Editorial | Pace and Space

Coming Soon: The 1980s Western Conference Bridesmaids

January 10, 2023 - by Fox Doucette

Been watching a lot of Hardwood Classics recently, and it got me thinking of what happened to all those Western Conference Finals teams that Magic Johnson and the Lakers beat on their way to eight NBA Finals between 1980 and 1989. The only team to best Magic and friends in the entire decade was the ’86 Rockets. Michael Jordan and the Bulls faced five different Finals opponents for their six championships because after 1991, Magic was no longer there to serve as gatekeeper. What if the ’80s had been that wide open? Who would Larry Bird and Julius Erving and …

Editorial

Cultural Alienation and NBA Fan Ennui

December 19, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

I love the sport of basketball, from shooting around at the playground to watching the greats of the NBA do their thing on national television—or, better still, on local television in Indianapolis that I happen to watch in Seattle thanks to League Pass. I abhor celebrity culture, gossip, and the parts of sports that are collectively known as “off-the-field issues.” I detest ESPN’s chattering pundit shows, and whenever someone on their NBA coverage veers off into something not related to what’s going on on the court, I tend to mute the sound. I’m also a history buff and a stat …

Editorial

The Broken Nets Are Back in 2023

November 5, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Broken Nets…er, Brooklyn Nets…are well on their way to barfing out another Dumpster fire of a season. At 3-6, no matter what that 128-86 demolition of the Washington Wizards may try and tell you, they’re cooked. Kyrie Irving is suspended indefinitely for graduating from Idiot School summa cum laude. Ben Simmons continues to fear 3-pointers the way small children fear monsters under the bed. And while Kevin Durant is off to a fantastic start (32.0 ppg, .522 FG%, .196 WS/48), you know he’s going to get hurt again. It’s just a question of when and what body part. The …

Editorial

State of the Site 2022

June 25, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The 2022 NBA season was a return to normalcy in more ways than one. For the first time since 2019, the league played an 82-game season. And like 2019, the Golden State Warriors ended up being the class of the Western Conference and ultimately won the title. The Celtics were contenders in the East and made the conference finals, this time actually breaking through to the big show at the end before falling short. Pace and Space chugged along, even though the site’s content dropped to weekly once my return to in-office work last fall officially put an end to …

Editorial

Kevin Durant, Stephen A. Smith, and Eleanor Roosevelt

June 7, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

“Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.” – Eleanor Roosevelt Kevin Durant and Stephen A. Smith got into a beef on Twitter last week over the former accusing the latter of ruining the NBA while the latter complained that the league’s shift toward marketing personalities—Michael Jordan, LeBron James, and every other star great and small—in the 1990s set the league up for its issues in the past couple of years where TV ratings fell off a cliff in as much time as it took LeBron’s Lakers to collapse. Meanwhile, the Boston Celtics, a team that …

Editorial

The 2022 Boston Celtics Broke NBA Playoff History

May 31, 2022 - by Fox Doucette - 2 Comments.

A funny thing happened in the Eastern Conference Finals. The Boston Celtics, a team that has perennially been not quite good enough to win a title but good enough to make a serious run at one since 2017, a team right out of the 1980s in the sense of “every Western Conference team other than the Rockets that couldn’t beat Magic Johnson in the conference finals”, finally broke through. And when they beat the Miami Heat in Game 7, the team that had thwarted them in the COVID bubble in 2020, they absolutely turned on its head everything we all …

Editorial

2022 Playoffs: Too Many Series, Not Enough Drama

April 24, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

Between having a full-time job with one heck of a commute between the city and the suburbs, living on the West Coast, and having had my evenings occupied with getting my new apartment set up the way I like it, I have generally been too busy to watch many games this past week. But checking in with ESPN and Basketball Reference and committing that cardinal sin of the writer of letting the box score do the job of actually watching the games, I can’t help but think I haven’t missed anything important. Sure, Minnesota’s giving Memphis all they wanted in …

Editorial

The Boston Celtics’ “Only Very Good” Problem

April 17, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The Boston Celtics, by virtue of having won a convoluted three-way tiebreaker, took the 2 seed in the 2022 Eastern Conference. If they can get past the 7-seed Brooklyn Nets and the winner of the 3-seed Milwaukee Bucks and 6-seed Chicago Bulls in the second round, it will be Boston’s fourth appearance in the Eastern Conference Finals in the past six seasons stretching back to 2017. The problem is that Boston hasn’t broken through and gone to the NBA Finals since 2010. And for a franchise whose 17 championships stand tied with the rival Los Angeles Lakers for the most …

Editorial

5 Ways to Fix the Broken NBA Playoffs

April 9, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

The NBA playoffs are nearly upon us, and with them come a couple of games guaranteed to involve a team that posted a losing record (the two West play-in game teams, plus the Clippers if they lose their last two; they’re 40-40 at this writing.) The play-in games are pointless, and if the 34-46 Spurs lose their last two regular-season games and somehow turn it around in the play-in tournament, that 34-48 record will be the worst record by a playoff team since the 1988 Spurs got in after going 31-51. On the other hand, the East is showing why …

Editorial

With the #LOLakers Dead, What’s LeBron Got Left?

April 3, 2022 - by Fox Doucette

LeBron James is, at this point, playing purely for his legacy, putting any finishing touches he can on his GOAT argument before age catches up with him for good and sends him into retirement. Bron’s got four rings, including a ring in Cleveland in 2016 that came for his hometown against a team that went 73-9 in the regular season and had a 3-1 lead in the Finals. He’s got a “career triple double”, having notched his 10,000th rebound and 10,000th assist during this 2021-22 season to put the finishing touches on an accomplishment that no other player in NBA …