You're an OK player. Sure. Not bad at times at the local gym.
But once in a while, the shot fairy visits. You're open from the free throw line early in the game: splat. Nailed it. Later you're open from the corner, and you've got that too. Then from the top of the key, and they're getting to overplay you. So you dive in for a layup, and the defensive players are getting cranky at each other. Things keep up, and you end up making ten straight.
After the game, these guys you have played with for years, do they think you have suddenly become a much better player? They do not. Instead, they throw up their hands in the knowledge that you have been visited by the shot fairy.
She's magical, mercurial, and capricious. She could visit just about anyone, and it's no special credit to you that, on this one night, you happen to be the guy. (Remember how Michael Jordan held his palms incredulously to the sky after he hit all those threes in Game 1 of the 1992 NBA Finals? Watch about the 4:40 mark. I don't know what he is saying, but is might as well be "hello shot fairy!") Next week it might be Vern, or Nickie, or just about anyone. That's how everyone sees it. And if the shot fairy does abandon you the next time you play, well then they're right.
That's why, in basketball, shooting streaks are suspicious.
The same thing goes for winning streaks. You start the season winning more than you're losing, and sitting at ten and five, and you're a halfway decent team. You start the season losing five, and then rattle off ten straight, and nobody can say for sure what you are. Are you the same halfway decent team you would have been otherwise, or are you an also-ran 0-5 team that has been visited by the shot fairy's friend, the win fairy?
The real answer is: it depends on what happens next. You're a team with something to prove.
Boston was like that. A terribly crappy team for years, they made some trades and started the season on a win streak that meant almost nothing to a lot of people. "Wait 'til defenses figure them out," and the like. Finally Boston lost a game or two, but otherwise kept on winning, and stopped seaming streaky. Now they're 27-3, and sure they have a flaw or two, but by and large they have convinced everyone that this is a case of good basketball, not some visit from fairyland.
Another team that may or not have been hanging out with fairies is my team, the Portland Trail Blazers. They have had a season sprinkled with pixie dust: OK for a brief stretch, miserable for most of the season, and magical for one long run of thirteen wins. That run was so long, in fact, that at this early stage of the season it was enough to bring them within three and a half games of conference-leading Phoenix.
But does it mean anything? They're seventh in the west at the moment, but not even Portland GM Kevin Pritchard, talking to ESPN's Chad Ford yesterday, feels certain Portland is a playoff team. (I have been skeptical, too.) He points out that the team still has much to prove on the road. Something about this strong record doesn't feel all that strong.
Since the streak ended in Utah, Portland won a game in Minnesota, but no one thinks that means anything. Minnesota is struggling so hard their own coach, Randy Wittman, as reported by Mike Trudell on their official website, is bragging that they're almost as good as the Knicks:
Before the game, Wittman pointed out that if Minnesota had managed to win even half of the eight games in which it led or was tied heading into the fourth quarter, it would have eight wins. Memphis, Miami and New York have eight wins, Seattle nine, the L.A. Clippers 10 and Sacramento, Chicago, Milwaukee and Charlotte 11. Is there really such a big difference between Minnesota and those other teams?
So, last night in Chicago, against the rejuvenated Bulls, on national TV, the Blazers had their first real chance to prove that they have a little post-streak something.
I tuned in a little after half-time, and the Blazers were down 14. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what it looks like when the win fairy departs for the next town.
But check out the gameflow. Around the time I turned it on the Blazers began marching back.
As commentator Doug Collins would later remark, the Blazers showed us all something. Watch Jarrett Jack's gritty three-point play that sealed it in double overtime. Sure Chicago is still finding its sea legs. And yes, Luol Deng would have changed things if he had not been injured half the night. But Ben Gordon and Joe Smith were scoring, Brandon Roy was playing hurt at the end, and the Bulls wouldn't let the Blazers have any defensive rebounds. Yet the Blazers gritted out the win in double overtime.
My favorite highlight -- the one I made my wife wake up to watch, was not James Jones' block, but Brandon Roy stripping a key rebound out of the hands of Joe Smith (which as far as I can tell did not make any of the highlight packages).
It was a quality road win for a young team. Despite a tough schedule, Portland has now won 15 out of 16 games. Last night's game sure doesn't make the season, but it was a nice test and they passed. Now they join the big boys with 20 wins. At the end of this season, I'm thinking we'll look back at last night as the time that this team started convincing people this story is about a lot more about basketball and a lot less about fairies.
