Weekly Countdown (cont.)

Brook Lopez and the Nets could bounce back with a spot in the playoffs next year. AP

On to the rest of the Countdown ...

4 Replies rescued from the spam

• The problem with the idea that NBA owners and players should act like "partners" is that they're not. Players take ZERO risk. They sign a contract and they get paid, guaranteed, regardless of personal performance or injury. If players want to be partners, then it's time to pay for performance. Only an agent would argue that franchise value appreciation is "income" that owners should share with players. Again, where was the player risk? An owner pays tens (or for recent owners, hundreds) of millions of dollars to purchase a team and arena. If that value goes up, why should the players share? Will they give back a portion of their pay if they suck and the value of the franchise goes down? Of course not. Player money flows one way: to their pocket, never back the other way. Partners share risk. If the players are willing to do that, then fine, they can be partners. But as long as all they want is to get paid with no responsibility to perform and no risk if overall league revenues fall, then they are not partners and deserve none of the upside.
-- Dan Palmer, Evanston, Ill.

Well put, Dan. My point is that both sides need a partnership. I thank you for spelling out the price the players would pay in order to be so engaged.

The free-agency era in sports is relatively young and still evolving, dating back to the Andy Messersmith ruling in 1975 that did away with the reserve clause in baseball. A players' union in one of the major sports eventually will recognize the upside of partnering with the owners, with an understanding that the shared risk will liberate the players to grow the game and ultimately make more money via that growth. It is the next phase.

• I cannot understand how the Nets could be this bad when I compare them with the Wolves, who are the worst team in the West. I believe they have a more balanced starting five and veteran leadership at the point, and they play in the much weaker conference. Is it the bench? Coaching? Chemistry? Or just plain luck?
-- Donguk, Seoul, Korea

All season I've agreed with your point of view that the Nets ought to be performing better. But maybe you and I have been giving them more credit than they deserve. I know Devin Harris has been diminished by a groin injury, but he hasn't shown any of the leadership you'd expect from an All-Star point guard before or since Lawrence Frank's dismissal. As promising as Brook Lopez has been, he is by no means a dominating center; Courtney Lee is a complementary player at shooting guard; and interim coach Kiki Vandeweghe took over with zero head-coaching experience.

The Nets can springboard back to the playoffs next season around a new rich owner, max cap space, a high lottery pick, those young players and the promise of an eventual move to Brooklyn. But I regret making excuses for them. If they become the NBA's worst team by losing 74 or more games, then they'll have earned that record and all of the ridicule that goes with it.

• Please stop posting Cleveland-in-the-Finals predictions. Every article you publish with this foolishness puts us inevitably one step closer to losing in the first round to the Bobcats and LeBron subsequently leaving town for New York. If you must publish Finals previews, stick with L.A.-Orlando, because invariably whatever you reporter-types predict in columns in February never happens. Thanks from Northern Ohio.
-- Jeff Scheid, Cleveland

I hear you, Jeff, but you ought to have more faith. You Cavs people are more insecure than Red Sox fans used to be.

• Do you think having Michael Jordan taking over the Bobcats would be good or bad for the franchise? He's noted for his lacking managerial skills, but he did trade for Stephen Jackson -- a player who has guided Charlotte to what may be the first playoff berth this season.
-- Stephanie, Matthews, N.C.

Here's one thing I don't understand: Why isn't job experience a commodity when it comes to running an NBA team? Isn't it natural to think that Jordan will grow better at his job the longer he does it? Instead of always looking for new faces to run NBA teams, I don't know why former GMs and franchise presidents aren't recognized for their experience. It takes a couple of years for rookie GMs to become trained for the job. Usually they learn the hard way by making mistakes, and sometimes they're fired before they can profit from that education. I'm not saying everyone should get a second chance, but I do think if Jordan becomes Charlotte's majority owner, then he'll apply his experience in a positive way. It's not fair to think of him as the same guy who hired himself to play when he was president of the Wizards.

3 Takes from Mike D'Antoni

The Knicks' coach can't wait for July 1, when New York will have more than $30 million in cap space.

• On All-Star center David Lee, who is averaging 20.3 points, 11.5 rebounds and 3.5 assists through Thursday. "It's hard sometimes to evaluate a guy when you don't make the playoffs; then it's [the criticism that] his numbers get skewed. And they are a little bit, but that doesn't change from him being really good. He has a great sense of offensive timing, of passing the basketball, of being able to finish as a pick-and-roll guy, and if you're running that he may be one of the best I've ever seen at it.

"He's undersized, he can play '4,' though. Would that cut him down? I don't know. He's developed his 15-foot shot and he shoots the ball really well in that [distance], so I see him as a very good player on a very good team.

"Now, maybe he doesn't put up 20 on a good team. Maybe he does have 12 points and 10 rebounds, and now you have to determine what that is worth. But I know he'll be a positive force on any team he plays for."

• On the deadline trades that generated cap space for two near-max players. D'Antoni slowed the offense in December. "And we had our best month, and we felt that was the key," he said. "We're now ramping it back up. We want to finish the next 20-something games and see if we can run again and get them out. To be honest, Gallo [second-year forward Danilo Gallinari] shoots the ball better when we run because he gets more open perimeter shots, and with Sergio [Rodriguez, the up-tempo point guard acquired at the deadline], we need to push the tempo.

"Getting that cap space is what we set out to do. It was our main goal other than to develop as many guys as we could. We developed David Lee into an All-Star and we got Gallo and Wilson [Chandler] to pretty good levels, and now, hopefully, Sergio we can plod along too. And then we open the space. Still, we're disappointed we didn't make the playoffs [New York is nine games out of the No. 8 spot], and we're disappointed for the fans, but they've hung in with us so far, and hopefully we'll all benefit from it."

• On losing in New York. D'Antoni was 253-136 in five years with the Suns, and before that, eight years as a championship coach in Italy.

"Losing tears up any coach," he said. "But losing at other teams is maybe even worse. If you're [with] the Phoenix Suns and you lose a game, it's like, Oh my God. Here, you take it in stride a little bit knowing the grand plan is what we're doing.

"I signed on knowing this could be a reality. But I didn't really believe it: I'm thinking, We'll switch it around, we'll win anyway. But after we made the trade with Zach Randolph and Jamal [Crawford] and these guys [to clear cap space], the reality sank in that this is going to be some tough sledding. And it has been.

"I don't really get a whole lot out of losing. You re-examine everything, you see a lot of different things. It's just the life experience. But I wouldn't recommend losing to learn something, because that doesn't help anything.

"The only upside is the experience the young players are earning. Every game we're competitive, it hurts when Wilson and Gallo go down and miss a big shot. OK, you missed a shot here, we lose, big deal. But being in those situations and being able to react defensively or offensively is very crucial for their development."

2 Names in the news

• Larry Bird. HBO's new documentary, Magic and Bird: A Courtship of Rivals, emphasizes a major difference between the two stars: Johnson sought attention while Bird shunned it.

Earlier this season I asked Bird if fans in Indianapolis respect his privacy. "It's better here than anywhere I've ever been," he said, while emphasizing that he wasn't a recluse in the past. "I go out. I don't stay at home just because I'm worried about somebody coming up to me. I never was like that. My thing earlier in my career at Boston -- it was all new, and Boston's completely different than anywhere I've been."

So you've made peace with your celebrity? "Well, yeah, after 30 years," he said, laughing. "You know, I was very uncomfortable because I was pretty shy early on, but [the attention] is just expected now. It's part of the game. But it always amazes me: I haven't played for 17 years and they still talk about the days we played and comparing us to guys who play now. It's always been interesting to me.

"It's always been amazing to me, but fans are fans, I guess. If you really think about it, all the guys who are in their 60s and 70s and 50s now have seen us play, and there's a majority of them still alive. It really meant something to them. A lot of the letters I get and the support I get are from people who watched my whole career or seen me play in Boston. If you play in a place like Boston, it's different from anywhere else."

• Tiger Woods. May we please settle one fact? He is not the most famous or popular athlete in the world. He is a golfer, and most of the world knows nothing of and has no interest in knowing anything about golf. When I read numerous reports casually describing Woods as the most famous athlete in the world, it comes across as us Americans deciding that Woods must be popular everywhere because he is popular here.

As a matter of common sense, the most famous athlete on the planet used to be Muhammad Ali, because boxing is universally understood. Pelé has been up there as the top star in soccer, which is the world's most popular team sport, and Michael Jordan -- star of the world's second-most-popular team sport -- took over for him following the 1992 success of the Dream Team and the newfound access to American entertainment and products behind the Iron Curtain after the Berlin Wall went down. You can't be the most popular athlete globally unless you accomplish something of universal appeal.

I remember speaking a decade ago with one of the top sportswriters in England about the importance of Jackie Robinson. He asked, "Who is Jackie Robinson?"

It is just so arrogant to imagine that hundreds of millions of people in China or South Africa or great swaths of Eastern Europe and Russia have ever noticed anything Tiger Woods has done at the U.S. Open or the PGA Championship. Probably he is more famous now around the world because of his affairs than he was because of his play. The man is a golfer, and golf makes as much sense to billions and billions of people as cricket makes to Americans.

1 Point guard helping another

• From Sacramento mayor Kevin Johnson. On Tuesday, the former Suns playmaker will hold a news conference at City Hall to formally endorse Kings point guard Tyreke Evans for NBA Rookie of the Year and support a campaign the Kings are naming "RekeROY" (as in Rookie Of Year). This makes perfect sense for Johnson, as the best candidate to endorse is the one whose election is assured.