Dwight Howard Dominates Game 5, Sends Series Back To Boston
Lost in all the hub hub about Kendrick Perkins flailing his elbows, pouting and moaning was the Defensive Player of the Year setting the tenor early for Orlando’s defense in Game 5. Superman finally showed up on the defensive end and wreaked havoc through the first half, blocking the first layup attempt by Paul Pierce, another by Rajon Rondo, and altered a Ray Allen shot. The driving game that had worked so well for Boston in the first three games was snuffed out by D12 hovering all over the lanes.
10:19 Dwight Howard blocks Paul Pierce’s layup
9:33 Ray Allen misses driving layup
6:11 Dwight Howard blocks Rajon Rondo’s layup
5:39Rajon Rondo misses driving layup
(The moment Howard left the game, Boston got two layups from Tony Allen and Rondo. Don’t tell me that was a coincidence.)
Orlando won the paint battle for the first time in the series, getting 40 points to Boston’s 28. Hard to attribute that to the foul trouble, since Garnett is more of a finesse jump shooter with his offensive game, Sheed lives at the three point line, and Perkins only goes to the line every now and then. Howard owned the paint. The Celtics eventually ran out of jumpers to answer back with.
On the offensive end, Orlando finally shot over their heads from three point land. I doubt we’ll see a 52% performance from downtown the next two games. But the Magic’s pick and roll game finally triumphed over Boston’s defense, as four Magic players hit multiple threes.
Jameer ran the show (and surprisingly Boston , as he was able to penetrate past Rondo’s renegade defense, forcing either the bigs to sag in (which they rarely did) or drew Allen and Pierce inside which left Barnes, Pietrus and Redick open. Several times the Celtics would leave these guys open, an issue they struggled with at the beginning of the season.
For all the fuss about Perk, he hadn’t played real well up to the point of his ejection; Rasheed Wallace actually was an upgrade for what he brought offensively as well as defensively, stretching the floor and forcing the Magic to guard all sides as Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett struggled to get good looks, Allen especially. Redick continues to play excellent defense on Jesus Shuttleworth, as his Duke tutelage of fighting through screens seems to be paying dividends.
I’d be interested to see if the Celtics go back to the defensive strategy that won them the first three games–playing excellent man-to-man defense and not biting as much on the dribble penetration and continuing to switch the screen and rolls. The rotations have been slower the past few games, and the Magic have set up their offense much much faster.
Although Boston has shown they can win anywhere and everywhere, it’s feeling more like Game 6 will decide who moves onto the NBA Finals. The Celtics have looked lethargic and slow for two games straight, and it’s hard to see them having anything left for another road trip to Orlando.
Perkins should be back for Game 6 as will Rasheed Wallace, so there’s unlikely to be any officiating favor for Orlando. However, if Howard can make his impact felt defensively and keep Boston on the perimeter, it’ll give the Magic a fighting chance to tie the series up.
The Greatest Tennis Match You Can Barely See: French Open Match Played In Near-Total Darkness
It was 9:30 PM at Roland Garros in the fifth set when Gael Monfils and Fabio Fognini were tied up at 4. With sunset in Paris rapidly approaching, much of the games on the court were suspended until Thursday, and it appeared their game would also end prematurely.
Yet for reasons that will continue to mystify tennis fans everywhere, the official in charge of making the call hemmed and hawed. He inexplicably consulted the two tennis players and got conflicting responses (Monfils wanted to win behind his super-hyped French supporters, Fognini and his coach wanted to stop). Six crucial minutes passed that turned dusk into total darkness, with only the scoreboard and the big screen at the side of the court illuminating the proceedings.
And they kept on playing, like two kids on the neighborhood court with the nightlights burnt out. For fifteen surreal minutes, both of the players traded shots and ragged points. Fognini seethed to three match points but couldn’t convert on any of the opportunities, Monfils cramped up and could barely serve for the final point, and there were a lot of slow shots put up. Highly dramatic, even if it was totally unnecessary.
Thirty minutes after the match should have ended, play was finally postponed. With a limping Monfils and a furious Fognini still tied up, 5-5. Oh, the French bungling a crucial decision. So many historical jokes one could make. At least this one was entertaining for the rest of us.
Great Win By the Phoenix Suns, But Does Anyone Believe They Can Win In Staples?
The Phoenix Suns have had strong performances in the past two games to even the series. Amare Stoudemire and Brook Lopez carried them in Game 3. The bench exploded in Game 4. And Steve Nash has been their rock after struggling in Games 1 and 2, closing out both games to tie the series at two.
However, as a lot of NBA folk like to say, a series doesn’t start until one team wins on the other team’s court. That is precisely what Phoenix has to do to get to the NBA Finals, and their past history in Los Angeles doesn’t smile on them at all. Neil Paine of Basketball Reference points out the sobering stats.
Yep, the Suns have been pretty good vs. L.A. this season… as long as they are playing them in Phoenix, that is. At home, they’re efficient on offense (even better than their seasonal average of 115.3 pts/100 possessions), they force turnovers, and they win the free throw battle by a huge margin (witness the Suns’ 37-16 edge in FTM two nights ago). But the second the Suns set foot in Staples Center, the Lakers own them, winning by an average of 18 PPG (and no fewer than 12 in any single game), hanging ridiculous offensive numbers on them, and stifling Phoenix’s own offensive machine.
Several other factors point to the degree of difficulty of the Suns taking one game in Los Angeles.
74 to 33. That’s the free throw disparity Phoenix enjoyed in Games 3 and 4. Now, the officiating wasn’t that bad in Game 3 as LA settled for threes while the Suns attacked the basket, but the Lakers didn’t get some the contact calls they probably earned on Tuesday (even the normally ref-neutral Forum Blue & Gold had to make a passing comment about the frustrating officiating). Safe to say the Suns won’t enjoy that type of free throw advantage in Los Angeles, and that they’ll have to muscle their way a little more to a win on the road. This probably means relying on Amare for a big game. Ruh roh.
Relying on the bench. Now, the Suns bench has had some good performances on the road this playoffs (Goran Dragic’s explosion in San Antonio the most notable), but as a whole the bench usually plays its best at US Airways Center. To expect a repeat performance Thursday night would require.
Moreover, the generally maligned Laker bench (mostly Jordan Farmar, Shannon Brown and Lamar Odom at this point) has already outplayed the Suns twice at home in this series, and you figure as the series wears on, the experience of those players will kick in. You’d have to figure the starters would carry the load, especially Steve Nash, who has never played well at Staples, especially against the physical Derek Fisher.
Of course, we said the same thing about the Spurs in Game 3, and we all remembered what happened there.
Past history. The Lakers have done this before, letting series slip to 2-2 before taking control. Silver Screen & Roll points out how history is repeating itself. Against Houston and Denver last year, against Oklahoma City barely a month ago, LA fell into a 2-2 tie with a dubious Game 4 performance, only to come out and dominate their Game 5s and eventually win the series (actually, the Lakers have not lost a Game 5 since 2007, when they fell to Phoenix in the first round).
Conventional wisdom says the Suns lose Thursday night as the Laker experience and home court advantage takes root. But then again, there is nothing conventional about these Phoenix Suns.
2010 NBA First Round Playoff Predictions
Wrote this over at CGB. Curious how wrong I look in retrospect.
The Bulls are going to get swept, and then Vinnie will get canned. Sorry chowder, but they’re at a disadvantage at every position except maybe center, and even that’s a stretch.
The Magic depend way too much on the three offensively to win a series in five or less—they’ll lose a game or two in every series they should win (that happened against Philly and Boston last year). They nearly blew their first round series last year when the well drew up and Hedo bailed them out. Plus the Bobcats play some of the fiercest perimeter defense in the league with Captain Jack, Wallace and Diaw all scrambling around. Howard will probably wear them down, but Larry Brown always gets the most out of his guys before he packs town and leaves. Magic in six, possibly seven if they can’t light it up from beyond the arc.
The Celtics-Heat series sucks. Boston’s looked terrible for a month. KG looks like David Robinson near the end (effective at times, out of it at others), Pierce looks totally worn out (it’s so depressing to watch him play now), and Allen is starting to wear down. Rondo’s playing great ball, but it’s amazing how abrasive the vets treat him. I kind of hope that Wade carries Miami through just because a Lebron-Wade series would be fun for two or three spectacular individual duels. Celtics in seven though, and then they get swept by Cleveland. This is the Series of the Living Dead—the Celtics look ready for retirement and Wade probably wants out of Miami.
The Hawks-Bucks series would’ve been epic for true hoops fans with Bogut in there—I was so bummed when I heard about that injury. I really wanted to see the evolutionary Luc Longley dominate the boards. Instead Atlanta will win in four or five, setting up a real exciting Orlando-Atlanta seven game series which I can’t wait to watch.
Lakers in 7 without Bynum. Lakers in 5 with Bynum. Thunder have blown a half-dozen double digit leads against all teams of all sorts the past month to blow homecourt in the first round, and I could see the same thing happening here. Fisher will get eaten alive and Kobe probably won’t play that well, but Gasol and Odom should wreack havoc inside. Of course, if the guards decide to hound the ball rather than plastering it inside, the Thunder could sneak up on them, but if LA messes around with these guys. Definitely worth watching for the Durant-Artest battle.
Dallas in 6. I like the Spurs, and if they can pull the upset I can see them in the Finals, but the Mavs are the worst possible matchup for them. They can throw Damp and Haywood at Duncan for forty minutes, and Timmy’s not exactly in dominant form anymore. George Hill is coming in sore. Tony Parker is coming in rusty. The Mavs can throw Barea and Beaubois off the bench to outquick Parker, and Terry is a capable match against Manu. Unless Ginobili has the series of his life, it’s hard to see them beating Dallas’s depth.
I could definitely see the winner of this series in the Finals. Lots of hungry vets on both sides—something I DON’T see on the top half of the West bracket.
Suns in 6. Holy great Jesus. I hadn’t paid much attention to the Suns other than box scores, but I watched them the last two nights and they CRUSHED Denver and Utah on back-to-back nights to earn that three seed. And it wasn’t like the Nugs and Jazz were screwing around and playing cards on the sideline. Phoenix has three great three point shooters in J-Rich, Dudley and Frye, Dragic has finally emerged as their quality backup point (he’s even making some Nash-like moves), Amundson’s doing his deal, Grant Hill is playing great, Amare has been monstrous, and Steve’s still being all cereberal. Favorite team of the postseason (although it’s funny they replaced an injured Robin Lopez with Jarron Collins as their 5), even if they’re probably doomed to lose in the second round.
That being said, Portland won’t go quietly. Camby will make Amare work hard for his points. Nash won’t be able to handle Miller defensively (but the same could be said the other way around). Aldridge could cause Stoudemire some problems, but Amare’s issue has always been post defense. Roy’s meniscus injury is going to really hurt their upset potential. But Portland has the best home court in the league, so they’ll probably squeeze two before succumbing to the Suns.
No way Utah wins a Game 7 in Denver. I really liked the Jazz earlier this season, but they’ve sunk off since then, and I don’t see them having the horses to stay with the Nugs. Afflalo and Lawson will make Deron work hard for his points (if they could knock around Chris Paul last year, the story should be the same here), Melo traditionally has been an awful matchup for them, and JR Smith will throw a few casual 30 point games in there. The Nuggets beat the Jazz three times this year (once without Melo and Billups); and their lone loss came without Melo and Billups. Denver’s biggest weakness has been size, but Okur is a perimeter big and Boozer is an undersized big. Their exit won’t come for another round. Nuggets in 5.
What I Learned from Drunken Master
1) Breaking norms is rewarding. The main character disrespects his masters, flirts and gropes his niece (so no one gets grossed out), gets his ass kicked in by his aunt, cripples some dude at the market, refuses to pay for his dinner, and in the end earns the respect of all. A hero for the ages.
2) The more you act like a goofball, the more you succeed. Jackie Chan has proven that not taking yourself seriously will earn you MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. In other words,
a) Look like a buffoon. This can apply to all walks of life. Chicks dig the comedian.
b) PROFIT!
3) What the hell’s in the water in China (other than copious amounts of lead)? How do these thousand year old Chinese men go flying around kicking ass ? Is it tai chi? Buddhism? All the senior citizens I know in America just want to buy cheap prescription drugs and sleep at 4 pm.
THIS MOVIE GIVES FALSE HOPE THAT BEING OLD IS AWESOME.
Buy on Amazon, or rent the movie on Netflix.
Stuff I’ve Been Writing About Cal Sports
People who thought I was done writing about Cal football/hoops are mistaken; I might be done writing for Bears Necessity, but that doesn’t mean I’m still not writing about the Golden Bears elsewhere.
For those who don’t know, I’ve been writing a lot for the California Golden Blogs (a Cal sports community that’s part of SBNation, a grassroots sports network of team/sports blogs), which is probably why you haven’t heard or seen much of me lately. Stupid I know, but I generally work at my best when unencumbered by social or physical burden. I haven’t been this productive in years, and it’s definitely allowed me to reassess the way I approach writing.
For those who care about this stuff, the best way is to follow me at SBNation by clicking on the here (or on the SBNation link on the sidebar) and subscribing to the feed.
Anyway, these are just samples of the best work:
Should the Pac-10 eliminate round-robin scheduling?
“The BCS, for better or for worse, is here to stay for most of the next decade. We don’t really have much of a say in it, so we have to deal with the system as is. So we have to figure out what situations would benefit the Bears assuming USC maintains its conference dominance. One thing to look at it is the vaunted Pac-10 round robin. I got thinking about this after reading a quote from Wizard of Odds:
Wouldn’t it be nice if BCS teams took off the skirt and started playing BCS teams in nonconference? Wouldn’t it be nice if you, the fan, actually got value for all that money you pump toward a university just to get a decent seat? Wouldn’t it be nice if the spirit of competition returned to college football?
This is a nice viewpoint, but it’s a little naive. The Pac-10 already does this, playing the extra game, having every other team in the conference play each other once. How much respect do they get for this system? (Hint: it’s equal to the number of BCS at-large bids they’ve been rewarded with the past six seasons.)
Other stuff, if you want to take a look at it.
Here’s the dirty secret: This extra conference game drives up the probability of an extra loss. And you could argue has crippled BCS dreams several times for our conference’s best.”
This post was pretty crazy. 484 comments, with pretty good discussion arguing for and against. Can’t say it didn’t get a little bit heated, but it was all in good fun! We even started a discussion about Scorsese movies on the side.
Here are some of my other favorite posts.
What Concerns You About Cal Football (2009 ed): ”Concern. That’s the state of mind a Cal football fan can find his or herself in during the interminable offseason…However, while those positive thoughts run through our minds from time to time, worry and apprehension can supplant them fairly easily. As in, “how will the Bears break our hearts this time…There are several troublespots going into next season, and I’m sure we can identify others if we try hard enough. Behold the power of pessimism!”
Introducing +/- to Cal Hoops (still a work in progress!): You probably know how the plus/minus has become a huge staple of NBA stats (you’ll see it on NBA box score sheets); I tried applying them to Cal Hoops. Still a work in progress.
Should the Pac-10 Get Better Television Deals?: Anyone who’s followed or tried to follow the Pac-10 football circuit outside the West Coast has pretty much found themselves in dire straits…
Finally, I started a Hall of Fame for this Cal community site to reward the greatest Cal athletes for their efforts as Golden Bears and as pros. It’s a March Madness style tournament where . You can see what the full bracket looks like here, and track what’s going on by following the Hall of Fame section.
It’s really cool stuff; Cal sports fans should check it out if you guys have some time, some really quality stuff has come out of this.
Was Operation Barbarossa A Smart Move by the Nazis?
Tens of thousands of Soviet Unions at Birkenau. Nearly six million Soviet soldiers would be captured during the Second World War. Only about four of every nine would return to Russia.
Operation Barbarossa are two words that emnate pure terror to any European. It would start a war between Germans and Russians that would end with tens of millions dead (either on the battlefield, massacre or as POWs). On the 68th anniversary of this battle I figured I’d talk a little bit about it. This particular post and map focuses on the military aspects of the campaign (in the future I’ll talk about the horrifying aspect of Barbarossa involving the Nazi death squads).
After Hitler could not subjugate Britain by either air supremacy or coastal invasion (Operation Sea Lion was postponed, and eventually cancelled), he turned his sights eastward toward Russia.
Strategic breakdown
There were definitely huge advantages for Germany if they did win. The Soviet Union had the largest army and air force in Europe, some of the richest territory in terms of resources, and the last great meance to Nazi dominance of the continent. If Germany were to crush the Russians in combat, they could be overlords of the European mainland for years to come.
They also believed they would have the superior tacticians on the field, thanks largely in part due to Stalin’s Great Purge. The embarrassing performance by the Soviet Union against Finland in 1939 reinforced that notion. It would bear out during the early months of Barbarossa, when Soviet commanders, afraid of the NKVD squads if they gave ‘retreat’ orders, would rather they and their soldiers face encirclement and imprisonment from the German Panzers.
However war against Russia needed to be won swiftly. The German economy was not in the shape to fight a long, protracted war, which was certainly what Barbarossa would entail. A decisive military victory would have to come in the first year or two of the invasion if Germany was going to have any chance to win in the Eastern Front.
Moreover, while he respected the British as a people and longed for a coalition of both the empires, Hitler expressed malice for the Russians almost as tantamount as his hatred for the Jews. Indeed, the main reasons for the invasion were probably ideological, which overruled strategic orthdoxy from the outset. Hitler outlined his stark and frightening thoughts on Russia early on in his famous testament, Mein Kampf:
Here Fate itself seems desirous of giving us a sign. By handing P ussia to Bolshevism, it robbed the Russian nation of that intelligentsia which previously brought about and guaranteed its existence as a state. For the organization of a Russian state formation was not the result of the political abilities of the Slavs in Russia, but only a wonderful example of the state-forming efficacity of the German element in an inferior race.
…
For centuries Russia drew nourishment from this Germanic nucleus of its upper leading strata. Today it can be regarded as almost totally exterminated and extinguished. It has been replaced by the Jew. Impossible as it is for the Russian by himself to shake off the yoke of the Jew by his own resources, it is equally impossible for the Jew to maintain the mighty empire forever. He himself is no element of organization, but a ferment of decomposition. The Persian I empire in the east is ripe for collapse. And the end of Jewish rule in Russia will also be the end of Russia as a state. We have been chosen by Fate as witnesses of a catastrophe which will be the mightiest confirmation of the soundness of the folkish theory.
Indeed, the campaign would be full of such barbaric overtones, and would eventually rob the Germans of the strategic advantages they had enjoyed in their biggest battles in Europe (we can talk about that later).
As for the Soviets, they were in good shape to anticipate the attack; they received NUMEROUS intelligence reports that indicated, even a report that indicating an attack for June 22. However, Stalin refused to believe any of this; whether he had wholly deluded himself to believe this or simply shrank from the moment can be debated for ages.
Battle Plans
As you can see from the map above, the plan was for the Germans to center their attacks on Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev, with one army group in charge of each case. The northern most group (Army Group North) would advance through the Baltic states with minimal help from the Finns looking to recapture lost territory from the Winter War. The southern most group (Army Group South) attacking the Ukraine would advance with the help of Rumanian and Hungarian satellite troops. The middle group, Army Group Centre, would be assigned the most tanks (two of the four Panzer groups), charged with encircling the bulk of the Soviet troops and opening the road to Moscow. Eventually they would try to take the territory between the Russian cities of Astrakahan in the Caucasus, which would occupy practically all of European Russia.
The Germans would engage nearly four million soldiers to the initial attack with 3600 tanks and 4400 aircraft; although they’d be outnumbered 4 to 1 in tanks and 3 to 1 in aircraft, those numbers would mean less compared to the inability for the Red Army troops to manuever, the fear of Stalin by Red Army commanders, and the inferiority of the equipment to defend with (the Soviets would not start producing T-34s en masse until very late in 1941, and Soviet aircraft was of barely average quality throughout the Second World War and was generally outclassed by the Luftwaffe until late in the European campaign).
Ultimately, each side (one fueled with ideological motivations, the other wandering with willful ignorance of the situation about to unfold) would collide into circumstances that would ensure the maximum number of casualties. It would leave a generation of men from Europe’s largest countries ravaged. To think it could all have been avoided.
Conclusions
1. Germany should not have prosecuted the war in Russia until they had finished off Britain. Had Hitler finished off the British by either overwhelming the Royal Air Force or achieving total economic blockade with the U-Boat campaign, the worry of persisting in a two-front War would have dissipated. Unfortunately, Hitler remained deluded that the British would welcome a partnership with Germany to help govern the world. This viewpoint seemingly made even less sense considering their leader Winston Churchill was one of the most vehmently anti-Nazi leaders BEFORE the war even begun.
2. Hitler’s paranoia about Jews and Bolsheviks ultimately led to his undoing. Hitler’s inability to reconcile his perceptions of the ‘Jewish conspiracy’ would force him to conduct the war with Russia from ideological rather than pragmatic purposes (although he did turn the war into an economic one). It would end tragically for the Jews in Eastern Europe, especially in the Ukraine and Belarus, but it would also ultimately lead to the destruction of their Gideon.
The ideology against Slavs would alienate and antagonize many Baltics, Ukranians and White Russians. These peoples were no friends of Stalin and Communism; they weren’t even very friendly to the Jews. However, instead of collaborating, recruiting local troops from these territories, and setting the resources of these occupied territories to the Third Reich, the Nazis would treat those occupied as inferior peoples not worthy of anything but slave labor or extermination. Thus a potential pool of soldiers and resources was severly drained and those who survived were lost to the partisan movement or the prisoner camps of the East.
3. Stalin’s stubbornness to reconcile himself with reality would end up costing Russia millions of its finest soldiers. The Red Army would only mobilize in the hours before the invasion when it was far too late to face the attack head-on. Interestingly, while Hitler’s personal feelings about Russia would color the portrait of the war that was about to unfold, without Stalin’s co-operation (by his ignoring all warnings of war coming to the Motherland) the Red Army would never have been brought as close as it was to near breaking point.
4. Germany would have to win quick. Letting the war drag on would ultimately lead to a war of attrition, one the Soviet Union was bound to win. The Germans would have to rely more than ever on their Panzers to outmanuever and envelop the slower, plodding Russian armies.
5. Germany still had a decent shot to destroy Russia. I’ll talk about this later on.
In the next few posts I’ll get into the nitty gritty of Operation Barbarossa, and then in a post after that I’ll talk more about the darker side of the battle.
Source: John Keegan, The Second World War (The best one volume novel on World War II around. I’m sure there are better books out there, but this books does a great job of breaking down the big picture, of how these stories fit into broader history and gets us deep into the mindsets of the people prosecuting the war. There are probably fine books breaking down the intricacies of warfare, but if you want the best book to learn about the overaching nature of World War II, Keegan is for you. Keep in mind he does not like Clausewitz.)
The Zen Master’s 12 Strategies
Phil Jackson is about to win his tenth NBA title, probably tonight or Tuesday. It can be debated whether Phil is the greatest coach of all-time, but there’s no doubt that he’s done what he needed to get the Bulls and the Lakers to the top of the mountain.
As usual, back to Robert Greene and The 33 Strategies of War, which I learn something new from everytime I pick it up. Kind of like watching Zen Master Coach, and how he applies some of these strategies to his coaching.
Declare War On Your Enemies: In most sports, this usually refers to the other opponents, but in basketball, the war is from within. Phil knew the biggest enemies to the Lakers’s progress would be their mindset, roughed up after getting wiped out in last year’s Finals. Were they tough enough? Could they handle the spotlight? Could they fight the concept they were soft?
Phil Jackson is pushing Pau Gasol. Has been pushing him. Since the beginning of training camp. Since the last seconds ticked off the clock in the Lakers’ ugly loss to Boston in Game 6 of the Finals last June.
“He’s yelled at Pau more this season than at anyone I can remember in a long time,” Lakers assistant coach Kurt Rambis says. “He’s been working him, needling him, constantly challenging him to be better than he was then, to be a tougher rebounder, a tougher defender.”
Playing with greater resolve — absorbing blows more carelessly and lowering a shoulder more forcefully — isn’t a switch you throw, it’s an attitude you arrive at, a process you survive.
Many of us remember the famous anecdote from the 1991 NBA Finals, when Jordan was looking for his shot in traffic instead of passing out to the open John Paxson, and in a timeout Phil asked MJ who was open. After asking him several times, Michael finally said, “Pax.” Phil replied, “Then get him the fucking ball.” From that point on in Game 5, MJ drew the double team, found Paxson, who nailed five jumpers in the final four minutes to give the Bulls their first title. Jackson picks his spots, finds the weak points in his team’s psyche (Michael’s and Kobe’s willingness to take over the game, Shaq’s passive-aggressive behavior, Scottie’s whining, Gasol’s lack of toughness), and challenge it when the team needs it. In terms of managing the emotions of his stars, no one has done it better as a coach than Phil.
The Ten Thousand
For those wanting a visual depiction of the Xenophon story, click on the picture of the map to go to the actual Google Map.
~The blue markers represent where the mercenaries originated from.
~~Example: “4000 hoplites under Xenias the Arcadian“ would be marked by a marker on the province of Arcadia, Greece, etc.
~The red territory marks the extent of the Persian Empire during the time of the march; the Greeks would have to make it to the Black Sea to sail their way to Greece.
~The blue line….is well…yeah, the line they marched on.
~The fire represents where the battle of Cunaxa took place and all that jazz. There aren’t many details outside of the book of Anabasis; click on the link to check it out via Project Gutenburg!
Xenophon and The Big Aristotle
For those not familiar with the story, Xenophon was a Greek philosopher/adventurer back in those ancient times. He accompanied Greek mercenaries under Cyrus into the heart of the Persian empire to march on Babylon to overthrow Cyrus’s brother, the Persian king Ataxerxes. The attack failed, Cyrus was killed, and the Greek commander was ambushed and beheaded by Persian soldiers on the trek back to Greek territory. As the Greek soldiers began to fall into despair, Xenophon began to cast himself into the spotlight.
“That night Xenophon, who had stayed mostly on the sidelines during the expedition, had ad ream: a lightning bolt from Zeus set fire to his father’s house. He woke up in a sweat. It suddenly struck him: death was staring the Greeks in the face, yet they lay around moaning, despairing, arguing. The problem was in their heads. Fightin for money rather than for a purpose or a cause, unable to distinguish between friend and foe, they had gotten lost. The barriers between them ”
Eventually Xenophon would help inspire the Greeks to forget about these internal battles and turn their fight outward onto the Persians. He told them to focus on one goal: Getting home to Greece. Inspired by this call to arms, the Greeks managed to elude the Persian army and get back to Greece in reduced, but still healthy numbers.
Now, what does that have to do with the Big Cactus? Let’s take a little look at his personal taste in movies:
“Remember, Shaq’s favorite movie is “The Warriors,” the ’70’s classic where the top gang leader in New York City (Cyrus) holds a gang summit and tries to organize the first-ever gang revolution. As Cyrus points out, the total number of gang members doubles the number of police officers in the city, which logically means that they can overpower them and take over everything. Apparently, he didn’t know about the National Guard, the FBI, the Army and the Marines. Anyway, Cyrus gets assassinated at the gang summit — one of the most devastating screen deaths ever, right up there with Sonny Corleone and Hooch — and everyone incorrectly blames the Warriors, an unassuming gang from Coney Island.”
Sound familiar? The Warriors is actually based off of Xenophon’s Anabasis. The struggle, the despair, the leader stepping up (Swan taking the place of Xenophon).
What is striking is that despite this being Shaq’s favorite movie, he doesn’t seem to have learned the deeper meaning behind the message of the film. If he did, he might very well be most dominant center ever. Simmons wrote a fascinating paragraph about Shaq’s reaction in the 2006 NBA Finals, that even with Shaq playing the Robin role he still couldn’t cede the spotlight. The victory had to be about him, in some form or the other.
Shaq has struggled with internal drama his entire career, to the detriment of his team and perhaps his legacy. That he could never show up and lead his team to big victories (and it’s still debatable whether he’s ever shown up). That the NBA had to change the rules so teams could defend him. That he never put in the work to make his damned free throws. That everyone was out to get him. That his coaches were never good enough or masters of panic. That his teammates didn’t get him the ball enough. That his centers That his sidekicks (Penny, Kobe, Wade) were selfish and immature.
Perhaps there’s some truth to that. Shaq is candid like that. But what does it tell us about Shaq that he says such things? Is he just trying to make excuses for his narcissism and self-indulgence? He could’ve had at least seven to eight dominant seasons rather than three (imagine that 2000 season replicated six to seven times over), like Bill Russell and Kareem, and left the game as undoubtedly one of the greatest to ever play the game. Right now he’s sitting somewhere in the top 20, with two of his sidekicks (Kobe and Wade) on their way to surpassing him.
Shaq could’ve overcome all of this if he had the foresight of Xenophon or the will of Swan. Instead of being ruthless and destroying his opponents on the court after winning his first title, he retreated and did just enough to squeak his way to titles. If he had battled his inner insecurities and turned the inner drama into an external battle he waged to get to the top.
But he could never truly crush his insecurities. His career won’t be a disappointment, but it’ll be diminished from what it could’ve been. Shaq can say he’s the greatest center ever all he wants. We all know the truth. He didn’t do quite enough to get out of Persia.