Insider Special: Good, Bad, & the Kitchen Sink

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The Good, the Bad, the Kitchen Sink

By Terry Brown

Monday, November 11 Updated 9:55 AM EST

Just sitting here waiting for the Grizzlies to win, the Mavs to lose, Antoine Walker to square up from behind the halfcourt line without blinking in the middle of a quarter with his team up by a bucket and Shaquille O'Neal to declare the first two weeks of the season invalid.

Until then . . .

The Good

Jerry Stackhouse, Washington Wizards

Week's work: 3-1 record, 116 points, 23 rebounds, 12 assists, 5 steals, 6 triples on 47%

It wasn't Michael Jordan hitting that game-winning shot at the buzzer against the Los Angeles Lakers. Stack has officially made the Greatest Basketball Player in History the second option on the very team His Airness owns, and legitimized his own standing as a true franchise player. This could be the second team he elevates from lottery to playoffs in as many years. Crack open your almanac and try to match that.

Kevin Garnett, Minnesota Timberwolves

Week's work: 2-2 record, 92 points, 61 rebounds, 21 assists, 8 steals, 5 blocks on 44% shooting

One four-quarter game in the NBA consists of 240 player minutes per side. Look at those numbers above again. There are entire teams out there that don't get this kind of production in the 157 minutes KG played this week.

Tracy McGrady, Orlando Magic

Week's work: 2-1 record, 96 points, 21 rebounds, 13 assists, 4 steals, 4 blocks, 4 triples on 50% shooting

If the back-to-back 40-point games don't get you, then the 216 points this guys has scored this year in only 151 shots will.

Steve Francis, Houston Rockets

Week's work: 1-1 record, 64 points, 13 rebounds, 14 assists, 3 triples on 56% shooting

Claimed Hakeem Olajuwon as his idol during the future Hall of Famer's retirement ceremony. In another 15 years, the Dream may return the favor.

The Bad

Derek Fisher, Los Angeles Lakers

Week's work: 0-3 record, 15 points, 7 rebounds, 9 assists, 2 steals on 31% shooting

With Shaquille O'Neal and Rick Fox out, the defending champs were looking for a little more help from their other starter not named Samaki Walker. Absolute worst time to post career lows in field goal and three-point shooting and flops.

Courtney Alexander, New Orleans Hornets

Week's work:: 3-0 record, 18 points, 5 rebounds, 0 assists on 31% shooting

This is not the proper method to crack the starting rotation. In fact, it's the quickest way to lose the 65 minutes you were gifted during the week.

Mike Dunleavy, Jr., Golden State Warriors

Week's work: 0-3 record, 0 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists on 0% shooting

Hate to do this to a rookie, but No. 3 picks with more than two commas in their yearly salary should be able to get the ball in the hoop at least one time in 33 minutes of play.

Morris Peterson, Toronto Raptors

Week's work: 1-2 record, 29 points, 13 rebounds, 7 assists on 30% shooting

Maybe the Raptors are going to miss Vince Carter this time around.

The Ugly

On Nov. 10, 2002, the New York Knicks failed to sell out Madison Square Garden for the first time in 433 games, losing to the Milwaukee Bucks before an announced crowd of 18,100. Two days later, they atoned by not only defeating the Sacramento Kings for their first win of the season, but also selling out all of their 19,763 seats. In between those two games, the Denver Nuggets played before a home crowd of 10,073 . . . and lost by 16.

The Kitchen Sink

KOBE'S GOATEE

It doesn't really matter who drew the mustache, horns and pointed tail on Kobe Bryant's image, but I wouldn't blame the kid if he was the one beginning to see red.

Three-time champions who have All-NBA credentials and MVP candidacy will have their run-ins and outs with the media, fans and even upper management but should, in no way, have to go hand to mouth with NBA referees.

This is royalty we're talking. And relativity. Referees wear whistles not blindfolds and unsheathed swords. And stop shaking your head before I break out tapes of Ewing traveling, Jordan pushing and Olajuwon hooking. If this game was meant to be fair, then the man upstairs wouldn't have allowed 7-footers to play small forward. Start your stop watch now and see how long it takes for a rookie center to pick up three fouls for scratching himself. Compare that to a Dikembe Mutombo third-degree elbow with no whistle.

STOP!

Now try to explain to me why a fourth-year player named Corey Maggette who has never averaged more than 12 ppg can get a foul shot for every 2.4 shots he takes this season when Kobe doesn't get that same whistle until he shoots it 2.9 times.

For goodness sakes, Jason Richardson, a second-year player whose next game will be his 88th, gets a call every third shot. Ricky Davis, a fifth-year player on his third team who has started a total of 20 games, is at the line every 1.8 shots.

The list goes on . . .

Jerry Stackhouse - 1.8 shots per FT

Richard Hamilton - 2.2

Steve Francis - 2.2

Vince Carter - 2.2

Paul Pierce - 2.3

Tony Kukoc - 2.3

Michael Jordan - 2.6

Allen Iverson - 2.6

Tracy McGrady - 2.7

Allan Houston - 2.9

Kobe Bryant - 2.9

These are all players with similar styles of play and court position and time of possession. But you could pick out the one with the scribbled-on beard from here.

IMMOVABLE MAVS

Something had to give when the NBA's stingiest defensive team met its most explosive offense team Saturday afternoon. The Pistons were, accent on the past tense, holding teams to a league-low 76.7 points per game until they met up with the Mavericks, who were scoring a league-high 108.6 points per game. Forty-eight minutes later, Dallas racked up 114 points to tie a season-high.

Detroit scored 75.

In six games so far, the Mavericks have failed to reach triple-digits only once and are now averaging 109.5 points per game. At this rate, they would score 8,979 points this year, which would be 350 more than they did last season and 1,644 more than the Chicago Bulls did last year.

Of course, at this rate, they'd also finish 82-0 if they continued to play teams with a combined record of 14-25.

NBA 101

1 plus 1 equals 2 . . . plus 2 equals 4 . . . times 4 equals 16 . . . which is the time it took the Chicago Bulls to learn a very important lesson in NBA math.

In the first four games of the year for the Bulls, Donyell Marshall averaged 20 points and 11.5 rebounds per game in 35.2 minutes per game. In the next two, he averaged only 6.5 points and 5 rebounds per game in 22 minutes per game.

That's eight minutes a game, 16 over two contests.

Common sense overcame Jerry Krause and Marshall got his 30 minutes back the next game and produced 14 points and 15 rebounds and a Bull win.

Marshall is already putting together the best statistical season of his eight-year career, but simple math suffices. In the three seasons in which he has averaged 30 or more minutes per game, he has responded with 14.8 points and 8.7 rebounds when he takes the floor. This year, he's at 15.5 points and 9.3 rebounds in 31.6 minutes per game.

They don't call plays for this guy. He doesn't cross halfcourt with the ball, isn't the first option and doesn't get pick after pick on his way to the hoop. He takes his minutes, fights for each of his touches, says thank you, please, and may I have another. And when Marshall does get his 30, the Bulls are 3-2. Without them or him, they are 0-2.

And they said you'd never use that math after high school.

EASY AS 3-2-1

Last Saturday, Sonic guard Brent Barry went 4-for-5 from three-point range to improve to 20-of-35 on the season for 57 percent. More impressive is that he has hit more triples than anyone else in the league so far. Less impressive is that in front of the three-point line, he went 1-for-5 that Saturday to go 12-of-25 on the season for 48 percent.

Insert the following numbers of your favorite high-salaried, ego-inflated shooting guard for the punchline after reading off Barry's current line: 53 percent FG and 57 percent three-point FG.

Yeah, it's probably a good thing that he's not only taken more three-pointers this season than your traditional jump shot, lay in, fall away, hook, bank or dunk, but also done so over his entire career with 1,871 attempts from two and 1,915 attempts from three.

But things will really get out of hand if he doesn't improve the worst free-throw shooting of his career, which is at 76 percent as we speak, type or punch keys.

SIX NINE GOING ON SEVEN

No surprise that last year's Rebounding King, Ben Wallace, at 6-foot-9, is co-leading the NBA in rebounding at 13.9 with 7-footer Kevin Garnett. But it's a little surprising that Miami's Brian Grant, also at 6-foot-9, is right behind them at 13.8. In fact, Grant is averaging more defensive rebounds per game (9.2) this season than total rebounds in any other season (9.1 rpg in 1998 and 7.8 rpg over his career) not to mention the fact that he's leading the entire league in offensive rebounds at 4.6 per game. At a 48-minute per game basis, he'd be grabbing an eye-popping 20.6 per contest.

95 PERCENT PERFECT

Sacramento's Doug Christie and Washington's Tyrone Lue are a perfect 25-for-25 from the line. But New York's Allan Houston and Washington's Stackhouse are even better, so to speak, at a combined 101-for-106.

Prior to this season, Houston and Stackhouse averaged 3.4 and 7.8 free throws per game, respectively, and shot 88 and 80 percent, respectfully. So far this year, they are averaging 7.3 and 9.7 free throws per game while both shooting 95 percent.

ON THE SEVENTH DAY . . .

Zydrunas Ilgauskas

6 games, 17.3 ppg, 10.5 rpg, 1.8 bpg, 34% shooting

Tim Duncan

6 games, 19.6 ppg, 10.6 rpg, 2.8 bpg, 44% shooting

The End

"Watching the reels of my accomplishments, I thought it had to be somebody else."

MVP, two-time Defensive Player of the Year, Top 50 Player of All Time, two-time World Champion . . .