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Which team went 8-0 v. the East playoff teams last year?
(beating each team once)
The Bulls only lost to a handful of West team last year*, so it has to be...OKC. Or maybe Portland. The Bulls beat the Spurs (cause they had the tiebreaker, MARV ALBERT), but I think they may have lost to Houston.
*Looking it up, 6. More than I remembered actually.
I used to live within walking distance to Turner during grad school, and me and my buddies have walked into about 6 or 7 playoff games over the years with scalpers literally giving tickets away. Good seats as well. I've always hated the Braves, but there was a good run when they always made the playoffs and you could always get good seats.
Man, Rose really needs to just play basketball. Still sounds miserable.
That's pretty much exactly how I remember thinking when I tore my ACL for the first time. There were probably a few more people watching Rose's game than mine, though...
That will also be the year Kobe and Pau's contracts are up. I have a feeling that if Kobe doesn't follow through with his hints to retire, he won't be getting a 30 million dollar contract (which would effectively cost the Lakers over 100 million given the luxury implications).
I'm sure an offer will be out there for 10 million or so, something like what Garnett and Duncan got this offseason. Kobe may not be OK with that, and things might get a little ugly. No big deal, Lakers can cross that bridge when they come to it. Right now they've got a great 2 year window to win a championship.
Of the guys unveiled from 445-500 so far, here are some that I kind of like:
496: Hollis Thompson- Even if I'm biased, I still think he has a combo of skills that could make him a rotation player. He is an outstanding shooter from range and long/rangy enough to bother perimeter players defensively.
468: Lester Hudson- He has had his moments. Probably has a role as an emergency guard on a team that doesn't want to take big risks.
461, 468: Travis Leslie and Cory Joseph- Both sucked last year, but seems too early to give up on guys who were considered projects when they started anyway. I could see either one developing into a useful reserve.
456: Darius Johnson-Odom- He has such good body control that it makes up for a lack of great size or athleticism. I think he will always be underrated because he does not look like he's doing anything exceptional. I still like his ability to get defenders on his hip.
448: Quincy Acy- Who knows? He seems explosive. He will probably either establish quickly that he does not have the skill level to be an effective energy guy or that he does.
Hilarious- Solomon Alabi is ranked 497 for the second consecutive year. I guess he really is the 497th best player in the NBA.
Whoa. Sorry, dude, that sounds rough.
Indeed. At this point, their only commitment in 14/15 is Nash. We will see, of course, what Howard decides to do.
The Lakers have already traded his rights to the Thunder for Durant.
It will be interesting to see how things go down with Kobe. Lakers won't want him to play anywhere else, Kobe won't want to play anywhere else. He won't be worth 27-30 million (as he already isn't, by my calcs he's worth at this moment a standard max deal - 17-20). He won't get anywhere near that amount anywhere else. His pride might make him reluctant to take a pay cut. And he might just retire. We'll see.
Yeah. Tore my right one in 2000. Got it fixed in 2001. Tore my left one in 2005. Didn't get it fixed. Tore my right one again in 2010.
So every five years. Looks like I'd be due again in 3 years, but (un)luckily I don't have any more ACL's to tear...
Obviously, it will depend a lot on how the next two years go. I could also see him playing in Europe for a couple of years at ages 37-38.
As to Pau, he obviously will not get a max deal, but I suspect that there will be some real demand for him at a lower salary. Bigs who can put the ball in the hoop and pass are still tough to find.
Or he could always go play in China. This picture from his Nike jaunt to China is pretty amazing.
Pau will be the centerpiece of the Chris Paul/Lakers trade part 2 next season.
Hasn't he talked about playing in Italy?
Yeah. His old man played there when he was a kid, and he is, to hear the media guys tell it, a big deal to basketball fans in Europe.
Sterling seems the type that would let a player walk and get nothing in return before being bullied into a lopsided sign and trade. Paul is probably going to need to take less money if he wants to play elsewhere. More money plus the chance to play with Griffin who is locked into a contract gives the Clippers a strong chance at keeping him.
He'll also probably be allowed to handpick their next coach and possibly GM (some people that follow the Clippers joke that Chris Paul was the GM this offseason, because rumor is he wanted Crawford so they went out and quickly signed him to a questionable contract, and its not like they had an actual GM to blame it on).
Heh. We'll see. If it doesn't happen, then I was totally joking. If it does, then I'll brag that I called it a year earlier. :-)
As I said earlier, Denver also lost twice to New Orleans (1 at home), twice to Golden State (1 at home), and once to Cleveland (at home) and Toronto.
I brought up the 9-0 record partly because I think it’s interesting, but partly because I was catching up on the conversation and saw robinred’s reference (2010) to Beckley Mason’s article and the subsequent discussion. Mason said “few teams will put in such consistent 94-foot effort.”
That’s not the team I saw last year. For 20 games at the start of the season, they were one of the top 5 teams in the league. Injuries and slowing down their play cost them some mojo that they really didn’t recover until the last week of the season.
But, like a lot of good not great NBA teams, they seemed to regularly play to the level of their opponent; thus their effort (and performance) was a lot different against the Hornets and Cavs then it was against the Magic and Bulls.
If everyone stay relatively healthy, I think a rotation minus Afflalo, Harrington, Fernandez and plus Iguadola, Chandler, and Davis should be more productive. The key is that someone from among Iguadola, Lawson, or Gallinari has to be the one that gets the team to focus mentally on beating the teams that they should be, and is able to make the plays that need to be made to beat the teams that are going to be ranked ahead of them going into the season.
A lot of great not good teams do too. Notably, several iterations of the Jordan Bulls got that rep in the 90s, and the KG Celtics have made spectacular use of the practice ever since '08. Seems to me like a totally natural approach when playing such a long season, and not doing so is unusual. In my totally unresearched opinion, I think that you need a situation with several unusually driven players or a young team first establishing dominance or such; if you don't feel you have something to prove, makes some sense to take the easier games a bit easier.
How many of those games were the second game after a West Coast game?
Denver, every year, picks up 2-3 schedule wins.
Okay, answering my own question:
1/13 against the Heat: 117-104, last game of a 5 game road trip for the Heat. Played the Clippers two days prior.
1/18 beat the Sixers in Philly 108-104 in OT, Denver 2nd night of a road B2b.
1/21 beat the NYK in NY 119-114 in double OT. Both teams on B2B's.
2/11 beat the Pacers in Indiana 113-109. Pacers on a road/home back to back, 4th game in 5 days.
3/13 beat the Hawks at home in OT 118-117. Hawks in game 5 of a 6 game trip.
3/17 beat the Celtics 98-91 at home. Celtics on 2nd day of a road B2B (played in Sacramento the night before). Schedule loss.
3/26 beat Chicago in Chicago 108-91. DENVER on 2nd day of a road B2b. Although Rose did not play.
4/1 beat Orlando in Orlando 104-101. Howard was out.
4/22 beat Orlando in Denver 101-74. Orlando on day 2 of a road back to back, Howard was done for the season.
The games against Philly and NYK were reasonably impressive. Those were both road wins on back to backs. Beating Chicago without Rose is mildly impressive given that it was a road B2b. Basically you have a bunch of coinflip games that went Denver's way, plus some schedule losses. I'm not particularly impressed with the MOV, because beating Orlando by 27 in a schedule loss without Dwight is doing some heavy lifting (without that game the MOV is 6.75).
Ibaka may extend with OKC for 4/40.
i could be wrong, but wasn't danny ainge's thing in boston phrenetics and horoscopes and personality tests?
should i really be excited to have one of his disciples be a leading candidate for the next GM of the sixers?
and in related news, for today's installment of terrible writing from sixers blogs, we visit libertyballers:
***if you can tell, i'm kind of clearing out my google reader
ibaka: 4/48
and business-wise, well, would you even know about the existence of the movie if it weren't for ron artest's involvement?
I am not the movie's target audience; it's on Lifetime.
And, I have no problem with it--I just think it's funny that:
MettaWP is palsy with Nancy Grace (although they are arguably in the same general celeb tier)
That he has been cast as a cop in a Lifetime movie
Reports are that Dwight Howard has purchased a $20M mansion in Newport Beach near where Kobe's mansion is and paid for it by writing a check.
should i really be excited to have one of his disciples be a leading candidate for the next GM of the sixers?
Yeah, it's not like the Celtics have had any success since Ainge took over.
Texts like that are NOT harmless - if you're married to Cercei Lannister.
Ainge has had one really good offseason. The rest of his good moves are:
1. Trading Bass for Glen Davis.
2. Picking Rondo, Davis and Powe late in the draft.
3. Picked up Courtney Lee this offseason without giving up anything.
Ainge is hard to evaluate because he looked like a pretty mediocre GM before making the KG trade. He's drafted relatively poorly with high picks (Jeff Green, Randy Foye) and relatively well with low picks (above). He appears to be more comfortable dumpster diving than anything else. He obviously did a great job getting KG and Allen. Other than that, his record is pretty so-so, but those are two huge gets.
How do you evaluate him? Well, he's probably not one of the very best GM's in the game. That's probably RC Buford, Sam Presti and Pat Riley. He's probably in the next tier, which has Darryl Morey, Donnie Nelson and Mitch Kupchak. You could also put him in the next bucket which (to my mind) is Larry Bird, Gar Foreman, Geoff Petrie, and Kevin Pritchard.
This whole thing is really subjective though, because 10 years ago, I would have put Geoff Petrie as one of the best GM's in the game, but now no one really thinks of him that way. I think that Buford, Riley and (to a lesser extent) Presti are a clear cut above the rest of the pack, but YMMV.
Incidentally, I'm really not sure how to evaluate Kupchak--really a lot of just bad moves and bad overpays, but he's now pulled off two franchise-changing trades. Sort of curious how non-Laker fans see him.
He didn't do a very good job right after he took over from West, but he (and/or Jim Buss, supposedly) nailed the Bynum pick, got Odom in the Shaq deal, and he also picked up Ariza cheap and drafted Farmar, who did help some, faults and all. He also drafted Turiaf, who has been a decent value. He has had an issue overcommitting to role players, in terms of both money and years (Walton, Blake, Fisher, Radmanovich).
Obviously, he was helped by circumstances this off-season, but it is hard to see how he could have done any better than getting Jamison, Meeks, keeping Hill, and adding Nash and Howard--all without trading Gasol.
I also think that his laconic, low-key, not-quotable, stone-faced media persona helps the Lakers, and it seems that his peers respect him.
I think that this is pretty good assessment, though I would add the Shannon Brown for Radmonovic as a plus and the 1st rounder for Joe Smith as an obvious negative. Overall, he's done a great job but obviously doesn't get the same hype because he isn't charismatic nor has a definitive style (ie sabermetrics or crackpot mind theories like Ainge).
I think he's pulled of one of the best few off-seasons in GM history, including the Lebron Heat year. Trading almost nothing of serious value and getting Nash, Howard, Jamison and Meeks is a HOF worthy off-season. I don't the perception will change especially with Jim sharing credit, but there isn't a GM, including Buford, who gets the big picture better than Kupchak.
Yes, but he hardly would have had the opportunity to do so if he weren't GM of the LA Lakers. That's why he's really difficult to grade for me. Yes, he gets the big picture right and targets the right guys in trade, but most of those guys were only available to one or two teams.
That makes him really tough to evaluate. Echoing rr, I would add that he's consistently been above average at getting guys late in the draft. The Lakers haven't drafted in the top 10 very much at all in the last 15 years or so.
Zarren is a guy I've met socially, and have friends who know him reasonably well (in an acquaintence kind of way). He is a very bright guy, but a bit odd and socially awkward.
1. MIA
2. ATL
3. NYK
4. BOS
5. CHI
6. IND
since it wasn't obvious, my comment regarding zarren was mostly in jest.
I don't know how you get ATL as the 2 seed in the East. Marvin Williams for Devin Harris is mostly a wash (and slightly redundant with Teague). Joe Johnson for Anthony Morrow + Farmar is a straight downgrade.
What am I missing here? Is this just a case of, they were behind IND and CHI and those teams look worse than the Hawks?
Yes, but the 2010-2011 ATL team wasn't exactly the 96 Bulls either.
I like Al Horford, but I don't know that I think he's all that great.
Here's my fearless Eastern Conference prediction:
1. MIA: 58-24
everyone else: significantly < 58 wins
I think this may be a crappier version of the West's 2008-2010, where only 5 or 6 games were separating seeds 2-8. But rather than all these teams winning 50-55 games, we're probably looking at around 42-48.
1. MIA 60-22
2. BOS 50-32
3. IND 50-32
4. CHI 46-36
5. BRK 46-36
6. PHI 46-36
7. NYK 45-37
8. ATL 40-42
My guess is that because Marvin Williams is such a low usage player and Joe Johnson is not an especially efficient scorer (and surely projects to decline in any forecasting system given he's on the age precipice for good but nor great shooting guards) that a collection of fairly efficient low usage players and a couple of not especially efficient high usage players (It's more accurately Joe Johnson for Morrow + Lou Williams + Korver + John Jenkins) simulates to be similar to the Hawks having kept Williams and Johnson.
(As an aside, Smith/Horford/Pachulia/Jordan Williams/Ivan Johnson is a really nice post rotation.)
I don't think it will play out that way because of the uncertainty of the practical changes in use for so many player. Plus, until Ferry acquires a good perimeter defender, Smith and Horford will have their work cut out to make this an average defensive team and team defense has to have a similarly large margin for error in any forecast.
For what it's worth, if the Hawks try to win for the entire season, I'd peg them at 42-45 wins in an offensively entertaining but defensively abysmal style.
As a Celtics fan, that is a terrifying scenario.
1. OKC
2. LAL
3. DEN
4. MIN
5. SAS
6. LAC
1. OKC 59-23
1. LAL 59-23
3. SAS 54-28
4. LAC 50-32
5. DEN 50-32
6. MEM 48-34
7. DAL 46-36
8. UTH 41-41
I think 54 is too high for SA too.
I'd agree, but I've been saying this for a few years now. I've decided I'll look less foolish if I just stop doubting them.
Nike's new LeBron James shoes to cost $315
Here's a description of the wonder shoe:
The closest thing I've ever seen to that was a line from the 1961 Communist Party program which read,
"Only under Communism can man combine spiritual wealth, moral purity and a perfect physique."
Yeah, but how many NBA rings did those Commies ever win?
Vujacic wasn't born in the USSR. Under Communism, yes.
A lot of people born behind the Iron Curtain have been on title-winning teams, all the way from Zan Tabak of Houston Rockets fame through Kukoc, Beno Udrih, Darko Milicic, Sasha Pavlovic, Sasha Vujacic.
I think Medvedenko is the only one actually born in the USSR.
I am nonplussed.
I trust that its the right thing to do for the University, but its a sucker punch for a fan. Having participated and read the Paterno discussion, this makes me feel even weirder about college sports as an entity. Why am I so attached to a sport at this school at which I've had only a geographic affiliation with.
http://www.news10.net/news/article/206251/3/Report--Sacramento-Kings-moving-to-Virginia
EDIT: WaPo isn't buying it.
Though, the "Great Dismal Swamp" would be a great team name.
I tend to think this report is bogus but who knows. I would guess the Maloofs would want to go to Vegas or Anaheim, but the NBA won't allow either. Even then, doesn't KC make more sense? Already have an arena, probably get a pretty sweet deal, larger market than VA Beach. The only issue is KC may be tapped out for sports dollars, which is what makes VA Beach so attractive.
Or what about Seattle? They seem pretty determined to do whatever it takes to win a team back. Big market, projects well demographically for the future.
If you want a market with no team, what about Louisville? They already have an arena (although would the university share it?) good demo trends, basketball crazy state.
Is Virginia Beach/Norfolk a growing area? Is it doing well economically? I admit I don't know much about the area at all. While it is a small market, it would still be a larger TV market than OKC, Milwaukee, Memphis, or Salt Lake City.
Also, To Catch a Pedator's Chris Hansen is putting up a lot of the money needed to build a new arena south of downtown.
I'm not sure about that. There are some people who feel that way, but I'm not sure that's a consensus opinion.
No, the university won't share. At least as the arena lease exists today. Sadly, the taxpayers probably love UofL basketball too much to let an NBA team buy scheduling rights so that money could be used to pay off the Great Vampire Squid that's sucking the city dry after financing the arena.
KC: better market in the abstract and a solid arena, but with the Royals and Chiefs, they probably don't need another team.
Tidewater: In an '09 slideshow on this sort of thing, Forbes said:
Being bounded by the ocean on the east and DC to the north is somewhat limiting. 1.7 million is definitely on the small side for a pro market, but sufficient to support the NBA, particularly given the lack of other sports entertainment options. jmurph's note about transportation is a big deal - I was there a few months ago and was annoyed at how (unnecessarily?) difficult it was to get from place to place.
That seems misleading. I would guess approximately 100% of the non-tobacco HQs in Virginia are in Fairfax County (outside of DC).
Story is that the arena would be in Virginia Beach (most populous city - also a resort town).
Wouldn't St. Louis be even better?
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