End of an Era

The following blog post is an email that I wrote earlier today to some fellow Stanford fans. It best sums up my feelings about Mike Montgomery leaving Stanford yesterday.

I didn't get much sleep last night, as I lay awake pondering the devastating
news. I can't believe that the face of Stanford Basketball is leaving us. Mike
Montgomery IS the program.

I was thinking about how this compares to when Tyrone left us for Notre Dame,
but this just feels so different. In football, we have a much longer history
and we've had great coaches leave before. But Monty has been an institution
here for almost two decades and he built our basketball program from the
ground up. On the other hand, when Tyrone left, he had the gall to bolt for
another college team (a team that we play annually, no less). I can at least
respect Monty for going to a job at the highest level in his profession.

So now we start to think about the future. Who will coach the team next year?
We’re already losing Josh, Justin, Lotty and Joe, so we already knew the
team would have a new look. It might make sense to have Tony Fuller or Eric
Reveno serve as interim coach for the coming season, since it is relatively
late in the year for a new coach, new staff and new system to be implemented.
But chances are, the athletic department will hire someone with head coaching
experience. I would be happy if we could lure Mark Few from Gonzaga. I just
hope we don't hastily hire some big name coach who isn’t a good fit for us.
I’m skeptical as to how many good coaches there out there who are available.
I guess there’s Matt Doherty. How about Jerry Tarkanian? Steve Lavin
anyone?!?

While it will be very, very difficult for our next coach to match Monty’s
level of regular season success, I do hold out hope that the new guy will be
able to get better results in the NCAA tournament. I wonder if Monty thought
to himself: “You know, I’ve been here 18 years, got us to the Final Four
and gotten us to #1 in the polls, but I think I’ve achieved all that I can
with Stanford basketball.” It’s a tough question to ask because Monty has
been so great for us, but you wonder if he has taken Stanford as far as he
could.

The thing that really makes this news ironic for me is that the Warriors
happen to be my favorite NBA team. And as a Warriors fan it’s nice to have a
likeable coach, but I think it’s highly questionable hire. College coaches
NEVER succeed in the NBA, and given how often NBA coaches get fired, I will be
very surprised if Monty lasts the four years on his new contract. I guess new
GM Chris Mullin wanted to make a splash, and he did. I guess I’m willing to
give Mullin some benefit of the doubt, if only because he’s not Garry St.
Jean.

So all in all, I’m very sad to see Monty but I do wish him well. He’s
given us 18 great years and I hope that he’s built the program to the point
where it can survive his departure. I just think it would be funny if we heard
these words next month:

“With the 10th pick in the 2004 NBA Draft, the Golden St. Warrriors
select… Josh Childress from Stanford!”

 
Rambling through the Playoffs

With a faaaaantastic second round of the NBA playoffs coming to a close, I thought I'd offer up a few thoughts on the games of this past week:

* The Lakers-Spurs series just had me dumbfounded. Before the series I was positive that the Spurs would win in five. Maaaybe six games. And after the first two games, when Tony Parker looked like a Hall-of-Famer, I wrote the Lakers off just like everyone else. I guess the lessons are as follows:
1) The home court can change everything. In games 3 and 4, the atmosphere and style of play were so different, it was like the Lakers were playing as if the first two games never happened.
2) Never underestimate momentum. After the Lakers evened the series at 2, the conventional wisdom was that the Spurs were going to quit playing games and take control of the series when it shifted back to San Antonio. Not so- LA proved it's much easier to win Game 5 on the road if you've won the previous two.
3) You just can't dismiss superstars. I think that we can all agree that Kobe Bryant deserves the benefit of the doubt (on the basketball court, that is). You can never count a team out when they have a player like Kobe, who can score at will and cannot be fazed.

* Watching that series, you could sense that Robert Horry's heart just wasn't in it. Didn't you get the feeling that he was secretly rooting for his old teammates? By the way, with Horry now out of the playoffs, so ends the most underrated streak in NBA history: every NBA champion of the last 10 years had either Robert Horry or Steve Kerr. Think about it: Rockets, Bulls, Spurs, Lakers, Spurs. Maybe Kerr will come out of the TNT broadcast booth and sign a 10-day contract with the Timberwolves, just to make things interesting.

* How is it that last night, Jeff Foster was the most important player on the Pacers? The Warriors drafted this guy in the first round in '99 and he was quickly inducted into the Golden State Draft-Day Bust Hall of Fame. You're telling me that this guy is starting on the best team in the East?

* Watching the game today I was reminded of one of my favorite ideas for an NBA stat: conversion percentage. First you take the number of made baskets + number of trips to the foul line. Then divide that by the number of possessions. It's a great measure of how effective you are with your scoring opportunities. I'm always surpised at how many teams can't convert on their posessions in the last two minutes of the game. With conversion percentage, you could measure which teams can make the most of their chances in crunch time.

* The Game 7 between the Kings and T-Wolves is just what this playoffs need. Either Webber or Garnett will shed their label of choke-artist, so it will be absolutely riveting. But I don't think the winner will have enough to top the Lakers.

 
I'm the Mel Kiper Jr. of Summer Movies

I find myself in the same position every May: excited and optimistic that there will be some really good movies in the coming months. Sure, I nearly always end up sorely disappointed, as I'm not the wide-eyed 12 year-old who was riveted by films like Demolition Man. You know, prognosticating the summer movie slate is a lot like trying to evaluate the NFL draft. And since this blog is heavy on the sports-talk to begin with, let's break down the summer movies as if they were NFL prospects:

LARRY FITZGERALD DIVISION: The Can't Miss Blue Chippers

This class is for movies with either an innovative director (The Village's M. Night Shyamalan), a star that I like (Anchorman's Will Ferrell) or good buzz (the anti-McDonald's documentary Super Size Me) . But the last two members of this class have all three; Collateral and The Terminal have can't miss directors (Michael Mann and Spielberg), superstar Toms (Cruise and Hanks) and an X-factor that piques my interest. Collateral has Jamie Foxx, the flawless comedian who's also an underrated actor. The Terminal is loosely-based on the true story of a guy's who's been living in Charles DeGaulle airport for 16 years.

BEN ROTHELISBERGER DIVISION: Have the potential to be special, but certainly don't bet on it

When I first heard about I, Robot, I was very, very intrigued, as it's about time they make futuristic artificial intelligence movie that's actually intelligent. I can't help but look forward to The Day After Tomorrow as I have a thing for garish disaster movies. The Ben Stiller-Vince Vaughn comedy Dodgeball could be riotously funny or it could be another Mystery Men. Spiderman 2 looks cool, but that franchise is still in need of an awesome villain: Doc Ock is just too unrealistic, even for a comic book movie. Although everyone's trying to make it into the next Gladiator, I'm reluctant to jump on the Troy bandwagon. Brad Pitt has a spotty track record and I don't think he was cast in this movies for his acting chops. In one 30-second commercial earlier tonight, there were three separate shots of Pitt leaping into the air with his tunic-clad thighs spread apart. This worries me.

CHRIS PERRY DIVISION: What you see is what you get...and no one's very excited about it

The first movie was all right, but did anyone ask for The Bourne Supremacy? Do we really need to see what happens next to this white-bread amnesiac spy? I pity anyone who is excited about Van Helsing. Yeah it'll have some cool stunts and slick costumes, but it's from the director of both Mummy movies, which was like a crash course in bad special effects. Finally, there's only one reason to see Catwoman, and we all know what it is.

CRAIG KRENZEL DIVISION: Why even bother?

While Soul Plane merely looks mind-numbingly stupid, White Chicks takes African-American comedy to a new depth. This one looks offensive to both blacks and whites, while ruining any shred of good will the Wayans brothers had left from the days of In Living Color.
I have no idea why anyone decided to remake Shall We Dance, a Japanese dancing movie that was a lukewarm hit in 1996. That they decided to cast Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez all but ensures it's dismal failure. When will people figure out that J. Lo hasn't been in a good movie since Out of Sight six years ago? Finally, there's no doubt in my mind that the absolute worst movie of the summer will be The Chronicles of Riddick. First of all, Vin Diesel's day in the sun is over- forget all that talk about him becoming Hollywood's next action star. Second of all, even though Pitch Black made decent money when it came out in 2000, that doesn't mean the movie has enough of a fan base to warrant a sequel. Do you know anyone who has even mentioned Pitch Black in the past four years? Third of all, any movies that both takes place on another planet and features Dame Judy Dench is doomed for the land of Battlefield Earth.

 
Are We There Yet?

We're now in the thick of what has so far been the most maddening NBA playoffs in my lifetime. Of the eight first round series, exactly one went past five games. And that one series happens to be the worst matchup of the playoffs, Hornets-Heat (that Jamaal Magloire-Brian Grant showdown just isn't doing it for me). Clearly, last year's decision to go to a seven-game format for the first round was a mistake. First of all, in the NBA, the better team wins a seven-game series 99% of the time. That's why it's always easier to predict the champion in the NBA than it is in any other sport. So when you bring that dynamic into the first round, you get an epic mismatch. The Celtics and Knicks had no business being in the playoffs (hell, those teams couldn't even win the ACC tournament) so the Pacers and Nets didn't break a sweat in those series. The league's desire to drag out the first round over three weekends has backfired, as was blatantly evident this weekend. I'm sure David Stern was just thrilled to have zero games yesterday, a Saturday, and just two games today. Go back to the 5-game, playing-every-other-day format for the first round.