NBA Offseason Primer

by Shaebaun "Suge" Benjamin

Been a little busy at work and finding new work so I'm putting this out there now. I planned on doing this before the draft, actually right after the Finals but this will suffice. In this I will cover trades that might, could, and should happen. Moves in free agency that might, could, and should happen. Other tidbits and I'll start with a draft review.

NBA DRAFT 2014

Things I liked:

• First and foremost let's talk about the Cleveland Cavaliers. I enjoyed a lot of what they've done this offseason. They've acted like a team building for a future. Ideally with Kyrie, Wiggins, Thompson, and Waiters all remaining healthy and improving, it could be like if they had Lebron, Boozer stayed, Dejuan Wagner didn't break down and lastly making a much better pick than Luke Jackson in 2004. They hired a coach without the Lebron seal of approval. Let me tell you something, for the entirety of MJ's career he had a GM that he cared very little for and who cared very little for him. Jerry Krause built a solid team not a team Jordan liked and they both have 6 rings to show for it. The coach they hired should be successful in a few years after being very successful overseas.
• The Lakers and Celtics made solid picks. I see Randle not as a franchise guy but as a terrific guy to play with. I think he is a really raw Zach Randolph and when he reaches his peak he'll be better than Z-Bo. The Celtics have to be getting prepared (not ready) to trade Rondo. He's a free agent soon and they are a ways away from winning. Rondo's value is "meh" at this point honestly, in my opinion. I feel like if they traded him anytime before he was a free agent it's going to being a trade like "oh that's what they got for him" but sometimes those trades are alright when you have replacements for him as in Marcus Smart.
• I'm a Knicks fan so let's get it out of the way...For most of the year I thought the Knicks had no picks and by about March I wanted the Knicks to make the playoffs if only because the Magics/Nuggets pick would not be a lottery pick. They got Cleanthony Early, a first round talent, a steal. Thanasis Antetekounmpo, not a star, not his lil bro Giannis, but he's a player. I compare him to a Michael Pietrus, might knock down a few shots and frustrate the shit out of whoever he's guarding. The French dude at the end, I know nothing about, all I know is he's not Patric Young so let's move on.
• Isaiah Austin...Adam Silver honestly is making a serious case for Sportsman of the Year, seriously.
• Quick hits: Charlotte is nice, Philly fans are going to stay away from Whateverbankownsthenamingrights Arena but will return in 2018 when Dario Saric is somewhere between Danillo Gallinari and Dirk & Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel are at least Hakeem and Sampson 2.0, Jabari will somehow keep the Bucks in Milwaukee unlike KD keeping the Sonics in Seattle.

Things I didn't like:

• Speaking of KD...the Brazilian Durant, really Toronto, really, at 20. I joked with a college friend that my dad had VHS porn from the 70s that was better quality than the highlight reel of the kid. It's not the pick, this dude may actually be the the Brazilian KD, but still it's the 20th pick of the deepest draft in the last 20 years or something. Pick him with your 59th pick not your 20th. They could have drafted Shabazz and traded him to Miami for the 25th,a future 1st rounder, and multiple second rounders (which based on this pick they'd presumably fuck up too).
• Speaking of Shabazz...really Miami? You got held up because this guy who there is a chance albeit a small chance might not be in a Heat uniform anymore wanted. I always said that I don't even know who Pat Riley is anymore. I see the Lakers/Knicks coach as Episode I&II Anakin Skywalker and 1995-2009 Pat Riley as full-on Order 66 Darth Vader. This Pat Riley today has to be the disintegrating pull off my helmet I can't breath Episode VI Darth Vader. Well if this is how soft Pat Riley's gotten then keep getting softer maybe his ghost will show up with Red Holtzman and other ghosts of Knicks past at the 2029 Knicks NBA championship celebration. I threw too many Star Wars references in there but still.
• Not enough trades. As in established player for established player. I mean there's only two teams or maybe just one that gets Carmelo and Lebron.

TRADES THAT OUGHT TO HAPPEN

• One reason I wanted to put this out there a while ago. I knew one person that was being traded before the 2014-15 NBA season was Tyson Chandler. He had to be. The Knicks had only one tradable asset and it was their defensive anchor. Why is he valuable? The only reason the Knicks are keeping Sam Dalembert is because there is no one out there to replace Chandler. An idea I kicked around was the Thunder getting Tyson and Shumpert for Westbrook and the 21st or 29th pick. I think the Thunder would get the better of that and be closer to the title because they could give some of the 60 shots KD and Russell take and give them to the other Thunder players & no one is approaching the rim with Ibaka and Chandler guarding it. The trade that did happen was pretty good, the Mavs got a person they were missing the last three years and without him they could beat most teams out West and EVERY TEAM IN THE EAST. There I said it. The Knicks got a prospect in Shane Larkin, someone I liked but the Mavs picked him first, two picks that turned into Cleanthony and Greek Freak the Elder, also solid prospects. And they got rid of Felton...so two hands up to the Lord.
• Kevin Love- If the only thing keeping a trade of Love to Golden State is Klay Thompson, just stop. I believe the proposal is Thompson, David Lee and the 2015&17 Warriors' picks for Love and Kevin Martin. Thompson and Martin are the same player in 2014 as far as production. Thompson in 2017 is going to be Earth and bounds better that Kevin Martin. If you told me in ~2000~ the Raptors could have gotten Alonzo from the Heat with Eddie Jones for T-Mac, Charles Oakley, and two 1st rounders, I'd say "The Raptors gave up a shot a the Finals probably to be a decent playoff team with a developing T-Mac and by the time he does, everyone on the team is too expensive to keep?" Golden State fired Mark Jackson so I don't really expect them to make smart decisions.
• I fully expect the Rockets to end up with nada in the hoopla. Meaning no Melo, no James. Why? They play in the West where they could probably get both and still lose or play a tiring series in the first round. In the East you could leave a brick on the gas pedal and let the car loose and your team still probably makes it to the Conference Final. In the case when you lose out on a big free agent frenzy, what do you do? PANIC!!! Panic signing, Panic trade. In this case, panic trade, the Rockets probably panic and trade for Rudy Gay's final year, somehow someway.

FREE AGENCY

Let's start with the two people that really matter...

Carmelo Anthony

• I fully and totally expect Melo to remain a Knick, all Knick fandom aside. I think Melo gets it. I assume the man walked around the Garden a few times and bumped into Mark Messier. He's been around the city, he's met Derek Jeter and Eli Manning. This is a city that loves and idolizes their winners. People outside of New York snare at it but it is true, there is really nothing like winning here. We respect the hell out of people that ride it out and despise you if you don't (looking at you Tiki Barber). The only reason A-Rod didn't get booed post-steroids scandal at Yankee Stadium is because he helped get the 2009 title. All that aside he can sign for at least one more year, whether he signs for less to help build a team around him is left to him. I also really believe him when he said he doesn't want to uproot his family being that he moved as a young kid which I know personally is difficult. I really don't see LaLa as a Houston person either.

LEBRON!!!!!!

• Cleveland and Miami. Honestly that's it. Going back to Cleveland would be a nice story. Redeem him with a lot of people. For basketball reasons I think it would be great. He's the winner now. Let old man Suggie tell you a story...A man named Lew Alcidor later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar won a title with the Milwaukee Bucks then was traded to the Lakers and won more championships when he had a couple young players named James Worthy and Magic Johnson help him out. I would love to see that for Lebron. If he stays with Miami, cool, I enjoyed watching them get dogged and lose to San Antonio in the Finals. It was awesome. But when Lebron is hauling knee-less Wade and not as effective Bosh through the playoffs and losing a second round series to the Wizards in 2016 and a first round series to the Cavs, Hornets, or whoever in 2017 with no help in sight would be nirvana...the Lebron hater in me wants that but the basketball fan in me wants the Cleveland reunion with Wiggans and Kyrie welcoming him back.

Other things to watch:

• For the champs, a move I'd like to see is a bold move to trade for or sign Greg Monroe to an offer sheet. The Duncan, Parker, Ginobilli era may soon end but remember it followed the Robinson, Duncan, Elliot era so to pair Monroe up with a mentor like Duncan in his last few years to groom him to be in a future duo with Kawhi would be helpful.
• Once again I bring up the Knicks not just because I'm a fan but because I'm curious about Phil's vision for the team. I foresaw the Chandler trade because I assumed that Phil would replace him with Andrew Bynum on low cost 1 year "redeem yourself" deal. Even before Phil came I thought they would kick the tires on a potential deal for Pau Gasol and reports are saying they likely will. The other thing I have heard is them going after Pau's little brother in the next offseason. Marc Gasol would be a solid replacement for Chandler on the defensive end being that he is also a former Defensive Player of the Year. So we're going to have the Spanish Olympic basketball team as our starting five and Melo? If it happens nice, it'd be nice to see some Penelope Cruz type chicks around the city bars watching Knick games.
• Wade and Bosh. People are saying that these two should take a massive paycut for Lebron to stay and be able to give him all the money he deserves and be able to provide other role players. I say no. Lebron didn't win those championships by himself. Wade had a ring before he came and has one more than Lebron for the foreseeable future. He probably can't get a max contract but he wouldn't have to take a massive paycut to play for Chicago or Dallas. Bosh on the other hand can still make a ton of money in a winning situation too. Playing in his home state of Texas with Dallas or Houston, he'd make max money and compete. 

Hate of Women? Rodger’s Hate of Rodger

By Shaebaun “Suge” Benjamin

On Friday May 23, 2014 a 22 year old man named Elliot Rodger murdered seven people and wounded thirteen others over the course of an afternoon. During all of this I was the movies watching X-Men: Days of Future Past. When it was over I took the bus to meet a friend. I perused twitter as most of us do as a combatant of boredom. I saw a few things about a shooting at a school, which unfortunately did not shock me as mass killings have become a norm within our society. The Aurora shootings, the Newtown Killings, and the Boston Marathon bombings all happened within a few months of each other and even more recently the incident at Fort Hood just a month ago. The sad part about the last sentence is that I am omitting at least two other incidents where several innocent people were harmed.

When things like these happen the first thing people tend to do is become Nancy Grace or Bill O’Reilly and come up reasons for these things whether they are sensible or not. We blame Muslims for terrorism. Video games, music, and movies for school shootings or funniest of all a hooded sweater made for rain and chilly weather for a person to murder an unarmed teen.

During my twitter reading on Friday, I at first didn’t connect the tweets about the shooting to tweets about this Elliot Rodger character. What I read about him were about him believing he was owed sex for basically his very existence. This opened the floodgates for a bunch of “all of a sudden” feminist critics to go on tirades against the rise of misogyny and its correlation to the horrible thing this man did to these innocent people. This is where this misplacement of blame comes in.

I am in no way excusing the actions of Rodger. It is my belief that this young man was severely dissatisfied with himself and without mental help through psychology or other means he took his displeasure out on others. In effect he blamed his own perceived inequities with himself on others because from his perspective he felt that they, men as well as women, found him inadequate. In his manifesto he recalls certain incidents where he was considered a loser and had difficulty obtaining not only women but male friends as well.

 Tony Montana said it best “first, you get the money, then the power, then the respect, the women come with that”. So rather than learning to stick his tongue out like a lizard as Manny did in Scarface, Rodgers thought he’d go the Tony route and spend oodles of money on his “friends” to earn that power and respect and the women that came after.

In this world today where the perception that this guy‘s whole ideology was misogynistic is understandable if you’re convincing me his motivation was that a female lover or companion can be gained with money and power.

What is misogyny?

It is the hatred of women.

Like most men, I have had my fair share of rejection from women, but by no means do I hate women. That is life. I love all the women in my family and have several female friends that I love and care for. Have I ever felt that I’ve done things for women that I felt should entitle me to some sort of physical reciprocation? Yes. Have I done things for women and thought “Hey maybe a date would be nice?” Yes, but does that make me a misogynist? That is left for you to decide.

In this society twerking and sultry Instagram posts are basically normal behavior for most young ladies and the rise of self promotion through self-taken pictures, what we now called selfies, and any male approval, to be fair, unless it is a male whom the subject approves, is considered the act of “thirst”. How do we decipher admiration from misogyny, or misogyny from admiration?

You watch any hip-hop video you see beautiful women being “objectified” yet there has been no sighting of the muscled-armed-gorilla pimps who force these young ladies to these video sets and into sling bikinis for all our viewing pleasure. That is because they don’t exist. Those women as well as porn actresses, swimsuit models, and other women who are eye candies for misogyny are there on their own volition. Feminists can counter that these women have low self-esteem and hardly respect themselves as human beings.

That’s fine, but, if we can chalk these women’s reasons as lack of self-esteem and self-respect can we spare the misogyny babble and see the motives for these shootings for what they are. They were the maniac and tragic act of person with a lack of self-respect and loathe himself to the point he hated all others.

Another cause for his lack of appreciation for himself may be because his mixed raced background. Rodger’s father was a Caucasian man of British decent and his mother was Malaysian. He spoke of his distaste for interracial relationships, particularly ones that involved white women and men of other races. Growing up around affluent white children and being a shade darker made Rodger an outsider. He wondered in his blog why white women would date black men and Asian men but not him while also disparaging men of those ethnicities. This also demonstrates how instead of finding the faults in himself, he projected it on others.

The Revenge he spoke of was against others in his mind, but in reality was a battle against himself. I do ask that anyone reading this that is or knows someone with issues like these seek professional help to resolve them.

NEW SLAVE(Owner)

By Shaebaun “Suge” Benjamin

It is fascinating to see the amount of slave movies or even films dealing with racism towards blacks that have been made since the 1970’s.

As recently as last year we saw 12 Years a Slave by Steve McQueen, based on a true story win the Academy Award for Best Picture. The year before Quentin Tarantino had won Best Original Screenplay for his film Django Unchained. Lee Daniels made the underappreciated The Butler in 2013 as well.

Most people believe that making these films have stunted the growth in our nation as far as racism. I other hand believe that these films need to continue to be made so we as a nation can see where we came from and how far we have to go. They remind us of a time where I could take a trip to Atlanta (which I often do) and would not be able to eat or use the restroom wherever I’d like because I am African American. Better yet if I went to Florida I could not talk to an attractive white girl in fear of my life being threatened as Emmitt Till was.

But times are different, in Atlanta I can eat anywhere and if you’re a good looking girl I can talk to you no matter your race. What has not changed is the inherent racism in some people.

By now we have all heard Donald Sterling, the disgraced Los Angeles Clippers owner, speaking to his female companion V. Stiviano or at least heard of it. In the conversation we hear him tell her that she should not take photos with black men or even bring them as guests to Clippers game.

 The black men in the pictures in question were Basketball Hall of Famer and entrepreneur Ervin “Magic” Johnson and Los Angeles Dodgers center fielder Matt Kemp, who if you’ve seen the video of him giving a handicap fan the jersey off his back and cleats of his feet, seems to be an all around nice guy. These weren’t two hoodlums from the street, but, even if they were this guy did not care because they were black.

Sterling is no stranger to having his racism brought to light. The difference now is that someone finally said enough is enough and got rid of him. No knock on former commissioner of 30 years David Stern, but, current commish Adam Silver finally took out the trash.

Donald Sterling made much of his money on real estate by owning several apartment buildings across Los Angeles and has been taken to court for accusations of racial discrimination by his tenants. These include Koreans, Latinos, and African Americans. No matter his record in the courtroom I am of the belief that where there is smoke there is fire.

There have been accounts taken where during interviews with potential head coaches he asked “So, what makes you think you can coach these niggers?” Former basketball legend Elgin Baylor worked under Sterling for 22 years as the general manager of the Clippers. He claimed that Sterling envisioned hiring a white coach to coach an all black team with a southern plantation mentality.

He has even been accused of reverse-racism as it were also for not wanting to pay Clippers player J.J. Reddick what he requested because he thought it was inconceivable to pay that price for a white player.

Silver recently banned Sterling and ordered him to pay a $2.5 million fine. The idea of Sterling continuing to own the Clippers startles me because it reminds me of the slave owners in those movies, namely Calvin Candie of Django Unchained.

Candie, played brilliantly by Academy Award nominee Leonardo DiCaprio, owned slaves who worked for him as well as mandingo fighters. Mandingo fighters were slaves who fought other mandingo fighter slaves, most times to the death, for money which of course went to their owner. These fighters hardly if ever work the fields or households in order to save energy and focus on fights. When they won they were awarded with fine food and a female slave of their choice to use for their pleasure. In the taped conversation Sterling is questioned by Stiviano as to why he is so ignorant towards blacks but owns a team that employs several of them as well as a black head coach. He replies that he puts food on their table and clothes on their back. That reply sounds like what a slave owner would say in response to abolitionist during the anti-bellum to the Civil War. To those slave owners and likely Sterling, no matter how free you think you are, you are still my property.

The other disgusting part of all this is that Sterling is Jewish and should be aware of the devastation brought on to the Jews for centuries because of their race and religion. When I was younger I thought the comparison of the Holocaust and slavery was incomparable because one lasted five years and the other lasted nearly 400 years. This was until I went to Europe (Munich, Germany to be exact) as a senior in high school where I visited Dachau, a concentration camp. After seeing gas chambers and ovens where people including children were sent to be killed, I realized that the Holocaust and slavery are not to be compared but recognized as tragic injustices in history that we ought to learn from. For that reason I believe that Jews and blacks of all people should be most tolerant and accepting of all people.

The Clippers as of May 30, 2014 are to be sold to the former CEO of Microsoft Steve Ballmer for the sum of $2 billion. That is the largest some for an NBA team by $1.5 billion. The money will likely be split amongst Sterling and his estranged wife Shelly. Shelly reminds me of Mistress Epps who was played by Sarah Paulson in 12 Years a Slave in that she seems to be the calming voice compared to Donald Sterling’s vitriol. In reality like Mistress Epps, Shelly Sterling is just as racist as her husband. She has been a defendant in a few of the racial discrimination suits against her husband. She was accused of the same types of racist acts against tenants as Donald had.

The large sum of money going to the Sterling is a small price to pay for the ugliness brought on to the league by them. What puzzles me is why he stuck around so long? Was it his friendship with the late Dr. Jerry Buss? Buss owned the Lakers until his recent death and was well respected around the league. It is said that Buss convinced Sterling to buy the then San Diego Clippers and move them to Los Angeles. They even moved into the same arena together in 1999 when the Staples Center opened, which is an oddity for two teams of the same league sharing the city.

For whatever reason he stuck around, the time of the Sterling’s and owners like them are over. Good riddance.