NBA - playoff predictions

Cavs/Hawks, game 3 - what an entertaining game! Too bad about Horford getting tossed. By rule book, probably the right call - but it is still miserable.

 

With your permission, I'd like to go off topic to discuss this news item:


Marques Haynes, 89, Dies; Dribbled as a Globetrotter and Dazzled Worldwide


http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/23/s...0150523&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=15502042&_r=2



Marques Haynes, whose dazzling ball-handling skills, exhibited for more than 40 years as a member of the Harlem Globetrotters and other barnstorming black basketball teams, earned him a place in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and an international reputation as the world’s greatest dribbler, died on Friday in Plano, Tex. He was 89.

A spokesman for the Globetrotters, Brett Meister, confirmed the death. Haynes had lived in Plano.

Haynes was a stellar cog on the Globetrotter squads of the late 1940s and early ’50s, when the team was as competitive as any team anywhere, including those in the professional leagues that in 1949 merged to form the National Basketball Association.

Indeed, the Globetrotters were basketball’s biggest attraction, not only in the United States — where their popularity was a societal sneer at segregation and bigotry even though they were victims of it — but also around the world, where their signature mix of sport and showmanship made them ambassadors of American good will. But his career extended far beyond his peak playing days.
Photo
Haynes in 2008 in Plano, Tex., where he died on Friday. In his prime, he could dribble the ball at a height of an inch or two. Credit Tony Gutierrez/Associated Press

In two stints with the Globetrotters (his second was in the 1970s, a more showmanlike incarnation of the team), over decades with his own team, the Harlem Magicians (also called the Fabulous Magicians) and with a few other squads, Haynes traveled an estimated four million miles and played in an estimated 12,000 basketball games in 100 countries, give or take a few — in racially hostile Southern towns, in dim school gyms, on dirt courts in dusty African villages, in bullrings, soccer stadiums and emptied swimming pools, not to mention in Madison Square Garden, the Rose Bowl and other celebrated arenas all over the world.

Haynes was a brilliant player — a fine shooter, a tenacious defender and an expert passer. But as a dribbler he was nonpareil, and it was that skill that made him an ace entertainer.

Able to bounce a ball three times a second, to control it just an inch or two off the floor, to tease defenders with a now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t legerdemain, he befuddled opponents and thrilled fans night after night with his dexterous displays — dribbling from his knees, lying on his side or sitting, and weaving in and out of court traffic, playing a solo game of keep-away within the larger game.

Once, at a game in Chihuahua, Mexico, when two teammates fouled out in the third quarter and only four men were left on the floor, he dribbled out nearly the whole fourth quarter to exhaust the clock.

Haynes often played against local teams around the world that could not match the Trotters’ skills, and against hapless opponents whose very haplessness was the point. But he also played in the Globetrotters’ victories over the all-white Minneapolis Lakers and their star center George Mikan in 1948 and 1949, games that helped prompt the integration of professional basketball. (One of the first black players in the National Basketball Association, Sweetwater Clifton, who joined the Knicks in 1950, came from the Globetrotters.)

And Haynes played on a European tour in 1951 that ended at Olympic Stadium in Berlin, where 75,000 people welcomed the Globetrotters and a special guest: Jesse Owens, who in 1936, in the same stadium, won four Olympic gold medals, to Adolf Hitler’s dismay.

In a Germany recovering from World War II and divided by ideology — a Communist-sponsored youth festival was taking place in Berlin when the Globetrotters arrived — the appearance of the team and Owens turned into a triumph of American diplomacy.

“We roomed together, Jesse and I did,” Haynes recalled in a 2011 interview with Voices of Oklahoma, an oral history archive. “We played in Berlin stadium, we had to charter a bus, we went in on a bus, and Jesse wasn’t on the bus with us. You know how he came in? A helicopter brought him in. He got out of that helicopter, and there was an announcement: Jesse Owens has just arrived. Boy, that stadium went wild. You had to put some cotton or something in your ears.”

Owens took off his suit to reveal that he was wearing his Olympic running togs underneath, Haynes remembered, and he jogged triumphantly around the stadium. “And they invited him over to the chancellor, the top man’s box, to greet him” — it was actually Walter Schreiber, the acting mayor of West Berlin — “and he said to Jesse, ‘In 1936, Hitler wouldn’t give you his hand; today, Mr. Owens, I give you both of mine,’ ” Haynes said. “Boy, that crowd went wild.”

Haynes’s professional career began after he graduated from Langston University in Oklahoma, where he was the leading scorer on a team that went 112-3 and at one point won 59 games in a row. He was invited to join the Globetrotters in 1946 after Langston played against them and he scored 26 points (some sources say 2, leading Langston to a surprise 74-70 victory. But he put them off until he finished college, and then briefly played for the Kansas City Stars of the Black Professional Basketball League.

The Globetrotters, who began life on the south side of Chicago — they didn’t play a game in Harlem until 1968 — had been playing competitively since the 1920s. But when Haynes joined them, in either 1946 or 1947 (sources are divided on when he made his first appearance), their reputation as basketball entertainers was still emerging.

It was in 1941 that the star player Reece Tatum, better known as Goose, joined the team and made trick routines and comic antics (not to mention the hook shot, which he is widely credited with inventing) central to its games, essentially creating the exuberant razzle-dazzle that subsequent generations of fans have come to expect from Globetrotter basketball.

Haynes was a natural partner for Tatum, and his tour de force ball-handling was a staple of any game he played in, for the Globetrotters or anyone else.

“He started to dribble,” the magazine Boys’ Life began, in describing a Haynes performance in 1968, when he was 41. “The player guarding him darted for the ball and presto, the ball and the dribbler were gone, working their magic on another victim across the court. In and out of the pack he moved, dribbling high and low, quickly and slowly, on his knees and sitting, searching out victims and conquering them. In 22 seconds, he dribbled 57 times before driving in and sinking a layup.”
Photo
A 1963 poster. Haynes left the Globetrotters and formed the Harlem Magicians in 1953.

Marques Oreole Haynes liked to keep his age a secret, and sources have differed about his birth date, but as he finally acknowledged in his oral history interview, he was born in Sand Springs, Okla., on March 10, 1926. He grew up in a three-room house without electricity or plumbing. His father, a railroad worker, left the family when Marques was 3 or 4, and he was raised by his mother, Hattie, a domestic worker and laundress.

The youngest of four children, he learned basketball from his siblings. His sister, Cecile (some sources say Cecil), taught him to shoot, he said, his brother Joe to pass and his oldest brother, Wendell, to dribble.

“We’d take economy-size food cans and cut the bottoms out and tack them to the outhouse, then ball rags and tie them together and shoot baskets,” Haynes recalled in a Sports Illustrated interview in 1985. “Sometimes we’d find a barrel hoop on an empty lot and tie a feed ’n’ grain gunnysack to it for a net and use that for a basket. Everywhere I went — the backyard, vacant lots — I practiced dribbling with a tennis ball. Or a rubber ball.”

He played for the Booker T. Washington High School basketball team, which won the black national championship, held at Tuskegee, Ala., in 1941. At Langston, Haynes was already a virtuoso dribbler, but he kept his skills under wraps during games because his coach, a local legend named Zip Gayles, was a disciplinarian who preached teamwork.

Haynes unveiled his gift publicly for the first time in a tournament game against Southern University in February 1945. In a previous round of the tournament, Haynes had watched Southern humiliate an outmanned squad from a tiny school, Samuel Huston College (now Huston-Tillotson University), whose coach, fresh out of the Army — before he signed with the Dodgers, but after he had achieved fame as an athlete at U.C.L.A. — was Jackie Robinson.

Langston whipped Southern, and for the game’s last two minutes or more, to pay Southern back for its poor sportsmanship and to avenge Robinson, Haynes dribbled out the clock.

“He dribbled behind his back and between his legs, dribbled the ball two inches off the floor and higher than his head,” Ben Green wrote in his 2005 history of the Globetrotters, “Spinning the Globe.” “Two Southern players chased him, but he dribbled right through them. He circled around the key in one direction, then back the other way, weaving in and out of the Southern players. Just when they seemed to have him boxed in, he would feint in one direction and slam on the brakes so suddenly that they’d slide right past him, falling over themselves.”

The crowd of 2,500 bellowed and cheered, rose to its feet and showered the floor with programs and small coins. “They threw their hats, and even their shirts,” Mr. Green wrote. “No one had ever seen anything like this before on a basketball court. And, in truth, there had never been anything like this on any basketball court. Not on any court, anywhere, since Dr. Naismith invented the game. What Marques Haynes was doing with a ball had never been done.”

After graduating from Langston, Haynes played for the Globetrotters for several years, a time when the team was so popular that the fledgling N.B.A. often scheduled games on the same bill as Globetrotter games in order to help draw fans. In 1953, however, he left the team in a dispute over money with the Globetrotters’ owner, Abe Saperstein, and starred for his own team, the Harlem Magicians. Goose Tatum came with him.

The Magicians were successful enough in the early days that Haynes turned down two offers to play in the N.B.A., from the Philadelphia Warriors in 1953 and the Lakers in 1955.

After his second stint with the Globetrotters, from 1972 to 1979, when the franchise was in disarray, he played for the Bucketeers, a team formed by another former Globetrotter, Meadowlark Lemon, as well as for the Harlem Wizards and a reconstituted version of the Magicians.

Haynes founded a clothing company specializing in Italian knitwear in 1973, and though it eventually failed, he met his wife, Joan, a Wilhelmina model, when she auditioned for a fashion show. He declined to hire her, he later said, because it was his policy not to date his employees, and he wanted to ask her out.

They had two daughters. She survives him, but information on Haynes’s other survivors was not immediately available.

In 1998, Haynes was the first Globetrotter inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass. He did not retire from playing until the early 1990s, and into his 60s he was still crisscrossing the country by bus — driving, often enough — sleeping in motels, eating cheap restaurant buffets and swishing 30-foot set shots and dribbling behind his back and between his legs for crowds of hundreds or thousands.

“I’ve been in basketball for as far back as I can remember,” he said in Charleston, S.C., on a road trip with the Magicians in 1985. “After you’ve traveled so many years, you don’t pay it any mind. After one stop, it’s on to the next. You get lonely on the road, sure. It gets boring. It gets tiring. Sometimes you wonder why you’re out here, out on the road, but then you remember you’ve been here all your life and how you enjoyed it so.”






Long before Curly Neal took over this job as HGT's biggest show man, Haynes stole the show. He was the greatest player ever during the sport's old era. Saw him play numerous times and he was the best. If you can find videos of him, please watch and you will agree.

 

Yeah. I actually think Horford should have only received a flagrant I and not got tossed out.

But I'm shocked at this national outcry that Cleveland's backup point guard....Delly....is a dirty player. They bring up the play in the Chi series where Taj Gibson got tossed, which is a stupid point. There was no threat to Gibson possibly getting hurt. He was standing over top of Delly. The play in game 2 vs Atlanta, Korver did get hurt but it was a bang bang play.....both players diving for a loose ball. Last night's play was nothing....just a bunch of guys in a scrum, losing their balance and falling to the floor.

Here we sit.....Cleveland hasn't won a professional sports title of any sort in over 50 years, yet seems like we're going to be the villains in the Finals as the whole bball world appears to be in love with Seth Curry and the Warriors.

 

The NBA wants a superstar in the NBA finals.
That superstar is Lebron James.
Isn't it amazing when it looked like Cleveland would never win anything, how
they get two good players almost for free?

 

playoffs? more like gayoffs.

Seriously, basketball is for weaklings.

 

love Lebron, or hate him.... the man is encroaching Jordan status.
5 straight finals appearances
he's taken teams that were horrible before he came, and took them to the finals.

Clevland dropped out of any conversation as soon as he left
Cleveland reemerged in the conversation as soon as he came back

Miami wasn't anything before Lebron came
Miami became a contender when he came
Miami became nothing again when he left.

And he's still in his prime.

unless he pulls a tiger woods and completely melts down competitively, instantly..... then when Lebron Retires.... he will be considered greater than Jordan

 

People don't really like Lebron for some reason.

Actually, it was the way he went to Miami that made people kind of hate him.
So the NBA talked it over and said the best way to get people to like Lebron again
is to let him win a championship with Cleveland. But even now, people don't seem to like Lebron.
The NBA needs a superstar and Stephen Curry isn't good at being a superstar.
And Lebron ruined things for himself by going to Miami.

Jordan - #1
Kobe - #2

Lebron, maybe #3

 

I think the NBA will want Lebron to win. They always need a superstar type of guy.
those Splash bros in San Francisco don't really do it.

I say Cleveland wins it in seven games.

 

Kobe is a hall of famer, no question.... but he had to have support brought in for him to win. Lebron wins whereever he goes with whatever team

Kobe just isn't in the same conversation as Jordan/Lebron are....

 

Agreed. I wouldn't even have Kobe in my top 10 all time. Top 20 maybe, but not top 10, and certainly not top 2.

 

I changed my mind. Golden State will win in six games. Look at these guys - something
is wrong with them. they already know they're going to lose for some reason.
Look at them.

Go be the farm on Golden State.



[video=youtube;BCgAwhtT1cM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCgAwhtT1cM[/video]

 

That's not at all what I got out of it. What I heard was a determined LeBron James understand that this thing isn't easy, it's never easy. But that he and that entire team is going to do everything it can to win the games they play in the series. This is like the steepest climb on Mount Everest. It's the same thing for GSW. There's not going to be any brooms in this series.

GSW in 6.

 

Cavs in 6. That's the homer in me talking.

 

Not a homer here, but agree, Cavs in 6.
About your earlier post about the Warriors being the everyone's darlings & hating on the Cavs: Let 'em hate, it means nothing.
Go Cavs!

 

Another homer rooting on the Cavs, but I believe the outcome of this series is going to depend on a healthy Irving.

 

In a 3 minute span, it all went to hades. Who steps up if Irving is done? It is not out of the possibility it is 2007 all over again. Not necessarily a sweep, but a foregone conclusion that the Warriors win.
I hated that shot that LeBron took at the end of the game - a step back 3 pointer in a tie game - hated it.

 

I do not understand why lebron did not continue to back down and take post shots from 3-6 ft...

 

Bummer - Irving is done
http://espn.go.com/nba/playoffs/2015/story/_/id/13020515/kyrie-irving-cleveland-cavaliers-fractures-kneecap-season-ending-surgery

 

One play changes the whole series. If Lebron backs his guy down or drives, he has a much better chance at hitting the winning shot. Without OT, Kyrie doesn't get hurt. Cavs up 1-0 on road, Kyrie played well, Cleveland in the driver seat. Now down 1-0, and without 2 of their big 3. Afraid it's all over.

 

IMO, if Cleveland continues to control the tempo, has better ball movement & hits it's open shots, I believe they have a real shot at this. I thought both teams played rather horribly on Sunday - G.S. with their shooting & the Cavs when their ball movement became nil at times. You gotta figure that eventually, the Warriors will start playing/shooting better. Cleveland needs to continue playing disciplined to have any chance.

 

Golden State can't win this series. I can say that affirmatively. David Blatt's coaching circles all over Steve Kerr right now. Cleveland's utilizing LeBron out of the mid-post Shaq-style and GSW isn't doubling, or fronting, or anything. If Cleveland had a healthy Love/Irving, the onslaught would be worse.
Cle's team-mates are doing just enough to pick up LeBron and it really is like watching the 2001 Sixers. I feel like a kid rooting for AI all over again against the top-dog Warriors.

Stephen Curry's really over-rated and his numbers tonight were fluff(and aided by a few no-call moving screens). He's a one-dimensional player and so too is that entire team. Run and shoot. There's no post option, no take-off-the-dribble option(Curry can do this...He just doesn't want to). Matthew Delladova changes the complexity of the series by bringing a hand in Curry's face, just like Patrick Beverely. Curry can't handle the heat, he's never played in that kind of environment before.

I really can't see anyway GSW wins another game.(They shouldn't have won game 1, to be honest with you. Cle going cold is what's saving them from down 3-0 right now). But I'll try:

-David Lee should be the starter. You need to run more pinch-post action, Cleveland's small right now with only Mozgov/Thompson as bigs.
-Use Iguodala as a Point-Forward. Right now, Curry can't be your main one guard. Not only because Delladova(and the whole Cavs team) is in his grill, but because Steve Kerr's letting him jack three's like no tommorow. The offense has been out of sync since Game 4 in Houston.
-GSW needs to win the Rebounding Battle. They need to force misses, get in transition off the imbounds pass. Right now Cle's dictating flow and tempo.

But the main reason I don't see GSW winning this series is that neither Curry/Thompson are good defenders. Frankly, I'm not sure if you can build a title team around Curry/Thompson looking at their flaws. If you could swap Curry for Rubio, it'd make so much sense for both teams. Rubio's a high level defender who can also run in transition.

 

Brian? Where are you? Thought you'd be all over Cleveland regaining the advantage in the Finals.

To the last poster American Nationalist......good analysis! I thought all along that Cleveland's "role" players were getting no respect and that GS's "role" players were overrated. All the experts said GS had this huge advantage at center, Bogut supposedly over Mozgov. Bogut has no offensive game. Mozgov plays just about as good defense as Bogut, but is the far superior offensive weapon. Hell, Bogut catches a pass 3 feet from the basket and doesn't even look to shoot. Looks like he's playing hot potato and throws the ball out as quick as he can. Also....Draymond Green is so overrated. Granted, he has more offensive game than Tristan Thompson, but Thompson is a beast on the glass, and Green has been exposed as a fraud. He's nothing more than an average player. And on and on.

Only thing I don't agree with the last poster's analysis would be dealing Curry for Rubio. No way. Curry hasn't stepped up in this series yet, but Rubio?

 

Warning: Language not suitable for some work environments.

[video=youtube;ZOw95bLv1dQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&persist_app=1&v=ZOw95bLv1dQ[/video]


Typical Oakland trash.

 

If the Warriors are ever going to show up, tonight better be the night.

 

I'm here. And still (maybe foolishly) holding out hope we can win another on the road.

The way I look at it is Curry and Thompson still did not get off in game 4, Lebron played poorly, and the Cavs' perimeter game of JR Smith, Shumpert, and Delly were a combined 3 for 22 from beyond the arc. That's horrid. Yet, Cleveland pulled within 3 late in the 3rd qtr. I have to believe they can't possibly shoot that badly again.

50 years without a title.....what's left but to hope.