Wow, the Clippers looked really really bad last night. But I guess that’s what happens when your starting point guard is Daniel Ewing and your backup just got plucked out of the NBDL (Will Conroy). Conroy actually looked OK, but made a couple really costly mistakes, but hey, who didn’t? The Clippers turned the ball over at an ungodly rate, and the Sonics looked practically as bad, (not necessarily with turnovers, just in general), but Seattle squeaked out the win (barely), in a game so ugly that Charles Barkely, typically, complained about having to even watch.

Although the Clippers could bitch about Shaun and Sam being out (and Tim Thomas missing much of the 2nd with more back spasms), the Sonics were without their best player, Ray Allen, last night. (cue half hearted yet not quite justifiable Rashard Lewis teeth gnashing in the background.) And it could be for a while, as apparently the perrennial sharp shooter, Allen, (who Doug Collins gushed over last night as the best pure shooter EVER) is thinking about having surgery on his ankle, which would put him out for the season. According to Sonics Insider Frank Hughes:

...he has a bone spur in his left ankle, right around where your shoe meets your ankle. He said surgery is a very good possibility because this has been bothering him for two months and nothing has changed...

...Basically, Ray said, he twisted his ankles three times when he was younger (once at Uconn, twice in Milwaukee) and he thinks he came back too soon to allow them to heal properly...

If the Sonics are ready to start their divebomb for Kevin Durant or Greg Oden, this would seem like a good thing, but, eh, I just can’t get behind that, call me old fashioned. It’s just too depressing hearing teams (or rather, fans of teams) talk about purposefully losing games, but that’s an argument for another day, or perhaps never.

Speaking of players that are actually playing, for the Sonics, Rashard Lewis was a beast last night; dunks, outside shots, flying all over the place, grabbing rebounds, the Sonics will really have to break out the diamond mine to keep him around (free agent at the end of the year). And he’ll only get better; he’s still a young kid, really. Chris Wilcox looked OK, typical Chris, he was lost at times, and then all of a sudden he’d do something amazing. The big one I remember was the put back dunk in the 2nd half, but there were other moments.

As for the Clippers, well, Shaun is the obvious piece missing, and he ain’t coming back anytime soon, which means not having Sam Cassell, even if just for one game, just absolutely kills them. The offense just doesn’t move, passes flying all over to the wrong places, people out of position, just chaos. The simple screen roll that Sam and Elton run seems so simple, but it’s been born out of those two having such a familiarity with each other as to exactly where they’re each going to be, they know what each other is going to do, and obviously that synergy does not exist between Elton Brand and Daniel Ewing, let alone Will Conroy. They just could not get Elton the ball properly the whole first half, a big portion of which is Elton’s fault, but someone’s got to set his table to some degree. Elton will have to adjust and play the rest of the season like he did the 2nd half, basically assume the double team’s coming and get the ball, shoot, or pass, and move on with his day. The double (and triple) teams were relentless, and unless Cat Mobley or someone else lights up (which Cat did in the first half, but was conspicuously absent in the 2nd) then it will continue, and even then it probably will, people will dare the Clips to shoot their way to victory, and I just don’t see it happening, definitely not without a gamey Sam Cassell, which is a rarer & rarer sighting this season.

I hate to say it, but it really looks like we’re screwed; if the Clips can’t beat a team like Seattle, who besides Rashard Lewis going off for 30 plus (and he did look really good, although the Clipper defense gave him a few easy ones, including not once but TWICE fouling him as he shot a 3-pointer), played relatively poorly, who ran the same simple “elbow” (as Doug Collins called it) pass off play to the guy running hellbent into the post, over and over and over again, and granted, I do feel that the refs we’re calling it a bit towards the Sonics (Maggette especially must have been getting frustrated), but if they can’t beat this team, who practically tried to HAND the game to the Clippers in the end, then we’re doomed. If Sam misses more than 4 or 5 games TOTAL the rest of the way, we’re doomed, and we may be fucked anyway. I mean, it’s not like the Clippers were dominating with Sam and Shaun running things, but at least we could get a play set up, and run it, and hold on to the ball with some reasonable aplomb. Last night, every time the Clippers got a rebound, I prayed with fingers crossed that they’d even be able to hold on to it long enough to pass off to a guard and get it across halfcourt without turning it over, and oftentimes, they couldn’t get even that accomlished.

This just reminds me too much of Shaun’s rookie year, when he was hurt almost the whole season (harbinger alert), and it was Rick Brunson, starting point guard. These are not good memories. Unless Will Conroy suddenly grows wings and starts shooting butterflies out of his ass (metaphorically of course), which, who knows, it could happen, honestly, I think I see a bit more light in him than Ewing, but hey, I have to give Daniel more time, but, wow. I don’t know, I just don’t know. Last night’s loss to a team we really should have beat, beat up as they were, just told me volumes, much of which I already knew, about how devastating for the organization Shaun’s injury really was.

I've also, after further deliberation, made myself completely comfortable with the fact that the Earth is round and Elvis is dead. Yup, revelations abound. (cries).

Well, this is mildly encouraging:

From the LA Times:

Tony Daly, the Clippers physician who had used an eight- to 12-month time frame predicting Shaun Livingston's return from a knee injury, said he hopes it can be more like six to eight months, while conceding, "It's an inexact science."

"His age is in his favor, 21," Daly said before Wednesday's game with Seattle. "The fact that I've seen him work hard through the other injuries he's had — I've seen him work"...

...The Clippers are hoping that the recovery by Buffalo Bills running back Willis McGahee can serve as a model.

McGahee, who injured three knee ligaments in the 2003 Fiesta Bowl, gained more than 1,000 yards in each of his first two seasons and 990 last season after sitting out his rookie year.

I guess I'll cautiously pour my metaphorical mentality glass to a quarter full in reference this situation, pending further evaluation, analysis, and the ever present etcetera.

Yahoo’s Dan Wetzel scribed a nice one today, using Shaun Livingston as an example of why it’s wrong to force kids to go to college for a year rather than letting them go straight to the NBA. (ie, Shaun would have gotten injured his first year in college, scared off NBA scouts, never made all the life changing money that he did). Have to say I agree. It’s no coincidence that just a couple years after putting in this ridiculous rule about putting in at least one year of college (or being at least 18? Not sure about the exact wording) that we have the most phenom laced freshman class in the NCAA ever. And they’ll all be gone next year.

It’s a joke, really, a rule used to pump up NCAA basketball (which was falling apart, and is now rejuvenated), to pump up the NBA (which was getting way too many rough, rough projects and can now “screen” a bit better by forcing players to “audition” in a farce of academic tinged pre-NBA lather), and at the core of it, to screw over athletes who are on the doorstep of millions, with a “no, buddy, you gotta jump through a few more hoops” (pun not intended) mentality. How can you explain rationally why Freddy Adou can play pro soccer at 15 (or however old he is) but Greg Oden & Kevin Durant have to go pretend to be students for a year before cashing in? How can Monica Seles & Jennifer Capriati (yes, old examples, but there are still young girls these days playing pro tennis for millions) clock major bills at Wimbledon in their teens but the NBA (and the NFL) have always been such a force in pressuring the youngens to “stay in school.”

Sitting in between a set of two clipper games with Seattle (which the clips won the first of last nite, their first win on the front end of a back to back the whole season, believe it or not, and their third win in a row), you can’t help (at least I can’t) but notice whose number the Sonics retired just a couple nights ago. It was the first player to challenge the NBA’s original “age limit,” one Spencer Haywood, whose case went all the way to the supreme court & who spent a year in the ABA (where he was not only rookie of the year but MVP right out the gate), until the NBA was forced to let him in. Yet here we are thirty (or so) years later, and they managed to sneak in some rules involving age and letting people through the door again. Yeah, the limit is younger, but it’s still the same idea.

Say a 17 year old kid was preeminently qualified to be top notch stock broker, that he could pick a winner 9 times out of 10, could, at that time, make his investors millions & millions of dollars? Do you think Merryl Lynch & Wachovia would (or could) let the fact that the kid is underage stop them from competing for his services and cashing in his brilliance? (this is purely a hypothetical example, for all I know there is an age limit on getting your broker’s license, or whatever you call it, but the point still stands). The point is that the powers that be try to say that this rule is in the interest of the kids, but I'm just not buying it. The kids? The kids are alright, they'll figure it out, and if they don't? if they get ground up in the NBA and should have stayed in school? well, they'll have to let that giant amount of money they made somehow soothe their savage heart, and maybe even use a percentage of it to, voila, go back to school.

The whole setup as it stands now just seems immensely hypocritical and perpetuating of the money machine that is college basketball & the NBA. It’s a long term business model meant to elevate the value of the league in every way, while letting them get what amounts to free injury insurance for a year for players they would otherwise have to compete against each other for with less assurance of what they’d be getting.

By the way, yes that is a pregnant Iman (former supermodel and NBA wife, now married to David Bowie) with Spencer Haywood in that picture. Those 6 degrees of separation just keep percolating.

Well, life (and the Clippers’ season) must go on, so I’ll stop (for the moment) regaling you (knock knock) with further information on the devastating Shaun Livingston injury situation. It’s done, and all that’s left is rehab and the hope that he’ll be his old self once again some day. The clippers did sign a backup point guard to a 10-day, guy by the name of Will Conroy, who played college ball for the Washington Huskies, which leads to the topic I was hoping to concentrate on before I had a Livie flashback (last one I promise, he said with fingers crossed.)

Anyway, the Husky relation and topic thereby indicated is that the next two games, home tonite & on the road tomorrow, are against the Seattle Supersonics. So what better chance than the nonce to cast an eye on a Sonics team that is a bit down this year (er, decade). Somewhat iffy times for NBA fans in the Pacific Northwest, what with the club's new owners not only seemingly inclined to move the team out of Seattle, (Oklahoma City has been prominently mentioned in the rumor mill) but apparently playing the part of anti-homosexual zealots as well.

As far as on the court stuff, the Sonics are further back in the standings than the Clips (LA's currently in the West’s 8 spot, with the Sonics another 5 games back). Ray Allen (pictured) has had a typically nice year. As far as their bigs go, they took a major hit before the season even started losing Robert Swift to a torn ACL, and Nick Collison hasn’t exactly been a revelation. As for the former Clipper Chris Wilcox, he sees himself as a “10 & 10 type guy.” (his words) Seattle Weekly’s Mike Seely isn’t quite satisfied with that, and neither should he (or Wilcox) be. Wilcox’s potential is through the roof, but as Clipper fans know, he’s not exactly blessed with the grit & fortitude of Achilles, more like the work ethic of Shaggy after a 20 sack of Scooby snacks. The point hasn’t been much better of a story, with Luke Ridnour not living up to the hype. While Earl Watson has had some flashes of brilliance, he’s always been more of a scorer than a distributor (back to his days at UCLA), which is nothing new in today’s NBA, where “true” point guards, a la Jason Kidd, Steve Nash, Chris Paul, and (cries) Shaun Livingston are few & far between.

Anyway, should be an interesting couple games. I don’t have Fox Prime Ticket, so I’ll miss tonite’s homeslate, but I do catch KTLA on the satellite at my Honolulu compound, so I’ll be watching tomorrow nite’s tilt at Key in Seattle, and will likely have plenty to say about it, among other things.

update: brainfart. Tomorrow night's game at Seattle is actually a national broadcast on TNT. It's Saturday's home matchup against Indiana that is on KTLA (LA's local WB affiliate). Should be interesting, as well. Will be my first chance to see a whole game with Indiana's new lineup after the monster trade with Golden State, in which they acquired Troy Murhpy and Mike Dunleavy (Jr.). As irritated as I might have been if the Clips had traded Maggette for Dunleavy (with Nepotism being just one of the shady backdrops of such a move, his dad being the Clipper coach), I actually like (somewhat, at least) the younger Dunleavy's game. He's not much of a defender (granted, a big problem, but neither is Maggette, although of late he's been better), but he sees the floor well for a big(ger) man, and he has a knack for being at the right place at the right time, at least on the offensive end. He definitely needs to assert himself more, but I think he'll get better over the next few years.

It’s this little idea in the back of my head, that gets louder & louder the more information I digest, but so far I’ve tentatively ignored it, letting the blinding rays of hope and glass half full metaphsyics filter in starry eyed landscapes of ponies & ice cream, but Clipperblog goes ahead and drops the sad knowledge:

… in talking to sources that know a little something about the human body, I'm beginning to believe that Shaun Livingston is looking at a career-ending injury. While Shaun has youth on his side, this breadth of damage is about as bad as it gets w/r/t knees. Even with successful surgery, which can't happen until there's a reduction in swelling, there is no certain timetable for recovery.

All of this amounts to very bad news.

(Gulp). Yup.

Click the link; there’s lots of good back and forth in the comments, including citings of other athletes that have come back from similar injuries, so don’t break out your shovels and black umbrellas just yet. Clips Nation is pulling for you, Shaun, just take your time and get better.

Update on the Shaun Livingston injury, and it ain't good news. In addition to the immediately diagnosed dislocated knee cap (discovered on the floor, at which point the team doctor popped it back into place), an MRI exam "revealed tears in the anterior cruciate ligament, posterior cruciate ligament, medial collateral ligament and lateral meniscus. He also dislocated his patella, in addition to the previously diagnosed dislocation of his tibia-femoral." Whoah. When I think about, in regards to what I've read, as well as to hearing the personal experience of a friend of mine, how hard it is to come back JUST from a torn ACL, I just can't imagine the kind of rehab, both in length and intensity, Shaun's got ahead of him.

"It's probably the most serious injury you can have to the knee," Clippers physician Dr. Tony Daly said Tuesday. "He might miss all of next year." Daly said he has rarely seen anything similar in 24 years of practice.

Wow. Let’s all pray (those religious ones among us) or simply hum in meditative contemplation, for a full and complete recovery (eventually, damn), as well as conjure up some ward or demon antithesis to keep away further injuries from blasting away at this kid’s plentiful gifts in the future. I’m hesitant to use the word tragedy, as he’s still alive and otherwise healthy, as well as a multimillionaire, but this is definitely a goddamn shame of a quite high echelon order.

Great article (a guest spot by Joey from Straight Bangin) on Free Darko about Patrick Ewing and the idea of massive expectations compared with possibly not so immortal results and how that pertains to the nigh biblically foreshadowed arrival to the NBA next season of Texas’ Kevin Durant.

Meanwhile, Bill Simmons seems fairly certain that, despite the brilliance of Durant, OSU's Greg Oden will still go #1 in the draft:

...any NBA team picking first will work themselves into a lather that (A) Oden's wrist hindered him more than anyone realized, and (B) if that's true, then they don't want to be the idiots who passed on Oden someday. Which means there's no way in hell that Oden will go second in the 2007 NBA draft, rendering every "Oden or Durant?" discussion meaningless unless Durant blows everyone out of the water next month like Melo did in 2003. Anything less and Oden goes first. Nobody will have the balls to pass him up...

Thought I’d put up a happy picture to offset all the Shaun Livingston angst & depression. Cuttino Mobley driving for a handy layup (what makes a layup handy? Sorry about that.) The clippers did win the game, which normally calls for some type of celebration, even if it’s over the not quite as hapless as they used to be Charlotte Bobcats, but obviously spirits were substantially tempered, seeing as their point guard of the future had to have his whole knee popped back into place on the court and then wheeled away to the hospital, season likely over, before they’d even gotten through the first quarter. Sigh, there go those pipes a calling again, Sammy boy, and here I was gonna put on the smiles for at least 5 minutes. Eh, smiles shmiles.

I’ll warn you, it’s not for the faint of heart. Video of Shaun Livingston’s knee injury at Staples last night. He was on a breakaway and somehow he came down wrong. Oh, so horribly wrong. Again, very cringe-worthy stuff. According to ESPN radio this morning on my way into work, he’s out for “the duration.” We’ll see what that means exactly, but watching this, I wouldn’t guess it’ll be anytime soon. Tragic for Shaun, for the Clips, for basketball in general. When Shaun’s in the groove, zipping passes, knowing exactly where every single person is on the floor at all times, blocking shots, clogging lanes, I'd be hard pressed to think of anyone else I'd rather watch lead a basketball team. Here’s to a quick and full recovery for an amazing yet seemingly perpetually injury hounded young talent.

Shaun Livingston dislocated his left kneecap in today’s matchup against the Charlotte Bobcats at Staples (now in the 3rd quarter, clips up 3). Wow, that sucks gigantic donkey balls. Poor kid has yet to play a complete season. Missed more than half of his rookie season with the same malady (dislocate knee) but on the other leg, among other issues. And this happens right after he played what could have cautiously been called a breakout game against the warriors on Saturday in which he dished 14 assists. This JUST happened, so we’ll have to see what the prognosis is, but moving forward, it seems to me he’s just gotta beef up a little bit, kid is so injury prone. Not sure if you can fault being skinny for perpetually dislocating knees, but a little more strength, as long as it doesn’t slow him down, would seem like a good thing. Let’s hope for a speedy recovery and that the clips don’t fall (further) apart as a result of this crappy, crappy happenstance. With Sam’s health shaky as well (hey, the guy’s 37) this is potentially devastating; I shiver at the thought of Daniel Ewing, starting point guard. Might as well bring Rick Brunson out of the hyperbaric chamber.

Well, the clips got r done at home against oaktown today, and aside from too many turnovers, looked pretty good doing it. Shaun was teee riffic and Elton was a beast (8 blocks!) and even Corey Maggette looked, at moments, like he actually gave a shit. I had to reset my television because I was sure he was a clone, but there, yup, sure enuff, was his government issued tattoo on the back of his neck so I knew it was kosher. So, uh, yeah, I mean, yes, the warriors suck, so you can’t get too juiced about this one, but at this point everything even grains of salt have to be taken with umbrellas, so there you go. Kaman had the flu, and Elton performed well in the post, but Biedrins (the warriors up & coming center) doesn’t look like he’s winning any defensive man of the decade awards any time soon, although he is crafty & slithery. Monta Ellis, yup, he’s good, and will get better. Didn’t know Al Harrington was that good with the deep ball, was an enjoyable game to watch, both teams got up & down the court pretty fast. The clips looked smooth with Shaun, at all times, he was dishing some really pretty dimes. When Sam came in, things got sluggish, but I don’t think Sam is at full strength. I’m really starting to wonder, though, if the school of thought regarding we have to get rid of Sam so Shaun doesn’t look over his shoulder bears possible some credence. You’d like to think we could keep them both, Sam mentoring the youngen, but, wow, their games are so different. If anything, though, Sam can teach young Shaun to be more aggressive, which he was today. When this kid actively looks for his shot, and I think soon he’ll start hitting a higher percentage too, wow, unstoppable. The ceiling has not lowered one iota. It may actually be safe to peer your head out from the basement and embrace the clippers again, at least for the moment. And with the next game against Charlotte, well, why not let the nice delusion continue for a spell. Careful not to let the Care Bears and puff the magic dragon slip out through the doggie door on your way out. Gratzi.