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Alex Caruso of the Los Angeles Lakers certainly isn’t gloating about, at last count, accruing more All-Star votes in the Western Conference than Utah’s Donovan Mitchell and Phoenix’s Devin Booker — as well as a pretty popular veteran in Portland named Carmelo Anthony.
He isn’t apologizing, either.
Among the various attributes that have enabled the undrafted Caruso to play his way into a rotation spot with the veteran-laden Lakers is an ability to resist getting swept up in the Hollywood hoopla all around him.
Caruso, 25, is a self-described perfectionist but also a realist. He understands that his All-Star vote total, which placed sixth among Western Conference guards last week, is a byproduct “of the beast that comes with playing for the Lakers.”
Yet it’s also true that Caruso’s high-energy play is undeniably part of it.
“It’s a lot of fun,” Caruso said recently in Dallas. “Obviously I’m doing something right, because people are excited to see me play and do whatever it is that I do.”
Without warning, on a team headlined by LeBron James and Anthony Davis, Caruso has emerged as a defensive spark off the bench who has shown enough promise, with his ball-handling and shooting, to convince the Lakers that he may just develop into a full-fledged point guard who can have an impact on the game at both ends.
“He’s just an invaluable piece of our success,” Lakers Coach Frank Vogel said.
Said James: “Every time he’s in the game, he’s a plus guy. He can do so much. He can defend at a high level. He’s very smart. He’s very tough. To have him on this ball club is a luxury.”
Fans in other cities who chafe at the extra attention afforded to various Lakers, compared to the daily struggle for notoriety faced by true All-Star contenders such as, say, Mitchell and Rudy Gobert in Utah, are bound to cringe at Caruso’s growing profile.
You can hear the naysayers from here: For all the cult-hero talk he generates, Caruso averages just 5.9 points and 1.8 assists.
Other numbers, though, support the hyperbole from Vogel and James about Caruso’s active hands. As pointed out the other day on Twitter by my good buddy @MicahAdams13, Caruso is one of just four players in the league averaging at least one steal in less than 20 minutes per game. He also leads the Lakers in deflections per minute and makes the team 9.3 points better defensively per 100 possessions when he’s on the floor.
After earning a two-year, $5.5 million contract in the off-season, following two seasons on a two-way contract that had him shuttling between the Lakers and the G League, Caruso knows he has to improve his shooting, efficiency and decision-making in the paint to cement himself as an N.B.A. player.
“I think I’m a little better in all those categories,” he said.
Around the Lakers, though, what may earn him the most praise is that Caruso appears unfazed by the stakes and scrutiny that come with playing alongside LeBron.
As we’ve seen in King James’s previous stints in Cleveland and Miami, not everyone is cut out to be his teammate. Caruso is.
“I think I’m just comfortable in my own skin, man,” Caruso said. “I know who I am. I know what I do. And at the end of the day, it’s basketball.
“People like to put a lot of hype around it, but for me, at the end of the day, I think it’s just my job to go out there and play. Whenever I don’t think and I just play, I play my best. It’s gotten me this far, and I think it’s going to carry me further.”
Caruso said that his parents and close friends “keep me humble.” His Lakers teammates, Caruso added, haven’t “said one thing” about the 528,246 votes he received through the first two rounds of All-Star balloting.
But James can apparently stay in downplay mode for only so long.
Caruso’s penchant for memorable dunks has already earned him a few nicknames: “Bald Mamba,” “Bald Eagle” and “Carushow.” Yet LeBron has added another.
“Every time I see him and say, ‘Hey, Bron,’ he just calls me G.O.A.T.,” Caruso said with a laugh. “The first couple times it kind of threw me off. Now it’s just an everyday thing.
“But in reality, I never want to take any credit away from guys that are truly deserving of being All-Stars that have had great seasons. The fan vote part of it is just, I guess, a compliment to how hard I’ve worked to get here.”
It’s worth remembering that the fan vote is only 50 percent of the All-Star equation. Media and player votes count for 25 percent each, so there’s zero threat of Caruso actually claiming a spot in the All-Star Game.
In our visit, I proposed the dunk contest as a sensible alternative, but it turns out Caruso doesn’t have All-Star Saturday on his bucket list.
“I don’t think so,” Caruso said. “That’s like a different breed of dunker. I’m a good in-game dunker — fast breaks, tip dunks, stuff like that. But I don’t have the off-the-bounce, between-the-legs dunks.
“My goal is to win. I’m pretty much an all-business guy.”
The Scoop @TheSteinLine
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Corner Three
You ask; I answer. Every week in this space, I’ll field three questions posed via email at marcstein-newsletter@nytimes.com. (Please include your first and last name, as well as the city you’re writing in from, and make sure “Corner Three” is in the subject line.)
Q: Based on what you’ve seen so far, which non-Los Angeles team in the West has the best chance of beating the Clippers or the Lakers — or both — and reaching the N.B.A. finals? — Dan Myers (Abidjan, Ivory Coast)
STEIN: I wish I saw one, Dan. I really don’t.
Although Denver is the closest to that level, skepticism persists about the Nuggets’ playoff ceiling. Utah has been scorching hot since the Jordan Clarkson trade, but the Jazz have also benefited from a favorable schedule recently — and have yet to successfully integrate their marquee newcomer Mike Conley, who has been injured. To get to the conference finals, as one ambitious Times scribe (hello!) predicted in October, that has to happen.
There are only two forces that can deny us a Western Conference finals contested exclusively at Staples Center:
1. Catastrophic injury incurred by either the Lakers or the Clippers.
2. If the Clippers’ recent sluggishness against weaker teams and their injury management programs for Kawhi Leonard and Paul George spiral into something bigger that prevents them from reclaiming the West’s No. 2 or No. 3 seed. The Clippers awoke Tuesday at No. 5 in the West.
The Lakers and the Clippers share at least one goal beyond winning a championship: avoiding the other in the first two rounds of the playoffs. The Clippers have been sensational every time I’ve seen them live so far, but there have been many nights that they have fallen short of those top gears they hit in winning Kawhi’s return to Toronto on Dec. 11 and their Christmas Day defeat of the Lakers.
Q: I mentioned LeBron James playing through flulike symptoms Friday night against Dallas and sitting out Saturday against Oklahoma City to my wife over dinner. She rightly asked me whether players get an annual flu shot. Since the internet couldn’t provide the answer, can you? — Neil Koffler (Forest Hills, N.Y.)
STEIN: I’m told flu shots are not mandatory for N.B.A. players, but they are offered by teams and strongly encouraged by both the N.B.A. players association and the N.B.A. physicians association.
At the start of every season, players are advised on the potential benefits of receiving vaccines for afflictions such as measles and chickenpox as well as the flu. But it is ultimately up to each player.
Q: I still miss the Daily Dime. — @Topher_Jones from Twitter
STEIN: Appreciate the kind sentiment. It feels like another lifetime ago that ESPN’s Daily Dime was, well, daily. But I’d like to think this newsletter is reminiscent of it in some way — albeit with three items instead of the old-school Dime overload of 10.
The Dime format was the brainchild of an ESPN editor named Royce Webb. I always looked at our old Weekend Dime as the internet’s answer to the full-page displays that various newspapers used to devote to the N.B.A., Major League Baseball or the N.F.L. on a Sunday.
There are still a few papers, to my knowledge, that have kept the format alive for their N.B.A. writers. My colleagues Gary Washburn (Boston Globe) and Dan Woike (Los Angeles Times) still churn out a full page on Sundays. Ira Winderman gets a half-page in the Sunday editions of the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
The full-page look, in print, is what I miss even more than the Weekend Dime. The format was birthed in the 1970s at the Globe by the legendary baseball writer Peter Gammons and his relentless boss Dave Smith.
One of the most influential sports editors in industry history, Smith brought me to the Dallas Morning News in 1997 to cover the Mavericks and changed my whole life. And he eventually gave me the chance to inherit Sunday duty from my pal David Moore, which was an absolute honor. Moore’s N.B.A. page was must-read; his annual printing of N.B.A. salaries used to be the only place you could publicly find them for much of the 1990s.
Numbers Game
4
Only four teams currently rank in the top 10 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. Milwaukee is No. 3 on offense and No. 1 on defense, followed by the Los Angeles Lakers (No. 4 and No. 3), the Boston Celtics (No. 5 and No. 4) and the Los Angeles Clippers (No. 6 and No. 7).
22-0
Recent losses for Milwaukee (in San Antonio) and Toronto (at home to Portland) have left the Lakers as the only team in the league unbeaten this season against sub-.500 teams, with a record of 22-0. The Lakers are also 9-0 overall since their Christmas Day loss to the Clippers.
35
The recent 35-point game posted by Utah’s Bojan Bogdanovic against New Orleans was the highest scoring output without a single rebound, assist or blocked shot, according to Basketball Reference, since Allan Houston’s 37 points for the Knicks that were accompanied by a string of zeros on Dec. 2, 2000.
74
Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on Monday night became the youngest player in league history to post a triple-double including 20 rebounds — by 74 days. Gilgeous-Alexander was 21 years and 185 days old when he amassed 20 points, 20 rebounds and 10 assists in the Thunder’s victory over the Timberwolves. Shaquille O’Neal was 21 years and 259 days when he set the previous record, according to research by @jkubatko of @statmuse. O’Neal’s line: 24 points, 28 rebounds, 15 blocks.
35
Much has been made of LeBron James turning 35 on Dec. 30, but there are a few players older than him, led by Atlanta’s Vince Carter, who turns 43 later this month. Miami’s Udonis Haslem (39), Milwaukee’s Kyle Korver (38) and the Houston duo of Tyson Chandler and Nene (37) are also older. James is one of several 35-year-olds in the league alongside Memphis’ Andre Iguodala, Portland’s Carmelo Anthony, New Orleans’ J.J. Redick, Houston’s Thabo Sefolosha and Dallas’ J.J. Barea.
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Source: Basketball - nytimes.com
