ABSOLUTE DRIBBLE: NBA Week 4

Paul George has me feeling nostalgic

If there’s anything that’s true about the relationship between NBA players and fans it’s that love is fleeting. In a league with so much talent, it’s so easy to flip on a player when they do something you don’t like. It’s so simple to call a guy washed and move on to the shiny new toy when there’s a whole batch of shiny new toys every year.

Flashback to 2013 and Paul George and his Indiana team have just taken prime LeBron and the Heat to 7 games in the Eastern Conference Finals and have become everyone’s second favourite team. PG was tipped as The Next Guy, the LeBron Stopper, the future finals MVP. While he had some good seasons, ultimately those predictions all became true for his now-teammate Kawhi.

Since joining the Clippers, PG has had the full spectrum of experiences and hit basketball rock bottom when his corner 3 crashed into the side of the backboard during a crucial game 7 against Denver in the bubble. In that moment, the entire basketball world flipped on its former darling. Resentment had been building against PG the years prior, especially once he’d given himself the nickname “Playoff P” before immediately being knocked out in the first round of the playoffs.

Suddenly, PG is leading an overachieving Clippers side that shouldn’t expect to see Kawhi for the rest of the season and has me feeling nostalgic for the simpler times of 2013. He’s already had two 40 point games and even had 8 steals one night against Portland. He’s just fun to watch again: it’s like breaking out your old Nintendo 64 and firing up Ocarina of Time, it just feels right.

The Suns are starting to rev up

After a bombshell report was released about Suns owner Robert Sarver (who is allegedly a racist, sexist, terrible person), it was suspected that Phoenix would be enveloped by off-field drama, players being unable to escape a post-game conference without being asked whether they had been called a racial slur by their teams owner.

That article was full of bombshells against Sarver, who came back with some wild retorts via his lawyers. One that really stood out to me was him saying he had never used the n-word, because he’d once repeated the n-word after someone else had said it and been pulled up for it. I’m not going to pretend to be the world’s greatest lawyer but I think it’s a bad idea for your client to admit to doing the things they’re denying in their denials. 

Anyway, that situation isn’t so fun to talk about, especially when the Suns are on a 9 game win streak.

Phoenix mustn’t have realised games started back in October, which is fair since the schedule has been out of whack for two years now. Having not made the playoffs since 2010 before making the finals last season, the Suns didn’t realise the off-season gets a lot shorter when you keep playing until June. So who can blame them for starting slow when they’re used to a solid 5-month offseason?

Now that they’ve realised they need to win games to make the playoffs again, the Suns have made a job of doing just that. Even if it’s a small sample size, they’re playing fast, whipping the ball around in the half-court and sprinting out on the break. At age what, 42? Chris Paul has got this offence humming again and he’s never going to die, he’ll be in the league forever.

Phoenix look deadly and motivated by last year’s finals loss. The West is just as open this year as it was last, and the Suns have every reason to expect to be playing deep into the playoffs. In their next 2 games they play against Dallas, a genuine yardstick to measure how good both teams are, and there’s every chance their win streak goes out to 11.