Fish tale

The Utah Jazz came out of nowhere to pull out Game 2 on the Golden State Warriors Wednesday night but it was partially aided by a guy who wasn't even in the state when the opening tip took place.

I've been a fan of the Los Angeles Lakers for more than 20 years and in those two decades Derek Fisher and in eight seasons in L.A. became one of my three favourite Lakers of all time. Likely he isn't on a lot of Laker fans all-time lists but Fish was wildly underrated during his time in the City of Angels.

But Fisher — who is best known for his 0.4 shot — had another moment in the spotlight Wednesday when he flew back to Salt Lake City after being by the bedside of his 10-month old daughter who is fighting retinoblastoma, a rare cancer.

And in that paragraph are two reasons why Fisher's in my top three list alongside Magic Johnson and James Worthy. He was more clutch than anyone remembers (the 0.4 shot just got all the attention even though he was a legit second option to Kobe late in games) and he was always a class act and the consummate professional.

Fish hit a big three in OT for Utah and caused a late turnover on Baron Davis, both aspects of his game that have been generally overlooked. Because Fisher played in L.A. for most of his career under the shadow of Kobe and because now his later years are as a bench player, he's never truly been recognized as a key contributor. Truly he's never been a guy who you would ask to carry your team, but is he the guy you want to be a part of the bigger picture? Absolutely yes.

After arriving via charter flight late in the third quarter, Fisher finished with five points and three assists in just 10 minutes of playing time, fittingly a rather pedestrian line for a guy who for years has always played just outside the spotlight.

What is value?

Following up yesterday's blog on the NBA's rookie of the year, time to chime in briefly on the upcoming announcement of the league's MVP.

It is likely that Dallas' Dirk Nowitzki will be named shortly as the MVP after a season in which he led the Mavs to a 67-win effort by averaging 24.6 points and 8.9 rebounds per game while shooting 50 per cent from the field and 42 per cent from deep.

Whether it be voters' hesitance to give Steve Nash a third-straight MVP or simply that Nowitzki was the best performer on, statistically, the league's best team, it's unlikely that anyone other than the German will garner the coveted trophy.

Unlike the rookie blog, we won't get overly into the statistical argument of Dirk v. Nash, but suffice to say Nowitzki's numbers are far from stunning in an historical sense. His stats don't rank him in the same echelon as many past MVPs and certainly Nowitzki's season will go down as relatively unmemorable for an MVP.

But besides all of that, there is likely no bigger indication of Dirk's un-MVP-ness than what has shaken down during the playoffs, which sadly don't play a role in the voting. Nowitzki couldn't even get his No.1-seed Mavericks into the second round of the playoffs and disappeared for much of the six-game upset that the Golden State Warriors dealt his team. His most significant minutes — when he bagged a pair of threes and had a huge block in a deciding late run in Game 5 — were a rarity in a series in which he was just another player.

Put two snapshots from the past week of Nash and Nowitzki together:

• Nowitzki lays an egg in a series-deciding game in Oakland (2-for-13 for eight points) and his team, the one that he is the unquestioned leader of, is bombed by 25 points by an 8-seed.

• Game 1 of the Phoenix-San Antonio semifinal series and Nash collides with Tony Parker, busting up his nose until it's an ugly, lacerated mess. Parker drops in a heap, Nash barely flinches, later hits a key three with bloodied bandages on his sniffer and is forced out of the game because the medical staff couldn't stop the thing from leaking. San Antonio wins the game, Nash finishes with 33 points and the Spurs afterwards sounded almost gloomy about the win, acknowledging that Nash's presence in the final minute would have likely changed the complexion of the finish.

Now, I'm not like many of the Canadian basketball fans who are just unabashedly pro-Nash because he happens to be one of us (although South Africans also have a claim to him, don't forget). He's a pretty damn good player, though. But what is most striking about Nash is his desire and fire to simply not let his team lose games. You see him take over games and you know that any game he's involved in, the Suns have a chance to win. His 18.6 points per game and 11.6 assists per are both equal or better than both of his previous MVP seasons and he shot the three at a ridiculous 50 per cent.

You feel like teams legitimately are concerned with how to defend Nash whereas the book on Dirk remains to pressure him on the perimeter, get physical with him and you can force him to struggle. It was less so this season than in the past, but the option still very much remains.

It's difficult, then, to say this is the most valuable basketball player to his team in the NBA even though the league and its voters are likely just days away from (mistakingly) telling you that he is.

---

A few other random notes:
• Roger Clemens coming back to New York is the winner for the award of running storyline that less and less people are paying attention to. Clemens unretired for the fourth time Saturday and signed a one-year, $28-million deal with the Yanks, giving the Bombers a much-needed arm in their starting rotation. No one should doubt that Clemens can still compete at a high level — he's proven year after year in his 40s that he can — but adding one ace to the rotation likely won't be enough for New York, which has suffered injury problems and has had a record 10 pitchers start games already through 30 contests. The Yankees are 5 1/2 back of the Red Sox and have beaten Boston just once in six outings this season.

Bold and ridiculous predictions are traditions in the Point After, so here's another: They're done.

• Also done are the Toronto Blue Jays who came into the season with such hope after a slew of off-season signings that beefed up their offence but failed to address their need throughout the bullpen. Injuries and blown saves have just served to highlight the glaring needs the Jays still had if they want to be in the elite of the money-grubbing AL East.

• Mentioned this prediction verbally back on April 8 after the San Diego Padres 2-1 win over Colorado, but never made it public record. Now I feel I have to get it out before it becomes less and less bold:

Jake Peavy will be the National League's Cy Young Award winner.

At 4-1 with a 1.75 ERA and only one home run allowed thus far, he's certainly making an early case for the award and is getting my nod for "Thing That Actally Makes Me Pay Attention To The Baseball Season" award.

The Rookie

If you don't like Chuck Swirsky, you really don't like him. If you like him ... well, you've got bigger issues in your life.

But not hard to wonder why Swirsky, the all-the-time voice of the Toronto Raptors, is disliked by those who find him, among many things, completely unlistenable.

Portland Trail Blazers' guard Brandon Roy was named the NBA's rookie of the year recently, garnering 127 out of a possible 128 first-place votes and running away with an award that had practically been given to him two months ago. While the Memphis Grizzlies put together a unique campaign to get their guy, Rudy Gay, some love and Toronto-centric media trumpeted Andrea Bargnani for the prize, the consensus for some time was that Roy was the guy and very few argued it.

But there's that one lingering vote. The one first-place ballot that went to Bargnani instead of Roy. One person in all the media granted rights to vote on such things thought Bargnani was the guy over Roy. Three guesses as to whom it was.

Swirsky has received hate mail over his decision to check off Bargnani instead of Roy and there's no discussing how ridiculous and infantile that is. If your life has a section in it where you take the time to compose hate mail over one person's vote for the rookie of the year balloting, well — to take a basketball term — it's time to sub out. Shoot, it's not even the most coveted of the individual awards.

But Swirsky was recently quoted in The Oregonian this way:

This is not an anti-Brandon Roy thing, I hope people understand that. This was strictly a case of me seeing Bargnani day after day. He was a significant player on a playoff team."

Undoubtedly the Italian was a big part of Toronto's nice little regular season and he probably blossomed quicker than the pre-season naysayers had expected. But the problem with Swirsky's statement is when he says it was because he saw Bargnani day after day. He would have, conceivably, seen Roy play twice.

Swirsky has been bashed on more than one occasion for being unabashedly homer towards his beloved Raptors and anyone who watched Toronto broadcasts on the regular will have heard him big-up his boy Bargnani almost shamelessly.

The statistics between Roy and Bargnani were extremely similar but Roy has an edge in virtually every significant stat:

	PPG	RPG	APG	FG%	3FG%	FT%
ROY	16.8	4.4	4.0	45	37	83
BARGNANI	11.6	4.0	1.0	42	37	82

Roy also did this on one of the most atrocious teams in the NBA. You could make the argument that Bargnani assisted in a revamped and suddenly not so dreadful Raptors team and its newfound success. Until you consider that as rag-tag as Toronto was, it wasn't nearly on the same level as what Portland had to work with. For any player to step into an environment such as the one in Portland and make something good happen is commendable, for a rookie to step in and do it is remarkable.

But this isn't so much an argument for Roy vs Bargnani as it is against Swirsky who, try as he might to make his pick seem objective, can rarely be counted on to make a brains-first decision when he pretty much showed his allegiances in his quote. So whether the fault is in the process for allowing people who are going to be naturally biased to whatever team they see regularly, or the fault is on the person making the vote, Swirsky is entitled to his opinion even if an entire population tells him he's wrong.

But that's the problem. It's one thing that we have to listen to his goofy and non-sensical catch-phrases, sit through his homering and look at his made-for-radio face but if you tell me he actually has an impact on things other than his headset and cough button — things that matter on some level outside Raptor TV-land — that's when I'd suggest we cut his mike.