Mark Kreidler: All that really counts: Play your best ball
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/10963900p-11881188c.html
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, October 3, 2004
In a case like this, the People v. Peja Stojakovic v. Chris Webber, it is critically important to take the long view. Unfortunately, nobody has one.
Tough break. But for sheer common sense related to the general discussion at hand, it looks as if we'll be going with the wily veteran, Doug Christie, for the win.
Friday, while Kings players scattered about their practice facility doing TV and radio promos, while Stojakovic spoke in this corner over here and Webber in that corner over there - while the happy talk at times reached epic proportions of irrelevance, Christie basically stepped up and called the whole thing for what it was.
"I think it's always a good thing," Christie replied when someone dropped the dreaded "A" word - adversity - into the general topic of what Webber said about Stojakovic, what Stojakovic said about being traded, what Webber said he meant by what he said, and all the rest of the silly rot.
"You have to learn from any situation," Christie said. "If you can only learn from positive situations, then you have to look at yourself in the mirror, because life isn't always positive. I think, from this situation, Peja has learned."
One hundred thousand million percent correct. And if we can just take this learning experience away from Arena 3 of the media circus and over to the basketball court, it would translate something like this:
You spoke. We listened.
Now play.
Play ball. Play now. Play hard. Play great.
Play for love. Play for hate. Play for family. Play for money. But above all, play.
Play brilliantly and let the rest of your career sort itself out, which, in my experience among professional athletes, almost always seems to work just fine.
Trust me on this: Whether it's Stojakovic or Webber or anyone else, the sports world, as a cold, calculating, bloodless entity, doesn't give 30 seconds' worth of a damn what a player's individual motivations are during a season. It just wants to know whether he's good or lousy and whether the future is mostly upside or downside.
The whole character of the sport is revealed in the playing, or at least that's what we tell the kiddies in Little League right before they run screaming to the snow cone counter. On the pro level, you can appreciate the simplicity and essential truth of that thought.
Play.
After that, we can all watch the dominoes fall.
This has been a wonderful summer of festering recrimination, ludicrously vague blame and all the bad blood that could possibly be imagined among warring factions. On a purely theatrical level, there was a certain "Gladiator" value to it.
But now it's time to play basketball again, and what a relief. The Kings have enough on their plate trying to adjust to life without Vlade Divac but with Greg Ostertag, to a life without Anthony Peeler but with Kevin Martin - that they might not even find time to worry about the Team Chemistry final exam.
Stojakovic still would prefer to be traded, and there's just no mistaking that.
The player was polite and friendly as usual at the Natomas complex Friday, but he hasn't changed his position a bit since August.
But, look, he has laid the parameters out there, and they're perfectly acceptable. Stojakovic will show. Stojakovic will play. He's a smart and proud enough man not to commit career suicide by tanking, which means coach Rick Adelman will still get the best of his small forward no matter how Peja feels about playing alongside Webber.
Stojakovic still has levels to add to his game, which is why it was disappointing to hear him say he had played virtually no basketball during the offseason. Time away from national teams and world championships, sure; but no work at all on refining that skill?
Still, as Christie said, "I've seen him improve every year. What he brings to the game is enough for me," and it is - at least during the regular season - great stuff.
Webber spent a bit of time Friday insisting that he and Stojakovic are "cool," which they're not, and that he, Webber, is here "to have fun," which he's not - at least not according to the Webber of summertime quote heaven, who made it clear that it is time to get tougher, act tougher, be tougher, sort of like if John Wayne was your center and you had Conan the Barbarian at shooting guard.
But does any of that really matter? Nope. What really matters is whether Webber can be close to the player he once was - and if he is, it will be enough to dissolve a hundred layers of calcified bad vibes from the ghost of personality conflicts past.
Webber and Stojakovic don't need to be pals; they need to be great basketball players. If they aren't, none of the rest of it is worth a warm bucket of spit anyway. If they are? Well, as Peja himself said Friday, "Two years is a long time."
In one of those amazing coincidences, Stojakovic has two years remaining on his contract, the one he says he will honor as a professional. It's an excellent start, that comment. Here's what comes next: Go play.
http://www.sacbee.com/content/sports/basketball/kings/story/10963900p-11881188c.html
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, October 3, 2004
In a case like this, the People v. Peja Stojakovic v. Chris Webber, it is critically important to take the long view. Unfortunately, nobody has one.
Tough break. But for sheer common sense related to the general discussion at hand, it looks as if we'll be going with the wily veteran, Doug Christie, for the win.
Friday, while Kings players scattered about their practice facility doing TV and radio promos, while Stojakovic spoke in this corner over here and Webber in that corner over there - while the happy talk at times reached epic proportions of irrelevance, Christie basically stepped up and called the whole thing for what it was.
"I think it's always a good thing," Christie replied when someone dropped the dreaded "A" word - adversity - into the general topic of what Webber said about Stojakovic, what Stojakovic said about being traded, what Webber said he meant by what he said, and all the rest of the silly rot.
"You have to learn from any situation," Christie said. "If you can only learn from positive situations, then you have to look at yourself in the mirror, because life isn't always positive. I think, from this situation, Peja has learned."
One hundred thousand million percent correct. And if we can just take this learning experience away from Arena 3 of the media circus and over to the basketball court, it would translate something like this:
You spoke. We listened.
Now play.
Play ball. Play now. Play hard. Play great.
Play for love. Play for hate. Play for family. Play for money. But above all, play.
Play brilliantly and let the rest of your career sort itself out, which, in my experience among professional athletes, almost always seems to work just fine.
Trust me on this: Whether it's Stojakovic or Webber or anyone else, the sports world, as a cold, calculating, bloodless entity, doesn't give 30 seconds' worth of a damn what a player's individual motivations are during a season. It just wants to know whether he's good or lousy and whether the future is mostly upside or downside.
The whole character of the sport is revealed in the playing, or at least that's what we tell the kiddies in Little League right before they run screaming to the snow cone counter. On the pro level, you can appreciate the simplicity and essential truth of that thought.
Play.
After that, we can all watch the dominoes fall.
This has been a wonderful summer of festering recrimination, ludicrously vague blame and all the bad blood that could possibly be imagined among warring factions. On a purely theatrical level, there was a certain "Gladiator" value to it.
But now it's time to play basketball again, and what a relief. The Kings have enough on their plate trying to adjust to life without Vlade Divac but with Greg Ostertag, to a life without Anthony Peeler but with Kevin Martin - that they might not even find time to worry about the Team Chemistry final exam.
Stojakovic still would prefer to be traded, and there's just no mistaking that.
The player was polite and friendly as usual at the Natomas complex Friday, but he hasn't changed his position a bit since August.
But, look, he has laid the parameters out there, and they're perfectly acceptable. Stojakovic will show. Stojakovic will play. He's a smart and proud enough man not to commit career suicide by tanking, which means coach Rick Adelman will still get the best of his small forward no matter how Peja feels about playing alongside Webber.
Stojakovic still has levels to add to his game, which is why it was disappointing to hear him say he had played virtually no basketball during the offseason. Time away from national teams and world championships, sure; but no work at all on refining that skill?
Still, as Christie said, "I've seen him improve every year. What he brings to the game is enough for me," and it is - at least during the regular season - great stuff.
Webber spent a bit of time Friday insisting that he and Stojakovic are "cool," which they're not, and that he, Webber, is here "to have fun," which he's not - at least not according to the Webber of summertime quote heaven, who made it clear that it is time to get tougher, act tougher, be tougher, sort of like if John Wayne was your center and you had Conan the Barbarian at shooting guard.
But does any of that really matter? Nope. What really matters is whether Webber can be close to the player he once was - and if he is, it will be enough to dissolve a hundred layers of calcified bad vibes from the ghost of personality conflicts past.
Webber and Stojakovic don't need to be pals; they need to be great basketball players. If they aren't, none of the rest of it is worth a warm bucket of spit anyway. If they are? Well, as Peja himself said Friday, "Two years is a long time."
In one of those amazing coincidences, Stojakovic has two years remaining on his contract, the one he says he will honor as a professional. It's an excellent start, that comment. Here's what comes next: Go play.
Just good to see Kings stories rolling in again. I'm sure they will have something more informative to write about once they get a couple practices in
