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Alexander: Power of three isn’t necessarily NBA ticket to success

June 24, 2023

The world according to Jim:

• It’s a fallacy, really, that in the NBA you need a Big Three to compete for a championship. Yet Phoenix’s acquisition of Bradley Beal last week, starting a chain reaction that eventually deposited Chris Paul with the Golden State Warriors, suggests some teams haven’t gotten the memo. …

• Consider the last five league champions. Current champ Denver is built around should-have-been-three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray and a band of complementary players. Golden State last year had shooters extraordinaire Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, disrupter Draymond Green and a bunch of guys who knew their roles. Milwaukee in 2021? Giannis Antetokounmpo and a solid core around him. The Lakers in 2020? Good health for LeBron James and Anthony Davis (no doubt aided by the four-month pandemic break) and, again, complementary parts. Toronto in 2019? Same thing, built around Kawhi Leonard. …

• Miami might have rode the power of three to a couple of titles in 2012 and ’13 with LeBron, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, and we can debate whether Bosh was truly a star. But more realistically, and especially with the league’s increasingly punitive salary cap rule coming in, isn’t it better to concentrate on having the right pieces around your main guys? …

• The trick is convincing on-site superstars who want/demand input on personnel. They attack problems much as they did as teenagers, when they were recruiting their buddies to join the same AAU team. …

• Did Miami get the steal of Thursday night’s draft at No. 18 in UCLA’s Jaime Jaquez Jr.? With the polish that comes from playing four years in Westwood and the knack for doing the little things that equate to winning, he can have a quick impact in Miami. And if there truly is a “Heat Culture,” he fits perfectly. …

• Yes, the Lakers had a shot at Jaquez but instead took Jalen Hood-Schifino, the Indiana one-and-done guard, at 17. He’s more of a long-term play and should benefit from the player development skills of Coach Darvin Ham and his staff. His offensive game needs work, and I suspect Hood-Schifino’s presence won’t lessen the need to either re-sign or replace D’Angelo Russell. Think two or three years down the road. …

• With the Houston Astros in town to play the Dodgers, the timing of Rob Manfred’s interview with Time Magazine was interesting – and particularly his acknowledgment that offering Astros players immunity for information regarding the 2017 sign-stealing scandal was “maybe not my best decision ever.”

You think? …

• But I’d go further. The biggest blunder in the aftermath of the Great Trash Can Caper was treating Astros owner Jim Crane with a velvet glove. Crane allowed General Manager Jeff Luhnow’s anything-goes culture that led to the scandal, made Luhnow and field manager A.J. Hinch the scapegoats after the penalties came down and said, “No, I don’t think I should be held accountable.”

And he wasn’t, aside from a $5 million fine – chump change in baseball economics – and the loss of a couple of draft picks. A year’s suspension from ownership would have been more fitting. …

• Then again, this isn’t Bowie Kuhn slapping George Steinbrenner with a two-year ban for illegal campaign contributions, or Fay Vincent banning Steinbrenner in 1990 after he’d hired someone to dig up dirt on his own player, Dave Winfield. Manfred doesn’t discipline owners but coddles them, as we’ve seen in the way he’s enabled A’s owner John Fisher in his willingness to tank multiple seasons in order to burn bridges in Oakland and facilitate a move to Las Vegas. …

• Incidentally, you’ll love this: The A’s marketing slogan for the last few years in the East Bay has been “Rooted in Oakland.” Raiders owner Mark Davis, who fled to Las Vegas first, said one of his beefs with the A’s involves that (now hollow) slogan, which he construed as a slap at the Raiders.

If the shoe fits …

• If last week’s U.S. Open wasn’t already a triumph for golf in Los Angeles, the USGA announcement a couple of days later that the Open would be coming to Riviera in 2031 would have been. (It is, among other things, confirmation that broadcast partner NBC really, really likes being able to show the final rounds in prime time on the East Coast, given that this was the most-watched Open since 2019 at Pebble Beach.)

Plus it’s Riviera, more of a fan-friendly course than Los Angeles Country Club. Anyone who tried to walk the LACC course last weekend and tried (and failed) to find a patch of flat ground will understand. …

• The real heroes of last week’s tournament? The shuttle drivers. With no parking even close to the course, spectators and media had to park in Century City or at UCLA, and the shuttles between those points and the golf course were prompt and convenient. …

• Another big event announcement that should impact SoCal came down Friday. The FIFA Club World Cup, which is being expanded from a seven-team event to a 32-team tournament in 2025, has been awarded to the United States, likely in late June and early July. It will be a dry run for the 2026 World Cup, which will be shared between the U.S., Mexico and Canada but will have most of its host sites in this country.

And yes, you can assume SoFi Stadium will be one of the host sites in 2025 as well as ’26. …

• Today’s suggested motto for most of us on social media (and a lot of people who aren’t): “I may not always be right, but I’m always certain.”

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