Sometimes the best comedy isn’t meant to be funny. Take NBA rankings. Google is a friend, and often when searching for lists, you’ll come across one where Tim Duncan is still a top five player or that Michael Beasley is a future beast. It’ll be written somewhere and you’ll believe it. The date is background. When you do finally see it, scribbled something like October of 2009, you’ll be all: “Ah, okay, I get it now.”
Fans, particularly NBA ones, are extremely erratic. We have to have a top five. We have to proclaim someone as the very best in the league. There can’t just be a group. There must be a list. All of last season, the talk was that Derrick Rose had jumped past Chris Paul and Deron Williams, who were battling for the title of best point guard in the league for well over three years.
It’s hilarious, the way we sprint from story to story, from player to player. One minute Tyreke Evans is a smaller version of LeBron. A few injuries, a few months and a few losses later and no one will even speak of him as a future All-Star. I can’t be the only one laughing at our fickleness.
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It’s like hip-hop. You’ve got your top 20. You’ve got your top five DOA. You’ve got Jigga, Rakim, Nas, Chuck D, Eminem, KRS-One and on and on. If someone throws Lil’ Wayne‘s name out, you can’t take them seriously. You fight. You argue. If someone’s opinion is different, it’s as if they don’t count. But the minute someone releases a wack record, they’ve fallen off. It’s on to the next one. Only the true legends can weave through the daggers, and the only way you get to that point is to kill it for years, staying relevant through every fad and every album.
If these summer league games mean anything, it’ll be Brandon Jennings, John Wall, James Harden and Rudy Gay breaking out. But when was the last time you trusted the playground?
No one trusted Rose last season to become an MVP so fast. Everyone figured a jump would come in his third season, but 21 points to 25? Six assists to nearly eight? A No. 8 seed to the best record in the league? That’s an HBO storyline.
The year before that, it was Kevin Durant coming into his own as one of the most unstoppable scoring forces we had ever seen. Did we see it coming? Some did. But not everyone, and hardly anyone had the foresight to see it coming so fast.
I was reading an old story from the New York Times last night about Allonzo Trier, an at-the-time beast of a sixth grader who treated the game like a job. In it, someone compared him to Brandon Jennings, and then Clark Francis of The Hoop Scoop said Jennings’ potential is top five point guard of all-time. Everyone has potential. How often do we hear that? He has the potential to be an All-Star in two years…his potential is a future league MVP. Shoot, Andre Iguodala‘s potential is to be the next Scottie Pippen. But actually realizing your potential is a different animal. It nearly never happens.
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The lockout might stop the NBA, but it won’t stop basketball. The lockout can’t stop progression or change, and the players who were meant to become the new faces of basketball will soon be that, whether it’s in November or if we have to wait until February.
Who will make the Derrick Rose leap this season? Dozens of players have the potential to make a jump. Jennings, Derrick Williams, Derrick Favors, Wall, Evans, Paul George, Gay, Harden, maybe even Kyrie Irving. But only a few will realize it.
Who do you think will make the biggest leap this season?
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