It’s been a while since we emotionally & physically destroyed a round Irishman..
In case you forgot: Bob Ryan is a pompous windbag.
To the zingers!..
Game-Changing Developments
Snappy title. Was “Basketball Game I Watched While Fumbling Through Cushions For Last Frito” already taken?
You’re an NBA rookie named Doc Rivers,
No I’m not. I’m a jerk who works for an insurance company (and makes fun of past-their-prime ovals) named Ethan Booker.
and someone tells you the day will come when you will be a coach in this league and the opposing team in a playoff series will have a starting front line as follows:
It will be 6-11, 6-10, 6-10.
Who is this magical shaman who uses his mystical powers to infer the size of my formidable opponent! He’s a witch! Off with his head!
The 6-10 forwards will each be certified 3-point shooters.
It’s true. Stan Van gave them gold stars and everything.
Two of them will never have gone to college and the third will be a native of Turkey.
Oh yeah, and your lymphnodes will be the size of guava fruit and it’ll sound like you’re having a hernia every time you talk.
And your 1983 response would have been?
“Isn’t Turkey currently under a State of Emergency? How did he get out? I READ THE PAPER!”
“Not possible,” Rivers says. “I wouldn’t have thought that possible.
Whoa, holy shit. Bob actually went back in time to ask him? Maybe he still is a good journalist. Going to all that effort to create time travel and all..
If a guy like that took a three back in those days, he’d probably be suspended. I know he wouldn’t be playing.”
They’d probably just take him out behind the arena and shoot him.
“You’re tall! You don’t shoot threes! Stop it!”
Unfortunately for Doc, Orlando Magic counterpart Stan Van Gundy is not likely to be benching Rashard Lewis and Hedo Turkoglu before this series is over.
I don’t know. He’s getting that glint in his eye. I wouldn’t put it past him.
“My star player’s gonna push me out this summer. Fuck it! Battie, you’re running the point!”
They’re his guys, and firing up threes is a very big part of their games.
That and complaining about foul calls. That’s the other part.
As for Dwight Howard, he’s no 3-point shooter.
Or is he?..
Dum dum dummmm….
He’s just a modern version of an old-fashioned, butt-kicking, low-post center.
I can’t believe he never gets T’d up for kicking all those butts. Glen Davis’ ass is redder than a Cherokee in August. Not that I’ve been filming him change from across the alley..
If he’s shooting a three (0 for 2 this season, 1 for 12 lifetime), it means he has somehow been stuck with the ball in a very bad place with the shot clock running down.
Help me! I’m lost and I’m behind the three point line!
/shoots flare gun
The 23-year-old Howard and the 29-year-old Lewis were each drafted out of high school. The 30-year-old Turkoglu is a Turk.
You know what rhymes with Turk? Jerk! ‘Nuff said.
Easily my least-favorite Turk since this guy: 
Neither of these phenomena would have been imaginable to the 1983 Doc Rivers, either.
It’s been recorded as fact that Doc Rivers didn’t develop an imagination until watching an episode of Murphy Brown in early 1991. After hearing another of Charles Kimbrough’s classic sass-backs, Doc was heard to exclaim, “Eureka!”
The Magic starting front line represents a microcosm of the 21st-century NBA.
Overrated & on steroids?
Actually that sounds about right..
The 3-point shot’s evolution is a fascinating story.
It didn’t exist. And then it existed.
FASCINATION!
In Doc’s rookie year of 1983-84, his Atlanta Hawks made 23 three-pointers all season.
Their team slogan that year was: Not Much Huckin’.
This season, Lewis made 226 and Turkoglu made 134.
That 226 (actually 220, Bob’s eyes are still recovering from the face explosion) looks good until you see the 554 he hoisted. DWIGHT HOWARD NEEDS HIS TOUCHES!
That Atlanta ‘83-84 total is a shocking revelation to a contemporary NBA fan,
I am shocked, and a little gassy.
but it was not out of line.
I am not as shocked!
That wasn’t even the lowest total in the league.
I am utterly unshocked!
The Bulls made only 20 threes.
Zounds! Statistics!
Other amazing totals: San Diego 24, Portland 25, Seattle 27, Philadelphia 29. The league leader, and by a wide margin, was Utah, with 101, the reason being Darrell Griffith, who had 91 of them.
Three-Hog.
(If you had been awarded extra points for shot arc, Griffith might have led the league in scoring.)
What other arbitrary aspects of peoples’ games can we come up with?
If you had been awarded extra assist totals for crotch-bunchage, John Stockton would still be the all-time leader.
If you had been awarded a better shooting percentage for having a poor shooting percentage, people with very poor shooting percentages would have better shooting percentages.
If you had been awarded cake for eating lots of cake, Bob Ryan’s belly would have exploded long before his face did.
Power forwards knew their place, and it wasn’t out by the arc.
It was in the kitchen, making me dinner!
“Stop boxing me out and pass the carrots, woman!”
“Fours [power forwards] and 5’s [centers] were all bangers,” notes Rivers.
They were all British sausage? Oh my God..
“British sausage is people! Very large people!!!”
“We had Dan Roundfield at 4 and Tree Rollins at 5. Roundfield didn’t go very far from the basket [he was 0 for 11 on threes], and we didn’t throw Tree the ball at all.
Yeah, fuck you Tree!
“The skill level has changed, especially at the 4 spot. Now you run pick-and-rolls with 4’s and 5’s. And it’s not usually a pick-and-roll; it’s a pick-and-pop.
“Sounds like my herpes sore removal process!” - Delonte West
That’s all you hear: pick-and-pop. That’s essentially what Baby [Glen Davis] did to get that big shot in Game 4. It was a pick-and-pop.”
Danny Ainge feels all that business may have started right here with Larry Bird.
And then his heart exploded.
“Larry was a small forward, but he played a lot of power forward,” Ainge points out. “Larry wasn’t a guy who grew up shooting the three. He was just a great shooter, period. But guys now grow up shooting the three. It has become an integral part of the game. It’s a priority of many offenses.”
We call them “Shitty Offenses.”
We now have a totally different basketball world, one in which Cleveland has a 7-3 Lithuanian center (Zydrunas Ilgauskas) who’d rather launch an 18-footer than plant his large carcass down in the paint
Fuckin’ Lithuanians! They’re worse than the Turks!
and in which Dallas has a 7-foot German
(ahem) Nazi! (ahem)
(Dirk Nowitzki) whose 3-point shooting is a devastating weapon.
And notice, please, the nationalities.
Notice, please, that they’re all filthy Europeans.
“I couldn’t have envisioned that when I was a rookie, either,” says Rivers. “I guess I kind of knew some Europeans were legit,
Some were even too legit. And some would, in fact, not quit.
and you knew some would wind up playing in our league, but you couldn’t imagine it becoming as worldwide as it is.”
“When I was in college [BYU], we played the Russian national team, and they had some good players,” says Ainge.
If ya like dirty red Commies!
“I had respect for the good European players. But now it is completely global, with the best players from France, Germany, Canada, and China all playing here.
Doesn’t get anymore globaler than Canada.
That’s why this is the best league in the world.”
Better than that one full of extraordinary gentlemen? My!
Ainge and Rivers are reasonably contemporary, with the GM preceding his coach as an NBA player by two years. That was the in-between period, when no high school players were entering the draft. That small first crop (Moses Malone, Darryl Dawkins, Bill Willoughby, etc.) were making their mark,
And what a helluva mark ‘ol Bill WIlloughby made!
and the second wave, led by Kevin Garnett, had yet to materialize.
The world wasn’t yet ready for this level of intensity..
In the early ’90s, it was generally agreed that what those first three had done was an isolated phenomenon and the NBA would never have to deal with teeny-boppers again.
With their juice boxes and their cassette tape players and their complicated shoes!
Then came Garnett, a young man from South Carolina via Chicago who believed he was good enough to play in the league right now.
Wait, he thought then that he was good enough to play now? Why did he enter then, then? Why didn’t he wait ’til now?
“My first thought was, ‘No way!’ ” says Rivers,
And then I was like, “Oh no you din’n't!” And then I was like, “Awwwww sheeeeyitttt!”
who had entered the 1983 draft following his junior year at Marquette. “There’s no way you can play coming out of high school.”
Then he saw Garnett play.
“I actually did say, ‘OK, I was wrong. The kid can play.’ “
Lewis offered himself up for the 1998 draft after a successful career at Alief (Texas) High School. The Sonics took him in the second round, and he is now concluding his 11th season. He is a three-time 20-ppg scorer, and you’d certainly have to say his career choice was wise.
Yeah, he duped the Magic out of hundreds of millions of dollars and has never been out of the second round; when he could’ve gone to a school like Texas for four years, taken them to a couple Final Fours and come into the NBA as one of the premier forwards in the league and still gotten all that money and probably have taken a team to the Conference Finals by now and not been such a whiny immature bitch every time a ticky-tack foul is called. Wise career choice.
Howard was the ultimate, the first pick in the 2004 draft. The Magic had to choose between this sculpted kid from Southwest Atlanta Christian Academy
Whoa, easy there Bob.
“And you should see his ass. Cut. Out. Of marble.”
and the best college player on the best college team, Connecticut center Emeka Okafor.
God bless you.
The latter has had an OK career for the Charlotte Bobcats,
The Charlotte What-Nows?
and he keeps getting better, but he’s not close to an All-Star.
Actually, he’s sorta very close. If Ree-Shard Lewis can be an All-Star, Emeka can.
Howard is, by acclamation, the best center in the league,
Bold statements, brought to you by the Boston Globe: In business for the next three months.
a shot-blocking and rebounding machine who can also get you 30 points if not monitored properly in the low post.
Thanks for the plug, Bob. Much appreciated.
He has had five great seasons in the league, and he won’t turn 24 until Dec. 8.
And he smiles a lot. Don’t forget the smiles!
Turkoglu began playing professionally in Turkey at age 17.
Ugh, Turkey? Might as well play in a trash dump.
At least he didn’t play in that whore factory known as Lithuania! Or Nazi Germany, for that matter!
He was a 2000 No. 1 pick (16th overall) by the Sacramento Kings. He has been a mainstay of the Turkish national team, and his entire profile is that of a modern player, from the extensive international background to his proficiency with the three.
Howard-Lewis-Turkoglu: It’s the quintessential futuristic NBA front line, except that the future is now.
The Future Is Now.
I give you…FUTURE ORLANDO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bob Ryan is a Globe columnist and can be reached at ryan@globe.com. 
~~~
Random Bob Ryan Face ‘Splodin’ pic: 
If the Magic frontline is the future I’m getting in Bob Ryan’s time machine back to 1983 lickity-quick.
Besides, Future Orlando’s always under constant surveillance for the ongoing threat known as Space Bear.
SPACE BEAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
