Part II, February 27-March 5

On Tuesday, New York attorney Kerry Konrad won the right in an eBay auction to name Boston’s FleetCenter for a day. For his $2,325, Konrad wanted to honor the New York Yankees shortstop.

“We decided that all the names had to be rated G, and this name was determined to be obscene and vulgar,” said Richard A. Krezwick, president and chief executive of the FleetCenter, which has auctioned off daily naming rights to about a dozen companies since its contract with the bank was terminated. “We were afraid of the volume of phone calls bogging down our switchboard, the number of e-mails clogging our portal and the potential graffiti on the side of our building.”

“I had no idea that this joke would get so much attention in the first place,” Konrad said. “It was a joke. I’ve already had my laugh. But I could have made it much worse, like the A-Rod Center, Bucky Dent Center, the Aaron Boone Center, or the ‘Only 25 More [championships] To Go’ Center.”

To be fair, the Red Sox are only 20 championships behind the Yankees’ major league record 26.

Instead, on March 1, the building will be named the Jimmy Fund Center. Jerry Rappaport Jr., Konrad’s ex-college roommate and Red Sox fan, added $6,275 to Konrad’s bid -- to reach $8,600 in total to signify the 86-year Boston Red Sox curse that was broken in 2004. The money will go to The Jimmy Fund, which supports the fight against cancer through Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

Krezwick said that it's not likely that any future auction winner would get by with naming the arena after anyone associated with the Yankees organization.

“I got a lot of e-mails from Red Sox fans in Boston who tipped their cap to me,” Konrad said. “They left the back door open. I’m sure if [Yankees owner] George Steinbrenner were foolish enough to auction off the naming rights to Yankee Stadium for a day, Red Sox fans would have thought of something clever.”

See, this is what’s great about sports fans. It’s not just that a guy would spend 2300 bucks to rename a stadium for a day, and it’s not just that his sole purpose of spending the 2300 was to piss off his Red Sox fan buddies. All of that in itself would have been funny, certainly, but the best part of all is the guy in charge saying no dice to the name “Derek Jeter Center” because it is considered vulgar. That’s amazing! He could have just negged it based on the reasons he gave—excessive phone calls, e-mails, graffiti—but he went a step further and said that the name was vulgar. That’s awesome.

We’re in Arizona now, just outside of Phoenix, staying with my aunt Sharon and Uncle Eddie and their three kids. As we head further west, the road trip—and the country—begin to take shape. After Austin we continued south to San Antonio, which turned out to be a really beautiful city. On our first night there we checked out the river walk, something that I was totally unaware existed. It’s a beautiful sight…part Bourbon Street, part Michigan Avenue, part Florence. A total surprise…it’s as if we discovered it.

Of course, San Antonio was also an example of why we are on this trip as explorers, not as tourists or sight-seers, because on that instinct we checked out the Alamo which turned out to be beyond boring. This was very disappointing for me personally, because my brother and I were such crazed Davy Crockett fans when we were kids. I’d say we forced our parents to rent the Disney live action Davy Crockett movie at least once a month for about four or five years. I called Mike from outside to consult him.

So no, no sight-seeing. Exploring only. We know where we want to go, and we’ve got our map to tell us how to get there. That’s it. Originally we’d planned on going all the way down to Corpus Christi, but after five nights in Texas Meghan became a little bit nervous, and so we decided to head west on I-10 from San Antonio towards Tuscon.

Having made the decision to leave Texas, we were now faced with the daunting task of actually leaving Texas. It’s not as easy as one might think. This is a huge freakin’ state. I drove the first day—just an endless, sightless drive, like something out of Blood Simple—and finally we camped out at the Balmorhea State Park. We awoke early the next morning, and as I had taken the driving duties the day before Meghan took them that day…much to her dismay, as West Texas Part II featured many beautiful sights of mountains and sand dunes, and Meghan the photographer was not able to take it in as much as she would have liked. (We did stop a few times so that she could take pictures.)

And then, as we got further west, and I kept checking the map to see how much longer we had until El Paso…

“What??!!!” It’s amazing how a crucial detail like that can be missed, even after eight months or so of dating. “We’ll have to take care of that some time.”

“I can’t tell you. You’ll just have to see the movie. We gotta pull off the highway and check it out.”

One of the great thrills of this trip so far has been the surprises. Driving under the underpass in Dealy Plaza before realizing where I was, finding the beauty of the river walk, and now getting to visit Ft. Hancock, Texas. Amazing. It really is just a small, border town, like something out of an independent film where Everybody Has A Secret and lives Just Around The Corner. We found a big wall with the words “FT. HANCOCK MERCHANDISE CO.” and Meghan took a picture of me in front of it.

It wasn’t too long to El Paso after we hopped back on the highway. We stopped for lunch at a pub/brewery, and along with my burger I had a wonderful chocolate stout that was rich and smooth. I topped off two of those, and being the lightweight that I am I was a bit tipsy for the most of the afternoon. El Paso was a beautiful city; the sun was now shining a piercing bright as we cruised through the cacti and mountains of New Mexico, and somewhere in this drive I got a call from Ben.

“A little. Dude, guess what…” (and then, before he could answer) “…guess where we just went…” (and then, quickly) “…Ft. Hancock, Texas.”

“Seriously? That’s awesome.” Ben did a mock Morgan Freeman voice: “It was blank, but the post mark read Ft. Hancock, Texas. Ft. Hancock. That’s where he crossed.”

“Sure. So, I was watching the Bulls the other day…I’ve got something for you.”

“They’ve started referring to Ben Gordon as ‘Heir Gordon,’ ya know, like ‘heir to the throne.’”

“Pretty much. The Bulls are back. It’s as much a return of the fans as it is a return of the Bulls.”

“Still sweet, though.” He laughs, excited and giddy, the laugh of a man wrapped up in something pure and happy and truly exciting. “How’s Meghan?”

“Talk to you—oh wait!” And then: “I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention it.”

“Yeah, the Panthers let him go yesterday or two days ago for salary purposes, and the Bears scooped him up like five hours later or something.”

“Yeah man.” Great news. “Well, you enjoy Herms, and tell Tony I say hey.”

It wasn’t too long before we were out of New Mexico and into Arizona, and from the border it wasn’t too far to Tuscon and two of my friends from camp, Tommy and Annie Millstone. Tommy was a long time camper and then a counselor; his younger sister Annie worked as the office manager last summer. We’re also planning on seeing Leb and Sue—North Star’s owners/directors—while we’re in Tuscon, as well as Beth Shefcyk, the program director. First J.R. and Bubba, and now this whole Tuscon crew; later it will be camp friends Adam Heldman in Seattle, Mike Cousins in Montana, and Musch, Hitch, Corrie, and the McCormacks in Denver. I never really realized just how far the North Star network extends until now. It’s nice to know.

After a night in Tuscon with Tommy and Annie, Meg and I left this morning and headed north to Phoenix, which is where we are now. I knew that I needed access to a TV and the surrounding room for the Oscars tonight, and it didn’t seem as if either Millstone house would be available for that. And so it was up to Phoenix to see my dad’s siblings and their families. First up, Uncle Eddie and Aunt Sharon, who moved here with their kids a few years ago. After that will be my dad’s sister Andi and her husband Terry; Aunt Anid and Uncle Terry moved down here last year after they both retired. I don’t get to see this part of the family very often, so it’s great to get a chance to sit down and hang out with everybody.

When we got into the Phoenix area, Meg and I called Eddie and Sharon to get more specific directions to their house. Eddie picked up.

“Yeah, you’re close. We were going to pick up Chinese food for dinner. How’s that?”

He directed us in, and when we got there Aunt Sharon was back with dinner. David, their oldest child, was out, so dinner was with Eddie, Sharon, and their two daughters, Rianna and Sara. After dinner we flipped onto ABC for the Oscar broadcast. Eddie and I grabbed spots on the couch, while Meghan went with Sharon, Rianna, and Sara to check on the newly-hatched chicks in Sharon’s kindergarten class.

And so it was Oscar time, with Chris Rock hosting. Hosting the Oscars is probably the hardest live comedic gig I can think of. You have to entertain a restless, anxious audience while they wait for the one prize they care most about, and you have to be big enough to command the room while never actually taking it over. It’s a tough balance. Billy Crystal and Steve Martin are clearly the best. Whoopi and Letterman were clearly the worst. Anything in the middle is acceptable.

The first big award of the night was Best Supporting Actress. Tim Robbins came out to present, and as soon as I saw him I called Mom. We do not have a strong pull for this category, though we agree that of what we saw, Cate Blanchett probably had the most difficult role. It’s always tough to effectively play a real person who had a very defined public image, and it’s particularly difficult if that image stems from film, because then we have seen that person so many times that an actor playing the character runs the risk of having his or her work viewed as impression rather than acting. That was the challenge for Blanchett in her attempt to portray Katherine Hepburn in Scorsese’s The Aviator. We saw that together, the four of us, and when Robbins announced Blanchett’s name as winner, Mom and I nodded in agreement. It was probably the right call, and we were glad that common sense seems to have been served. It’s not always that easy…watching in horror as Julia Roberts, charming as she is, grabbed the Oscar for Lead Actress in 2000 over the much more deserving Ellen Burstyn…

So the Blanchett ‘W’ was a good start, but that was just a lead-in. Morgan Freeman was the key guy here; this man was absolutely incredible in Million Dollar Baby, and on a lifetime standpoint, how can you root against Morgan Freeman? Every year there’s a nominee that just gets us. Bill Murray a year ago, Queen Latifah for my mom two years ago, Ellen Burstyn and Ed Harris in 2000, and the monster: Robin Williams and the Damon/Affleck writing team for Good Will Hunting. Those were some of the big ones, and this year it’s Morgan Freeman. That was our focus throughout: help Morgan Freeman win the Oscar.

The other clear focus was Jamie Foxx for Ray; I thought the movie was sloppy, but Jamie Foxx turned out an absolute classic performance. The only truly difficult part for us was the Best Director race between Clint and Scorsese, and that was only due to sentiment. You’d like to think that Scorsese would’ve won by now, but he hasn’t, and even though he’s one of my favorite filmmakers of all-time, there’s no way that I can justify giving it to Scorsese over Eastwood. Scorsese made a very good movie, but not a great movie, and not a great Scorsese movie. Eastwood made a great movie and a great Eastwood movie. I wish I could, but I can’t.

Of course at this point, what does an Oscar even matter to a guy like Scorsese? Hitchcock went 0-for-6 on Best Director Oscars before being given the Thalberg Award in ’68. Kubrick went 0-for-4, Bergman went 0-for-3, Altman went 0-for-5, Kirowasa lost his lone nomination, Spike Lee’s only nomination was for Original Screenplay on Do the Right Thing, and Godard was never nominated for any Oscars of any kind. Not even an honorary, and he made Breathless, for goodness sake. As for Scorsese, he enters tonight at 0-for-4. That’s eight of the best filmmakers of all-time clocking in at a robust 0-for-23 and counting…and yet, there is no debate as to the artistic merits of these directors. So what does this matter?

Mom and I were back on the phone for Best Supporting Actor, a showdown between Freeman and Foxx for Collateral, his other nomination. The sleeper pick was Thomas Haden Church as the engaged/cheating fiancé from the much-loved Sideways. (Mom: “What a creep. We were supposed to like him?”) And there was an outside chance on the respect angle for Alan Alda in The Aviator, and all the while I was pissed that David Carridine didn’t get a nod for Kill Bill vol. 2, but so it goes. Mom and I were focused in on Morgan Freeman.

“Yippee!!!” Mom and I are both cheering at this point, with Eddie looking at me curiously, and the audience at the Kodak Theater coming to its feet for the beloved veteran actor Freeman. Three times nominated, no wins. A load was clearly lifted as he gripped the Oscar statuette…later in the night he spoke about how he’d gotten himself used to losing, how he didn’t care anyore, but once you hear your name called, all that goes out the window. Sounds like a Cubs fan.

With that win in the bag, Mom and I relaxed. Indeed, we got Jamie Foxx for Ray, and there was no arguing with Hilary Swank for Million Dollar Baby. Even Charlie Kaufman winning for Eternal Sunshine was fun to see, even if it was a reminder of how the Academy likes to award “lesser” movies with screenplay awards in lieu of the bigger nominations. Ah well. What can you do?

Finally, it came time for director, and the right decision was made. Clint won his second career directing Oscar, and Scorsese moved to 0-for-5. It wasn’t much of a shock, then, when Clint was back on the winner’s podium for MDB’s Best Picture of the Year victory. Mom and I were very satisfied—Mom: “This was a great picture. It was the kind movie that wins Best Picture. I’m happy. This is right.”—and hung up the phone for the last time shortly after Chris Rock said goodnight.

After Meg got back and the Oscars were over, the two of us hopped in the car and just drove around some, checking out the scenery. I love it. The landscapes are so much different than what I’m used to. Just to look down the block and see mountains…from here on out, it’s a whole new America.

Sports fans are always a step ahead of the rest of the country when it comes to their team. We watch day after day when no one else is watching, and then the team starts to play well and begins garnering praise outside of the city, and we feel pretty damn good about ourselves. We’re like the kid who “discovers” a band, and then makes sure everybody knows it when they finally hit big. But being a fan of a rock band is not the same as being a fan of a team. First of all, there’s no such thing as a bandwagon rock band fan. Posers maybe, but not bandwagon. A band starts small, cuts a few records, makes a few hits, and grow more popular. There’s no shame in becoming a fan of a band once it becomes popular, because all you are doing as a rock fan is appreciating their music.

Take Kanye West, for example. I first heard his music last summer, when some friends of mine played The College Dropout for me. They were big into that album, and wanted to share it. I liked it, and got into it, and by the time the Grammys came around earlier this year, I was a Kanye fan. Not a huge fan, but that was only due to personal tastes. I dig his shit. What more does one need?

Then came the Grammys, with Kanye getting pub for his many nominations. College Dropout won Best Rap Album, and Kanye performed “Jesus Walks” at the show. His fame grew. Sales of his CD increased after the Grammys, as lots of music fans discovered his music for the first time. That’s a time span of nearly a year in which people have become fans of Kanye West, and certainly there are still people who have not yet heard his CD. Does it matter when a person became a fan? No, not at all, because all we are doing is appreciating a person’s music. In fact, my future child could find The College Dropout in my CD case in about thirty years, pop it into his CD player or forehead or do whatever it is that they will be doing for their musical enjoyment, and he could then become a diehard Kanye fan. Totally possible, totally reasonable. There is no expiration date on a piece of art. Even if Kanye West never cuts another successful record, people can still enjoy The College Dropout, and new fans can still discover that album in the same way that I became a fan of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

This kind of attachment is not the same for a sports team. A franchise, yes. But not a specific team of a specific season. The Bulls are improving now, and like Kanye during the past year, more and more people are being introduced to this team, to Kirk and Tyson and Eddy and Du and Luol. And while others can enjoy the team and root for them now that they are winning, they cannot legitimately claim to be diehard Bulls fans; it just wouldn’t be true. On top of that, if a person attempts to hop on the bandwagon of a team on the rise and disguise himself as a long timer, we actual diehards would take a great deal of offense to them because they are not just saying that they like a team; they are trying to take on an identity. This is similar to what happened in the early ’90s when the whole grunge movement took off, and flannel started popping up everywhere. People were doing the grunge thing because they thought it was hip, not because they were really into it, and the real grunge fans got mad, because they felt like their identity was being pimped. That’s why people don’t like fair-weather fans, and why it’s a sin to hop on a team’s bandwagon and claim to be the driver.

Outsiders are now seeing the Bulls’ improvement, and as the season goes on I’m sure we’ll see some amount of bandwagon fans. However, bandwagon fans have never really bothered me, because I am comfortable with my fandom. People who know me know what my fandom is all about, and anybody who jumps onto a rising team’s bandwagon can always see what separates them from the real fans, and in my experience they pay us their respect. And that’s all we ask. Acknowledge our commitment. After all, if you don’t, and you try to talk shop with us about our own team, our depth of knowledge will be immediately apparent.

For example, anybody who jumps on the Bulls bandwagon well into this season probably thinks that this Bulls team has come out of nowhere, but those of us who have been watching all season have seen the steady improvement. We went 1-10 in November, 8-7 in December, and then romped through January with a league best—and franchise best—13-3 record. That made us 22-20 heading into February, which was a good record to have considering that our February schedule looked like a minefield. Eight of eleven games on the road, and the home games were against Miami, Minnesota, and Sacramento. Not exactly an easy run. In the world of sports journalistic clichés, this stretch would determine whether or not the Bulls were “for real.”[1] Well, we won seven of those eleven games, and at 29-24 we’re starting to get some recognition around the rest of the league. ESPN.com’s Power Rankings has us at number eight overall right now. I almost crapped myself when I saw that.

But even with our vast improvement, we still have a long way to go, as witnessed by the 119-89 schalacking at the hands of the Houston Rockets two nights ago. Like the Bulls of the ’80s, this team is young and inexperienced, and watching them can be both agonizing and exhilarating. We are clearly a talented group—Tyson Chandler (second overall pick in 2001), Ben Gordon (third in ’04), Eddy Curry (fourth in ’01), Kirk Hinrich (seventh in ’03), and Luol Deng (seventh in ’04) are all recent top ten picks—and apart from Curry every player on the team is a guy whose effort and desire matches or exceeds his talent. When we are playing well, our talent is augmented by that effort and desire as we out-hustle opposing players for rebounds and loose balls. When we are playing poorly, no amount of talent or hustle can save us from our poor decisions and fatigue. Young players generally have more energy than older players, but older players are wiser and better conditioned. Young team, old team, it doesn’t really matter. There are ups and downs with both, and either name is used more as an insult than just a description. Michael, Scottie, Horace, Pax, B.J., and the rest of those guys were all in their twenties during the first title run, but they weren’t a “young team,” but rather a high-energy athletic club. Then, during the second three-peat, Jordan, Pippen, Rodman, and Harper were all in their mid-30s, but people never referred to the Bulls as an “old team.” They were always “experienced.”

Along with the defense and team play, what I find most exciting about this Bulls team is the possibility that the team’s core will stay together throughout their primes. The championship Bulls were fun to root for because they kept the team together for a while, allowing fans to become familiar with the players. That’s one reason that sports are best when teams stay together, but there is another big reason, and that is this: teams that stay together perform at a higher level because they learn all of the specificities of their teammates’ games. This rule is more applicable in basketball than in other sports, because basketball is a more individual sport than football or baseball. That’s not to say that basketball isn’t a team sport. It is. But like soccer, hockey, lacrosse, field hockey, water polo—any sport that has players advancing a ball towards a goal or net—basketball is a game that can be taken over by an individual player.

Brett Favre is a great quarterback, but in order for him to be successful he needs an offensive line to block for him and a receiver to catch his passes. Barry Bonds is a great baseball player, and while he can achieve brilliant individual stats on his own, he cannot win games just by himself. He only goes to bat between three and four times a game, he doesn’t pitch, he only covers one-ninth of the field, and he is frozen within the confines of a batting order. On the other hand, Michael Jordan could win a game practically on his own, because he could control the ball and dominate without much assistance of his teammates. Of course, he found his greatest success when he got his teammates involved, but even without that help, Jordan was still able to hold more of an influence over his team’s success than any great football or baseball player. With that kind of potential for individual effort and skill to translate into at least a moderate level of team success, talented but selfish basketball players feel more important than the team and thus make it difficult for clubs to keep a team nucleus together. And it’s the talented but selfish basketball players that always feel like their team’s failure is somebody else’s fault, and GMs have fallen into an unfortunate logic track that has them acquiring these kinds of players and then getting rid of them when they turn the heat on and say that they won’t resign.

The NBA trade deadline hit last week, and this trend of GMs not knowing how to keep teams together and giving into the pressures levied by talented but selfish players led to eleven deadline deals involving fifteen teams and thirty five players.

How many of these trades will result in a positive impact for the teams involved? Philly getting C-Webb is big, and Houston made some nice moves, and Steve Smith will be a good fit in Miami, but the rest of the trades were either addition by subtraction or, failing that, simply subtraction. Nobody knows how to build and keep a team anymore. That’s another big problem in the NBA, a problem that was almost non-existent when I was growing up: most teams do not stay together, and thus they do not form an identity, and thus there are a small number of memorable teams which in-turn makes the games less memorable and less exciting. The NBA of the ’80s and ’90s was filled with teams that stayed together. There were the top tier clubs, the teams that were guaranteed to challenge for the NBA Finals every season,[2] but there were also the second tier teams, teams that were never at the top of the heap but stuck together and were highly competitive and professional clubs.[3]

All of these teams benefited greatly by patient owners and GMs who allowed their teams to grow and learn to play together, making for a much more competitive and thus more exciting league.

That’s what I want most with this Bulls team, maybe even more than another championship. I want a club that will stay together and grow together and take the city along for the ride.

Meghan and I are flipping around the dial at her friend Josh’s house in Prescott, Arizona when we come upon the second game of a TNT double header between the Pistons and the Suns. It is not often that I am super excited to watch a non-Bulls related NBA game, because many of the teams are boring. But the Pistons and the Suns are two squads that play as a team in a way that makes each player more effective, and they are both teams that have an identity. Detroit, run by general manager and former Piston all-star shooting guard Joe “The Nice Bad Boy” Dumars, plays a physical game predicated on defense, with five hard-nosed starters and a terrifically cohesive bench. Phoenix is a run and gun throwback team that tries every night to fight fire with fire. It is a game between two well defined teams…TEAMS…that play hard and play together. It’s everything that I like about basketball.

“If there’s something else that you guys really wanna watch, then we can watch it, but if you can’t think of anything do you think we could watch some of this game?”

“I don’t care.” He takes a drink of pop. “So, what’s the plan from here? You’ve got Spring Training tickets for next week, right?”

“Yeah. I think we’re gonna go to Vegas now instead of after the games, since we’ve got some time. Meg, that right?”

Meghan looks at me. She has been thinking about something. “Why this game?” And then, before I can answer: “I mean, beyond just that you’re a sports nut and you want to watch a game. Do you really want to watch this game?”

“Pistons-Suns? Hell yeah. Arguably the top two teams in each conference. Possible Finals matchup. The run-and-gun Suns and the defensive hard-nosed Pistons. Should be great.” And then, with the Suns coming down on the break… “Q, hit that…money! Yeah boy!”

“Quentin Richardson. Number 3 in white. He’s a Chicago guy who went to DePaul.”

“Yeah. I did…” I go on yelling for Q-Tip, and I applaud Steven Hunter when he enters for the Suns.[4] And then the Pistons flex their muscle, with the Wallace boys down low, and I applaud them.

One thing that I have found from watching the Bulls over the past six years is that when your team isn’t doing well, your interest in the rest of the league diminishes, because there are fewer teams with which you have a specific connection. To put it another way, you can’t have rivals when you suck. Along with the big rivalries with the Pistons and Knicks, the championship Bulls had beefs at one point or another with the Heat, Pacers, Jazz, and Cavs (though the Cavs weren’t much of a challenge, no offense to Cleveland fans; their dislike for us is much much greater than ours, which was and is pretty much non-existent). Now, there’s none of that. We don’t have any rivals in the league right now, though I’m sure that will change this year. Our home-and-home double header against the Knicks in January may have done at least a little something to re-spark that rivalry, but we’ll need more than just two awesome regular season games.

That’s one of the things that is missing from the NBA; there are no big eternal rivalries, just temporal ones. Bears-Packers, Red Sox-Yankees, Michigan-Ohio State, Duke-North Carolina, Evanston-New Trier…these are eternal rivalries. It doesn’t matter when these teams or schools play or which players are on the teams or what their records are. When eternal rivals play, it’s always an intense game, no matter what. The Lakers and Celtics are the closest thing the NBA has to an eternal rivalry, but even that one is centered more around specific team matchups than the two franchises and their fans: Wilt vs. Russell, Magic vs. Larry. The dislike between those two teams and their fans does not live without on-court acrimony. The same can be said for the Bulls and Pistons. I always cringe when I see pictures of Bill Laimbeer and clips of those old games, but I don’t care about the current Pistons, and Pistons fans don’t care about the current Bulls. That might change this year, (wouldn’t it be sweet if we met in the playoffs?), but you can’t have much of a rivalry when one team wins 23 games all season and the other wins the championship. It just doesn’t work that way. Rivalries that grow out of a specific time are fun and full of good memories, but they can’t really compare to ones that last throughout the generations.

[1] I absolutely destest this expression. Definitely a sports journalism-ism that I wish to have blown up immediately. What does it even mean, “for real?” Were the ’95 Wildcats not “for real” because they didn’t win the Rose Bowl? Were the ’98 Falcons not “for real” because they got trounced in the Super Bowl? What about the ’97 Pack, the defending champs who put together a dominant season and lost a close, competitive Super Bowl to an excellent Denver Broncos team? Did that loss lessen the Packers’ collective realness? Were the 8^th seeded Villanova Wildcats of 1985 “realer” than the top seeded Georgetown Hoyas simply because Nova knocked them out in the championship? Do you see how ridiculous that phrase is?

[2] Magic’s Lakers with Kareem, Worthy, Byron Scott, Michael Cooper, and Kurt Rambis…Larry’s Celtics with McHale, Parish, and Dennis Johnson…Isiah’s Bad Boy Pistons with Dumars, Laimbeer, Rodman, Salley, Edwards, Aguirre, Mahorn, and Vinnie Johnson…Michael and Scottie’s Bulls with Grant, Pax, B.J., Cartwright, Dennis, Luc, Harp, and Toni…Drexler’s Blazers with Terry Porter, Jerome Kersey, Buck Williams, and Robert Duckworth…Ewing’s Knicks with Starks, Oakley, Mason, and Doc Rivers…Hakeem’s Rockets with Kenny Smith, Robert Horry, Sam Cassell, Drexler, and Mario Elie…Stockton and Malone’s Jazz with Hornecek, Bryon Russell, Tom Chambers, and Ostertag.

[3] The Cavs of Price, Ehlo, Nance, Daugherty, and Harper, the Heat of Zo, Tim Hardaway, P.J. Brown, Mash, Majerle, and Veshon Lenard, the Supersonics of Kemp and Payton, Robinson’s Spurs with Avery Johnson, Sean Elliott, Chuck Person, Vinny Del Negro, the Suns of Barkley, KJ, and Majerle, and the Reggie’s Pacers with Mark Jackson, Smits, and the Davis boys. (Actually, Reggie Miller’s Pacers are one of the most impressive teams in NBA history from a management standpoint, as Donnie Walsh was able to take an old nucleus of Reggie, Jackson, Mullin, Smits, the Davises, and Jalen Rose, and turn it into a young nucleus of Jermaine O’Neal, Artest, Tinsley, Croshere, Foster, and Reggie without ever missing the playoffs. That’s really impressive work.)…(Also, the Spurs are listed as second tier for this list because they did not become a real championship-contender until Duncan arrived in ’98.)

[4] Bobby Simmons is also in the league, putting up about 16 a night for the Clippers.