Monday, February 28, 2011

When I was in my last semester of graduate school I celebrated the awarding of a postdoctoral fellowship by purchasing a red Pistons Rasheed Wallace jersey. It was my way of saying "Ball don't lie" to any doubts or fears I might have been feeling about finishing my dissertation, defending it, and moving away from Providence to start a new and unknown future.

The evening of the day I defended my dissertation I wore the Wallace jersey. Some friends and I went to Brown's Graduate Student bar, where the bartender, upon hearing the news that I just defended, told us that the bottle of champagne we'd ordered would be complimentary.



Apparently, that was the way things worked—there was even a small form I had to fill out, where I wrote my name, date of defense, and department name. It was definitely a nice way to finish up my life as a graduate student, and Rasheed was part of the story. 


As they say in Turkish, "Top yalan söylemez!"

Well, Reşid left the Pistons years ago, and retired from the NBA altogether after the 2010 Finals. Meanwhile, my jersey has been slowly decomposing, too. The writing on the back has rubbed off almost completely, and is only a little more legible on the front. (The jersey smells pretty bad, too, but I suppose I could solve that problem with a quick wash.)

In any case, I've decided to buy a Chauncey Billups New York Knicks jersey. This makes me little uneasy. I'm a Pistons fan, and I've never purchased sports gear for a team that competes against my own. But come on—the Pistons are no fun to even think about right now. They're trying to sell the team, nobody knows what's going to happen, and the team is miserable in so many ways these days. Any time the words "player mutiny" come up regularly in discussions about your favorite team, you can be pretty sure the situation isn't good.



Chauncey Billups was a great Detroit Piston, and was the MVP of our 2004 NBA Champion team. But after losing in the Finals in 2005 and losing in the Eastern Conference Championships from 2006 to 2008, it was decided that the Pistons were never going to get back in the Finals with Chauncey. Piston GM Joe Dumars was ga-ga over Rodney Stuckey, a young point guard they'd drafted from Eastern Washington, so Chauncey became expendable and was traded at the beginning of the 2008-2009 season to the Denver Nuggets for Allen Iverson.

The trade seemed to rejuvenate Chauncey, and he led Denver to the Western Conference championships, extending his personal record of conference finals appearances to seven, while the Pistons got bounced out in the first round.

The sad thing is that, the way things worked out in 2009, the Pistons could have made it back to the Finals if they'd only kept Chauncey.


Did the Pistons get rid of Chauncey too soon? Maybe so, but I think the trade put a chip on his shoulder and was probably good for his career

In 2008-2009, everybody had assumed that either LeBron would carry the Cavs to the Finals, or that Kevin Garnett and the Celtics would go. According to that logic, getting rid of Chauncey made sense because, while the Pistons were very good, it was generally understood that they were no longer great. But in 2010, they might have been good enough to sneak back into the Finals.


The Answer tried hard, but the 2008-2009 Pistons missed Chauncey

But in 2010 Orlando shocked Cleveland in the Eastern Conference playoffs, while in Boston Garnett got hurt and Boston fell apart. If the Pistons hadn't traded Chauncey, maybe in the playoffs they could have beaten a Garnett-less Celtic team and then, perhaps, faced Orlando—a team the Pistons had owned in recent years—in the finals.

We'll never know—Chauncey was already out of Motown and the Pistons were beginning their depressing descent down the drain.

* * *

Now Chauncey has been traded again, a throw-in to the much-hyped Carmelodrama. Chauncey was reportedly bummed to have been shipped away from his hometown of Denver, and pissed that he's just an afterthought to all of this. Some Knick fans were actually upset that Raymond Felton, whose contract is expiring in 2012 anyway, had been traded for Chauncey Billups.


Well, Chauncey was amazing in that Miami game last night. Just incredible—stealing the ball, making 3's, coming up with big shots at critical times. He's pissed again, like he was after the Pistons traded him, and responding by raising his game. Whatever sense of rejection or disrespect he's felt, he seems to respond to it positively.

Don't forget—this is someone who was the # 1 pick for the Boston Celtics, then got traded midway through his rookie season—he's now played for seven teams—and twice with one of these teams, Denver. He's played for nearly one-quarter of all of the teams in the NBA. This is someone who knows what it feels like to be given up on. 

When Chauncey, alongside Anthony, was interviewed after the Miami game, Chauncey looked like he might have been still pissed about the trade. He said, with a bit of a sneer, that it was good to win a game in the 90s because 'a lot of people think we can only win if we score 110, 115' (or something like that). I wonder who he was thinking of—maybe his own teammates and coach? He's going to try to sell defense to his teammates, hopefully he won't have to try to sell it to his coach. 


Tellin' it like it is: Chauncey hoca teaching his teammates how to win

But my prediction is that, barring an injury to Billups or Stoudamire, this Knicks team could end up having a good end to the year, though I think their ceiling is probably the first round of the playoffs. But still, they might be able to land a few punches on a good team like Miami, steal a game or two in the first round.

But I don't know how much Chauncey has left in the tank. There could be a lockout next season, and after that who knows? He's 34 now, and has played a lot of basketball in his time. Over a seven-year stretch Chauncey played more games than just about anybody in the NBA, appearing seven straight years in the conference championships, with two of those years in the Finals. That works out to a lot of games—who else played that many? How many players go consistently that deep in the playoffs over that period of time? It's got to be wearing.

I think that when he does retire—and hopefully he has a few good years left in him, including next season—he should think about coaching. The Pistons totally fell apart without Chauncey, even though Stuckey's numbers initially were not that much worse than those of his predecessor. The Nuggets got a lot better when he arrived. As long as he stays healthy, the Knicks will be at least a decent team, and should make the playoffs. He's someone who seems to help teams gel.

So I'm cheering for the New York Chaunceys this year, although not nearly as hard as I would for the Detroit Pistons if something cool were going on with them. I'll cheer for them the same way I cheered for the Nuggets when Chauncey played for them—definitely not neutral, but not the way a real fan would. I'm definitely a sports monogamist.

But still, I like Chauncey and wish him the best. I like the way he plays, and I like the way that, after feeling like he'd been kicked in the teeth, he's managed to once more up his game. I know he's a millionaire athlete and I'm just a humble university professor/visiting research scholar who feels slightly pathetic to have devoted over 1000 words to his appreciation of an NBA player, but still: I like Chauncey's style. 

After all, who among us has not felt kicked in the teeth at one time or another?