Wednesday, May 01, 2013
OT: NBA Monthly Thread - May 2013
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posted 2 weeks ago by Athletic Supporter gangnam style to basketball, nba, off-topic
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930 comment(s)
I estimate only 10-12 Primates care about straight NBA players, but with our own thread, we won’t detract from what this site is really about: gay NBA players and craft beer.
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< 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 > Last ›I got that impression as well, what he really wanted to do was be a member of the Mormon church and was in the NBA only because it seemed like he had to be. What I remember most about the leadup to that draft (which was one of the first to get a lot of publicity) was they had that one clip of Bradley dunking on the fast break that they showed over and over and over. I remember being concerned that was in fact his only highlight and terrified that the Warriors would end up with him when there were two other clear studs in Webber and Hardaway.
Stackhouse developed after leaving the Sixers, but even at his best he's overvalued as a bad 20 ppg guy. I thought the guy was hopeless; he was a scorer who couldn't shoot or dribble.
The thing is right after getting rid of Stackhouse the Sixers went and drafted the poverty-stricken man's version of him in Larry Hughes. Those mid-late 90s Sixers teams were very weird until they realized they should just dump every other scorer around Iverson and surround him with a bunch of defense-first rebounders. It's crazy that Stack is still in the league, but for that matter Iverson is still only 37 - it seemed like he was around forever but he was actually done at 34 which is pretty young for a star these days.
Another what if: To make that pick the Sixers passed on Paul Pierce, the 2nd best career in that draft. They also passed on Dirk Nowitzki, who was taken right between Hughes and Pierce. Personally I give them a pass on that because I knew nothing about Dirk and thought the pick was just Don Nelson going off the deep end again. I knew Pierce was going to be good (or at least guessed as much and have been proven right) and was not happy that the Sixers left him on the board.
Nash is a good "what if" but what is there to wonder about Marbury? He wasn't good enough to have made the Sixers any better in the late 90's, and I don't see any way he leads them to the NBA finals for a year like Iverson did. Pretty much I see Marbury a poor man's Iverson, and he always has been. A high volume, low percentage player. But where Iverson had hustle and a super competitive drive, Marbury not so much.
It's pretty obvious, and yes, I think the same one is both.
Yeah. But what else are you gonna do when you're 7'6? *
* Other than running around in the woods in a custom made gorilla suit faking Bigfoot sightings, of course. But that's a given, right?
What, no Thibs!?
To be fair, he also played basketball, just not in the NBA.
I for one can't wait to pay $450 to have a portrait of Joakim Noah screaming on my wall.
EDIT: $495!
BTW, that link was emailed to me directly by the Bulls. They are promoting those, for some reason.
1) Like there's a chance in hell that Sarver would approve taking on more salary
2) Why would the Suns do this?
Drafting Dirk was Don Nelson going off the deep end again - he had to go through a lot of tall white offense-only stiffs to finally find his Dirk Nowitzki. I've always thought Nelson drafting Nowitzki was his stopped clock is right twice per day moment.
But where Iverson had hustle and a super competitive drive, Marbury not so much.
Supposedly Marbury is now Mr. Good Teammate in China. Took him a while and he had to cross continents to do so but he got there. I saw him once in a coffee shop in LA, head tattoo and all.
And now I'm imagining Kevin Garnett saying "Cheerio" like a British stereotype and I'm very happy.
Other than that, he came off as an extremely intelligent guy. I can identify with a lot of the experiences he described arising out of his generalized anxiety disorder and hyper-vigilance. On the other hand, he has very different conclusions about how to deal with those issues than I have encountered. His idea of treatment is very rigid and opposed to exposure; I didn't know those were common tropes in branches of mental health treatment.
I got the impression that White did not have the same take on what constitutes a "reasonable" accommodation under FMLA. Permanent, intermittent leave is pretty dicey for an employer and I don't think he appreciates the sacrifice he is asking the team to make from a management perspective. Of course they want him healthy, but he is asking them to establish a process in which they cannot participate and cannot monitor that would determine when and if the employee can work.
Neither one of them helped you win much though. Iverson was actually through after his age 32 season. His play in Detroit was horrifically bad.
FMLA or ADA? I thought you had to be employed for a year for FMLA to be applicable? Or does a multi-year contract make it applicable immediately?
Is that any different than, say, if Brandon Roy's knee only allowed him to play games intermittently? They're both pre-existing conditions that management is aware of, even without the ADA being involved.
IIRC, accomodations for sporadic unpaid leave is part of the ADA (or is it FMLA?) regulations, but I could be wrong. And I'm not sure how the partiality of the medical evaluation plays into that.
It does sound like some 3rd party arbitration or a court ruling would be necessary to clarify this. I suspect the Rockets will be saying that you can't perform the required duties of an NBA player (which extend beyond the court) with White's condition. Which is unfortunate if true.
In theory, the question is because the Sixer as constructed before the pick simply didn't make any sense to take Iverson, Marbury was more of a passer than Iverson, which made more sense when your already on a team with Coleman and Stackhouse.
And if we're going for the 1 super start that can change the whole game and rebuild everything around him (which was what the Sixer eventually did around Iverson), then they should have just went out and got Kobe. (then again, they shoulda picked Garnett isntead of Stackhouse as well.)
In the end, the guy most screwed was probably Weatherspoon, who wasted most of his career on a horrific team, he was really a nice role player, too bad he was the only one on a god awful team.
Predictably, they are blowing away the Rockets so far, which would also be interesting, if they manage to actually go on a big win streak without Howard.
the entire sixers team: 19
I wouldn't be that surprised, so far this year they are playing better than he's off the court (put play better when Gasol is playing, despite how much he's struggling).
They are playing MWP at PF, which worked has worked ok the other times they've tried it this year. It would interesting to see how they do for an extended stretch with Gasol at center and MWP at PF if Howard misses a lot time, both have done better at those positions this year, than the position where they usually play.
This is not gonna work in the playoff is it.... but still, it's fun to watch.
Why the hell did no one draft this guy? they really should consider experimenting with just starting Smith at PF instead or something, or at least try to get him on the floor more.
On Lin: another curious thing is that Lin's actually amongst the league leader in steal and steal per game. his 3 pt shooting started out god awful but has been getting a lot better lately
Toney Douglas has also been pretty decent, which is amusing enough.
Really? Iverson was so small and frail, you could crush him on picks or abuse him taking it to the basket or going over the top on him. He got a lot of steals but his defense wasn't very good.
Mutumbo and 'Melo.
Mutombo and Melo weren't on the same team together, and Mutombo has close to zero offensive ability anyway.
FWIW, Iverson is 93rd all-time in the NBA for defensive win shares. As you can imagine, this list is mostly big men -- he's 16th among guards. More WS than Jerry West or Doc Rivers.
Yeah, you're probably right about that. From what I know, I think White would be disappointed in the outcome (anything other than his personal doc having unquestioned final say) and might walk away. Also, you're right that it would be an ADA accommodation. His time away may be governed by FMLA but I'm mixing the stages.
Also, despite tonight, I thnk LA could compete without Howard, but not without Howard and Gasol. May be moot since I read that Howard could be back in a week.
Wolves held on against Atlanta tonight. Pek once again played great with Love out, and Rubio was more engaged, but they had trouble closing without Love.
Iverson didn't defend the point in his prime. Snow did. Iverson was moved to the 2 after it was decided he wasn't a true point guard.
And so what about Mutombo's offense? He was NBA defensive player OTY 4 times. Russell wasn't a great shooter either.
I could swear Rick Pitino was jonesing to pick Nowitzki with the 10th pick. That would have been interesting. Or maybe he would have traded Dirk mid-rookie season.
Pretty sure that while guys like Snow or McKie would run the offense, they were both bigger than Iverson and would cross over defensively and defend the SGs, similar to how guys Rubio or Kidd might defend SGs when playing with guys like Barea.
Yes, he most certainly did defend the point. The whole point of putting Snow in the lineup was to have him play bigger guards on defense.
Because Mutombo's offense is very germane to the question of offensive ability of teammates, whereas being defensive player of the year is not.
Marbury was 4.7/-2.9/1.8. So RAPM says he was better offensively than Iverson, but such a blight defensively as to not even be an All-Star. I actually think that's about right for Marbury; no matter your opinion of Iverson's defense, he was definitely much better than Marbury on that end. As I think is the case with a lot of volume scorers, people correctly sense they're overrated and attribute this to shooting too much rather than being abysmal on defense. Hollinger got a lot of mileage out of how the real key to the Marbury-Kidd swap was how it affected the two teams on defense, not offense.
Those links are also fun if, like me, you believe Ben Wallace is a Hall of Famer.
delfino's passing, on the other hand, has been much better than i expected from a spot-up 3 pt shooter.
smith tends to play more when asik's in foul trouble or the other team is playing a small, less physical center. he's (relatively) always moving and getting to the right spot.
I am assuming that the guy in the Kobe jersey was part of the Rockets' mascot's act, because if he wasn't, that did seem hard enough that it would piss a person off.
delfino's always been a pretty good passer, hasn't he?
I think there's a good case to be made for Wallace for the HOFer on narrative in addition. We've come around to the realization over the last 10 years that defense is at least as important as offense (if not very much more so) and he was a dominant defensive force for a lot of years with a very nice peak (though my god, look at those FT% numbers). The basketball Hall has had no problem inducting a bevy of offense-only players - why not Wallace? 4-time DPOY, won a ringz, had great hair.
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