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| Thursday, March 8 Utah might not underachieve with Donyell around By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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I am the moderator.
The debate is whether the Utah Jazz has its best team ever, superior even to the back-to-back NBA Finals squads of 1997 and 1998. Arguing the affirmative, Mr. Karl Malone. "Without a doubt," Malone says. "We can put a lineup on the floor now that you've gotta guard all five guys. And we never had a team where -- maybe three guys you had to respect. But now we can go to a lineup and all five guys, I think you have to guard them. You have to respect them." Rebutting, Mr. Bryon Russell. "Those teams, we could go nine or 10 deep," Russell says. "On this team, we've got a good eight or so."
We will not settle the issue until May or June, but right now, the Jazz are doing their usual excellent impression of a team lying in the weeds, piling up victories and fighting for homecourt advantage throughout the Western Conference playoffs. They are doing it with their usual blend of StocktontoMalone, but they've also blended in veterans like John Starks, and Danny Manning, and Donyell Marshall. It is safe to say all of these three were extremely available in the offseason. "Those guys have helped us a great deal," Coach Jerry Sloan says. "I think the comfort factor is something that Starks has probably struggled the most with, getting comfortable, where can he help us the most. He's a little bit wilder player, but he's also helped us on the other side of it." Starks isn't the shooter Jeff Hornacek was, but Hornacek was never the defender the aging but still game Starks is. And since being suspended twice early in the season for being late to a practice and missing a team bus, Starks hasn't caused any trouble. Manning's physical game is still never more than an inch or two off the ground, but he still knows the angles and creases better than just about everyone else on the floor. You wonder what took him so long to get here; he's a prototypical thinking man's player -- exactly the type that thrive vibing with the pulsating StocktontoMalone brain. Marshall has been a revelation. In journalism, you are often paid to make snap judgments about people you've never met. About their character, their intelligence, their abilities. And after six seasons of watching Marshall flop around like a mackerel on dreadful Timberwolves and Warriors teams, I looked at his $42 million contract, his high draft status (fourth overall in 1994) and concluded that he was as big a flop as SuperTrain. Others made that judgment, too. And it ruined Marshall's life.
"I had a lot of problems in my relationships, just coming home upset every night," Marshall says. "There were times I would just go home and cry. I'd be like 'what did I do to deserve this?' I mean, you just want to win so bad. You try to do everything you can and it seems nothing you do is right. It seems nothing your team can do is right. The bad thing about it is, even though we lost, we were in a lot of games we actually could have won." They were short a StocktontoMalone, one would guess. "My kids would be like, 'can we go to Chuck E. Cheese or a movie?,'" Marshall says. "I'd just be like, 'daddy just don't feel like being seen by nobody today.' It took a toll on us. I couldn't do the things I really wanted to do with them because I was always depressed and down. It got to the point where I didn't watch pro basketball. I'd always watch college basketball ... you just hated to see other (pro) teams do well, see them all happy and pumping their fists. Knowing that you haven't pumped your fists since college." But Marshall got his parole from Golden State last summer, coming to Salt Lake in that four-team deal (Dallas, Warriors, Utah, Boston) nobody mentioned much amid the swirl of seemingly bigger deals. When camp started, though, Marshall wasn't in very good shape. Or, at least, not in very good Jazz shape. "We have certain ways we do stuff here," Malone says. "I'm sure other people have talked about it, but until you get here, I think that's when you realize that first and foremost, we come to camp in some kind of shape. We're not late and we try to play hard all the time and not take the easy way out." Marshall worked himself into better condition, and when Russell sprained an ankle in early January, Sloan put Marshall in the starting lineup. He hasn't been out since. Through Wednesday, Utah was 21-5 with Marshall as a starter, and he's led the Jazz in rebounding during that stretch 10 times. At 6-10, with his wingspan, Marshall is a tough check on the weakside, where he's feasted on the offensive boards. And with Sloan pushing him to be more consistent running the floor, Marshall's gotten the usual offensive boost from Stockton's precise fast-break passes. "He's allowed my game to get a little bit easier," Malone says. "Instead of going in the hole 20 times a night, he's allowed me to do other things."
Still, if Utah's going to make some real noise in the postseason, Marshall will have to improve his defense. Sloan has had him guarding threes, fours and fives during the regular season, and he does double down some. But in the playoffs, he'll have to check the likes of Dirk Nowitzki, Kevin Garnett, Scottie Pippen. Sloan likes using Russell as a double-teamer, too, and Russell's playoff experience will get him postseason playing time. Even David Benoit, who started at small forward for Utah a few years ago, is back on the roster. It's a pleasant problem to have. "He's big and long, and some people are gonna beat him off the dribble," Sloan says of Marshall. "But if we're able to utilize him in the right way, he can take advantage of some of those situations." And Marshall can't wait. It's been a long time since he was Big East Player of the Year, since he played in games that mattered. And he's playing with his two boys again. "It's funny," Marshall says. "Last week, I was like, 'I've got 37 wins. That's the most I've ever had in a season.' And they all just started laughing. Even before all-star break, Coach Sloan was like, 'everybody take care of your bodies. We always do well the second half of the season and we're making a stretch run.' And Karl comes to me and goes 'yeah, Donyell, you don't have to start packing up your house; you don't have to ship your cars home, 'cause you're actually going to be out here past the 15th of April.'"
A Sonic Mess
Gary Payton tells the local media in Seattle that he and I didn't have the conversation we most certainly had last week in New York (click here for that column), when he outlined the teams he'd like to play for next season. Whatever gets you through the night, GP. You and I both know what you said. Then, I get a call from Paul Westphal, who wants to set the record straight as he sees it. You may remember that I wrote about Payton's tirade against Westphal in the Sonics' huddle in Dallas last Nov. 21, the game that led to Payton being suspended, and then unsuspended, by Sonics management. Payton was angry because Westphal would not put Patrick Ewing and Vin Baker back in the game against the Mavericks, who had, as they did a few days earlier, cut into a substantial Seattle lead. The way I put it last week was, "Westphal was leading the team down the same ruinous path he'd taken them a few days before against the Mavericks."
Well, I should have called Westphal to get his side of it. A week late, here it is. In the first Dallas game, Westphal acknowledges, as he has to other media before, he did something he didn't want to do. He played Baker down the stretch even though he didn't believe it would help win the game. But Baker had been upset with his lack of playing time in recent games, Westphal says, so he felt compelled to get him on the floor instead of trusting his gut. And the Mavericks, playing small, completed their comeback from a 17-point deficit and won the game.
It was a mistake Westphal says he did not want to make again five days later. So when Payton made his request for Baker and Ewing, Westphal didn't want to hear it. And he told Payton, "I'll coach; you play." Which is when GP went nuts and had to be restrained by then-assistant coach Nate McMillan and David Wingate. Westphal points out now that he stayed with a small lineup down the stretch in the second game and the Sonics held on to win. "I haven't run to tell my side of the story," Westphal says now, "but I may want to coach again in the league. And I want to avoid having the known facts changed more than is necessary." Now Vin's gonna be mad at me, I guess.
Lightning Rod
But Rod Strickland hasn't been honorable in his profession the last two months. It's hard not to think he's been jaking it, claiming injuries that would never keep a guy with his toughness off the floor, so that he could get his release from the Washington Wizards. He hasn't respected his now-former teammates, who went out there every night and gotten their butts kicked while he sat behind the Wizards' bench. Guys like Chris Whitney, who has been playing on two sprained ankles for two months because there was no one else available to run the point. There are guys who would sell their mothers for one shot on an NBA floor, but they aren't good enough. Rod Strickland is good enough. And something just seems wrong when he leaves a bad team in the lurch, gets $2.5 million for his trouble, and then gets $2.25 million more (pro-rated for the rest of the season) and a chance at a ring by quitting on his teammates. I hope that if Portland does win the title, in the din of the Blazers' locker room, Rod Strickland thinks about the guys he left behind so that he could have a moment in the sun. And thinks about the team that let him go on his way when it could have had him sit and rot. |
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