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Raw Power, Baby

2010-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

Between catching butterflies and tending to my stamp collection, there was nothing I enjoyed more as a boy than lowering my Huffy Sports Tuff Court portable basketball system to a moderate height, and throwing the pumpkin down hard.

“GET OFF ME!” (See Wayans Marlon, Above the Rim) I’d scream, while beating my birdcage chest and flipping off the opposition crowd of my mind’s eye. My curtain twitching neighbours must have thought me a strange, profane child.

Nowadays, I fill the power-dunk shaped void in my life by following the NBA. Unsurprisingly, there are some guys, both past and present, who have topped my driveway exploits.

Here are, to my mind, some of the best rim-rattling, robinzine-crying, teeth-shaking, glass-breaking, rump-roasting, bun-toasting, wham-bam (See Dawkins, Darryl) dunkers to have stepped foot in the league:

K-Mart

Dude clearly has issues with the rim. Big, horrible, ugly issues.

The Reignman

Probably my favourite dunker of all time, Shawn Kemp was pure, untamed energy. His sperm was fantastic too, apparently.

Chocolate Thunder

I’ve only seen the highlights, but highlights are all you need. Darryl Dawkins is the sole reason the NBA deemed it an offense to break backboards.

Ham Slamwich

Dunking is pretty much all Darvin Ham could do, but he did it pretty dunking well.

The Baby Eater

So what if Jason Maxiell eats babies? If eating a baby can make you dunk like that, serve me up a baby.

The Cable Guy

Sure, he never actually played in the league, but with dunks like this someone could have at least thrown a 10-day contact his way.

The Original Superman

Remember kids - before there was Hack-a-Shaq, there was Shaq attack.

Superman. The Second Coming

The higher you climb, the harder you fall. It’s pretty simple, really.

Life Before League Pass

2010-09-14T13:06:00.000-07:00

I was first introduced to the NBA by a funny little man named Alton Byrd.

It was sometime in the early-‘90s and Byrd, a star of British basketball, was fronting a show called NBA Jam Session, a highlight package of 50 minutes or so, which aired on a Sunday on ITV.

Other than Byrd’s fetching moustache, my memories of the programme itself are hazy – I was around 10 or 11 at the time.

What I do remember quite distinctly, however, was how it profoundly altered my take on basketball.

Up until then my exposure to the game had been brief. It pretty much consisted of watching my primary school teacher clang layups off the underside of a hoop in a well-intentioned but misguided effort at instruction.

Not a romantic introduction to the game, to say the least.

Then I stumbled across Jam Session. While I have no specific memory of a game, team or player, I recall watching these big black guys in baggy shorts hurtling down a shiny wooden court, zipping the ball around like it was nothing, dunking and strutting, and generally being bad-ass.

Basketball, for me, was suddenly the coolest thing on earth. A sport I had previously given nothing but a fleeting consideration now consumed me.

Living in England, this would prove to be problematic.

By the time I had started secondary school Jam Session had wound down and, aside from a few videos - Superstars Vols. 2 and 3, Furious Finishes, Dream Team Vols. 1 and 2, Sir Charles, and those cheesy MJ tapes - NBA footage was like gold dust.

Occasionally a rumour would circulate about someone possessing a full-length NBA game taped from an elusive German Sky channel (always German for some reason) but, invariably, the cassette would never materialise.

Times were tough. At this point I had probably never seen an NBA game in its entirety. I remember watching and re-watching the basketball scenes in White Men Can’t Jump. The voice of Rosie Perez haunts me to this day.

Thankfully, in 1995, the basketball Gods took pity and delivered a gift in the unlikely form of Mark Webster.

Channel 4 had picked up the rights to the NBA in a three-year deal and Webster, along with then Slam Magazine writers Scoop Jackson and Dave Lewis, hosted a game weekly on NBA XXL and presented its sister programmes NBA 24/7 and NBA Raw.

Although Channel 4 would forego the first half of each season, with coverage only picking up at All-Star weekend, those were halcyon days.The programmes were slick, the analysis informed and, more than anything else, it was the NBA on our screens each and every week.

Sadly, the deal was never renewed. ITV went on to become the sole provider of NBA content on terrestrial TV and it churned out the vastly inferior NBA ’99, a half hour show presented by Beverley Turner and former Olympic athlete Derek Redmond.

After Channel 4’s deft analysis and full-length games, watching ITV’s 30 minute highlight reel was like swallowing a jagged pill, but there was nothing else to take.

The format continued unchanged (although Redmond did disappear pretty quickly) for three years, before concluding in 2001, after which all terrestrial coverage ceased until 2004 when Webster made a return to basketball to present live NBA games on Five.

By that time, however, it was getting easier to watch the NBA in Britain. With coverage on Sky Sports, NASN and Five, there were usually two or three games aired each week, maybe a few more during the Playoffs.

There was also Pontel, a Swiss-based DVD service, from which - if you were prepared to pay the money – you could actually select the games, the teams, the players you wanted to watch. Choice was now an option, albeit an expensive one.

For British viewers, there was more NBA basketball to be watched in the mid-2000s than at any other time, and this was pleasing; slow, faltering progress was better than no progress at all.

But a handful of games a month (even Pontel only delivered weekly) was never going to be ideal. Every morning I would crank up my PC to peep the highlights, read the reports and pore over the box scores on the internet, yet it would never be the same as actually watching the games.

For years, following (or, more correctly, trying to follow) the NBA in Britain, was wholly unsatisfying. It was as if I was perpetually dieting; never sated, always hungry and, when it finally came time to eat, forced to choose from a heavily edited menu.

When the NBA extended its broadband package to the UK in 2008, it finally put an end to the frustration and disappointment, despite the buffering and blackouts.

It’s easy to take things for granted. Everyone does it. How can you not with the abundance of cool-when-you-think-about-it shit we encounter daily (“You’re sitting in a chair…in the sky!”)?

But with League Pass, it’s different. I’ll never have to diet again.

Dog Days

2010-09-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

The World Championships are fun and everything, don’t get me wrong, but for NBA diehards, these are dark, empty days.

The draft’s done, summer league’s a distant memory, free agency is effectively over, and there’s still over a month before the regular season begins. If it weren’t for the occasional trade rumour and Monk reruns, would anyone even get out of bed in the morning?

Thankfully, the light at the end of the tunnel is bright. Lebron’s decision to join Wade and Bosh in Miami - and the utterly baffling way in which he announced it - instantly made the upcoming season more intriguing than a Stephon Marbury live stream.

And that’s just the start of it. Here are a handful reasons why 2010-11 will be well worth the wait:

LeBron James and the Evil Empire

Barring his penchant for wearing sunglasses at night, LeBron James always seemed like a fairly cool guy. Going by the media vitriol levelled at him recently, however, you’d think he tortures kittens for fun.

Yes, James’ decision to take part in The Decision was about as classy as Tiger Woods, but does it make him a villain? And is the hoarding of talent in Miami really one of the great crimes in sport, as some critics have suggested?

Regardless of whether the LeBron/Miami bashing is justified or not, the Heat will be ludicrously fun to watch (inevitable glut of free-throws aside). Just the thought of a Wade-James pick and roll, or a small lineup featuring LeBron at the four, has me pumping my fist Kriss Akabusi style.

Kevin Durant and the Thunder

So, while the Heat organisation is an imperious juggernaught bent on destroying the integrity of the NBA (or something like that), the Thunder are the good guys - a group of humble young men who were assembled with patience, integrity and draft picks. You know, the polar opposite of Miami.

Expectations are high after last year’s captivating 50-win season and it will be interesting to see if Durant and Westbrook - fresh off a tour of duty with Team USA - can sustain the team’s winning ways.

As for Durant, could the youngest scoring champ in NBA history become the youngest MVP in NBA history? LeBron and D-Wade will be sharing shots in South Beach and Kobe’s no spring chicken, so don’t put it past him.

If he continues to improve at the rate that he has, Durant, aged just 22, could be looking at a 35ppg, 10rpg season. The last player to do that? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1971-72 (34.8ppg, 16.6rpg).

Rooting for Oden and Yao

Unfortunately for Oden, his name will be inextricably linked with the guy above. Drafted ahead of Durant in 2007, GO has been more injury prone than Mr Glass, playing just 82 games in three years.

It’s definitely nearing make or break time for Oden (bad pun intended). Another injury stunted season would put the kibosh on anything remotely resembling a promising career.

Yao will be easing himself back into playing shape after missing all of last season with a severely broken foot. All signs indicate he’ll make a successful return, but re-injury could bring the Great Wall down for good.

Let’s hope the big men (Andrew Bogut included) stay clear of the plaster cast for a change.

Steve Kerr Back on TNT

In the words of Marv Albert: Yes! Kerr was a good GM, but he’s an even better announcer. Funny, insightful, understated, he’s everything Reggie Miller isn’t. Together, Marv and Steve are a double act worthy of a sketch show.

NBA in London

It will be great to see a regular season NBA game in the capital but, Mr Stern, at the risk of sounding ungrateful, did it have to be the Nets and the Raptors?

The Geriatric Celtics

KG, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and the two O’Neals. Together they combine for 73 seasons, 51 All-Star appearances, seven championships…and a cumulative age of 536.

Despite their years, the Celts should be good for another deep run into the playoffs, especially if Danny Ainge’s younger off-season acquisitions, Delonte West and Von Wafer, get loose. Just not with the Grey Goose, we hope.

Questions do remain, though. Can Garnett’s gimpy knee hold-up another season? Does Shaq arrive at camp under 500lbs? Will Jermaine rebound from last year's miserable playoff performance? And when, if ever, will Rondo develop a serviceable jump shot?

Two Number One Picks

Remember Blake Griffin? He was meant to be pretty good, wasn’t he? With Griffin, John Wall, plus headcase DaMarcus Cousins in the mix, don’t tell me this isn’t an exciting rookie class.

New York has a Basketball Team?

Stoudemire, Randolph and Gallinari in a D'Antoni offence is a pretty salivating prospect. And, while he’s no Steve Nash, there are plenty of guards in the league worse than Ray Felton. Take Chris Duhon, for example.

Sure, the Knicks aren’t going to win a chip, or a playoff series, any time soon - the Heat, Bulls, Celtics, Magic, Hawks and Bucks will all finish ahead of New York in the East - but, right now, that’s not what’s important.

After years of ineptitude it seems this fabled franchise is starting to turn a corner. In Stoudemire, the team finally have a superstar they can call their own. He’s a guy with a big personality and an even bigger game who will bring the buzz back to the Garden. Yes, James Dolan still owns the team, but you can’t have everything.

Kobe's Sixth

Very quietly, the champs got even better. Steve Blake and Matt Barnes may not sound like much, but they’re a couple of solid veterans who should fit in well with the Lakers experienced core.

Phil Jackson's returning for a shot at his fourth career three-peat and with Kobe gunning for that all-important sixth ring (MJ has six, as if you didn't know), expect Mamba to be even more motivated than he usually is, which is really pretty scary when you think about it.