I. Hype and Circumstance
Amidst the swirl of goofball silly ads (surprisingly few tech-fused ones; as such, though thoroughly inane, generally comprehensible to an older demographic), during ever-lengthening and more frequent commercial breaks, there was one true North Star, wearing Number 1 for Duke.
Disparate teams of all stripes wore long sleeved shirts proclaiming “Family,” but only one team had Zion, who had averaged 27 points and shot 70% from the field since returning from the injury he sustained when his talent, size, speed, and energy proved too much for his Nikes to contain.
“Never seen anything like him,” said commentator Jay Bilas, who ordinarily avoids hyperbole, and does not lose credibility on the basis of being a fellow Dookie. He too worshipped at the Temple of K, and, despite lacking a tutor purchased by rich parents, is reputed to be able to spell his college coach’s name.
A few looks at Zion Williamson in action, with all his blue chip support, made Duke seem invincible, but, even before the Elite Eight, both Central Florida and Virginia Tech had last second close-in shots that barely failed to fall, saving Duke from a loss in the second round and then in The Sweet Sixteen. They survived Central Florida when Aubrey Dawkins barely missed a put-back on an astounding rebound effort, after scoring 32 points and playing an unbelievably great game for his father/coach Johnny Dawkins, who had been Krzyzewski’s first great star and former assistant for ten years.
II. Looking Forward
Lebron James, perhaps Zion’s only true predecessor, will not grace the NBA playoffs this year. On March 18, the day after the NCAA Selection Committee revealed its seedings (determined by their new metric, The NET), the New York Times symbolized James’s fall by sporting a picture of Knickerbocker reserve Mario Hezonga blocking his shot, to seal a 125-124 Laker loss, and bury Laker playoff hopes. In fairness, it should be noted that the Lakers had been 20-14, and improving rapidly at the time James was side-lined with a groin injury. But fairness will not be a consideration when Magic Johnson fires Coach Luke Walton.
On that same day, in a 130-125 76er victory over league-leading Milwaukee, Giannnis Antetokoumnpo had 52 points, and Joel Embiid had 40, along with 15 rebounds. Mid-level exceptions to James’ continued hegemony? Maybe more than that: LeBron may have been finally eclipsed by the NBA’s ever-growing spate of unicorns and phenoms, which Williamson will soon augment. Though the coming summer’s free agency party will determine much, James’s solo reign seems over, giving way to a new pantheon that includes the two rising stars (Giannis and Joel), along with James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and Paul George. Only an Anthony Davis move to L.A. seems able to save LeBron. Perhaps Williamson will soon fill, if not burst out of, his gigantic shoes.
III. Play On, Scandalously
Meanwhile, with the brackets filled, percolating below the level to which only Zion could ascend, there were multiple, shifting, intersecting story lines, many involving the sorts of impropriety and scandal that tend to surface at tournament time: LSU was playing without its Head Coach Will Wade, whose egregious sin was to engage in illegal activities more properly delegated to assistant coaches.
Filling in for Wade, Interim Coach Tony Benford conducted himself in exemplary fashion, scoring wins against Yale and Maryland, before succumbing to powerful Michigan State, but scandal was reaching the pre-college level as well, with Trump-nemesis Michael Avenatti being implicated in an extortion case brought by Nike that seemed also to involve an AAU youth coach (Gary Franklin) with a previously impeccable reputation. Not to be outdone by Bob Dylan, they’ve tried their hands at bribery, blackmail, and deceit. They’re certainly in the right country!
Regional locus of power was also a sub-plot, with the Southern power conferences (ACC and SEC) securing nine of the Sweet Sixteen slots: not only Duke, Kentucky, and North Carolina, but also Virginia, Tennessee, Auburn, Florida State, Virginia Tech, and LSU, whose raw talent level Charles Barkley championed as the tourney’s best. Not Duke, Sir Charles?
These Southern teams are full of incredible athletes: the guys who used to work the fields, the ones the evil but prescient gatekeepers were scared to let in the door lest they rise up and completely take over. Along with giant African imports: Florida State’s 7’4″ Christ Koumadje and Central Florida 7’6″ Tacko Fall. Now, it’s almost “no whites allowed,” unless you’re as great as Kentucky’s 6’5″ freshman Tyler; or Georgetown’s reverse quota-defying Mac McClung.
The early rounds produced precious few upsets, and soon dispatched Murray State’s Ja Morant and Baylor’s (by way of Yale) Maki Mason, who crashed to earth after great first round games. In the second round, the LSU-Maryland match-up featured incredible leapers. It was like a reverse Great Migration playground game in the South. With so many three pointers leading to long rebounds, boxing out becomes passé: get the ball quickly, and high. And run.
IV. That Great Regional Weekend
With almost all the vaunted “franchise teams” remaining alive (except Kansas), the Sweet Sixteen/Elite Eight weekend was properly the tournament’s feature, the last games to be played in true basketball arenas. We were treated to a spate of memorable high-speed battles, with reversals, overtimes, and heroic individual performances.
Auburn-North Carolina was a true track meet: Auburn took 37 threes, hitting 17. Times reporter Joe Drape wrote that “sometimes basketball can be simple game: you run, you shoot,” but he meant it quite differently from Bill Russell’s now-dated dictum that basketball is a simple game played by grown men in short pants. Two thirds of that statement are now quite contestable.
In the Regional Final, Duke’s twice-practiced Houdini escape act was emulated by Virginia, with a freak basket off a missed free throw they chased down well in their own backcourt to send the game into overtime, and then a near-tragic turnover by the amazing Carson Edwards, who replicated his 42 point total against defending champion Villanova, but threw an errant pass to lose the opportunity to send the game into a second overtime.
To make a three then was of course unlikely, but not more so than many of the amazing shots Edwards had already made. The strange twist was that the opportunity never should have existed, as Virginia could have fouled earlier in the possession, which would have denied Purdue the chance to tie with a three.
One could counter that a missed free throw had resulted in a basket to throw the game into overtime at 70-70 five minutes earlier, but this was a very rare instance in support of the argument against fouling to avoid the possibility of a three to tie. That argument presents this exact scenario: a missed free throw leading to an offensive rebound, leading to a basket.
But how many times have we seen that happen? When it did in the Virginia-Purdue game, it required a crazy-long chase down of the ball in the backcourt, as well as Ty Jerome’s “perfectly missed free throw”that was retrieved in the backcourt and resulted in the miraculous game tying shot that forced overtime.
Oh, those Regional Finals! Talk about playing with joy! With their best player Chuma Okeke out with a torn ACL, Auburn which had outrun, outshot, and decisively dispatched vaunted North Carolina, just could not get started against Kentucky: they did not score in the first three and a half minutes; unable to hit good shots, they trailed 22-11 after ten and a half. But they closed to 35-30 at half time, at which point Okeke wheeled himself courtside, and his team-mates took off, their bubbling energy proving uncontainable by an expertly coached and highly talented Kentucky team, which still managed to send the game into overtime.
Then, their non-stop churning 5′ 11″ point guard floor leader, and pace pusher Jared Harper turned scorer, tallying twelve overtime points. He made all eleven of his free throw attempts, for 26 points in a 77-71 OT win. To Charles Barkley’s equally bubbling delight, Auburn secured its first ever Final Four berth, as a lowly fifth seed. They would be underdogs once more, against the only One Seed remaining: Virginia.
In the last Regional Final, Duke made a twelve point run to lead 30-21, but Michigan State got the next 13, to lead 34-30 at halftime. The second half saw myriad two basket runs and fully 14 lead changes! Duke’s final possession, strangely, did not involve Zion, and fell short, with a missed free throw. Statistically, fast break points and turnovers (i.e The Cassius Winston Effect) determined the game.
All told: four incredibly close regional finals. The Final Four couldn’t be better and might even prove anticlimactic, though serious excitement and hype looms if the teams of Charles Barkley and Magic Johnson meet in the Final.
It’s hard to believe that Duke is out. Could it be that it’s not enough to say they were beaten by older more experienced and also quite talented players? How explain the three straight nail biters, the last of which Duke finally lost? Could it be that Krzyzewski, lionized as he is, especially since his role with the US Olympic team, got precious little out of this team, with all its blue chip young recruits, including the incomparable Williamson?
Interestingly, in the last seconds of the Michigan State game, Duke was in a position where they could not hope to prolong the game by fouling, because they had committed only four personal fouls in the half, which deprived them of the strategic possibility of putting Michigan State on the foul line. Instead, Tom Izzo’s Spartans would simply be taking the ball out again
I have never encountered this strategic wrinkle before, but its very occurrence argues for giving a foul or two a little earlier to insure against just such a situation. And why on its last possession did K not go to his best player, who had scored the critical last basket against Central Florida, challenging and scoring upon their towering 7’6” shot blocker Tacko Fall? R.J. Barrett simply is not Williamson!
Anyway, Zion is out, LeBron is sidelined and I am in the playgrounds with two of my buddies. We got next. We’re waiting for them to show up and play with us against whoever prevails in Minneapolis.