TOUGH PILL TO SWALLOW
Houston’s DeAndre Jordan sees the good times end in L.A.
One of these days, someone smart is going to make a movie about DeAndre Jordan’s NBA career. Spielberg, maybe. Or who was it that did Forrest Gump? Robert Zemeckis? Perfect.
Jordan’s story has everything you could want in a sports film. Even a little basketball.
Let’s start at the end: Jordan’s teammate with the Clippers, Chris Paul, the brilliant point guard, recently engineered a trade to the Rockets. This, in and of itself, is big news. Not every day does a player the caliber of CP3 change teams. Generally speaking, it requires a few superstars sitting around on a banana boat plotting mutual destinations between mai tais.
Lord knows how they’ll find enough basketballs to placate Paul and his new backcourt teammate, James Harden. It might also turn out great. The Rockets could even challenge the Warriors.
But, for the purposes of today’s story, we’re really not all that interested in the Rockets’ title chances. They were going to beat the Mavs even without Paul. The Mavs currently play in a different league, which might have been a different story if not for what happened two summers ago. Or didn’t happen, actually.
What might have been
Maybe you remember about this time in 2015 when DeAndre Jordan said he would sign with the Mavs. This was also big news, mostly because it would break Mark Cuban’s 0-for-forever streak with bigtime free agents.
Word got out that Jordan
was tired of playing third wheel in L.A. behind Paul and Blake Griffin. We even heard Jordan was miffed because CP3 wouldn’t high-five him. Frankly, we couldn’t care less about the reason. The Mavs were going to get a big-time center in his prime for the first time since Bobby Folsom opened Reunion Arena. A lot of experts argued at the time that Jordan wasn’t good enough to build a team around. He’s a little offensively challenged, a problem in today’s NBA. Even so, he’s a big-time defensive presence and rebounder, which would have been well-received in Dallas, especially if you’re Dirk Nowitzki.
Anyway, it all seemed on the up and up until word got out that Jordan’s old coach in Los Angeles, Doc Rivers, was in Jordan’s native Houston talking him out of it.
Panic set in immediately. Chandler Parsons, then Cuban’s chief recruiter, got right on it, tweeting an emoji of an airplane, signifying his intent to fly to Houston and straighten things out. In response, one of Jordan’s former teammates, J.J. Reddick, tweeted an emoji of a car. Griffin, another old pal, tweeted a plane, helicopter and automobile before Paul Pierce, who doesn’t do emojis, tweeted a cartoon of a rocket.
And that’s when it really got creative: CP3 tweeted emojis of a banana and a boat. (See paragraph 3 above for clarification.)
The Clippers didn’t just play the social media game. Oh, no. They showed up at Jordan’s house in Houston and basically held an intervention. To give you a better picture, Griffin tweeted a chair blocking Jordan’s front door.
Until they could officially get Jordan’s name on the dotted line that night, the Clippers, old and new, played cards and video games and had a grand old time while Jordan ignored Cuban’s phone calls.
In the end, Jordan got what he wanted all along, which was a little love from his team. Next thing you know, he’s in national commercials with CP3. Funny stuff, too. You’d have never guessed that Paul used to avoid him in huddles.
Playing out the string
Unfortunately, life has not been as good on the basketball court. Two years in a row, the Clips have been eliminated in the first round. Tension has mounted. CP3 reportedly didn’t get along well with Rivers, not the least because the coach played favorites with his son, Austin, who apparently is related to Doc only by blood, not talent.
The close-knit group that had hunkered down in Jordan’s crib in the summer of ’15 is no more, a lesson of sorts about the NBA these days.
Lately there’s been a lot of carping about how bad the Warriors are for the NBA. They swept through the playoffs with hardly a challenge, even from LeBron James. This couldn’t be good for basketball, could it? I mean, everybody knows that owners don’t make money until Games 6 or 7.
What’s the rest of the league to do?
Wait a couple of years, that’s what. First of all, you should know by now that dynasties are good. They make history, giving you something to measure your team against. Also, if your team isn’t going to win it all, you either want one you can root for or against. Parity isn’t the answer, then. Parity allowed the Marlins to win two World Series, and nobody cared. Not even people from Florida.
The other thing about dynasties is that they don’t last long, particularly the NBA’s. This is because player contracts are comparatively short. If MLB operated under the same parameters, ShinSoo Choo wouldn’t still hold the Rangers hostage.
Meanwhile, DeAndre Jordan plays out the string with the Clippers. That is, if they don’t trade him first. One thing to realize that good times don’t last. Harder, probably, when you thought it was family.