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New handle of Bitter Leech?
Bosh looks like a giant catfish. Gasol is the tallest hobo I've ever seen.
Maybe Modest Mouse would make a better handle.
I think you "know enough" to at least do a Top 20; those kinds of lists, except for certain issues (James #1 at the moment being one), are pretty subjective.
For example, I would have Kevin Garnett ahead of several guys who he is behind on the ESPN list, but while there is a lot of data to support Garnett's value on D, that judgment is also in many respects subjective on my part.
No one gets to complain about the draft last year- I was 10 minutes late and in that time the computer autodrafted Hedo ####### Turgoglu for me. And he didn't come cheap.
If he suddenly sported fleshy barbs growing out the side of his face next season, I doubt I would even notice the difference. And if someone pointed it out, my response would probably be, "Hasn't he always had those?"
Good calls on the ostrich and Jar-Jar comps as well.
Sticking with the topic of hideous players...
It's hard, especially now with a kid. Luckily for me, it was easy to drop baseball this year - I think I watched less baseball this year than any other year in my life - and I'm not that big on college football (and have been turned off on it even further than what Ron Zook did to me). NFL gets every Sunday - and the rare Monday or Thursday if nothing else is going on. And then basketball - pro only, I'm also pretty much done with college too except for March - is top priority. I only watch soccer during the World Cup or if I haven't gotten out of bed yet on Saturday mornings and it's on. Hockey is good during commercial breaks/halftime of basketball games.
And all of us here are counting on you to keep it that way, mister.
6 Kobe
7 K Love (Jimmy isn't happy about this)
8 D Wade
9 Westbrook
10 D Williams
That means the top 5 are, in some order, but most likely this one (or swap Durant and Howard): LeBron, Durant, Howard, Paul, Rose.
not the starting five of the 76ers? I call bias.
Seriously I am surprised Love is 7, but maybe I am wrong about his (lack of) defense.
Yes, same here.
andrew bynum: 13
jrue holiday: 73
thaddeus young: 91
after that, you had hawes, turner, (nick) young, and richardson all come off the board as 4 of the 5 from 117-121
I think you'll have good reason to reengage this year.
Brittney Griner, come on down!
Feel like I'm agreeing with Booey a lot lately, but...yeah. I mean...Derrick Rose has risen (at least) 3 spots after tearing his ACL.
That struck me as weird too. I think I'd tend to rate him a little more conservatively until we know when he's coming back and how close to full strength he'll be. These rankings are supposed to be for just the 2012-13 season, aren't they?
All of the other guys in the top 10 have been on playoff teams as the best member of the team. Not a perfect metric given how weak Minnesota has been, but I think that 7 is quite a bit too high.
...
Probably an eyeballs thing. D-Rose brings eyeballs.
Underrated: probably Wade, actually. Certainly KG. Al Horford? Zach Randolph probably.
In general, that list has too many guards/wings and too few bigs.
And that is the order.
Meh. Nothing against Groce or any of the players, but I don't see myself getting sucked back in. Today reinforces it.
But his rating of players is a bit...skewed. Otherwise, yes, good read.
Maybe. Looking at the final list, I agree with the Top 4, and I think the only dispute there is Howard/Durant. Even with the back questions and all the bricks at the stripe, I personally would still take Howard #2 due to his D.
But I think after Paul, it gets pretty subjective in a hurry.
I think I'd put Wade ahead of Love for now. He has had injury issues, but I think the perception of him is skewed a bit more because he has taken a back seat to Lebron in terms of running the offense. He is still a phenomenal player. Even though his style does not make him a personal favorite, he is a better defender and creator than Love.
Other than that, I think he is pretty even with Westbrook, and I'd take him pretty easily over anyone else behind him. 26 and 13 still mean something, and it was only for a losing team once the mediocre lineu paroudn him suffered injuries and became a very poor lineup.
That was my initial reaction as well, but after thinking about it some more it doesn't really seem too out of place. With Duncan, Dirk, and KG almost ready to start collecting social security checks, Love has got to be considered the best PF in the game by a pretty wide margin, right? That sounds like top 10, IMO.
Wade's a tough one for me to rank. He's still a great player, obviously, but last season he seemed to take a small step back from his previous seasons. And at 30, it doesn't seem too unlikely that he may simply be entering his decline phrase. It's pretty much a toss up for me as to who I'd rather have next season between Wade and Westbrook. And I'd probably take Love over either.
My suggestion for the flopping penalty is to chronicle the foul that the flopper was trying to sell, then have Ivan Johnson commit that actual foul to them after the game.
I'm waiting to hear what it's actually going to be. The specifics aren't out yet. Even though they're saying nothing in game will change, it better be a point of emphasis to the officials to not reward flopping in game.
My suggestion for the flopping penalty is to chronicle the foul that the flopper was trying to sell, then have Ivan Johnson commit that actual foul to them after the game.
I like.
John Wall will miss 8 weeks with a petalla injury. Ouch
He's not a bust, but I've been disappointed in him. I argued on this very site at one point that coming out of college, he was a better prospect than Rose coming out of college. Rose took a leap I didn't expect (though I had hoped for it), and I've seen little out of Wall that predict that leap coming. Yes, that environment wasn't great for him, but I still thought there'd be more. I can't believe how much more I expect out of Irving now - who I didn't like at all coming out of college.
He is a good datapoint to demonstrate that there are no predetermined realities for players in the developmental chain. Sometimes we talk about what a player became as if it was a fait accompli, but a lot goes into the end result. Obviously, Kevin Durant was always more likely to achieve his potential than Hasheem Thabeet, but Wall and Rose are good examples of guys who were on reasonably similar trajectories up to a certain age, and have taken very different paths in the years immediately following that. Of course, Wall is going to have many opportunities to take more steps forward, but each side step or backward step makes that probability lower.
Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but I mostly don't see what the big deal is.
Cosign. He'e easily young enough to take that step forward still, of course, and last year was better than it looked since offense was down everywhere (i.e. it doesn't represent a total stagnation from his rookie year). But he is looking like more of a top 10 PG than a top 5 one.
Do PGs peak later than other players? Intuitively I would think so since it's the most mental position (as opposed to athleticism) but I don't know if this is actually true.
I suspect that is part (though maybe not all) the difference between them. Some of it is on them, but as a PG I have to think it is hard to develop into a superstar surrounded by idiots and knuckleheads.
Do PGs peak later than other players? Intuitively I would think so since it's the most mental position (as opposed to athleticism) but I don't know if this is actually true.
Billups is always the guy that's talked about peaking later. But the NBA has so many of these young great PGs that seem to be so good right away.
I think a comparable example to Wall is Westbrook. Russell plays the same type of hyper, reckless game but his situation has put certain boundries around him that Wall never has had. I think that if you switched their experiences, Westbrook might have fallen in the same traps without a winning atmosphere and teammates/coaches who have given him space but also reigned him in from some of his excessive tendancies.
Nature vs. Nurture is always difficult to entangle.
Unless you have Danny Ainge's magical brain analysis contraption.
I think you're exactly right, though. It's always a fine line when analysis stops and projection begins. We all do that.
I think there are several guys after the Top 4 that you can put in various orders and be making a reasonable argument. Love's DRTG was 104 last year, after having been at 108 or 109. Leaving aside how one feels about that metric, where Love goes depends on how one evaluates his D.
Yep.
When I studied this way back in 2004, I concluded yes:
http://web.archive.org/web/20060904021917/http://www.hoopsworld.com/cgi-bin/news/exec/view.cgi?archive=39&num=7358
However, I think it's reasonable to assume the rules reinterpretations during 2004-05 may have changed the development curve for point guards. I'm not sure we have enough data points since then to really make a firm declaration.
I think Blake Griffin is close to Love. Griffin I think despite occasional lapses is a better defender than Love and their offensive efficiency was pretty similar last year, and Griffin could make huge gains there even if he just returns to his rookie at of FT%. Griffin I think is rated too low because people are more focused on his flaws than how good he is at the things he's really good at.
I do think Love's defense has improved but individual drtg doesn't mean much, its just team defense modified by B/S/R numbers and most of Love's improvement in drtg came from better defense from the team, where much of the improvement likely came from Rubio. When Rubio got hurt and the team collapsed later in the season, it was much more their defense that went bad than their offense.
Griffin takes a lot of plays off on d and love's ability to stretch the floor / not be part of hack a Blake type games has significant value.
Started doing a surveymonkey thing but then they it requested that I register and I gave up. If people are interested, I'll figure something out.
NBA2K13: Anybody interested in a PS3 Online Association?
Love-Griffin: Put me in the Love is better than Griffin and I don't have to think twice camp.
Very interested to see what Stern decides to do about flopping. So much of NBA refereeing is already subjective but this is going to take things to another level.
Knicks wrapped up the '02-'05 titles with their acquisition of Rasheed Wallace today.
Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2012/basketball/nba/09/26/darrell-arthur-grizzlies.ap/index.html#ixzz27yYQiw2o
I guess this is under the heading of, "God, their wings HAVE to be better this year, don't they?"
I am a bit skeptical as I thought they over-achieved in the start of the year and Rubio is pretty fragile. I will say nice things to Berg if they do, though.
I mean no high seeded team. Boston plays a style, and they play it against good teams and teams like Philly. It makes it hard for them to embarrass poor teams, but also very hard to beat them 4 times.
Not much to add at this point. We will need to see some games before we can substantiate any of these statistical projections. Media day is today and the preseason games are starting soon. Even then, until we see what Rubio is going to provide, we'll have to just kind of guess how competitive they'll be.
I guess that leaves the question of how good the team can be without Rubio in the lineup early in the year. That leaves Ridnour/Barea at PG, Roy/Kirilenko/Budinger/Shved on the wings, and Love/Pek/Williams/Stiemsma/Cunningham inside. Still, we have NO IDEA what to expect from Roy. If he's a league average SG with his own tendencies of running the PNR and creating solid scoring chances off the dribble, that's probably still close to a .500 team. If they can be around that mark without Rubio, I will be encouraged.
Someone's already in mid-season form.
It's funny, but the Bulls, through their own stupidity when it comes to cap management, have hard capped themselves and can't take more than the 13 players under contract (that excludes Fesenko and Jaric) into the season with them. About a month in, they can sign one more player to the minimum. IOW, they don't have enough space to sign a full minimum contract until the season has passed enough that the pro-rated amount fits in. I guess technically Nate Robinson has a non-guaranteed deal, so they could cut him in favor of someone else. But with Rose's injury, I expect he makes the team over other depth needs.
If so, is there some reason they couldn't waive Robinson and sign him for slightly more such that it gets them to the cap and they have access to the minimum salary exceptions for teams over the cap?
No, they're not under the cap and they will pay the tax*; however, they are hard capped by their own doing and here's more than you wanted to know on why.
The salary numbers seem to have changed a little bit since that was written, but here's the key point:
The 2 year vets minimum salary is $884,293. That's what Robinson, plus Zazr and Vlad-Rad, are all making, and what Jaric or Fes would be able to sign for at the minimum.
OTOH, Bulls did sign Thibs to a 4 year extension today. Only took all offseason for no other apparent reason that Reinsdorf's cheapness.
*Unless they make a trade of say, Rip's contract, without taking any salary back.
Bradford Doolittle, a Chicago fan, was pretty negative as well in a recent piece at BaskPro.
Abbott on Bynum and the procedure:
I think you cut off the end of the last sentence: "and selfishness."
Heh. Plenty of that is coming. With James' having quieted his critics, at least for now, and with Howard's having at last been traded, Bryant and the Lakers will be the most scrutinized player and team in the league from a media/blogosphere POV again this season.
Questions for Moses and other Chicago fans: are you down on Reinsdorf in a big way? Or is this just a bump in the road? Doolittle, as I said, was pretty negative.
On a sort of related note, all of the Hollinger stuff is out now (ahead of schedule?)
Jeff Green looked amazing in the fourth, taking over in a lineup that surrounded him with rookies. The Celtics booth was comparing him to James Worthy, and while that's equal parts partisan hyperbole and preseason hype, he honestly looked the part. He made about 3 baskets in a row down the stretch driving hard to the right, elevating and finishing soft around FBU's center off the glass, along with some strong put-back dunks and jumpers. That said, while Fenerbahçe's bigs were very skilled, they weren't nearly NBA-caliber athletes. I wouldn't put much predictive value on this performance alone, but it was a great sign.
Jared Sullinger is a smart, smart player, with a nose for (especially offensive) rebounds. Great positioning, and really clean technique to get layups on the glass quickly despite his lack of size. He wasn't very useful guarding legit 7-footers one-on-one, but he looks like he'll be a rotation player all season and like he'll learn the NBA game quickly.
Darko was very, very physically large, and rebounded and passed well. He'll be among the better back-up bigs in the league; no more, but a big, big upgrade over injured Stiemsma and Ryan ####### Hollins. Fab Melo had some highlight blocks and some strong rebounds, but was a net negative. Lots of talent and nowhere near ready.
Courtney Lee shot terribly, but had a quick trigger on the break and ran hard. He, Green, and Rondo all seemed committed to busting their asses on the break, which is a lovely change of pace from the last several seasons.
The team as a whole had some pretty miserable pick and roll coverage-- Bo McCalebb looked like Derek Rose-- and lots of dumb turnovers.
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