THE TEN-POINT SHOOTOUT: Packet 4

THE TEN-POINT SHOOTOUT: Packet 4

(THE SUBLIME PORTER – THE OTTO-MAN EMPIRE)

1. This team spent three first-rounders in 1977 on Ernie Grunfeld, Kent Benson, and small forward Marques Johnson. Owned for many years by Senator Herb Kohl, they won a coin-flip with the Suns to pick first in the draft in 1969. They were hampered in one Finals when guards Jon McGlocklin and Lucius Allen were lost to injury, and were the first career stop for four-time All-Star Bobby Dandridge. In one trade in 1975 they swapped their biggest star in 1975 for Elmore Smith and three other players, and in 1970 they traded Flynn Robinson and Charlie Paulk to the Cincinnati Royals for Oscar Robertson. Losers to the Celtics in 1974, in 1971 they swept the Baltimore Bullets to win their lone championship. For 10 Points, name this Central Division Team that was the original home of Lew Alcindor/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

ANSWER: The MilwaukeeBucks

This basically boils down to “do you know anything about the early Bucks except for Kareem” and then “here’s Kareem”. Flynn Robinson makes multiple appearances in the set.

2. This player was involved in a 2009 trade which swapped Tony Battie, Courtney Lee, and Rafer Alston for him and Vince Carter. Another team acquired him in a sign-and-trade featuring the immortal Gustavo Ayon. He missed a large part of the 2013-14 season due to a neck injury suffered during a collision with Gerald Wallace, and was the recipient of the 2011-12 Most Improved Player award. Leading the NBA in threes made in the 2011-12 lockout season, he hit a career-high 8 three-pointers on four occasions, once during his three years with the Orlando Magic. His career high 36 points came versus the Bulls in December 2013, including 7 threes, a number he would match in 2016 while filling in for the injured Anthony Davis. For 10 Points, name this sharpshooting stretch 4, most notably for the Hornets/Pelicans, who signed with Houston this offseason.

ANSWER: Ryan Anderson

Another one of the rare role-player tossups.

Description Acceptable

3. During this sequence Greg Anthony twice fell to the court, once with no timeouts remaining as time expired. An oft-forgotten part in this sequence was an absentminded intentional foul by Sam Mitchell, after which two missed free throws resulted in a chaotic scramble and a missed game-winner. Greg Anthony’s first foray to the parquet led to a poor inbounds pass by Anthony Mason which was picked off by the opposing team’s shooting guard. The first shot involved was scored over John Starks off an inbounds play, and its last, less-celebrated two points came off a loose-ball foul. This sequence depended heavily on the temporary presence of a shorter, uniform 22-foot three point line. Starting with the visiting team down 105-99, For 10 Points, name this sequence from the end of Game 1 of the 1995 Eastern Conference Semifinals, where MadisonSquareGarden was stunned by a flurry of points by an Indiana Pacer.

ANSWER: Reggie Miller’s 8 points in 9 seconds ((be generous with the time portion of the answerline) or the ending of Game 1 of the 1995 Eastern Conference Semifinals before mention)

I like this one a lot, especially since the circumstances surrounding “8 in9” were at least as interesting as the shots themselves, which did not decide the game.

4. One player with this last name was a backup center for Utah in the early ‘80s, peaking at 11 and 7 in 1983; his first name was Jeff. A journeyman small forward with this last name played in Seattle from 2004-8 and then bounced around doing bench work with Minny, Atlanta, Detroit, and Philly. One player with this last name played as a physical SG for the Knicks before being supplanted by John Starks; his nicknames included “Doug E Fresh” and “The Jordan Stopper”. Another player with a slightly different version of this name was a 13-time All-Star point guard for the Hawks and Sonics in the ‘60s and coached the Sonics to the 1979 championship; he also had substantial stints later on in Cleveland, Atlanta, and Toronto. For 10 Points, give this shared surname of Damien, Gerald, and Lenny, as well as a player dubbed “The Human Highlight Film.”

ANSWER: Wilkins/Wilkens

I’m not sure of the quizbowl ethics about having an answerline about players with similar but not identical last names, but it seemed like the best way to shoehorn Lenny Wilkens into the set.

5. In this game one team relied on backup center Jim Chones for much of the contest, counting on him to neutralize Caldwell Jones. This game was famously broadcast with a tape-delay of two and a half hours in favor of Dallas and The Dukes of Hazzard reruns in most of the country. On one team, Steve Mix scored 18 and Darryl Dawkins 14, but the other was missing a star center who had stepped on Lionel Hollins’ foot the previous game. This game’s final score was 123-107, and Jamaal Wilkes put up a forgotten 37 and 10 in this game, along with 16 from Michael Cooper. This game was played in the Spectrum, and Julius Erving would score 27 in a losing effort. For 10 Points, name this Finals game, seen as the coming-out party for Magic Johnson, who had a statline of 42-15-7 and played all five positions in the absence of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

ANSWER: 1980 NBA Finals, Game 6

Jim Chones comes up again. The tape delay clue is pretty famous in its own right, and speaks to a different priority for basketball on major networks as opposed to what we see today.

6. Unlikely players who accomplished this feat include Tony Delk, who did so in 2001 versus his old team, the Kings, and Andre Miller, who did so for a shorthanded Blazers squad against the Mavericks in 2010. Of the 132 players who have accomplished this statistical feat, 78 have done so only once. Tim Duncan only achieved this feat once, in an overtime loss versus Dallas in 2001, and Tony Parker did this once, vs. Minnesota in 2008. Vince Carter and Allen Iverson accomplished this in back-to-back games of the 2001 Eastern Conference Semifinals. Michael Jordan is second all-time in accomplishing this feat, doing so 33 times, including once versus the Knicks ten days after he returned from his basketball hiatus. For 10 Points, identify this statistical feat, which Wilt Chamberlain averaged doing across the 1961-2 season.

ANSWER: Scoring at least 50 points in a game (prompt on “40”, 60+ points applies to none of the clues)

For some reason, “players who scored 50” is fairly prominent on my trivia radar. As with the “quadruple-double” tossup, I imagine that once people start guessing statistical feats, this answer would rapidly become obvious.

7. For two years this team was coached by the luminous Butch Beard, and failed draft picks by them include Dwayne “Pearl” Washington and Chris Morris. One Sports Illustrated cover of this team in 1995 featured their star surrounded by Dwayne Schintzius, Benoit Benjamin, and Kenny Anderson. At one point, this team nearly changed their name to the Swamp Dragons, at the urging of team president Jon Spoelstra. They fired coach John Calipari in 1998, replacing him with Don Casey, and were the main employers of poor-shooting rebounder Jayson Williams. They once traded a first-rounder and Walter Davis to acquire Drazen Petrovic, and in 1997 traded Tim Thomas for Lucious Harris and Keith Van Horn. They spent their first-ever #1 pick in 1990 on the troubled Derrick Coleman. For 10 Points, name this perennial Eastern Conference doormat, whose fortunes were turned around in the early 2000s by the arrival of Richard Jefferson and Jason Kidd.

ANSWER: The New Jersey (or Brooklyn) Nets (or the New York Americans)

Who was looking for a question on the 1990s New Jersey Nets? Everyone in the audience, I assert. As with many Eastern teams, the division between hard and middle clues might have been a little obscure to me. There’s a Jayson Williams joke in there than I could not avoid making.

8. The book A View From Above seems to have started the discussion of this statistic, and one analyst claimed that this statistic was originally calculated using a form of daily planner called a Day-Timer. The Atlantic magazine published a 2012 article about this statistic, claiming that individual elements of this statistic had happened roughly 1.4 times per day. One reaction to this statistic was an In Living Color sketch which parodied the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, as well as a soap-opera-esque SNL sketch starring MC Hammer called “Remembrances of Love”. This statistic is corroborated by anecdotes from the memoir Just Like Any Other 7-Foot Black Millionaire who Lives Next Door, including an episode involving receiving oral sex from a stewardess. For 10 Points, name this statistic, a claim about an NBA star’s sexual promiscuity.

ANSWER: Wilt Chamberlain’ s claim that he slept with 20000 women

Labeling this “a statistic” is a little devious, but pronouns were always going to be an issue here. The ILC sketch typically takes a clever premise and executes it poorly. I haven’t seen the SNL skit. Jason Cheng apparently knows the names of most every player’s autobiographies, which doesn’t seem like knowledge worth rewarding, but there you go.

9. This phrase titles a book which includes the claim that one player deliberately threw mis-aimed passes to Bill Cartwright to expose his poor ball handling. That book includes one player’s criticism of his white teammates Ed Nealy and John Paxson as hard workers that didn’t have talent, and describes an incident where Will Perdue was punched in practice. In practice this phrase referred to a series of defensive guidelines which included an instant double-team upon the ball being caught, contesting any move to the basket, and using a maximum of physical contact. For 10 Points, identify this phrase, which titles a 1992 book by Sam Smith which first popularized the implausible notion that the namesake player was a sociopathic asshole, and also a defensive strategy employed by the Detroit Pistons against that player, a star for the Chicago Bulls.

ANSWER: The Jordan Rules

Some content for this tossup had to be edited for a similar tossup elsewhere in the set. I read a good chunk of the PDF of this book, which contains the expected level of quality you’d anticipate from a sports journalist.

Note to moderator: emphasize opening word

10. He dragged an injured Scottie Pippen off the court during play during the 1989 East finals, and once handed cash to a vendor, telling her to buy beers for two fans. This individual ran over Dwyane Wade during a 2005 playoff game, after which a foul was called on the uninvolved Damon Jones. One viral video of him had him stealing the ball from Kevin Durant before an attempted free throw in a playoff game vs. Memphis. He made multiple consecutive hops onto the court to illustrate a blocking foul against the Lakers in 2012. In 2007 he was suspended for the remainder of a season after ejecting Tim Duncan for laughing. For 10 Points, name this histrionic referee who retired due to a knee injury in 2016, known for a quick whistle on technical fouls.

ANSWER: Joey Crawford (both first and last name required, there’s a Dan Crawford out there)

The moderator instructions and pronoun use attempt to correct for transparency issues: how many answer-worthy referees are there? I can think of three, tops. Part of my strategy as the author was in the wording of phrases like the passive “a foul was called”, although I dispense with it by question’s end.

11. This coach once resigned in fury after player John Mahnken was traded. As a GM he pulled off a trade called the “Steal of the Century” by swapping picks that would become Rickey Brown and Joe Barry Carroll for a #3 pick and a center. He acquired another star center on draft day through trading Ed Macauley and Cliff Hagan for the 2nd pick, and as a coach led a team that included “Bones” McKinney which lost a Finals series to the Chicago Stags. Employed for 14 years by owner Walter A. Brown, he retired with more ejections than any coach in NBA history and won three championships as a GM and team president. He hired the league’s first black coach in 1966; fifteen years earlier he had drafted Chuck Cooper, its first black player. For 10 Points, name this cranky, cigar-smoking coach of the lengthy Boston dynasty of the ‘60s.

ANSWER: Arnold “Red” Auerbach

This would probably be incredibly transparent were it played in 1965.

12. Apparently, this phrase titles a 2010 article published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, fittingly about how consciousness of inequity can undermine performance. This phrase titles as a 2007 book by Matt de la Peña, and its 2008 movie adaptation, about an ambitious streetballer, and also titles a Yahoo Sports blog maintained by Kelly Dwyer. Its most famous proponent was ejected from a game after shouting it while playing for the New York Knicks in 2012. The earliest easily identifiable instance of it comes from a 2006 game vs. the Bucks after a Pistons player fouled Andrew Bogut. For 10 Points, identify this exclamation used after free throws awarded in error fail to connect, most often associated with the luminous Rasheed Wallace.

ANSWER: “Ball Don’t Lie!”

This tossup was edited post-play to reflect that Kelly Dwyer’s blog is more famous than I had realized.

13. This player began his career with the Utah franchise in the ABA before being sold to the Spirits of St. Louis. He was selected 5th in the ABA dispersal draft by the Trailblazers before being traded for a first-round pick and cash to the Buffalo Braves, for whom he would play two games total. One famous poster of this player had him holding a Nike-swoosh-shaped shepherd’s crook with basketballs littering a dusty ground. The last ABA player to play in the NBA, he reached the NBA Finals one year with a team that finished the season 40-42, in 1981, losing to Boston. He won three MVPs, in 1979, 82, and 83, and had his most successful season after being teamed with Bobby Jones and Julius Erving. The maker of the prediction “fo, fo, fo”, Fo 10 Points, name this power rebounder who was the centerpiece of the 76ers’ championship in 1983.

ANSWER: Moses Malone (first name required)

If one had time to think about it, the poster clue is probably a dead giveaway. These are very basic Moses clues – for a player this early on, I didn’t see the need to attempt cleverness.

14. Coaches for this team included holdover Bobby Wanzer, Charles Wolf, and Jack McMahon. One star player for this team was crippled because of an on-court head injury which ended his career; that was power forward Maurice Stokes, who had been paired with All-Star Jack Twyman. Their greatest playoff runs ended in the Eastern Finals, falling to the Celtics in 1963 and 1964. They did so by building a contender around center and eidetic memory-haver Jerry Lucas, as well as a dominant point guard. After 15 years housed at their city’s eponymous Gardens, they would change their location and become the Kansas City Kings in 1972, and later move on to Sacramento. The team of Oscar Robertson for ten years of his career, For 10 Points, name this NBA franchise which moved from Rochester in 1957.

ANSWER: The CincinnatiRoyals (accept the Rochester Royals, Kansas City Kings, or Sacramento Kings before mention)

Another batch of fairly obvious clues, but the Royals don’t really exist any more.

15. This player was selected in the second round by Cleveland with the 35th pick in 2002; he would later escape from the Cavs via negotiation tactics of questionable morality. He once accidentally punched referee Dan Crawford in the groin while celebrating a three-point play, and was a member of the 2004 and 2008 Olympic teams. An All-Star in 2006-7 and 2007-8, he was released via amnesty in 2014 and claimed by the Lakers. For a short period in 2012, he sported a hilarious spray-on fake hairline. While a potent offensive player because of a brilliant face-up jumper, he became a severe defensive liability during a four-year tenure with the Bulls. For 10 Points, name this power forward, who formed a potent offensive pair with a star point guard in the mid-00s in Utah.

ANSWER: Carlos Boozer

I have no memory of Boozer being on the 2008 Olympic team. While easily forgotten, he has a surprisingly large stash of memorable clues about him.

16. One commercial from Lebron James’ “Rise” series for Nike featured a modified version of this statement as its speaker ate a doughnut. In a 2011 issue of Vogue, pop singer Rihanna (REE-AH-NA) echoed this statement, and defended the use of vulgar language in her music. Its original speaker also stated “I am paid to wreak havoc”, and Dan Quayle called this statement “a family-values message”. This statement’s vehicle was created by a company running concurrent “Bo Knows” and “Spike and Mike” campaigns, and includes the line “Just because I dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids”. For 10 Points, identify this central statement of a black-and-white Nike Air commercial starring Charles Barkley, about the intersection of fame and parental responsibility.