Skip to main content

A.I. no-go

Sure, it’s only two games, but the Detroit Pistons (playing without Allen Iverson) were able to shed their eight-game losing streak (playing with Allen Iverson) by beating the Orlando Magic in Orlando and the Boston Celtics in Boston in what amounted to pretty solid wins. (Yes, both teams are missing one of their starters, but a win’s a win, and with Carmelo out for tonight's game against the Denver Nuggets, they should scratch out another victory.)

Their losing streak started somewhere around the time that the Pistons brain trust asked Richard “Rip” Hamilton to come off the bench, which allowed Iverson and his ego to start. Now, I’ve always been a fan of Iverson, all the way back to the Georgetown days, and it’s clear that he wants to be part of a winner and fit into a team concept, but that’s like asking a cobra to become a flying squirrel – just because the cobra flares its hood and slithers off a shelf doesn’t mean that it’s getting airborne any time soon. When Iverson tries to integrate himself into the Pistons team concept, he looks tentative, and the rest of the team follows suit.

The solution seems clear: put Rip Hamilton back in the starting lineup and bring Iverson off the bench with one Vinnie Johnson-ish goal – score, baby, score. The hell with team concept and sublimating one’s ego; instead, let’s see a return to the Iverson of old who could drive and score (not drive and dish) past anyone in the league. And if he can’t do that anymore, let him spot up from wherever he wants and get his shot off.

Or better yet, jettison him and let him go to a team that can use a shooting “point” guard on the downside of his career with (admittedly) a better haircut than he’s ever had before, and let a solid bench become a contributing force once again. While this year is a lost cause as far as championship caliber performance is concerned, every game is an audition for the A-list talent around the league who can fill those two max salary slots in 2010, and everything must be done to make Detroit a destination for free agents. And that's the real Answer.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"The Silver Gun" by Robert Palmer (1983)

I mean...Urdu? Seriously, Urdu . On an already eclectic and worldly album -- Pride , from 1983 -- "The Silver Gun" closes a chapter in Robert Palmer's career by singing a song about a horse in a language spoken daily by over 100 million people. The liquid bass line and propulsive electronics set out a bedrock for Palmer to ping phrasings rather out of place in Western music, askew astride even the peripatetic minimalism of the rest of the record. Somehow, in the middle of Michigan's Appalachia, I had this on vinyl a few years before the CD era officially commenced. It was an album of effort -- even the cover, a pointillism-and-bronze work, had Palmer's head barely above the water -- but the stitches didn't show to my pre-adolescent eyes and ears. In a career marked by zigs and zags, Pride and "The Silver Gun" were most certainly Other, and for a kid that felt like he didn't belong much of anywhere, it was nice to have those discrete feeling...

Some 2024 Listening Pleasures

It started with a gift of two JBL Control 25 speakers, and by "gift" I mean "borrowed" -- a.k.a. "will never return" -- from an obsolete tech detritus pile at work. I may have snagged more than two gifts, of course, but the raw footage proving such a claim remains elusive. And after installing the JBL speakers into the upper corners of the music room, and after installing speaker stands for the rear speakers I already had, and after making the hard choice between a big-ass bean bag and a comfy leather recliner to properly center myself in the audio field (R.I.P., big-ass bean bag), there was only one missing piece: the Apple TV 4K unit. So for me, 2024 was the year I streamed a lot of music in Atmos through Apple Music, surrounded by new tunes and old bops in thrilling new dimensions. Some might say you don't need surround sound, 'cos the two ears + two speakers modality has been dandy for a while now, but that's like saying you don't need ...

“Keep America great”

“Keep America great” Right now, I can’t watch MSU or U-M football, I can’t go see a movie at the State Theatre, I haven’t been to a concert in almost a year, my neighborhood is swaddled in flags made in China that aren’t the Chinese flag, I haven’t eaten inside a restaurant since February, some of my retirement stocks lost almost 40% of their value, I can’t find certain types of food and drink in the stores, the price of toilet paper has exploded, we are running out of coin currency in circulation, and I haven’t set foot in a classroom since 11 March, which is the last time I saw my friend and colleague alive. “Keep America great” In the United States, there is minority rule from an ignorant off-white supremacist cult leader and the rich and powerful people who can misuse the law and his followers to become more rich and powerful, while people that don’t look like them are being shot in the streets or their homes, or being put in concentration camps where infants wail for their absent ...