Convince me to root for your NBA team

The Game Room
1

I’m a big fan of the NBA, but so far it’s only been of the league in general, and not really of any particular team. I’m from Atlanta, and I live in San Diego, but neither city happens to have a professional basketball team. The closest franchise to qualifying in either place is the Atlanta Hawks, and…no. Just no.

Last season, I watched the TNT broadcasts most weeks and, if I had no preference between the teams, I rooted for whoever was behind. This is actually a very enjoyable way to watch basketball, but once the games are over and I start reading recaps in the newspapers and online, I lose interest.

With preseason games starting in barely more than two weeks, I need a team to have some sort of emotional investment in, one I’d be happy to read all the blogs for, perhaps with controversial players it’ll be fun to defend against detractors. I think I could be okay with a perennial loser as long as they’re interesting (and hopefully not dysfunctional - sorry, Knicks) and fun to watch (I’d want them to, at the very least, be able to make free throws. This makes the Magic doubtful, even though they had a decent season last year).

Since all the games all end before midnight in my time zone and because going to games is sadly not much of an option, location doesn’t matter at all.

Here are my priorities:

  1. At least one player or team employee who, whatever his faults, is never boring. (Examples: Gilbert Arenas, Rasheed Wallace, Josh Howard, Mark Cuban, etc. Steve Nash qualifies, too, even if his interesting qualities are based on style of play and genuine intelligence rather than outspokenness or a famous temper.)

  2. At least one really good blog devoted to the team.

  3. One or the other - an uptempo offense or a good defense. I like watching the former kind of team best, but I also thoroughly enjoy seeing smarter teams destroy them.

  4. Not quite as important as the other factors - A team more likely to be on its way up (the Blazers, the '76ers, the Hornets) than already at the top (Celtics, Lakers) or hitting a decline (the Spurs now that they’re aging, the Suns now that they have Shaq, the Mavs now that they have Jason Kidd).

  5. The following teams are disqualified based on longstanding, unshakable prejudice - the Hawks, the Celtics, the Lakers, the Knicks. With any other team, I’d be happy to listen to someone make the case.

Any of you care to make the case for your team? I know the SDMB doesn’t seem to be big on pro basketball but I do know there are some of you out there.

2

That’s easy. The Phoenix Suns.

We’re close to San Diego.

  1. Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire

  2. blog

  3. #3 Shooting offense in the NBA.

  4. Forget about Shaq. He was brought in as a mid-season boost. I’m not sure he’ll stay with the team this entire season.

  5. Other factors. The Suns have a nice arena downtown where fans actually show up to watch the game and cheer. You won’t see the thousands of empty seats or people yapping on their cell phones during the game. Also, the Gorilla is the best mascot in the NBA. The orange uniforms are also cool.

3

Detroit Pistons. They play actual defense, and have Hamilton and emerging star Tayshaun Prince (bonus points for being a Kentucky alum!), who’s a freak. They also have the aforementioned Sheed Wallace to spice things up.

They are also a team that is consistently good, has won it all and doesn’t seem to be in the decline of age just yet.

As for blogs, I’m sure there are some good ones. I like them, and I hate the NBA. They are literally the only team I will watch outside of the postseason.

Ok, here’s a forum: http://www.pistonsforum.com/

4

I like both suggestions. The Suns are a team I know will be a finalist for my consideration, despite circumstances suggesting that their window might be closing. Nash-to-Stoudemire is always one of the most exciting things on TV, and the double-overtime Game One against the Spurs was probably my favorite game from last season.

As for the Pistons, I like the way the four main guys work together, and have been to see them twice in recent years, once in Atlanta and once in Charlotte. Even if Dumars breaks them up, like he hinted he was willing to do after the conference finals loss, that just means there’s a good storyline to whatever happens next.

Actually, both teams have compelling storylines going into this season. The Suns remind me a little of the '90s-early '00s Braves, a perennial success with mostly bad luck in the postseason. It’d be nice to watch them get a ring. I don’t think last year’s Shaq gamble will pay off but it’s definitely worth keeping track of. Meanwhile, the Pistons are in a similar situation, except they have the '04 title to point to, and haven’t completely decided whether to try again with this roster or try for something new. I can easily see them making a big trade deadline deal.

dalej42, what do Suns fans think of making Terry Porter head coach? All I know is that he coached the Bucks, but I don’t know how he ran his team. What else happened during the offseason? I see DJ Strawberry isn’t there anymore, but are there any young guys who might get minutes this year?

5

Before I get to my nomination, I want to explain what happened to me. I was in the same boat. I’m from Arizona, but for some reason I could never get behind the Suns. I follow them mildly, and enjoy it when they succeed, but it wasn’t the same. With how much I love basketball, I knew I had to finally pick a team.

One thing I love is a team that is always willing to make moves to improve. I will never be a fan of a team like the Hawks or Clippers, both of whom refuse to ever do anything to actually win. I made an arbitrary decision. Whoever made the most dynamic moves in the 2006 NBA Draft was my new team. One team clearly won that draft, both making the most moves and the most dynamic moves. So I nominate…

The Portland Trailblazers.

1.) Greg Oden is never boring. A dynamic personality, and an all round good guy, he’s also compelling in that a lot of people compare him to a Patrick Ewing or Hakeem Olajuwon, before even his first professional minute. How will he actually turn out? How high is his ceiling? Brandon Roy also makes this list, compelling players both.

2.) I don’t follow the team blog scene, so I don’t know about this one. I’m sure there is one or two, but I have never tried to look. Once you pick the Blazers, let me know.

3.) How about both? With Roy and Rudy Fernandez on the roster, this team can go up tempo. They just drafted Jerryd Bayless (seriously, this team is STACKED, I can’t wait for this season) who makes this team a truly dangerous offensive threat. They can also play defensively with Oden and LaMarcus Aldridge manning the lane, and Ike Diogu gobbling the bpards off the bench. Seriously, this team is loaded, more about that later.

4.) No team is more on the up than the Blazers. Their recent drafts have been a clinic in how to manipulate and beat the other GMs in the league. And since the Blazer’s GM is given free reign to spend money and make moves, he does, and the Blazers are ALWAYS moving. He buys other team’s picks every year, drafts a foreign player and stashes them in Europe, stockpiling assets with which to trade or develop. He makes draft day deals and is NEVER on the losing end (See: Brandon Roy). Both the Suns and the Pistons are getting older, while the Blazers are just starting out with a team of young players all at the same age. This team will be interesting for ten years with this roster.

5.) Not the Hawks, Lakers, Celtics, or Knicks.

Following the Blazers has been a ride. Going from getting both Aldridge and Roy in 2006, to miraculously winning the 07 lottery for Oden, to getting one of the best scorers in the 08 draft in Bayless has been really exciting. How can you not want to follow a team fighting against it’s own prior labels (Jailblazers), competing in the staggeringly tough Western Conference, and coming to battle with as much weaponry as anyone in the league? Join in, there’s an exciting storyline around every corner!

Edit: Another thing to consider. While the Pistons have had success of late and having won a title, do you really want to climb aboard now? Can you really get excited about a title they won when you weren’t a fan? Wouldn’t it be more fun to start from the bottom and cheer and root for a team AS it wins a title? I don’t think I could join on to a team that has had recent success for that reason, I’d feel like I had missed out.

6

The Phoenix Suns? Are you kiding me? The management is wretched on the team. They managed to stumble into dumb luck! They give away their first round picks that they’ve stockpiled through all the years theyve sucked .

No, Phoenix is all wrong for you. Shooting doesn’t win championships.

You *want *to be a Detroit Pistons fan. By the way, there’s www.need4sheed.com and www.detroitbadboys.com if you want some blog action.

7

We are very excited about a new coach. We’ve underachived the past couple of years and with the amount of talent this team has, that is unacceptable.

Not sure if we will have any young players breaking out this year. Here is a recent article about the 3 players we’re inviting to camp this year. Jiri Hubalek is the one I’m most interested in.

I’m sure you don’t want to become a Pistons fan. Stick with the Western conference so at least you can watch games at a normal time in the Pacific time zone. The Suns are clearly the class of the NBA. You won’t hear about their players whining a la Kobe or smoking pot with the Mavericks. The Jail Blazers? Nope, not a team for you either. Get some purple and orange and Go Suns!

8

Here are some Blazer related blogs

Channing Frye’s Blog

Greg Oden’s Blog

Oregonian’s Blazer Beat Blog

I find Channing’s blog the most interesting, but he talks a lot about non-basketball stuff and he’s currently injured. Oden isn’t the best writer. The Oregonian’s blog is pretty good though.

9

You must be describing the Wizards
*
Here are my priorities:*

  1. At least one player or team employee who, whatever his faults, is never boring. (Examples: Gilbert Arenas, Rasheed Wallace, Josh Howard, Mark Cuban, etc. Steve Nash qualifies, too, even if his interesting qualities are based on style of play and genuine intelligence rather than outspokenness or a famous temper.)

Check Got this one in one

  1. At least one really good blog devoted to the tea

Check.
Gil’s blog. Pretty much the first to show the way, I am not an expert but I think it really is above average as thses sports blogs go.
The Washington Post and Dan Steinberg have good Wizards blogs too.

  1. One or the other - an uptempo offense or a good defense. I like watching the former kind of team best, but I also thoroughly enjoy seeing smarter teams destroy them.

Check.

The Wizards play uptempo and do not really play defense. Ever.

  1. Not quite as important as the other factors - A team more likely to be on its way up (the Blazers, the '76ers, the Hornets) than already at the top (Celtics, Lakers) or hitting a decline (the Spurs now that they’re aging, the Suns now that they have Shaq, the Mavs now that they have Jason Kidd).

Longest currently active NBA Playoff streaks:
Spurs (11), Dallas (8) Detroit (7), Nuggets (5), Wizards(4) T-Phoenix

Of this group, only Denver was “younger” by average than Washington was last season when the Wiz bested the Celtics 3 out of 4 meetings unlike any other team last year. With Gilbert being 26 and Caron Butler being 28, I expect that they will keep this streak alive for a few more seasons.

  1. The following teams are disqualified based on longstanding, unshakable prejudice - the Hawks, the Celtics, the Lakers, the Knicks. With any other team, I’d be happy to listen to someone make the case.

Check in that what is good for the Wiz is usually bad for the Celtics, Hawks and the Knicks

10

In addition, they have a good story. They brought in a big name coach that couldn’t get the job done. He got fired last year and we’re now coached by a guy who worked his way up from being a player and president of the players union to an asst coaching job and now head coach. He played with a lot of these guys that are still on the team now. He wasn’t a real talented player, but he worked his ass off and made contributions to the championship a few years ago. His status in the union shows how the other players felt about him.

11

So many to choose from, but at least I’ve got time before the season starts.

The Wizards are a fun team to follow. Gilbert Arenas is one of the coolest people in the country. Really, he deserves more respect than he gets for making it okay for athletes to have personalities again. Steinberg’s DC Sports Bog is a good read, too. The locker room pranks, the constant one-upsmanship, and so on…the laughs just keep on coming. DeShawn Stevenson, starting with that bit he had a couple of seasons ago he’d refuse to speak to anyone with a sub-40 FG% except through an intermediary, and continuing to the Soulja Boy / Jay-Z feud with LeBron, is hilariously insane.

That said, picking the Wiz would be like going to a party school. It’d be fun to show up on weekends and get wasted with everyone, but I’d rather get my degree somewhere else. Besides, the fondness I’ve had for the team in the last few years is entirely based on Gilbert Arenas. If he were to be traded (I know he just signed that big contract, but still) or left the NBA to fulfill his destiny and become Zaphod Beeblebrox, I doubt I’d be as likely to want to watch the Wizards.

The Blazers, meanwhile, have personality and look like they’re headed for a long run of playoff success. I like their organizational philosophy, too - Jules Andre’s points about recent drafts prove they have the right priorities in place. Paul Allen seems to be a better owner than Abe Pollin or Robert Sarver, too, so that makes it more likely I’d be able to stick with the team in the long run.

I still like the Pistons a lot. Darko Milicic excepted, I like the job Joe Dumars has been doing. While I wasn’t a true fan for their recent Finals appearances, I did root for them both years, even if I didn’t set anything on fire when they won in '04. The blogs Least Original User Name Ever mentioned look like they’d be good enough to hold up for the whole season, too.

As for the Suns, I’ll always watch them as long as Steve Nash is around, but the poor drafting during the last several years is a big minus as far as long-term rooting prospects go.

So right now I think the Blazers are in first. They’ve even got more than a dozen nationally televised games, which is up there with the big names. (The Lakers have more than twenty, which is simply nauseating.)

The only problem is that they don’t have a compelling storyline. Smart drafts and shrewd draft-day trades are great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not nearly as cool as “all-time great strives for that elusive ring,” or “band of misfits neglected by other franchises come together and achieve long-term success.” There’s always time for a good story to reveal itself, I suppose, so it’s really not that big of a drawback.

Another contestant no one’s mentioned yet is the Hornets. Chris Paul’s a brilliant point guard, and for storyline there’s everything that’s happened in New Orleans in the last few years. I don’t know much about them as far as personality goes, though, and haven’t heard of any particularly excellent Hornets blogs, either by players or fans.

12

I mentioned a couple intriguing storylines in my post. I go gaga for the plotlines, so most of these may not be exciting for anyone else, but here’s what interests me about this team…

This is a team with perhaps only one or two guys on the roster from the Jail Blazer years (interestingly enough, one of them is named Outlaw), and yet the team STILL struggles to be rid of this nickname. You would be hard pressed to find a team of more likeable stars than Oden and Roy. Those two are good people that are fun to root for because you know they won’t go thugging it up after games. Can they finally shed that nickname?

Can Oden live up to the hype and potential? He still hasn’t played a regular season game. This guy alone is fascinating. He is on record as saying he always wanted to be a dentist. Dentist, really? There are so many questions around him that he’s really interesting to follow. This is the primary storyline for this team, Oden is going to be the centerpiece of any success the Blazers have, and at this point, nobody can really be sure what he can actually do. It’s odd in this day and age to have such a hyped prospect and consensus future All-Star be such a mystery in his second professional season!

Can such a young team compete in the West? How will this team come together and actually play? Between Roy, Fernandez, Bayless, and Outlaw, this team can be really explosive. How will they manage their scoring options with their defensive presences? Can Oden and Aldridge keep up?

There is always a story happening regarding GM Kevin Pritchard and Paul Allen’s money. Pritchard is always doing something, this team is never boring even when they aren’t playing. This video explains it all.

Each player seems to have their own interesting plotline too. It isn’t the grand drama of the Celtics vets coming together to win a championship, but, there’s interesting stuff here!

13

What is wrong with the NBA stems from Michael Jordan. He popularized the sport to people who had no interest in it previously. He made it a bigger game.
The NBA wants another Mike. They have distorted the rules and calls to attempt to create one. It has not worked.
For years I thought the top heavy teams were vulnerable to a team that actually played team ball. That turned out to be the Pistons. They were unselfish and played solid defense. They played the game the way it was meant to be played. For that they had the rules changed to handcuff them. The league encouraged refs to make calls against the Pistons defense to attempt to create a new star.
The Pistons have played 2 way basketball for a couple decades. They have an unselfish offense and a hard working defense. They play the game the way it should be played.
So root for the Pistons if you are a purist and love the game.