Covering a number of subjects, including bad basketball in Oregon, the Trail Blazers’ future, Dan Burke, Gary Payton II, Patty Mills, Nike & Alberto Salazar …
Will Richardson (Courtesy of goducks.com)
A few sporting items on my mind as we ring in the new year …
• The state of Oregon is known for some pretty good basketball, but its major teams are displaying little of it so far this season.
As I write this, the Trail Blazers are 13-22 and losers of 11 of their last 13 games, sitting in three-way tie for 12th place among the 15 teams in the NBA’s Western Conference race (ahead of only Houston). Oregon coach Dana Altman, who has crafted 11 straight 20-win seasons, is a mediocre 7-6, sustaining shellackings by BYU (81-49 at Moda Center) and Houston (78-49 at Las Vegas) along the way. A year after a Cinderella run to the Elite Eight, Oregon State is 3-10 (though on a two-game win streak), with home losses to Samford, Princeton and Cal Davis.
• The Blazers, who have been in the playoffs for eight straight years, have been hammered by injuries and COVID, though that wasn’t the case early in the season when they were mediocre at best. In Wednesday’s 120-105 loss to Utah, Portland was without starters CJ McCollum, Jusuf Nurkic and Robert Covington and key reserves Ben McLemore and Cody Zeller. On the floor at game’s end against the Jazz: Reggie Perry, Greg Brown III, Cameron McGriff, Brandon Williams and Jarron Cumberland. Cumulative amount of NBA experience prior to this season: One year.
So often it is that how Damian Lillard goes, so go the Blazers. It has been anything but a banner season for “The Franchise,” who shot poorly with consistency through the end of November. Lillard has been better in December, averaging 29.6 points in nine games, but has also had shooting performances of 5 for 17, 11 for 31, 6 for 21 and 5 for 15 (twice). Dame is averaging 24.0 points for the season, on pace for a low since the 2013-14 season. He is shooting .402 from the field and .324 from 3-point range, on pace for career lows. Part of it may be a continued struggle with abdominal muscle issues, and defenses have focused their efforts more than ever on containing him. But it is also clear that his confidence in his shot has suffered.
Lillard can’t go it alone, and he hasn’t gotten enough help. Norman Powell has been terrific and Nassir Little and Anfernee Simons promising, but McCollum has missed the last nine games with a collapsed lung. Nurkic has been disappointingly consistent — not just game to game, but minute to minute. Neil Olshey left Chauncey Billups with a team too small to battle the good teams inside, and the first-year coach’s philosophies haven’t helped an inept defense that ranks last in the NBA.
It has been a mess. The Blazers still are just four games behind Dallas (17-18) for the eighth and final playoff spot in the Western Conference, but we are nearing the midway point of the season. It will be interesting to see how interim general manager Joe Cronin plays things as the February 10 trade deadline approaches. Does he make a major move involving Lillard, McCollum and/or Nurkic? Does he try to improve the team’s playoff chances, or will he throw in his cards, forget about this post-season and begin a rebuild?
The former option has been the Blazers’ mode of operation through the years — but this isn’t even close to a normal year. I think a major shakeup is coming.
• I’m not sure what the record is for the oldest head coach to gain his first victory in the NBA, but it might be Sherwood native Dan Burke.
Burke, subbing for COVID-idled Doc Rivers, coached the Philadelphia 76ers to a 110-102 victory over Brooklyn Thursday night. Burke, 62, has been working on NBA staffs for 33 years, beginning in Portland in 1989, but always as an assistant.
“This is one of the really great success stories in the history of our league,” Indiana coach Rick Carlisle told the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Gina Mizell of Burke, with whom he worked on the Blazers’ staff from 1994-97.
(I wrote about Burke in the following story for the Portland Tribune in 2018 here)
Burke was working as a high school coach and teacher when he began as the Blazers’ video coordinator under Rick Adelman — his brother-in-law — in 1989. He served seven years in Portland under Adelman and P.J. Carlesimo, then was hired as an assistant coach and video coordinator in Indiana, working with Coach Larry Bird. Burke worked for 23 years for the Pacers under six coaches (Bird, Isiah Thomas, Jim O’Brien, Frank Vogel and Nate McMillan) until McMillan’s firing in 2020, earning a reputation for being a defensive mastermind.
That came in part from Burke’s relationship with Dick Harter, the former coach of Oregon’s “Kamikaze Kids” with whom Burke worked with the Blazers and Pacers.
“No matter what I do, if I’m bagging groceries at 75, I want to bring the same enthusiasm and energy (Harter) always had and the passion for everything he did,” Burke told The Athletic’s Rich Hofmann.
Rivers, who developed an interest in coaching due to a friendship with Harter, hired Burke as his defensive coach when he took the 76ers head job in 2020. It was Burke who got the call to run the 76ers when Rivers went into COVID protocol, with the blessing of the team’s players.
Burke is “way different than I expected,” center Joel Embiid says. “I thought he was going to be old-school, extremely tough, don’t want to listen, but he is great. Our defense has been great. He has done a good job every single day. They’re teaching us the right fundamentals. And he is a great communicator.”
After the victory over the Nets, Burke was quick to mention to the media he is now 1-2 as an NBA head coach, having lost his first two games as an acting head coach when McMillan missed a pair of games. The Philadelphia players celebrated the occasion in a boisterous post-game locker room, dousing Burke with water. It was an emotional experience for Burke — one of the true good guys in the business, understated but eminently competent.
• It has been fun to watch the development of two NBA players whom basketball fans in Oregon are well-acquainted with — Gary Payton II and Patty Mills.
Payton II, 29, has finally gained some traction in his fifth NBA season as a key member with Golden State. The former Oregon State great, always a player who provided intangibles but an inconsistent perimeter shooter, has become an important two-way player while starting the last four games for the Warriors. Over the last five games, the 6-3 Payton has averaged 14.4 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.4 steals and 26 minutes, shooting .588 from the field while hitting 8 of 19 attempts from 3-point range. He leads the team “defensive box plus/minutes.
“He’s the tallest 6-3 guy in the world,” teammate Stephen Curry says. “He plays way above his height. Defensively, he can do some pretty crazy things.”
Mills, 33, is having the best statistical season of his 14-year NBA career — the first two with the Blazers — in his first season with Brooklyn. The 6-1 Australian, who spent 11 years in San Antonio, is averaging a career-high 14.1 points while shooting .445 from the field and .431 on 3-point attempts. Starting for the COVID-ravaged Nets, Mills hit 8 of 13 attempts from the 3-point line and matched his career high with 34 points with seven assists against the Lakers on Christmas Day after tallying 30 points against Toronto on December 14.
Teammate James Harden says he thinks this is the best stretch of basketball Mills has played through his long career.
“People know how many big shots Patty hit when he was in San Antonio, but he has a much bigger role on this team because of guys being out of the lineup,” Harden told reporters. “He has been consistent with his shot, and he is doing a better job of being a playmaker, putting the ball on the floor and getting into the paint.”
“Patty has added so much to the team,” Nets coach Steve Nash says. “He has been big so many nights, whether it’s scoring, (basketball) IQ, experience. It’s the way he approaches the game — his spirit, his mentality. He has been unbelievable, not just on the floor but off the floor as well.”
• I just got finished reading Matt Hart’s excellent book, “Win at All Costs: Inside Nike Running and Its Culture of Deception,” which essentially is a primer on the sordid Alberto Salazar tale. Nike officials essentially turned a blind eye to Salazar’s pushing the boundaries — or going beyond them — in his direction of the Nike Oregon Project distance-running group that featured Olympic medalists Mo Farah and Galen Rupp.
In 2019, the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency stuck Salazar with a four-year ban for repeated doping violations. Within weeks, Nike shut down the Oregon Project. In 2020, Salazar was suspended and ruled permanently ineligible to coach by the U.S. Center for Safesport — an independent body that handles abuse and misconduct cases in Olympic sports — for “emotional and sexual misconduct” of several of his female runners. A few weeks ago, SafeSport denied Salazar’s appeal, which would appear to end his coaching career.
The heart and soul of Nike is the sport of track and field, co-founder Phil Knight’s sport at Oregon and his first love. The company, which paid half-a-billion dollars to brand the U.S. national track and field team until at least 2040, has taken deserved criticism for its de facto support of Salazar through years of him stretching (and breaking) rules in terms of performance-enhancing drugs with his athletes.
In reading Hart’s book, it occurred to me that it isn’t too late for Nike — with more influence than in any other company in America — to make a difference in a positive way. Nike’s strict endorsement of USADA rules with its coaches and athletes would set an example that could lead to greater adherence not only in this country but worldwide. Cheating will always occur to some extent in the sport, but wouldn’t it be nice for a colossus such as Nike to be on the right side of the issue?
• What is going on in college football these days is disturbing.
I know — I could be referring to a number of things.
What I’m talking about here is the increasing propensity of players to opt out of bowl games to avoid sustaining an injury that would affect their NFL draft status.
The Peach Bowl, for instance, was missing Pittsburgh quarterback Kenny Pickett — who got the second-place vote on my Heisman Trophy ballot — and Michigan State running back Kenneth Walker, who was also on my Heisman list. In the Alamo Bowl, Oklahoma was missing four defensive starters and Oregon was minus stud defensive end Kayvon Thibodeaux.
Of course, the Sooners were also without Coach Lincoln Riley, who had fled Norman for La La Land after taking the Southern Cal job. And the Ducks were coached by receivers coach Bryan McClendon with Mario Cristobal’s hiring at Miami.
I understand the possibility of a player sustaining a serious injury in a bowl game. I don’t know what the odds are of that happening, but they are slim. An ACL tear could affect where a player is drafted, but most injuries won’t.
A school has invested three, four or five years in a player. Teammates who have gone to battle with him through that duration count on him. Then comes a bowl game — the highlight of a season, perhaps of a career — and the “star” passes on the opportunity to play? Doesn’t seem right to me.
I’m sure some of you will point to Ole Miss QB Matt Corral, who chose to stay with his team and play in Saturday’s Sugar Bowl matchup with Baylor and suffered a first-half lower-leg injury. Unless the injury turns out to be catastrophic, he will still be drafted very high, and it shouldn’t adversely impact his NFL career. His teammates and the school’s fans will long remember his loyalty.
Then there are the coaches who move on to their new job before the old team’s season is completed. Some coaches stay on, but the majority of them desert the ship. That’s not fair to the players, or to the fans. Staying put until after the bowl game would make for a frantic couple of weeks coaching one team while hiring assistants and recruiting for another, but it can be done with minimal damage to the latter endeavor. And frankly, it’s the right thing to do.
• Speaking of the right thing to do: How about UCLA’s decision to pull out of Tuesday’s Holiday Bowl a few hours before kickoff, claiming a number of positive COVID tests the morning of the game?
In a statement, UCLA officials said they were advised by the school’s medical staff that having players participate in the game would be “unsafe” based on COVID protocols.
North Carolina State coach Dave Doeren said he felt lied to because the Bruins gave no warning they were having COVID issues before pulling the plug on game day.
How would you like to be the Wolfpack, preparing for weeks for the bowl game, only to be told the game was off hours before kickoff? How would you like to be the team’s fans, who paid thousands of dollars for the long flight to San Diego, hotel room, rental car, etc., looking forward to a game that was not to be?
Bottom line: A major-college football program has more than 100 players on its roster. UCLA could have covered all positions adequately, albeit with a number of reserves with less than top-level talent. Many other college and NFL teams have faced the same dilemma and still played the game. The Bruins simply chose not to compete with the group they had left. That’s deplorable.
I’m not sure if a fine is possible, but UCLA should have had to accept a forfeit loss. It might have been little solace to the Wolfpack, but it would have been something.
And it would have left the Pac-12 a perfect 0-6 in bowl games this season. That’s a record that is hard to match.
• Another thing to get off my chest: Media access to college football players and assistant coaches.
Lincoln Riley didn’t allow Oklahoma QB Caleb Williams talk to the media all season. After the Sooners’ 47-32 win over Oregon in the Alamo Bowl, he finally met with reporters for the first time since arriving in Norman. Sure, Williams is a freshman, an excuse some coaches have made through the years. Truth is, most freshmen do just fine in interview sessions. They’ve been doing them for years as high school stars.
Georgia offensive coordinator Todd Monken hadn’t been allowed to answer questions from reporters since the first week of August until Wednesday’s required media session prior to Friday’s Orange Bowl.
My guess is, head coach Kirby Smart’s reason is that he wants one voice from the coaching staff — his. Which is ridiculous. Every coach has something to offer in terms of input on a program.
So does every player. Dealing with the media is fun for most athletes; for others, it’s at least part of the growth process of a young student-athlete.
There are too many control freaks in management and coaching in college and pro sports. The losers are the fans, who get less information on the teams they follow. I don’t see the situation improving in the future.
• Let me pop off on one other (much more minor) subject.
Over the last couple of football seasons, I’ve noticed broadcasters referring not to the first-down marker, but to the “line to gain.”
It’s almost as if the broadcasting gods have issued a directive that broadcasters are no longer allowed to use the phrase “close to the first down marker.” Instead, the correct phrase is, the team is striving to reach the “line to gain.”
During the Cotton Bowl, game analyst Todd Blackledge seemed to catch himself when he uttered, “He’s short of the first down … er, line to gain.”
Maybe this is the result of the imaginary yellow line on a TV screen that denotes the yard line a team must reach for a first down, which, I guess, is the “line to gain.”
Seems to me as if it suddenly has become a popular phrase that everyone has decided to use.
It reminds me of another change in sports nomenclature in recent years. As in this sentence: “Across three seasons, Jones has averaged 20 points a game.” Throughout most of my writing career, the sentence would have begun, “Through three seasons” or “over the last three seasons.” Now, the trendy preposition is “across.”
Anybody else notice this?
► ◄
My latest book is now for sale, Jerome Kersey: Overcoming The Odds. You can buy regular, autographed, and inscribed copies of the book in my new and improved online bookstore here.
Follow me on Twitter.
Like me on Facebook.
Be sure to sign up for my emails.
