Lance Thomas' Attitude

Perseverance and hard work are often touted as the roads to success. But I remember once as a kid I hit a rough patch. It was a confusing time, and I reached out to someone who told me, "You're doing a lot of the right things, except perhaps the most important one; The way you look at things. Attitude is altitude, and altitude is consciousness."

Basketball Insiders

5 Years After NCAA Title,

Thomas Embraces Long Road to NBA

ByJessica Camerato

February 26, 2015

Ten minutes. In reality, it was a matter of seconds but for Lance Thomas, Gordon Hayward’s halfcourt attempt lingered in the air for an eternity before the ball painstakingly made its way to the basket, clanged off the rim and fell to the court.

The buzzer blared, signaling Duke University’s two-point victory in the 2010 NCAA championship game over Butler University. Jon Scheyer jumped on Thomas’ back in celebration, sending his co-captain to the ground in a burst of chaos and excitement. Thomas hit his head on the court.

“I opened my eyes and confetti was falling all over me,” Thomas said. “It was amazing.”

Five years later, Thomas remembers the vivid details of the moment from his space in the New York Knicks’ visitors locker room at TD Garden. He has played in just two more games in the NBA than he did during his four-year career at Duke – a slower paced journey than he expected, but one he has embraced.

Thomas knew when he lifted the trophy the night of April 5, 2010, it did not guarantee him a spot in the pros. He returned to campus (with a hero’s welcome) to complete the semester and graduate. As June neared and NBA hopefuls prepped for the draft, Thomas did not expect to hear his name called. He had averaged 4.8 points and 4.8 rebounds as a senior, a ways away from strong consideration.

Thomas still believed he could play in the NBA, though. Instead of the draft, he viewed the D-League as his best route.

“I wasn’t really a guy who was on the radar like that,” Thomas told Basketball Insiders. “I was a proven winner, but I wasn’t really putting up NBA numbers to put myself in position to be drafted in the first round or anything like that. My main thing was, I just wanted the opportunity to show that I could be an NBA player. When I had the opportunity to play in the Development League, I was like, this is a no-brainer. I want to do that and try to prove it.”

Thomas was selected by the Austin Toros in the second round of the 2010 D-League draft. He was far from Cameron Indoor Stadium, but he described the Toros fanbase as “very great.” He wasn’t there for the hoopla anyways. Thomas credits the coaching staff for working extensively with him on the skills he needed to take the next step and making him feel like he had a chance to accomplish his goal.

“It’s competitive,” Thomas said of the D-League. “It’s like a bunch of crabs in a barrel. Everybody wants to get to the NBA.”

The following summer, he was named to the U.S. team for the 2011 Pan American Games, a squad made up of D-League players during the lockout. From there, he received a training camp invite from the then-New Orleans Hornets. Thomas bounced around between the Toros and the Hornets before earning an NBA deal for the remainder of the season after a pair of 10-day contracts.

“A lot of days are tough,” he said. “ There are days when you just never know what’s going to happen – the trade deadline is coming up, the last two days of your 10-day contract, things of that nature. I’ve never been a guy to look over my shoulder. I just go for it. I never wonder what if.”

Thomas appeared in 106 games for the now-Pelicans over three seasons, averaging 3.0 points and 2.3 rebounds in 12.4 minutes. When the team released him in November of 2013, he decided to pursue basketball in China for the Foshan Dralions.

“Of course you always miss (the NBA),” he said.

He was determined to make it back. Last September, the Oklahoma City Thunder signed Thomas. He averaged 5.1 points and 3.4 rebounds in 20.5 minutes over 22 games, including 13 starts, before being traded to the New York Knicks in January as part of the Dion Waiters-Iman Shumpert-J.R. Smith deal.

The changes weren’t done yet. The Knicks waived him two days later, only to re-sign him on a pair of 10-day contracts. The New Jersey native is now posting a career-high 9.3 points and 3.4 boards in 24.6 minutes in his latest stop close to home.

Teammate Quincy Acy, who competed against Thomas in the Elite 8, has seen growth since their college years.

“He brings his hard hat to work every day,” Acy said. “He mostly played the four in college and now he can guard the one through five. That’s a testament to his hard work. (His journey) says a lot about him, his perseverance and his will to get where he wants to go. Nobody can tell him what he can’t do.”

Thomas understands success in the NBA is a process. He has never been one to rush his progress and is willing to be patient, putting in the work necessary to stick in the league. Knicks guard Shane Larkin noted the extra time he spends at practice and describes his work ethic as “100 percent pedal to the metal.”

“I never expected anything; I’ve never been like that,” Thomas said. “I’ve always wanted to take the next guy’s head off if I’m competing against him. I think that’s what’s fueled me to continue to play this game. My competitive nature and drive has gotten me where I’m at.”

The memories of winning a national championship at Duke will always be special to Thomas. The sound of the final buzzer and downpour of confetti are still clear in his mind after journeys through the D-League, NBA and overseas. He wants to be remembered as a person who “worked his butt off, and on top of that he’s a winner.” If that means paying his dues over the past five years, he’s all in.

“I really have no regrets with how my career has turned out,” Thomas said. “It’s been unique, to say the least. Everything I’ve had or accomplished in life has never been laid out on the red carpet for me. I think all the things that have been thrown my way in regard to this game makes my story that much better.”

Chris Herren: "Unguarded"

Some people meditate. I got the pot sink. This is where I found myself.

--Chris Herren

What's valor? Maybe a better question is, what's valorized?

About six months ago, fellow hoop head Johnny S and I were talking and he mentioned the Jonathan Hock, ESPN 30 for 30 doc on Chris Herren, Unguarded. As someone who's been following hoops all my life I knew the surface story about Herren, but when Johnny told me about this flick I made that mental note that sticks.

It's not a great story insofar as surprise, mystery or forecasting. In fact, it's the classic predictable tragedy made right and triumph, much like The Pursuit of Happiness. Yet it's really moving, and credit goes to Hock, who edits Unguarded masterfully, weaving different presentations by the now clean Herren deftly to  various audiences: youth, druggies and cons.

This story formula could have easily sunk to pandering, and the truth is that the major credit must be paid to Herren who deals straight and with the voice of the real behind him, exerting a solid undercurrent that builds empathy.

The coda has his current life in stride; wife and kids, the fans who loved, then  reviled and now respect him, all back on board. That of course is a great thing, but for me, the most moving parts of stories where people triumph over adversity are those moments, those turning points, where a crossroad is approached. For  Malcolm, it was lying in prison, his mind coming alive through books. With Herren, his was also a punishment; having to wash dishes in solitary, the pot sink room, for hours on end. It's where he was alone with the biggest hurdle; himself.

It gets better, and speaks to a rare quality in individuals, the ability to introspect, to really get down and look at yourself. He speaks in the coda about how one day he noticed something about his behavior, that where once before, for years on end, he'd taken his shaver and toothbrush into the shower, but all of a sudden with sobriety, he'd stopped.

And in an insight that speaks as much to psychology as to that ability to really observe yourself, he said that now he was able to look at himself in the mirror.

No MSG

I don't care what anyone says, I dig Mike Francesa; I think his commentary on sports are right on and he brings that New York directness I love.


The following two interviews show the game behind the game, in this case, illuminating all of the hoopla around Jeremy Lin. Because what most fans aren't aware of is that for many fans in the Tri-State area, they haven't been able to catch Knicks games because Time Warner and Madison Square Garden Media are in a contract war. And they have been evidently for quite some time. Credit Francesa here for being a bulldog, for instance at about 14:30 in the interview with Eric Mangan of Time Warner. Here again is an instance where sports are a vehicle for talking about other things, in this case, big money, big media and big capital interests.

Stick around for Aasif Mandvi's funny Daily Show skit. I don't have the time or energy to do the conversion, so these files are embedded. I suppose when WFAN's (Francesa's radio station) and The Daily Show's links goes dead you can find them on Youtube.

Eric Mangan, TW New York

Mike Bair, President of MSG Media

The Daily Show did a great skit on this. Olivia Munn would have been the babe to handle this, IF she were still at TDS, but Aasif is a funny dude. However, they never mention MSG and instead make out Time Warner as the bad guy.

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Super Lazarus

The Warriors' uni is nice but the Apple is sweet.

It's common knowledge now that only a couple weeks ago, the Knicks were a patient on the gurney with a weak pulse if not dead in the water. Not saying anything original here, but watching one of the NBA's classic franchises destroyed by Isaiah over the course of a few years was really sad.

Now it's top of the world. This is the power of sports at its best, and thank god for the Internet, because I have the Knicks scheduled on my calendar and it's appointment TV.

The longer statement about JLin is coming because I had to wait for my angle and it's still baking, so this is about the Knicks, because everyone is so concerned about Melo, how he's going to come in and ruin the chemistry because Melo's a ball hog. Here's what I think.

1. Having one of the league's premier offensive weapons about to return to pair up with an offense firing on all cylinders is a problem worth having. [UPDATE, 2015: Boy, was I wrong!]

2. When Lin came out of today's game against the Mavs, the Knicks literally turned into another team. Lin's impact can't be over-stated. This is why Baron Davis coming back is key, because it spells Lin, who's playing a shit load of minutes, but more, Baron's got skills. Every basketball team knows that bench play is a crucial element to a winning formula. Think about Coop with the 80's Lakes and McHale with the 80's Celts before he became a starter, or even as recently as Barrera with the Mavs in last year's playoffs. That little dude KILLED the Lakes and kept the pedal to the metal. If Baron can come in and contribute, watch out, because this will make the Knicks a very dangerous team.

3. Jeffries is a key player because sometimes -- and I'm being kind when I say sometimes -- A'mare doesn't play like a 4 should in terms of boards. Rebounding is an art, defense is essential. Jeffries played well today and they'll need that to continue.

4. When you look at that intangible, chemistry, this team is playing as well as any in recent memory. As a long time hoops fan, it's fun to watch the game being played this way, pick and roll, team passing, basic fundamental basketball.

5. Much has been made, some of it rightly so, about JLin's turnovers. But here's the rub; he is constantly aggressive, and that puts tremendous pressure on a defense because you're forcing them to react. That's power basketball in its rawest form, and it's what I wish the Lakes had; a player to break the defense down and create openings. Related, JLin's showing signs of developing a killer instinct which is what all of the great players have. His 3 point dagger over Nowitsky was just that. Now let's see if he develops this element.

6. Credit Mike D'Antoni who had a system in search of a player to run it and gave Jlin the chance. The truth is the Knicks were so bad that Lin got the chance because the Knicks stank so much, but D'Antoni's system, where everything flows from the pick and roll, is a case of now having found its lead actor. Timing is everything they say, and this is a case for the annals.

In the final look, the Knicks are loaded with talent; all they needed was a catalyst and it was delivered on a silver platter. Novak, the newly acquired JR Smith, Tyson Chandler, Landry Fields, even Shumpert with his tough defense... all are playing as if a fire's been lit beneath their asses, and I think the Knicks can be a very dangerous team if they sustain this level of play. And if A'mare starts busting out like he's capable of this will be a scary team. Hey, if a notorious head case like JR Smith can come in and play with enthusiasm, watch out.

It also goes to show that if one bad apple spoils a bunch, it works the other way around too.

It's one of the best stories I've ever seen in sports, and has much larger lessons. He's a good kid, and I've been rooting for the Knicks, hanging on every play as the Garden erupts with every good play he makes. It really is tons of fun to watch and is sports at its best.

Juke

KD was busy doin' work during the lockout.

The Most Beautiful Game

Brilliant legal theorist, deconstructionist and social critic; that's Stanley Fish. No one ever guests him on talk shows, and I think I've seen him but once on a panel many moons ago, where I was struck by the incisiveness and range of his mind. Add to that he's a really good writer, and you have someone who means business.

When I stumbled upon this essay while perusing his archive at the NYT, I was floored; Fish, the intellectual, the brilliant critic and essayist, shared with me a love for basketball far beyond fan worship of one's home team. Not the nebbish, say, Woody Allen (who happens to be a huge Knicks fan) is, Fish, nonetheless and by his own admission, is anything but athletic, whether in ability or looks.

But that doesn't stop him.

This boy plays. His love for the game - "addiction" by his telling - shines through, and because he's such a good writer, that "hidden dimension" that only players can ever know is revealed, at least hinted at, in mental pictures and feelings. That feeling is, on a "basic" level (for lack of a better term) something at once mysterious and glorious.

[But] for me, playing basketball is above everything - even those times creating art. There's something about synergy, creating with teammates that, when it clicks, is unique. It's the most beautiful game. There's a feeling of connecting to your teammates that, at its best, is like you're plugged in to the universe in a very direct way; it's a transcendent experience far beyond words.

I know it sounds corny and new age-y, but it's a pure experience - thought doesn't enter in. There's only seeing and doing.

Two things stand out from those brief encounters with "the zone": 1) The euphoria it produces is more sublime than anything - you literally desire nothing, and 2) "you" seem to disappear and yet be more present than ever. If that sounds too Tao-ish then tough. This is the limitation of words here aside from meager writing skill.

One time I was talking to a surfer and he was relating how there are certain times when he catches a wave just right, and the feeling that it produces is indescribable. I told him that for athletes, it's called "being in the zone." It doesn't come often and in fact is the rarest bird, but when it does, all you can do is watch and marvel.

Then it flies away.

Branford Marsalis - another big hoop head - likes to make the analogy of how playing in a band is like playing on a basketball team, with everyone with their roles and contributing to the common good. I disagree, and I, like everyone, love music. Sports in general and basketball in particular have that physical release; so does sex, but those feelings are animal-biological. Tantric sex with Raquel Welch when she was 24 may help me there, but until then.... I will give his analogy some props though, because improvisatory jazz and rock have that element in common with basketball, particularly pick up games where there's no strategy much less people who know how to play from the book aspect.

For me it's about "running" (what hoop heads call it) with the boys on a late afternoon when the heat's not as bad and the shadows are long, the promise of cold drinks and devouring food waiting; knowing, somehow, that Mitch will make the cut, seeing him in the periphery, fooling my defender and then getting the pass to him as he lays it up. That feeling is something that has become as branded in me as anything.

In the following essay, Fish waxes poetic about the game we both love in far more eloquent terms than I ever could. He may get his March Madness pick wrong, but then again so did I (Louisville) and aside from that, on the court of the essay, I'm a pick up player - he's Magic Johnson.






March 22, 2009, 10:00 pm

My Life on the Court
I have been playing basketball since I was seven years old. That’s more than 60 years, and as March Madness moves into full swing, I find myself thinking about the game and my addiction to it.

It isn’t skill. I can do two things — shoot from the outside and run. (I don’t get tired.) I dribble as little as possible. I drive to the basket once a decade; I’ve blocked two shots in my entire life, and if white men can’t jump, this white Jewish man really can’t jump. Maybe twice a year my shot is on and I feel I can’t miss. On days like that I think that I’ve finally arrived and can’t wait for the next game. But when game day rolls around again and I get out on the court, I find that I have regressed to my usual level, which is several degrees south of mediocre.

In all these years I have had two triumphs. Once when I was playing on the beach-side courts in Laguna Beach, every shot went in. The other players, black and Latino, started to yell, “Larry Bird, Larry Bird.” I knew it was a joke, but I savored the moment anyway.

Another time, when I was living in Baltimore, I hired a tall young man to remove the leaves from my lawn. When I came back a couple of hours later I found the leaves merely rearranged. I complained and refused to pay. We got into a shouting match, and then I asked, “Do you play basketball?”

“Yes,” he answered, and I said, “There’s a gym up the street; let’s play for it. You win, I pay you; you don’t, I don’t.” He replied, “Are you crazy old man?” (At the time I was in my mid-forties; I hate to imagine what he’d say today.)

We trekked to the gym and I beat him three times by big scores. In the first game he didn’t guard me because he didn’t believe I could do anything, and I hit one long shot after another. In the second game he guarded me too closely, and I went around him. In the third game he didn’t know what to do, and it was all over. The whole thing took less than half an hour, which was good because in another 20 minutes he would have figured out that I had only two moves and that both of them could easily be neutralized by someone taller, stronger and more athletic, all of which he was.

And then there are the thousand other times when I walked off the court either feeling happy not to have embarrassed myself (although I hadn’t done much) or trying to come to terms with the fact that I had indeed embarrassed myself. Whichever it was, I always knew that I would be back.

Why? Why continue to do something I wasn’t any good at nine times out of ten? Well for one thing basketball players are by and large generous. (There are exceptions.) If you’re not very skilled, if you’re old and slow, they will make a place for you in the game. In his recent book “Give and Go: Basketball as a Cultural Practice,” Thomas McLaughlin speaks of the ethical practices that emerge in the course of a game even though no rules have imposed them: “Every time one of the players in our game says to a weak player as he is taking an open shot that he will likely miss ‘Good shot,’ he is weaving the ethical fabric of the game.”

I have often been the beneficiary of that ethical fabric, even when those weaving me into it are perfect strangers. For one of the great things about being a basketball player (or pretending to be one) is that no court is closed to you which is why I always have a basketball in the trunk of my car. You can just show up wherever there is a hoop and a game and you will be included. (This holds also in foreign countries where there may be a language barrier, but never a basketball barrier.)

At Live Oak Park in Berkeley I played with college standouts and with American Basketball Association all-star Lavern Tart. On a famous court in the West Village I played on a team that won every game. It was glorious even though I never touched the ball. In a strict sense I didn’t belong on those courts, but pick-up basketball doesn’t enforce any strict sense and is willing to relax the demands of competition and winning for the sake of extending its pleasures to those whose skills are minimal.

What are those pleasures? They are not, I think, pleasures that point outward to some external good. Rather they are the pleasures of performing (however badly) within the strict parameters of a practice whose goals and rewards are entirely internal. Hans Gumbrecht, in his book “In Praise of Athletic Beauty,” links sports to Kant’s account of the beautiful as the experience of “pure disinterested satisfaction.” It is a satisfaction, Gumbrecht explains, that “has no goal in everyday life” (like virtue, it is its own reward), and he quotes with admiration Olympic swimmer Pablo Morales’s description of the pleasure he feels in competition as “that special feeling of getting lost in focused intensity.”

The marvel is that focused intensity can be achieved even in the act of failure, even by someone who knows what to do but most of the time can’t quite do it. And it is for that intensity — not its object or its goal — that one plays, for in those moments of surrender to the game all one’s troubles, all one’s strivings, all one’s petty irritations fall away. And if, occasionally, you actually do set the hard pick or deliver the perfect pass or make the improbable shot, well, that’s just icing on the cake.

And by the way, my money is on Duke to take it all. A pick from the heart.

Skillz

Let's take a break from all of the doom and gloom, shall we...?


My first taste of ballin' magic was the Globetrotters, of course; Curly Neal was the dope shit, plus Meadowlark was funny. Later, as a child of the 60's and 70's, I heard tales of Bob Cousy's trickery, and ran out to the library and got his book, Basketball is My Life; I'll never forget the two page photo spread in the middle with stop action photos of him performing his around the back move.

I was lucky as a kid to witness greatness in person in the form of Elgin Baylor, who'd do his famous hang in the air and no look passes at a time when b-ball was just hinting at the freedom of improvisation and creativity that the streets brought. I honestly thought he was a god of some sort, I just marveled at his skill and talent, and to this day, he's without a doubt one of the greatest artists I've ever seen in any discipline.


Then it was the first incarnation of showtime with a small "s" brought by Pistol Pete Maravich. Dude's legendary so there's no need for me to go on. One thing I will say when I read about him as a kid; his father would drive and he'd sit in the passenger seat and dribble out the window! Guess they couldn't have been going that fast. No less than Isiah Thomas called him the man.


During Maravich's era one guy that never gets mentioned is an Angeleno, Paul Westphal. Boy had skillz and proved it by putting on a show during halftime when (I think it was) CBS ran a HORSE competition. He's assisting at Dallas now.


Then it was on to the true beginnings of the modern era, when the game began to evolve above the rim and below as well. But the magicians were Isiah and Magic, "Showtime" with a capital "S," and even Bird who'd let loose with a no look because he simply had that sixth sense that the great ones do.


And 1 has taken it to DVD in the form of their freeform streetball theater - it's not really hoops per se, and is entertaining for a bit. So to provide a bit of entertainment, here's a white boy with some flava; truth is the kid's not really that good as a player but he's got some nice tricks; this is a triumph of editing and it's fun. Gotta say though there's a nice dish at the top when he breaks that kid's ankles.


Here's Rory Grace, aka, "Disaster," with a nice track by Arcee.

Remembering DJ

I felt a punch to the gut when Fish delivered the news yesterday morning; DJ, Dennis Johnson, died suddenly yesterday at 52.

Even though DJ made his bones with the hated Celts during their epic wars with the Lakes in the 80's, he actually preceded that with the Sonics, playing with Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, and "Downtown" Freddie Brown and winning a ring in '79.

But leave it to Red Auerbach to snatch DJ for the Celts (in one of those "Huh?" moments, DJ was traded to Phoenix for a brief stint before Auerbach's theft), and the rest is history. Everyone remembers the play against the Pistons in the playoffs; Bird steals Zeke's inbound pass, dishes to a head's up streaking DJ - a smart thinking player if ever there was one - who makes a difficult layup, and the Garden explodes while the legendary Johnny Most loses his mind. Of course, being in LA, I listened to our legend, Chicky Baby, during Laker games, but I don't know who called for the Pistons. At any rate, ESPN and others will always roll that clip with the Johnny Most cigarette-stained voice. I can still hear the old crow squawking: "BIRD STOLE THE BALL!!! BIRD STOLE THE BALL!!! OMIGOD, THE PLACE IS GOING CRAZY!!!!" as pandemonium erupts.

As much as I hated the Celts, this is why I love sports, probably more than anything else creative. In the case of the NBA, you get a bunch of highly skilled and talented athletes - with a few exceptions, the best athletes in the world, in my opinion - and put them in pressure cookers and watch what happens. It's endlessly interesting.

Anyone who plays sports, games or is an artist has experienced the feeling of being in the zone, where things just seem to fall into place. For me, those moments are indescribable. In tennis it's when you're always in correct position, on balance and the ball always strikes the sweet spot. In poker, it's making the correct plays - time after time after time.

But for me, playing basketball is above everything - even those times creating art. There's something about synergy, creating with teammates that, when it clicks, is unique. It's the most beautiful game. There's a feeling of connecting to your teammates that, at its best, is like you're plugged in to the universe in a very direct way; it's a transcendent experience far beyond words. Filmmaking comes close.

Another point is that very few play on the level where they make everyone around them better players. Magic was the greatest I've ever seen at that, but DJ is in that club.

And despite playing for the hated Celts, DJ is also special to LA, a Compton brotha. Played up the street for Pepperdine.

His death - at 52 - kinda shook me because he was so young and it was just so sudden.

I remember you DJ.