The Importance of Offseasons

Let us take a quick look at this past week.  I did not get much sleep and fell asleep while watching a few games but got a good sense of how everything is playing out. 

A quick rundown of where I am at in my predictions:

San Antonio defeats LA Clippers 4-0, my prediction was SAS in 5

San Antonio is on an amazing 8 game run with Tim Duncan averaging 17.6 points a game and 9 rebounds with a 54% field goal percentage.  I cannot believe he is 36 years old.  I am turning 35 this year and I know I am not a professional athlete, but I can certainly feel the years.  I cannot imagine what his body must be like, especially playing at the power forward position all these years.  More on Tim Duncan later, but I was astounded to find out that he lost 20 pounds this past offseason so that he could be lighter and not put so much weight on his bad knees.  San Antonio played a great series and became fun to watch.  I understand the prevailing thought that San Antonio is a boring team, and I was even one of those people in the past, but they are playing superb basketball that anyone should be able to appreciate.  They are so good that I expected the 24 point comeback. 

OKC leads LA Lakers 3-1, mine was LAL in 6

This series is a lot closer than the 3-1 score.  It could easily be 2-2 or even 3-1 in the Lakers favor.  However, Durant is playing out of his mind.  For someone who is considered a jump shooter, he is shooting over 50% in this series, as well as providing clutch baskets down the stretch.  The crown for my favorite current NBA player is still up in the air, but he may be taking at season end.  I am sure he is happy to hear that.  But I really expected Lakers to close out games better, given their experience and that they have Kobe.  A stat that I saw during one game that I never would have thought was that in clutch situations, Michael Jordan was 50%+ in field goal percentage, LeBron is high 30%, and Kobe is a measly 25%.  Durant in this playoffs, is somewhere in the 60% range...that is purely going from what I have seen and feel.

MIA tied with IND 2-2, mine was MIA in 6

As expected, this is a battle.  I thought Miami would give two away by a few points because of a lapse in Miami's scoring, but Indiana has proven to be the real deal.  They are a complete team that plays defense, rebounds and refuses to back down.  They lack any form of star power that I bet a casual fan would not have been able to tell you a definitive starter on this team when this season started.  With a little experience, I could see them being like the Detroit Pistons that won championships earlier this decade.  I look forward to all of these upcoming games.

BOS tied with PHI 2-2, mine was PHI in 7

I am most torn about this series.  I live in Boston now and I adopted this team during the Knicks era that shall not be named.  However, I have grown to appreciate Doug Collins.  He was always a good commentator and is a great coach.  This has been a well played game on both sides, except for the 18 point meltdown the Celtics had in game 4.  What is going on with all these teams surrendering huge leads anyway?  I am considering this as a post later if I can find all the data necessary.  I think either of these teams deserve to advance.  They are playing well and will pose an interesting matchup with Miami even though it will not be as good as the current Miami-Indiana series.

OFFSEASON WORKOUTS

In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell examines education and tries to figure out why students in lower income areas are at such a disadvantage and have such a low rate of graduation compared to those with more money.  What he found out was that it was not race, religion or quality of teachers.  He found those students were just as smart and learned just as fast.  The differentiator was how they spent their summers.  Lower income children did not go to camps or have group activities, they simply sat around, and as the new school year rolled around, they had lost more of what they learned then their stimulated peers. 

This made me think about the correlation between how hard an athlete worked in the offseason and their greatness.  Again, I was surprised to hear that Tim Duncan had shed 20 pounds in order to manage the season better.  I have tried losing 10-15 pounds but it never took, so I tried to find his offseason workout routine.  Besides finding out that he used to roll tractor tires up a hill and that he postponed the start of his workout routine by a month because of the lockout, there was not much to find.  Still, the fact that he gave so much thought into when he should start working out and how much weight he should lose in order to handle the trials of a compacted season was interesting.  If he managed all his offseason workouts like this, it is no wonder that he will be in the discussion of greatest power forward ever.

Other offseason routines I found that were worth mentioning are Blake Griffin and Kobe Bryant.  What I found interesting was that Blake found "a mysterious trainer that is both radical and extreme in his approach towards fitness", and part of his training was carrying a 60 pound sandbag up a hill.  My conclusion is that he found a fitness instructor and not a basketball coach, or his game would have developed a little better than where it is now.  He is the new human highlight reel, but anyone that shoots barely 50% from the free throw line is definitely not working hard enough on the basketball end.  Kobe, on the other hand, has a sick workout.  He works out six hours a day for six days a week, running in a variety of ways for two hours and then shoots 700-1000 shots per day.  It's no wonder he will be one of the greatest. 

Finally, this would not be a Knicks blog if I did not mention them at least once.  I did look up Carmelo Anthony's workout routine and ended up on this site.  It did not seem like he had much of a workout besides medicine balls and jumping exercises.  I could not find anything that would contradict anyone calling him Flab Melo.  Still, I am holding out hope that he refocuses this offseason and realizes what he has to do to bring the Knicks into championship contention.  He is currently my favorite for pre-2012-2013 season MVP.  I think this is it for him.  His window is closing to become truly great.  Would you not be incorporating Kobe's schedule if you were in his shoes?  I do not understand what these players are thinking.  You only have 8 years or so for your prime, would you not work out to be the best you could be?