to get their shooting touches back. I'm still looking. A quick glance at last night's boxes reveals four pro teams shooting below .400 and only three making more shots than they missed.
There have been surprises, but not so many. No one, of course, saw Portland coming. But short season or no, one constant remains: The regular season means nothing. Portland will have to prove to everybody they can win in the playoffs. I, for one, don't think they will. Teams that win by committee have a hard time in the superheated hit-the-shot-or-perish environment of the playoffs. We'll see. My pre-season column saw both Orlando and Milwaukee as good dark horse teams, but I'm flat out shocked by Detroit's 20-13.
More unexpected results are on the negative side. How could the Celtics, with loads of talent, a year of experience with Pitino and a great rookie in Paul Pierce, fall so flat on their faces? The Nets were obviously overrated, but Jesus, they've won only four more games than the Clippers! Denver, after acquiring Van Exel and McDyess, is still Denver. Phoenix (15-16) was supposed to be a title contender. And then a sad duty: It's time to start shoveling dirt on the coffin of the great underachieving team of the Nineties. That would be the Seattle Supersonics, now an old team not getting any younger. Gary Payton's still as good a point guard as ever played, but you look down this once electric line-up and he's all that's left. Besides Payton, there's 37-year-old Detlef Schrempf, a 57-year-old Dale Ellis, and a what, 83-year-old Hersey Hawkins? It's really kind of sad. This was a team which should have and could have been so much more. Management didn't know it, but they did George Karl a favor when they fired him last winter.
But these travails are commonplace in every season of every sport. Some teams overachieve. Some teams go the other way. No, to me the story of the year in the NBA is that what most fans hoped for has come to pass. With the fading into history of the Chicago Bulls, I defy anyone to say with any certainty who will win the respective conference titles, let alone the league championship. This sets up a compelling playoff season with the teams, hopefully, rounding into mid-season form. The eventual winner is far from a foregone conclusion.
In the East, only four games separate the number one team from number eight. All the favorites have struggled for significant stretches to time. Miami, who seemed unbeatable for much of the year, is in one of those stretches right now. Indiana hasn't been the write-in winner everyone thought they'd be. Forget picking a conference champ, each match-up of each round will be basically a toss-up.
Form has held more closely in the West, where Utah's played like a team tired of eating, pardon the rare pun, bullshit. L.A., Houston, and San Antonio, like their Eastern counterparts, have experienced hideous stretches mingled with periods of brilliance. So who knows?
And lucky me! The seventh game of the finals will end at 7pm sometime in July. Plenty of daylight left to play nine.
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