Best Pure Scorer in the NBA

By Chris Le

Call him dumb.  Call him hilarious.  Call him loud-mouthed and nonsensical.  But there’s no denying Charles Barkley is provocative — perhaps the most clamorous figure in basketball today.  And Sir Charles didn’t disappoint  last week when he dropped, almost on schedule, another eye-opening line when he called Carmelo Anthony the best pure scorer in the league.

Initially, there was some head-shaking on my part, thinking Barkley was merely caught up in the moment of Melo’s magnificent series against the Dallas Mavericks, in which he averaged 27.0 easy points per game, hitting one clutch shot after another.  But following a period of digestion, and the eventual pondering of the phrase

When Charles speaks, you listen.

“Best Pure Scorer” itself, the whole thing confused me, even more so than when I first contemplated the topic.  Amid all my bewilderment, only one conclusion was deduced: I cannot say whether or not Melo is the purest because I don’t know what purity consists of.

The idea of the “Best Pure Scorer” is an interesting one.  It’s a title we fans imprudently toss around in arguments amongst friends to boast our favorite players without knowing what it really means.  Its understanding is and always has been implied, but the phrase has gone unspecified for as long as I can remember, with no universally agreed-upon definition.  And it seemed strange that during all my years as a basketball fan, I have yet to hear an acceptable explanation of it.

The same goes for the label of “Best Pure Shooter.”  I’ve come across experts who say Ray Allen is as unadulterated a shooter there is, while Steve Nash, though statistically just as deadly from behind the arc, is merely a player with perfect mechanics; he does not qualify as being pure — for reasons that are beyond my understanding.  I thought to myself, aren’t purity and technique one in the same?  What truly separates the Ray Allens from the Steve Nashs?

This same confusion extends to the ambiguity of Pure Scorers.  Though they amass a similar number of points per game, what truly sets apart Kobe Bryant from LeBron James?  Or how about Brandon Roy from Chris Paul?  Is there even a difference between them?  These are the questions I set out to answer.

As I contemplated the concept this past week, wasting a lot of productive work time at my day job in the process, I came up with five defining characteristics, without which a designated scorer cannot be considered pure:

Skill

Sounds simple and obvious enough, right?  But this is where mechanics — or, for a player with an unconventional release (e.g. Kevin Martin), a consistent, repetitive stroke — come into play.  It’s the ability to adjust a shot under myriad situations: mid-air, double clutching, fading away or floating towards the hoop.  A true scorer knows when, where and most importantly how to tweak his release given the circumstances.  And this is why someone like Shaq cannot be considered a genuine scorer, despite having averaged nearly 30 points a game in his prime.  His m.o. is overwhelming power and physicality, rather than polished technique.  That’s not to say Shaq is some unrefined brute who is all brawn and no brain.  It’s just that his game is more synonymous with strength.  I don’t know if it’s the fact that I’m a short, frail Asian guy, but I’m more keen on viewing the act of scoring as a skill developed through years of disciplined study and practice.  Scoring by way of sheer force seems cheap by comparison.

Not exactly the face of a skilled craftsman.

Well-roundedness

A pure scorer should be a Swiss Army Knife of offensive weapons, fully equipped with a sweet jumper, nice slashing ability and serviceable post skills.  A one-dimensional player cannot and should not be seriously considered.  That’s why a prolific point maker like Tony Parker does not qualify.  There may not be a better threat in the paint, nor a craftier mid-air contortionist, but his jump shot — while improved — barely qualifies as reliable.  He can be schemed, and he can be defended.

This brings up something I’ve been thinking about for a while now: Scoring seems to be synonymous with shooting more than, say, a player’s ability to drive and finish at the hoop or post skill or any other mode of point accretion for that matter.  Pure scorers need to possess a deadly jumper before any other tool.  That’s why Melo — whose penetrating capability and back to the basket scoring is solid, but far behind his J in development — is considered pure, and Parker — whose offensive skills are inversely proportional to Melo’s — isn’t so much.

Consistency

This is the dividing line between a lucid scorer and the proverbial streaky shooter.  No one questions the eruptive capabilities of Ben Gordon.  You’d be an idiot to do so, and all anyone has do to prove you wrong is replay the first round series between the Bulls and Celtics.  When Ben Gordon is “on,” like he was in Game 2, he can make the net swish like water and drop 40 points as if it were a day at the spa.  But for every game in which he makes the hoop look like the singularity of a black hole, he registers a dud.  He’s unreliable.  Or to be more specific, as I heard one analyst describe Gordon: He hits the shots he has no business making, and he misses the ones he should.  This is why Gordon is not pure…that is, unless he’s on fire.

Consistency is also what distinguishes skill from luck.  It explains how we consider a double clutch shot or a reverse layup through traffic done by Kobe to be the result of prowess and a credit to his basketball genius, and the same move performed by, say, Roger Mason is seen as blind luck.   A player of Kobe’s status has earned the right with sustained brilliance to have his every shot be considered skill.

Efficiency

Anyone can jack up 35 shots and score 25 points — just ask the Warriors.  But a true scorer makes the most of his possessions; he is a thinker on the court, observing all five defenders, performing calculations in his head and planning the highest percentage shot.

Effortlessness

Perhaps the key ingredient in this whole equation.  Ease of scoring is what comes to mind first when I think of purity.  The ability to put the ball in the hoop must seem natural, innate.  It can’t be ugly and plodding like a Ron Artest drive to the hoop or as hideous as Shawn Marion’s release.  Purity, by definition, is crystalline, and with that a certain degree of beauty is implied. Aesthetics is heavily weighed.  A pure scorer must look like a ballet dancer on the court: graceful, light, but at the same time not without a sense of strength.  There is an artistry involved here.  George Gervin immediately comes to mind.  From his sweet pull-up mid-range jumper to his gorgeous finger rolls, there probably wasn’t a smoother player to enter the league.  Ever.  The man should’ve had his jersey made out of silk.  He’s what I consider pure.

–

After deriving these five traits, it was time to make a list.  I easily whittled it down to six, because in all seriousness, while a lot of players have high averages, there aren’t many pure scorers in the league.  First, let’s see who missed the cut.

Tony Parker — TP is prolific no doubt, and some of the moves he does in the lane on men twice his size is flat out amazing.  But his offensive arsenal is anemic compared to the others on the list.  The fact that he lacks a legitimate jump shot holds him back from achieving purity.

Dirk Nowitzki — Dirk meets all of my requirements except consistency.  There are times when I see him play and think, There’s no way to guard this man. He’s such a great shooter with such a high-arching shot — and to top it off, he’s 7-feet tall — there’s nothing to stop him from scoring 30 points a night.  But then there are games where he’s not even the second-best player on his own team.  Dirk has developed a nasty tendency to disappear so there was no way I could put him on the list.

LeBron James — Okay, before you start spitting at your computer screen, hear me out.  The title of “Purest Scorer” suggests an inborn proclivity to score.  The desire to make it rain on an opponent has to be coursing through the veins.  But LeBron, by nature, is a passer, and he’s such a physical freak he is able to score 30 points while still being unselfish.  In any given situation, his first instinct is to make the best play, even if it means passing the ball.  But a scorer needs to lack a certain consciousness, a mental “flaw” that urges him to shoot despite being double-covered and seeing a wide open teammate in the corner.  LeBron, for better or worse, will always make the play to pass.  This alone almost disqualifies The King.  But then you also see that his scoring is mainly predicated on strength, overpowering opponents on his way to the basket.  His jumper is still inconsistent, due to minor mechanical issues.  I just don’t see him as a pure scorer.  To me, LeBron is more of an unstoppable force of nature that cannot be denied in the lane.

Now the list:

6.  Brandon Roy – They don’t call him the Natural for nothing.  There’s a smoothness to Roy’s game that is oh so pretty.  I’d say it’s akin to watching Morgan Freeman act: simultaneously methodical and languid in delivery, making everything seemingly effortless.  You watch Roy play and you honestly think you can do the same — until you actually attempt to replicate him on the court and fall flat on your face.  Have you ever tried driving towards the hoop at full speed, only to stop on a dime, and square up for a pull-up jumper?  It’s one of the toughest maneuvers to execute in basketball, and Roy makes it seem like he was doing it since exiting the womb.

5.  Paul Pierce — He can’t really jump out of the gym nor does he regularly blow by defenders with his average first step.  Not to mention he’s tied with Rasheed Wallace as the scruffiest looking player in the league: with an unimpressive, undefined physique and random patches of hair all over his face, he looks like a homeless bum plucked directly from a freeway underpass.  But I digress.  Bluntly stated, Pierce is physically the least gifted of the six listed.  But I’m hard pressed to find a scorer who does more with what he has.  Pierce is smooth in his motion and possesses a pretty (albeit slow) release, but above all else he’s exceedingly cerebral on the court — and he’s an absolute scholar at the top of the key in a one-on-one situation.  He’ll outthink anyone, setting up opponents for his next move as if it were a game of chess and he a grandmaster.  No one will mistake him for LeBron, but he’s almost as hard to stop.

4.  Dwyane Wade — This year’s league leading scorer comes in at number four?  Like LeBron, Wade is as productive a scorer as anyone on earth, but he earns every point he gets.  He can score any which way, but he’s predominantly a slasher who does the majority of his damage at and above the rim, and he pays the price taking hard fall after hard fall.  The next three on this list seemingly get their points rolling out of bed.  I see the skill and concentration with Wade, but I don’t quite see the effortlessness.  I’ll give him this though: there’s no better maker of circus shots in the NBA.

3.  Kevin Durant — Entering the league, Durant was 6’10” and 215 pounds of straight-up bone.  He couldn’t bench 185 pounds once during his pre-draft workouts.  Pound-for-pound, I’m probably stronger than this dude.  But Durant makes up for his lack of physical strength with an uncanny offensive awareness that the league only sees once in a generation.  And talk about easy.  With one of the quickest triggers in the game, a nonchalant flick of the wrist, the ball swiftly leaves his fingertips and travels 25 feet towards the bottom of the net.  It’s one of the sweetest shots I’ve ever seen.  And his lankiness and athleticism combine to produce an oddly graceful style of play that conjures up memories of George Gervin, the Iceman himself, but with infinitely more range.  The league better watch out because Durant is upping his basketball IQ at a rapid pace, as evidenced by his improved efficiency after just one year (from .430 to .476, and .288 to .422).  I wouldn’t be surprised if he tops this list in a season or two.

2.  Carmelo Anthony — His rebounding and defense may leave some wanting more, but the dude can score the rock with the best of them.  Whether on the block, beyond the arc, or in no-man’s land of the mid-range — and you can have Shane Battier or Kobe bodying him up, it doesn’t matter — Carmelo is getting his.  He possesses at his disposal the most natural feel for the offensive game, and he’s so efficient with his movement that if you didn’t know better, you’d call him lazy.  It’s innate with Carmelo.  He knows the quickest and easiest path to gathering points seemingly without cognition.  Even in high school, his scoring was already developed to a professional level.  Melo was born to shoot a basketball, and there really isn’t much else to say.

1.  Kobe Bryant – I hate to say it because I despise nothing more than complimenting the Black Mamba, but Kobe Bryant is the most complete offensive player I’ve ever seen.  That’s not to say he’s the most dangerous or most prolific point maker of all-time, but more so that his offensive repertoire has no holes.  He’s technically flawless — a living textbook of basketball execution with fluidity and ever perfect mechanics, no matter the position.  And I don’t think he gets enough credit for his creativity.  It’s particularly awe-inspiring when he’s “stuck” after picking up his dribble following an unsuccessful pump-fake.  He’ll spin on his pivot foot at a dizzying pace, exploring every conceivable out before making what usually is the correct scoring option.  All you can do as a spectator — and as a defender — is shake your head in disbelief, and give credit where it’s due.  If you saw Kobe: Doin’ Work this past weekend, you begin to realize that on top of his overflowing natural ability, he is a true student of the game.  Kobe is the highest confluence of basketball’s mental and physical aspects, and I’m sure I’ll get little resistance when I say there’s no better pure scorer in the league today.

Playoff Basketball, I’ve Missed You

By Chris Le

Nothing passes the time quite like nostalgia.

I can stare at my screensaver, a slideshow of all of the pictures on my computer, for hours on end, and I’ll reminisce about the events of each image, smiling all the while. Seventy-five of my top 100 songs–if I were to make such a list–would be ranked, not because of their enjoyable melodies or head-bobbing beats, but because they are inextricably linked to particular moments of my life: the song that softly played during my first kiss, a tune that evokes memories of my first college trip to Vegas, that R&B joint that still to this day serves as a painful reminder of how I let that one girl get away…I can go on for hours with this.

And my longing for fonder times applies to all aspects of my life, especially to the realm of sports. I’m old school through and through. With boxing–the most ancient of all athletic contests–I’m an ardent advocate of 15 rounds, one champ per division, same day weigh-ins and the abolition of the junior/super weight classes.  Call me a sadist, but that is how boxing should be, like it was in the golden age of the sport.

When it comes to football, I’m all for horse-collar tackles and (slightly) late hits on quarterbacks. I say, enough of this protection by referees; it’s a contact sport, and the quarterback should be as much a viable target as any other position. And if it’s legal to drag down a ball carrier by his dreadlocks, then horse-collar tackles should be kosher as well.

And finally, for basketball, I’m an avid supporter of dunks (no thanks to the player formerly known as Lew Alcindor), hand-checking and of course, the good, old-fashioned playoff foul.

That’s why, after one-and-a-quarter rounds of playoff basketball, you see nothing on my face but an ear-to-ear smile. Like Ahmad, these first few games have me thinking of “Back in the Day,” when flagrant twos were run-of-the-mill whistle calls, almost brushed off as a natural consequence of a physical game played by gigantic, brooding men.

Not since the early ’90s have I seen such deliberately physical play.  We got a small taste of it in the ’07 playoffs when Robert Horry sent Steve Nash crashing into the announcers table like a rag doll.  But not much else–until this year.

Here’s a list of the action so far:

• Dwight Howard sideswipes Samuel Dalembert’s head with an elbow. Howard is known as a player with a child-like demeanor but lacking the requisite killer instinct to be great, and that’s what makes this one so surprising. It was a pretty vicious blow–and don’t let Dalembert’s relatively nondescript reaction fool you into thinking otherwise–that occurred after the play was done. The suspension was well deserved, but I wouldn’t mind seeing more ‘bows from Dwight in the future. Imagine how dominant he’d be if players actually feared him. He’d be like Mike Tyson before Robin Givens and Buster Douglas stole his dignity.

The NBA is my bitch.

• Rajon Rondo clotheslines Brad Miller. This one, I thought, was special, coming straight from the Bad Boy Detroit Pistons’ playbook. How this was not a flagrant two is beyond me; how Rondo wasn’t penalized postgame is even more perplexing. The fact that Rondo didn’t follow through with the arm swing shouldn’t matter. His aim was nowhere near the ball, plus it was pretty much a fishhook (which is illegal even in mixed martial arts), and he proceeds to drag Miller down…by the chin. Bravo, Rajon. Bravo.

• Oh, an encore? Rondo pulls Kirk Hinrich into the scorer’s table. Not only is Rondo maturing into a top-5 point guard, he’s developing into one helluva filthy player who isn’t afraid to show his claws. Though not particularly heinous, the move was blatant and unnecessary–yet Rondo goes undisciplined once again. Geez, just because he’s small doesn’t mean he should be able to get away with murder. It’s like when a kid punches and kicks you with all his might, thinking it’s okay because he’s little. Fuck that. Kids like this need to an ass whooping.

• Sasha Vujacic spikes Shane Battier’s face like a volleyball. My man crush on Battier aside, this one isn’t too bad, despite the horrendous result. The blow left Battier looking like a maxi pad, bloodied worse than Ricky Hatton after being blasted by Manny Pacquiao. However, Vujacic was merely trying to tap the ball out into the backcourt, and the hit was clearly incidental. Still, it at least warranted a foul call.
  

  Which one is Dirk?

• Kenyon Martin throws Dirk Nowitzki to the ground. Eh, whatever. I’ve grown to expect such things to happen to Dirk, the softest player in the league, who seems to suffer at least five similar embarrassments a year.

• Rafer Alston slaps Eddie House on the back of the head. This is by far my favorite incident of the playoffs. It was utterly stupid of Alston, no doubt, and he’ll justifiably be suspended, but it was too silly not to be hilarious. It was the type of slaps upside the head that a father gives to admonish his son’s idiocy.

• Kobe Bryant elbows Ron Artest, possibly in the throat. It’s cliche to label a physical, borderline dirty play as “playoff basketball,” but it applies here. This was just playoff basketball. There’s no better description for what transpired. It was two hard-nosed players fighting for a rebound–case closed. Elbows like this occur in every game, even in the regular season. The retroactive flagrant one is not deserved. Wow. I can’t believe I’m defending Kobe.

• Derek Fisher lays out Luis Scola with a shoulder brush. Call it sending a message or a dirty play, I say it’s both.  And it definitely brings back memories of better days.

On Boxing Coverage and Pacquiao-Hatton

By Chris Le

There’s an old adage in boxing that says you’re only as good as your last fight.  Meaning, the perception of any particular fighter is determined by his most recent result.  It’s the ultimate “what have you done for me lately?” criteria.  And really, with current sports fans’ obsession with the now and our tendency to be captives of the moment, this axiom is applicable to all sports.  In this sense, we have the memory of a newborn baby.  It happens, without failure, before every postseason.  A once-hot team that takes a midseason turn for the worse, but still manages to stumble into the playoffs, they are brushed aside — until they go on a tear, at which point everyone flip-flops again, jumping right back onto their bandwagon (the Arizona Cardinals, anyone?).

The sport of boxing, however, finds itself a unique situation.  It has changed a bit since the proverb’s advent, since the golden age when fights were aired on network television.  Changed in the sense that it’s, uh, dying.  The casual fan no longer cares about the sport’s non-premier matchups, reserving their attention to those fights previewed on ESPN, and as we all know, ESPN only covers the bouts that fall into the “Fight of the Year” category. When was the last time you saw Stuart Scott and Scott Van Pelt profile a “Boxing After Dark” matchup?

ESPN doesn't care about boxing.

So the saying needs to be modified a bit.  It should now read: In the public eye, you’re only as good as your last mega Pay-Per-View fight that was showcased on SportsCenter.

Taking this into account, the general public probably views tomorrow’s fight as being between the Manny Pacquiao who destroyed Oscar De La Hoya and the Ricky Hatton who was battered by Floyd Mayweather Jr.  In reality, however, only half of this equation is true.  The Manny Pacquiao that enters the ring will be the pound-for-pound king of boxing, the one that humiliated the Golden Boy into retirement.  This much is true.  But he’ll be facing a new-look Ricky Hatton.  If anyone expects the plodding, head-first brawler that was dissected by Mayweather, they’ll be sorely mistaken.  No, the Hatton we’ll see will resemble the one who stopped Paul Malignaggi back in November.  (I bet you didn’t know Hatton fought since his loss to Mayweather.  In fact, he’s had two bouts; the Malignaggi victory and a decision over Juan Lazcano.  Thanks for keeping us informed, ESPN!)

Hatton’s move to bring in the audacious Floyd Mayweather Sr. to head his training camp is a good career move.  As senile as Mayweather Sr. comes off at times, and he does to great extent, particularly when he rhymes like a wannabe Muhammad Ali, he’s a decent enough trainer — at least for Hatton.  If anything, he’ll instill in Ricky basic defensive maneuvers (like ANY semblance of head movement, parrying and blocking punches with his gloves and arms as opposed to his face, all of which were absent in his previous career) which will benefit him, particularly against someone like Pacquiao who likes to mix things up and doesn’t shy away from a brawl.

The best fighter in the world.

But in the end, it won’t make that much of a difference.  It will merely delay the inevitable.  Instead of being blitzed out in the first few rounds from a barrage of head-snapping blows, Hatton will have a moment or two of his own . . . until the mid-to-late rounds, when he’ll be stopped from a barrage of head-snapping blows.  There’s no one on the planet that can handle Pac-Man, and that includes the Hitman.

Prediction: Pacquiao by late-round stoppage.