Some NBA Coach really respects Przybilla

Old news by now, but whatever: the NBA All-Defense team has been announced. Most interesting from a Rip City view is that chronically underappreciated Blazer Joel Przybilla actually nabbed a few votes. One voter gave the Nilla Gorilla a spot on his first team ballot. Before you think Nate, know that the coaches are not allowed to vote for their own players. Nice to see the guy finally getting a little respect outside of Portland. Sad that it is coming just before he is likely to return to a limited role as the franchise attempts make Oden a legitimate franchise player.

Rudy All-Rookie Second Team, Batum..well. Yeah.

The news just keeps coming today. Rudy Fernandez has been named to the All-Rookie Second Team. Fernandez tied with the Bobcat’s Augustine for the lowest vote total to earn honors, but in a field crowded with talented rookies this achievement is something for Rudy and Rip City to be proud of.

And just in case you forgot that achievements aren’t as impressive when they happen in the Northwest: There was a certain rookie that started for a team that won over fifty games that failed to get even a single vote. I’m too lazy to look it up, but I’m pretty sure that doesn’t happen too often.

Coach of the Year. What a Joke.

As scheduled, Coach of the Year was announced. As expected, Nate McMillan didn't come close to winning.

Not to knock any of the guys who finished higher than McMillan, they all won a bunch of games. But they did it with rosters stocked with of veteran star talent. Call me crazy, but that doesn't seem spectacular. That is pretty normal, actually.

And while that handful of coaches achieved something that is done by multiple teams every year, Nate did something that was closer to historic. Something that had never been done before. Something that deserved more acclaim than a consolation Western Conference Coach of the Month award.

The first fifty win team to play four rookies. Earning homecourt advantage with the youngest rotation in the League. Both of these things happened while playing what the Elias Sports Bureau deemed the hardest schedule in the NBA.

Even when you come to expect this type of unrecognition it is still deflating. We're in the Pacific Northwest, not on the Moon. Voters: please stop being such jackasses and try your hardest to pay at least a little attention.

Nate McMillan should be Coach of the Year, but isn't even being mentioned

Oh the joys of toiling away for a small market team in the Pacific Northwest. I have yet to hear Nate McMillan be mentioned as even a potential candidate for Coach of the Year honors from a member of the national media. If you think this is nothing more than homerism, think about how simple the case for McMillan really is: No young NBA team has played this well. Ever.

Portland is considered the second-youngest team in the league based on their entire roster. But if you exclude Raef LaFrentz, who has been "rehabbing" in Iowa all season and is by no means a part of this team beyond his paycheck, the Blazers are the youngest of all.

So the youngest rotation in the League is currently battling for home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Also consider this nugget from Mike Barrett: this is the first team in League history to win fifty games with four rookies in the rotation. Not convincing enough? This graph shows that Portland is the best young team to play in the years 1951-Present. (1951 being the first available year for the needed statistics.)

More simply, what the Blazers have done this season has never been done before. In my mind that is more impressive than winning a ton of games with a little help from various veteran stars and super-stars. Am I mistaken, or does that sort of thing happen every single freaking year?

Being that Nate's historic performance this season is not even getting him into the conversation, I would like to submit this as exhibit #870324580345;;ewru9 of how ridiculously overlooked the Blazers remain at a national level. Boo.

Kobe is MVP, legions of lovers and haters forced to somehow become even more extreme

So Kobe is MVP. You might be expecting an anti-Kobe rant, the typical kind from the Blazer fan that clings to the belief that the Lakers and Portland are some how rivals despite logic that says otherwise. (Always open with a run on sentence, always!) Nope, but I'd imagine you can find a bit of that without looking too hard.

I'm also trying hard to sidestep the whole "who deserves it" debate. I think we can say that little area has been covered and will continue to be bludgeoned to death. Now that I think of it, the angle that the MVP debate is lame has also probably been bludgeoned to death. Anyways, we know the MVP concept itself is purposely vague. If the criteria were operationalized, we really wouldn't need voters or discourse. That would mean a lot less bullshit, for sure, but I assume there are lots of people who like the bullshit. We all are producing and consuming it on some level. That isn't one of my burning interests at the moment.

The first thought that came to me when I learned Kobe won the award was how this would impact his lovers and haters. I've always been impressed with the extemity of the polarization Bryant seems to have. I'm not sure that sentence makes sense, but hang with me.

A lot of his fans can be so overboard and dogmatic with their passion for the guy that they really make it hard for others to appreciate one of the best basketball players in history. That perspective has been disseminated more eloquently than I could ever do here.

But before I criticize those dipshits too much, I should awknowledge that a lot of the problems I have with Bryant fans apply equally to his haters. I was one, probably for years. I am a Blazers fan after all, and we have no shortage of anti-Mambas in this growing demographic. In fact it might even be part of how one Blazer fan judges the real fanhood of another:

Out of style dirty Blazers hat?

Check.

Hates Kobe?

Check.

But the impact of hundreds of conversations focused on Kobe hatred ended up having the same impact on me as having to endure his die hard supporters. The conversations were so repetitive, dogmatic, and baseless that I came to a point where it became impossible for me to hate Kobe Bryant.

The extremity of these two camps is what makes me crazy. Its that disgusted face a Lakers fan gives me when I say Kobe is compelling to me because the same thing that makes him so great keeps him flawed. That disgusted face and the process behind it are often the same when I tell one of his haters the same thing.

Now those in these groups (that are actually just one group, but don't tell them that) have an MVP trophy to deal with. It seems like this will propel them to new extremes I didn't think were possible in the pre-MVP Mamba era. Hopefully this spits a few back towards the middle.