Post#12 » by lethalweapon3 » Tue Mar 26, 2019 10:33 pm
Granted, there weren’t many Clippers fans in LA, or anywhere else, at this time 30 years ago. But you can bet there were some that were peeved about what they were seeing, as they rose up off their couches and out of their recliners to change the TV channels.
On one channel, UHF probably, there were the Clippers, a hearty 11-49 just weeks before, simply going through the motions under a replacement coach, months after #1-overall rookie prize Danny Manning exited with a torn ACL.
Like an RKO, out of seemingly nowhere, the Clips decided to go on a winning spree – six wins over the final four weeks of March. Young ne’er-do-wells like Benoit Benjamin, Manning’s fellow lotto rookie Charles Smith, and Ken Norman were suddenly going off, routinely snatching victories out from the jaws of defeat.
To the Clipper fans – both of them, in ‘89 – who were wholly committed to the brave new world of tanking, March was pure Madness. Further down the dial, there were the Duke Blue Devils, America’s newest college hoops darling, courageously led on the court by their senior star.
On this day in 1989, Danny Ferry was on his way to helping Coach K clinch his third Final Four, in the span of their four seasons together at the Durham campus. Flanked by freshman Christian Laettner and senior Quin Snyder, Ferry’s 21 points and 8 rebounds helped the Blue Devils upset Alonzo Mourning’s and backup big Dikembe Mutombo’s top-seeded Georgetown Hoyas.
Both of the Clipper fans had to be distraught. This winning business was going to cost them precious Lottery odds! How are they ever going to get their hands on Ferry, if this keeps up? Settling for second-tier talent, like Mookie Blaylock, Glen Rice, Sean Elliott, Tim Hardaway or Shawn Kemp, was one thing. But this here was Danny Freaking Ferry, and the hopes this Dookie Diaper Dandy would help the Clips finally stand toe-to-toe with the Showtime Lakers were growing dimmer, one Benjamin stat-padding wall-ball bucket at a time.
The good news was, by season’s end, only new franchises in Charlotte and Miami had fared worse, while the Clippers had won a tiebreak flip with the woeful Spurs. At Lottery time, the division rival Kings had leaped them all for the top spot, and eventually set their sights on another sure-thing, in Louisville’s Pervis Ellison. For the Clippers, whose lotto-ball fortunes allowed them to pick second, The Ferrocious One, the Duke All-American star everyone coveted, was there for the taking!
Happy days, unfortunately, were not here for the first time in Clipper history. Ferry decided Tinseltown was too big for two Dannys. I don’t know how you plan on trading me, Ferry hinted to Donald Sterling, Elgin Baylor and company, but I’ll be taking my talents to Rome (Italy) until you brainiacs figure it out.
“Frankly, I was also a little surprised the Clippers drafted me because they had a pool of young forwards,” Ferry said in a statement at the time, three years before Shaq would be panned for playing similar hardball with Minnesota. “However, any concerns I had became academic once Il Messaggero (now Virtus Roma in the Italian League these days) made me this once-in-a-lifetime offer.”
1989 is not 2019, and the way the Lottery is set up is drastically different than it was back in those days. But the antacid-popping feeling among fans when bad teams win, this late in the NBA season, remains the same. As is the entropic variability that comes with fans keeping one eye on the scoreboard and the other on That One Guy from That Big Program they’re targeting.
Sometimes, the Sure-Shot Dookie turns out to be Kyrie Irving, or Grant Hill. Other times, he can wind up being Shelden Williams. Or, Jabari Parker, or, Austin Rivers. Or, Jahlil Okafor, coincidentally a possible starter when the New Orleans Pelicans take the floor at Smoothie King Center tonight to play the Atlanta Hawks (8:00 PM Eastern, Fox Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Fox Sports N’Awlins).
Or, Danny Ferry. More of a Diaper Rash than a Diaper Dandy.
A resigned Clipper team settled on Ron Harper and a few future draft picks from the Cavs. Ferry, who returned from his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to The States, and Cleveland wound up stuck with each other for the next ten seasons. The former #2 overall pick was unable to secure a spot in the starting lineup until his sixth season at age 29, well after the Cavs’ Jordan-era title shots had peaked.
Danny, ultimately, lacked the requisite skills to become anything more than a second-line player in this emerging pro league. What he did not lack was a parent who had managed an NBA team to a world championship. He was able to parlay his Duke degree, a shiny new championship ring, and his dad’s pull into a front office gig immediately after retiring with the Spurs. Just a couple years later, Danny finessed that into his first job as a top-dog GM, back in Cleveland. The rest, as Hawks fans know all too well, is Drunk History.
For a while there, it looked like Ferry waiting in the wings for Pelicans GM Dell Demps to implode wasn’t going to work itself out. The Pels had surprised in last year’s playoffs, even after Demps’ big play to pair Boogie Cousins with Anthony Davis fell apart. This offseason was unsuccessful in securing Cousins’ services, but New Orleans did get an improved Julius Randle to ink a contract instead.
Coach Alvin Gentry had his share of missteps once this season began, and health among the starters was routinely an issue. But by mid-January, Gentry was steering this club back toward .500 ball by mid-January, not an easy task in the Western Conference. Things were looking up in the Big Easy. Ironically, the fella who made Ferry jump before he could get pushed out of Cleveland, LeBron, did some more of his behind-the-scenes player-personnel magic, with the aid of his agents and big-M Magic.
Turning New Orleans’ All-Star franchise face, Davis, into a minefield that not even Demps could elude finally worked in Ferry’s favor. Now, Danny is back pulling the strings for the first time since the fateful phone call that blew apart the Atlanta Spittoon Group (in a roundabout way: thank you, Danny) once and for all.
Assuredly, Ferry is among a half-dozen finalists competing to get the GM duty from the Benson family on a non-interim basis, this time without any annoying Aints staffers hovering over the GM’s shoulder. Whether it’s Ferry or not, whoever gets the job is in kind of a good spot, thanks largely to Demps and his former puppetmasters.
A lottery pick that Demps hasn’t squandered, only the Pels’ second in the past five years, will be available at Draft time. Solomon Hill’s $13.3 million expiring deal in 2019-20 is the only albatross contract left on the roster. Jrue Holiday, officially shut down for the season today after having surgery for a core muscle injury, ought to be back healthy to run the show.
They’re currently over the salary cap level, but probably not for long once the team decides when and how to deal Davis. Because Demps and the Pelican brass held their ground, they’ve got Davis’ $27 million contract (Player Option in 2020-21) for next season as a bargaining chip, and not an array of unwanted and/or questionable rookie-scalers foisted upon them by Laker fanboys playing RealGM at the Trade Deadline. Gayle Benson is publicly quashing rumors that she’d sell the team to, say some tycoon that wants to make Louisville a major-league city, so there ought to be some stability behind whoever she hires to fix the franchise’s longstanding organizational issues.
I’m a full-throated advocate for Benson handing the reins over to Ferry. If there’s anybody familiar with artfully moving an All-Star’s eight-digit contract in less time than it takes to arrange the office furniture, it’s this guy. It is a pity that he was never able to max out the whole Ferrybudz relationship, but for all parties, things have generally worked out for the best. So long as he has learned to quit Cliff’s Notes-ing his scouting advice from RealGM services (am I allowed to say that aloud?), he’s golden.
While the Pelicans (31-44, 1-8 in last 9 games) move on officially without Holiday for the final few games, ballhandling is not a major issue as they prepare for the wrath of reigning Eastern Conference POW Trae Young, coming off a stellar stat line and a buzzer-beating game-winner (32 points, 11 assists, nobody cares TOs, 4-for-9 3FGs, 6-for-7 FTs, 6 rebounds vs. PHI) on Saturday.
It’s amazing what a productive visit to Great Clips can do. Presenting Elfrid Payton (questionable for tonight, wrist contusion) as Exhibit A. Or, dare I say, Elfrid “Mister Triple Double” Payton? Spurred on by the 15-10-10 he collected in Atlanta on March 10, during the Pelicans’ 128-116 loss, the native Louisianan went on to collect four more trip-doubs in consecutive games.
During the last couple games, both 20-plus-point losses to the Magic and Rockets, respectively, Payton had what Rex Chapman jokingly refers to as a “triple couple” – a couple points here, a couple dimes there, a couple boards. But if he’s healthy enough to go, and better locked in defensively versus Young, Payton can fill up the boxscore and keep Gentry’s team in the running to win.
Three years before Fran Belibi last night, there was a McDonald’s High School All-American named Frank Jackson rocking the rims, along the way to winning the Powerade Jam Fest. The co-Most Outstanding Player of the All-American Game, Jackson, along with some five-star recruits named Jayson Tatum (that week’s skills competition winner) and Harry Giles, were on their way to certain NBA glory, after a short pitstop at Duke.
While not quite a PTP’er under Coach K, Jackson was one-and-done with college. But unlike Tatum and Giles, he will have to scratch-and-claw for longer-term deals, since he was drafted 31st in the 2017 NBA Draft and shelved for what would have been his rookie season to repair ankle and foot issues.
Effectively, Jackson has been an undersized 2-guard, and he scored a team-high 23 points a couple weeks ago in Atlanta, on 10-for-18 field goal shooting, while paired alongside Payton in the backcourt. But with Holiday and now possibly Payton unavailable, Gentry is leaning on Jackson (30.9 3FG%, 25.0% as a starter; 16 combined assists in past three games, 16 in prior 15 games) to unearth more of his distributive skills when he’s on the floor.
Having forwards like Davis, Randle, and ex-Piston Stanley Johnson all willing to move the ball helps. But if Jackson and the Pelican guards spend an inordinate amount of time trying to out-shotjack Young (2-for-14 FGs, both makes on layups, but 10 assists, 2 TOs, 5 rebounds vs. NOP on March 10), rather than focusing on getting stops and doing what has worked all season under Holiday’s watch (12-6 when team racks up 30+ assists) in setting teammates up for scores, it is destined to be another long night.
Trae may have struggled on that night against the Pels as a jump-shooter and a float-sinker. But he and the Hawks’ wings had near unfettered offensive access to the bigs and to each other. Atlanta tied a season-low with nine player turnovers against New Orleans, and their highlight reel-makers John Collins (23 points, 10 rebounds, 4 blocks???) and Kevin “NOOO! HE WASN’T READY!” Huerter (27 points, 4-for-7 3FGs) stood to benefit the most.
Both clubs are bottom-10 defenses in the league, with New Orleans’ 23rd-ranked 111.6 D-Rating not far from Atlanta’s 26th-ranked 112.5. Yet both teams have tended to ratchet things up in the fourth quarters while keeping up league-high paces, the Pelicans’ 106.7 ranking 5th while the Hawks’ 107.5 is a respectable 10th, a value that has only improved for Atlanta since the All-Star Break (104.3 4th-quarter D-Rating, 4th in NBA).
Davis, as we know, is unlikely to be of assistance in the final frame. So it will be up to Randle, Okafor, and Cheick Diallo to keep Collins, Dewayne Dedmon and Alex Len from getting easy catches for scores in the paint.
Swingmen Kenrich Williams, Darius Miller and Hill must be active in making Atlanta perimeter shooters think twice, especially from the corners (ATL 5-for-6 corner 3FGs vs. NOP on Mar. 10). The Hawks missed 32 of 47 three-point attempts, in Saturday night’s wild win over Philly, but splashed six of nine trey attempts from the right corner.
Will the Hawks prevail again tonight? Maybe. Would this particular win, or the next one, imperil their shot at getting That Big Guy from That Big Program? Perhaps, a little bit. But the Pelicans’ interim GM knows, as well as anybody, that a team actually getting The Big Man on That Big Campus won’t instantly translate into NBA championship-contending success. The Pels’ backup center understands this a little better, too.
Whether they’re true Diaper Dandies or Diaper Rashes, if whomever Atlanta reels in this offseason doesn’t nudge this team back into playoff territory next season, no rush, no worries! Matter of fact, you can head down to State Farm Arena tomorrow and catch Duke signees Wendell Moore and Vernon Carey, before the preps become the absolute must-gets of 2020 (Migos at halftime, too). While Atlanta patiently waits, there is enough of a young core here making plays that get all us Hawks fans up off our couches, and not to change the channel in search of a college playoff game.
Let’s Go Hawks!
~lw3
"Dunking is better than sex." - Shawn Kemp, 1996
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