The Pistons

Alright, that's it!

2005-06-09T00:32:00.000-04:00

Okay guys, that's the end of my basketball writing here on Blogspot. I now share Motoring Pistons over on MVN, which I think is a nice move. Traffic should increase by a bunch, that's the main component. Go check it out.

Domino

2005-06-08T00:00:00.000-04:00

The day after and I'm still psyched up! But can you blame me? For the fifth time (somehow, all of them within my lifetime), the Pistons are going to the Finals. Can't say I was much of a fan for the first three (I was four in 1990) but last year's and this year's are certainly must see events for my life. Thus, I have a right to be psyched.

Stein... fine?
I think this is the best article I've ever seen him write! Impressive. Granted, he doesn't agree with my opinion on the victor of the series, but that's alright. I consider these two to be the two best teams in the league (did last year too, didn't go as well for SAS) and either one winning certainly wouldn't shock me. Nice article.

The white guy named Kiki chats it up
I think Cleveland's going to have to make a monstrous offer a la the one the Lakers offered to the Krz las year, but more towards a GM's salary range to get Kiki out of Denver. Unless Denver doesn't want to give him a long deal in the coming future. Then he might be persuaded out with less "effort". Either way, for the great job he's turning that former sorry franchise around, he's going to get paid for a long time by someone.

Skiles locked up; Blog writer proven correct
See? Nothing to worry about for the Bulls fans. No word on the cash involved, but I'm sure it's in the range for $16-$20 million.

JH'd
Yes, it's an Insider article and until someone with Insider gets off of their ass and helps out the Bleedinginc site (seen linked to on the side), we won't get the full thing for quite some time. But that's not the point. I link to this for two separate reasons. The first is the topic of the article. Pop was the best man at Brown's wedding... that might be the other way around. Might be both, actually. Regardless of that, they're both good friends, that's the idea. Pop was one of Brown's assistants at the Olympics. Not only are they good friends, but they might be the two best coaches in the league. Yes, helps that they happen to coach two of the best teams in the league (as I said earlier, I've considered them the best for two years now), but the fact stands. Brown's great, Pop's great, they're both great at what they do.

It should be a good coaching matchup, until ABC hypes the hell out of it anyway. As happy as I am to get rid of THE CLOSER and INTO THE WEST, I feel like we're going to start getting slammed with GREY'S ANATOMY and DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES. I think the last of the four is done, but with Parker's girlfriend in the crowd, they won't shut up about it regardless. No, I haven't seen any of these shows, but even if I did, I wouldn't want to hear about it every ten minutes like the other ABC playoff or regular season games. Darn networks. At least ABC only flashes little adds on the bottom of the screen, rather than doing the split screen crap. That's one improvement. Moving on to the second reason I linked to the article, which is to point out a quote:

San Antonio versus Detroit is a matchup of two fantastic defensive teams that aren't quite as capable at the offensive end.

Granted, the Pistons are about average on offense, we know this already. The thing is, the Spurs' stats don't say that about them. They were 9th in the league in offensive efficiency during the regular season and so far in the playoffs, they're 3rd. Granted, that'll drop by the time this series is done, but it still stands to the point. I know, Denver's the only good defensive team they've faced (we knew the Sonics blew and Phoenix dropped from average to bad after round one) but it's still very good. The Spurs aren't a bad offensive team. They've got that nice three pronged attack (even though Parker's been weak all playoffs) and their role players (Mohammed, Horry when in the playoffs, Barry) are effective scorers as well. Like the Pistons, they can come at you from all angles. They're just more consistent and have the best player in the league.

Driving the last spike

2005-06-07T00:48:00.000-04:00

Dancing in the street!
Hey hey! What did I say? So many good things come of this. The new league superhero doesn't advance to the Finals despite the... uh, okay, no reference to Willis Reed here. Shaq, who promised a title this year, doesn't get to the Finals. As noted on the fabulous Fark, Detroit beats Miami in Game 7, Kobe Bryant waiting for Shaq with UFIA. Precisely. And the best part? I can finally witness the series that I (and oh yeah, I'm in the minority) have been waiting for for some time. Pistons versus Spurs. It's going to be super duper. I'm so hyper, I love it! David Stern suicide watch '05 is on, by the way. Programming note, Finals Preview will be up as the Thursday post.

The thrill of victory
Now, for less of a fiery ball of excitement and more of a breakdown. It was a really great game. Can't say I liked a lot of the officiating (I thought Bevetta being there would help, but apparently not), but it was fairly balanced overall. Every round has someone to draw my ire. First round was AI, second Reggie, third Wade, fourth will probably be "The Sickness". But as I was saying, the game. "The game!". Rasheed had a nice showing, as I suggested he would. When the headband came off in the first quarter, you had to figure he was going to go into "Angry Talented" mode, rather than "Angry Annoyed" mode. Rip couldn't miss from inside 23 feet in the first half, that was fun. Tailed off a bit in the second half, but that was alright. Ben's O boards were good, but what impressed me the most about his game was that he didn't have any fouls until about when four or five minutes were left on the clock in the fourth. Then he proceeded to put some perfect fouls on Shaq. Very good job by the DPOY. Tayshaun wasn't very effective offensively (though I liked his O boards), but his D was nice. More on that in a moment. I knew Chauncey wasn't going to brick any of those late game throws for two reasons. One, he's a very clutch guy. Two, he missed the FT on the T earlier, meaning that he wasn't going to miss anything else in a game of such magnitude. He's Mister Big Shot, as the phrase goes. Was very happy and psyched up when he went to the charity stripe so late. Not all was good, though. Lindsey! Agh! I want to scream every time the ball is in his hands and it isn't there because he just stole it. The bench wasn't all bad, of course. Elden was on pace for 31 boards if he were to play 36 minutes, that was good. McDyess provided some pop off the bench, also good. Certainly outplayed the opposite bench anyway.

No more playoff games on TNT for the rest of the year
Finally, I'm free of that wench Kyra Sedgwick and the West! Yay!

The agony of defeat
Paging Eddie Jones, come on. Where was the guy? Boards were good, but that's about it. Couldn't defend, couldn't shoot, couldn't... be an effective third option. Haslem was very good, I really don't know why they didn't go to him for more than six shots. Oh, I know! Because they had to go to a guy shooting 35% from the floor twenty times instead. I know his PPS is 1 (weak, but not terrifying) but again, that's not good if it's going on twenty shots. I realize he was hurt, but he still tried to push the issue quite a bit. The one game where Shaq is still effective outside of Q1 and Wade keeps on going with it instead of going for more feeds. I guess there was one positive about Wade taking it so much, it made Marv Albert extremely happy in the pants. I swear, every time he made an FG... "Dwyane WADE WITH THE BUCKET". Fortunately it only happened seven times and none of the times were in Q4. So yeah, the point is I didn't care for Wade's doing. Shaq, on the other hand, was great. Hit 3/4 of his throws down the stretch, PPS of 1.42, 9 boards. Not bad at all for the Diesel. But as I said above, his promise is broken. I bet Mitch Kupchak is also dancing in the street tonight. Dooling was alright, aside from that stretch where he got three fouls in about two minutes. Damon Jones seemed to trip over the center line when he hurt himself, can't say much there. Mourning was okay, but couldn't defend McDyess. Butler didn't show up, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop there. All in all, they played alright, but due to poor shot distribution, they lost. Wade going Walker ends the season. Somehow, I expected this.

Apparently all of the Finals games are going to be at 9 PM ET
I'm going to be so dead at work. Side and personal notes, I start work in eight hours and I'm getting broadband back later in the week. Not that this matters, you'll just have a pair of reasons to blame if my updates happen to be at strange times. Just a heads-up.

The waiting room

2005-06-06T02:20:00.000-04:00

Prognostications
I think I'll go one by one here.

Stein - As much as I don't care for his writing and general opinions, I appreciate his lack of bailing on a prediction.

Bucher - Makes good points. I agree completely with what he says.

Broussard - Most dominant player since Jordan... funny that, since Shaq's career started right when Jordan's first one ended. Also, "it showed" in game six too, it just happened to be in a losing effort. So his thing about rebounding makes no sense. No dice.

Legler - Lakers had the two most dominant players last year too. Yeah.

Anthony - Doesn't really delve into anything special here. Meh.

Ford - Normally I don't really care for him either, but in this case he knows what he's talking about. The Pistons will clamp down in game seven and he knows just who the main contributors to the intensity are.

Hollinger - Like Anthony's, but for the other team. Again, meh. The guy's got some great stats but I really don't care for his articles.

Spears - Again it's general knowledge, but still nice to read, I guess. Sort of meh.

James - I like it. He mentioned the lack of back to back wins, but I don't think that really jumps out at you. Not at me anyway. It's not like they haven't played well enough in consecutive games, they just haven't pulled such things out.

All in all, a nice segment, aside from a few of the guys not giving much insight. Also, the line before the article on the main page was:

History says home teams win Game 7 in the NBA playoffs 82 percent of the time.

The Pistons have shown they're in the minority before, I bet they'll do it again.

There's not much else to say. There's been plenty of dissection on what will happen in every ambiguous case. How Shaq plays, if Wade plays, how intense the Pistons are, how "distracted" the Pistons are... there's a pile of variables. It's going to be a great game, I think. It'll be a nailbiter. I just hope Chauncey is the one taking the majority of the shots down the stretch for the team in blue. That's all I've got for now, I'll see you as soon as the game concludes (provided the road team is victorious). Go Pistons.

The lady lies

2005-06-05T00:58:00.000-04:00

Give it away now
Well, that wasn't too zesty. The Heat had three guys (Shaq, Butler, Zo) making contributions and none of the Pistons big men did much that was worthwhile. Due to the lack of Wade, there are only a few things I can take from this game. One, Rasheed may have been going Walker but with him barely shooting in game five and shooting like crap in game six, I think he'll respond by shooting very well in game seven. Two, a note that three things in a row is a pattern (or series). Rasual Butler has had two good games in a row. If you get my drift, well, he won't show up in game seven. I don't believe he's capable of a pattern of good games. Three, I take that Stan Van Jeremy will play eight guys at the most tomorrow. I mean, Smith had one previous playoff minute (why the heck did they trade for him if they weren't going to use him?) these playoffs before tonight, Laettner did absolutely nothing and Anderson hadn't played all series up to this point. Zo, Dooling and Butler will be the only ones to get time off the bench tomorrow, that might aid the Pistons. I think taking three things from that Wade-less beatdown is pretty good, personally. Well, I took more things, but those are the only ones that impact the next game. Also, on the topic of Eddie Jones and his cut... Chauncey got cut earlier in the series and had no foul called on him, but he didn't go crazy. He didn't shove the guy he was guarding (in Jones's case, Rip) into the crowd. You get the idea. It's already happened the other way, it can't be that terrible for him.

"What you say?", part two
I heard a lot of strange things come at me care of TNT before and during the game. I didn't listen to "after", but if I did I'd probably pick up on something else to go along with this. I'll number these chronologically. Note, since my memory can't distinguish between the voices of Kerr and Collins, I'll just refer to quotes between them as K/C.

1. The first thing out of the mouth of Sir Charles was "It's over tonight"
Thanks for playing, Chuck. I love hearing the guy speak, but... ouch! Not one of the better things he's said.

2. David Aldridge talks about how Brown showed the team tape of "Game 7 of the 2004 Eastern Conference Finals"
This game is non-existant, of course.

3. K/C refers to how the Pistons played the Knicks in the 2004 playoffs
Again, non-existant.

4. K/C talks about how Steve Smith had a great game with the Charlotte Hornets earlier in the year against the Pistons
Who?

5. When the Heat were down about 20 points, K/C said that Van Gundy will take Shaq out and see if the team can come back
So he's going to take his best player out with his second best player injured... and see if the team can come back in the fourth quarter from 20 down. Makes perfect sense to me!

6. When Shaq came back in about three minutes after #5, K/C said that Van Gundy will put him in to see if Shaq can do something positive
But I thought Stan was going to see if the team could come back without him! And something positive? He wound up with 24, 13 and 5, most of that coming prior to the fourth quarter. What he got more of in the fourth instead were turnovers. Again, the guys aren't making sense.

Yeah, it kind of sounds like nitpicking... but there are six things they were factually incorrect about or way off about. As I said earlier, three is a pattern. Six is a long pattern.

Promises
I know I said I'd come big tonight, but... I really expected there to be more to talk about. Wait, I found something! Something stupid, of course! What would the world be without stupid stuff to make fun of?

It's time for another round of, "Let's judge a team with a roster full of injuries by how they played without their second best player for one game!"
A quote to start, as usual.

Van Gundy could take Wade, O'Neal and the last 10 players of almost any NBA roster, and he'd have a team capable of reaching the NBA Finals. Take away Wade from that collection, and Van Gundy would have what he had Saturday night -- humiliation.

O'Neal and Wade are that good. Eddie Jones, Damon Jones, etc.? They're that bad.

Thanks for that one, 3G. Always good to know that a guy who shot 43.2% from behind the arc during the regular season (43.7% in the playoffs) and a guy who plays great D, shoots well for the most part and routinely guards the opposition's best scorer are "that bad". Next this guy's going to tell us that Nash is only good because he has Amare and Marion to pass to. The Heat's supporting cast is great! They're dinged now, but they're still a very good team. Granted, they're not going to come close to winning game seven if Wade can't play, but honestly, who expects him to sit that out? I'm sure he'll do everything within his power to come out there, pain every time he breathes or not. To use an overly worn out phrase, I'll eat my hat if Wade doesn't play on Monday. One more thing, Wade's Roland Rating is -0.1 for the regular season. +4.8 for the playoffs, but that's still only fifth best on the team. But... but... without him there, they're so horrible! Oh, the lime-anity! Like many, the guy needs to do his research before firing up the word processor.

Just a job to do

2005-06-04T01:22:00.000-04:00

Well, we had two bits of big news in the league today. I guess I'll start with the one that's more pertinent to this blog.

It's funny because he says what some of us are thinking
It's no big deal. Regardless of the officiating (which I've said has been equally bad for both squads, though Wade's certainly been the biggest benefactor of it), I think they'll win game six fairly easily. The seventh is the tricky one, of course. Really don't have much to say now, just want to get six out of the way. After that's done, I'll come back strong, I promise.

Technicality'd!
I'm sure there will be a big deal made about this one, mainly because of the big number involved. But really, is it that bad? It's like that mom who got the stripper for her kid's 16th birthday party... it's not really that damaging, there just happen to be strange rules against it. Well, maybe it's not like that, but you get the idea. George Karl happening to watch a workout of some guys three, two and one day(s) before the list got put out doesn't require a three game suspension and a giant fine, but whatever. It won't hurt them much. It's not like they got multiple first round picks ripped like Minnesota (and over Joe Smith of all people!).

Sorry, that's all I've got. As I said, I'll come hard tomorrow when (no ifs) the Pistons are victorious.

In limbo

2005-06-03T00:50:00.000-04:00

To quote Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, "What were you thinking?"
Holy crap! I've talked in the past about bad shot distribution, but this was ridiculous! Arroyo and Lindsey combine for 15 shots, while Rasheed has 3? Brown's got to give those two a stern talking to and very soon. Granted, a few of Arroyo's were down the stretch when the game was pretty much out of reach, but it still adds to the problem. Not only was the distribution bad, so was the selection! In the fourth quarter, they got the Heat into the penalty with about 8:30 left on the clock. So what did they do the rest of the quarter? You'd think they'd try to pound it inside, slow the game down and get to the stripe. Instead, they proceeded to take deep jumpers for most of the remaining 510 seconds. Pretty much everyone except Ben was to blame with the shot selection. Chauncey took some weird triples, Tayshaun was seemingly scared to go inside after Wade beat him there twice in a row, Lindsey needs to learn how to hit layups... jeez. Rebounding was good though. However, what was the worst part about this? As bad as their O was, their D wasn't really that bad. Miami just got some great performances. Rasual Butler played out of his mind (did you see those jumpers on the baseline?), Damon Jones was coming out of nowhere, Shaq was good past the first quarter (!), Haslem... well, they didn't defend him too well. Most of his buckets were on open jumpers. Like I said, it wasn't so bad.

But there is a cure!
As bad as their O was in a fairly crucial game, I'm still confident they can win the series. As mentioned yesterday, they've done this before. Last year I was kind of down after game five against the Nets, but the Pistons pulled it out. Granted, the game seven is on the road this time, but I believe in them. They're 8-0 in their last 8 games with a chance to close out the other team, so I think that the final game being in Miami isn't that troublesome. Also, Wade might be dinged up. Speaking of that, that was terrible! They claimed he tweaked his back on a jumper, but he went out of the game after taking that "charge" on Rasheed. Funny thing about that "charge"? Rasheed came at Wade head on and Wade fell at a 45 degree angle. Hm... not suspicious at all! If Wade and Shaq are both not 100%, then the Heat are in a lot of trouble. Butler and D. Jones won't be so effective next time. Also, I don't want to hear the "Pistons only won the series because Wade and Shaq were hurt" card if (when) the Pistons win it. Ben took an elbow in the mouth from Shaq a few plays later and continued to play after a moment's rest (due to the stoppage in play). Finally, there's the big one, the Pistons "play well with their backs against the wall". Sounds dumb, but it's true. They won when down 2-1 to the Pacers and Heat, they've won in tough situations in the regular season under the mantra... you get the idea, we've heard it enough times. So let's recap: They've done it before, they're awesome in close out games, Wade might also be hurt and they play well against the wall. In conclusion, the Heat will finish their playoff run with a record of 11-4.

The best player to have a career FG% of 40.4 died
It's funny. Well, it's sad and funny. George Mikan was one of the all time greats, which is sad. Widened the lane because of him, made great use of the hook shot and so on. On the flip side it's funny how there's so much love because "he was the first" yet there's occasionally a severe lack of love towards Wilt because, as one person once put it, "You could put Chris Mihm in the league during Wilt's time and he'd have similar numbers". Note, this was before Mihm turned into a decent player partway through last year. Tell me, is there anyone better than Mikan that you could apply that phrasing to? Yeah, he was the first star, that's all well and good. But until guys like Bob Pettit and poor Maurice Stokes came along, there was pretty much no one near him in size. Even then, Mikan had 40 pounds on Pettit and 3 inches on Stokes. I think you could make a pretty good case for the Lakers' current center back when their #99 center was running wild. At least, a better one for then than when Wilt was dominating. I'm not saying that Mikan wasn't great, he probably was, but a lot of his greatness might've been due to that he happened to come into the game at a time where the game was bereft of big men.

More bloggery, part three
If you didn't catch it in the top right there, my NFL blog is up now. For more details, check it out.

Shipwrecked

2005-06-02T01:24:00.000-04:00

I would've titled it "And then there were three", but I'm not counting album titles.

I wanted to put "Suns Set", but half of the sports pages in the US will have something similar in today's paper
Tim Duncan, "Manno Gi-no-bee-lee" (as Al Michaels would call him), Beno Udrih and Bruce Bowen defeated the Amare, Nash, Marion and Corliss's twin earlier this evening in a fine battle. Seriously, where were the rest of the guys? Mohammed was in foul trouble, Parker and Horry were building a house (though Horry's boards helped again) and Barry only got three shots. Tony "Twelve Teams" Massenburg even had to get some PT. Bowen would've been included here too if he wasn't shutting down Q. Thus, Q was shut down and got hurt after. Johnson was helping build that house and Hunter did a whole lot of nothing other than diving into the crowd on that one play. It was almost like 4 on 4, except Beno only played ten minutes. Note to the guy that was the best man at the Piston coach's wedding, if Parker's got a PPS of 0.86 on 21 shots and his backup has one of 2.67, you might want to play the backup more than ten minutes.

Carnival #10
Again I return, though this one didn't quite catch the topic of the post. I submitted it to him with the description of, paraphrased, "Basically just a breakdown of what the opponent did wrong in game four". Yet he describes it with what's there. Odd. Whatever, being featured on that isn't something to really complain about. Check out the other stuff on there too.

Swat-Machine
Well, so much for my trendsetting. Apparently the Amare block on Duncan from game four is officially the best thing since sliced bread! If you didn't catch it, during game five of the WCF, Nash called it one of the best plays he'd ever seen in a pre-taped segment. Walton agreed completely from the commentary table. Numerous others (can't remember where I heard it, might've been on ESPNews) concurred. Don't get me wrong, I said yesterday (when I reputed Collins's clame) that it was a fantastic play, but jeez! This thing is spreading like wildfire. I guess it's not too terrible, the better the press the NBA gets the better, but it's still getting ridiculous. This isn't Tayshaun's block on Reggie from last year's ECF where he prevented the Pistons from going down 2-0. This is a block that saved a team from getting swept... where they promptly lost in five on their home court two nights later. Maybe it'll stop now that Phoenix is out of it, I can only hope.

Five Alive
Remember folks, teams who win game fives in a series tied 2-2 go on to win the series about 85% of the time, or something like that. That's not to say that the opposite is overly rare, the Pistons did it just last year (remember the triple OT game where Chauncey hit the 46 footer to send it into the first OT?) but it doesn't come around often. So it's not must win, but it's close. As said recently, I expect the win anyway.

Skiles not locked in yet
I'm sure this will be fixed soon. Something I'm also sure will be fixed soon was that, for some reason, Joe D is also without a contract. I'm sure he'll get a nice fat deal soon, but as to why he has no deal right now I have no idea! This guy is one of the best GMs in the league (if not the single best) and yet they actually let his deal run out before getting around to replacing it. Weird.

Scoop strikes again
This article's written fairly well, much better than his usual stuff. I just really don't agree with his opinions. As usual, quotes:

In the past 15 months since he was traded here, I think I've done four feature stories on him. All saying the same thing: that he's the most valuable player in the League.

Uh... I have to disagree. While the five starters are all very close to each other in overall talent, I personally put him at fourth or fifth on the chart. I mean, you don't have to be the best player on your team to be MVP (as some debate that Nash accomplished this year, not me though) but being in the top two certainly helps. Moving on:

But do the Pistons get that chip without him being him last year? Will they get it without him being him this year? Therefore ... MVP.

Unavailable for comment are the games where Ben was suspended which contained numerous Piston struggles, the games where Hamilton missed and the offense completely fell apart, the games where Chauncey had to bail the team out deep in the fourth and the games where Tayshaun was the most consistent player on the team. There's a reason they're the best starting five in the league... as I said above, they are all very close to each other in overall talent. When one of them disappears, everyone suffers. You can't just pick one guy out of the five and say, "If he's not there, they won't do well!" because it applies to all of them pretty much all the time. Such a fun team to root for.

I know what I like

2005-06-01T01:03:00.000-04:00

Note, there will be no more Larry Brown speculation on here. He said on The Fan today that if health permits, he's coaching the Pistons. That's enough for me. Okay, one more thing... just have to point out that for the nth time, Marc Stein is an idiot. The paragraph that starts with "I say". Yeah.

Note two, I didn't go into details on Amare's big block because it's getting a ton of play elsewhere. Yes it was great, but no, it's not one of the greatest blocks of all time (as Doug Collins put it on PTI earlier). So I'll be the first and stop with the talking about it. Trendsetter(?)!

Ah yes!
That was precisely what I was hoping for in game four. Well, outside of Ben's 2-11 performance. But aside from that... precisely! Everyone defended well, everyone drew fouls, almost everyone was good on O... I love it. I really have next to nothing to complain about on the Piston side in that game. Faaaaaaaantastic.

On the other side... wow. So many things wrong with the Heat. Their defense were nowhere to be found, especially when Eddie Jones was doing said defense. He couldn't stop Rip or Tayshaun and it showed. Yes, he got a lot of boards and had an alright PPS for 10 shots, but that D... Heat fans everywhere must've been cringing whenever he found himself opposing the ball handler. It's not like Rasual Butler did a lot better, but at least he could guard for a few seconds out on the wing. With E. Jones, it was no time and nowhere. Another note on the D? Pistons didn't have a turnover until 7:24 remained in Q3.

Shaq looked like a beached whale in the second half. Yes, I know he's wearing down in the second half due to his injury... but he did only play 8 minutes in the first half. That's not a lot of play time. This is because of the three fouls he picked up, of course. His first foul came at 9:14 remaining in Q1... is that the quickest Shaq's ever gotten a foul in a game? Quickest I've seen, I think.

Haslem got his shot back, that was surprising to see, considering that he's operating with about seven fingers. Rebound numbers are alright, PPS was good... but he also had a lot of trouble defending. Rasheed had a pile of open dunks and McDyess had one or two as well.

Wade... that guy can sure hit some crazy shots. As long as they're inside the arc, anyway. He played a nice game aside from that stretch where he missed 7 straight shots... and when, you know, he bullrushed Lindsey. I've seen Lindsey piss off numerous talented guards (Kidd and Iverson come to mind) but I've never seen one of them do that to him. That was funny. I knew the Heat were in trouble before, but when that happened, I knew that they weren't going to be able to do anything down the stretch. Call it a turning point, I guess.

Doleac... can't believe they spent part of their MLE on that guy!

Dooling, don't hurt yourself. I found that move funny too. It wasn't as obvious as the Wade on Lindsey play, but it was still a dumb move. If you didn't catch it, late in the game, he drove to the hoop. Since the Pistons were trying to avoid fouling and were up by a bunch, they let him by. He went and threw up a gorilla jam, slammed his right hand off of the backboard and nearly fell on his back coming down. That's a fall on the hard court on the back from about five or six feet up. Considering that these are the same playoffs where Joe Johnson took a header from a similar distance and was out for six games, he probably shouldn't be doing such a move. Still funny, though.

This seems excessive I know, but hey, this is my Carnival post. If it's going to have a central topic, it's going to be big and excessive! More on other stuff tomorrow when it's not Carnival time.

Visions of angels

2005-05-31T00:35:00.000-04:00

A note before we start... sorry about the lack of update last night. I really didn't feel like writing about the NBA. I wrote about some other stuff, though, so it's not like I was avoiding writing completely.

Implosion
The above being said, it's not "Panic in Piston town!" for me. Yes, they did fall apart down the stretch and despite that ten minute stint (6:00 Q3 to 8:00 Q4) where they allowed about ten points, they weren't that good all game. But this weak game did happen to coincide with a game where Wade was hitting just about all of his jumpers, where Shaq had a PPS of 1.85 on 13 shots and where Rasual Butler hit three triples in three tries. Granted, the Pistons' play had a bit to do with the first two and I'm not saying they'll never happen again this series. But if the Pistons are going to play that bad and the Heat are going to play that good and the Pistons are only going to lose by 9, that's not too terrible to me. Like after game three of last round, where the Pistons were also down 2-1 (except then it was on the road), I again feel that the Pistons could randomly roll off three straight. Yes, the Heat are much better than the Pacers... but I know the Pistons are much better than what they showed in games two and three. The Pistons may get a lot of T's, but they don't tend to get a pair of them that late in the game. The Pistons may shoot bad from time to time, but Chauncey doesn't tend to shoot a PPS of 0.95 on... 19 shots. Basically, what I'm saying is that the team's inconsistent and they're currently on the "bad" swing of that inconsistency. What I'm also saying is that the Pistons are yet to win a game three in these playoffs, yet they're a combined 4-0 in game fours and fives. They'll be alright. I reiterate, Pistons in six. Now, for more singular discussion.

As I said, Chauncey had a piece of crap pretty much everywhere. Shot bad, defended bad, got that late T. I mean, how did Damon Jones get 7 boards? Only one TO, though, that was good. Rip had a great game on O, but defensively he was questionable. Constantly he was hitting Eddie Jones and Wade on their shots and it certainly wasn't helping his cause. Granted, the refs were crap all game, but they were equally crap towards both teams. No more game three ref ranting for me, hopefully. But back to my point, as good as Rip was on one end, he was terrible on the other end. Which leads me to Tayshaun. He seemed missing on some of the jumpers that Wade got open on. He did a good job keeping Wade out of the key at some points, but he was also to blame for some of Wade's shots. Not as much as Rip, but still a bit. The bigs were alright, I liked how Mourning got 6 fouls in 17 minutes. But overall, the team D was weak. Thus the Heat having 113 points on 65 shots... a team PPS of 1.74. Ouch! Don't expect such a number for any team for the rest of the playoffs. I wonder what the record is for a team's FTA per FGA. The Heat had 54 FTA's and 65 FGA's... for a clip of 83.1%. Granted, the Pistons had a high one as well (52.4%) but 83.1%!? That's ridiculous. 97 FTA's shot this game. Now that's a playoff game!

Delaying the inevitable
Shawn Marion, welcome back! His game still wasn't very effective offensively, but combined with the 14 boards and 3 blocks, he's moved past the acceptable level. And what do you know, they won in the same game that this happened! Might be a correlation there. Also, Johnson with his ugly ass white strapped mask and all (I much prefer Rip's) had a whale of a game. Well, he wasn't that great on D, but his offense was certainly key to the victory. Nash returning to double digit assist form was also key. As were Amare's late game heroics. Q played well too. Basically, all five of their starters was in their average to above average form and it got the job done on a whole. Yes, Steven Hunter is still their seventh man and that's a rather large problem, but they might be able to stick out another win if they can reproduce what they did tonight. I really don't expect them to win game six if they get there at this point, though. Awesome road record and firing on all cylinders or not, the Spurs aren't going to drop three home games all regular season and then two in the same playoff series.

Now, for Spur dissection. Parker went Walker, Barry was ineffective and only had three shots, Duncan only had 12 shots... they had numerous problems. Seeing as how Duncan was a combined 33-36 from the stripe (91.7%) in the first three games where he had shot 67% from the same spot during the year, you had to figure that the law of averages was going to catch up with him sometime. That's no big deal. What is a big deal is that he only got 12 shots, which ties him for the lowest amount of shots he's taken all playoffs. Over the 15 games the Spurs have played these playoffs, he's averaged 17.5 shots a game. Yet, here he took 12. Similar to the correlation of Marion playing well with the Suns winning, there might be a correlation between how many shots the best player in the league gets and how well the Spurs do.

A look back
Hoopsanalyst has a nice article up about Don Nelson at the moment. This is what I love the most about that site, the retrospectives that they do sometimes (like the GM Reports, for instance). I always enjoy reading such things.

Sounds more and more like PJ is going to coach KG and the sunshine gang
Yes, this will be the first meeting between the two, but rumours say they've been interested in him for a while. I expect it to go through, more on it if it happens.

It's official, Mike Brown is in for the Cavs
Thus gaining him the title of Lebron's second coach. As I've said before, if the Cavs make some good offseason moves (picking up a guy who has a been a lifelong coach as their GM would not be a good move, more on that later) then he should be fine. Get a great/very good SG, play Varejao more... should be a good team next year. Certainly a playoff team. If they miss out a third straight year, Lebron's not sticking around. But, luckily for the team in Wine and Gold, that won't be happening if they play their cards right.

Like it or not

2005-05-29T01:34:00.000-04:00

BRUTALITY
Well, it's pretty clear what was wrong here. The Spurs were on pace for 288 points after two and a half minutes! Well, that and Nash had three assists. And Marion had a PPS of 0.67 on nine shots. Yeah. Amare was a monster as usual and Johnson was decent in his return, it just wasn't enough. Also, more respect to Horry. His shot wasn't on, but he raked in eleven boards. Yes, Marion did similar, but Marion's a much better player than Horry and was starting. As much as Marion wasn't effective on O, Nash wasn't either. Considering that he was averaging 12.1 APG in the playoffs before this game, getting a quarter of that is pretty much unacceptable. It's not like he was very effective shooting the ball either, with that 1.11 PPS. Yes, that's alright, but not too hot when it's coming on 18 shots. The Suns had 10 assists as a team! As seen on the recap page, San Antonio outscored Phoenix on the fast break 14-8. The Suns got outscored on the fast break by 6. That might just have something to do with the 10 assists as a team. But enough numbers. The Suns played a nice fourth quarter, but clearly it was too little too late, as they put up an astounding 10 points in Q2. That was such a strange parallel of quarters. 38-29, then suddenly 19-10, both not in Phoenix's favour. During the pregame, the guys kept mentioning that it was critical for Phoenix to have a good start to the game. So much for that, huh? Much of this was due to Duncan's repeated asskicking on both ends of the floor. The guy was 15-15 from the stripe! Mark Price, Reggie Miller and Chris Jackson (you heard me) come to mind. Parker had another ineffective offensive game and half the time he was switched off to someone other than Nash, so he can't really be credited there. He did mix in 7 assists though, so it wasn't all bad. Ginobili continued to have a wild PPS and snagged 9 boards, yet another good showing by "The Sickness". He seems almost unstoppable at times. So, in conclusion, as I said a few posts back after game two... "Butter them, they're toast". Monday is broom time. So much for my prediction!

Report: Pacers assistant talks with Cavs
I was hoping it was Kevin O'Neill when I read title! I'd love to see another K-O inspired trainwreck, a la last year's Raptors. I'm surprised they're talking to all of these unproven guys, I thought they'd go with someone more established. Time to rehash that yes, I did say Phil Jackson would do to them if he wasn't nuts. So, to go with the fallback plan... he's nuts! Or his girlfriend is Buss's daughter, one of the two.

More bloggery, part two
Yes, I am going to start up that Lions blog sometime. Maybe in July when there's not much NBA action to talk about other than summer league and free agency. I have decided on a title and I think it's fairly good. I guarantee it will be better than this one... fortunately, people are routinely referring to this one as "Pistons Blog", which isn't as bad. Perhaps I should officially change it to that. We'll see.

More mockery, part two
Not that I know a ton about how good some of the guys were in college, but I think I'll throw up my own mock draft sometime. Maybe I'll put that up during an off day of the Finals as well, just like the playoff team offseason moves thing, catchy title and all. I know! I'll try to come up with something entertaining for each off day that doesn't happen to have an explosion of NBA news. I might be able to pull it off.

Squonk

2005-05-28T01:47:00.000-04:00

You heard me!

JJ1 returns
Coach Mike D'Antoni said the only thing that would limit Johnson's playing time is "how he's playing."

As I suspected earlier... I just figured he'd be back in time for the start of the series. Problem is, it's too late now. Yes, I know the Spurs were up 2-0 and lost in six last year, but that's a much different thing. For one, the Spurs didn't have Barry, Mohammed, Udrih, etc. For two, the Spurs won those games at home. Finally, for three, the Spurs probably won't have the folks running the clock working against them. Well, it's quite possible that the last one could come true, but I don't think the Spurs will let it get to that situation in game four. As I said a day or two back, I think the Suns will win game three and game five. But nothing other than that.

What you say?
Can someone translate this for me? I think he's developed a new language that only he and the higher-ups at ESPN.com can understand... Scoopese, perhaps. Yes, that's the one. So, to rephrase that, could anyone who is familiar with "Scoopese" translate that? I'd do it with Google or Altavista, but they just don't carry such a language pack.

The Cavs actually contacted Calipari for their open coaching job
This comes to mind. Come on, Gilbert! I know many of them aren't taking, but there are a lot of better options out there, most of them not coming from the college ranks. Do your franchise a favour and don't go looking anywhere but the pro level.

Antonio McDyess has bad knees; Captain Obvious strikes again
Is this really necessary? This is like saying that Mourning has bad kidneys or Hill has a bad ankle. Well, it's not as famous as them, but it's close. So why bother putting up an article that's half about that? In related news...

Rip Hamilton not shooting well after two games, obviously because of a defender and not because of missing open shots
For those who have watched the team all season, we know the guys are streaky and anyone could show up with a huge game at any time. I know I suggested that Hamilton take more of a distribution role, but that's only if his shooting trouble continues. He'll probably have a big game in game three, to counter the crap he was throwing up the first two games. It has nothing to do with Eddie Jones. He's a fairly good defender, but defending Hamilton like Tayshaun defended Wade in game one is not something he can do for long stretches.

League and Union resume talks
That's pleasant to see. Yeah. I guess there will be more to say when they actually start agreeing on certain terms of the deal. I'll still be shocked of the max contract lengths are lowered to four years. The agents (who despite Billy Hunter's rant, do have a big say in this) stand to lose far too much money if such a thing happens. Thus, it won't happen. In related news...

Thanks, Russ
I had no idea there would be a lockout if the two sides couldn't agree on things! More pointless articles! Yay!

More mockery
Apparently there's a mock draft on ESPN.com but guess what? Insider'd! Since the link regarding the insider articles on the right here hasn't updated in a bit, those of us who won't fork it out for words on a screen are left without access. However, it was mentioned on the main page of the NBA section there that Ford suspects the Bucks will take Williams. More on this when bleedinginc updates, I guess.

More bloggery
I'm thinking about starting up a Lions blog when the NFL season gets closer (such as, around when preseason starts). It would probably be slightly more home team-centric than this one, as my knowledge of the leaguewide NBA is larger than my knowledge of the leaguewide NFL. Not that I wouldn't touch on leaguewide issues, but I wouldn't be doing things like describing what the non-playoff NFL teams should be doing each offseason. Hopefully I can come up with a more original name for it than I did with this one. As always, tell me what you think.

It

2005-05-27T00:05:00.000-04:00

Yes, that's a Genesis song title.

Can't believe I forgot
Chauncey had 8 turnovers in the first half yesterday. Yeah, 8 of them. This prompted me to look up the record for such a thing in a game at half time, as I know all of the other single game records (100, 55, 30, 17, 11) but I didn't know this one. The record for turnovers in a game is 14, by John Drew. Fortunately, Chauncey had no turnovers in the second half, but obviously it was too late for that. This also prompted me to think about something else. The stats after two games for the great Piston backcourt:

Chauncey: 86 minutes, 12-26 (46.2%) from the field, 32 points (1.23 PPS), 10 turnovers, 11 assists
Rip: 90 minutes, 15-43 (34.9%) from the field, 37 points (0.86 PPS), 2 turnovers, 10 assists

Now, seems to me that Chauncey is scoring the ball well (helps that D. Jones is guarding him most of the time) and not handling it that well. On the flip side, Rip is handling it well and shooting it poorly. They say Rip's hamstring is a bit dinged, that might have something to do with it. It looks like he's been moving fairly well with that, but maybe there's something I don't see. So, perhaps Chauncey should start focusing on scoring and Rip should start focusing on distributing. Makes sense to me. Also, Ben (who has 17 points on 22 shots) should stop shooting as much. But that's not as important as the first part.

Brown sick
Bulls Blog also sick of Brown, but that's beside the point. Yes, most of it is speculation, but it's not too hard to believe. We know Brown's missed a bunch of time because of his health and we know he doesn't want to coach much longer. I'm starting to think that LB probably won't be back behind the Piston bench after all next year. It's too bad Woodson took off to coach the Hawks, he usually did a pretty good job in Brown's absence last year. Yes, the Hawks were horrible this year, but look at their roster. The only guy above a 16 PER played with them for 2 games. But going back to Brown and his possible absense, I wonder who the Pistons would turn to if he happened to be gone. Probably not Heard, as he didn't do such a good job in Brown's absence (part of that was because of Ben being gone for the early one, I know). Maybe they could get Laimbeer instead of the Knicks. Just think of the story if Joe D became interested in bringing him in as heach coach. "Former Bad Boy backcourt mates battle for former Bad Boy center". Could be funny.

Mocks that are only a slight mockery
Not bad overall... as to why Lawrence and Mejia have the Pistons taking a C and a PF at the 26 spot respectively, I don't know. Can't say I'm familiar with Joey Graham, so I'll have to get back to you on that one. I am familiar with Sean May though, and I find it humourous that his predicted spots are 4, 24 and 13. I think the Doyel's 13 is the most accurate for him. Similar can be said for McCants, who is listed at 12, 29 and 20. Difference is that Lawrence's 12 is probably the most accurate there. Also, Stoudamire is at 15 on Doyel's list, 29 on Lawrence's and nowhere to be found on Mejia's. I'll go for Lawrence's there. But enough of that. Overall, I think that Doyel's is the most accurate. I guess we'll see in about a month.

Dickie V has a take on the draft, unsurprisingly
I know I said that I'd try to write next to nothing on college ball as I'm not much of a fan of that, but as far as I'm concerned, it stops being college related when draft day is approaching. Yes, expect a lot more draft coverage in the coming days. Now, for the link. While I disagree with the Ex-Piston coach's pick placement after the #1 spot, the article is good. Bogut should fit right in with the Bucks, as he and Gadzuric will be a very potent duo on the glass and on the interior D. Bogut's passing skills will help Mason and Redd (if he's there) a bunch too. Even if they can't bring Redd back, it's not like there aren't other SGs they put in his place, as I detailed a few weeks back. I'm starting to lean more towards selecting that big man with the top selection.

Bogut, Williams likely to be gone by fourth spot
In related news, water is wet. It's pretty clear that those two will be done sometime in the top three picks. What's also pretty clear is that Bristow is a jive turkey. A quote:

Bristow said the Hornets will be inviting the three top-rated point guards in the draft for workouts slated for next week, along with a couple of high school prospects and several others.

But Bristow said the Hornets still intend to bring back Dan Dickau, a free agent, and may also keep Speedy Claxton.

"We said all along we want to carry three point guards," Bristow said. "Because we might bring in a rookie point guard, it might take some time. So it wouldn't necessarily mean we'd have to do something with either" Dickau or Claxton.

Yeah, sure. You're going to keep two decent young point guards and then draft a point guard with the number four pick. Unless you're going to run some sort of two-point offense or you're the '96 Suns, your count of PG's you're going to play will decrease to two somewhere along the line. As I said before, I think the Hornets should take a big man and I stand by that. Andriuskevicius ought to be around, as will Vazquez, Frye, Taft, etc. I guess you could include May, but unlike Lawrence from earlier, I don't think a team that high will take a chance on him. I probably shouldn't include the centres, but perhaps they could run a twin towers type thing with Magloire. He's quick enough to move to PF in the future, I think. Granted, he's played just about all of his time at centre the last three years (82 Games ought to put links to the player's past stats on the player's personal page), so I can't prove that. But, it's a personal belief! I doubt that the Hornets agree with me, though. All of the big man talk quickly erases if Paul happens to fall to the four spot, though. But, like the odds on Phoenix reaching a game seven this season, that's pretty unlikely. So, think about a big man. Andriuskevicius (I love typing that) sounds like a good choice to me. Or, if they don't want to replace PJ quite yet, Gerald Green sounds like a good one.

All time great, but few MVPs
Going by the stuff noted, he probably should've won in '94 and '01, as well as when he actually did win. Obviously Shaq's biggest problem is the injury trouble, but that'll happen to a guy who has weighed around 330 pounds for the latter part of his career. Lack of MVP's or no lack of MVP's, he's still one of the best to ever play the game. Maybe I should throw together an all-time All NBA team. That would be original! Maybe in a few posts.

Turn it on again

2005-05-26T02:11:00.000-04:00

Ah, savior of the universe!
I figured they'd bust that wonderful song out once or twice during this series. Good reason for it too, as the guy who happens to share a nickname with the song's focus was great tonight... well, when inside the key he was great. On the dunks, layups and Kobe-esque (more on this later) moves, he was fantastic. On the jumpers... not so hot. I don't have the numbers separating the two on me, but I'm positive he was a lot less effective when he wasn't in the painted area. The Pistons will definitely have to work on keeping him out of there, a la game one. If they can consistently do that, their time winning the series will be much easier. There's still no doubt in my mind that the Pistons will win this series and, unlike popular opinion, why should there be? They did just get a split on the road and if they'd played a little better down the stretch, they could've been coming home up 2-0. Shazbot, huh? But no big deal. As I said the other day, but now with full backing, I believe home teams will go undefeated in this series the rest of the way.

Now, for some number cracking. I don't know what to think about Wade now. Thus, my hypothesis is that he'll repeatedly be inconsistent, except they won't win one of the next two games where he breaks out for 30+, 6+ and 6+. Hell, might be 40+ instead of 30+ again. It's too bad the Pistons couldn't have had as nice of trips to the line as he did. Rip 4-7? Chauncey 0-2? I would've believed Wade would go for 60 before I'd believe FT numbers like those for those two. As bad as those were, obviously the Pistons' shooting wasn't very good. 38.3% is bad times, especially when not facing their round two opponent. Why was this number so low? Aside from that they were missing numerous open shots, they just weren't playing that usual team game. Too often, the guys were going one on one and running into trouble (like Mourning's four blocks, specifically the one near the end on Tayshaun). They need to work on this for next game too, but not as much as their other task. Also, Haslem! I know he's running on about seven fingers right now, but he's been completely useless on offense. His defense hasn't been particularly good either, but it's not like Rasheed was working him over very much this game. Game One Rasheed was and it was more obvious then, but not on Wednesday night. Yes, he did get 8 FTA's, but Rasheed was still doing too much 20+ feet from the basket.

What Brown can do for them
I guess I forgot, there's another guy in the league with a position of power who adores Ex-Pistons now too, Dan Gilbert. Being that he's a businessman from the town, it's understandable. First the rumours that he wanted Laimbeer, then talking to Daly, now the rumours that he's talking to Brown. As the article says, Brown denied of course, but I wouldn't be shocked if there were talks. I don't know how well he'll do as a GM, he could be a huge success or a big flop. He might do as Phil did, taking a year off and then driving up the price when he returns. We'll see. Something irks me about this, though:

Gilbert, speaking to CNBC on Wednesday, said the Cavaliers "are undergoing a massive transformation" and that he will announce the hiring of a new coach, new general manager and president in the next one to two weeks.

It's going to be pretty tough for that to happen when the Pistons are trying to repeat in the Finals... or so I thought before I remember what happened with the Patriots. Crennel and Weis took other jobs as they were storming back to the big game, but stuck around enough to help the Pats get a third title. Perhaps a similar thing will happen in Auburn Hills.

DW and KB
All the time I keep seeing things like, "Wade isn't like Kobe at all!" because Wade's "not selfish" or something like that. First, I'd respond with that while Kobe is second in the league in usage rate, Wade is fourth and Kobe's assist rate is is only 3.2 lower than Wade's. Thus, if Kobe is selfish, Wade must be nearly as selfish. I don't really see either as such, so let's move on to their games, rather than the perceptions about them. Against weak defenses, Wade and Kobe both dominate. Both average over 20 points a game and are the high scorers on their respective teams. Both are the second best players on their team (that's personal preference, obviously), but tend to take it in crunch time. Also obviously, both have played with Shaq. Both have been very inconsistent against good defensive teams like the Spurs and Pistons. Both do their best work around the basket, as referenced near the start of the post. They draw fouls, make circus shots and pretty much slice people up down there. The major difference between them is that Wade isn't a great outside shooter yet and realizes it. Kobe's not a great outside shooter (yet?) and doesn't realize it, taking only 29% of his shots from "inside" while Wade takes 47% from the same area. Kobe's clutch, but he's not great. Similarly, Wade takes 36% of his shots from "close" and Kobe only does 25% from this area. Granted, Kobe's field goal percentages are better from inside but Kobe doesn't take as many shots inside, thus decreasing his overall field goal percentages. As you can see on the pages, Wade's FG% is better while their eFG% is equal. Wade still wins slightly because of his ability to draw more fouls. I guess I shouldn't say he wins, as I wasn't really planning to pick which one was better. The point is that they're similar in play and stats, thus disproving these untruths I hear so often. It's also great filler! Feel free to leave some comments about this one, I'm sure somebody will want to praise/hate on me.

I guess we're sans NBA games until Saturday now, that's a bummer.

The lamb dies down on broadway

2005-05-25T01:15:00.000-04:00

Butter them, they're toast
Sorry to my latest link addition, but nobody's going to win 4 out of 5 from the Spurs. I guess I do owe Horry an apology now, he's been wicked this series. I forgot how good he was in the playoffs. Of course, he almost got in one little fight and his mom got scared, but my guess is he'll be avoiding Bel-Air. Also... Nash! Nash! If you didn't catch it, that's four straight playoff games with 25+ and 10+. The Big O and His Airness are the only others to have accomplished it three straight times! That's pretty crazy. Almost as crazy as it would've been if he'd hit that triple at the end. Other impressive performances included Duncan's wild second half and... Jimmy Jackson's four blocks? I didn't notice any of these during the game, but the box score is showing this to me. If it's true... nice! Corliss's long lost twin is always fun to cheer for. But as, good as it was and as I said at the top, it's not happening for Phoenix. They might sneak in wins in games 3 and 5, but it's definitely not going back to Phoenix after game 6.
Side note, anyone notice that Tony Parker's dad looks like a 2035 version of Ron Artest?

Bucks win lottery, irony realized by few
Well, that was weird... and I guess my streak is broken. I'm curious as to what the Bucks will do with this. If they can't resign Redd, I think getting Marvin Williams and shifting Mason to the 2 would be a good idea. If they do manage to keep Redd, which seems unlikely, perhaps they should get Bogut. Joe Smith is getting older (30 in July) and while he's still talented, he seems like he would be a good sixth man. Or, if Bogut isn't ready to contribute right away, he could still start. He's a versatile kind of guy! They could go for Chris Paul, but they have Mo Williams who is young and decent... they have Ford as well, if he ever makes it back. So I'd suggest Marvin Williams if there's no Redd, which seems likely. However, if they do keep Redd, they could still get Marvin Williams and move Mason back into that sixth man role that he was so successful with. I guess it's up to Larry Harris... I'll certainly be interested to see what they do.

Sorry folks, I'm low on stuff again. I guess I could bounce a couple of rumours I heard off of you.

Laimbeer to coach in NBA?
Note, this was on the pregame show, I think S. A. Smith brought it up. Like many Piston fans (above a certain age, anyway) I think Laimbeer's great. Great player, good commentator, seemingly good coach (won a WNBA title... makes me think about my grade school's team again)... and now supposedly being contacted for an NBA coaching job. Guess where? The same place that holds a guy who loves to bring in old Pistons at the helm. That's right, New York! Apparently Zeke wants to bring his buddy in to coach. I wouldn't be shocked at all if this happened. I'd laugh and wish him luck with that screwed up roster. More on this if it happened.

More coaching news, this time an assistant
Note, this came from the same place as the above rumour. This one is that old PJ Carlesimo is going to coach the Timberwolves. I guess I'll get it out of the way, "Good thing they're not going to bring Spree back, huh?". PJ hasn't been a head coach in a while but has been an assistant on these great Spurs teams for a few years. So I think it'd be a pretty good choice for Minnesota. I thought a lot more guys would be clamoring for the chance to get to coach KG... but then, I also thought the same about Lebron. There I go suggesting people use logic again. How foolish of me! Insert other elitist remarks here.

The lamb lies down on broadway

2005-05-24T02:10:00.000-04:00

Seems to me I changed the band I took song titles at the start of the last round, so I guess I should change again now. Not to hard to figure this one out, considering how famous the album is.

Wade builds a habitat for humanity by himself
Good job, D-w-y. I mean, the Piston defence had a lot to do with this most recent "going Walker", but a lot of it was Wade's fault too. For instance, partway through the fourth, Wade had Rasheed on him on an isolation about 20 feet from the basket with 14 seconds or so on the shot clock. The obvious thing to do would be to drive to the hole here, right? Dwyane had a guy who is 7 inches taller than him and much slower than him on him far away from the basket with a decent amount of time on the shot clock. Instead, Wade took a step back and threw up a brick. Rich, but not smooth. On a related note, I was surprised how much they had Tayshaun on Wade. I figured they'd do what they did with Reggie, have Hamilton on him most of the game and then throw Tayshaun on during crunch time. Instead, it was Tayshaun on him for about 70% of the game. Similarly, Wade guarded Tayshaun about 60% of the time... and Tayshaun didn't respond very well. I think that's a bit out of place but trust me, Wade's piece of crap won't be an anomaly. He won't shoot 28% again, but I bet he'll be in the mid 30's a few times. As for the PPS of 0.64... okay, maybe that will be an anomaly. I can't believe there were only 22 free throws taken, four of which came on techs. As for the other guys, I must say, I was shocked when Rasheed was heating up (and consequently on fire) early in the first quarter. Never thought I'd see the day where Rasheed hit his first three triples and only shot five on the game. Great showing with the 2 PPS, to go along with the 20, 10 and 3. As for Shaq... wow. If you didn't catch it, prior to the game, the trio of Marv, Steve and Doug at TNT were all worried that Shaq would barely play and be next to useless when he was in there. He then proceeded to be the Heat's second best player by a considerable margin. Granted, he could've had more boards, but they couldn't complain that much. Also, I'd put up a "Sorry" thing for Eddie Jones like I did for Bones, but the karma has to run out sometime. Other nice showings included Arroyo's 7 assists in 10 minutes off the bench... that's 25.2 per 36 minutes. Could've given Scott Skiles a run for his money if he'd played about 43 minutes (and stayed on pace... yeah). McDyess's 5-6 shooting was also impressive, but wasn't accompanied by any FTA's. It was accompanied by those 6 boards in 19 minutes though, so I can't complain. All in all, a good showing by most of the guys on the Pistons. I'm beginning to think that the home teams will go undefeated the rest of the series, to keep in line with my prediction.

Good times in Eagletown
Friend of mine was psyched about this one. We were curious as to whether Philly would let O'Brien go after the year when Mo Cheeks was available and well, I guess they would. If they can keep Korver and Dalembert, they should improve next year... even more so if they pick up someone for their bench other than Marc Jackson who has business being on an NBA court. As for what's next for O'Brien... he has a decent track record (as seen in the article) and there are plenty of job openings, so he should find his way into one of them.

Something out of place
Remember how we kept hearing that Phil Jackson was the sixth man on the Knicks team that won the title in 1970? Why is it that he didn't have any PT with them that year, regular season or playoffs? At first I thought this might be something erased a la Kamino, but after checking at the other basketball reference (the one with the hyphen) this fact seems to be consistent. Weird, huh? I wonder what the story on this is... and why this is incorrectly told, as mentioned at the start of the section.

Let's do it again!
I don't know what to say. I mean, his record as a head coach is good, but he had Shaq and Penny (in his prime, before the injuries were too bad) during those years. It's not too hard to do well with those two on the squad, right? I guess they could do worse, they could keep Jent.

Big Mouth Zo, now with Jive Talking action
Yeah, my grade school could put together a team that could beat the '72 Lakers after a few billion tries too, doesn't mean it's going to happen.

Intelligent Simmons, sometimes worth listening to, seconds the opinion
Sort of. Too bad his game one prediction is off, it could... actually, unless he's joking, pretty much all of his game predictions (except maybe game six) are likely to be way off. Or so says I. Then we move into the second series, in which he slams in the old "nobody likes to watch defense" generalization. As usual, I'm nobody. I like the Suns, but I still want the Spurs to win. I think a Spurs/Pistons series would be fantastic. I also think it's very possible. We'll see in a week plus.

The gnome

2005-05-23T01:40:00.000-04:00

D'oh!
Completely forgot to add the round 2 roundup to the round 3 preview... oh well. I guess I'll put it here. Like last round, I got all of the winners. I was only two games off in total this time, but the scale was smaller so I was a bit more off. No matter, it's not like I get paid for such things. It'd be awesome if I did, though! Surprise big performer of the last round was... Nash, I guess. We know he's wicked, but he had some pretty wonky games. Surprise underachiever? Michael Finley. His last two games against Phoenix were crap and sure enough, those were wins 3 and 4 for the opposition. There you have it.

SA/PHX, Game 1
I owe Brent Barry an apology, I guess. Horry... well, not so much Horry. But definitely Barry. So, brother of Jon and Scooter, I'm sorry for the hate. It's not that I don't like the guy, I just didn't think he'd contribute. Aside from that... wow! 43 in the fourth for the Spurs. It's not like they're terrible on the offensive end or anything, but that was pretty funky. I don't think they'd be scoring as much if Marion had shown up. Sure, his rebound numbers are nice, but his D was bad and he did shoot 1-6 from the field. Q's bad shooting didn't help. I liked how Amare had 18 FTA's and 21 FGA's, while Manu had 13 FTA's and 10 FGA's. These FT numbers are Fortson-esque (remember, he averaged 1 FTA per FGA). Fun stuff! Very entertaining game, a real joy to watch. I hope the next six (yes, six) are like that. A friend of mine seems to be convinced that Phoenix won't take any on the road, but I beg to differ. SA did already drop one at home (granted, Duncan was about 60% at the time) and Phoenix was 3 wins shy of the all time best road record, which leads me to believe that they'll win one of the three they play in SA. Probably game six.

Weisbrod to book it
Yeah, that's it. Trade the team's superstar and a good piece (that'd be Mobley) for much smaller returns, then leave the next summer. Nice guy, huh? Granted, he did grab Nelson for little, but he's mostly hurt the organization. So now they need coach and GM. As to who fills or which two fill these roles, I have no idea. I doubt they try another assistant, though. Such another practice hasn't worked out for them too well lately.

Sorry folks, but it's a really slow news day aside from the game. I guess I'll delve into other topics to comment on.

Here's a laugher
To quote "The Seattle Times", care of Hoopshype:

Still, league sources said yesterday that Atlanta plans to court Allen just as they did Kenyon Martin a year ago.

Uh, okay. It's not like they don't already have Childress as a good young guy who can play the spot. It's not like there are better situations for him to go to. Unlike K-Mart, there's going to be more than one team that goes after Allen. I guess I can't blame them for trying.

Anyone notice the Pistons have the five man unit with the best Roland Rating so far in the playoffs?
Fifth best one too. More proof to the fact that the Pistons have the best starting five in the league. Also in the "bests" department, anyone notice that Tayshaun's deferensive PER at the 3 spot so far in the playoffs is 3.3? Granted, he wasn't guarding Bird and Jordan or anything, but it's still pretty impressive. He also has a monster personal Roland Rating of +22.2. More evidence to the fact that this team needs a good backup 2.5 in the offseason. As to who would be the best to get, I'm not positive on that matter yet. We'll see who falls to the MLE section. More on that when I put up my playoff team offseason preview, I guess.

Funky
Don't know if I mentioned it here before or not, but this is pretty humourous. While all of the stats, info and such are useful, I think the humour section might be the best part.

Like I said, there's not much to go on. I've got stuff to talk about like Drew Gooden has infected hair follicles. Yes, it's that bad. Maybe I can dig more stuff up tomorrow. Wish me luck!

The Endless Enigma; Round 3 Preview

2005-05-22T03:30:00.000-04:00

#1 Miami versus #2 Detroit
Miami is #2 in offensive efficiency and #6 in defensive efficiency
Detroit is #17 in offensive efficiency and #3 in defensive efficiency

Well, we've been waiting for this one for quite a while. Media favourite versus the underappreciated. Shaq looks for revenge against the last team he played while in Los Angeles. The Pistons take on the guy they could've drafted, even though people don't seem to notice that they already had Chauncey and Rip at the time... moving on. The two best teams in the East (at least while Artest isn't playing) duke it out. Damon Jones and Christian Laettner face their old team... well, not that one so much. But you get the idea. Here are a few stats that stand out from the Won-Lost profiles on 82games.

Miami is only 14-10 against teams that are ranked "Good" in Points Against. This is a clip of 58%, while they won 74% of their other games. Similarly, Miami is only 10-13 against teams that are ranked "Good" in defensive eFG%. This is a clip of 43%, while they won 83% of their other games. As for the Pistons, not a lot stands out. The best one with a good sample size is that Detroit is 22-9 against teams that are ranked "Good" in Points For. This is a clip of 71%, while they won 64% of their other games. Not big, but still the one that stands out the most. Perhaps it's a sign that the Pistons can take on any type of opponent? Let's take a look at the matchups.

Center: Shaq, Mourning and Doleac versus Ben, Rasheed (part time) and Elden
There's a big deal being made about Elden being a "Shaq stopper" or something, but I don't think he's going to get a lot of time. He'll come in and use up 3 or 4 fouls on Shaq and maybe hit a jumper, but that's about it. Shaq's going to get his, we know this. Even if he's not 100%, he's still going to get his. As long as Ben and Rasheed do a decent job of staying out of foul trouble, a la last year, they should be alright. Also, while Shaq's still quite good in the area, the Pistons are still better defenders in the lane. So, advantage Heat, but only on offense.

Power Forward: Haslem and Laettner versus Rasheed and McDyess
This matchup is kind of funny. Haslem and Laettner are great shooters and compliment Shaq well. Rasheed and McDyess are great from fifteen feet in and compliment the Piston offense well. On offense, the Pistons only have a slight advantage. Defensively... there's a gigantic advantage for the team in blue. Haslem is too small and Laettner is too slow. Rasheed and McDyess are big, quick and good shot blockers. Yeah... yeah. This isn't Heat advantage over Nets or anything, but it is at least Rocket centres over Maverick centres-esque. Advantage Pistons.

Small Forward and Shooting Guard: E. Jones, Wade and Butler (maybe ?) versus Tayshaun, Rip and Lindsey
These are grouped because Jones/Wade and Tayshaun/Rip will be alternating on who each guards between each other fairly often. Jones won't be able to guard Tayshaun (similar to how he wasn't able to guard Jamison last round) and Wade won't be running around on Rip all game, so I suspect they switch up sometimes. Wade will wind up on Chauncey as well, but I don't suspect that happens a whole lot. So, I'll focus on these. Basically, the Heat will have trouble guarding the Piston starters no matter who is on them. On the other side, Hamilton on Wade will be the only matchup that doesn't favour the Pistons on the other end. Tayshaun's shown that he can defend Jones and Wade very well during the regular season and I don't believe he'll let up here. Advantage Pistons.

Point Guard: D. Jones and Dooling versus Chauncey, Lindsey (part time) and Arroyo
Here we have another spot that's favourable for the team in blue. Jones and Dooling can't guard Chauncey... that's pretty much all that matters. Hunter will spend more time at SG and Arroyo will probably only play 6-8 minutes a game, so what they do while he's in won't be overly important. Bottom line is, Chauncey won't be stopped when he doesn't want to be in this series, much like last series. Advantage Pistons.

Overall, while the Heat are very talented, they shouldn't be able to take out the Pistons. The 2004 Pistons beat a somewhat similar team in the 2004 Lakers last year and while Wade is better than Kobe and 2005 Shaq is better than 2004 Shaq, I don't think the outcome will be much different. I suspect my favourite team makes it to their second straight NBA Finals before the fourth game in Miami.

Predictions
Surprise positive showing: Pretty much everyone in this series is well defined already... something more fitting would be more like "better showing than last round" and I'm going to go with... there's no one to pick! Darn. Pretty much everyone on both of these teams played great last round.
Surprise negative showing: Eddie Jones. He's going to get torched multiple teams this series, even if he does have the Jungle Karma.
Series winner and game count: Pistons in six.

#1 Phoenix versus #2 San Antonio
Phoenix is #1 in offensive efficiency and #16 in defensive efficiency
San Antonio is #9 in offensive efficiency and #1 in defensive efficiency

Out west, another one versus two matchup. I was really going back and forth in my head before deciding who would be victorious in this one. Both teams are overly talented and go with much different philosophies, as we know. Like above, we travel again to the Won-Lost profiles.

San Antonio is only 17-11 against teams with a "Good" offensive eFG%. That's not really an "only", but is is far down from the others. That's a clip of 67%, while they won at 75% the rest of the time. Like the Pistons, their stuff is slight. Another thing that points out that they're good all around. As for the Suns, Phoenix is 17-12 against teams ranked "Good" in Net Points. That's a clip of 59%, whereas they win at 85% the rest of the time. If you'll recall, the Spurs were the best team in the league for Net Points. That makes me wonder. I mean, granted, most teams aren't going to be success against teams with high net points. But a 26% difference? That's fairly major. Now for the positions.

Center: Stoudemire and Hunter versus Rasho and Nazr.
Dampier couldn't defend at Amare at all, but these two will. Granted, he's been so hot it's going to be tough to do much, but they'll do better. I'd suggest that they could power him out down low, but Dampier couldn't do that either, so I wouldn't count on it. I'd mention Hunter, but his PT will be quite limited. Advantage Phoenix.

Power Forward: Marion and McCarty versus Duncan and Horry.
Hard to say. Duncan's the best player in the league, but Marion did a great job against Nowitzki last round. McCarty and Horry won't do much, so I'll leave them out. Duncan's going to work Marion more in the post, which could be troubling for Phoenix. Marion's on fire right now, but... Duncan's on permanent fire. Seriously! Advantage San Antonio.

Small Forward: Johnson and Jackson (part time) versus Bowen and Robinson
Johnson's supposed to be back, but whether he's 100% is up in the air. It is an eye injury, so it's not like he's going to be slowed or anything. He might be a little afraid to go to the hole, but it's not like he went there a lot anyway. He ought to be just fine... except for that Bowen is guarding him. Bowen ought to do a pretty good job of shutting him and the other JJ down. Robinson won't get much PT and if he does, he'll just run into foul trouble... but that's no big deal. Advantage San Antonio.

Shooting Guard: Q and Jackson (part time) versus Manu and Barry
I'd go in depth here, but Manu's just been on an absolute tear as of late. Q and the older JJ will get their treys, but it won't be enough to counter Manu and Barry... mainly Manu. Advantage San Antonio.

Point Guard: Nash and Barbosa versus Parker and Udrih
I don't know what's up with Parker. I can understand him not shooting too well in the first round, what with having to deal with Miller and Boykins. But having that continue against Ridnour and Daniels? I like the guys, Daniels more, but they aren't good defenders by any stretch. I don't know what it was. Maybe it was a funk and he'll snap out of it, but even if he does Nash is right there. As we know, my countryman is on fire. Almost had two straight triple doubles to end the series against Dallas and it's not like Terry can play a lot of D, but it's still quite impressive. Nash is going to roll again, whether Parker is on or not. Advantage Phoenix.

Ooh, this is tough. My gut tells me San Antonio, just because they're a good choice to pick in just about any series, but my head tells me that nobody in the West can stop Phoenix. I'm positive the series is going to seven, anyway. I'm so torn on this, I decided to flip a coin. I haven't been this torn on a subject since first deciding who was a bigger chucker between Walker and BD (Walker won). After the coin flipped, it landed on Spurs. So, there you have it.

Predictions
Surprise positive showing: Joe Johnson, since people will be clamoring about his eye.
Surprise negative showing: Brent Barry. I doubt Manu comes off the bench at all during this series, so Barry may be next to useless.
Series winner and game count: Spurs in seven.

Still you turn me on

2005-05-21T03:13:00.000-04:00

Programming note, third round preview will be up as the Sunday post instead of the Monday one, since Spurs/Suns game 1 is Sunday. Expect this one to be more "in-depth" than the last two round previews.

Down go the Mavs
Michael Finley pulls out another piece of crap and unsurprisingly, the Mavs drop another one. Unlike game 5, Dampier brought some game (even if he did only get in 30 minutes), but Finley didn't follow suit. Also, where was Marquis Daniels? A DNP-CD in a game six when down 3-2 isn't a good thing for him to have. On the flip side... Q with 13 boards! Where did that come from? Marion and Amare were beasts again, but Nash is still clearly the MVP. Almost put up a second straight triple double and had a PPS of 1.63. Fantastic, Kid Canada. The series seemed fun, even though I didn't get to see a ton of it. Not as much fun as some would have you believe, such as those saying that the league needs to have teams sprinting 48 (or 53, 58, etc.) minutes as game, but fun nonetheless.

The Wilt Stories, parts 1 and 2
I was expecting more of an era breakdown than the few references this involved. Regardless, this is the best thing I've ever seen Scoop write. It was interesting, even if it didn't really resolve anything or offer a ton of insight. Not overly circular either!

Ainge locked up for a trio more
Aside from sending a first round pick for something that could've been useful instead of Walker, he's done a pretty good job so far as GM. Bringing in Lafrentz's talents, brought in a decent coach (Rivers), making good draft picks (Jefferson, Allen), creating balance (trading Jumaine Jones and Welsch), not bad. Of course, my opinion of him changes by a bunch if he resigns Walker to a big, long or both deal. We'll
see how the offseason goes.

#91 did something odd that didn't make the national news (yet)
Most of you are probably unfamiliar with this one, so I'll retell the whole thing. On WDFN earlier (I've mentioned them before, for unaware of them), the "Pistons Insider" Chris McCoskey (spelling might be off) came on and told of a scene he had witnessed himself. He said that after game six, at about 11:30 at night, the Pistons were at the loading docks of Conseco Fieldhouse getting on the team bus. At this point, a black Escalade drives up to the bus and nearly decks a couple of people on the way. Out of the vehicle jumps Ron Artest, clad in gym clothes. He proceeds to look at the Piston bus, rip off his shirt and go inside. There were a few false reports like he called out someone or tried to start a brawl, but in reality, he just went up and did as I described. First speculation was that he was trying to say something like "This is what you'll see next year" to the team. Later speculation just said that he wanted to come in and work out at the building (it has two practice gyms and the regular one) and happened to see the Pistons getting there. I don't know what to make of this, but I do know it's funny. Just thought I'd relay the story, seeing as how it's kind of funny.

More on the Sonics
A valient effort, but winning without Lewis again is tough. Thus ends a very odd year for the team in the state of Washington. A large chunk of the team probably won't be back next year, leading me to believe it'll be Lewis, Ridnour, a great rebounder and a gang of misfits. From what I could tell, it was good while it lasted. My friend in Seattle wants to hurt the Spurs, but I'm sure the rage will subside in a week or two. What's next for them? Their draft spot won't be that good, but they will have cap room. As I mentioned a while back, I'll be doing an "offseason preview" for the playoff teams sometime in the future. Likely during an off day during the Finals. You'll see more on this team then.

Draft Lottery on Tuesday
Just thought I'd remind you. Presumably, it will be at halftime of game 2 of Spurs/Suns. The last three years (Houston, Cleveland, Orlando) I've been able to predict the winner of the #1 spot before it happened. So, I figure I'll take another crack at it this year. So, you're hearing it here first, the winner of the 2005 NBA Draft Lottery will be... the New Orleans Hornets. Believe it!

Tank

2005-05-20T22:31:00.000-04:00

I had this one done for the regular time last night, but Blogger's "new post" function was on the fritz. Some proof of this was that I edited the template (put up the game 6 recap and Miami game slots). Was here, but got owned. Sorry about that.

With his brim pulled way down low
The end is here! I can't complain at all about any of the Piston players, pretty much all of them played great. As for the Pacers... J-O finally showed up, but it was clearly too late. Tinsley had 0 points. Jackson had a PPS of 0.5, Davis had one of 0.67. Nice work, starters. The team had a PPS of 1.05 in total. Foster was on fire inside there, his only miss came on a 20 footer (as to why he shot this, I don't know). I mean, they shot well, 48% from the field, first time all series they topped the 40 mark. But 7 FTA's? Pistons had 24 and the Pacers had 7. Pacers only had 6 more fouls than the Pistons, why was there such a difference in FTA's? It was weird. Anyone else notice that the Pistons were 4-0 when Rasheed had his normal hair and 0-2 when he had the cornrows? Anyway, the series was mostly good... outside of game three, anyway. Moving on...

Ain't no sound but the sound of his feet
I decided to do something special for this. I tried to keep track of how often Reggie pushed off upon going up for shots. The counts, out of his 16 field goals:

- 7 came where push offs took place within the previous second or two
- 7 were clean, generally off of picks or late game triples from the next area code
- 2 came when he was about to shoot, but had the ball stolen instead
- 1 was missed due to ABC showing me drivers (not sure which association they were from, I don't exactly follow such a thing) that happened to be in the crowd
- 1 was missed due to ABC throwing stats up on the screen in the middle of a play

So, he pushed off on somewhere between 43.8% and 56.3% of his shots. Honestly, it being his last game, I expected a higher range. Related note, Anthony Johnson screwed up at the end of the first quarter... how many times did that guy screw up at the end of a quarter this series? Must've been at least four or five.

Machine guns ready to go
Now, it's on to the series most of us have been predicting to go down in the ECF since about November 20th. Shaq's still dinged and they say he might not make it out for game 1 on Monday. I really hope he's not, as the complaints that, "Oh, Detroit sucks, they only won because Shaq was hurt" will annoy me to no end. Never mind that they frustrated the hell out of Wade in the regular season and such. Third round preview will be up for Monday's post.

All-NBA... and creative section titles
No complaints at all here, the selections were quite good. However, I'm shocked that Yao didn't get on... conspiracy! Also, needless to say, Duncan's fantastic. If they held another "50 greatest players" thing, he'd be one of the first names they'd add. More on him later.

Boys of summer
The most recent post on Forum Blue and Gold states that even if there is a lockout, summer league will still go on, it just won't be individual NBA teams... which makes me happy. As I've stated before, I like summer league. Last year, from watching it on NBA TV, I learned how useless Rafael Araujo was on defense (which he kept up through the year) and how much they showed Boston and Denver for reasons completely unknown. Indeed. Speaking of that site, I must say that I've found the position reviews he did of the Lakers very interesting. Check them out if you haven't.

Walton off his rocker again
Somehow, this didn't surprise me. During the pregame, Walton decided to throw out that to him, the Spurs don't have much of a bench. I completely agree! They only have Barry (53.2% eFG), Brown (good all around scorer), Udrih (ran the point well for a rookie, 51.8% eFG), Nesterovic (great defense) and Robinson (17.54 PER in his short time during the year). No bench at all, Bill. Especially no bench when Ginobili came off of the bench for a few games these playoffs. Jeez.

Courtside
I'm moving Courtside to an MWF schedule, as is the most popular one for webcomics on the net. I wish I could do it more often than that, but it's just too time consuming at the moment. Maybe in the future I can start doing it more often, but until then... MWF!

"There was Dallas, from Phoenix."
Note, this was for game five. Something about that box score just doesn't make sense. Perhaps it's that the minutes for Dallas's guys combine for 198, rather than the standard 240 (48 x 5). But I digress. Where was Dampier's scoring. Granted, he made up for it all of the boards and blocks, but still... 0-7 from the field? Wacky. Even worse was Finley's play. Bad on O, brutal on D... just crappy all around. Dirk needs to call him out next.

Kings contact representative of Phil Jackson
Wish I had a link for this one, but I don't. Heard it on the radio... yeah, great place for rumours, right? I don't give much chance of substance to this, but I thought I'd mention it... seeing as how I find it kind of funny. They might actually be a good fit for him, with the good passing centre and all, but I give him more of a chance of coaching the Knicks than them. Yeah, that bad.

Cavs are a bit nutty
Okay, going after Kiki is bad enough... did they really think Denver is going to let him go? But going after Daddy Rich? He's 74, looks like he's 90 and talks like he's 30... he's not going to fit as a coach in the league anymore. College maybe, NBA... no. Not a chance.

John Nash still has a job
Worst record in team history, team's over the cap, just handed out some bad contracts... let's bring the guy back! Great thinking, Blazers. Third worst GM in the league gets his job back for another year. If you hadn't noticed, I place Mullin and Isiah respectively at two and one. Great players, brutal front office guys.

Wilt articles coming at random
There's a two part thing about the Dipper going up at ESPN.com. There's only one part up right now, I'll comment on it when the second part comes up.

Foxy
While watching Conan, I saw an ad for Carson Daly's show. Normally I think nothing of this, but... among the featured guests?

"B-Baller Rick Fox!"

Yeah... numerous things wrong with that one.

You blew it!
Unsurprisingly, Seattle's defense was the reason for their demise. More on this next post.

The curse of Baba Yaga

2005-05-19T01:22:00.000-04:00

Can't do it, folks. Creative juices aren't flowing at the moment, I'll give it another try after that rest period we go through sometimes.

Nutrocker, part two

2005-05-18T02:18:00.000-04:00

Beatdown!
You know something's wrong when Anthony Johnson is your most effective offensive player. You also know something's wrong when the other team outrebounds you by 18! There isn't really a lot to say about this one. Tayshaun had 12 boards, that was good to see. In fact, all of the top six had at least 6 boards each. Good sign. Foster and Davis boarded well for Indy, but... J-O has three boards in 31 minutes? Unacceptable for Pacer fans. Speaking of unnacceptable, nice line by Reggie. Series is over on Thursday, bring on the Heat.

Note, below boxscore is taken from sportsline because the one on ESPN wasn't working correctly.

Spurs jump up
I guess Wilkins wasn't quite as effective in this one. Courageous effort by the Sonics, but just not enough to get past Manu's wacky night. On the bright side, Fortson made himself useful for the first time this series.

Sorry for the short post, was working on Courtside #3 for quite a while. Hopefully the amount of time it takes will decrease with the more comics I make.

Fugue

2005-05-17T01:43:00.000-04:00

Colangelo collects
It's not official, kind of like comeback player of the year, but more realistic. I can't say I can think of a better candidate. Riley's a good one as well, but he didn't get Nash, Q and the older JJ. Granted, he did get Shaq, D. Jones and Zo, but they fit in pretty much any system well. Colangelo's moves fit the running Phoenix system perfectly.

Apparently they still think NBA players are on steroids
Yet, they're shocked when nobody shows up. Next on the chopping block, high school volleyball! Seriously, they should just drop it. Stern will go in, talk up a slightly better storm than Tagliabue (and a much better one than Selig) and they'll hopefully forget all about it.

Crazy go nuts polls
As to why Lebron and Carmelo are being mentioned in a poll that focuses on the Heat, I don't know. Let's start with questions five and six. The candidates are fine but, where's Bosh? Again he was left out, just like in the comments from yesterday. I guess because his teams haven't made the playoffs yet... oh, right. On to question seven, which (at the time of writing) garnered 51.1% for the first selection, 28.4% for the second selection and 20.5% for the third selection. Yet, if you'd listen to the media during this Pistons/Pacers series, the Pistons couldn't possibly be underdogs anywhere! But, what happened here? I guess hilarity ensued.

Courtside
If you didn't catch it in the top right there, it has begun. Yes, I know it's nothing special yet, but I think it will be good. I also know it's all text for now, but trust me, that ends with comic #3. I think it'll be a good one. Still working on learning how to do stuff on Keenspace, but as with this blog, it'll come to me sooner or later.

Jeez, talk about a slow news day
What's up with there being no games on Monday? I know Miami/Washington game five would've been here if it were to happen, but... come on. Three games the night before, no games tonight. I guess I could touch on the game I missed from Sunday.

Crazy go Nash stats
Oh doctor. I can't believe the strategy worked, really. I doubt it works twice, though.

The old castle

2005-05-16T00:40:00.000-04:00

Victory
Yeah, I'd say that worked out pretty well, despite some efforts. Rasheed took 20 shots and had 1 FTA, Hamilton took 16 shots and had 1 FTA. These numbers almost make what Jamison did the other night look good. Fortunately, Chauncey was around to throw up a 1.45 PPS on 20 shots. Well, the Pacers shot like grade schoolers, that helped too. I must say, that was brutal. As I've always said, Anthony Johnson can't shoot. J-O can't seem to shoot lately as well... yes, I know he's dinged, but this is pretty bad. Almost nobody on the team could shoot triples. As I look at the box score, I see that Stephen Jackson was 2-5 from behind the arc... which I find very odd, because I could've sworn I saw him miss about six or seven shots from the area. Maybe they were just 22 and 23 footers. As for the Pistons, it's not like they were hitting triples either. Rasheed still needs do as McDyess does and stick to fifteen feet and in. I'll discredit Hamilton's, because two of those were in the last two or three minutes. Maybe it's not so bad... not 3-19 bad, anyway. Something else that stood out on the box score that I didn't notice in the game was that Tinsley had 7 turnovers. Perhaps if Chauncey keeps having big games, he'll continue to be less effective. Also, the refs were pretty good this time. I guess it took the power of Steve Javie to straighten such a thing out.

Carnival #9 is up
Back where it started! For the third straight time, I make an appearance. Not only do I make an appearance, I get a nice compliment. As I'm fond of doing, the quote:

Another must-read newcomer is The Pistons (with now-appropriate color scheme!), which covers the defending champs' drive for the repeat. Not only that, but with daily posts he's tackling the entire league. Becoming an every-day read for me.

Nice to see that someone I read every day reads me every day as well. Thanks, Matt.

Some joker commented on my post that was mostly about game three and I have to laugh at him
As per standard, we break down with quotes. I realize I could've just responded in the comments spot, but then few people would've seen it. So, here we go:

I have always had a rule of thumb which is, in any major college or professional sport the refs will screw up enough so as to help a team win one game and lose another; therefore each team must be mature enough to overcome this hurdle.

See, I don't think it was a screwup. If I thought it was a screwup, I wouldn't have logged on and suggested something like "Artest's missing $5 million finds its way into refs' pockets".

Forget the refs and concentrate on scoring more than 80 points in a playoff game. If an NBA team's defense can keep the opponent to under 80 points, victory ought to be a lock.

Let's go back to last year's ECF between these two teams, shall we?

Game 1: Pacers 78, Pistons 74
Game 2: Pistons 72, Pacers 67
Game 3: Pistons 85, Pacers 78
Game 4: Pacers 83, Pistons 68
Game 5: Pistons 83, Pacers 65
Game 6: Pistons 69, Pacers 65

Three times that series, teams held their opponents under 80 (once under 70) and didn't get wins. You were saying?

If the Pistons can not score more than 80 points, they don't deserve to win the championship.

I guess the Pacers don't either, since they haven't topped that mark in the last two games. Also see above comments on last year's ECF.

I also call every loss the curse of Darko. The Pistons could have drafted Dwayne Wade or 'mello.

Yeah, not like they won a championship with Darko on the roster or anything. Also, I'm confused as to who those last two people are. I'm familiar with Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony, but not Dwayne Wade and 'mello. Side note, Bosh is better than Carmelo.

What's up with ABC?
While watching the pregame and halftime shows for the Piston game, I discovered a number of odd things that were said.

1. Let's start with the guy they call "Big Red". He was a fantastic player and is usually a decent commentator. However, he decided to put his stupid cap on for today's show. To start, he said that nobody on the Pacers would even start for the Pistons. When challenged about J-O, he said Rasheed was better than J-O. Uh... maybe slightly defensively, but J-O is much more talented on offense (even though he's not showing it this series). I have a hard time running with that one. Later on, Walton said that Amare was the best big man in basketball. What!? He's kicking ass this year and working very well in the system, but... Shaq? Duncan? Garnett? Come on now! There's no way Amare's better than those three. Following this, for the trifecta, Walton said that Seattle's big men needed to more than just dunk and shoot against San Antonio. Of course, I had to smirk and go look up some stats. Keep in mind, this was before game four of the series, so I'll leave that out. Also, I'll be counting their big men as Fortson, James, Evans, Collison and Potapenko. Their series totals in stats:

Fortson: 13 minutes, 2 boards
James: 48 minutes, 10 boards, 5 blocks
Evans: 76 minutes, 21 boards, 1 block
Collison: 42 minutes, 18 boards, 1 block
Potapenko: 16 minutes, 2 boards
Totals: 195 minutes, 62 boards, 7 blocks
Per 36 minutes: 11.45 boards, 1.3 blocks

So as a collective unit, per person and not counting the dunks and fouls, they average 11.45 boards and 1.3 blocks per 36 minutes. I'd say that's more than just dunking and fouling, wouldn't you?

2. Next, Tirico. Normally I don't mind the guy, he's usually a decent talker. But, today, to start, he asked the group if Miami needed Shaq to get past round three. This isn't just the Piston fan in me, this is the NBA fan in me... what!? They may have swept a pair of teams that can't defend, but they're going to be running into Detroit next round. Without Shaq, they're going down in five at the most... provided the Pistons don't score 29 points against them in a first half or something. As if that wasn't bad enough, Tirico later went on to refer to Indianapolis as "Basketball City, USA". I'm sorry, when was the last time they won title? Oh, right, 1981... in college. Okay, when was the last time they won a pro title then? Oh, right, 1973... in the ABA. Sorry, you can't be Basketball City, USA if you haven't won an NBA title or won any title in the last twenty years.

3. Finally, Ahmad. He only committed one offense, but it was a big one. During a pretaped interview with Chauncey, he went about various questions until he got to a brutal one. He asked Chauncey why Chauncey is referred to as "Mister Big Shot". Let's break the nickname down word by word. Mister, referring to the fact that Chauncey is in fact male. Big, referring to that Chauncey often does large things. Shot, as in field goal attempt, often made. So Chauncey is a male that takes large shots that are often made. What exactly is so hard to understand about this? Ahmad must have a hard time understanding, otherwise he wouldn't have asked why Chauncey was called that? I mean, is it so hard to figure that he's called "Mister Big Shot" because... he hits big shots? Jeez! I don't remember what Chauncey's response was, but I bet he was being ridiculously polite when he said it.

Sonics even series
Heh, I guess they'll make it to six after all. The causes of death here are pretty obvious, them being that the Sonics shot 8.3% better from the field and had 8 fewer turnovers. What's even more intriguing is that the Sonics pulled off those feats sans Rashard Lewis. This meant that, as seen in the box score, Damien Wilkins had to play 32 minutes and the point guards had to start together. If I was told this would happen before the game, I would've said "well, 3-1 Spurs". Instead, you get that trio combining for a reasonable PPS of 1.23 on 44 shots and combining for 9 steals. Not bad! Also, Danny Fortson continued his hilarious statlines with 13 minutes and 4 fouls. Not as hilarious as in the previous three games, but funny nonetheless. JJ didn't do much, but it didn't matter, apparently.

Jeez, I thought I was tired an hour ago. I guess not. Also, Courtside should be launching shortly, take a look.

Excerpts from "Brain salad surgery"

2005-05-15T02:26:00.000-04:00

I really should start with the sweep, but...

"I'm in Indianapolis and I write for ESPN.com... therefore, I must be a complete homer!"
What a piece of garbage. The quotes:

League officials -- well, one in particular, named David Stern, who was present at the game -- tried to screw the Pacers back on Nov. 20

Yeah, because Stern ought to applaud the jokers for cracking some fans, right? Here's the worst one:

Did Brown honestly expect the officials to hit Miller with a charge in the final seconds of what could be one of his last games? I like Hunter a lot, but let's keep it real -- we're talking about Lindsey Hunter. Reggie Miller. Lindsey Hunter.

HE'S NOT FAMOUS OR POPULAR, HE'S JUST AN INSANELY HARD WORKER, HE SHOULDN'T GET ANY CALLS. This guy makes Tommy Heinsohn almost sound unbiased! I decided to take a look at another article of his (remember, he also wrote this, which I explained the crappiness of a few days back) to see if this was a one time thing or not. Guess what? Quotes from here:

The Pistons were in a collective funk for six quarters, from the second quarter of Game 2 through the first three quarters of Game 3, when they scored, in order, 17, 19, 14, 11, 17, 17, and 17 points. During that stretch they looked lethargic, lackadaisical, even, at times, lazy. And they were being outworked by a scrappy Pacers bunch.

Hunter made two great hustle plays Friday night when he blocked Johnson's breakaway dunk from behind in the final minute of the third quarter, and got on the floor to steal the ball from Johnson early in the fourth. McDyess carried the Pistons offensively for a short stretch of the second quarter.

They're lazy... but they had a guy (from their bench) make multiple good hustle plays. Which is it? Keep in mind, this is the same guy that according to the writer, should never get a call late in the game when he's on Reggie. This guy does circular like Scoop Jackson!

Indy might be the deepest team among the final eight. The Pacers go 10, 11 deep, giving Carlisle the luxury of subbing for situations and matchups.

Yeah, just like the Celtics went ten, eleven deep against Indy, right? For matchups? The thing about going ten or eleven deep and it being effective is when you're like Memphis or Dallas and actually have ten or eleven guys on the roster who can make contributions. The Pacers have guys like Pollard (-14.5 Roland Rating this postseason) at ten and Gill at eleven... yeah. The other thing is, those two have combined for 97 minutes so far this postseason, which for them is ten games. Which means that combined and split, counting all games, they average 4.85 minutes a game each. Sorry, guys don't tend to make contributions in that time, especially at their talent levels.

The Pacers' strength clearly is wearing on Detroit. Pacers backup point guard Anthony Johnson says he's noticed that at times the Pistons have been late getting back on defense in transition, something he attributes to the Indy second unit's edge in energy.

I've been trying to find how many fast break points the teams have this series, but my search has been fruitless so far. More on this if I can find the stat.

Moral of the story is, this guy has no idea what he's talking about. I can't wait to see his reaction after the Pistons win this series. I bet it will be something like "REGGIE WAS SCREWED WITHOUT ARTEST". Side note, this is the first time I've ever written sentences in all caps on here. That's how infuriating Michael Smith, a "senior writer for ESPN.com" is. Like Scoop, I have no idea how he got his title.

Also, like Rasheed before game 2 last year and before game 4 now, I also guarantee a victory for the Pistons. You heard it here second.

Is that a 40 spot in the third?
Yes, yes it is. You'd think Miami was the team down 3-0. Despite the wacky D, Washington had a shot at this one. Like Boston last round, they just had problems distributing the shots. Jamison scored 10 and took 15 shots. Haywood took 14 shots and had 18 points. Most importantly, Arenas took 17 shots and had 25 points. Respectively, the PPS numbers are 0.67, 1.29 and 1.47. You know where I'm going with this. I think Jamison's great and I still don't think anyone on Miami can guard him that well, but come on. He took 15 shots and didn't get to the charity stripe once! Clearly something's got to change there. As for the Heat, well... Wade's a machine. Nothing more to say on them.

"Haywood, pioneer for early entry, favors age limit"
Huh? Okay, his reasons make sense, but it's kind of odd that he's the guy saying it. Also, if you look at another quote (certainly are a lot of those this post):

"Those people who say LeBron James is the best ever at 19, they didn't see me," Haywood said in a telephone interview.

Well, he wasn't in the NBA (or even the ABA) at age nineteen, so it's kind of hard to say. Again, people need to do research... even on their own lives.

Bitches crystal

2005-05-14T00:35:00.000-04:00

Folks, there's four words that sum up how I feel about game three.

ME KILL REFS NOW
I was considering a different section title like, "Pacers + Refs 79, Pistons 74" or "Artest's missing $5 million finds its way into refs' pockets" or "Reggie Miller has perfected mind control" or "Reggie Miller has developed a force field in which anyone else who steps inside is called for a foul". But, I settled on the one in all caps and in broken English. Seriously, was that not absolutely horrible? He took 12 free throws and probably took about two of them care of fouls that weren't a complete prevarication. Not only were there phantom calls called in his favour, there were a pile of pushoffs that also weren't whistled. I mean, we're talking Jordan on Bryon Russell at the end of the 1998 Finals-esque. I was about twice as pissed off about it at the time. Makes me wish I was detailing my thoughts then, I bet it would've been something like "Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders Screw Flanders" and so on. What's kind of funny about this is that Reggie was "going Walker" (that's going to be my new phrase for a supposed "star" who is shooting badly) all game. 3-11 from the field, including 0-7 from behind the arc. Even if you hadn't seen the game, isn't it odd how a guy who only took four shots from inside the arc went to the line 12 times? Really makes you think. I'd offer more analysis, but when an outside force does so much to the game by giving the Pacers many points, putting the Pistons in the penalty repeatedly and knocking Rip out of the game, it's hard to break the game down. Yes, I know the Pistons only had 28 points in the first half, but the amount they put up in the second half would've been enough to win the game if not for the tainted variable in question.

The millenium of aftermath
Hey hey, someone else noticed too! Some quotes from the recap:

And when Detroit needed a stop to have a chance at a potentially tying 3-pointer, Hunter fell down -- or perhaps was pushed -- and Miller hit a 21-foot jumper to make it 79-74.

"It was an unbelievable shot he hit," coach Larry Brown said. "But how could he get so open? ... It's a shame that in the final situation they leave it up to other people to decide the game."

Brown seemed to infer that Miller was using his trademark push-off to draw fouls and get free, and Hunter declined to comment for fear of a fine.

Fitting that the guy who has seen just about everything in basketball also saw this. He'll probably get fined for it... but, that's what happens when you tell the truth sometimes, sadly. Also, I guess my prediction is ruined. I still have complete faith that the Pistons can win the next three in a row and win the series in six... provided we don't have the same (insert favourite eight letter compound word of many NBA players here) we had in game three anymore.

In a game that I won't bitch about...
I have to give it up for the Suns. They went on the road (not that they're bad on the road) sans their younger JJ and shot 11-22 from behind the arc anyway. Favourite number of the night is Nash's 17 assists. Least favourite number of the night is Nash's 7 turnovers... not like he didn't make up for it. Dirk shot like crap again, I don't know what's up. I haven't heard anything about him being injured, it's not like Bill Russell is defending him, I can't figure it out. I don't know if he's going to get it back on track in time for them to beat this kind of opponent.

In different basketball news
After grabbing an FTP program and editing the thing on Keenspace that way, I've managed to get part of what I want done. So, it's official, Courtside will be launching Monday morning at around when I put up the blog post for that day. The link is up already, but the "under construction" part will be removed soon. I hope you enjoy it, I'm having fun writing for it.

Benny the bouncer

2005-05-13T03:45:00.000-04:00

If you're curious as to why this is up later in the morning than usual... honestly, I forgot all about it. I thought I put it up earlier, but then I remembered that I couldn't say anything about SEA/SA yet and didn't. D'oh.

All defensive teams announced; Blog writer left without good section titles
First, why is it under Minnesota news, rather than Detroit news? The Pistons had three guys out of the eleven, you'd think it would be attributed to them. Garnett's on for the sixth straight time... so? Duncan's been there the same amount of consecutive times, it's not like KG is unique in the regard. My other complaint is that Bowen got in listed as a guard, despite that he played 1% of SA's time at SG and no time at all at PG. Other than that, no complaints at all. If AK47 wasn't on the first team and had played the full year, I'd complain. But, since he unfortunately wasn't, no more complaints. Good to see Chauncey and Tayshaun on there, they deserve it.

3
This was eerie. I think the game (and/or the dollar bill) was trying to tell me something... there were so many references to the number three.

- The obvious one, it was game 3
- Etan Thomas, #3 in Washington's big man rotation, was out
- Shaq didn't play, so Mourning (wears #33) got the start instead
- The most frequent advertisement I saw was for Star Wars: Episode 3
- This was the 3rd road game Miami played in the playoffs
- Mourning won 3 tips in 3 tries in the first 3:30 of the game
- Washington's big 3 had all of Washington's 24 (8x3) points in the first quarter
- Washington lead by 3 after the first quarter
- This was the 3rd time in 3 games that there had been a reference to why Gilbert Arenas wears the number he does
- Dixon wears #3 and got a huge cheer when he first entered the game
- Etan Thomas was shown on the bench 3 times
- Lute Olsen was shown in the crowd 3 times
- Washington hit 1/3 of their 3 point shots
- Brendan Haywood, who wears #33, played 33 minutes
- Wade, who had another great game, wears #3 (almost had 33 points too)

Crazy. In a similar fashion, I think Jared Jeffries is hilarious. Almost every time he goes to the basket, something funny happens. A few games ago, he kept on trying stationary dunks from five feet away. Tonight, he stuck the ball between the glass and the rim. Very adventerous. Now... for some real comments. Break out the brooms! How is it the Wizards lost at home when Miami was missing Shaq? Oh, I know. They gathered a grand total of 29 rebounds, to Miami's 43. The team rebound rate was 34.9. By comparison, Miami's was 51.8. I mean, Shaq and Haslem's rebound rates for the season combined are just 1.9 boards short of what Washington reeled in, in game three. This is what happens when they're sans Etan and Kwame with Ruffin only grabbing 2 in his 17 minutes (his regular rate is 14.8). Sigh. I thought they had a shot at one game, but I guess not. Turn out the lights, DC, the party's just about over.

Sloan, not Sloan-terno
I think the Jazz will be much better next year if they get a competent point guard so that ought to delay his retirement even more. As the title of the section suggests, he's not going Joe-Pa, he still knows what he's doing. So, more power to him. I don't think he'll let himself go on until he's useless anyway. As to when he actually does quit... hard to say. I hope it's not for a while.

I want some "Revenge of the Stith"
Had to throw it out there eventually. If you remembered him, you were probably thinking about it too.

Potapenko makes himself useful
I certainly didn't think I'd be using that section title tonight. There are a number of things to say here. First, Fortson has 10 fouls in 16 minutes here. Slanted up to 36 minutes, that's 22.5 fouls. Keep them coming, our enforcer in pigtails. Second, is it really possible that Seattle can win a game where Lewis and Allen combine for 9-33 from the field and 32 points? Apparently so. Part of it was the +11 rebound advantage they had (Hm, where did I see a similar thing earlier?) and another part was... JJ! 7-7 from the field for 15 points! He also had 2 blocks in his 24 minutes. Unfortunately, he also raked in those 6 fouls. This guy is hilarious. He's kind of like Fortson. If he didn't get so many fouls and actually managed to stick in there for a while, he'd get so much accomplished! I guess the same can be said for Evans, but his foul trouble isn't usually as bad. Seattle's certainly got some interesting big men.

From the beginning

2005-05-12T01:58:00.000-04:00

Let me start with something that I had to explain to friends that said 'Hello' to me with, "Pistons suck" and "Pistons got owned"... the Pistons lost a home game in every series last year and look where they wound up. Don't be like Marc Stein and not do your research before claiming ownage.

I've heard of hot and cold, but this is ridiculous
So the Pistons put up 33 points in the first quarter and 33 points in the second half. Yeah, something's a bit off there. Something else might be off when one guy on the opposing team has 10 offensive rebounds. Jeez! Foster was everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I think the guy's a great player and I know he tends to play well against the Pistons, but he shouldn't be crushing them like this in a playoff game. The Pistons shouldn't be losing playoff games where their opponent has a PPS of 0.97. But, it happened in game two. It's pretty clear what the Pistons need to do next game... keep up the good D and box out. I know it's not a very popular concept in the NBA, but they need to do something to slow those second chance opportunities down. I mean, outside of Foster, it's not like any of the Pacers played particularly well. Reggie couldn't defend a chair, Jackson was 2-9 from behind the arc, Tinsley was 4-19 from the field, J-O had a PPS of 0.88 (but made up for it with the quintet of blocks, I know). Even if they hold him to like five offensive boards, still a big number, the Pistons have a great shot to win the game. Instead, he grabbed ten and they were doomed. As noted at the top, I know they didn't do particularly well on offense after the first quarter, but it would've been enough if they could've slowed Foster down a bit. I don't mean to diminish the guy's success, he was playing like a superstar, but part of it was the Pistons' mediocrity on the glass. Being outrebounded by nine? Being outshot by 18? For a team with the big man talent of the Pistons, brutal. I don't place the blame squarely on one of the Piston big men for this, as all three of them had their chance on Foster on both ends, so all three deserve a chunk of it. I know Ben had 15 defensive boards, but he was in on it too. Despite all of the complaining, I fear not, as I believe Brown will pound them into shape for Friday. Side note, Tayshaun was silently very effective. 24, 9, 7, 2 blocks and a 1.6 PPS. He made up for his weak game one in a big way, too bad it went to waste. However, it's alright. If Reggie keeps guarding him, he'll get the opportunity to do such things again in the coming games.

Stern to the hill
I'm not expecting much here. It's not like news that a pile of NBA players are on steroids is going to come out afterwards. As the article says, suspensions on the subject have only come out twice since the policy started. Granted, that was only six years ago, but I doubt many more would've been up if the policy was older. Look out for late night TV jokes that involve Katelyn Faber injecting Kobe, though.

Artest back in the news because... he's talking about stuff to somebody
This seems to be the head column on it. A quote:

Consider lifting Artest's suspension after Game 2. Let Ron come out and play. Don't tell me it's unrealistic.

Not only is it unrealistic, it's also never going to happen. Why in the hell would Stern randomly lift the suspension after game two? I can only imagine the bad press the league would get for it. "NBA lets suspended fan beater back in for ratings reasons alone!" is the first headline I foresee. I know, it wouldn't be correct, but the league would sadly get a bad rap. I think Artest ought to be back as well, but I've thought he should've been back about 30 games after he started being out. That's just me, of course. Now that he's out, letting him back in for game three of a playoff series (after saying he'd be gone the whole year) just wouldn't make sense. Letting him back in would be like letting Dumars fire off a trade for a decent backup 2/3 and letting him play in game three... it just makes no sense at this point in the year.

Lebron did something
Guess who put up an article about it! Hint, I ragged on him and got complimented for it last post. I'd comment on it, but I haven't read it. I'm sure it's very circular and self-contradictory, as per standard.

Unrealism, part two
He's kidding, right? Right? Two things of note here. First, the draft is in a month and a half and yet, he's just now declaring himself for it. Second... he's coming out of nowhere, not hiring an agent, completely willing to go to school if need be and expects to go in the first round. It's too bad we all can't make assumptions that bogus, huh? If we could, I'd assume that I could get someone to pay me for sitting around and scratching my ass all day. I really hope he's kidding, otherwise, he shouldn't be heading to Texas A&M... he should be heading to Arkham Asylum.

Weird out west
Funny, I didn't think one would go to the wire until at least game three... didn't think Dallas would win one until then either. Keeping in mind that the score was 106-106 before the events happened, let's take a look at the last few plays of the game, as noted by the ESPN.com Gamecast:

0:06 4th DAL Dirk Nowitzki made 16 ft two point shot.
0:06 4th PHO Phoenix Full Timeout.
0:06 4th DAL Marquis Daniels enters the game for Jason Terry.
0:00 4th PHO Quentin Richardson missed 25 ft three point jumper.
0:00 4th End of the 4th Quarter.

I can't say I've seen the play yet, but one of two things had to have happened here. Either (a) COY D'Antoni drew up a triple at the end of regulation when down two or (b) the ball randomly found its way to Q with six seconds on the clock for some reason and he decided to have a triple try. I'm guessing the second one is more likely. I realize the guy was 3-4 from behind the arc before that shot, but come on, you'd think Amare would be a more derisable target when 0:06 on the clock and the score being 108-106 in your opponent's favour. Or failing that, Marion, who had a wicked game of 23, 15 and 6 blocks. This isn't "Reggie chucks up ugly 28 footer with time on the clock at the end of Q4 against Boston in game six", but it's close. On the opposite side... welcome back, Dirk Nowitzki! His last name is misprounced almost as much as Jamison's name. Maybe I should put up a pronounciation guide for NBA player names, it sounds like a lot of folks on TV and the radio out there need it. Anyway, back to the topic at hand, Dirk finally shot well. 8-18 for 23 points and nice PPS of 1.28. Not only did he shoot well, but his verbal busting up of Dampier after game one might've helped as well, as that lethargic beast (no, Dirk didn't call him that) went 7-8, 15 and 12 in only 27 minutes. Granted, he had fouls like Jerome James/Big Dog, but his contributions were great nonetheless. Maybe I was wrong about his playing time being really limited.

Hoedown

2005-05-11T01:00:00.000-04:00

First, remember to look below for the fatter post. Second, sigh... apparently I can figure out how to use the comic uploading software, it's just acting like a piece of crap right now. Example? I try to delete what it has as the sample comic up right now instead, it places a copy of the comic in the trash and keeps the original file in place. Great stuff, huh? But enough of that, on to the games!

Crazy for the Heat
This one wasn't nearly as close as the score indicates. The Wizards had some nice runs and as I predicted, nobody could guard the man whose name is mispronounced by commentators more times than Sarunas Jasikevicius (okay, that might be a stretch) but you were kidding yourself if you thought the Wiz had a shot at this one. Teams don't let their opposition shoot 16.5% better from the floor and win playoff games! If such a box score exists somewhere in the great history of the NBA, I'd love to see it.

Spurs... uh... blog?
Similar idea to the Heat game, except only 10.5%. Wicked line of the night goes to Manu Ginobili, who shot 9-11 from the field and had... 28 points? The man had a PPS of 2.55 on the night. Every two he took was equivalent to a make and over half a free throw made. That's so good it makes Ray Allen's 1.79 PPS on the night look average. In the Jerome James watch, he went 4-9 with 8 points, 7 boards and 5 fouls in 24 minutes. Slanted up to 36 minutes, that's 12 points, 10.5 boards and 7.5 fouls. Yeah, something seems off here. Too much hanging out with Fortson and Collison, perhaps? Or maybe it was just playing against Big Dog, who had 6 fouls in 20 minutes. Tell me that guy can't play D, huh?

Preview of Pistons and Pacers, game two
As I said in the post down below, this ought to be another beatdown. I suspect J-O has a better second half, the near 40 year old shoots a little better and Jack-1 stops hounding Tayshaun, but the result will be very similar. I know I don't normally attach score predictions but I love 100-85, let's say it'll be around there again. Was only four points off on both sides in game one, right?

Brain salad surgery

2005-05-10T23:24:00.000-04:00

Well, aren't I the role model? Right after I say that updates would be at more regular times, I go and put the post up 22 hours late again. My excuse is that I had an early job interview and had to hit the hay early, but that's not interesting, so we'll skip it.

Pistons thwomp Pacers, series starting to look like DET/PHI
Seriously, I think this is going to take the same path. Pistons pound them in first two games, they have a crazy shooting night in game three and win, Pistons pull out two tough ones in games four and five. Granted, Indy was wild last series... but come on, they were playing a team that starts Antoine Walker! Of course it's going to be nutty. You heard it here, very similar series. Not a carbon copy, but very similar. Now, for some related stuff.
Yeah, the one we're (almost) all curious about... what's up with Ben? To quote Knickerblogger:

When Ben Wallace drops a blackjack on you, you know you've been Punk'd

Precisely! He had 21, 15 and four steals. I can see the latter two happening a decent amount, but he doesn't cross the 20 point barrier a lot. Yet, this is the second time in six games (yes, that's referring to the playoffs) that he's done such a task. It's not like he was playing against crappy interior D. J-O, Davis and Foster make for a good group in there. Yet, he was constantly getting and creating good opportunities. I really hope he keeps it up, as it's definitely helping the team. Having five offense options certainly beats four and a half or four (or in the Carlisle days, three).

More scheming!
You might've noticed that the scheme is different... and more Piston-esque. I thought it was super duper... aside from the glaring white background, which I absolutely hated, but people seem to like. Really, it doesn't matter to me. Through Firefox, I see it however I want, so it's up to the readers. Don't like this one? You know the drill, keep complaining to me.

Apparently Vlad-Rad is out for the series...
... and thus, the season. Well, they wouldn't last the series without him, but with him gone and Allen day to day, Sonics might not make it to five games. Guess I should've put some small print that my predictions are void if important players get hurt.

D'Antoni wins COY; Writer of "The Pistons" reportedly baffled
Zuh? I know Hollinger likes him, but I just don't share the view. A quote:

Phoenix is winning largely because D'Antoni had the cojones to play Amare Stoudemire defensively at center and Shawn Marion at power forward.

Yeah, it has little to do with the fact that his other options were Steven Hunter, Jake Voskuhl and Bo Outlaw or that Steve Nash and Q joined the team in the offseason. Another quote:

The Suns rarely run set plays because D'Antoni is smart enough to get out of the way. This is incredibly tough for pro coaches to do – considering their life expectancy nowadays, most consider it borderline suicidal to turn the play calling over to the players.

"Listen guys, I know this is borderline suicidal, but I'm letting our fantastic point guard who averages 15, 11 and 51% call the plays." Right. I like Hollinger a lot, but that article is a bit questionable to me. As for the whole COY thing, another reason why it irks me that D'Antoni won is that he won in a season that contained the coaching jobs that Karl, Skiles and McMillan have done. Maybe in another year where such guys didn't stand out it wouldn't be so bad, but I feel there are three worthier candidates.

JVG now stands for Jive: Very Gruesome
What a jive turkey that balding Van Gundy is. I guess option four was "change my comments so that they're an obvious lie", hadn't really thought of that.

Scoop'd
Normally I wouldn't mention one of his articles because they seem to go in circles and end up nowhere, but since it touches on the blog's topic, I figured I'd mention it. Part one of the article screams "Wah, the rivalry started with Carlisle but the loss of Artest ruined it!" but no bomb threat references, I found that odd. Anyway, back to the topic at hand. If the rivalry started with Carlisle, does it really matter if Artest is there or not? Part two... well, that's the going in circles part. It says "the rivalry is over because of things that aren't Artest"... which completely contradicts the first part. Every time I read one of his articles, I wonder how the line at the end of each of them, "Scoop Jackson is an award-winning journalist", is a fact.

This time I really am getting back to the regular schedule
No more job interviews, no more other stuff, just regularity. The blog's taking Beano and/or Metamucil, I promise. I'll have another post up in a bit to account for 05/11/05 on tonight's games to start that regularity off. Remember folks, it's good to be regular.

Nutrocker

2005-05-09T00:26:00.000-04:00

I had a nice post ready to go for this about half an hour ago and accidently exited my browser as I was working on it. I think, "Wait, didn't they recently up something up for post recovery?" and yes, yes they did. Problem is, the "Recover post" button wouldn't work in this situation. So, new post. Sigh. I thought bringing out the "Nutrocker" title was fitting, seeing as how the two games today were decided by a combined 41 points. Another note, now that the posts that required a lot of pre-writing thought are done with, updates should be on a more regular time schedule (as in, they should consistently be up between 12 and 1 AM ET). Now, for the meaty sports talk.

Starting in the East...
There were a number of problems for the Wizards here. One, the bench outside of Etan Thomas shot 0-8 for 0 points. Two, Miami's bigs shot a combined 18-27 (66.7%) from the field. Granted, they did deal with Shaq fairly well (four turnovers and six fouls) aside from that strange sequence where he took and missed three free throws in a row thanks to two Washington lane violations. If they can keep up such a defense throughout the series and maybe shoot a little better (than the 36.8% they shot this game) they might have a shot at winning more than one game... well, maybe not.

Statlines!
Both teams played all twelve of their guys for at least two minutes in this one. Granted, part of that was because one team lost two of their best scorers early in the game. If Ray and Vlad are out for extended periods of time, Seattle's not going to make it to two victories. Related notes, Jerome James was 2-8 with 4 points and 3 boards in 19 minutes and Danny Fortson had 4 fouls in 3 minutes. JJ might be out of magic (as I predicted) and I must say, I love Fortson. Partially because of his awesome 2.05 PPS and partially because he often puts up lines like the one he did there.

HALF AN HOUR LATER UPDATE: Okay, I did as told by the multiple complainers and changed the scheme. It's now more Piston-esque and not dark. Hope you enjoy it. Second, the comic is now working. However, there are numerous problems. One, I have no idea how to work the FTP service keenspace provides, I'll get on trying to learn it. Two, the comic currently up is what I put as the "preview", which needs to be taken down anyway. The actual version of comic #1 is much better looking than that, trust me. As soon as I can get it up, you'll see. So, as soon as I figure it out, the comic is go!

Three fates

2005-05-08T13:47:00.000-04:00

I guess it was fitting that I was running out of useful Queen song titles, as we're now going to round two. We now switch to ELP... not that it matters much. Yes, I know there are four teams advancing, but I only give three of them a shot to get to the Finals. Take a guess which one I'm leaving out.

Quick round one recap:

Number of winners correct = 8
Number of games correct = 5, including all four in the East.
Number of whole things correct = 5

I'm special!

Unexpected big performers: Andres Nocioni (knocked out) and Jerome James (now faces good defenders). Sort of a shame neither will be able to repeat the performance in round two. I presume others will step up, though.
Unexpected bad performer: Dirk Nowitzki (45-128 on the series from the field, 35.2%)... his destroying Houston PF's was the prediction of mine that didn't pan out at all. But it didn't turn out too badly for him, his team did advance.

#1 Miami versus #5 Washington
Miami was 2nd in offensive efficiency and 6th in defensive efficiency.
Washington was 11th in offensive efficiency and 18th in defensive efficiency.

Watching game 6 between the Bulls and Wizards made me spout a comment of, "It really doesn't matter who wins this series anyway, Miami's going to demolish them in the next round." and I stand by the comment.

- Bigs -
Washington may not have Nenad Krstic and the army of crap like the Nets, but they still can't match Miami's potent front court. Kwame Brown's never to be heard from again in DC, Haywood and Thomas's size won't be any good against Shaq and the D is too good for Jared Jeffries to accomplish much. On the other side, Miami's still got that great group of high FG% guys, even if it was on the low side last round (partially because of Shaq's questionable health). Like last round, Miami's advantage is very big, but not as huge as before.

- Littles -
It's a lot more even here. Jamison, Hughes and Arenas pack a threesome that's very Run TMC-esque and Juan Dixon is a great gunner off the bench. None of Miami's littles will be able to guard Jamison very well, but even so, they have the capabitity to hold the other two from doing too much damage. While on defense, only Hughes will be able to defend against Wade and even that will be inconsistent. Then there's Miami's two gunners in Jones and Jones, who ought to get the same numerous open looks they got during the season thanks to the big men. Also, Keyon Dooling might be able to keep up his effectiveness from the first series in this one. This area is almost even overall, so I can't give the edge to either squad. I think whoever plays better between Hughes and Wade will get their team the edge here.

Like Philly against the Pistons last round, the Wizards are volatile enough to pull out one game against the much better team. Past that... don't count on it.

Prediction: Heat in five

#2 Detroit versus #6 Indiana
Detroit was 17th in offensive efficiency and 3rd in defensive efficiency.
Indiana was 19th in offensive efficiency and 11th in defensive efficiency.

Well, here's the one they were all waiting for. Time for more brawl and bomb threat rehashes than we can shake Jonathan Bender at. Sigh.

- Bigs -
Dale Davis might be effective against Boston's lack of interior D, but the same can't be said here. Jermaine O'Neal's not going to get away with shooting like Antoine Walker in this series. Foster... well, he's equally effective. For the opposition, we know what they can do. McDyess ought to shoot better this round... if only by the fact that the first two games will be in Detroit again. Wallace and Wallace... if J-O couldn't shoot well against bad defenders Lafrentz and Walker, he's going to have a terrible time shooting against superb defenders. Pistons have this part covered.

- Littles -
Tinsley's back, but he's still dinged. I suspect he'll be back up to full speed by the time this series gets heated, despite that he has to deal with Chauncey, who is almost like Payton++. Reggie's still hot, but will have to deal with Hamilton on the other end, hurting his effectiveness. Jackson... well, he has Prince to deal with instead of Pierce. I think the Pistons the Pistons have this part covered too.

I touched on this one a while back after Marc Stein said that the rule was they had to go seven (except that was just for "this" year)... Pistons are pretty much equal to last year's team. Pacers are weaker than last year's team because they have no Artest. The series between the teams went to six last year and the Pacers were on the short end of the stick despite having home court. This all leads me to believe that it will go to a number less than six with the same winner.

Prediction: Pistons in five

#1 Phoenix versus #4 Dallas
Phoenix was 1st in offensive efficiency and 16th in defensive efficiency.
Dallas was 5th in offensive efficiency and 9th in defensive efficiency.

Here's the other one they were all waiting for. Steve Nash and company against the Mavs. I hope Dirk shoots a lot better in this series.

- Bigs -
Don't expect Dampier to get a lot of time in this series. It's going to be a whole lot of Dirk and four guards, which showed up a few times last round. Which is fitting, because Phoenix runs a big man and four guards out there pretty much all the time. So, there isn't a lot to dissect for the bigs here. Amare and Hunter versus Dirk and... maybe KVH will be back for a bit? Maybe they stick Dampier out there more than I think. Either way, this matchup will be fairly even, if not a bit in Phoenix's favour.

- Littles -
I know he played 71% of Phoenix's PF minutes, but I still consider Marion a little. So he, JJ1, JJ2, Q and Nash make up Phoenix's littles and there's not a team in the league that has better littles. Dallas may have the talented group of Finley, Howard, Terry, Daniels and Harris and would beat most groups in the league with that, but can't stand up to the Suns. Edge, Phoenix.

Dallas is a nice team and I know a few of the big basketball names on the web (like Roland Beech) have them going all the way, but I just don't see it. However, it won't be the pounding that the Suns put out in round one.

Prediction: Suns in six

#2 San Antonio versus #3 Seattle
San Antonio was 9th in offensive efficiency and 1st in defensive efficiency.
Seattle was 3rd in offensive efficiency and 25th in defensive efficiency.

This one will be a lot closer than folks think. Seattle went 2-1 against San Antonio during the regular season and Ray Allen wasn't playing in the loss. I'm not saying Seattle's going to win the series, but I think they put up a good fight.

- Bigs -
This is a variable category because of a certain inconsistent player's play. For San Antonio, Tim Duncan does everything, Nazr Mohammed scores well in the post, Rasho Nesterovic plays good D and Robert Horry shoots jumpers. On the flip side, Danny Fortson and Reggie Evans rebound, Jerome James scored inside and rebounded last series against the weak King D and Nick Collison does a little of everything. If JJ can play like he did last series, SA's advantage will only be slight. If he can't, the more likely outcome, the Spur advantage will be big everywhere except on the glass.

- Littles -
This part is more evenly matched. As we know, Seattle is pretty well set up here. Lewis and Allen make up a potent offensive force, Ridnour and Daniels make up one of the best PG tandems in the league and Radmanovic is dynamite off the bench. Of course, the Spurs match that and beat it with Parker, Ginobili, Bowen, Barry, Udrih... and even Big Dog. While Seattle's guys can score like there's no tomorrow, SA's guys can score in bunches and defend... defending being the key. Seattle's group will win them a game or two, but nothing more.

Seattle's a good team and if they can keep their team mostly together in the offseason, they'll be in good shape. Problem is, unlike last round, they're up against a team with good defenders. Thus, because of their own defensive shortcomings, they shouldn't be able to advance.

Prediction: Spurs in 6

My melancholy blues

2005-05-07T00:00:00.000-04:00

I'm really running out of relevant Queen song titles... might have to switch to one of my other classic favourites (like ELP or Genesis) soon. Also, this part was originally going to have a complaint about how I hadn't gotten my Keenspace password. However, I just got an email that showed me it! That's the good news. Now, for the bad news. A quote:

It may take 2 to 5 days before your account becomes visible via ftp or http.

Well, crap. You'll see it up as soon as they let me put it up. Now, for some NBA content.

Wizards barely stamp out Bulls
Teams played a pretty even game, Washington just managed to pull it out at the end. I still think Chicago would've won if they'd had Curry and Deng. Of course, if Deng was there, Nocioni probably wouldn't have had such a nice series. I'll have a review of his performance up with my round two preview, which will go up early Sunday morning.

Sounds like Nash is the MVP
Nash was a rather large part of Phoenix's turnaround and certainly aided in the development of Amare. I still prefer Nowitzki, but, can't complain. Nash would be my second choice by a slim margin. Nice to see a point guard get the trophy too.

Scheming
Well, there wasn't much of a voter turnout for the colour scheme thing... and honestly, I forgot about it for a while. So unless there are more complaints, I'll pass on changing it. Hint, that's your cue to complain if you don't like it.

Sorry about the dinky post, yesterday's and tomorrow's ought to make up for it.

Keep passing the open windows; The non-playoff team offseason preview

2005-05-06T15:30:00.000-04:00

Notes before we start:
- NBA Salary Cap FAQ can be found here
- The maximum contract length could be changed to from seven to four in the new CBA
- I realize I'm probably overestimating the value of some guys based on how many teams have cap room, but... I overprice because I love!
- When I give a salary like $5.5, I'm obviously referring to 5,500,000 dollars, not five dollars and fifty cents

For every team that didn't make the playoffs, a few changes have to be made. This is the case for pretty much any team for any sport for any year. From the top, starting with the team that didn't win consecutive games all year.

Atlanta Hawks: 13-69 - Salaries
This team will be about $25 or so million under the cap. It's hard to predict what they'll do in resigning, as they might want to keep Lue and Crawford (if he's healthy) around. Or since they have so much cash free, maybe not, so my picks will not be counting them. Willis is probably done for (at least with them) and I doubt Ekezie finds more NBA work any time soon.

5 - Collier, Drobjnak
4 - Harrington
3 - J. Smith, Diaw, D. Smith
2 - Childress
1 - Delk, Ivey

Aside from getting a few pineriders, the team is fairly set from spots 2-4 with talented youngsters. Atlanta has the best odds of getting the top pick and will probably take Bogut if they get it. Bogut is said to be ready to compete right away, so they don't really have a big reason to grab a good five through free agency. They might want to pick up a decent one to back up, as Collier and Drobnjak aren't the most talented guys around. Delk isn't going to work as the starting PG on a very young team, so he'll need to be displaced. So the team needs a starting PG and a decent big man and has a ton of money to blow. What's available for them? At the point:

Earl Watson (Unrestricted) - This guy seems to be a pretty likely candidate for the ATL. He plays good D, is very quick, runs an offense well, has an assist rate of 31.5 and averages 4.5 APG (7.2 per 36) and averages 7.7 PPG (12.3 per 36). So that's a guy who'd average 12.3 and 7.2 at starter minutes, run the O nicely and play good D. Sounds like a perfect fit for the team. If I were Billy Knight, this would be who I would go for. Problem is, plenty of other teams will want him too.

Marko Jaric (Restricted) - Since the Clippers are the Clippers, they probably won't match on him. Even if they weren't the Clippers, he won't have a starting job there next year because of Livingston, so he probably wouldn't be matched anyway. So my guess is that he'll be readily available. Marko's big enough to play both guard spots and can feed the ball a decent amount, averaging 6.1 APG (6.6 per 36 minutes and an assist rate of 33.9). He won't score a ton (9.9 PPG, or 10.7 per 36) but he's got three point range (37.1%) and can score from many different spots. He'd be alright, but probably wouldn't fit in as well as he would another place, as he's not a pure point guard. I think the Hawks need a pure distributor as they already have some good scorers on the team in Harrington and Childress, along with the likely Bogut.

Antonio Daniels (Player Option) - His option is for only $2.2, so I'd say it's extremely likely that he opts out. His averages were 11.2 PPG (14.9 per 36) and 4.1 APG (5.5 per 36). His assist rate was only 27.0, reinforcing the fact that he is more of a scoring point guard than a distributing one. I believe the Hawks need a pass-first guy, so I wouldn't suggest that they go in this direction.

For the decent bigs, there isn't a lot in the $3-$4 range. Zaza/Zaur Pachulia would be an alright option, but Milwaukee sounds adamant about resigning him to a long deal. I recently said that Jerome James was just turning it up for the playoffs, but if he doesn't generate as much interest as he's hoping to, they could take a gamble on him. He might be for real after all. I wish there were more, but that doesn't seem to be the case. They could always drop to the "veteran's minimum stage" and pick up someone like Ervin Johnson or Jahidi White.

In general, the Hawks have a lot of money to spend and if they can find willing takers, they should probably spend right away. There's always a suggested course of action, but most guys don't want to come to Atlanta. Kenyon Martin opted for Denver. Jason Terry was really pissed off when Atlanta matched on the offer Utah gave him last year, but was happy when he was dealt to Dallas. Gary Payton bugged the team to release him upon being traded here. Antoine Walker didn't like going there. The list grows every year. Moral of the story is, beggars can't be choosers. If they can get Daniels or Jaric, they should go for it. Watson would be the best choice, but they don't have the option of being picky.

Charlotte Bobcats: 18-64 - Salaries

Expansion teams are always funny. Charlotte's cap isn't as high as the rest of the league's is, being that it will be their second year. According to the FAQ, it's 3/4 of the regular cap, which will be around $33.75. So they have around $23 in cap space. I don't know what to say here, Bickerstaff could go any number of directions. Let's take a look at what the roster is with the guys who still have deals. Note, I don't know what's up with Brevin Knight. Hoopshype says his deal runs out, but I've read other places that it doesn't. If it does indeed run out, he'll probably get offers too big for Charlotte to go after, so I'll ignore him.

5 - Brezec, Ely
4 - Okafor
3 - Wallace
2 - Robinson
1 - Hart

We're talking slim pickings, girl. They have good young guys at 1 and 3-5, but nothing at the two. Obviously there's plenty of improvement to be made with the record they have, but they have a nice young base, similar to Atlanta. They have the best shot at the #2 pick and I'm told that they want to get Chris Paul. Personally I'd go a different direction, but it's up to them. I'm not here to predict the draft. So I'm going to presume they get Paul and ignore getting a free agent PG. So, Charlotte's spot for major need is at SG. Let's take a look at their options. In the high priced range, where they probably won't go...

Ray Allen (Unrestricted) and Michael Redd
These two are the cream of the crop, of course. Charlotte's not going to bag either of them, even if they do shoot that high, so let's move on.

Larry Hughes (Unrestricted)
It's hard to say where he goes. I don't think he wants to head down to another (re)building case after being in Washington and Golden State for the four and a half years prior to this season. Thus, I don't think they have a shot at him either.

Joe Johnson (Restricted)
I think Charlotte should throw money at him. My guess is that Phoenix doesn't keep him around when they have to fork it over to Amare after next year, so I bet they wouldn't match. B. Colangelo says they're going to match any offer, but I find that hard to believe. Lots of teams will be trying to get him so Charlotte will be lucky if they can manage to bag him, but there's still a shot. This would be the best guy they could get ahold of, I think.

Bobby Simmons (Unrestricted)
He's not coming here. As much as his season screams "contract year", including that MIP award, there's going to be a ton of teams after him. Unless Bickerstaff throws a massive wad of cash at him, which the player/coach of the team won't, Bobby won't be coming to the Carolinas except for road games.

Kyle Korver (Restricted)
Not technically a shooting guard, but seeing as how he has the correct size and tends to just kick it in the corner and wait for the opportunity to gun, they can slot him here. Philly's said they're going to match any offer that he gets and on Korver, I'm inclined to believe him. Since he's so one-dimensional, unlike the five guys listed above, there probably won't be as much of a market for him. Thus, Philly resigning him to whatever is likely in my view. Charlotte would be smart to steer clear of this one.

Antonio Daniels (Player Option, very likely to leave Seattle)
Like Korver, because of his playing style and size, he could be slotted here. For the same reasons he wouldn't fit in Atlanta, he would fit here. They ought to make a run at him if Johnson gets priced out of their range.

Charlotte may or not be in a buyer's position, so it's very hard to say what they'll do. I think they ought to sign Johnson to a long deal (if possible) and then go wild in the summer of 2006. Obviously they need to pick up a pile of benchwarmers too, but that's not important.

Cleveland Cavaliers: 42-40 - Salaries
As I've said before, they're not going to resign McInnis. I'm guessing that they don't resign Zydrunas in an effort to go after Redd/Allen/Hughes. They'll be happy to get rid of Wagner and thus, they'll be about $19 million under the cap when it's time to go hunting. The roster, sirs (and madams?):

5 - Traylor, Diop
4 - Gooden, Varejao
3 - James
2/3 - Pavlovic, Newble, Welsch, Harris...
1 - Snow

If you couldn't tell, I put it the 2/3 because all of the guys listed there except Harris could play both spots. Now, for the needs. Despite the army of shooting guards, they desperately need to one up. Jackson could fit the spot, but he was hurt all year, so they'll have to presume. They need a point guard too, but that isn't as important as the SG because Lebron is such a ball handler. For the available SGs, basically look at what's listed for Charlotte, except change who is available. Basically, if they can get one of the big three listed, they have to do it. There was talk that Redd would go there all year... I still doubt that he stays in Milwaukee, despite his positive talk about it. Allen hasn't ruled it out. I haven't heard anything about Hughes going to Cleveland because the talk's been mainly focused on the guys who made their name big in Milwaukee. But if for some reason they can't bag the max money guys, he wouldn't be a bad plan C. As for whether Redd or Allen is a better choice... it's really hard to say. I value them as pretty much equal. If Cleveland has their pick, it has to be personal preference.

As for point guards, they could go a few ways. There's the guys listed for Atlanta, along with a bigger name like Knight. I don't think Knight would fit very well, again, as Lebron handles the ball so much. I think Jaric would be more fitting, as he could be a good complimentary player as he was in LA. They could also go for Ex-Piston Damon Jones, who might use his player option to get away from Miami. His slated salary for next year isn't listed on Hoopshype, but I bet it's not much more than the $2.5 her made this year. Thus, he might be looking to make more money. It's entirely possible he'll just stay in Miami for the stability and because he likes it so much, but if not, hanging out in the corner and getting dishes from Lebron could be an enticing opportunity. I haven't mentioned centre here because as I said in a recent post, I think they could get away with playing Varejao at the C in the East.

All in all, the Cavs have the pieces to go somewhere and might have a coach in the Zenmaster to help take them there. They have to make a big splash and I think there's a good chance that they pull it off.

Golden State Warriors: 34-48 - Salaries
Hee hee! Ah, always laugh inducing. While it's not officially listed on Hoopshype, Richardson's making around $11.67 and Murphy's making around $10 next year. Thus, their salary is something like $58 for next year. Needless to say, they're over the cap. Thus, they only have the mid-level exception to play with with people worth mentioning. Their roster:

5 - Foyle, Biedrins,
4 - Murphy, Cabarkapa
3 - Dunleavy, White
2 - Richardson, Pietrus
1 - Davis, Fisher

There's a lot of talk that they're going to deal Dunleavy in the offseason, so they could be shopping for an SF... so I'll focus on that. This SF will having to be willing to take the mid-level, so their options will be limited.

Glenn Robinson (Unrestricted)
The Warriors have a lot of bricklayers, so a consistent shooter would be beneficial to them. Big Dog doesn't play much D, but that could be masked by Foyle's shot blocking and Murphy's athletic ability.

Uh...

There's not much here. Raja Bell, maybe? Korver, but Philly will match him at the mid-level. Small forwards who will take the mid-level from a team with multiple chuckers in the current market don't really exist. But maybe that's a good thing. With all of the stupid contracts Mullin's been taking on, it could be a blessing in disguise that there's nearly no one out there fitting for what little wiggle money he has to play with.

Los Angeles Clippers: 37-45 - Salaries
Always entertaining to ponder what Elgin and the gang will do. They're not on the books for much and in usual Clipper fashion, I don't think they resign their big free agents (Jaric and Simmons) so they'll probably sign some low level guys to fill out the roster. They're about $15 under the cap, but it's not like that matters. I hate to write a section that's so tiny, but unless Sterling suddenly stops running the team like a business and starts running them like a sports franchise, there's not much to say. I guess there was last year when they had to get off the salary floor, but there's no such trouble this season.

Los Angeles Lakers: 34-48 - Salaries
They're capped out for a few years. Their roster is unbalanced. They have no coach. Their best two players don't mesh well. A lot of teams don't want to trade with them. Their point guard is (an Ex-Piston and) pissed off at the team. Their second best player just had surgery on his shooting shoulder, so he'll be tough to trade, even though they're still trying. What's the bright side about this team? They have a bunch of pieces. Presuming they let stiffs Brown and Walton go:

5 - Mihm, Divac, Medvedenko
4 - Odom, Grant, Cook
3 - Butler, Jones, George
2 - Bryant, Vujacic
1 - Atkins

Like Golden State, they've mainly got the mid-level to work with. However, they have three talented small forwards with which to deal as well. If one of the three isn't moved by the time the summer is done, Kupchak should be fired. If they can pick up a good point guard in a trade involving some of them and maybe a pick or two, then the Lakers shouldn't add more to their big stack of current salaries. Or, I've heard that they might draft Raymond Felton or another late lottery-esque PG. If they do neither of these things, then a point guard for the MLE is what they have to find. What's available there?

Dan Dickau (Unrestricted)
The Hornets will probably want to keep him around, but he might want to head out to the bright lights. I think Chucky's better than him, but Chucky's definitely better off the bench, so having them split time at the PG wouldn't be a bad idea. Dickau can shoot the three (34.7%) and dish the ball... his assist rate is only 25.7, but he was on New Orleans all year, it's not like there's a bevy of talented scorers there. He'd probably be the best option for them to pursue, if they don't grab one through trades. Well, there are better guys like Watson they could go after, but Dickau's the most likely one for the MLE only teams.

There are a few more that don't really fit what they need at PG (that's someone to get Kobe and Odom the ball) like Damon Stoudamire or maybe they could bring back Tyronn Lue. As I said, I think Dickau is their best choice, but that's only if they don't acquire a point guard through other means. If they do get one some other way, I wouldn't suggest adding to their current over the cap salary structure.

Milwaukee Bucks: 30-52 - Salaries
Well, we all know what their main goal is this offseason... resign Michael Redd, of course. Not that they don't have side projects of resigning Gadzuric and Pachulia. It's really hard to say what their figure will be once they hand out the funds, so I'll just guess that they will be somewhere over the cap, thus only having the MLE. Note, roster doesn't include TJ Ford because I have no idea if he'll be healthy or not. Let's see the roster without him and without the various other guys like Kukoc and Strickland so that they have the low number of dollars spent.

5 - Gadzuric, Pachulia
4 - Smith
3 - Mason
2 - Redd, Gaines
1 - Williams

So they have a team that put up a record of less than 41 wins, may not even be able to retain their star and if they do retain him, will be over the cap for years. Not a good situation. On the bright side, they don't have much in the way of holes to fill. Could use a new PG and ought to play Mason at his normal position... but since they only have the MLE, they'll have to focus on just one. I think it'll be the PG one, but we'll see. For cheap SF's, see Golden State. For cheap PG's, see the Lakers. I think they should also go after Dickau... or maybe draft a PG (their most likely spot is 6th overall). Of course, all of this changes if they lose Redd. Then, they could spend on an expensive SF (see the Cleveland SG list, add Radmanovic and Marshall). If that happens, Radmanovic is probably their man. He shoots similarly to Redd and isn't as old as Marshall. I think he'd fit in well there. They'd have more cap room if they get him instead of Redd, so they might be able to go after one of the PG's on Atlanta's list as well. Like Atlanta, I think Watson would be the best for his distribution skills.

Minnesota Timberwolves: 44-38 - Salaries
As I've mentioned in the past, they're in trouble. Some guys want out, they have no coach, they're over the cap and supposedly their superstar could possibly want out. There's no way in hell they brig Sprewell back, for one. It's hard to say what they'll do with their other free agents. Eddie Griffin will probably return with a raise, Ervin Johnson might be done, Madsen will probably be back with a smaller salary, Carter back at a similar price... can't predict all of them. My guess is that Griffin, Madsen and Carter will be back with a combined salary of maybe three and a half million. Fittingly, added onto their other salaries for next year, their total salary will be at about $50. So, they're over the cap. Szczerbiak wants out, he might be moved. Similar to who they resign, it's hard to predict who they trade for. With my best guesses, their roster will look like...

5 - Olowokandi
4 - Garnett, Griffin
3 - Szczerbiak, Ebi
2 - Hassell, Hoiberg
1 - Cassell, Hudson, Carter

Let's see... they need a shooting guard that can do things other than sit in a corner or have no offensive talent at all. They need a centre who can play defense. They need a good small forward that wants to be there. Somehow, despite these needs, they're over the cap. They can bring in a guy or two with Szczerbiak, but they still have another hole to fill, but only the MLE to do it. C, SF or SG. Whichever of the three they can't fill, they need to sign a player of that spot. Their options for SF and SG are pretty much the same as Golden State's for SF, so they'd be doing well to trade for one of them. Thus, their pickup ought to be a C. Bigs that will take the MLE are...

Kwame Brown (Restricted)
Based on his recent trouble, this one's up in the air. Personally, I think he still has an opportunity to be great (he's averaged 12 and 8.2 per 36 this year) and the Timberwolves would be smart if they struck while the iron was hot with him. Presuming Washington lets him go and with the army of similar players they have (remember when I noted about how he, Etan Thomas and Jared Jeffries all averaged about the same numbers a game) they probably will, he ought to be available. I think he would be the best thing they could grab (presuming they don't get a big man in a trade).

Jerome James (Unrestricted)
I did say he was in the $3-$4 range earlier, but he could get as high as the MLE from someone, especially if he continues his excellent play in the playoffs against the Spurs. Again, I wouldn't suggest this, as I still think he'll return to his regular season form when next year comes. But, he could be worth a gamble if it's for the short term.

Darius Songaila (Player Option)
Songaila's option is for $1.76, so it's pretty likely that he'll opt out and go for more cash. Sacto will probably try to bring him back at a bigger price, but if not he'll be on the market. He'd make a nice combo with KG, as both can score from midrange and in the post. This would be their second best choice, I think... but that's only if he's available.

So there you go. Big guys are usually the hardest thing to trade for in this league (as the talented ones are few and far between) so they'll probably have to find one through free agency. Supposed bust Kwame Brown will be their best option and I think they have a good shot at getting him.

New Orleans Hornters: 15-67 - Salaries
First, meet the new home of Marvin Williams. Second wow, this team only has $16 in salaries on the books for next year. Granted, they'll likely resign a few of their guys (like Dickau, Nachbar, maybe Jacobsen). So let's presume that those three make maybe a combined $6 next year. I think that sounds plausible. So that would put their "under cap" figure at $23. Their roster would be...

5 - Magloire, West, Lampe
4 - Brown, Andersen
3 - Nachbar, Lynch
2 - Smith, Jacobsen
1 - Dickau, Claxton

As I noted, Williams would be the SF solution. This leaves them with a hole at SG (I know, lots of people love JR Smith, I don't) and an aging PF. So they need a SG and a PF. You know what the SG options are, see Charlotte, so I'm not going to list them again. For PFs where there is no roof, well, time for a hot new list.

Tyson Chandler (Restricted)
I have no idea if Chicago is going to bring him back or not. If they don't, he'd be a good pickup for any team that needs a big man. He rebounds like a machine (19.8 rebound rate), blocks well (2.4 per 36) and can score a little in the post (10.5 points per 36, 49.4 FG%). I think he'd be the best and likeliest pick up for the worst team in the West in 04-05... granted, there's still a chance Chicago puts up the dough for him, but it's slight.

Samuel Dalembert (Restricted)
The chance that Philly lets him go is very, very low. As seen in the series he just played against the Pistons, he's quite talented and he won't be leaving the city he's currently in for a long time. NO should definitely inquire about him, but he won't be getting away.

Stromile Swift (Unrestricted)
Stro is similar to Chandler, just quicker and not as good on the glass or defense. Stro should definitely be their number two choice... but, only gone after if Chandler isn't available.

Shareef Abdur-Rahim (Unrestricted)
SAR's been on crappy teams all his career, I doubt he wants to come to another rebuilding effort. Thus, the Hornets shouldn't bother.

Vladimir Radmanovic (Restricted)
I'm not sure what will happen with him. Hornets could use him, but I think other teams will be bidding higher than them. Thus, he probably won't wind up here. Seattle may even match for him, so his chances of coming to New Orleans are about equivalent to the chances of Dalembert leaving Philly for anywhere.

Donyell Marshall (Unrestricted)
There are a number of better teams interested in his services and he seems to be too old for what the Hornets are trying to do, so I suggest and think they'll steer clear of the versatile gunner.

So the Hornets have a number of options at both SG and PF and the cap room to make multiple things happen. I hope they spend wisely.

New York Knicks: 33-49 - Salaries
Ugh... let's do this one quickly. The Knicks are in cap hell for years and the only deal of over $1 coming off this year is John Amaechi's (how did that get there!?). They will have a payroll of $108.5 before any additional signings next year, so they might as well sign as many guys for the next two years or so as they can. Their roster, including guys like the CBA pickups.

5 - Sundov, Butler
4 - K. Thomas, Sweetney, Rose, Taylor
3 - Ariza, T. Thomas
2 - Crawford, Houston, Hardaway
1 - Marbury, Jackson

Obviously Sundov's not the starter here, but it emphasizes a point... they have no real centre on the team. So, they need to go after a big man with the MLE. See Minnesota for what to do here. My bet is that Isiah will fall in love with the idea of turning Kwame Brown into a #1 overall after all and fight tooth and nail to pick him up. Really, that's probably the best thing he can do as well. There, that was a quick one.

Orlando Magic: 36-46 - Salaries
They're over the cap by a bunch... but really, they might be the slight exception to the rule. If they can get everybody to want to be there and get a coach who knows what he's doing, they're in a nice position. Presuming they let various waste of bench space go, their roster. Note, I know they played Francis and Nelson as the back court for a good chunk of the year, but they were sans Christie and old Hidayet for a while. Thus, I list both as PG's.

5 - Cato, Battie
4 - Howard, Garrity
3 - Hill, Turkoglu
2 - Christie, Stevenson
1 - Francis, Nelson

They're a pretty solid squad. As I said, if they can get everyone willing to contribue and a coach who can keep them doing that, they'll be fine. I wouldn't suggest they add anything to their cap, as they'll be under in a few years if they spend (or rather, don't spend) correctly.

Portland Trailblazers: 27-55 - Salaries
I recently went off on them... and the facts remain the same. They have a bunch of bad contracts and won't be under the cap for years unless Nash's general manager IQ suddenly doubles or triples. SAR and Stoudamire won't be returning, so they can be forgotten about. Van Exel may or may not retire. If he does, they'll have a bit of room, but not much more than a small addition. So, like many, they'll mainly have the MLE to use. Now, for the roster.

5 - Przybilla, Ratliff, Ha
4 - Randolph
3 - Miles, Khyrapa, Outlaw
2 - Anderson, Patterson
1 - Telfair

Not only is it unbalanced, it's low on talent in the part (the wingmen) that has the biggest chunk of the roster. They need a decent outside shooter and Glenn Robinson would be able to play both forward spots... so he'd probably be the best guy to go after. If not that, a point guard (a la the Lakers' options) would be good in case Telfair falters. Not much to say, as it's not a popular destination. We'll see what Nash does, maybe he can redeem himself.

Toronto Raptors: 33-49 - Salaries
Here's a train wreck. Front office is messed up, their centre choices are currently terrible, their second best player (Marshall) won't be returning, their best rookie (Bonner) might take off... not good. They're also over the cap. Presuming they resign Sow for cheap and let Palacio (Mitchell seems to like Cook more) go... their roster:

5 - Araujo, Woods
4 - Bosh, Sow, Aa. Williams
3 - E. Williams, Murray
2 - Rose, Peterson
1 - Alston, Cook, Al. Williams

I don't know if Alvin Williams will be back from injury or not, but it really doesn't matter at this point. I don't think they'll manage to bring Bonner back when other teams will be willing to spend more. Anyway, it's pretty clear that they need a centre... one that is talented. See Minnesota's options for details. The roster could drastically change if the front office drastically changes... so what their needs are may be completely changed. If the needs stay similar, I think Jerome James would be the best thing to go after. He's the big force that they've been trying to have with Araujo and Woods... so he'll be the best work. Kwame Brown and Songaila may be better, but James is the biggest at 7'1, 272. Thus, I think JJ ought to be a Raptor next year.

Utah Jazz: 26-56 - Salaries
This one is weird. They've got a great coach, they've got a great 6th man, they've got a great PF, they've got a spectacular SF, they've got decent guys off the bench... yet, injuries and bad point guard play doom them to 26 wins. I don't think they're going to bother with Raja Bell and his injury trouble or Howard Eisley and his lack of talent trouble. I also think they're going to dispatch Keith McLeod due to his play over the year... and scapegoats never hurt. They've over the cap, by the way. Now, for the roster.

5 - Okur, Collins, Borchardt
4 - Boozer, Humphries
3 - Kirilenko
2 - Giricek, Snyder
1 - Lopez

Yeah, they need a PG. They're slated for about the #4 spot in the draft and NBAdraft.net has them slated to pick Deron Williams... I agree completely. I think they also ought to pick up one of the PG's listed under the Lakers or one of the good SG's that falls to the MLE. Like the Magic, not a lot of movement, just getting everyone healthy and together. I think they can do good things with that frontcourt and hope they do it next year.

Nevermore

2005-05-05T23:03:00.000-04:00

Well, post's on the right day, just about 22 hours later than usual. Sorry about that, folks. Side note, I should be getting the password for the comic tomorrow, so the comic itself should be starting tomorrow. Yay big moment in life!

JVG in continuous trouble
Apparently Stern wants to continue reaming the guy. More on this when JVG picks one of his three options... that is, name the ref, claim it was made up or do nothing. I hope he picks the first one. As Jim Rome would say, that makes him the NBA Canseco, but it beats the other two in my mind.

Still little word on what's up with the most famous Kwame in the world
Hoopshype had a few quotes up that said he missed a few mandatory workouts and didn't explain his absense... so, they hit him with ban... pretty much for life, I'm guessing. They're not going to suspend a guy for the playoffs and ever bring him back again. At least, I wouldn't think so. So, that spells good news for a certain couple of teams.

After a wicked game, Paul Pierce nearly cost his squad the season
At the sight of this one, I had to think of Jay Leno's famous line to Hugh Grant: "What the hell were you thinking!?". Had Reggie not taken a contested 28 footer with five or six seconds left on the clock before the end of regulation, it probably would've cost them everything. Granted, Pierce was chewing gum and kicking ass all night long, but his clutch play was certainly questionable. Not so similarly, Walker was his usual team huring self... of course, ESPN.com wouldn't lead you to believe this. A quote:

Walker's clutch baskets in OT lift Boston

See, the thing about that is that he had a PPS of 0.92 for the game so while he was miraculously putting up those clutch baskets, he was actually taking more points from his team (the rest of the team had a PPS of 1.06). As usual, the real contributors get less love and the ones who just score a lot of points get more. Sigh.

HOUR AND A HALF LATER UPDATE:
T-Mac also brings the beating
Figured that was coming. I knew this one would get to game seven. Related note, what's up with Dirk? It can't be Ryan Bowen and McGrady guarding him, can it? The guy is shooting 35-92 (38%) from the field so far in the series. For a guy as great on the court as Dirk, that should be unfathomable, shouldn't it? If he doesn't have a big game in the finale of the series, Dallas will be in trouble.

Another one bites the dust (part one)

2005-05-04T00:45:00.000-04:00

Steve walks warily down the street
First thing I have to say here is, "Why the heck didn't they go to Dalembert more?". He went 5-7, 11 points, 10 boards. Not a bad night, but it could've been so much more. Webber had 16 shots, Iverson had 30, Dalembert had 7. Webber had a PPS of 0.69, Iverson had a PPS of 1.13, Dalembert had a PPS of 1.57. Priorities, guys! After that... nice showing by the Pistons, I guess. Shooting 40% isn't a good idea, but whatever, the job was done with the +13 rebounds. Saw a stat (before the game, I think) that said the Pistons had a team rebound rate of 53.0, leading the playoffs. In grabbing 46 of the 88 misses in tonight's game, they actually hurt their cause. Go figure. As I said earlier, bring on the Pacers (or, a slight possibility that it will be the Celtics).

Another award that matches my view
Another good call, voters. I'm shocked he had 517 points and Ricky Davis had 257, though. I thought the national perspective was that they were a lot closer. Not much more to say, other than that there's a nice post on the matter on Bulls Blog.

I think of him as Chuk, they think of him as ROY
As I said, I preferred Dwight Howard for this, but old Chukwuemeka isn't so bad either. Both guys are great.

Kwame Brown in "Philosophical Differences"
I hate when this happens. News breaks, but details are pretty much non-existant on the big sites and sketchy on Hoopshype. More on this when we find out what he actually did. Suffice to say, he's probably not coming back there next year.

The thing I was promising for now
I'll save it for when we're sans playoff games or down to one a night... also known as, I'm not done it yet. Over halfway done, but theoretically, my reasoning is good. This night had three games and three different chunks of big news. Thus, save the big thing for after. It makes sense!

Supposedly untalented team goes into supposedly talented team's house and goes up 3-2
Similar to Philly, Boston didn't have their priorities straight. Walker had 13 shots, Pierce had 13 shots and Davis had 15 shots. Walker had a PPS of 0.77, Pierce had one of 2.08 and Davis had one of 1.27. Not as bad as in the other game, but still a bit off. Just think, if Walker takes no shots and Pierce takes 26 instead, they could theoretically have 27 points instead of Walker's ten... and thus a score of 102 instead of 85. I know, it wouldn't be exact, but I'm pretty sure it would've amounted to more than 90. Almost every time I see the guy play, I want to smack Antoine with a foam baseball bat.

Man on the prowl

2005-05-03T01:34:00.000-04:00

Being the best means getting the award for being the best
Good call, award voters. Ben joins Dikembe Six More Names as the only guy to win DPOY three times (and the finger wagger won it four times). He gave the standard "this is a team thing" speech, but you know he's proud to have it for the third time in the last four years. Now that I'm done praising one of my favourite players, let's rag on some other ones. Shawn Marion was fifth? Uh... I know the guy is playing out of position and that he's pretty good at defending PF and SF, but fifth? I think that's a little off. Don't get me wrong, I think he's one of the twenty best players in the league, but he's not in the top five (or ten) in defense. Shaq 8th? Uh... nah. In non-ragging, It's too bad AK47 played so little. Maybe next year, Andrei. Tayshaun at 7th is about right, nice to see he was recognized.

Shenanigans
Funny how the New York Post is reporting this one. Is Jackson really going to go to NY where he has little to no control with personnel, no cap room for years and a weak roster? Is Jackson really going to go to LA where he hates Kobe, the roster is messed up and was recently fired? Unless they lobotimized Phil recently, the answer to the previous questions is, "No".

Big hole in the Van Gundy who doesn't look like Ron Jeremy's pocket
I understand why they fined him a bunch, it's not like Stern is going to take kindly to league employees launching a conspiracy theory, but a hundred grand? That seems a little excessive... and is the biggest amount a coach has ever been fined. It's not like JVG can't pay it, but still... it's harsh. But then, aside from Starbury kicking the cameraman, pretty much every punishment in the league this year has been harsh. I hope it helps cut down on similar events for next year... I bet Stern hopes for the same thing.

The team in DC almost coughs it up
If it hadn't been for a certain pair of Chicago shooting performances, I think they would've coughed it up. Let's start with the better player. Ben Gordon goes 1-13 for 8 points from the field... what the hell is wrong with this guy? I know Bibby had an even worse 1-16 recently, but he has plenty of other guys on his team that can fill it up. Gordon is one of the lone effective scorers on his squad and can't be doing this in games that wind up being fairly close. The other one wasn't as painful for the team, but... Jannero Pargo goes 6-17 for 18 points. Pargo's not bad for a fringe guy, but he shouldn't be taking that many shots in a game four unless the team is down 3-0 in the series. On the flip side, Hughes shot 3-16 for the DC squad. Normally I'd be bitching about this too, but somehow, Juan Dixon took 15 shots and had a PPS of 2.33. That's all that needs to be said there. Outside of that, Chandler manages a Fortson-esque 15 FTAs on 6 FGAs. Always find it funny to see that kind of statline.

T-Mac almost saves the day...
... and would've if he'd seen an open Ex-Piston Barry. Don't get me wrong, that he managed to place the free throw correctly, grab the board and get off a shot (even though it was from 23'8" instead of 23'9") is incredible, but he could've done just a tad more. Barry looked like he was open on the wing but the ball didn't reach his hands. Oh well. As for the actual stats of the game... not much to say. Yao was a beast again and the teams were pretty similar in performance overall. Great game, I hope games 6 and 7 are similar in goodness.

Some love and "Can you believe a guy with a rebound rate of 24.1 made $880,000 this year?"
Of course, I'm referring to Reggie Evans. As for the other part, I was asked to provide some love for the Sonics (and I've barely talked about their series since I've seen so little of it) so I'll be doing that now. In game four, Jerome James continued his wacky play with a night of 7-11 shooting, 17 points, 8 boards and 4 blocks. I'm starting to hope this guy's turnaround is for real. Obviously other free agent to be Ray Allen's huge night was the attraction, but I'm more interested in seeing what happens to JJ. The Sonics need to lock these two and that magnificient rebounder mentioned in the subtitle before July 1st. Otherwise, it's back to under .500 for Rashard, Danny and Vlad next year. Hm, that didn't sound like much love, did it? Alright, let's try again. If they do bring back Allen, Evans and James (the last one is still to a lesser extent at this point), get Vlad healthy for all year, keep Fortson's temper under control and teach the guys how to play some defense, the team could very well be a contender again next year. Even if they manage to pull off three or even the middle two tasks, it could be rolling good times for the coming years over in the Northwest.

HOUR LATER UPDATE: It's come to my attention that despite what Hoopshype reads, Radmanovic is a restricted free agent after the year (I've even referenced that he's up for being an FA myself previously, as a reader pointed out). Thus, he's a signing priority as well. Also, I can't believe I forgot about Jason Williams' recent acts. Even though it's not mentioned in the article... honestly, "You ain't writing nothing homeboy!" is one of the best lines I've ever heard. Obviously the guy was being an ass, but you have to figure that he's pretty pissed off. Memphis is running into trouble. Swift and Watson are FA's, Williams did this, something is up with Wells... time to start working it, Logo.

Welcome back my friends, the show's about to end
Just like "Karn evil nine", it has to end sometime. Sometime is equal to tonight for Philadelphia. Yes, the city that hasn't had a major sports championship since Doctor J was kicking it in 1983 will still be without one from a basketball standpoint. I'm not going to put up a score prediction... all I'm saying is, it's going to their 20th victory in the playoffs under Larry Brown. Bring on the Pacers (or maybe Celtics).

Lazing on a Sunday afternoon

2005-05-02T00:33:00.000-04:00

Note, for some reason the box scores on the first two games listed aren't up on ESPN.com, so I'm going with Sportsline instead.

Mister Big Shot
A number of things of note here. First, it was the first time all series the Pistons shot under 50% from the field (43% today). Second, Tayshaun did something to his ankle but it doesn't seem serious as he continued to play after the TV break. Third, apparently the 36 and 15 Iverson had in game three is first time 35 and 15 assists has been done since Clyde (sit down Mister Drexler, I meant the other Clyde) did it in 1970. Such a fantastic commentator. Fourth, the Pistons had twenty turnovers today and managed to win. I know Philly lead the league in steals per game (9.2) but that's ridiculous for a winning team, isn't it? Fifth, today's game was more proof to my dad's theory that the best thing Chauncey provides for the team is stability. When everything was going wild and the team was veering off course, he had that big run of ten straight points and the team balanced out. Good times. Game five is Tuesday, expect the end of it all.

Nets swept, I'm proven right
Talk about upset potential! Aside from the brooming, my favourite part of this game was how Shaq started out 0-5 and ended up 7-14. Let's take a look at the series stats... Net big men shot 44-103 (42.7%) for the series, while Heat big men shot 63-121 (52.1%). Not as big of a beatdown as I suspected. Haslem didn't shoot that great this series and Krstic played better than I expected him to. The Nets as a whole did a lot better than I expected them to... still got swept, though. Maybe they can pick up a talented PF in the offseason instead of having to put out a platoon of Scalabrine and Ex-Piston (the more recent) Cliff Robinson. There are a number of nice names out there (Chandler, Swift, Dalembert, Shareef, Vlad Rad, Marshall) but the Nets will be hard pressed to get one of them to sign for the exception in NJ/Brooklyn.

Grizzlies are now 0-8 in playoff games
Well, my prediction was a tad bit off here. Too much faith in a team I like, I guess. Not much to say about this series. Memphis played them tough, but didn't have enough to pull out a W in any of the four games. See the last post about the short version of my thoughts on what they should do.

I'm going to start writing that big thing about what the non-playoff teams should do now, it'll be up after the Pistons KO the Sixers.

You don't fool me

2005-05-01T02:21:00.000-04:00

"You" being Antoine Walker
The Celtics shot 42-74 (56.8%) from the field without him in game four... in contrast, they've shot 95-219 (43.4%) in the other three games in the series. Not a bad clip or anything, but miniscule compared to game four's firing. I'll be sure to post their final totals when the series done as another comparison.

Josh Howard pulls an Eddie Griffin
The above references this. Why Griffin? He's a stiff who apparently shows up in the clutch. Howard was a stiff all game (3-11 shooting, McGrady lit it up, etc.) but made a play that might've saved the game for Dallas. Related note, I'm not sure how Mike James ended up with a .64 PPS on the day... but I do know how Yao had one of 2.86. He just looked unstoppable when they actually fed him. I haven't seen much of the rest of the series (late games, sigh) but as I predicted, I presume it's been similar domination.

Wizards take their first
Didn't see this one... slipped my mind that they show games earlier on the weekend for some reason. From what I can tell, Washington's big three turned it on (Hughes didn't shoot so well, but he was close enough to being effective) and they ran away with it. Just think, if Arenas had taken no triples, his line would be 8-14 (57.1%) from the field, 26 points (PPS of 1.86), 7 boards and 7 assists. Similarly, Hinrich could've been 4-5 (80%), 8 points (1.6 PPS), 4 and 4. Obviously that's a small scale, but he could've improved it with more deuces. It's amazing how much guys fall in love with the triple.

The Jerome James thing
Over the last three games, JJ has averaged marks of 33 MPG, 19.3 PPG, 11 RPG, 55.6 FG% and 2.3 BPG. Slanted up to the old 36 minutes, the numbers are 21.1 PPG, 12 RPG, 2.5 BPG. Basically, superstar-esque numbers. Over the course of the season, he averaged 16.6 MPG, 4.9 PPG, 3.0 RPG, 50.9 FG% and 1.4 BPG. Slanted up, the numbers are 10.6 PPG, 6.5 RPG, 3 BPG. So, 6th man or so material. Side note, the guy is in the last year of his deal. So on the biggest stage of the year, he's improved from a 6th man to superstar and his deal is about to run out. Similar to the correlation between Walker being out and Boston's FG% jumping up, something's going on and it's not subtle. Despite this article, I have to believe that JJ is going Erick Dampier on us... as in, ramping up his play for the sake of the almighty dollar. At least Dampier gave it a whole season before packing it in, JJ is going to have about eleven games of this (if my current predictions, one of which will be posted in the coming weeks, are correct).

Let me get this straight...
Tim Duncan shoots 5-19 for 11 points, Tony Parker shoots 3-12 from 10 points... and the Spurs win. Zuh? Apparently Carmelo had a Flagrant 2 on Ginobili, so expect a suspension there. Also expect another pair of victories to come to SA very soon. I'm pulling for Denver, but if they can't win at home on a night when the two noted above have such bad shooting nights, they're not winning this series. Another note, how the heck did Camby get 10 FTA's when he had 4 FGA's? Those numbers would make Fortson proud. The five blocks and 14 boards would make him proud too.

Game four of the one that should've been listed first here
I suspect a beatdown. National TV plus having lost game three plus the improbability that Philly keeps their shooting up equals a big old W for Motown. The more you know.

Put out the fire

2005-04-30T00:26:00.000-04:00

Note, I'll save the Piston game for the end because of the special nature of the review.

Comic ready to go, Keenspace not
A quote from the verification email I got earlier:

You will NOT recieve your password untill at least 7 days have passed. DNS takes 24-72 hours to propagate, this is beyond keenspace.com 's control.

Gah! Well, know that it's ready as soon as they are. I've got the first one in completed form and will work on the following ones in the coming days. It will probably be daily, presuming I can keep up such a pace. Like this blog, it'll probably update around midnight. Final note on the matter until it goes up, the comic's name will be "Courtside", thought up by my friend Axl in reference to the old N64 NBA game.

Phoenix up 3-0
Memphis is good, but not enough to handle Phoenix, unfortunately. Jerry West once said that he was going to start moving pieces of their army of good rotation guys for more talented guys, 2 for 1's and such. I know he made a run at Shaq last summer but he's got to start executing some big deals if he wants to succeed. Sometime in the near future, I'm going to put up a giant post (a la the playoff preview) about what all of the lottery teams need to do in the offseason. After the year's done, I'll do similarly for the playoff teams.

Traffic
As the Adsense page tells me, likely thanks to the link from Forum Blue and Gold, there was a bunch of traffic on Friday. Good to see. For those new, welcome to the site, check through the archives. This place might not be very old, but it seems to be well received.

The Zenmaster's destination
If he comes back, I guarantee it will be to Cleveland. I'm not sure if I mentioned this already, but if I didn't... you read it here. It's pretty much the best situation he could ask for. One of the best players in the league at an age of 20, very good young complementary piece at PF, no GM so he'll have all the player control he wants and a lot of cap room. If he goes elsewhere (other than not coaching)... either something great opened up or he's nuts.

HOUR LATER UPDATE: Completely slipped my mind about Walker getting a game off. Let's just throw out his Atlanta stuff, as it matters not right now. So, just Boston stats are listed. Even though his arrival coincided with the big Boston winning tear (recall, it was 11-1), his Roland Rating is -0.4. Add to that that his PER is 16.3, yet his defensive PER is 19.0... Boston's chances for game four just improved by a bunch. Seriously, the team is a lot better with that chucker firing them up on the bench rather than on the court. Side note, why are people saying Boston is so much more talented than Indiana, but Indy has "heart"? Bill Simmons even said Boston has 10 of the 13 most talented players in this series. This obviously doesn't count Artest and Tinsley, who are sans playing. I think I'll list off the most talented players in this series in my own view. From the top...

Jermaine O'Neal - This one is pretty obvious.
Paul Pierce - Same idea.
Reggie Miller - Normally I'd go with someone else here, but he's been crazy this series.
Raef LaFrentz - This is personal opinion, very few agree with me.
Ricky Davis - Has been brutal this series, but still this high.
Stephen Jackson - Not much to say here.

So that's three in the top six. Hm...

Gary Payton - Much better than he was in the playoffs last year.
Dale Davis - 9.5 defensive PER so far this series.
Jeff Foster - Just look at his stats this series, I have no idea why Carlisle isn't playing him more.

So that's five in the top nine. I'd go further, but you get the idea. If people tell you Boston is way more talented than Indiana, even without Artest and Tinsley... prove them wrong.

The one I was watching intently
I'm going to start with the time thing and add more review afterwards. Here you go...

7:39 - Watching the game preview on NBA TV. I've seen Scott Williams talk for about half an hour in total over the last three days on here and he's screwed up when talking about thirty times. So about one a minute. I realize he's just starting out but this is getting ridiculous. He does three from 7:39-7:40 alone.
7:45 - I find out that the Suns/Grizzlies game tonight will be the first playoff game at the new building in Memphis... not that they're going to wind up with more than two games there this season.
8:05 - My dad and I realize that the game isn't on NBA TV, it's on TSN (it's like the Canadian ESPN for those who don't know). Almost had a scare there.
8:07 - Breen and Walton are calling the game... you know what that means. Nothing of interest, big men throwing it down and five references to how Lebron's supporting cast is crap. The tip happens about thirty seconds after.
8:15 - Dalembert gets a shooter's bounce on a fifteen foot fade away jumper... Walton says he's a "real talent". I'd have to agree.
8:16 - Tayshaun has 10 points on 3-3 shooting with about 7:30 to go. Good job, Korver.
8:18 - Tayshaun goes for his super layup block, but gives AI an "And 1" instead. I think that's the first time I've seen him mess that up.
8:19 - Philly has 12 points in the paint, Detroit has 0. Something seems off about this.
8:20 - At the first timeout, with 4:58 left in Q1, Philly's up 20-19. At this pace, the final score will be 137-130. Good thing scoring paces in single games rarely keep up, huh? Side note, I don't think there are any commercials played during NBA games outside of the kid saying KG led the league in rebounding last year, the Gillette commercial with the woman with the dubbed voice, AI on how he isn't a gangster, Lebron and Thirst battling for the Sprite and the xXx: State of the Union trailer.
8:25 - Next timeout, at 3:38, Detroit's up 26-20... that changed in a hurry.
8:32 - Q1 ends with a score of 32-24. Pistons shot 65% from the field and 75% (6-8) from behind the arc. Pace is 128-96 now
8:38 - Walton refers to the Pistons' big six as a "Tetra-Hydra"
8:41 - Third timeout of the night, at 8:59 remaining in Q2, Pistons are up 37-26. So they're on a 18-6 run... starting to look like definite broom time on Sunday.
8:48 - Lindsey swats AI, but they call it a foul. I love seeing 6'1 guys who can't jump get blocks.
8:50 - Fourth timeout, 5:54 left, 41-34 Pistons. They hit a bit of a snag with chunks of the second unit out there, but it's alright.
8:54 - Rasheed gets a T while on the bench... as usual, when the crowd got on him, he pointed up at the scoreboard.
8:57 - Fifth timeout, Pistons are up 46-42 with 4:09 left... don't know what to say. Haven't seen Philly do anything useful past Q1 in this series so far.
9:05 - Dalembert, McDyess, Chauncey and Ben have a duel on the floor for a fumbled ball, which ends with Dalembert grabbing it and taking a spill
9:09 - Rodney Rogers hits his second triple of the game... which shocks me. I haven't seen him do anything worth mention since last year in NJ.
9:10 - At the half, Detroit's up 54-51. Ah, intermission... listen to track nine on "Ixnay on the hombre".
9:25 - During the half, we watched the Suns/Grizzlies game.
9:27 - The Piston starters sans Chauncey all had 10+ points in the first half, which ESPN called balanced scoring. Despite this, the Piston bench had 2 points. So it was balanced like the Laker return for Shaq was garbage. About thirty seconds later, the second half starts.
9:32 - Ben draws a charge from Iverson just outside the key... outside the opposite key. We had a good laugh about that one. This is followed by Iverson getting a T.
9:36 - Rasheed's been pretty much unstoppable so far this game.
9:37 - Timeout count++, Pistons are up 69-65 with 5:58 left in Q3. I feel like we're going to get a finish similar to game three of Miami/NJ
9:41 - Iguodala hits a jumper. I think that's the first one he's hit all series
9:44 - Philly ties it at 72 with 3:34 to go. Hey, Miami pulled the other one out.
9:49 - Ben fires another ball off of the rim with a vengeance, except there's a foul called on this one. After his throws, I think he's like 6-7 on the night.
9:53 - I think Rodney Rogers travelled back in time five years, I think he just went up to 4-5 from behind the arc.
9:54 - Q3 ends with a score of Philly 77, Detroit 76. See "9:37" for my thoughts.
10:02 - Ben's at a career high in points at 23! Seems to me his 22 was in game five against the Lakers last year.
10:04 - Another timeout, Philly's up 89-86, 7:51 left in regulation.
10:07 - Breen references the quarter toss... yet there's been no big deal about it yet! I'm shocked.
10:10 - Scratch the previous remark, Ben just reached 6-7 from the stripe now
10:11 - Timeout count = Timeout count +1; Philly's up 96-89 with 5:47 to go. This is their biggest lead of the game, but I'm confident in the Pistons.
10:15 - Breen refers to a miniature Larry O'Brien trophy as a "Larry Brown" trophy.
10:18 - Another "T" signal made. 101-95, 3:43. Similar comments to before.
10:21 - Walton says Dalembert should start his own religion. I suggest Pronounciationism.
10:25 - 109-100, 1:33, timeout Detroit. It was going alright until Iverson hit a triple. Can't say I think it's going to happen now. Call it realistic.
10:32 - 111-104, 0:42.3
10:34 - Rip gives it away after the inbound pass. That's pretty much all she wrote.
10:36 - Final score, 115-104. Meh, I did call it. Not quite 100-85, though.

Moral of the story is that letting teams shoot 43-78 (55.1%) from the field in their own building is a pretty good way to lose the game. Granted, a large chunk of those 78 shots were jumpers, so the Pistons weren't completely at fault. Detroit's O was great, aside from the bench, but that's no big hurting when they shoot 37-73 (50.7%). The D wasn't as terrible as Philly's stats lead it to be, but it was still questionable at many points. I'm sure Brown will ride them hard here on Saturday... I highly doubt Philly keeps up such a hot streak on Sunday. More on that later.

Give me the prize

2005-04-29T01:07:00.000-04:00

Wow, updates on consecutive days. I didn't know this was possible anymore... yes, the prize is for me.

Simmons gets MIP
Pretty good choice. I didn't have him on my preview because his PER didn't jump much, mainly, his PT did. His contract is up, so he ought to get a nice pay day. Hm, guy wins MIP during his contract year... yeah, something might be up there. Nevertheless, if he continues to play how he did this year, he'll be a nice pickup.

Miami's up 3-0
- NJ's night
Have to hand it to Carter, he did all he could to keep it going. Got Kidd an open triple at the end of regulation, hit that six banker at the end of the first OT and nearly had a triple double, but it wasn't enough. Granted, he did score 36 points on 37 shots and have 7 turnovers, but it was working in the clutch well anyway. The Nets had eight guys play and rack up 32 total fouls. That's an average of four fouls a guy. In addition to this, the Nets had five guys play 42+ minutes. I know these guys have a lot of stamina but if they're getting that many fouls while playing that much time, something might be wrong. Good job, L. Frank.

- Miami's night
Haslem had 19 boards, Shaq had 6. What? Miami shot 22-38 from the charity stripe, might be why it took them two overtimes to beat these jokers. I bet ABC is pissed that it has to show the Heat driving the last spike on Sunday instead of a more competitive series. I guess it's their own damn fault for scheduling such things.

Indy goes up 2-1
- Boston's night
Props to Antoine Walker, he didn't fling any pieces of crap at the hoop tonight... aside from just about every single FGA he had. I have no idea how he made 5 of them. Ricky Davis is 3-18 over the last two games. Justin Reed got more PT than Mark Blount, how does that happen? Kendrick Perkins shot 3-4, had 6 points and 4 boards in 11 minutes... and yet, only played 11 minutes. I don't know what Doc is thinking.

- Indy's night
Jeez, Reggie's still a machine. 10-16, 11-12 from the stripe, 33 points, 7 boards. I heard an interesting stat earlier, Fred Jones lead the Pacers in minutes this year. This guy was supposed to be about the 7th man and he lead the team in minutes. Very sad. On the bright side, I still think they're going to get out of round one.

Dallas pulls the third out
20-0 run. Wow. Can't say I saw this one (see recent note on late games for why), but I really wish I could've. I don't know why people are flipping out over the fact that Houston won both in Dallas. Dallas was 29-12 on the road and at home, so every game is pretty much the same to them. Which is why I fully expect them to rally and win four of the final five and pull the series out. I wasn't expecting a 32-37 clip from the line as a team, though.

Preview of DET/PHI
As I said yesterday, if Philly's going to win one in this series, it's going to be this one. If the Pistons win tonight, Philly will be too dejected to give enough effort to steal one when down 3-0. If Philly wins tonight, the Pistons will roar back and crush them in games four and five. Either way, game four will be a Piston beatdown similar to games one and two. The one that could be different is here. Despite my prediction, it probably won't be, but we'll just have to watch to find out. Side note, I'll be doing my first thievery (as mentioned yesterday) for this game.

I can't live with you

2005-04-28T15:02:00.000-04:00

Today's post title refers to the dialup connection, as it's making me want to cut things and is the reason there were no updates the last few days. At first I thought I'd go for another big post to make up for it, but I'll do that and more. For one (maybe two, we'll see how it goes) of the upcoming Piston games, I'm going to rip off Bill Simmons and detail my thoughts every five minutes or so before, during and after the game. That ought to make up for it.

HALF AN HOUR LATER UPDATE: Latest Carnival of the NBA (#9) is up at Forum Blue and Gold (link on the side), where this site shows up much like it did in the last one. Yay self!

Speaking of ESPN.com writers...
Eric Neel is a pretty talented guy, I tend to like his writing. But this is a bigger turd dropping than Bibby's 1-16 shooting the other night link. He can't think this is funny or good, can he? I know opinions are like assholes, but this is ridiculous. I mean, his combo article with Scoop Jackson (can't find the link, sorry) was better than this filth and that was terrifying.

Pistons and Sixers are both one point off
Well, I was close. We're down to 67% for Piston W's according to my prediction... and really, I think it'll be 100% after game 3. I suspect the third will be the one the 76ers have the best chance at winning. More on that later. Side note, Rasheed likes to refer to the team's most debated draft pick as "DMC". Apparently this is from Darko MiliCic (or ciC). I guess that's another title for him. It beats the coach's "Pound for pound" anyway.

1/4
I feel bad for AI. He was having such a brutal game shooting and handling the ball then his team got the loss. This is bad enough, but he had the night topped off getting a coin in the bottom of the skull. If you don't know what I'm talking about, I'll fill you in. As commented on by Jim Rome yesterday, some idiot fan threw a quarter towards Iverson and hit him in the spot I mentioned. Much of the 76er bench turned around and security went towards the guy who seemingly did it. Following Rome, I was listening to Stoney and Wojo of The Fan and they had a guy (his name was Michael, we'll call him Mike) that was sitting next to the coin chucker call up and explain what really happened. The chucker goes by the name of Dennis Wayne Pauley (spelling on last name is questionable). Similar to DMC, we'll call him DWP. DWP and Mike moved into the lower section towards the end of the game as a lot of the crowd was filing out. With about five minutes left in the quarter, DWP turns to Mike and says, "I'm going to throw this quarter at AI". Mike tells him not to. About five minutes in real time later, DWP throws the quarter and connects. Security comes up and takes Mike away. They question Mike and say that DWP did it. Ten minutes later, they go and bring back DWP and apparently arrest him. More news later. What really makes me glad is that this is semi-big news (Rome did mention it) but it's not all over the internet and television like the brawl was. If it was huge news, we'd have to hear about how Detroit's a cesspool (despite the Palace being in Auburn Hills) all over again and "baa baa baa" would go the sheep. Fortunately, it's not so bad (yet). Let's hope it never gets there again.

Net big men shoot a combined 10-28 (35.7%) in their game two...
... and I continue to be correct. Sans Krstic, the numbers go to 2-15 (13.3%). On a related note, I think we should make up a Mendoza Line for the NBA... call it the Kidd Line or something. I'd pick a different chucker, but he's the one with the most unique name.

A vengeance
Well, I figured that was coming. Not by 28 points, but I figured it was coming nonetheless. I'd say more, but what's to say? Good team played bad in game one, then kicked some ass in game two (which I'm currently watching the rerun of on NBA TV). I expect game three to be more competitive.

Epitome of the playoffs?
It's knock down. It's drag out. It's... Chris Duhon having a line of 5, 7 and 8 and Kirk Hinrich having a line of 34 (on 15 shots), 3 and 2. It's Arenas shooting 14-25 and his team still not getting the win because Hinrich shot 12-15.

Hot blooded, check it and see
I was watching NBA TV's show "Insiders" yesterday and they were talking to Artis Gilmore. Naturally, the main topic was the current Bulls. Eventually, they got to Ben Gordon. Artis said Gordon was like Ex-Piston Vinnie Johnson... in that they were both big scorers off the bench for teams that tended to focus on defense. I agree, it was an apt comparison. However, Artis followed that up by saying that they used to have a nickname for Vinnie... that he was "The Heater". Uh...

VJ reminds me of the one on the right, not the one on the left.

Filler, again
Speaking of the Bulls, there's a reason I love their first round opponents. While I enjoy the great play of their three headed monster, I enjoy their big men even more. Why? Let's take a look at some stats.

- Regular season stats
Brendan Haywood: 9.4 PPG, 6.8 RPG, 1.49 PPS, 60.9 FT%
Etan Thomas: 7.1 PPG, 5.2 RPG, 1.3 PPS, 52.8 FT%
Kwame Brown: 7.0 PPG, 4.9 RPG, 1.23 PPS, 57.4 FT%
Jared Jeffries: 6.8 PPG, 4.9 RPG, 1.21 PPS, 58.4 FT%

Those bottom three guys play so differently, yet come up with such similar stats. Washington's got a three headed monster that essentially does the same thing with all three heads. I just thought that was kind of funny.

Comic update
Ran into some unidentified trouble in the creation process (take a guess), but I guarantee it will have begun online before the end of the week, probably before Friday.

Don't try so hard

2005-04-25T23:23:00.000-04:00

Note , I'll make up for the missed day with a big post here. I'm good for it, you know I am. Note number two, I've got some ideas for the early comics, I just have to draw them up... which I'll work on tomorrow.

Tangent!
Still hate how annoying it is to surf the net on dialup. They need to get broadband to this area already. Supposedly, everywhere in Canada (probably excluding the non-habited parts of the territories) was going to have broadband access within a year dating back to a year and a half ago or so. Apparently they haven't come through yet.

The close ones
I guess the title of the post is a reference to the Spurs/Nuggets game and the Celtics/Pacers game. Both involved high seeds getting beaten by the defense of low seeds and both were a lot of fun to watch. However, the second game had the commentators referring to James Jones and Ricky Davis as "Jumaine Jones" and "Ricky Pierce"... which I thought was pretty funny. Partially funny because of the similarities between each and partially funny because I love commentator screw-ups. As for the games themselves... as I said, very enjoyable for the eyes and brain. Plenty of D from all four teams (surprised to see it from that green team).

Big game for Reggie. Could've been a big game for Stephen Jackson, he had 16 points on 4-5 shooting in the first quarter... and you can see what he wound up with. Could put a bunch of blame on Pierce for the L, he did miss that free throw and follow it up a little later with the missed triple... but I don't think that's the route to go. I think a chunk of the blame should go on Ricky Davis, myself. He did shoot 1-8, have five turnovers and 6 PFs. It was like every time he touched the ball, something bad happened. More blame goes on other guys who shot badly, like Blount getting 4 points on 8 shots or Payton, who had 4 points on 7 shots.

As for the Nuggets and Spurs... Parker shot 6-17 and had 5 turnovers. Duncan shot 7-22. Those just aren't things you see from those two guys. Like Arenas, once they start shooting better, the team with more talent on the floor will be victorious. Bruce Bowen taking more than one shot in 33 minutes will probably help too.

Mmm, filler
I was watching Pistons Weekly last night and I heard a funny quote. For those unfamiliar, 12:30 AM on Monday mornings, NBC 4 in Detroit has a show on with the title mentioned. It's a half hour show that details three things. The first is a review of what happened over the week for the team. The second is something the team has done in the community or a special feature (examples of this are the look back on the Palace of Auburn Hills when it turns fifteen or a music video for some song that features Piston highlights). The third is a preview of the week coming up. The quote I bring comes from the upcoming week. A few reporters were talking to Ben Wallace at the Pistons' practice facility and the topic of the Heat came up. One of the reporters said to Ben (I paraphrase here), "Does it bother you that a lot of people are picking the Heat or the Spurs to be in the Finals?" to which Ben replied (again, a paraphrase), "Not at all, they're right. One of them will be in the Finals." which I thought was kind of humourous. Hey, read the subtitle.

The not-so-close ones
Nets/Heat has gone pretty much as I've expected it to so far, aside from Ex-Piston Jones hitting the twine so efficiently. Combined shooting of the four Heat big men that played? 16-26, for 61.5%. I expect the next three to be similar.

Gordon+Nocioni/Hughes wasn't at all like I expected. Good night for Andres, but I don't suspect he repeats such a performance. Likewise, I don't expect a repeat of that from Arenas. Once those two go back to normal, Washington will come out ahead... or so I believe.

Suns/Grizzlies I didn't see, similar to how I'm not seeing the Dallas/Houston game right now... darn late night games (it's not that I can't stay up, it's that my ride can't stay up). Steven Hunter, second in the league in blocks per minute, makes his presence felt in the post... doubt he does that again, not again Memphis's front line. I find it funny how the Grizzlies can have a nice night from behind the arc of 9-21... then Phoenix can top it with one of 15-32. That'll happen when you go against a group of gunners like who Phoenix has.

Game two of the series I'm supposed to be focusing on
Like Miami/NJ, I expect a repeat performance in game two. I expect the same thing to keep happening, that is, massive Piston wins. That wild game from Korver/Iverson/whoever could come and interrupt, but otherwise I don't see Philly matching anything. Thus, expect another 100-85 (or so) game... with a 75% chance that it will be in favour of the team I cheer for.

Battle Theme

2005-04-23T22:04:00.000-04:00

Game one: Pistons 106, 76ers 85
That went well, huh? Philly's bench was pretty much non-existant, which was strange, since I figured Ex-Piston McKie and Ex-UDM Titan Willie Green would have some good outputs in this series. Tayshaun played 47 minutes and Rip played 44. Rasheed had 16 points in the third quarter. Tayshaun had another great block, but it was called back. McDyess was great and ABC loved him for it, I bet there will be a pile of stories if he continues to be a big producer. Ben tied the great Bob Lanier's record for blocks in a playoff game with 7, almost had a 5 by 5 night (one assist and one steal off)... quality all around. Pretty much everyone on the Pistons played well, but only everyone sans Korver in the Sixers' lineup played well to combat it. Thus, the Pistons were victorious. I messed some parts of the game (travelling and television trouble due to local snow) but caught them again later thanks to NBA TV.

Colo(u)r
The comment on the last post isn't the first one to question one of the colour schemes I've had. Personally the scheme is up to the readers, thanks to Firefox it's always whatever colour I want it to be on my laptop's screen. So I'll put it to a vote, I guess. Comment or email me what you think the colours should be (something Piston-esque, as proposed, will probably be popular) and perhaps there will be a change in the future.

Houston pounds Dallas
When Dirk shoots 5-21 and T-Mac shoots 14-27, Dallas is bound to lose. I'm sure they'll recuperate and win game two.

At the time of this writing, Boston's up on Indy 76-41
I know Tinsley's not playing, but... wow. I'll update later.

UPDATE at 5:18 AM: Well, it wasn't as bad of a beatdown at the end.

Still in the update, after reading the latest post at the Spurs Blog, I have no idea why I remotely thought about Denver winning that series. Change my pick to SA in six!

Another project of mine is coming
I love reading sports blogs on the internet... eventually, I started one up. Another thing I love reading on the internet is webcomics. Guess what? A similar movement is coming. There seemingly aren't many sports comics on the net (I've only seen one or two myself and I've seen plenty of comics in general) so perhaps this is an untapped section. My drawing skills are questionable, but with the aid of a certain popular image editing program and access to my dad's scanner, I might be able to make this thing fly. The last piece of the puzzle is Keenspace, who like Blogger, provides me with free hosting. I'm on enough to update weekly. I'm confident in myself, I think I could make it good. I've gotten a decent following here and with links from here to the comic, I could have crossover success. The topic will be sports in general, but I'll try to focus it on the NBA. Look for it soon. Once I draw up a few, edit them up and have them ready, I'll start my part of Keenspace up. Should be fun.

Long away

2005-04-22T10:50:00.000-04:00

This post will be short, just wanted to hit on a few topics. First, I'm going to throw a couple ads from Google's Adsense up here. The idea is that people click them and I get some miniscule amount of cash per click. I didn't start this blog with a plan to try and make money off of it, partially because I didn't expect to get much of a following. However, after just a month I have a decent following (or so it seems) already so I figure I'll try and profit off of it. I'm not attempting to force people to do this, I'll still provide the same stuff I do now even if my profit from here is $0.00. I'll also put them up as a footer, which means they'll be at the bottom of the page, so they'll be out of the way. The point is they aren't compulsory, but if you want to, give them a click.

Second point is that I'm heading home from University for the summer, so I'll be stuck with dialup for a little while, which might make posting semi-difficult like it did the last time (no, this is just a coincidence to the ads thing). I'll see what I can do to combat it.

Back chat

2005-04-22T03:45:00.000-04:00

Note before I start: My name is Corey, not Cory. Despite spelling it on the phone, their site got it wrong. No big deal, just clearing that up.

Yes, that was me on the radio
Had a little scare beforehand, seven minutes before when I was supposed to go on, their phones wouldn't take my call (I got an automated response). I managed to complain to one of the hosts through AIM and the next call I made, I got through. Just like magic! I thought I sounded alright and presuming they do a similar thing for the next round, perhaps I'll get to do it again. I had fun with it, so I'll definitely be up if they want me. You can find an mp3 of the whole broadcast under the "Podcast" button in the "Your Opinion Counts" section. In that clip, I'm on from 25:30 to 31:10. Check out the other parts too, they were generally well done. Note that this site (and the other blogs featured) are linked to on the menu on the right. If you want a link to a crappy real media file that has just my part, here. Side note, I found it funny that I was one of the "top NBA bloggers on the web" according to their site... after a month. Unlikely.

6:20 UPDATE: Delfino (in addition to the obvious Jenkins) is the one left off the playoff roster, not Darvin or Darko. I like this, seeing as how he was so useless on O and D for most of the year (when he wasn't hurt).

Paxson's out, this time officially, so is Malone
Well, we knew the first one was coming... second one too, actually. So this isn't huge news, just confirming our prior knowledge. Not sure why Paxson got the axe, really. His moves were great, the Battie for Gooden plus the picked that turned into Varejao for instance. Perhaps they wanted another patsy.

Stein's still crazy
Let's start with Washington at 16... what? They're playing a team with about equivalent talent that's missing their starting centre and small forward... and they're 16 out of 16 teams? This makes no sense to me. Similarly, Chicago at 8? This is weird for the opposite reasons Washington is 16. I don't agree at all. Next, Pacers at 6! They're 6th in their own conference, the weaker of the two, yet are sixth overall here. Let's have a quote, shall we?

Pacers vs. Pistons has to go seven -- those are the rules.

I called him on it in the chat he had on ESPN's Sportsnation at about 12:30 PM on Thursday. His response was that, "I mean that I feel that way for this year." So they lose their second best player, they won't have home court advantage anymore and it'll take the defending champs more games to dispatch them? Unlikely.

The show that never ends
Good to see this stat... good to see that the Pistons lead the way too. Yeah, I know they have the biggest arena. Perhaps this is a sign to NBA building owners that they need to increase arena sizes. I'm not suggesting NFL sized or anything, but I think various increases would be profitable.

McHale to return, but just as VP
Minnesota was 19-12 (.576) under him, as it said in the article, which is an 82 game pace of 47-35. Not too bad, considering what their record was not under him (25-26, .490, enough for a pace of 40-42). It's too bad McHale doesn't want to coach anymore, which I don't blame him for since he was thrust into it to start, because he might have been able to bring them back to the playoffs next year... you know, when they're free of Spree. Or the year after, when they're free of Cassell (I don't know why people complained about him, he did put up a 19.39 PER). After Cassell's deal comes off, presuming McHale doesn't give out any more big or long term deals, they'll be under the cap. This will be the summer of 2007... yeah, probably too long to go without spending much money for him. If they hold off, their record might suffer but they'll be poised for a comeback. I guess we'll see what happens and which coach comes in.

Final regular season ends for Reggie
You'd think less of a big deal would be made, seeing as how they have a playoff series (probably two, actually) left. Don't cry for Reggie yet, cry when the Pistons swat (a reference to Tayshaun's greatest highlight?) his team again in the playoffs.

The show must go on

2005-04-21T00:21:00.000-04:00

Before we start the post, I'd like to mention two things. One, the playoff preview is just underneath this post. Two, something you migh've guessed from the comment on the last post, I'm going to be on the net radio show of "Sports Bloggers Live" tomorrow sometime between 12:00 and 12:30 PM. It probably won't be for very long and I haven't received my email about exactly when I'll be on yet, but I'll be sure to update when I get it. I don't know what their audience numbers are like or anything, but this will probably be the biggest audience by voice has ever reached. Talk about a big moment in life, huh?

MORNING UPDATE: I'm personally going on at 12:23, but apparently it's not live (which I wound up gathering after looking over the site a few times). To quote the email I got...

The show will not be broadcast live, but it will be playing on-demand at www.sportsbloggerslive.com from 1 PM ET this afternoon on through Monday night.

So, check it out. I promise to make it foxy.

End of season one
Similar to last night's floor wiping with Atlanta, this one doesn't matter. They ran off the big win streak, tied last year's record, got Darko more time... even though his numbers were crap. Aside from that, everything went fine. Now, it's time to look ahead (or below) to Philly.

"Yes" on Nets, "No" on Cavs
I guess both managed to pull their games out... too bad for Lebron, Gooden and Zydrunas. See post below for more. On a related note, anyone notice that the Cavs have an 8.7 PER at the SG spot? Yikes. I haven't seen ineptitude like that since the Browns took Tim Couch #1 overall in the 1999 NFL draft... hey, same city too.

What a great poll
Turns out I can link to these things and didn't know it, this will makes thing much easier for the readers that actually care. I voted for God Shammgod, personally, even with two Ex-Pistons on the ballot. He's got the best name in basketball history (that I know of), but he's closely followed by Duany Duany and Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje.

Quick!
In Tuesday's "Daily Quickie" on ESPN.com, they mentioned an NIT-esque tournament for the teams that don't make it into the NBA playoffs. I think this would be a good idea, it would create extra revenue for the league and provide more exposure for the teams (like the Hornets with their phony ticket sales or Hawks with their lack of a two game winning streak) that need it. If I needed to convince you more than that, I'd say, "More NBA is not a bad thing".

Big, real big
This gave me a laugh when I read it. He'd have the new record for the tallest guy in league history if he made it in (which, at his height, he probably will). Recall, the previous height champs were Manute Bol (though he's listed at 7'6 on the linked site) and Gheorghe Muresan. Of course, Shawn Bradley and Yao are both in the league at 7'6 right now. Like the last two, one is just good for blocks and one is actually quite talented. Unfortunately for the talented one in the 7'7 group, Muresan, his career was cut short by injury trouble. Hopefully the same won't happen to Yao. But getting back to Sun, I hope he does well. Not every day I read about one of the few who is actually a full foot taller than myself. Whether he actually does well is up in the air, but we'll see. Not that he'll wind up there, but imagine the marketing possibilities if Phoenix manages to pick him up!

Everybody say it with me now... look below for the playoff preview post.

Hang on in there; The playoff preview (Round 1)

2005-04-21T00:20:00.000-04:00

Note: I tend to count small forwards in the "littles" category.

The Eastern Conference
(1) Miami vs. (8) New Jersey
Miami is #2 in offense and #6 in defense. New Jersey is #28 in offense and #8 in defense.

- Open -
Here's a laugher... apparently just to some of us though. A few days back (I wish I had the pic, sigh) there was a poll on the NBA section of ESPN.com that asked, verbatim, "If Richard Jefferson makes it back for the playoffs, what can the Nets do?" with options of "Nothing", "Beat the Heat", "Beat the Pistons" and "Beat both". I think the votes broke down like 57%, 6%, 15%, 22%. Makes you wonder who's voting on these polls if they think the Nets, whose frail frontcourt I break down below, can take out two of the best front courts in the league.

- Bigs -
Seeing as how the Nets' best big man has a PER of 13.65 (that's Krstic) and Miami has three big men who play regularly with PERs larger than that. Shaq, league leader in field goal percentage at 60.1% at a PER of 27.59, Haslem (fifth in the same category at 53.6%) at 15.59 and Ex-Piston Laettner (he shoots 57.6%, but hasn't played enough to qualify for the league leaders) is at 17.06. Not only will the Nets be beaten to a pulp in PER, they'll be beaten to a pulp in FG% as well.

- Littles -
The Nets match up fairly well in the non-big men categories and Jefferson has said he'll be back for a playoff run. He's better than Eddie Jones (even though Rasual Butler's good D may get a lot of time on RJ) and Kidd's far better than Ex-Piston and league three point runner up Damon Jones (225 made at a clip of 43.2%), but Wade is better than Carter. The edge is to the Nets here, but it's slight. However, if Jefferson isn't 100%, it's down to even.

- Close -
While the Nets are just ahead in the backcourt (barring a weak Jefferson body), Miami's front court will squash their opposition this round, regardless of guard play.

Prediction: Heat in four.

(2) Detroit vs. (7) Philadelphia
Detroit is #15 in offense and #3 in defense, Philadelphia is #24 in offense and #10 in defense.

- Open -
Similar to the 1-8 matchup, I suspect the 76ers will be pounded into the ground. Philly matches up against the Pistons better than the Nets do to the Heat, but I still don't think it'll do much, since the still Pistons have the edge all over the court.

- Bigs -
Dalembert, Jackson and Webber make a decent trio, but they can't hold a candle to Wallace, Wallace and McDyess. Expect a lot of interior scoring from the Pistons.

- Littles -
Korver's going to be a liability whether he guards Tayshaun or Prince and Iguodala's either going to be posted up or run into the ground depending on which one he's on. So it's lose-lose for Philly here. On the flip side, Iverson will go off (lead the league at 30.7 PPG and is actually third all time in career PPG behind Jordan and Wilt now, just 0.07 ahead of Elgin Baylor) as usual, but I can't see anyone on Philly doing a lot of damage unless Korver (three point champ at 226 made on a clip of 40.5%)/Iguodala (great defender) go(es) wild for a game or two.

- Close -
Due to the volatility of the littles on Philly, I'm not suggesting the brooms come out here... but they nearly do.

Prediction: Pistons in five.

(3) Boston vs. (6) Indiana
Boston is #7 in offense and #13 in defense, Indiana is #18 in offense and #11 in defense.

- Open -
Welcome to the best evidence on why the three seed shouldn't get home court advantage in the NBA (or any other sport). Expect a lot of triples, as the teams have combined for 34.5 a game during the regular season.

- Bigs -
Both teams are deep here. Boston has Lafrentz, Walker, Jefferson and Blount. Indy has J-O, Foster, Davis and Harrison. While they match up evenly elsewhere and despite that Lafrentz is shooting like a fiend (55.6% from two, 36.3% from three), J-O definitely pushes the advantage to the Pacers.

- Littles -
Here's where the balance comes back to the Celtics. Pierce, Davis, Allen and Payton beat Tinsley, Miller, Jackson and Jones... by about as much as the Pacer big men beat the Celtic big men. So we're back to even.

- Close -
I suspect these games will be pretty random (as in, we'll probably see 105-100 games followed by 85-80 games) and thus, pretty entertaining.

Prediction: Pacers in seven.

(4) Washington vs. (5) Chicago
Washington is #11 in offense and #17 in defense, Chicago is #26 in offense and #2 in defense.

- Open -
This one will be a strange contrast in styles. Like the 3-6, it could be rather random in what the games' point totals are.

- Bigs -
Bulls are minus Curry, so they have a sizable loss, but they have the depth to overcome it. So the matchup is Chandler, Harrington and Davis versus the young (sans Ruffin) army of Haywood, Thomas, Brown, Jeffries and Ruffin... Washington's better. If Curry was around, it would be even.

- Littles -
With Deng out and Gordon as the sixth man, the Bulls will be starting Duhon, Hinrich and Nocioni... who have an average PER of 12.03 between them. On the flip side, you have the Wizards, starting Arenas, Hughes and Jamison... who have an average PER of 20.39. Even if you were to add Gordon and subtract the lowest PER (Duhon's 10.19), you get an average of 13.75. Chicago may play better D (the best at the two spot, as recently mention on Bulls Blog), but the advantage on offense is far too glaring.

- Close -
If the Bulls were full strength, I'd call it pretty even... but they're sans Deng and Curry. With them out, the Bulls are in trouble, even with the home court advantage.

Prediction: Wizards in six.

The Western Conference
(1) Phoenix vs. (8) Memphis
Phoenix is #1 in offense and #15 in defense, Memphis is #19 in offense and #5 in defense.

- Open -
I said a while back that if Memphis didn't face Phoenix or San Antonio, they had a good shot at an upset. Problem was, they stunk when Gasol got back and wound up falling down to 8th... so they have to play the Suns. Memphis has the depth to run with them, but as can be seen here, Memphis is brutal against teams that are rated "good" in the "points for" category.

- Bigs -
Amare, Marion and Hunter average a PER of 21.41. Gasol, Wright and Swift average a PER of 18.14. Against most teams, Memphis would have a nice advantage. However, not here. As good as Gasol is, Amare provides a similar function with even more efficiency. Thus, the plus is to Phoenix.

- Littles -
JJ, Q and JJ might not have the best PERs (average of 13.49), but unlike most other 2-3 groups, they have a job that they do very well (that's drain triples, where they combine to go 6.7 for 16.2 per game, 41.3%) so they're still quite affective. Plus, Phoenix has that guy named Steve Nash, who has a Pure Point Rating of 41.6 (for those unaware, the "best" is supposed to be a mark of 40). While the Grizz army of J-Will, Miller, Battier, Watson, Wells and Posey are great in a group, I just don't see them competing very well with Phoenix's gunners.

- Close -
I think Memphis might give Phoenix a little trouble, if the jumpers stop falling for a game or so, but I doubt they can take much from the Suns.

Prediction: Suns in five.

(2) San Antonio vs. (7) Denver
San Antonio is #6 in offense and #1 in defense, Denver is #12 in offense and #7 in defense.

- Open -
Duncan's back but might not be in good enough health to be his usual superb self... I'm really torn here. The Spurs have been a great team for years, but Denver's been on fire. Both are near the top on D, both are in the second tier on offense... hard to say.

- Bigs -
Najera might be out... currently questionable. TD, Nazr and Rasho, three talented centres, take on three talented power forwards in Camby, K-Mart and Nene. Denver's got the speed, San Antonio's got the talent. Slight advantage SA, if Duncan's not hurt. If he is, big advantage Denver.

- Littles -
Denver's three main littles, Carmelo, Miller and Boykins, average a PER of 17.12. Denver is nicely balanced team, props go out to Kiki for that one. However, the Spurs three main littles, Bowen, Manu and Parker average a PER of 17.14... and that's only dragged down due to non-steal and non-block defense not counting toward's Bowen's total. Even after that, they have a backup group of Brown, Barry and Udrih that average a PER of 14.66... which Denver counters with Johnson, Buckner and Russell, who average a PER of 13.55 but do play good D individually. Still close, but still an edge for the Spurs. The variable here is that Lenard is back after missing so much of the year. His addition balances out the scale a bit, but the Spurs still have the advantage in this spot.

- Close -
The Spurs have more depth, better perimeter shooting and the two (maybe three) best players on the court. But Denver's... really really hot. Plus they have a guy that's "fugazy" (remember last year's playoffs?) according to Tim Thomas. This one's going to be down to the wire... it all comes down to TD.

Prediction: Spurs in seven (changes to Nuggets in seven if Duncan is less than 90%)

(3) Seattle vs. (6) Sacramento
Seattle is #3 in offense and #25 in defense, Sacramento is #4 in offense and #23 in defense.

- Open -
This is kind of funny... the one team that looked easiest to upset is playing what I believe to be the weakest (or second weakest, if Memphis were to play worse again) playoff team in the West. Seattle's defense is absolutely horrible as they enter the second season (see a recent post for details). Of course, the same could be said about the team that used to be in Rochester. Thus, this ought to be a high scoring affair.

- Bigs -
Vlad-Rad is out for the year. Aside from him, we know that Seattle's main bigs (Evans and Fortson) are there to collect boards (rebound rates of 24.1 and 20.4 where the "best" mark is 20, respectively), so they won't provide much inside scoring (outside of Fortson's disgusting 2.05 PPS on 3.6 shots a game, anyway). Past them, Collison and James can score a bit but are two of the worst defenders on the squad... so their effect is somewhat negative. For the Kings, Brad Miller is obviously the focus for the bigs, with his 21.16 PER and ability to score anywhere from 20 feet and in. Outside of him, they get mediocre. Kenny Thomas, Ex-Piston Corliss and Brian Skinner average a PER of 14.8... which is good enough to combat Seattle's other bigs. Rebounding-wise, Seattle will dominate. Scoring-wise, Sacto will dominate. Overall? Seattle, but not by much.

- Littles -
Bibby's at 19.70 PER, Peja's at 17.71, Mobley's at 15.20 and Evans is at 12.35. Put them together and you get 16.24. Good, but not great. Allen's at 21.44, Lewis is at 19.69 Daniels is at 18.45 and Ridnour is at 14.78. Put them together and you get 18.59. Great! Advantage Seattle.

- Close -
Seattle wins both categories and normally this would be justification for the series. However, as said above, this could get wacky... and thus, any attempt at prognostication could be completely wrong.

Prediction: Sonics in six.

(4) Dallas vs. (5) Houston
Dallas is #5 in offense and #9 in defense, Houston is #16 in offense and #4 in defense.

- Open -
Ah, the battle for the second best squad in Texas. I'm sure the colours will be out in full force here... I just hope the colours used in Dallas don't match those ugly green uni's.

- Bigs -
Juwan Howard's out. At the five spot, Yao and Dikembe (20.39 PER between them) will crush Dampier and Bradley (13.11). At the four spot, Dirk and KVH (21.41) will crush Padgett and the Spoon (10.93). Basically, pick your demolition. Since I believe he's the MVP, my demolition of choice will be the one lead by Nowitzki.

- Littles -
There will be less domination here. Fun point guard matchup of Terry and Harris against Ex-Piston Sura and Ex-Piston James. Dallas wins the shooting guard matchup of Finley (he plays more time there than he does at SF) and Daniels against Wesley and Barry, partially on size, partially on the talent difference. Lastly, great defender Josh Howard (15.78 PER, like Bowen it would be higher if more defense counted) takes on T-Mac (23.45 PER) at the small forward spot. While this is a victory for Houston, it's not going to be a massive one. Thus, after two slight edges for Dallas and a decent sized edge for Houston, this part is even.

- Close -
Since the slight difference between Boston and Indy is due to a lack of Artest and the slight difference between San Antonio and Denver is due to a possibility of TD not being in good health, this matchup may be the closest one that isn't hinged on a star player being out for a random reason. This is probably too tight to call, so I'm going with the demolition I liked better, the home court advantage team.

Prediction: Mavericks in seven.

You take my breath away

2005-04-20T12:17:00.000-04:00

Alright, I didn't mention it last night because it slipped my mind (was writing big playoff preview and studying for exam) but I'll give some thoughts on it now. Last night, Darko got his first start, logged his most minutes (30) and scored his most points (16). He even mixed in five boards and shot 7-11 (63.6%) from the field. Let's have a quote from the guy in question.

"Coach told me I was going to play a lot in the last two games so he could rest some of the regulars for the playoffs"

Sounds plausible. Granted, it's not like he was playing against superior competition (look at which bigs got time for Atlanta) but it's still a nice sign. While you're looking at that, notice that guys listed as SG's (Josh Smith, Childress, Diaw, Donta Smith) combined for 136 minutes, almost enough to fill three separate spots for a night (144 was needed for that). Like I said, not a great opponent, but good to see nonetheless.

As a Piston fan, like many other of the type, I hear about Darko all the time. Just last night (this is shortly before I realized the game had slipped my mind) I was having a conversation where a friend suggested that Joe D could've had Bosh or Wade. I suggested that Carmelo would be even better, judging by the big hole at the 2.5 spot on the Pistons' bench. He agreed and again asked why Darko was chosen. Obviously I don't have all the answers, but I rattled off the information I usually give to those questioning the pick of the human victory cigar (they even have that as his nickname on Basketball Reference!):

- Supposedly he's a star in practice, but he's not in game shape yet
- Their big men at the time were Ben, Memo, Elden and Corliss
- He turns 20 in a couple of months

Afterwards, I noticed a couple more stats.

- He's had 383 minutes on the career, enough for 10.64 games at a 36 minute clip
- He's taken 133 shots on the career, 9.45% as many as Lebron has.

So we've barely seen him play, yet he's constantly ragged on by people. Granted, most times when he's out on the court he looks about as useful as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest, but we've only seen 383 minutes worth. So let's wait until he has enough games under his belt for a couple of seasons before we judge the guy (I'd say "kid", but he's older than me).

Playoff preview will be up after this evening's games are complete.

Flick of the wrist

2005-04-20T00:45:00.000-04:00

Before the main post starts, just let me say I'm honoured to have Knickerblogger featuring me in the latest Carnival. He even has me linked to in his "NBA Blogs & Writers" section. Thanks! Side note, the blog's also a month old yesterday... two achievements in the same day, I'm psyched.

Beatdown!
Hamilton took the night off and it didn't hurt the team a ton, but even if it had it wouldn't have mattered. Holding teams to 68 points is usually a surefire way to be victorious. You can't figure a team that's starting a 35 year old Gugliotta (10.59 PER) is going to go far anyway. I'd analyze more, but it's not like this meant a whole lot. Despite that, this puts the Pistons at 54 wins, eleven of them in a row, so I guess they're going to tie or eclipse last year's regular season after all. Next up, in Charlotte to end the Bobcats' first season.

Nets and Cavs both win
So both teams are now 41-40... it comes down to this, then. Here on Wednesday night, the Nets are in Boston, while Cleveland's in Toronto. You know the idea by now, Cavs need a Nets loss and a win of their own to get in, Nets get in any other way. I wouldn't be shocked if both lost... knowing the Raptors, they might lose on purpose in order to try and screw the Carter and the Nets. I'm not kidding. As much as the fans hate the guy, the players might hate him even more (despite the face they put up for the public).

I recently added some new links to my links section, check them out. They're good reading.

Miles goes off
47 point, 12 board, 5 block effort off the bench... and the Blazers still couldn't pull it out. Then again, they only had 8 guys and Shareef only played 14 minutes. Their entire bench for the game consisted of small forwards too. So I guess they get credit for keeping it remotely close.

NBA, union talk; deal unlikely before season's end
I wasn't worried before, but I am a little worried now. I still suspect there won't be any trouble for next year (they won't let it be like the NHL, I'm sure) but I'm not 100% positive about it. All we can do is hope for the best, I guess.

Leaving home ain't easy

2005-04-18T17:36:00.000-04:00

Departure?
On the front page of ESPN.com right now, there's a big photo of Lebron and a Scoop Jackson article accompanying it that asks if Lebron will bolt from Cleveland after 06-07. There's also a caption on the photo that says If LeBron leaves, it'll rip the heart out of Cleveland fans. Yeah, that would make sense. With all of this worrying, people are forgetting some things. First one is that Cleveland only has $26.1 million in salaries for next year... this is minus Zydrunas and McInnis, the prior of which might be available for cheaper than his current $14.625 clip and the latter of whom they don't seem to like anyway. Also, as good as Zydrunas is, they could probably proxy him with Varejao and Traylor and not lose a crippling amount of scoring (rebounding would probably be similar, though). Then, all of that free space could be used to go after Redd/Allen and decent PG that whoever winds up coaching them actually likes. Think of it... next year, the Cavs could have a lineup of Varejao, Gooden, Lebron, an allstar SG and a quality PG. Provided they can pull Redd/Allen in and find a decent PG on the market (examples would be Tyronn Lue (14.01 PER), Gary Payton (15.40 PER), Brevin Knight (might be a stretch, 18.48 PER)), they'll have a team that would be very welcoming to Lebron and talented enough to get to the playoffs and maybe win a round. So if they can make some nice personnel moves in the offseason, they'll be sitting pretty. If not, could be trouble. But that's just my suggestion.

Shaq out for Miami's last two games
They'll have him back for the playoffs at 100%, this isn't anything special.

This is the reference for the next three comments.

Wayne Embry has a new job with the Raptors -- senior basketball adviser to team president Richard Peddie.
Good, it won't be as much of a jump up to GM for Embry when they slice Peddie and Babcock during the offseason.

Lenard has returned
Which adds more firepower to the Nuggets. Granted he's been out almost all year, but if he can be in game shape, he could be a very useful piece for them.

Surgery for Odom
Have fun trying to trade him in the offseason (not that I'd trade him, personally) when he's fresh off of surgery on his shooting shoulder, Kupchak.

Stein's new power rankings
Not much of a complaint here, but I'm still wondering how the Bulls are #9 and the Wiz are #16 when the Wiz beat the Bulls the other day are just one game back of the team in red.

Jefferson clamoring to come back
We knew about that one already. More comments on this when my playoff preview goes up. Again, this will be after all of the seeds are locked in.

Any Piston news?
No word on Rasheed's hamstring. I'm sure Rip will be fine, but Rasheed is questionable. Remember, he was slightly dinged for the entire playoffs last year thanks to Plantar Fasciitis. Let's hope he heals up quickly, because this year's going to be even harder than last year.

Under pressure

2005-04-17T21:37:00.000-04:00

The game
That was a wild one. Rasheed plays 5 minutes, Hamilton exits and re-enters sans mask, Ilgauskus gets 11 O-boards, Ben gets 8 O-boards... crazy. Fortunately, what was important got done (that was getting the W). Side note, subtract what I said regarding McInnis when he's guarding a guy who scored 17 points on 7 shots. Obviously there has to be a comment on what Lebron did: bad shooting, good saving at the free throw line and eventually missing the most important shot of the game... those 28 foot faders are tricky ones. I really don't know if it was Tayshaun that caused it or it was a mistake by Lebron, but whatever it was, it sure looked awkward. But enough about that, the Pistons have won 10 straight and head to Atlanta on Tuesday.

Due to the loss...
The Nets are tied with the Cavs for the eight spot and as I mentioned last night, the Nets have the tie breaker. During the pregame on ABC, Bill Walton said Lebron's been carrying the group of stiffs for too long. This group of stiffs apparently includes a guy with a 20.42 PER who is tied for thirteenth in the league in defensive boards per minute (0.2167, or 7.8 per 36) and a guy with a 19.92 PER who is tenth in the league in offensive rebounds per minute (0.1125, or 4.05 per 36 minutes). Just because one guy overshadows doesn't mean everyone else on the team sucks.

Happy trails, Minny
Not much to comment on here, other than to ask, "People really thought Minnesota was going to get in?"

Continuing in Minnesota... Start me or trade me, disgruntled Szczerbiak tells Wolves
Note before rant... Wally's had 37 starts this year, which is fourth most on the team. Apparently logic doesn't apply here. As for the demand... makes complete sense, right? Plenty of teams are dying to trade for a guy who has a PER of 17.43 and 4/$46 left on his deal. Don't get me wrong, the Szcz is a quality player but I can't imagine too many teams are going to want to take on his deal... okay, maybe Isiah will do it. I heard them saying Kurt Thomas + ? for the Szcz a while back, but it'll be tough in the offseason. Thomas only makes $6.6 next year, so they'll have to throw in anywhere between $1.9 and $4.9 to balance it out if just Wally is coming in the other direction. Unfortunately for those whose home games are at the MSG, the only person they have on the roster for next year making such a thing is Knickerblogger favourite Mike Sweetney, who I sincerely doubt they want to give out. So, it's going to have to get complicated (Minnesota only has 9 guys under contract for next year), but maybe they'll find a way.

Celtics clinch 3 spot
We'll see which lucky team gets the 6 spot in the coming days. Indiana's got it right now, being 14 back of the Heat. Washington's 12 back and Philly's 16 back, so Carlisle's squad has a good chance of meeting up with the guys in green again... and like last year, beating them to a pulp, especially since J-O is back.

Once all of the seeds are locked in, I'll throw up some predictions. I'm going to start writing this now, since I'll have exams to deal with in the coming days.

Don't lose your head

2005-04-17T03:58:00.000-04:00

Stoudamire goes crazy
Wow. NBA record for triples in a game. A night after Chris Duhon was 8-9 from behind the arc in Chicago, Damon decided to go 5-21 from downtown in this game. At least he made up for it with the triple double, I guess.

Related trouble in Portland
If only John Nash wasn't an idiot and hadn't spent all that money (giving Miles 6/$47, giving Randolph an extension of 6/$84, giving Ex-Piston Ratliff an extension of 3/$42) the team would be sitting pretty. After the season, Abdur-Rahim's deal comes off, Stoudamire's deal comes off, Van Exel was considering retiring (so his deal would come off), Ratliff's deal would've come off, they could've worked something out with Randolph after the season, there'd be no Miles to create distractions on the team... it could've been wonderful. Instead, one of the worst general managers in the league (if not the single lamest one) crushed a franchise with potential for years. Sure, Stoudamire and Abdur-Rahim have deals coming off (presuming they aren't resigned, which they probably won't be), but Van Exel wants to keep playing now and they're still over the cap for two more years (Przybilla's deal is done then, so they'll need to resign him). So they could be in cap hell for years to come, as well as having multiple players on the team that don't want to stay. Good work, Nash. You're officially useless.

WNBA draft was the other day
And look at how much people cared!

Grizz blow another chance to clinch
It's not like they've played four teams in six nights that all have better records than them all on the road or anything, right? It's not the end of the world, despite popular opinion. It's not like Minnesota is doing a lot better (2-2 in their last four, but wins were home for GS and at Utah, not tough).

Bucks' Ford practices for first time in 14 months
This is good to see. I hope he comes back 100%... the Bucks are going to need him, with or without Redd being locked up to a big deal.

Denver finally loses (to someone other than Phoenix)
Had to happen eventually, I guess. However, it did come with Camby being out against a team that has one of the best centres in the league... so I wouldn't take too much from it. Not saying that Camby makes up for 28 points, but he'd certainly help.

Preview of Cavs at Pistons
Cavs have dropped two straight (home to NY, road to Washington). Cavs are 12-27 on the road as recently mentioned, while the Pistons are 31-9 at home. Pistons have won nine straight. Based on these facts and my Cavs spiel from yesterday, I'd say the Pistons are going to steamroll. It's going to be on national TV, but that won't spot Brown from playing the bench a lot again, which is good.

Action this day

2005-04-16T12:33:00.000-04:00

Note before we begin, the linking to Sportsline boxscores instead of ESPN ones is random. Note two, Pistons are up to nine straight W's.

Sonics finally clinch
Let's see, facing the Hornets at home... yeah, might be a slumpbuster. I link to this not just to mention it, but to point out the photo of the guy with the sign. Now that's basketball! I also mention this to point out that all-star candidate JR Smith shot 2-15. Pretty tough to be an all-star when you can't shoot... of course, that didn't stop Antoine Walker or Baron Davis in years past.

Squish

Raptors completely fall apart in half two
I watched the latter part of the first quarter, whole second quarter and latter half of the fourth quarter of this... which is funny. I saw the Raptors play great, then okay, then terrible. It was like watching the Pistons, then the Sixers, then the Hawks. Three different teams over the span of 24 minutes. It's scary how inconsistent that team is (even without the Toronto version of Carter). Nets are now just a game back of the Cavs for the 8th spot in the East. Think Lebron will be pissed if they miss the playoffs? Just a bit?

I segue from this into a rant about the Cavaliers. Seems to me that last year the Cavs were bad at the start of the year due to a lack of point guard. They then traded Darius Miles for Jeff McInnis and things were going well. The Cavs reeled off a few wins in a row and looked prime to be a possible sleeper in the playoffs. Then McInnis got hurt and the team fell apart, missing the playoffs. This year, they start off strong, then start falling apart as Paul Silas starts playing Snow as much as/more than McInnis. Eventually, Silas gets canned and Brendan Malone plays Snow even more. Now, his Roland Rating might not be much to write home about (+0.3), but somebody has to notice the trend here. McInnis playing equals Cavs wins. McInnis not playing equals Cavs losses. I doubt they'll learn in time though. Remaining schedules for our 8th spot duellists:

Cleveland
Apr 17 @DET: Big fat L
Apr 19 BOS: Probably a W, hard to say
Apr 20 @TOR: Cavs are 12-27 on the road for a reason, L

New Jersey
Apr 17 PHI: Could go either way, they're only 3-3 in their last 6 at home
Apr 19 WAS: Same as above
Apr 20 @BOS: L, Celts won't drop this

Presuming the Nets win both of the questionable games, they will move into the 8th spot (they beat the Cavs in the season series 3-1). Perhaps the will of Cleveland's big three will pull them through, we'll see.

Carousel from Hoopshype
Here are a few quotes (both from the Orlando Sentinel) about the Magic head coach job from the recent update:

The Magic also are expected to inquire about a possible change of heart from Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski, who turned down a lucrative offer from the Lakers a year ago.

"Interim Coach Chris Jent will be a candidate, but the names Phil Jackson, Flip Saunders, Paul Silas, Eric Musselman, P.J. Carlesimo and maybe Rick Pitino will churn in the rumor mill.

Jeez, Weisbrod's really swinging for the fences here isn't he? If Coach K wouldn't go to the Lakers, there's no way he comes to Orlando. Phil Jackson's going to want a ready-made winner if he returns and while this team has pieces, it's not championship-esque. Saunders could go anywhere, there have even been rumours that Joe D has been talking to him about the Piston job if Larry Brown departs after the year. Unlike many, I believe that this will be Brown's last team, so I mean depart as in "retire". Silas probably would enjoy a stab with another #1 overall pick, so it could work for him. I really don't know what Musselman wants, it may have to do with what Fratello does in the future. PJ probably won't give up his nice post with the Spurs, but I could be wrong. Pitino in the NBA didn't work last time and he just took a team to the Final Four, so I doubt that's happening. So they're left with mainly Silas or PJ out of that bunch. There's Jent too, but I give about a 0.001% chance of Jent retaining his job with so many big names sans a head coaching position.

Other ESPN writers talk awards
I find it odd that Tayshaun showed up in multiple categories, though I wouldn't put him far back in either. I also find it odd that Hollinger has Garnett as MVP. Yes, he's the league leader in Hollinger's most famous stat (28.85 PER) but I still have to discount him for the Roland Rating that isn't even in the top 50 in the league (+3.9). I liked that Hollinger put Przybilla as MIP, though. Someone else noticed! Another thing I find odd is that D'Antoni got 4/6 votes for COY. Funny, he had 3/5 of that starting lineup last year and lead them to about half as many wins. He gets a fantastic PG and a nice SG and suddenly... he's a good coach! Right. Lastly, at least Stein was the only one to take Hill as MIP.

More, including a Piston preview, later.

More award stuff

2005-04-16T00:42:00.000-04:00

Have to comment on this. Unsurprisingly, Stein makes multiple mistakes here. One was naming Hill most improved... again, anyone will improve when their previous year was 0's across the board. None of his picks for most improved make sense. Hill had no 2003-2004 season. Simmons's PER only went up by 3.2 (13.35 to 16.55). Tayshaun's only went up by 2.21 (13.89 to 16.10). I don't get it at all. What was a second mistake?

Cleveland's LeBron James beats out Philadelphia's Iverson for No. 5 by becoming just the fifth player in league history to average 24 points, seven rebounds and seven assists in one season. The 20-year-old joins Oscar Robertson, John Havlicek, Larry Bird and Michael Jordan on that short list.

Havlicek was the other one, I'll have to remember that. But we've had this discussion before. Wilt is again sans recognition, sadly. While I agree (or at least have his choice in my personal top three) with his winners aside from the MIP, I still can't figure out why he makes these common mistakes. For the record, my personal picks are:

MVP: Nowitzki
Aside from the two guys on the Spurs who benefit each other so much, Nowitzki leads the league in Roland Rating. He leads his team in points (26.3), boards (9.9), three point percentage (40.8%) and is shooting 46.9% from two. These are impressive, yes... but when you consider that the next highest scorer is Finley at 15.7, they start to stand out more. Runner up is Nash, who is almost as important, but not quite enough to knock off Nowitzki (to me).

COY: Karl
He hasn't been there the whole year, but it's a whole new (and better) team with him at the helm. I have to hand it to him, he's done a wonderful job. Runner up is Carlisle for taking that team past .500, though it's true that not corralling Artest's personality could be partially blamed on him.

ROY: Howard
I just like Howard's game more than Okafor's. This would be the tightest award to pick of all, in my view.

6th Man: Gordon
I don't think Davis and Stackhouse add as much to their teams (which score enough already) as Gordon does to the Bulls. McDyess could be an option here too, but the Pistons already have two great PFs in front of him (though Ben plays the five spot with no real centre, of course).

MIP: Wade (just ahead of Stoudemire)
See last post.

DPOY: B. Wallace (just ahead of a number of guys)
I would've taken AK47 for this had he not been so hurt all year. Instead, my pick goes to the anchor of our super Piston D.

In non-award news...

Updated +/- over last 30 days feature
Rip 2, Rasheed 4, Ben 9, Chauncey 30... which is nice, but has no sign of Tayshaun. Very strange, but good to see nonetheless.

Pistons smite Bucks
I wish I had noted about this earlier, as I would've predicted said smiting. It's pretty obvious what was done good and bad (95% good) here, so I won't make much of a comment. Lots of bench play again, which makes sense. I'm glad Brown is doing such things with the bench minutes as we lead into the playoffs. I kind of wish he'd start a lineup of Arroyo, Hunter, Dupree, McDyess and Campbell to rest the regular five even more... maybe not. Next up, home for the Cavs on Sunday on ABC.

Improvements

2005-04-15T02:49:00.000-04:00

An award that doesn't get a lot of talk is the "Most improved player award". Yes, many folks are saying Ex-Piston Grant Hill should win "Comeback player of the year" but as is often the case, many folks don't know what they're talking about (this award doesn't exist in the NBA). Sometimes it's a very good player moving up to an elite player or it could be a stiff moving up to a good player. Last year it was Zach Randolph, which was kind of in between. Year before was Gilbert Arenas, same idea. So there isn't really a set way of how to win it.
Let's take a look at some people that I believe should be candidates.

Dwyane Wade
The research surprised me on this one. I remembered that there was such a big deal about him as the season went on last year and yet, his PER was nice 18.32. However, this year it's 24.04 for a jump of 5.72. His PPS is 1.42, up from 1.24. He's playing in 3.72 more minutes a game, yet is averaging 7.9 more PPG (16.2 to 24.1... he's taken 3.9 more shots per game, but this still stands out) and 2.4 more APG (4.5 to 6.9). I suspect the award will go to him.

Amare Stoudemire
This one's pretty obvious. His FG% has jumped from 47.5 last year to 56 this year, he has a 26.85 PER as compared to 20.74 from last year and increase his PPG by 5.2 (from 20.6 to 25.8). Very deserving, though some will pin it as just a side effect of having Nash on the same squad. If it weren't for Wade, he'd probably get it.

Dan Dickau
Not as obvious. His PER jumped 5.38 (10.45 to 15.83), his PPG is almost up by a multiple of six (2.2 to 12.6, but his minutes jumped from 6.8 to 29.1, a factor of 4.28), his APG is almost up by a factor of five (0.9 to 4.8, same minutes jump obviously) and he's actually managed to stick around and play on a roster for a bit. Deserving, but not quite enough.

Joel Przybilla
Wow. PER jumped from 7.5 to 15.99, field goal percentage jumped from 36 to 61 and improved his blocks per game from 1.0 to 2.1 in just 3.4 more minutes a game (20.4 to 23.8). Probably as deserving than Wade or Amare, but hasn't had much of an impact and is on a crappy team (and a guy on his team won it last year). So it probably won't go to him.

So those are four good ones. As I said, I suspect the overly popular Wade wins it, but we'll see.

Benched

2005-04-14T03:24:00.000-04:00

Side note before the review, Ben Wallace became the fifth player in NBA history to have 100 blocks and 100 steals in five straight seasons. Kudos to the heart of the team, even though he's going to have to grab 41 boards a game for the next four to hit 1000 rebounds on the year again. I doubt even the Big Dipper could muster 164 boards in a quartet of games.

Box for the game, which was a strange one. Barrett (5'10), Nelson (6'0) and Francis (6'3) were all playing for the Magic at one point, Elden Campbell got almost as many minutes (15) in the game tonight as he had since the start of March (16), Pistons only hit one triple, Tayshaun had no boards in 30 minutes, Pistons had 14 more boards, Magic rookies combined for 68 points, Magic had two guys not playing for "personal reasons" (Garrity and Stevenson) ... strange one. The guys that popped in and watched parts with me thought it was terrible (one said it was the worst game he had ever seen... then again, he also thinks Boozer was only good because of Lebron) but I thought it was fun. It was nice to see the young guys on the Magic against the various bench of the Pistons. Up next for the 04-05 Central champs, home for Milwaukee on Friday night.

Sonics have dropped six straight
In their latest defeat, Lewis and Allen combined for 12-33 (36.3%) from the field and 31 points. When your stars do that, you tend to lose. On the flip side, Nowitzki only needed 16 shots to hit the same total. Ouch. What's up with the team from Seattle? Let's take a look.

4/3; Loss at Golden State, 101-92: Warriors shot 38-76 (50%) from the field.
4/5; Loss at Sacramento, 122-101: Kings shot 47-80 (58.8%) from the field.
4/8; Loss versus Lakers, 117-94: LA shot 42-82 (51.2%) from the field.
4/9; Loss at Denver, 121-105: Nuggets shot 40-70 (57.1%) from the field.
4/11; Loss versus Rockets, 90-78: Houston shot 29-67 (43.3%) from the field.
4/13; Loss versus Mavs, 95-90: Dallas shot 36-70 (51.4%) from the field.

Aside from the Houston game (which is probably more caused by the Rockets), teams are frequently shooting the lights out against the Sonics. Unsurprisingly, bad defense is haunting Seattle, so much now that they've dropped six straight mainly because of it. Yes, Vlad Rad is out, but the fact still stands. We'll see if the team can figure it out. If they can't, I suspect a first round exit for the surprise story. On the bright side, at least McMillan is playing Fortson.

Coming up in the next post, a discussion about an award that gets very little chatter.

A kind of magic

2005-04-13T16:12:00.000-04:00

Preview
Another one. Pistons have won seven in a row, Magic have lost four straight. Pistons beat the Magic (in Orlando, as opposed to this one) last week. Magic are 12-26 on the road, Pistons are 29-9 at home. Pistons are locked in at the two, Magic are fighting for a playoff spot (and dying). Based on these facts, even the last one, I'm suspecting that the Pistons will hand out a thrashing. Maybe they'll get to or past 54-28 after all. It's not like their remaining schedule (this one, Milwaukee, Cleveland, at Atlanta and at Charlotte) is very difficult. Coming into the playoffs with a 12 game winning streak certainly wouldn't be a drawback, unless one believes that playing crap teams will leave them unprepared for more talented ones (which I don't).

Nocioni docked one for his knock
Fair enough, I guess. It's just too bad they didn't dock his playing time over a number of days instead of killing it for one. On a related note:

Argentinian rookie Andres Nocioni is quickly developing a reputation as a dirty player who lets the heat of the game influence his actions. It would probably be wise for him to curb his act before someone does it for him.
- Tony Mejia, yesterday's power rankings

If only he could be like Bruce Bowen and bring some talent all around the court (except at the stripe), then perhaps there wouldn't be as much of a complaint.

Memphis = feeble?
The feeble manner in which the Grizzlies have made their playoff push make them a leading candidate to be swept right out of the Western Conference playoffs, regardless of who they draw.
- Same guy, same place as last quote

Feeble being winning five of their last seven, with losses coming in Dallas (fourth best record in the league) and home to Denver (has won 20 of 22). Apparently they recently changed the meaning of feeble to "good enough".

Snyder'd
We expected rookie Kirk Snyder to get under opponents' skin with his physical play, but he's done more damage with his mouth, becoming one of the game's biggest trash-talkers from the jump.
- Same idea
Similar to Nocioni, once he brings some talent (like improving that 8.81 PER) then we'll talk.

The Suns
I like how I'm reading on message boards (sportsline or ESPN) that Phoenix's defense is terrifying. However, this is untrue. Obviously 15th in the league is nothing to jump for joy about, but when they're first in offense over the Heat by about the same margin that separates the 76ers and the Celtics, it really doesn't make you want to gag either. Not that I don't think defense is more important than offense, just that sometimes a wicked offense is fine if your defense is average rather than terrible (a la the Sonics, who are #3 on O and #25 on D). Note that I believe the opposite works as well, as the Pistons are #17 on offense and #3 on defense.

Poll commentary
Current poll in the NBA section on Sportsline asks, "How will Detroit's season end?". There are only 883 votes at the moment, not enough for a good sample, so I'll be sure to put up a tally when it has more opinions in. Unsurprising, "Loss in East finals" has a big lead at the moment.

Champions (of the Central)

2005-04-11T23:59:00.000-04:00

The game!
That makes 6 Central division titles overall and 3 in the last four years for the Pistons. Good times, Piston fans. As happy as I am, I can't help but wonder why the heck Rip Hamilton was 2-17 from the field. As I usually think, "Why didn't he stop after say, the ninth or tenth one, when his shooting percentage was at least >= 20% ?". The motto I usually hear is that "good shooters keep shooting" but one must realize that this is a league of inconsistency and sometimes folks have bad nights. Partially due to Rip's scary performance, the team shot better from behind the arc than they did from inside it. This might have something to do with the fact that Andres Nocioni got 45 minutes and might have something to do with the fact that Skiles took out Ben Gordon for Chris Duhon before Chauncey hit his game winning triple, then put Gordon back in (only to miss a triple himself). Another problem the Pistons had was that the Bulls had 60 boards, including 24 on the offensive glass... 8 of which were by Tyson Chandler. I really hope the Bulls resign him in the offseason. The Pistons had similar trouble on the glass against the Heat, but it wasn't this glaring (16 O-boards for Miami then). Pistons also shot 11-21 (52.4%) from the stripe... yuck. Despite the various trouble, this is the team's seventh straight win, they held their opponents to 84 points in 53 minutes, Ben Wallace did have 5 steals, this is their fourth straight 50 win season and the whole division championship thing. So there's a lot to be happy about. Up next for the crew, home versus Orlando on Wednesday. Might be a cake walk.

The race card!
That didn't take long. What J-O doesn't seem to realize is the whole "competition" aspect against the NCAA. Either that or he does realize it and is trying to create controversy. Or he's just pissed off that he got to come out of high school straight to league and now kids might not be able to. I guess there could be a number of options. By mentioning the race card, I'm guessing it's the second one. Whatever it is... I don't think it will affect any proceedings. It's not like David Stern has much affection for Jermaine after that whole "clobbered a fan" thing.

Did we read that right? San Antonio 136, Golden State 134
Don't see 270 point games very often these days. Not quite 186-184 (370!) or anything, but still impressive. I wonder when the last time a pair of teams broke 270 was. I attempted to do research, but couldn't find much. Oh well. You get the idea, it was really high scoring for today's day and age.

Reasonable?

2005-04-11T17:42:00.000-04:00

The reason for the lack of consistent recent updates is pretty much that I didn't have a lot to say other than offer previews. Aside from a few formalities (final spots in the East, Memphis's trouncing of Minnesota for the 8th spot in the West) the first season is just about wrapped up. We've heard about the big injuries (Bulls and Sonics dropping left and right, whether Miller and Duncan will be 100% for the playoffs, etc.) and the hot streaks (Denver's won 21 of 23). There just isn't a lot to say about the year until we know for sure what all of the match-ups are. However, there are some things about after the year that could be commented on.

The 20 year age limit
The poll over at the NBA section on ESPN.com has a poll of "Should the NBA impose a 20-year age limit for entering the league" with 64.8% of the 19,257 who have voted so far saying 'Yes' with 35.2% saying 'No'. This question isn't really complete, as it doesn't also question the idea of the NBDL expansion for those folks under 20 that still want to come into the league. Personally, I think the switching of the NBDL rules to the 15 teams (one per every two NBA teams) and adding that "no one over 20 on rosters" rule to go along with the NBA's age limit is great. I don't watch a lot of college basketball, as I mentioned (some reasons I concur with found here) but I watch the current NBDL sometimes... whenever I can find it shown on NBA TV. However, you'd figure that if its teams are affiliated with certain NBA teams, it would get more TV time, which means more watching time. I don't know if it would be a success with other fans, but I'd certainly want to view. However, if they're just going to shut out the < 20 year olds and NOT put the affiliation in between every two NBA teams for every one NBDL team, then I don't think it'd be a good move. One, folks would probably try to take the league to court (remember what Maurice Clarett did to the NFL?). Two, the NBDL's competition with the NCAA will be even worse if those guys under 20 are stuck in college. Thus, if the league puts the "over 20" rule in and puts those under 20 into the reformed NBDL, I think it'd be a good move by the league... that is, if Billy Hunter will allow it. Reportedly, there's a good chance he will, so I'm happy. In non-after the year news...

Pistons defeat Heat
To be expected. No Shaq means that the Heat are much less effective. Aside from watching how frustrated Wade was (strange side note, one of the guys on my floor saw "Dwyane Wade" on the TV and asked if his first name was spelled incorrectly), I can't take much from this game. The Pistons will see them again in a few weeks, we can debate then.

Next up, at Chicago
Bulls are dinged up (Deng, Curry) but are at home and fighting for home court advantage in the first round. Similar to Sunday's game, this one could go either way. Not as similar to Sunday's game, I give the advantage to the Pistons. Deng's too important for the Bulls to be able to take out good teams without him.

The duellists

2005-04-10T05:09:00.000-04:00

Not a lot to say about this one. Aside from letting Deshawn Stevenson shoot 4-6 from behind the arc, the Pistons did pretty much everything well. No complaints here. Let's face it, this game was just in the way until the showdown on ABC, right?

In about eight hours, it's Pistons at Heat time... likely a preview of games 1, 2, 5 and probably 7 in this year's Eastern conference finals. Seeing as how it's in Miami and pretty much meaningless other than as fodder for people (like me) to comment on, it could go either way. Since they're at home, I'll give the edge to the Heat... but the edge is very slight. However, Shaq may miss this game (he's already missed two straight). If so, the edge (much larger) goes over to the Pistons. Should be a good one either way.

Preview

2005-04-08T17:56:00.000-04:00

Here is ESPN.com's preview. The Magic are pretty much screwed at this point (with Ex-Piston Hill being out for likely the year and Nelson being out for a few more weeks) but nevertheless, they are still fighting for a playoff spot. The game means a lot more to them than it does to the Pistons, so I wouldn't be shocked if the Magic pulled it out. Of course, it's on national TV, so if the Pistons were to lose this (nearly meaningless to them) game it's more fuel for the "Even though the Pistons won it all last year, there's no way in hell they can win with a slightly different bench now" argument that seems so prevalent. I still suspect the Pistons will win, as per standard, but I'm not expecting it or anything.

Review, response, reports

2005-04-07T04:49:00.000-04:00

Victory
Nice game for the Pistons. Jamison was indeed activated, but didn't get any PT. They let Larry Hughes do a little of everything, but overall their O was good and so was their D (although the Wizards had single digit turnovers, just like the Raptors did). Interesting stat of the night was that everyone in the Piston starting lineup hit a triple, even Big Ben. It's rather difficult to look up such a stat, but I bet it's safe to say that this is the first time in a while that's happened. Next up, at Orlando on Friday night on ESPN.

Garbage
I was listening to the Arnie Spanier show on Sporting News Radio earlier and got rather annoyed. Normally I have no problem with the guy, but in his most recent show he couldn't stop cramming down the listeners' throats that what the Lakers got back for Shaq was garbage. Repeatedly, all he could say was that they got back garbage. Garbage? A 15 and 10 guy who shoots 50% from inside the arc (30.8% behind it) as well as a 15 and 6 guy who shoots 47% from inside the arc are part of the collective garbage. Granted, Brian Grant is garbage, but there's no way that one could logically lump the first two into the same category as him. Arnie later went on to say that Kobe Bryant will score more points than anyone in the NBA in the next fifteen years... yeah.

IL addition #1
Juwan Howard's out for the year. Their new starting four is going to have to be Scott Padgett, who has a PER of 11.97, but a defensive PER at the four spot of 13.7. By comparison, Howard had numbers of 13.25 and 16.8... huh? This will actually be an improvement for the Rockets, which is kind of humourous, seeing as how I started writing this thinking that they'd have a hole at the PF.

IL addition #2
Ex-Piston Grant Hill's out for the year... not that this is a strange development for him. However, this time it's his shin rather than his ankle, so there's a bit of relief for the Magic. Maybe next year.

Sixers blow 25-point lead but hand Cats 6th straight loss
Talk about a playoff team, huh? Iverson had 48 in this game and because of it, ESPN.com decided to put up a list of the leaders for "career 40 point games" in the game's recap. Let's take a look:

Wilt Chamberlain 271
Michael Jordan 173
Elgin Baylor 88
Oscar Robertson 77
K. Abdul-Jabbar 70
Rick Barry 70
George Gervin 68
Jerry West 66
Allen Iverson 58
Bob McAdoo 58

Another record of Wilt's that will never be broken, always fun to see for me.

Trends

2005-04-06T05:55:00.000-04:00

Baron Davis goes wild
He had a line of 11-20, 40 points and 13 dimes on the night against the Rockets. Congratulations goes out to BD on the big night, it seems when he actually has a good FG%, the team plays well. Funny that, huh? On a related note, the Warriors have won 9 of 10. Seems to me the Warriors came on strong at the end of last year as well, where they won 12 of their last 17. What good did it do them? They fired the coach! The moral of the story is, just because a team plays well when it doesn't matter, doesn't mean they'll continue the trend when it's time for the tough to get going.

Jim Paxson's going to get axed
Seeing as how they already canned the coach, there's new ownership and the team is underachieving, this one is about as obvious as who'd win a three point shootout between Antoine Walker and Fred Hoiberg.

Mavs earn fifth straight 50-win season and clinch playoff spot
Too bad they've only been past round two once in the first four, eh?

8th seed out West
Seems like there's a bit of debate that the T'Wolves can actually take over for the Grizz. Currently, Memphis (41-32) has a 2.5 game lead on KG's squad (39-35). Let's do a little "expected victory" thing with their remaining schedules.

Apr 6 @TOR .6
Apr 8 MIA .4
Apr 10 CHA 1.0 (I know there are no sure things in this league I love, but they're not going to be dropping this one)
Apr 11 @DAL .3
Apr 13 @HOU .4
Apr 15 @DEN .3
Apr 16 @SA .4
Apr 18 SA .6
Apr 20 DAL .6

Total = 4.6 = 5 wins

Ouch. Now, for Minnesota.

Apr 6 UTA 1.0 (See Charlotte at Memphis above)
Apr 8 DEN .5
Apr 9 @ATL .7
Apr 13 GS .5 (Normally this would be higher, but as mentioned above, the Warriors are on a tear)
Apr 15 @UTA .6
Apr 17 SEA .5
Apr 18 @NO .8
Apr 20 SA .6

Total = 5.2 = 5 wins

Thus, by my numbers, Memphis would finish the year at 46-36 while Minnesota would be 44-38. Close, but not close enough.

Suns on the road
Phoenix is currently 30-8 away from home. If they win their last three road games, they'll have the best road record of all time. Isn't that wild? It'll certainly be helpful in their playoff run, as San Antonio was almost 1986 Celtics-esque (they had a 40-1 home record) earlier in the year (35-3 now, but one of those was sans Duncan).

Maybe I was wrong about interpreting Bayless
Rookie J.R. Smith has been the Western Conference's top rookie all season, serving as the brightest of the team's scarce bright spots in an otherwise disastrous year.
- Tony Mejia, this week's Power Rankings

Oh, what an honour. The West has had tons of great rookies this year, like Sebastian Telfair (8.91 PER) and Shaun Livingston (8.37 PER). However, there has been a guy by the name of Andris Biedrins (15.39 PER) who is only playing 12 minutes a game, but is putting up alright numbers (3.8 PPG, 2.0 RPG, 58.9 FG% and 1.43 PPS, which slanted up are 11.4 and 6) which point to him as being the best West rookie so far this year to me. But what do I know? I just base my thoughts on all around play rather than plain scoring ability on a team desperate for people to put it in the bucket.

Suns block Lakers from playoffs
Still think Kobe will get a title again someday... but clearly, it won't be this year. The team has plenty of pieces (their starting five, Jones) but needs to do some moving to balance the roster (Devean George is the third best SF but could be a 7th man on some other team, their backup centre is unathletic, 6'9, 254 Brian Grant, etc.) before they can get anywhere. If Kupchak makes some solid moves during the offseason and does well at the draft, they'll probably be back in the playoffs next year.

Piston preview
The Wizards have dropped two straight (at home to Indy and Boston) but come on the road to take on Detroit. Jamison's been hurt for almost three weeks, but might be activated in time for the game. Brendan Haywood's still hurt, as is Jarvis Hayes. The team is pretty beat up, but they're still fighting with the Bulls for the 4th seed in the East. The Heat secured the #1 spot, but the Pistons would still do well to build momentum and fend off the teams that could possibly knock them out of the second best record spot (such as these Wizards and the Bulls). Rip, Rasheed and Ben can all claim that they're ex-Wizards/Bullets, which is often incentive to play well. So, I suspect the Pistons will be victorious here, since the Wizards are too beat up and the Pistons have won their last nine against the them.

News and stats

2005-04-05T19:20:00.000-04:00

This is the latest work over at the wonderful 82games. Last time they did this, Tayshaun was near the top (if not the leader) and Rip Hamilton was also near the top. This time, surprisingly, Rasheed is #3 overall. I wondered if perhaps McDyess was playing worse and sure enough, his Roland Rating for the last 30 is -10.6... yikes. Arroyo's even worse yet at -17.8. So much for these guys being effective off the bench. Neither are as bad Dupree's -36.5... wow. I guess playing all of the starters 40+ minutes a game might be compulsory throughout the playoffs.

The poll about whether or not Kobe will win another title is still up and the results are 29% for No and 71% for Yes at the moment, after 174,042 votes. I guess I disagree with the general populace on this one.

Spurs sign Big Dog
Granted, he's a good shooter (46% from the field and 34% from three on the career), which is what they want to bring in to fill in for the hurt Devin Brown... but I really don't suspect Robinson will fit in coming off of the pine (37.1 MPG on the career, big ego) or play much defense (in 02-03, his last year to play 50+ games, his defensive PER was a brutal 21.1). Or it could be the latest in the line of brilliant moves by Spurs GM R.C. Buford. I guess we'll find out in the coming days.

Preview tomorrow night's game up tomorrow.

News and opinions

2005-04-05T03:21:00.000-04:00

Bulls get thwacked
Luol Deng is out for the year... which means Andres Nocioni (10.08 PER, -10.9 Roland Rating) is going to have to take over even more time at the small forward spot. So far this year, Deng's had 44% of the time at the 3 spot and Nocioni's had 37%... still not sure why Skiles plays the latter so much. Don't expect a Bulls win in round one without Deng, even if they break their tie with Washington and get home court advantage... he's too integral to the team and his backup is next to useless, as you can see. So, solid year for the team, but it's not going to take them anywhere. Next year, provided Curry and Chandler are back, could be the one they really break through.

My take on who should be coach of the year
This year's a tough one. Many people are saying Mike D'Antoni, but it's pretty clear that it's been mostly Nash that's improved that team, which removes him from my view on the contention. Before the recent trouble in the locker room, I would've said Nate McMillan was number one, but now I'm not so sure. Scott Skiles is a good one too, but he needs to stop playing Chris Duhon (8.99 PER, 52% of team's minutes at PG) and Nocioni so much. All nice candidates, but if I had a vote, it would go to one George Karl. I know he hasn't been there all year but, as Marc Stein said in Monday's Power Rankings:

Throw out their last two games against Phoenix and Furious George has Nuggets on a stunning 17-0 run. Overall they're 14-1 at home for the new coach and 10-5 on the road.

"It's fantastic!". I thought the Nuggets would be one of the four best teams in the West at the start of the year and thanks to Karl, they're playing like it. My hat's off to him, he's done a wicked job, especially considering the widely held opinion that he wouldn't mesh with young guys like Carmelo and K-Mart.

Hall of famers
Article here. Calhoun and Boeheim getting in makes sense, as does Hubie's entrance. I'm not really familiar with Sue Gunter, so I won't comment there. Can't say I'm familiar with "Hortencia", either... yeah. Naturally, the biggest complaint is about the Human Highlight Reel/Film getting snubbed, which I have to agree with. Dominique was a scoring machine and a good rebounder throughout his career, as well as electrifying enough to earn him that famous nickname. I suspect he'll make it in eventually, though. Joe D also got snubbed and I don't think he'll get in as a player (but I'd certainly be happy if he did), but the way he's going as an executive, he might get in that way instead.

ESPN.com features Globetrotter news in the NBA section
I really don't get this one... I can understand why they put up the Kemp story, since he's a former NBAer, but why the heck is Globetrotter news up there?

Skip Bayless thinks JR Smith is an all-star candidate
It's quite possible he meant Josh Smith... but let's take a look at the stats.

Josh Smith
15.73 PER, 45.8 FG%, 1.18 PPS, 26.2 MPG, 8.7 PPG, 5.6 RPG, 1.89 BPG
Slanted up to 36 minutes... 12 PPG, 7.8 RPG, 2.6 BPG

JR Smith
12.01 PER, 40.6 FG%, 1.09 PPS, 23 MPG, 9.7 PPG, 1.7 RPG, 1.8 APG, 1.1 SPG
Slanted up to 36 minutes... 15 PPG, 2.7 RPG, 2.8 APG, 1.7 SPG

Presuming he meant Josh (which is likely, as he is the more famous of the two what with winning the dunk contest and all), this comment is fine, as he looks to be an all around talented player. If he actually meant JR... well, something's clearly wrong with that statement.

8th spot races
In the East, Philly's got a 1 game lead on Orlando and a 1.5 game lead on the Nets... don't count on them dropping it. Even without Webber, I think they can hold onto the spot. In the West, Denver and Memphis have a 3 game lead on Minnesota. The Timberwolves have won 6 of their last 7, but I already mentioned how Denver's been going and Memphis has won two straight since their return of Gasol tumbling. Don't expect anything to happen here... but expect a very unhappy KG when the Wolves are officially eliminated. Side note, I still stand by my prediction that Memphis would wipe out Seattle if the two were clash in round one, but they're really going to have to come on strong for the matchup to happen. Denver's in their way and Houston has a 2 game lead on them for the 6th spot. As for if Denver can make an upset happen... I think they could take out anyone other than Phoenix and San Antonio (if they have Duncan) in the West right now.

No Piston news right now, perhaps more later.

The new issue of "Weird" is here

2005-04-04T17:31:00.000-04:00

Update is late, but it's here at least. Strange game, huh? From 91-90, to 107-90, to 113-103. Don't see 16-0 runs very often. Rip Hamilton was one board away from his first triple double. Obviously the game was mostly a Piston beatdown, aside from that the Raptors got to the line 11 more times (but only made 6 more FTs). Although a lot of things they did were dominant (see 57.9 FG%), some things were missing. Seven Raptor turnovers stands out... I don't know how this happened. The bench was crap in the fourth, of course. Their defense of Toronto's triples was bad (countless times, the Raptors had open triples to shoot). I don't think this was a great effort aside from that they took advantage of the bad D of the Raptors, but a road win is a road win, which is what counts. Next up is the Wizards on Wednesday after a two day break, more later.

Odds and ends

2005-04-02T14:37:00.000-05:00

This is strange. I knew they were having some trouble with Fortson's train of thought but to not play him again when he returns? This might be the team's only shot at a playoff run if Allen disappears... so playing him might just be a good idea. Here's a quote:

McMillan is unsure if he'll use Fortson when the team returns. Reserve forward Nick Collison and center Vitaly Potapenko could replace him in the rotation.

McMillan's doing a hell of a job but he's not going to replace 19.7 PER guy with a 16.5 PER guy plus a 13.6 PER respectively and get away with it very well, especially when the you consider that their defensive PERs at centre (where Fortson spent pretty much all of his time) are 14.8 as compared to 20.4 and 24.0 respectively. If they're just referring to the regular season, fine, as they've got a 9.5 game lead in the division (but are only up one game on Dallas for the fourth best record, which could hurt them in round two). But, if they go into the playoffs without Fortson they're going to be in a heap of trouble, as their already bad defense is going to be a lot worse.

In other news, I know I didn't mention that AK47 is on the shelf for the rest of the year because it doesn't really matter at this point. Playing him more this reason is just increasing his chances of hurting himself again. Boozer's also out for the year and Utah's 18.5 games out of a playoff spot with 10 games left on their schedule... so as I said, playing him is a bad idea.

The poll in the NBA section on ESPN is pretty funny right now. The question is "Will Kobe Bryant win another NBA title in his career?". You'd think people would give him the benefit of the doubt, seeing as how he did win three in a row as the second best piece on the team... apparently not. The vote currently shows 27.5% for "Yes" and 72.4% for "No" after 88,668 votes. The guy's only 26, probably has another ten years or so in him and is averaging 28, 6 and 6 with 1.38 PPS. I wouldn't dismiss it just yet.

While that poll's a reasonable question, part of the one in Sportsline's NBA section makes no sense. The poll in question is "The Warriors will:" with options "Make the playoffs this year", "Make the playoffs next year" and "It's still a few years before they reach the playoffs". It's pretty obvious which one I picked... but how can anyone pick the top option? The Warriors have 45 losses while the two teams tied for seventh have 40 wins. It's pretty tough to make the playoffs when the team currently up for the last spot has more wins than it's possible for you to have. Despite this, 7.9% of the 1191 people who have voted so far picked the impossible. Yeah.

A tangent and a W

2005-04-02T12:50:00.000-05:00

I didn't rag on Mejia too much before, but I will now. He recently put up the column Davis has them playing like, well, Warriors again. I don't know how many times I can stress that this guy HURTS teams, not helps. I admit he has the best Roland Rating on the team (other than Flores who played 69 minutes for them), but realize that Derek Fisher is behind him. Yes, he has been playing good recently, but it doesn't really make up for his first few games (where he shot terribly) or the fact that he has $62.46 million over four years left on his current deal. This team is REALLY crippled, finanicially. After the year, Richardson has starts his 6/$70 extension and Murphy starts his 6/$60 one. Davis's money is above. Adonal Foyle still has 5/$44.5 on his deal. Derek Fisher still has 5/$31.65 on his. Not only are they hurt there, their roster is also terribly unbalanced. I mean, they have five guys that are about 6'10, 240 (and white, not that it matters). Murphy, Dunleavy, Biedrins, Cabarkapa and Tskitishvili. Skita's gone after the year (presuming they don't resign him), but they still have too many big men. They're worse off than the Knicks, because the Knicks may be more unbalanced but escape from their salary woes in 2007 (Penny, Tim Thomas) and 2008 (Ex-Piston Houston and Taylor). The Warriors? 2009 for Davis, 2010 for Foyle and Fisher, 2011 for the two talented guys (J-Rich and Murphy). Yikes. What's even funnier about their unbalanced roster is that NBAdraft.net has them slotted for a power forward (6'10, 230 Fran Vasquez of Spain) at their five spot at the moment. I know that site only slots by their opinions of overall talent and not by team need, but I wouldn't put it past Mullin to take a PF there... I mean, he did take on all of the contracts mentioned above, right? There's a reason these guys have the longest playoff drought in the league.

I'll tell you about team that doesn't have a playoff drought though. With their W tonight against the Clips (who were sans Simmons and Maggette), the Pistons clinched a spot. Ex-Piston Zeljko Rebraca got the start at the five spot for the Clips, which was weird, as it was his first start of the year. What was even more weird was that ex-Piston Mikki Moore got 34 minutes against his old squad, his second highest mark of the year (highest was 47 against the Lakers on 12/11). Meaningless statistics are fun! Anyway, for more meaningful stats, the Pistons did pretty much everything well aside from that Hamilton shot 5/15. Not a whole lot to say here. Pistons beat a team without their two best perimeter players... at home. You'd have to think that's expected, wouldn't you?

The team's going to have to go on a pretty large tear to match their 54-28 mark from last year. You might notice a small new thing in the top right corner of the site, which details what could've been if they hadn't been so mediocre to start the year as well as projected marks for reality and reality after 24 games. Not that important, but something to keep in mind. In related news, the Pistons take on the Raptors in Toronto on Sunday for their next game. More on that later.

Rookie of the year + Preview

2005-04-01T16:15:00.000-05:00

It's getting down to the end of the season, so it's time for the hype to start up for an award that's not to be confused with something relating to Henry Rowengartner. The league's official site has been doing rookie rankings all year and the top three slots are taken by the top three picks... just not in that order. At the moment, they have an order of Okafor - Howard - Gordon. Time for some stats.

Emeka Okafor
17.1 PER, 17.9 Defensive PER, -1.1 Roland Rating
35.6 MPG, 14.9 PPG, 10.6 RPG, 43.8 FG%, 1.8 BPG, 1.07 PPS
- His team's first option (13.9 FGA/game to Primoz Brezec's 10.5)

Dwight Howard
18.1 PER, 16.7 Defensive PER, -3.4 Roland Rating
32.3 MPG, 11.2 PPG, 10.1 RPG, 51.2 FG%, 1.63 BPG
Slanted up to 36 MPG...
12.5 PPG, 11.3 RPG, 1.8 BPG
- His team's fourth option (7.7 FGA/game... Mobley is ahead of him but not with the team anymore, so Dwight is moved up to fourth... Turkoglu is hurt, but this doesn't have a large affect on the season stats)

Ben Gordon
15.5 PER, 12.3 Defensive PER, +4.2 Roland Rating
24.1 MPG, 15.2 PPG, 42.4 FG%, 42.7 3FG%, 1.19 PPS
Slanted up to 36 MPG... 22.7 PPG
- His team's second option (12.8 FGA/game to Hinrich's 14.5)

The first two are pretty comparable aside from the fact that Okafor takes almost twice as many shots as Howard does. You have to give Okafor a bit of an edge for that, which puts them at about even. If you go by how much the rookie helps his team, as many folks do, then Gordon's Roland Rating, high shooting percentages and defensive PER put him ahead of the two big men. It's pretty much personal preference. Workhorse versus nice cog versus scoring/defending machine who only plays half the game. Personally I think it'll go to Gordon... and he probably should win it too. We'll see.

Now, for the preview. As mentioned recently, the Pistons are playing the Clips tonight, which marks Larry Brown's return to the sidelines. Arroyo and Hamilton are both questionable for the Pistons, while Simmons and Kaman are questionable for the Clippers. The Clips are 7-27 on the road. Clips are on a three game losing streak in which they're averaging 82.7 PPG. Pistons beat the Clips 99-96 in LA during the opening stretch... so as usual, it's disregarded. Based on these factors and presuming Hamilton plays, I suspect the Pistons will steamroll in Brown's return. Even if he doesn't play I think they've got a pretty good shot. So, expect the 45th win (and 33rd since the horrid start) in the standings after this evening.

Prediction off... again

2005-03-31T12:04:00.000-05:00

Having a hard time with this for some reason. The prediction in question today is the one that said Memphis would move up in the West standings when Pau Gasol made his return. I mean, it made sense, right? A team adds a guy averaging 18, 7.5 and 50.3% in 32 minutes back to the lineup and you'd figure it'd be a great improvement. Instead, the team is 1-4 since his return. Granted, some of the games have been tough (Phoenix, at Chicago, Seattle). Granted, part of this is his fault... he's averaging 11 and 2.6 while going 3.8/7.8 (48.7%) from the field in an average of 19.8 minutes. Slanted up to the old 36 minutes, that's 20 and 4.7. His season averages, slightly slanted up to 36, are 20.3 and 8.4... clearly, he's lacking in the boards. But that's not a gigantic difference, something is still wrong. Someone (can't find where I read this, sorry) at ESPN.com seems to think that Fratello just needs to find the right mix now that the Spaniard is back in the lineup... and they're probably right. If so, Fratello better do it in a hurry because the Nuggets have now tied the Grizzles for the 7th seed.

Now, for some Piston talk. Tony Mejia over at Sportsline.com put up his Power Rankings for the week two days ago (would've covered this sooner, but it slipped my mind to check the site) and as usual, included a blip about a certain team that was doing things for the week in question. This week, he chose the Pistons. Here's the first quote that made no sense to me:

On Monday night, a Western Conference front-runner barged into The Palace and started slapping the home team around. The Mavericks jumped all over the Pistons, smothering them on defense in the most unacceptable of role reversals.

First of all, the Mavericks are playing D since Avery Johnson took over (they've given up 94.1 points per game in the 7 since Johnson took over, as opposed to their 97.6 on the season). Second... jumped all over? They won by six points. That's not jumping all over. The funny part about the first point is that he actually addresses this later on, in the blip about the Mavs in the actual rankings...

Count us as believers that Avery Johnson's defensive-minded approach is right strategy to get the Mavericks into The Finals.

First, it's a terrible role reversal that the Mavericks played good D against the Pistons. Then... it's good thing the Mavericks are playing defensive-minded. Like Vince Carter when he's unhappy, this is completely inconsistent.
Later on, in his blip about the Pistons...

Lindsey Hunter's remarkable slump (1-for-18 and counting) and the lack of productivity from Carlos Arroyo has the Pistons worried.

Hunter I'll give you, but Arroyo's doing just fine. He's averaging 11.3 points and 7.2 assists per 36 minutes... doesn't sound like lack of productivity to me. This isn't inconsistent, it's just not true.

Also in the rankings, but unrelated to the Pistons, here's his blip about the Warriors...

They're calling Baron Davis the "Boss" these days, and considering he's happy and thriving back in Cali, the Warriors might just be a team you have to watch next season.

Similar to what I said about Stein's rankings, Baron Davis isn't playing well, let alone thriving! He's shooting 39.4% from the floor since moving to the west coast. He's taking 7.5 triples a game at a 33.9% clip (which is reasonable for about a third as many triples). His assist numbers are good (7.8 per 36) as are his steal numbers (1.4 per 36) but those first two stats detract too much for it to matter to me.

Going back to the Pistons, their next matchup is Friday against the Clippers... which as the edited link I mentioned last post said, may be the return of Larry Brown. Very good.

Trouble brewing

2005-03-31T03:43:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this earlier, but I ran into a six hour nap... so up it comes now.

Here is what happened during the game tonight. The Kings are sans Miller, but recall the last time these two met on 3/6/05, the Kings thrashed the Pistons. Fortunately, that wasn't the case tonight. Numerous things stand out, including the FG% differential (Pistons +9.7), rebound differential (Pistons +9) and turnover differential (Pistons -6). Point guard play also stands out, but the rest of the Pistons made up for Chauncey's mishaps of shooting 1-7 and getting booted in Q2. I liked Lindsey's 4 steals though... maybe that defensive PER will go down. Didn't like the triple percentage, but they held the Kings to a similar total. So, mostly a solid game for the team. Good stuff.

Other than the game, here is the news of the day for Piston fans. Heard's been alright filling in (the Kings game was his tenth straight in the head role) but if they're sans Brown in the playoffs, it could be really troublesome... troublesome in that they'd probably lose to the Heat. Let's be honest, the East is a two horse race. Even without the coach, they're going to spank every team in their conference that doesn't have a guy making $27,696,429 for the season on the roster. But, you know there's going to be a battle between the two powerhouses. Sans Brown, I don't know if the Pistons would be able to take the Heat down in 7. More speculation after his official announcement comes, I guess.

Update: The second link originally said that Brown was out indefinitely... now it's been changed to that he'll be back Friday. Good to see!

All about the acronyms

2005-03-29T17:40:00.000-05:00

Note, I first got the idea to poke around with this while looking at this, which I was looking at because I'd noticed some blogs I read (Knickerblogger, Bulls Blog, Forum Blue and Gold, etc.) mentioned their own teams' stats on the same nature. The thing that seemed inconsistent to me is that the Pistons' SG's PER was lower than the Pistons' SF's PER. I figured, "This can't be right, Hamilton and Prince are about equivalent, but Delfino and Hunter are better than Dupree!". I decided to look into it... I knew Lindsey was declining (9.67 offense, 18.4 defense, yet he's played 27% of the team's minutes... yuck) and I knew Delfino was having a rough time, but this is ridiculous! His offensive PER is about 9.43 and his defensive PER is about 19.45. I knew his D was brutal but I figured he at least offered something offensively. I know he's a rookie, but they did leave him in Europe and Argentina for an extra year. Plus, he is playing behind some talented guys and in only 8% of the team's minutes. Both guys aren't even in the double digits on offense and on defense they're almost to 20. As for Dupree, he's not much better (10.9 and 16, 11% of minutes). I guess I'll be happier to see Dupree on the floor than I was previously now. It's pretty clear that the team needs to sign/draft a competent 2 or 3 (or 2.5, as they say) and get rid of Lindsey after the year. NBAdraft.net has them taking Rudy Fernandez, a Spanish SG who is 6'5, 180. I think larger (like Delfino's 6'6, 230 size) is more fitting, personally.

Another interesting thing I found on that stats page is that the Pistons have a 11% higher iFG at the SF spot than their opponents do, while they have a 10% lower iFG at the PF spot than their opponents do. I know McDyess (44% of PF time) often nails a mean 15 footer, but think this is more indicative of the fact that a 6'9, 210 guy (75% of SF time) known for being shrimpy and long is in the post far more often that a 6'11, 230 guy (47% of PF time) who has a reputation as a wicked post player. Also note that the 6'9 guy has a 47.7 FG%, while the 6'11 guy has a 43.4 FG% (McDyess has a 51.2%). Thus, Rasheed should get inside more and Tayshaun should keep up what he's doing, as he's doing swell.

The team has the Kings in Detroit on Wednesday as their next game, that preview comes tomorrow.

Generic title here

2005-03-29T11:26:00.000-05:00

My predictions aren't going very well, are they? Box score here. Pistons played well, but came up short in the fact that they had 9 more fouls than the Mavs (leading to 8 more Mav trips to the line) and shot 3-12 from the stripe. Not really a lot to say. No starters stood out lowly, none really stood highly aside from Ben's 17 boards (including a wopping 7 offensively). Not much of a showing by the bench, whose only points were scored by Darvin Ham. Not really a whole lot to say. They didn't score well in the first half obviously (33 points at the break) but nearly made up for it later on. Pistons just couldn't do it, no big deal.

More later, the post form doesn't seem to be working too well here at the moment.

Back to broadband

2005-03-28T18:31:00.000-05:00

Finally! After going through the horrors of dialup for a few days, I have returned to the beautiful thing that is a fat pipe. Now, for the posting.

6 (2) Pistons
Why is a Lakers comparison so apt for these switch-flippers? One Detroit observer we trust says the champs' problem is arrogance against lesser teams. Just like the old Lakers.
- Marc Stein, today's ESPN.com Power Rankings

At first I was annoyed, but there might actually be some validity to this. Their games against bad teams (like the 64-62 win at Utah) have seemed sort of like disrespect... either that or they've just had some bad games that they managed to pull out lately. I'll tell you one game they recently had that they played well against a weak team and won in... this one.

A friend pointed out to me recently something funny about Antoine Walker. In his first twelve games with the Celtics, they were 11-1 and he took a total of 30 triples, making 13 of them. That's 43.3% and only 2.5 triples a game. In his next three, the team was 0-3 and he was was 4-18 from behind the arc, for 22.2% and 6 triples a game. There MIGHT be a correlation here. In particular, he was 0-6 from behind the arc against the Pistons, one of the numerous reasons his team lost. Other reasons his team lost were their 28 personal fouls (to Detroit's 17). Granted, the Pistons were only 4-18 from behind the arc (just like Walker last three) but they did a number of other things to keep ahead. Getting 37 trips to the charity stripe is probably the one that stands out the most, where they hit 29 (78.4%). The other one would be the monster night Rasheed had, with Walker guarding him. 11-21, 11 boards and 31 points, fantastic night for the taller of the Wallaces. The shorter of the Wallaces also had a funky 7-9-6 night, while Hamilton made his glorious return with a night of 22-8-8. Every starter played at least 44 minutes, but I still think it was a nice game for the team. They play the Mavericks tonight, that preview will come in a few. In other news...

14 (13) Pacers
How good a coaching job has Carlisle done? Consider that Pacers' projected starting lineup of Tinsley,
Miller, Jackson, Foster and O'Neal has combined to play zero games together.
- Marc Stein, today's ESPN.com Power Rankings

This is wrong in multiple spots. For one, you'd think their projected starting lineup would include that guy that was Defensive Player of the Year last year. Second, his claim isn't true. Look at the starters. The guy should do some better research, I think.

20 (22) Warriors
Montgomery says Baron is getting too much credit. Huh? GS is 6-4 on the road with Baron ... and 5-21 without him.
- Marc Stein, today's ESPN.com Power Rankings

And he's 53/141 (37.6%) from the field in those ten games. Again, Stein should read and think before he speaks. It's not that I don't Stein, I think he's alright, he just need to do more thinking and less pandering to people who think points per game = everything.

Read something humourous in today's National Post's (for those unfamiliar, it's a large newspaper in Canada) sports section. There was a quote in there from somebody (sorry about the vagueness, I read it three hours ago at a restaurant) who said that the Lakers went from a must see championship team to a bad one man team. I guess the Lakers don't have anyone shooting 47.3% from the field, scoring 15 points and grabbing ten boards a game on their team. Nobody at all.

Now, for the preview. Here is the one on ESPN.com. Mavs recently massacred the Cavs, but you know how the Cavs are on the road. Pistons are of course coming off of the game described at the top. Rip Hamilton's back. The Pistons beat the Mavs 101-85 last time they played and that was in the middle of the 12-12 start... so, dismissed. Aside from that abortion the other night against Indy (where they were sans Hamilton), the Pistons haven't lost at home since January 22 against Chicago. So, I think their chances are pretty good for winning.

Last word of the post comes about Larry Brown. His return is still indefinite but Heard seems to be doing an alright job now, so I don't think it will affect the team much. So, take your time, coach.

Update: I sent Stein an email about his error, he changed the column to read "Artest" instead of "Jackson" and replied to me with:

"do you see artest's name in that lineup?

read a little closer next time"

What an upstanding guy.

2002 Draft

2005-03-27T23:30:00.000-05:00

Big old update when I return to the salvation of broadband on Monday, until then, here's the draft thing I mentioned:

Heading towards the playoffs, we're about three seasons removed from the 2002 NBA Draft. As is often the case in sports, after three years is a good time to judge whether a player is a waste of a pick or not. There were a number of steals in this draft, as well as a number of large busts. From the top...

1. Houston selected Yao Ming (23.04 PER this season)
There's still a lot of debate about this one. Some think Yao should be Shaq-esque, others think he just needs to mesh with McGrad for a few more years. I fall closer to the latter sentiment, in that I think Yao is just fine now and could be beastly in the coming years.

2. Chicago selected Jay Williams (n/a PER this season)
Last I heard, he was hoping to make a comeback sometime in the next year or two. He showed signs of promise in his first year with the Bulls, but this pick has to be labelled a bust at this point, since he's not with the team. However, unlike a few Bulls picks (like Marcus Fizer), this bust isn't their fault.

3. Golden State selected Mike Dunleavy, Jr. (14.5 PER this season)
Dunleavy's been alright. This year and the previous season have been alright for him, as seen by his PER. He looks like he'll improve to be an average guy in the league, but certainly not third pick worthy. Technically he's a bust, but he's not too terrible

4. Memphis selected Drew Gooden (20.29 PER this season)
Before this year, I would've been shooting "Bust!" from the rooftops. But something in him has made it turn it around. Most would probably say that it's playing with Lebron and Zydrunas, but every time I see the Cavs play, most of his work is done by himself. So, in my opinion, he's done this for himself and I commend him for it. Good pick, even though he's on his third team.

5. Denver selected Nikoloz Tskitishvili (4.50 PER this season)
This one would have be the bust of the draft. Skita ran into some trouble with Carmelo being drafted the year after him and Nene being drafted the same year as him, but you'd think he could play his way into some backup minutes. Apparently not, as it seems. He'll probably be a 12th man for someone after his deal runs out this offseason.

6. Cleveland selected Dajuan Wagner (4.73 PER this season)
Very close runner up for bust of the draft. I know he's been hurt, but he's been pretty useless even when he's avoided the injuries and DNP-CD's. A large waste, to say the least.

7. New York selected Nene Hilario (16.64 PER this season)
Nene was traded to the Nuggets along with Marcus Camby for current Piston McDyess not long after the pick, if you'll recall. The trade's really worked out for Denver so far and so has the pick. Nene's been dinged up this year too, but when he's been in, he's been a nice force off the bench. Denver's resigned him for next year, but don't expect him to stay at a place where he can't start after next year. He's good enough to start for many teams and likely will start for one of them in 2007.

8. LA Clippers selected Chris Wilcox (14.20 PER this season)
A lot of injuries for the 2002 high draft class in 2005. Wilcox currently makes a good sixth man on the ever struggling Clippers, which is about what you'd expect in his third year. Fairly good pick.

9. Phoenix selected Amare Stoudemire (26.89 PER this season)
And here we have the steal of the draft. Amare's been a beast this year, which many claim is thanks to the arrival of Nash, but you have to give this guy some credit for his own success. Hoopsanalyst had a nice article in December about the Suns which featured what was up with Amare, which can be found at http://hoopsanalyst.com/ew9.htm . All in all, a terrific pick.

10. Miami selected Caron Butler (14.57 PER this season)
Caron's fairly similar to Dunleavy, except seven picks lower and with a new team. However, since he was a part of the trade for Shaq, he also takes on similar scrutiny to that which Dunleavy endures. I feel the same about Butler that I do about Dunleavy, except his stats are more suited to the first double digit pick. So, good pick.

11. Washington selected Jared Jeffries (11.58 PER this season)
Jeffries has sort of been a bust so far, but he's showed a bit of promise this year. Of course, he does have Kwame Brown, Etan Thomas and Jamison in his way, so getting minutes are troublesome for him. Nevertheless, he could develop into an alright player. Pick is a bit bad now, but could improve.

12. LA Clippers selected Melvin Ely (11.27 PER this season)
Ely's kind of like Jeffries, except he only has Okafor and Brezec in front of him. My opinion on Ely is pretty much the same as Jeffries, in that this was a bad pick but could be better in the future.

13. Milwaukee selected Marcus Haislip (5.60 PER this season)
This was a bust. Haislip's got some redeeming qualities (he can block shots, for instance) but overall he's nothing special. Currently a 13th man on Indiana, he's probably not going anywhere. Bad pick.

14. Indiana selected Fred Jones (13.95 PER this season)
This pick seems fairly good. I don't particularly like Jones or that dunk he did to win the dunk contest last year, but I'll admit that he's an alright fringe player.

15. Houston selected Bostjan Nachbar (11.59 PER this season)
Bostjan was barely used in Houston, but upon going to New Orleans in the Jimmy Jackson trade, his PT has increased. His PER is still rather weak, but he's a good shooter (40.7% from beyond the arc, 81.7% from the stripe this season) so he has a redeeming quality. As long as he hangs out around the 23'9 line, he'll be an alright fringe guy. So, alright pick.

16. Philadelphia selected Jiri Welsch (11.57 PER this season)
Jiri's kind of like Nachbar, except with Boston and Cleveland and less PT in the new city. His PER sucks and his 3 point percentage (31.5%) has dropped almost 7% from last year (38.1%). If he can get it back up, he'll be pretty similar to Nachbar. Until then, bad pick... but keep in mind that he's been on the roster of Golden State, Dallas, Boston and Cleveland since being in Philly.

17. Washington selected Juan Dixon (17.50 PER this season)
Dixon's been quite good off the bench for the soaring Wizards. This pick is looking like a steal at this point, as he seems to be quite talented for such a selection. Nice move, Wiz.

18. Orlando selected Curtis Borchardt (10.10 PER this season)
He didn't play the year he was picked and he was hurt for all but 16 games of last year, so this is like a rookie year for him... so there's no real point in debating this pick at the moment, as his career is currently 73 games old.

19. Utah selected Ryan Humphrey (12.30 PER this season)
Humphrey's been alright for Memphis, but he happens to have Gasol, Swift and Cardinal ahead of him in the depth chart, so his playing time is limited. He seems decent, but it's hard to say. Alright pick, I suppose.

20. Toronto selected Kareem Rush (11.00 PER this season)
Remember when there was a big deal about this guy because he had that one nice shooting game in the playoffs last year (I believe he was 6-7 from behind the arc in the clincer versus Minnesota)? He was later traded for a second rounder. Yeah. He can shoot well (37.2% from beyond the arc) and he looks like Lindsey Hunter, so he has a pair of redeeming qualities. Thus, he's in a similar boat to Nachbar and Welsch. But, since he was a bunch of picks deeper, he's a better pick.

21. Portland selected Qyntel Woods (n/a PER this season)
Despite having been on two different rosters this year, Q has a grand total of zero playing time. But if you'll recall, there are reasons for this. Portland got rid of him for the dogfighting thing and Miami hasn't played him yet... could be because they also have Eddie Jones, Rasual Butler, Dorell Wright and Shandon Anderson on the roster, all of which play similar position to Q. One thing Q did have going for him was that he could shoot triples (34.2% on the career, though he did only take 42 of them). Other than that, zilch. Perhaps if teams can look past his troubles, he'll be a 13th man somewhere. Even so, bad selection.

22. Phoenix selected Casey Jacobsen (10.77 PER this season)
Pretty much like Nachbar, but with a 36.7% 3 point percentage. Seems like a lot of similar players were taken around here, huh? Like Rush, since his selection was lower, the pick is alright.

23. Detroit selected Tayshaun Prince (16.17 PER this season)
Another steal of the draft right here. This season, Tayshaun's improving almost across the board (+1.8 FG%, +3.2 FT%, +0.6 RPG, +0.7 APG). His offense punch is good, his defense is great and he's often taking on the other team's top scorer if they're a 2 or a 3. He's very vital to the Pistons at the moment and they'd really be in trouble at the moment, with Dupree behind him. Excellent pick.

24. New Jersey selected Nenad Krstic (13.15 PER this season)
Like Borchardt sort of is, Krstic is a rookie at the moment, so there shall be no judging. However, he does look like he's talented.

25. Denver selected Frank Williams (1.35 PER this season)
He almost came to the Pistons earlier this year for Smush Parker and Horace Jenkins... now Parker's gone and Jenkins barely plays. Doesn't really matter, Pistons got their backup PG anyway. The guy's played 69 minutes on the year, so it's hard to judge him. However, his season in NY last year as alright (11 points and 6.2 assists per 36 minutes, despite an ugly 38% from the floor). Thus, again hard to pass judgment when he's barely played. Blame Chris Duhon, I guess.

26. San Antonio selected John Salmons (10.86 PER this season)
He shoots 33.3% from behind the arc, is 6'6, 207 and plays his best offense at the point (15.6 PER there, as opposed to 8.2 PER at the 2 spot). Strange. Like Jacobsen et al, he's an okay pick because he was picked so low.

27. LA Lakers selected Chris Jeffries (n/a PER this season)
According to the internet, he's playing ball in Ireland this season... nice place for a former first round pick. Obviously, not a good selection, but he was traded to the Raptors with something small for Rush anyway, so it mattered not for LA.

28. Sacramento selected Dan Dickau (16.80 PER this season)
He's certainly blossomed in New Orleans. Of course, like Primoz Brezec's numbers, you have to figure they're kind of inflated playing on such a bad team. I mean, someone has to get some of the boards in Charlotte, just like someone has to throw the ball around in the the Big Easy/Sweet Lady Gumbo/Old Swampy. Nevertheless, the times I've seen him play, he's looked like he could be an effective guy in the league. So, nice pick my the Kings, even though he was passed to Portland, Dallas and New Orleans already.

Second round highlights:

33. Milwaukee selected Dan Gadzuric (17.64 PER this season)
Talk about larceny! Danny G is second in the league in boards per minute (I think I mentioned this recently already) with and blocks shots as well, the numbers being 13.13 and 2.37 per 36 minutes respectively. Great year for him and a wicked steal for the Bucks.

34. Cleveland selected Carlos Boozer (19.59 PER this season)
Second biggest steal of the draft would be this. An even bigger steal than Gadzuric, we all know how this one worked out with Cleveland. No need to explain it.

41. Milwaukee selected Ronald Murray (12.10 PER this season)
I know I posted the other day that he wasn't a good option and as you can see by his PER, he isn't. But, he's still a nice pickup for 41st overall.

49. Boston selected Darius Songaila (14.71 PER this season)
This was a great pick. Songaila's having a nice year off the bench of the Kings and looks like he'll keep improving. Good times.

All in all, an interesting draft. A 7'6 guy from China, a potential 2005 season MVP (though I wouldn't place a wager on that one), an 18-9 guy with the 34th pick, a board machine with the 33rd pick and the Pistons' current 3 with the 23rd pick. Beautiful!

Sigh

2005-03-26T03:48:00.000-05:00

Battling with a 32k internet connection at the moment (at home for holidays) but I'll attempt to put a few things up later on. I'd do it now but I'm still annoyed with the game from earlier.

Sans Hamilton

2005-03-24T03:00:00.000-05:00

That went well! Without Rip, the Piston O was bad and their D was even worse! I guess he's 15th in the league in Roland Rating (+10.3) for a reason. Of course, Tayshaun is 4th in the league with a +14.7, so you'd think the affect of Rip being gone for the evening would be lesser. However, the affect can't be lesser when you have things like Tayshaun shooting 2-8, Rasheed shooting 6-18 and Delfino (starting in Rip's spot) shooting 1-9. Brutal. The team shot 28-74 (37.8%) as a whole, as opposed to Philly's shooting of 41-76 (53.9%). Iverson, the league leader in Usage Rate, was 15-26 for 39 points, 10 assists and 5 steals. Against the super, super defense of Delfino, Iguodala had 10 points, 10 boards, 10 assists and 4 steals. Even Chris Webber shot fairly well with 9-19 for 19 points, something he hasn't done in Philly so far (but his PPS still sucked at 1.00). Basically, the Piston backcourt did a bad job of defending... but at least Chauncey sort of made up for it by going 5-7 for 15 points, though he did have 6 turnovers. Bad effort all around for the boys in blue. They have Indiana at home on Friday, which ought to be a good place to turn things around off of this two game skid. The head coach and the shooting guard might both be back, so look for a W here... but more on that as it approaches. In other action...

Knicks 107, Celtics 82
Thwomp. The Celts fell flat on their faces after being so hot, a lot it due to Antoine Walker's 5-20 night and Ricky Davis's 2-10 night. Also, the Knicks shot 38-73 (52.1%). The Celtics shot 31-81 (38.3%) but without the mentioned two (with some simple math) they were 24-51 (47.0%), much better. Walker had 10 boards to sort of make up for it, but Davis little positive on the night. This is an odd one, as Ricky Davis is usually a good contributor... and I guess Walker has been too, since his return to Boston. Other things of interest were that Tony Allen managed to foul out in 19 minutes of play and Tim Thomas managed to have one less in the same amount of time. Bruno Sundov, the only real centre still on the Knicks' roster, had 2 minutes of play (adding to his season total of 67). Kurt Thomas didn't play, but the Knicks still outrebounded the Celts 46-36. I don't know whether the Boston tear is over or not, but this certainly is a dent in it.

Pacers 100, Spurs 93
A battle of two teams sans their MVP-esque power forwards... and one sans their dominant small forward. Rough times for these two.

As was in the news, Reggie Miller broke the 25,000 point barrier in this game. There's been a whole pile of debate this year on whether Reggie is a hall of famer... I'm kind of split on the subject. I'm not of the opinion that an athlete has to win a championship to be "great" or that winning championships makes a player great, so I didn't really factor that in when thinking about Reggie. He's the all time leader in triples made and has a career three point percentage of 39.5%. He's had the great individual games in the regular season and in the playoffs, naturally including the famous "9 points in 8 seconds" bit against the Knicks. He didn't board much and didn't assist much, his D was alright... it's really a tough call. I'm not for or against it and will be happy with whatever they pick, but apparently I'm in the minority for this. As the phrase goes, "It's all good".

As for the game itself, the Spurs shot badly (28-73, 38.4%) and made up for it at the line (30-36, 83.3%) but it wasn't enough. Tony Parker was 4-13 and Beno Udrih was 3-10, whereas Anthony Johnson was 6-9 for the Pacers. Steven Jackson was only 6-17 for the Pacers, but it was made up for with Jeff Foster's 8 points and 15 boards in 23 minutes off of the bench. Basically, the Pacers won the point guard battle by a large margin and it made the difference in the game's score.

A turn of events

2005-03-22T13:30:00.000-05:00

Before I begin... behold, the new colour scheme!

So Duncan's dinged now, that's not too good. I guess the Suns will be taking that 1 seed out West then. Also, the reason there was no wrap up last night was... because there wasn't much to wrap up. Other than the fact that the headline in the Knicks game started "Rose drops 18 on old team", despite that the 18 in question came on 6-18 shooting. Sigh.

Hedo/Hidayet Turkoglu's out for the year, the Magic are really screwed now.

As for tonight's action, the Pistons got squashed by the Cavs, 91-76. Pistons only shot 37%, including 3-11 from Ben, 2-8 from Chauncey and 2-9 from McDyess. Rip didn't play, which would add to the shooting woes (Delfino started in his place and went 2-5). Why was Ben taking 11 shots when he was only hitting 3 of them? I can understand Ben taking 11 shots if he happen to get hot and hit 5 or 6, but 3? Come on, far too much. Tayshaun and Rasheed combined for 47 points and 15 boards on 18-38 shooting, which I applaud both for. Arroyo had 4, 4 and 4 off the bench in 20 minutes. Those three were swell, the rest were weak to questionable. As for the Cavs, it was a nice rebound from the weird game at Toronto on Sunday. I'd say more, but there isn't more to say. In other action...

Rockets 84, Heat 82
Shaq's line goes 9-15 for 23 points, 16 boards and 3 blocks... and the Heat lose. It's like there's been an explosion of team stars having massive games and most of the rest of the team being completely flat and causing an L as of late. Haslem didn't play, that was part of it. Wade shot 4-19, also part of it. Keyon Dooling was 1-6, also part of it. How is it the Rockets won in a game where T-Mac shot 8-27 for 26 points, where the team as a whole shot 28-79 (35.4%)? Very odd.

Jazz 115, Lakers 107
Hey hey, AK's on the winning end for once, yet came off the bench (and played 41 minutes) for some reason. Ben Handlogten (possibly the scariest looking guy in the league ) got the start. Why was he on the winning end? For one, his own effort was good, with an evening of 6-8, 18 points, 5 assists, 4 steals and 3 blocks. Only 1 board... but it was made up for by the next two guys. Matt Harpring had a night of 10-12, 23 points, 8 boards and 5 assists. A very nice night. Also, Mehmet Okur (ex-Piston) had a night of 7-8, 27 points, 16 boards and 5 assists... wow! Wicked night for the best player in the league from Turkey (yes, best out of two). As for the Lakers, Kobe had 16-26 for 43 points which was spammed across the basketball part of the internet. However, if they're letting the Jazz put up 115 points, you have to figure something was up with their D.

That's all for the evening. Pistons play Philly tomorrow night on ESPN, I'll be back with the preview for that later. Also, sometime this week I'm putting up a review of the 2002 NBA Draft (since it's been about three years since then). Should be a good, long one.

!?, part two

2005-03-21T22:50:00.000-05:00

Let me get this straight... Jermaine O'Neal punches a guy while on court and gets a 25 game suspension, which was reduced to fifteen. Steve Francis kicks a guy while on court and gets a... 3 game suspension. What? I still haven't managed to see the clip, but how could there be debate if J-O wound up with five times as much for a punch instead of a kick?

More oddity + more wrap up

2005-03-21T13:00:00.000-05:00

So I wake up this morning with Sporting News Radio on and I turn up the volume as the "flash" (their update type thing) comes on. First thing I hear is that Paul Silas is fired and I have to wonder why. At first, it made no sense to me. A team with the 5 seed this late in the season firing the coach after not even being in the playoffs last year? But then I got to thinking about it. Cleveland lost 9 of 12, 9 straight on the road and... well, yesterday against Toronto after Lebron's crazy game. SNR said they were looking into getting Flip Saunders, so perhaps their fall will be halted. If it's not, the Cavs are just a game up on Chicago now, so this might be a chance for the Bulls to continue their ascension. They're also a game up on Indiana... who I now think will make the playoffs with the Magic sans Steve Francis's services for probably a while. Overall, I think the move can't be picked as good or bad yet. The real assessment to me will be if this gets the Cavs past the first round, because as I said, I didn't see them getting past there. If it does, it's a good idea. If it doesn't, it's pretty much a lateral or backwards move and thus, not useful.

Beginning the second part of the wrap up, from the "too late" category, Warriors 104, Kings 94

Golden State's now beaten Sacramento at home, Phoenix on the road and Sacramento on the road in consecutive games. I praise the guys aside from Baron Davis and Derek Fisher, who combined for 7-29 from the field for 21 points on the evening, but they're wasting their time. The more they play "spoiler" now, the worse their draft spot is going to be. They're not officially eliminated from the playoffs yet but even if they won out, with their current 23-44 record, there's no way in hell someone gets a playoff spot in West with 38 wins. However, it's nice to see the development of Zarko Cabarkapa, who has put up averages of 14.8, 5.3 and 23-37 (62.1%) in 23 MPG over his last four. Slanted up to the old average starter's minutes of 36, the stats read 23 and 8.2. Not bad for the third 6'10, 230 on the depth chart, huh? Note, I'd consider the chart to go Murphy - Dunleavy - Cabarkapa - Biedrins - Tskitishvili. What a roster, eh?

Nuggets 114, Bucks 103
Good effort by Denver all around, but there are some individual efforts for the Bucks that are more interesting to me. Dan Gadzuric, who is second in the league in boards per minute by the way, had 12 boards in 28 minutes. That's good. Zaza/Zaur Pachulia had 11 boards in 20 minutes. That's better. Anthony Goldwire (ex-Piston) had 9 assists in 19 minutes. This is best. It's too bad Michael Redd shot 8-25 for 23 points and the team defense sucked, otherwise these various stats would go a long way to help yank out a win, even thought the Bucks are in a situation similar to Golden State.

!?

2005-03-21T03:00:00.000-05:00

So much for me knowing anything. Gasol played today, as did Ginobili. No big deal though, the commentators I heard from in today's games don't know anything either.

Let's start with the Cavs/Raptors game I watched today. As was all over ESPN, Sportsline and such, Lebron decided to blow up with a 56, 10 and 5 performance... that concluded in the Cavs losing. Gooden was playing well too, but Lebron must be sympathizing with AK47 about now. What the commentators (Chuck Swirsky and Leo Rautins, for those of you who are unfamiliar with Toronto's usual commentary team) were lacking knowledge in, in this one, was the 25-7-7 thing. The stat is that only Jordan, Bird, the Big O and someone else (can't recall off the top of my head) have only averaged 25, 7 and 7 in a season before. Technically this is correct, but as is often forgotten, some guy by the last name of Chamberlain once averaged 24.3, 23.8 and 8.6 in a season. He also averaged 24.1, 24.2 and 7.8 the season before that. Technically, they're not 25-7-7. However, in the latter of those two seasons (67-68), Chamberlain was 58 points away from the 2050 point mark, which is 25 PPG in 82 games. Combining his field shooting clip of .595, his charity stripe clip of .38 and his average of .676 FTAs per FGA, Wilt would've only had to take about 40 more field goals in the year, or about half a field goal more a game to be at the 25 point mark. But because he was sans this, he must be ruled out of the situation entirely. Ah, nothing like glancing past this. Speaking of glancing past, at halftime of the Raptors/Cavs game, there was a montage on Lebron and how he compared to "the greatest NBA player of all time, Michael Jordan". Normally I'm used to this and I'm used to the 25-7-7 thing, but together the force was too much for me, so I had to come and bitch about it. I don't understand how Wilt can have so many fantastic records and yet be lambasted when referring to alltime greats by the mainstream media. Is it because he was 7'1, 270 or so? Is it because his career spanned from 1959 to 1973 instead of over the course of the 80's, 90's and early 00's? I just don't get it. If you hadn't guessed already, I much prefer the answer of the Big Dipper when asked who the best player of all time is.

On to the Pistons/Spurs game, where one of the two ABC commentators (this game had Breen and Brown) noted that McDyess played the backup 4 and 5 for the Pistons. I knew about the prior part, but I didn't recall him having played the 5. I checked it out on 82games and sure enough, he'd played a grand total of 0% of minutes at centre for the team. For those who don't understand, this it basically means that he didn't play ZERO time at the spot, but he played so little there that the results were negligible. Bad information was plentiful today, I guess. As for the game itself, the final score was indicative that it was quite an odd game. Duncan going down two minutes into the game leads to... the Spurs and Pistons combining for 211 points? Strange. I thought the Pistons did a very nice job offensively, aside from Hamilton. He looked kind of lost at points out there today, I don't know why. I know he was dinged partway into it, but I don't think that was it. Tayshaun was dinged too, yet he had a line of 8-16, 8 boards, 2 steals and 22 points. Defensively... ugh. Udrih, who I like and who has great upside, shouldn't be going up for 7-13 and 15 points in 20 minutes at this point when his opposition is Chauncey and Arroyo. But overall, nice effort, good to get a win against such a good team, even without their best player. Looking forward to the Cavs on Tuesday, Lebron will probably be looking for revenge after what happened on versus my country's sole team. More reviews of Sunday's action up later.

Nightly wrap up + Spurs at Pistons preview

2005-03-19T23:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Francis kicks courtside photographer
Oh, that's good. I haven't seen the clip yet, so I can't comment on possible severities of suspensions. But as is repeatedly noted around the web, the Worm got 11 games for this sort of thing about eight years back. Normally I'd expect similar punishment, but with what happened on old November 19th, it'll probably be more severe. Orlando has 17 games left, I wouldn't be shocked if he has all of them off. So much for the chances of the Magic making the playoffs.

Bulls 94, 76ers 88
You'd think Iverson committing 11 turnovers, Rodney Rogers starting, Othella Harrington scoring 24 points on 10-15 shooting and shooting 27-76 from the field as a team (35.5%) would add up to more than a six point loss for Philly, but I guess not. Funny how things work sometimes. What is up with the 76ers? I realize Webber's been having trouble as of late, but you'd think a lineup of Iverson, Iguodala, Korver, Webber and Dalembert would be effective. I figured after the Webber trade that they'd be in trouble in a year or two because of Webber's likely upcoming decline, but that they'd explode head this year. Somehow, the Celtics add one of the biggest wastes of money in the league (that's Antoine Walker, though I must say he's been extremely hot since returning home) and are now roaring ahead on a spurt of now eleven wins in twelve games since adding him. Those two are strange, I already mentioned the Raptors' troubles last night, Zeke got rid of Nazr Mohammed for a late first rounder plus an overpaid stiff and the Nets think they're dangerous with a frontcourt of Cliff Robinson and Nenad Krstic. Logic doesn't seem to exist in the Atlantic division anymore.

Wizards 96, Jazz 95
AK47 is overly dominant, his teammates most play terribly and the Jazz get snubbed. Where have I seen this before? His line goes something like 6-9 from two, 1-3 from three, 13-17 from the line, 7 boards, 6 assists, 3 steals, 5 blocks and 28 points. Almost another five by five night. It's too bad his team stinks and he missed time, he'd be a shoo-in for MVP. Dude's Roland Rating was like 50 a week or two into the year, that's how important he is to the club. As for the Wizards, Laron Profit got the start, putting heights of 6'4, 6'5 and 6'3 in the starting lineup of the Wizards for the night. Maybe Profit getting the start's not that weird, Smush Parker did get a start for the Pistons earlier in the year.

Heat 97, Knicks 82
Seemingly taking a page from Latrell Sprewell's department of "I shoot, that is all", Eddie Jones put up a statline of 13 points, 0 boards, 0 assists, 0 steals, 0 blocks, 1 turnover and 4 fouls in 28 minutes. Beautiful. Fortunately for him, Shaq and Haslem combined for 33 boards, while Damon Jones, Wade and Shandon Anderson combined for 12 assists. Not a real shocker of a game, one of the best centres of all time goes up against a team with no true centres on the roster and dominates. Like the Raptors, the Knicks ought to just turn it in and play the young guys (Ariza should have many more than twelve starts so far on the year) early and often.

Now for the preview
Ah, this one should be wicked. It's on ABC and is a showdown of the two of the best defensive teams in the league... sounds like my kind of basketball. I believe Ginobili's still dinged up, so the Pistons should have a nice boost in their chance to win this. The last time they met, in San Antonio, the Spurs won 80-77. However, this was in the middle of the Pistons' starting the year 12-12, so I'm dismissing it and starting fresh. The Spurs are 19-12 on the road and the Pistons are 24-7 at home, so there's an advantage for the Pistons, as is often the case between home and road teams (except Phoenix, which has odd home and road records of 23-9 and 25-7 resectively). The Pistons finally got Delfino back for the Raptor game, so the bench should be improved, what with having a talented guy backing up the 2 and the 3 instead of Ronald Dupree. Gar Heard is still coaching the team in Brown's absence, which normally would be a decent dropoff in overall team usefulness, but he is 4-0 during this stretch. If you'll recall, he was 2-3 earlier in the year, but this was also during the 12-12 period so this is also dismissed to me. So, I think the Pistons will be just fine with this game. I'm a large believer in the "a win is a win" philosophy, so I won't give an estimate on how much the difference will be between the teams at the end of the game. However, I am saying that I believe the home team will be victorious, as is often the case in the NBA these days.

Breaking news

2005-03-19T12:40:00.000-05:00

Don Nelson is out as Dallas coach, Avery Johnson's in. I mean, we knew this was coming sometime, but in the middle of March? I find this kind of strange. I don't suspect this will do much to the Mavs' playoff chances, seeing as how Johnson's been around the team all year and Nelson let him coach a bunch already.

The right to jump past the lottery

2005-03-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

At the moment, the middle of the East standings looks like this:

# Team GB
6. Indiana 16.5
7. Chicago 17
8. Philadelphia 18

9. Orlando 19
10. New Jersey 20.5

I know they got a nice win last night after the mentioned huge efforts from Miller and Davis, but I really don't think they can keep it up without (obviously Artest and) J-O. Thus, I foresee them falling into the 9 spot and out of the playoffs. I know I said I wasn't a fan of Orlando's moves, but I still think they're better overall than New Jersey and thus, I think they'll move into the 8 spot. This will bump Philly to 7 and Chicago to 6. Thus, my picks for playoff matchups will be:

(1) Miami vs. (8) Orlando
(2) Detroit vs. (7) Philadelphia
(3) Boston vs. (6) Chicago
(4) Washington vs. (5) Cleveland

I suspect the Heat and Pistons will thrash their opponents, but the other ones will be closer when Boston cools off and Chicago warms back up.

Now, for the West's middle/lower middle:

# Team GB
8. Denver 15.5

9. Minnesota 18
10. LA Lakers 18

This one is harder to call. I thought Denver was a shoo-in for a nice spot before the season (nice being 4 or 5), but obviously things changed. Lenard went down, Carmelo shot like ass, Bzdelik finally got the axe, Nene's been dinged and Karl came in. And since Karl's come in, the team's been on fire. As is often mentioned, LA's got the roughest schedule (with numerous games against other West playoff teams, many of which are on the road) left, yet I find it hard to pick against Kobe and Odom. Nevertheless, I'll do it anyway. I'm pretty much dismissing Minnesota because at this point I see them as Utah, but with less injuries to their best player. So, this leaves Denver. They'll probably get spanked by Phoenix/San Antonio, but the bigger media story will certainly be "KOBE MISSES PLAYOFFS" rather than "NUGGETS REBOUND FROM INJURIES, SLOW START AND FIRED COACH TO MAKE PLAYOFFS". Oh well. I suspect the West first round will look something like this:

(1) San Antonio vs. (8) Denver
(2) Phoenix vs. (7) Sacramento
(3) Seattle vs. (6) Memphis
(4) Dallas vs. (5) Houston

I'd pick the Kings higher if Miller wasn't out for 4-6. I'd pick the Grizzlies higher if there was more hope that Gasol would be back. I know they're hot now (they've won 8 of 10), but I don't see them getting up to fifth for some reason. Presuming the Spaniard does return for the playoffs, I think they could give Seattle a run for their money. Memphis is one of the few teams that can match Seattle's bench AND shoot with the Sonics. So I wouldn't be shocked to see that upset.

As for my listed 4/5 matchup, it's hard to say. Houston absolutely thrashed Dallas last Sunday sans Dampier, Dirk and Finley, so that's not exactly indicative of what would happen if Dallas was healthy all over. If only the Mavericks had a competent backup centre instead of the biggest white stiff, then they wouldn't be so dinged up without the services of Dampier, the guy with the hilarious contract. 7 for $73 for a guy who clearly (see .535, 12 and 12 in 32.4 on the year, where his career averages before that year were .432, 8.3 and 6.4 in 24.5 minutes. I know it's ten more minutes a game but the upgrades of practically doubling his rebounds and adding ten percent to his FG% are pretty clear) was beefing up for contract year? Give me a break. I mean, this guy was Adonyl Foyle (another hilarious contract) with more playing time and fewer blocks before that. It hasn't killed the team or anything yet, but wait for a few years. When he's still around and doing a lot to prevent them from making certain deals, then the effects will show. But going back to the playoff thing, I'd say that Dallas will handle them, seeing as how Nowitzki and Finley are both healthy now. Dampier's still out and now Stackhouse is as well, but I don't think the latter matters much due to Dallas's excellent bench. As for Dampier, Dirk can slide up to C while they wait for him and play Van Horn at PF or vice versa, no big deal. So in conclusion, Dallas > Houston in my opinion, even without their 7 for $73 centre.