Way Too Early Basketball Expectations-o-Meter: Tim Hardaway Jr.

I've been following NBA free agency, not with glee or any sort of excitement or optimism, but complete despair. Nay, I am a Bulls fan, a fan of a team team run by a guy gunning for the coveted Fiscal Responsibility Championship as opposed to an actual title that is real and has meaning. The Bulls have almost completely depleted their bench, losing Ronnie Brewer, Kyle Korver, John Lucas III, CJ Watson, and probably Omer Asik. The Bulls will also not bring back Brian Scalabrine, which is a crime almost as grave as Twitter hashtags sullying the Big House's artificial turf. Thus far, the Bulls have replaced the departing "Bench Mob"with Kirk Kinrich (which, as far as FA signings go, is basically like making a sequel of something instead of being creative and coming up with something original), Vladimir Radmonivic, and, it sounds like, Dark Milicic. With Derrick Rose rehabbing from the knee injury sustained during the playoffs and Luol Deng's wrist issues, the Bulls' situation for 2012-13 looks pretty bleak. Hello, lottery. Needless to say, this is not a basketball program to be excited about right now.

This is all a forced segue into something I am, in contrast, very excited about: that something is the 2012-13 University of Michigan basketball squadron. Unlike the Bulls, Beilein's Wolverines should be fairly deep and would seem to have few, if any, glaring weaknesses. They're experienced, talented, and eager to avenge what was a bitter end to the 2011-12 season.

It's been a while since the loss to Ohio (Ohio Ohio), so I've long ago come to terms with it and stopped losing sleep over Beilein deciding to allow Michigan to run the Kobe offense with Trey near the end of that game. It was not fun, but it's over. It was a sour final salvo to what was otherwise an awesome season. Insert your preferred verbiage here about the randomness of a single-elimination format and how it's all going to be okay because it's completely not even about wins or championships, you guys: it's about the game, having fun, and cracking joke about GRIT and TOUGHNESS. Everything else is just gravy.

In light of the stark dichotomy between my expectations vis-a-vis my respective basketball teams, I decided to take a look at what my expectations are for John Beilein's 6th Wolverine team. There's not much going on right now in this dead summer month before fall camp, and literally anything is better than talking about the NCAA's role in the PSU scandal, how the people in charge of college football are big dummies, and how there might not be anymore professional hockey played in 2012.

Since we are still about 7 weeks away from football and fall camp hasn't started yet, this is a good time to run briefly outline some expectations, player by player, for this 2012-13 basketball team. If I end up being right about any of these things, I'm going to turn into Phil Steele and just refer to my JAM-PACKED WITH FACTS correctness when I do these previews before next season.

Today, we'll start with the talented enigma that is THJ.

Career to Date
I'm going to reach back into my cultural worldview here, all the way to the fuzzy time known as "4th grade." Oh yes, I am in fact talking about Pokémon. If Hardaway's freshman season was analogous to Charmander (fire-breathing, a ferocity belying his youth/inexperience), his sophomore season was, naturally, very Charmeleon-esque: an awkward adolescent phase. Now, as we all remember, Charmeleon evolved into Charizard, who was pretty great. If THJ takes the proverbial next step in 2012, we're talking about a Charizardian winger, breathing fire all over the place and inspiring envy in fans of teams who do not have a Charizard card Tim Hardaway Jr. 

Last Year
Again, last year was sort of rough for THJ, one that led to a lot of recalibration when it comes to assessing THJ's abilities and/or future as a Michigan basketball player. Was his torrid freshman 3-point shooting (36.7%) a sort of extended fluke? Well, after shooting 28% last year, you would certainly not be wrong to think along those lines.

Otherwise, THJ's overall FG% remained roughly the same (42%). He averaged 14.6 ppg after dropping 13.9 ppg in 2010-11. He turned the ball over quite a bit more last season (66 turnovers last season vs. 45 during his freshman season). In addition to 3-point shooting, it became painfully obvious that his handles were not quite as crisp or world-destroying as we might have imagined them to be when he was still a freshman and we hadn't had enough time to objectively consider his abilities.

He got to the line more last season (4.4 FTA per game, averaging exactly 1 more attempt per than '10-'11), which was partly--well, mostly--a product of him simply having to create more with Darius Morris wearing purple and gold instead of maize and blue. For all of his abilities, Trey wasn't the facilitator that Morris was, but I'll address that when I get to it.

Things That Were Good 

Well, last season wasn't all bad, obviously. THJ flashed some of that freshman year Kobe-esque gunnery (the good kind, not the I'm going to take a million shots no matter what kind) here and there, although admittedly not as often as one would've liked. After non-conference play had ended, THJ was shooting 33% from 3; not exactly transcendent, but not completely terrible.

Then the wheels fell off during conference play. He went: 1/7 against PSU at home, 0/7 @IU, 0/8 @Iowa, 2/7 @OSU, 2/8 against IU at home, 0/6 @Nebraska, 2/9 @Northwestern...and so on. You get the picture. I realize that I'm not actually talking about good things, which is what this section is supposed to be for.

After Michigan took a weird thumping at home at the hands of a hungry Purdue team (Michigan's only loss at Crisler all year), the Wolverines traveled to Champaign to take on a desperate but dysfunctional Illini team. THJ went out and had the biggest game of his season, dropping 25 points and 11 boards. He was about as efficient as you could possibly be, going 6/7 from the field and a perfect 4/4 from beyond the arc. Additionally, he was a frequent visitor to the charity stripe, where he went 9/10. This is the game you point to from last season to say "why don't you do that all the time?" Of course, it's not that easy (plus, Illinois was sort of terrible).

Things That Were Bad
Well, I already said most of them in the last section, but...THJ had, shall we say, a deep-seated enthusiasm for the bad 3. Early shot clock, heat check, you name it. And, you know, I get it. As a gunner, it's frustrating to keep shooting, to have people tell you to keep shooting, and to know that you can hit from 3 because you did the year before, only to just keep missing and end up with a sub-30% mark on the season.

Other than that, THJ had trouble handling the ball at times. He had a tough time breaking his defenders down on the wing, and seemed to do much better off the ball when making slice cuts to the middle or attacking in transition, which Michigan did not find itself doing all that much as one of the slower teams in the league. Commentators keep joking about how "Daddy could never do that" whenever THJ flashes a bit of athleticism, but if there's one that that Dad has on him, it's a nasty, ankle-incinerating crossover.

 Last but not least, I fully believe that TJ could be a defensive stopper if he wanted to. There were numerous times when his effort didn't seem to be there, or he was simply being lazy with his footwork and focus. One example of a defensive gaffe that comes to mind came at the end of the first Northwestern game, when THJ fouled Alex Marcotullio beyond the 3-point line with Michigan up 3 and the clock just about to run out. Luckily, Marcotullio clanked the first of three attempts, but that sort of mistake just can't happen and is emblematic of THJ's occasional lack of defensive focus.

If THJ Was A Literary Figure. Franz Kafka. Often works in short, streaky bursts of fevered, prolific brilliance. Wildly divergent performance often makes one ask existentialist questions like "why am I a bug?" or "why am I shooting 9 percentage points worse from 3 this year?" Earlier work (The Metamorphosis, second half of the 2010-11 conference slate) is more widely known and praised than later material (The Trial, The Castle, 2011-12 season). His work makes you go both AHHHHH and AHHHHH, one in a good way and one in a very bad, frightening way.


Things That Would Be Prettyyyy Prettyyyy Prettyyyy Good

• Be more efficient. THJ was 31st in the conference in eFG%, putting him in between two Hoosiers in the rankings (Oladipo and Watford). As a junior, you'd think that a hopefully more well-informed shot selection is in the cards. Either way, if Tim's going to be the First Team All-Big Ten that many think he can be, he needs to value the ball a little more. 
• Less turnovers. His turnover percentage is not that awful when you look at it (14.5%), I guess, but it still seemed like THJ carrying the ball into the lane was just about a 50-50 proposition as to whether or not he'd turn it over or draw a foul. We know that Tim (and the rest of the team) has been working hard this offseason, so we can only hope that the offseason competitions and ball-handling drills will have an obvious effect come November. 
• D up. Not much to expand upon here, but I'd like to see THJ bring it a little more consistently on D. He's still arguably Michigan's best athlete (GRIII sounds like his biggest competition in that department), and he has the ability to stick to the conference's best wingers if he wants to. For a guy that can jump like Tim can, it would be nice to see him hit the boards a little harder (he averaged 3.9 per game last year). I think he could make serious hay on the offensive glass; I wonder if Beilein decides to put a greater emphasis on the offensive boards now that Michigan has some depth in the front court? With the added size on the roster, Michigan doesn't need his rebounding as much, but I think he should be able to pick up a few more double doubles this season after notching two of them in 2011-12. 

OFFICIAL EXPECTATIONS FOR SOMETHING THAT'S FOUR MONTHS AWAY 

FROM STARTING 

I think that Tim's offensive output only improves a little bit, but not because he hasn't gotten any better. Michigan simply has more options in the front court, Stauskas and Vogrich will be taking their fair share of triples, and Burke will still be around being all high usage-y and awesome. Tim will also be a little more efficient than he has been, I think. THJ put up just under 15 a game last season, and most people would probably say that his sophomore year was a bit of a disappointment. If anything, that speaks to the somewhat unrealistic expectations that THJ's freshman year created.

As far as post-season recognition goes, I think that THJ is easily Second Team All- Big Ten with only minimal improvement. Otherwise, if he improves as I imagine he will, he will be First Team All-Big Ten this season and the undisputed top shooting guard in the conference (after having moved back from the 3, where he spent most of last season).

On Losing, Coping, and the Meaning of This

On two consecutive weekends, Michigan saw an otherwise successful season come to an end with an almost existential abruptness. Seniors--Zack Novak, Stu Douglass, Shawn Hunwick--saw their time as Michigan athletes end on a sour note, an otherwise cheerful classical symphony ending in an out-of-place minor key.

The basketball team spent the time between November and March actualizing the entirety of its potential, doing everything that it could with what relatively little it had to spare. The ride was a nearly ceaseless crescendo, a buildup to something great. It fell apart in the end; the idealism of deserved Fate--of positive outcomes reserved for those who have traversed the darkest corners of the realm of athletic pursuit--was dealt a heavy blow. Is this how it was supposed to end? The curtain falls and you sit in your seat in the dark amphitheater waiting for more, and more never comes. That is all there is. You get up and leave.

The hockey team rolled into the sequestered vacuum that is the NCAA hockey tournament with a shiny #1 seed and a roster that had seemingly experienced the athletic equivalent of a renaissance. Whether by virtue of Jon Merrill's return or survivalist instinct, the latter mirroring the same sort of late-season push we saw last year and the year before, it was breathtakingly automatic, the quintessential example of the sports cliche "flipping the switch." The streak was not only intact, it was as if it had never been in danger. As others more qualified than I can probably corroborate, this wasn't a vintage Michigan team featuring electron virtuosos like T.J. Hensick or top-notch two-way stalwarts like Kevin Porter. And yet, the results speak for themselves.

After Lynch's late equalizer and the remaining time expiring without another goal, it was not difficult to harken back to last year's championship game, in which regulation time ended 2-2 after a late Michigan goal. UMD's first goal bounced just over Hunwick's outstretched pads, the second on a UMD power play, in which a shot in close rebounded almost miraculously onto the UMD attacker's tape for a second point blank opportunity. A Rohrkemper goal tied it late, like Lynch's late goal on Friday; overtime hockey once again. The land of dread. The land of affirmation. Overtime hockey is elaborate, fevered theater. It is a Shakespearean sword fight, each combatant slowing bleeding out his life slash by slash, until one or the other has no more blood to give and thus clutches, spins, and falls.

UMD's final goal came after Michigan had spent most of the early minutes of overtime in its own zone, frantically attempting to catch its breath, to stave off the final blow. A crashing UMD forward, essentially untouched, came through and potted the winning goal. It was over.

Again, Michigan entered the perilous domain of overtime hockey, looking to make its second wind count. Survival was the only instinct playing out at this juncture. At that point, everything else fades away, ancillary to the order of the moment. Overtime hockey is so Darwinian thought set upon the framework of sport.

A rebound and a weak backcheck later and the puck was in the back of the net only a few minutes into the overtime period. Again, it was over, as if someone was repeating a bad joke after it failed to elicit laughter after the first telling. There was nothing Hunwick could do, and the fact that he was mostly helpless makes a bitter end even more difficult to take. After a career filled with save after incomprehensible save, saves that defied the laws of physics and conventional wisdom, it would all naturally end with a sequence beyond his control, one of those moments in which agency is nowhere to be found. The puck didn't care what came before; it went in the wide open net, invited by its stark dimensional reality. The puck was oblivious to history. It always is.

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After these things, there must come some sort of response. Experience gives one the ability to skip certain steps in post-loss processing, insofar as watching sports can inspire feelings of personal "loss." You've got your denial, and it saves you and everybody around you a lot of time and broken household items if you just skip to acceptance.

Single-elimination hockey is Fate neutered, in which the thing that actually happens seems off, askew even, like a picture on the wall that has fallen to either side. A degree off-center. Bizarro. More so than anything else, the NCAA single-elimination format takes Fate, capitalized, and sends it through a grinder and a furnace, in the process revealing that Fate is not really a crystallized absolute but a collection of individual possibilities, flecks of charred, hardened reality. All it is is survival; the fleck that makes it through is the one that is. That's it. It's a little unappealing, isn't it?

But, I think, that's how it is. Whether we're talking about the Big Dance or NCAA hockey, Destiny and Fate--capitalized--are not self-aware. They don't know what the basketball team has been through throughout the span of Zack and Stu's careers, or the fact that the Michigan hockey team was fighting to continue one streak while also trying to vanquish another (i.e., no national titles since 1998). This sort of literal, rationalist thought sort of guts the entire enterprise of collegiate athletics of some of its most idealistic aspects--that things are or aren't meant to be, that people deserve certain things, that outcomes affirm or erase the journey--but I think that's mostly okay. Is that a loser's attitude? I honestly don't know. It may just be white noise in the end.

When I think back on the career of a player like, say, Mike Hart, what comes to me immediately is not the fact that he never beat the Buckeyes or won a national championship. If that's what comes to you then I think our respective worldviews are doomed to never meet at any point.

The way that these two seasons ended was bitter, unfortunate, and for a brief period of time after these games ended, seemingly unfair. The basketball team had its chances; hit even a couple of the many missed layups/bunnies and trade one of those late Burke threes for a possession of actual offense and Michigan probably wins despite being outplayed. The hockey team had its chances. The Wolverines outshot Cornell and had over double the PP opportunities, including 5 in the excruciating second period. Any grievances about the ostensible "randomness" of the whole thing seem to be directed at the game of hockey itself rather than the format of the tournament. The simple fact that Michigan has come away with only two titles throughout this over two decade long stretch of tournament appearances is irrelevant.  These things happen for a reason, and as much as we like to write these losses off as either instances of grand cosmic misfortune or the absurdity that is the single-elimination format, it's all about cold, hard probabilities and inglorious toil. Even with probability and work ethic on one's side, it may not work out, and not for lack of luck. Hockey is often beyond explanation in this way, and by explanation I mean an explanation that is all-inclusive/comprehensive or one that we want to hear, that assuages the pangs of frustration that follow such a loss. Sometimes it bounces this way or that way. Why? It just does, and it does often, so that patterns seem to appear to us even though they do not exist.

Hockey is "close but no cigar" taken to its logical extreme. It is a sport that, in a way, mirrors life: work really hard and you might get you want. Tight defense, shots, PP opportunities...these don't guarantee success. Despite the attempts to distill the essence of sports into verifiable statistics and formulas, it is often just a game of hamfisted probability. Ascribing vague notions of luck or fate to the outcomes of sport or life seems a bit pointless, but the process of coping is, in a way, inherently pointless.

Then again, maybe this is my own way of coping. Maybe looking at the outcome of the Cornell and Ohio games in the way that I am is just my way of distancing myself from the proceedings. I know that I didn't always look at things this way, as if these losses suggest anything more than the fact that, on these days, my team lost because of X, Y, and Z. In light of the Sugar Bowl and all the breathless talk of redemption that accompanied it--from many, including myself--this all might seem a little hypocritical. Maybe. Then again, as sports fans, we often say what benefits us at the time, even when we may claim otherwise in other situations.

What is clear to me is that Shawn Hunwick and all of the other seniors wanted this more than you or I. The same of course applies to Zack and Stu. The level to which they wanted this eclipses yours, rendering your frustration inconsequential by comparison. After the layers of personal frustration and other somewhat selfish (but understandable) reactions are cast away to the ether, all that remains is memory. I've said this many times before and I'll say it again: championships may come or they may not, but the memories that these players give us while representing Michigan are what matter most because they are what endure. While I would have hoped for a better end for Hunwick, Novak, and Douglass, or a victory in The Game for Henne, Hart, and Long, it becomes increasingly immaterial as the years go on.

One day, a young child will be taken to Yost for the first time. A mother or father will be able to tell this child, their child, this tabula rasa of a being, the story of Shawn Hunwick. This story could quite possibly plant the very first inkling of the beauty of sport in this child's head. True to hockey form, it also might not, but there will be another day when another child is told the same story. This will happen again and again until one day, the child finally understands. I truly do not know if being able to tell the tale of a championship once won is worth more or less than that. Let the details come later.