San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Warriors-Kings game highlights problem with in-season tourney
The NBA’s In-Season Tournament came within an inch of calamity. It presses on, with better times most likely ahead, but when point differential becomes the key to survival, you realize this is very much a work in progress.
How can you lose by winning, or advance in defeat? Those things almost happened in tandem Tuesday night in Sacramento. If Stephen Curry’s last-second shot had gone in, giving the Golden State Warriors a thrilling victory, they would have been knocked out of the tournament because they didn’t win by at least 12 points.
The Kings, certain to be emotionally crushed after yet another loss to Golden State, would have advanced to the quarterfinals because they lost by less than 12 points.
Win and you’re out. Lose and move on. Nice tournament.
This sort of confusion spread throughout the league that night. Big wins turned out to mean nothing. Teams were running up the score, and ticking off the opposition, because they would be eliminated otherwise.
Right from the start, I haven’t run across anyone who thinks this is a wondrous innovation. Have you? These are just regular-season games, in the end. The details will fade like cheap ink on a sun-parched scroll. But the national media has been fawning over it without shame. Broadcasters Brian Anderson and Stan Van Gundy never mentioned how that Warriors-Kings game could go haywire, and every time I tuned into another tournament game, the announcers were raving about the utter brilliance of it all.
Here’s the sad side of things: This is a spectacular triumph for the NBA. The whole idea was to get people talking about the league in December, when football
and the holidays drive those television ratings down. And they’re chatting up a storm: advocates, critics, everyone. Now we’re down to the quarterfinals, with the semifinals and finals in Las Vegas. The winning players will collect a half-million bucks apiece.
Just take note of some comments Tuesday night as the tournament dissolved into farce:
Jrue Holiday of the Celtics, who had to beat Chicago by at least 23 points — and did, thus advancing over two teams with the same 3-1 record: “It just feels weird. You’re kind of disrespecting the game and your opponent.”
Bulls coach Billy Donovan, who had a midgame confrontation with Boston coach Joe Mazzulla as the Celtics repeatedly sent Andre Drummond, a terrible free-throw shooter, to the line with intentional fouls: “What are we doing here?”
Cleveland coach J.B. Bickerstaff: “We had guys back there with their iPads out, trying to tell us what we needed and where we needed to go.”
Josh Hart of the Knicks, who scrambled into wild-card position by running up the score on
Charlotte: “I don’t really like it. When you just start chasing points, it kind of messes with the integrity of the game.”
The Knicks’ RJ Barrett: “If someone said you can go to Vegas and win 500K, would you wanna do that?”
Finally, someone speaking honestly. A lot of players have admitted they didn’t know anything about how the thing works, but they do know Vegas and a bundle of cash.
Also of relevance:
• Candace Parker, on TNT, said a better tiebreaker system would be to simply check the standings — advance the team with the best regular-season record, then move on to more esoteric methods if necessary.
• Teams eliminated before the quarterfinals were left with an 80game schedule, forcing the league to impose two games. For the Warriors, one of those is a road game Friday night against Oklahoma City, which they’ve already lost to twice this season. The Knicks find themselves with a fifth matchup against powerhouse Milwaukee.
• Maybe the fans don’t mind seeing starters play
virtually the entire game, in search of an outright rout, but the coaches would rather see their reserves, guys who need some examination, in garbage time. And make no mistake, running up the score has never been cool in the NBA. Not even if someone fires home a dunk with no one within 40 feet of him in the final seconds.
• It’s not strictly about television ratings. The NBA is building the Las Vegas market for an expansion team, spiffing up T-Mobile Arena and its event schedule to get people excited.
• All games are being played on specially colored courts, and credit Sacramento for its good taste (gray and a soft blue). Some of the others, especially those drenched in garish red, make the game unwatchable. Seriously — as in, change the channel.
A man to remember
As the Giants launched their free-agent pursuit of Shohei Ohtani, it was written that in the club’s long history, there were “no Japanese stars of note.” Perhaps that’s true, in the context of Ichiro, Hideo Nomo or Hideki Matsui, but groundbreaking
pitcher Masanori Murakami was definitely of note.
He was the first Japanese player to reach the major leagues, joining the Giants in August 1964. The 20-year-old lefthander had had some nice outings in relief down the stretch, striking out 15 batters in his first 15 innings, and caused quite a stir around town. (He earned himself a fan club, and one local restaurant added a Murakami to its cocktail menu.)
The 1965 season did not go well until the middle of June, after which he posted a 2.92 ERA with 77 strikeouts in 642⁄3 innings with eight saves. The team staged a Masanori Murakami Day, attended by Japanese consul general Tsutomu Wada, and Murakami was given a Datsun to show off his country’s sports-car brand.
As it turned out, the stress of his pioneering adventure took its toll. Murakami had hoped to play in San Francisco the following year, but he was in heavy demand back home, and he returned to the Nankai Hawks after their newly appointed manager, Kazuo Kageyama, died of a heart attack in November. Murakami pitched in the Japan’s Pacific League for the next 17 years.
Where credit is due
Quick note in closing: Enjoyed the Chronicle’s front-page story this week on Sean Geary, who emerged from a threeyear homeless crisis to rebuild his life. In the piece, Geary said that as far as he could tell, he was the first bodyboarder ever to ride the giant waves of Mavericks in December 1994. But that is also the year that Sara Lucas, also a bodyboarder, became the first woman to surf Mavericks on any kind of board. Who was first? Pretty hard to be certain. Let them share the honor.