2008 April 25 « Silk Roads and Siamese Smiles

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Rajon Rondo — Celtics Playmaker

In UK Basketball, Uncategorized on April 25, 2008 at 9:06 pm

A new and improved Rondo leads the Celtics into the playoffs. It’s good to see more and more Kentucky boys playing prominent roles on Championship contenders in the NBA

By Peter May, Special to Yahoo! Sports Apr 23, 1:08 pm EDT

On the day before he participated in his very first NBA playoff game, Rajon Rondo of the Boston Celtics was invited over to Ray Allen’s rather sumptuous suburban digs for food and conversation. Allen’s mom cooked up the meal. Rondo and Allen watched the playoffs, with Rondo zoning in on the Hornets’ Chris Paul.

At one point during the Hornets-Mavericks game, Rondo turned to his host and said, “I’ve got to be better than the guy I’m going to guard.’’ That would be the Hawks’ Mike Bibby, savvy playoff veteran. The next night, Rondo had 15 points, nine assists and two steals in the Celtics’ rather convincing 104-81 victory over Atlanta. Bibby? Five points, one assist.

“Only one game,’’ Rondo said. “I can do better.”

Rondo months ago put to rest any thought or suggestion that he might not be up to the task to be the starting point guard on a potential NBA championship team. He has made what seems to be a seamless transition from questionable shooter/occasional firebrand to calm, cool, assassin who, as he showed Atlanta in Game 1, is an utter pest on defense and, on offense, is to be left alone at one’s own peril.

Rondo’s made believers all over the NBA. Isiah Thomas, in one of his rare moments of lucidity, said of him, “He’s the guy who really makes them go. They don’t have another guy who does what he does. He’s tough. He’s gritty. He rebounds. He’s smart. He’s a perfect complement to those guys. I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Utah point guard Deron Williams is also an admirer. “He’s got the tools to be one of the best defensive point guards in this league – the long arms, the big, quick hands, the great anticipation,’’ Williams said. “And he’s added a lot to his offensive game. You can’t play off of him.”

But what most stands out in watching Rondo is that the kid – and he still is only 22 – never seems to get rattled. Nothing fazes him, be it a bad shooting night, an earful from coach Doc Rivers or a blown defensive assignment which finds Kevin Garnett in his face. “He was always that way,’’ asserts Tubby Smith, Rondo’s coach at Kentucky. “But that’s what you want from a point guard.”

Rondo also has evolved into a leader on the floor who now is unafraid to take shots, order his teammates around and generally play like a point guard is supposed to play. Other than Williams and Paul, there may not be another young point guard in the NBA with as much upside as this kid, who, lest we forget, is just completing his second NBA season with a completely different set of teammates (and circumstances) than he had in his first NBA season.

“He puts so much time into his game so it’s nice to see a guy who works on it and see it come to fruition,’’ Rivers said. “He’s so ahead of the curve. He started last year with a great IQ, which always helps because then you have something to work with. And then he has this self motivation that he wants to be good, that he wants to be the best. And he has the stubborn streak that sometimes gets in his way, but he has learned to move that out of the way and allowed himself to be coached.

“He’s one of the few that I’ve ever had in all my years of coaching that I’ve had to get on to trust his own natural abilities. And he has unbelievable natural instincts.”

Bibby already knew about Rondo long before Game 1. Rondo’s high school coach in Louisville was Doug Bibby and, as Rondo noted, “He’s kin with Mike.” As in, cousins. So Doug Bibby sent Rondo out to work with Mike Bibby in the summer when Mike Bibby was playing for the Sacramento Kings. Mike Bibby mostly remembers a skinny, determined teen-ager, but, he said, he told Rondo that the kid had a chance if he stayed with it.

BOSTON – APRIL 23: Rajon Rond…
Getty Images – Apr 23, 9:09 pm EDT

Staying with it has not been a chore for Rondo. He knew his outside shot was always going to be a question mark (his high field-goal percentage at Kentucky was due mainly to layups and short shots) so he took 500 jump shots a day over the summer. He shot 41.8 percent as a rookie. He shot 49.2 percent this past season and, as he showed against the Hawks, the sight of him nailing an open 15- to 18-footer no longer is accompanied by dropping jaws. He’s a legitimate candidate for Most Improved Player when you think about it; Detroit coach Flip Saunders said he’d pick Rondo if he had a vote.

Rivers also sees an attitude improvement in his young guard. While Rondo projects the image of Mr. Unflappable on the court, he also has an emotional side, the stubborn side that Rivers mentioned.

“We work on that,’’ Rivers said. “He had that problem at Kentucky. Someone would tell him something and he always saw it as criticism, instead of coaching. He’d close down. If there’s a big improvement this year, that’s it. Now, if someone tries to get on him or tell him something, he doesn’t answer with a question anymore. He listens and digests it. It has allowed him to play freer.”

And it goes without saying that adding an offensive dimension to Rondo’s game makes the Celtics that much more unguardable, not to mention practically unbeatable. Opposing coaches are still trying to figure out ways to not have Rondo beat you with his defense, his rebounding (he actually led Kentucky in rebounding in his second season there), his athleticism (he was a high school quarterback), his quickness and his knack for appearing in the right place at the right time. Now, they have to figure out ways to have him not beat you at the other end, where fellows like Allen, Paul Pierce and Garnett are roaming.

“We were trying to match a bigger guy on Rondo, but he made some shots and we have to live with that,” Atlanta coach Mike Woodson said.

The Hawks get another opportunity on Wednesday night in Game 2 before the series shifts to Atlanta over the weekend. Rondo freely admits he may not be able to replicate the impressive offensive game he had in Game 1. But he is determined to surpass the just-as-impressive defensive game he had in Game 1.

The morning after he had abused Bibby, Rondo was back at practice, going over tape with Rivers.

“I was trying to go back and see what I did wrong, how to stop Bibby,” Rondo said.

But he only scored five points!

“I know,’’ Rondo said. “But I want to shut him down. Those five points he had were because of two wide-open looks that I gave him. I can’t settle for that. And I won’t settle for that.”

If the favorites win out, The Rondo and the Celtics will play against Prince and the Pistons for the Eastern Conference Championship. It doesn’t get any better than that.

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Cambodia, Cheung Ehk, Democratic Kampuchea, Khmer Rouge, Killing Fields, Phnom Penh, Pol Pot

The Killing Fields of Cambodia

In Cambodia, culture, Travel on April 25, 2008 at 4:58 pm

“Chea, how come good doesn’t win over evil?” young Chanrithy Him asks her sister, after the brutal Khmer Rouge have seized power in Cambodia, but before hunger makes them too weak for philosophy. Chea answers only with a proverb: When good and evil are thrown together into the river of life, first the klok or squash (representing good) will sink, and the armbaeg or broken glass (representing evil) will float. But the broken glass, Chea assures her, never floats for long: “When good appears to lose, it is an opportunity for one to be patient, and become like God.”

from the book When Broken Glass Floats by Chanrithy Him

Cambodia. Pol Pot– Brother Number 1. The Khmer Rouge. Infamous for the “killing fields.” Brought to the notice of the West by the movie which shares the name. Cambodia is synonymous with these fields, with death, with genocide on a massive scale. The Khmer Rouge were the authors of this tragedy. Turning children into murderers. Turning the “base people” against the “new people.” Turning children against their parents. But Cambodia is more than this tragedy.

Cambodia is much more than that stretch of time dominated by the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot. Cambodia is the beauty of the Apsara. The nobility of Jayavarman VII. The majesty and antiquity of Angkor. The power of the Mekong, Tonle and Bassac rivers. The smiles of it’s carefree peoples. Jungles and forests and elephants and monkeys. Even so, a visit to Cambodia can never be complete without the reminder of the desolation and carnage that communism wrought upon the soul of the peoples of Cambodia.

The evils of Tuol Sleng. The Killing Fields. Khmer Rouge. Pol Pot. Democratic Kampuchea. The dark history that is enshrined at Cheung Ekh along with it’s victims.

Cheung Ekh is a foreboding place. It is a stroll into madness and the heart of evil. I could feel the past there . The sadness that bled into the ground with the blood of it’s victims. The blood that swells just beneath the sod. The evil that consumed the people of Cambodia under the guiding hand of Pol Pot. It’s victims caught in an eternal and silent plea for justice. A justice that will never be realized. Those skulls stare at you. Forever questioning how such a peaceful people could be turned into the tool of genocide by a mad prophet of death and destruction.

Cambodia’s notorious Brother Number One. The leader of the evil red revolution and murderer of millions. He died before he could be brought to justice.

Walking through the killing fields of Cambodia is horrifying. Yet, it’s fascinating. As I strolled through Cheung Ehk, I read the signs posts and literature. Tears welled up in my eyes. I felt a hand wrap around my heart. My stomach knotted up. My pulse was racing. Walking through those fields, your soul joins the millions of victims in silent protest. You can feel their screams and you join them in your heart. Surely, justice must come. It will not.

There is no justice. It is estimated that anywhere from 1.2 to 2.2 Million Cambodians died at the hands of the genocidal Khmer Rouge regime. Almost 1/3rd of the population of Cambodia. Cities, villanges and families were decimated. So many lives ended. Stolen. Human history unwritten, decimated, obliterated.

The motto of the Khmer Rouge as regards the “New People”: “To keep you is no benefit. To destroy you is no loss.”

The base people were the people of the villages. The new people were city dwellers. In 1976, the Khmer Rouge evacuated all of the cities of Democratic Kampuchea. And as the Jungle reclaimed the land, the Khmer Rouge destroyed a people. Their first victims were the literate. The educated. Being in possession of glasses was enough to prove guilt. As with all of the “great proletariat” revolutions, the Khmer Rouge soon ran out of victims outside of the party and feel upon itself with equal zeal. Murdering for the sake of murder. Murder became the great tool by which Pol Pot could purge the people of the evil of capitalism and turn back time. Erase history. Start from a new, pristine point without the corruptions of the West.

He would save the people by destroying them. A novel idea shared by many today in the lands of Islam today. The leaders of Islam share this vision. They would set the world on fire to save us from what? Hell. Create a hell on earth to save us from hell in the afterlife. There is nothing new in this. It is the same act of the murderous tyrant and his minions throughout history.