Chris Sheridan notes that LeBron James opened Team USA's exhibition game against Turkey with a FIBA move, swatting a ball that had hit the rim and was likely to bound into the hoop away from the basket. That's goaltending in America, but legitimate defense under FIBA rules.
That seems like an important step to me. Over the past few years, I've consistently thought that the fact that the rules have been an underplayed problem for American teams in international competitions -- it's hard when our guys are playing under unfamiliar rules that their opponents are familiar with. But it seems that this year the players and the coaching staff are putting more emphasis on getting people to think about how the FIBA ruleset should effect their behavior.
Chris Broussard wrote last week about the Atlanta Hawks lowballing Josh Smith: "Atlanta realizes Smith has no leverage (I'm told Europe is not on his radar), and while one could argue the Hawks are being smart financially, they're screwing up by creating bad blood with one of their main cogs."
In the wake of what happened with Josh Childress doesn't the clear solution here seem to be putting Europe on his radar? Smith could even choose, at the end of the day, to stay in the states for less money than what some Euro squad is offering him but if he's not happy with Atlanta's $57 million, six year deal he should see if someone is willing to pay him more. It's crazy to leave the option of Europe entirely off the table.
Already this offseason, the weak dollar and the strong Euro have changed the traditional pro basketball balance of power with a number of foreign players either opting to head for Europe or else (Tiago Splitter) stay over there despite offers to come to the states. Top superstars can earn more in the United States, but for lesser players the calculation's not quite clear and in certain instances you can make more money in Europe. And then yesterday Josh Childress became the first American to do something similar.
As a restricted free agent in a market where nobody has cap space, he had no way to earn more than the midlevel exemption unless Atlanta decided to feel generous. So he took an offer from Olympiakos in Greece that's worth more. If this trend continues, I wonder if it might not lead to more talented 18 year-olds seeking to go to Europe to earn money in exchange for their work rather than obeying the terms of the American sports cartel and working for free for a year or three in college.
Players who want to enter the NFL draft need to take a modified IQ test called the Wonderlic that's scored on a 0-50 scale, with a 20 representing an IQ of about 100. Consequently, one can do things like assemble the graphic above which show the average IQ by position. "The closer you are to the ball, the higher your score" is one common way of familiarizing the results, though in fact the tackles on the offensive line seem to score higher than the guards. Long story short, being the quarterback demands intelligence and so does executing blocking schemes on offense.
I keep forgetting to blog about Denver's salary dump trade sending Marcus Camby to the Clippers even though the Center for American Progress primarily hired me because John Podesta felt they had to beef up their NBA coverage to prepare for the looming era of having a hoops fan in the White House.
Camby is, though kind of old at this point, still really good. This is going to make Denver much worse and yet their payroll is still going to be high and they don't seem all that well-positioned to rebuild. For the Clippers, by contrast, I'd say this is about as good as resigning Elton Brand would have been -- they'll be in the playoff mix but not among the West's elite.
Here I'd been pessimistic about the outlook for the Wizards in an Eastern Conference where Detroit, Boston, Cleveland, and Orlando are still clearly superior while Atlanta and Philadelphia seem poised for improvement while we tread water. But I hadn't been paying attention to the Dee Brown signing. Now we're set!
The housemates were watching boxing yesterday evening when I came home, and during the broadcast I had occasion to learn of the existence of the boxer Nikolai Valuev who's over 7 feet tall. Why isn't he playing basketball? Maybe he never learned the game? But no "When I was on the fifths form I started to play basketball. Finally, I moved to the boarding school ?1of Leningrad specialized in sport. When I was a member of combined team of Frunzenskoi children sport school I was managed to be the basketball champion of country among the junior boys."
Obviously, I'm a basketball fan. But that aside, it features more money and less brain damage -- what's not to like?
Arroyo isn't a sexy name, but the market has a shortage of point guards, and Arroyo was more than adequate as a backup in Orlando last season.
Recalling my use-mention distinction, it's true that Arroyo isn't a sexy name (he's a basketball player) but I think "Arroyo" is about as sexy a name as any other on the list. Certainly I'd take it over "Dooling" (number six, too close to "drooling") or "Nachbar" (number nine, too Serbian). Nachbar, meanwhile, might be the shooting the new-look sixers need at a price they can afford.
It's been a hectic day so I haven't had a chance to note that Elton Brand decided to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers rather than re-up with the new LA Clippers featuring Baron Davis. That means another trip to the lottery for the Clips, and it also means the creation of a Philly squad that's pretty damn good by Eastern Conference standards. Boston and Detroit still seem better, but Brand and Andre Iguodala is a solid inside-outside combination, Andre Miller's been underrated for years, and Samuel Dalembert is a solid role player. If this means Thaddeus Young can start at the three with Iguodala sliding over to shooting guard, thus plugging the big hole in their starting lineup.
One popular vein of analysis in sports commentary is doing "similarity scores" for different athletes. By analyzing the past career of a current player and seeing which older players he's similar to, you can glean information about his likely future trajectory. Nate Silver, who mainly does quantitative sports analysis though he's recently become known for his political blogging, has done something similar for American states based on a variety of political and demographic factors.
It's an interesting exercise and shows, among other things, that there's less similarity than I might have thought out there. A number of states, including very large ones like Florida and Texas, are essentially unique by this standard and the closest any pair gets (North Carolina and South Carolina) is 71 out of 100.
In three seasons with the trio of Arenas, Antawn Jamison and Caron Butler, the Wizards have won 43, 41 and 42 games and haven't made it past the first round of the playoffs. The three players are 26, 32 and 28, respectively, so it seems likely that we've seen about the best we're going to get from them. They're an average team, and without an infusion of vastly better players around them, they'll keep being an average team.
Yet instead of blowing that trio up, the Wizards took a Bob-Beamonesque leap of faith this week. First they extended Jamison for four years and $50 million, and then they offered Arenas a monstrous six-year, $127 million package. Given that Arenas is coming off a major knee injury that kept him sidelined nearly all of last season and is heavily dependant on his quickness to be an elite scorer, his offer in particular appears to be a reach.
The trouble is that I think the Wizards think our "big three" is really superb and the team is only average because they have a below-average supporting cast. I don't think the evidence bares that out, either if you look at certain fancy statistical metric or simply the commonsense observation that losing Gilbert Arenas didn't hurt the team very much. Brendan Haywood, Antonio Daniels, DeShawn Stevenson, and Andray Blatche aren't great basketball players but as 4-7 guys in the rotation they're totally fine. The issue is that Arenas, Jamison, and Caron Butler are all kind of borderline stars. In the case of Butler that's great since he's cheap.
But the kind of money they just committed to Agent Zero needs to be saved for a truly phenomenal player. If it wasn't possible to resign Jamison and Arenas on the cheap, then this summer was a chance to blow the team up and rebuild around Butler's excellent contract and the team's decent supporting players. Instead, we're going back to war with what we had, hoping Jamison never shows his age and Gilbert's knee doesn't hamper his effectiveness.
I don't really follow tennis and wouldn't claim that it's an especially thrilling sport to watch, but there really is something appealingly epic about yet another Nadal-Federer matchup and the rivalry between these two. There's really nothing else like it in sports right now.
Like the evil Wes Clark, I'm a bit unclear on what it is about the physical and moral courage John McCain showed while captive in Vietnam that indicates he'd do a good job of managing US national security policy. The key point I'm missing seems to be that "military background = awesome" irrespective of specifics. Thus, when the NBA tells us it's going to clean up officiating by hiring retired Army Major General Ronald Johnson we raise no eyebrows at the news that Johnson "was commanding general of the Army Corps of Engineers, Gulf Region division, from 2003-04, responsible for overseeing $18 billion of reconstruction in Iraq." After all, it's not like half that money went missing or anything.
In a surprise move, looks like Baron Davis is going to sign with the LA Clippers. My understanding is that this means Elton Brand would have to take a small paycut for the Clippers to resign him, but if they can work out a deal that's a pretty damn solid inside-outside duo.
Not quite sure how to feel about Antawn Jamison's new contract. It sounds like folly to offer a big money contract to a 32 year-old, but there's been no deterioration in his skills so maybe it'll pay off. But who were the Wizards bidding against here?
Chad Ford repeats a common assessment of Andris Biedrins: "Biedrins falls a little bit into the Anderson Varejao category -- energetic big man whose stats don't tell the whole story in terms of on-court contributions."
But here's the thing: Unless by "stats" you mean "per game scoring average and nothing else" the story Biedrins' stats tell you is that he's a very good player. His stats tell me that he average 9.8 rebounds per game in 27.4 mpg. They tell me that his 10.5 ppg came on an extraordinarily good 63 percent field goal percentage. They tell me that the Warriors defense was better with Biedrins on the floor. These contributions are perfectly quantifiable.
I think Chad Ford amptly sums up Gilbert Arenas' free agent status:
The biggest issue for Arenas is the same one that plagues all the free agents: Who else has the money to pay him? I can't see the 76ers or Grizzlies spending the cash. The Clippers would have interest, but Arenas already spurned them once.
That's why I find things like this so hard to understand: "According to a league source familiar with the situation, Wizards President Ernie Grunfeld plans on soon offering Arenas a lucrative long-term contract, one that could cover up to six years and could be worth more than $100 million." It would be one thing if the Clippers had actually offered Arenas, say, a $90 million contract and the Wizards were countering. That kind of money would still, in my view, be a mistake but I could understand it on some level. But why make a pre-emptive bid like that.
It's a bit late to be commenting on this, but hasn't Kevin McHale pulled off a great deal swapping O.J. Mayo, Antoine Walker, Marko Jaric, and Greg Buckner for Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Brian Cardinal, and Jason Collins? Of the eight players in this deal, there are two prospects, five scrubs, and one good player. McHale got the good player. And while I wouldn't be shocked if Mayo turned out to be a better player than Love, I wouldn't be shocked if things turned out the other way. And the Timberwolves didn't take any kind of financial hit on this in terms of contracts.
Basically the Wolves exchanged one plausible #3 draft pick for another totally plausible #3 draft pick and snagged Mike Miller in the bargain. That's still not a playoff team in the West, but it's a pretty damn solid trade.
Everyone seems to agree that the New Jersey Nets shipping Richard Jefferson to Milwaukee for Bobby Simmons and Yi Jianlian was fundamentally about clearing cap space to try to lure LeBron James to the future Brooklyn Nets. One could imagine this happening, but I have to say I've always been skeptical of the idea that James would have substantially more marketing power in the Big Apple.
I could see that for, maybe, Michael Redd who tends to languish in obscurity right now because the Bucks aren't a great team and they're located in Milwaukee whereas the best player on a mediocre Knicks squad would be a star. But given James' current level of fame, if I were his manager I would tell him that team success is going to be a much more important factor than team location. James is already well-known and you could make the case that he's the best player in the league right now. If he wins championships, more people will make that case. If he plays with inadequate teammates and exits the playoffs in the first round people will start talking about how he's overrated and the world will move on to its next basketball savior.
To me, that would have to be the reason to leave Cleveland -- to move to a team with a better shot of winning. Ultimately, it's hard to sustain success as an NBA star without being on teams that go deep in the playoffs.
Gotta say I'm a little baffled by Knicks fans booing the Danillo Gallinari pick. Maybe he'll work out well as an NBA player and maybe he won't -- about the same thing you could say about anyone picked sixth in an average draft year. This is about where all the "draft experts" expecting him to go and John Hollinger's Euroleague translation formula says he'll be . . . the sixth-best player in the draft:
Wizards get JaVale McGee, meanwhile, but I would have rather seen Kosta Koufos.
Swapping Jermaine O'Neal for TJ Ford, Rasho Nesterovic's expiring deal, and a Toronto draft pick seems like a reasonable move for Indiana and an excellent pickup for the Raptors. Toronto was overstocked with Ford and Calderon at the point so even though Ford's a good player they're not, in practice, giving very much up. And O'Neal should help add some frontcourt toughness and defense and create a situation where they don't feel compelled to give many minutes to Bargnani.
I haven't been following the Euro '08 tournament at all, but I did watch Turkey-Germany yesterday intrigued by the prospect of ethnic conflict. What a match! It's my sense that soccer isn't typically that thrilling, but it was certainly enough to sell me on watching Spain-Russia this afternoon. I have some Spanish ancestry (I think my father's father's father was born in Spain before emigrating to Cuba) but I'm a serious Russophile despite that country's unfortunate habit of putting dill in everything, so I'll be rooting for them.
Several people have asked me to comment on the announced roster of the US Senior Men's Basketball Team set to compete in Beijing. The way I think about it is this. The biggest stars in the NBA tend to be guys who can score frequently by getting shots in the paint either through low-post play or through dribble penetration. We also know from bitter experience that our international foes will try to counter our scorers by playing a zone defense designed to pack the paint. We also know that big-time NBA stars aren't necessarily top-notch defenders. Conclusion -- you want to focus on guys who can shoot from outside and who can defend.
It's not that those are the only important skills. But Kobe Bryant fits comfortably within that framework and he's also got more to his offensive game than that. So you've got Kobe. Then you need to ask, what do we want Kobe to do when he drives and finds the lane swarming with foreigners? Well, we don't want him to kick it out to Jason Kidd, who's a poor shot. But Deron Williams? Now we're getting somewhere. I think the ideal lineup, from big to small, would be something like Tim Duncan, Shawn Marion, Tayshaun Prince, Kobe Bryant, and Deron Williams. That's a lineup that could space the floor extremely well and defend superbly.
The problem with the roster they've assembled is that it doesn't include Marion or anyone with an Marion-like ability to defend the power forward position and shoot from outside. At the same time, the team includes non-shooters Jason Kidd, LeBron James, and Dwayne Wade on the perimeter. Those guys are both good players, obviously, but it's kind of suboptimal. Wade and James are such huge stars that it's hard to see doing without them, but I'd feel a lot better with Marion instead of Kidd (we don't need three point guards anyway). It also continues to baffle me that Mike D'Antoni isn't the coach of the team -- he has experience coaching NBA players and he has experience coaching FIBA-rules basketball; since we're asking NBA players to coach a FIBA-rules game that sounds like what we're looking for. Coach K has experience doing neither of those things.
More broadly, I think the discussion around this topic needs to pay more attention to the fact that the rules are different. You need to design teams that can beat true zone defense. The closer-in location of the three point line changes how effective some people are. And if you've been playing the game one way professionally for years, it's difficult to just switch to a different set of rules -- especially when your opponents are more familiar with those rules.
Going to play professionally in Europe for a year or two certainly strikes me as a superior option for a talented 18 year-old American basketball player than going to play for a fake-amateur team affiliated with an American college or university. Indeed, it seems like something of a no-brainer. And maybe if more people did it, the NCAA would start feeling pressure to erode the cartel's rules against compensating athletes for the work they do on behalf of the college.
Or who knows, maybe some colleges might even decide that managing for-profit sports franchises is an odd side-business for institutions of higher education to be running.
Obviously readers are aware that I don't watch much college basketball, and therefore my scouting opinions are worthless. But thought Derrick Rose looks like a fine basketball player, talk of picking him ahead of Michael Beasley seems kind of crazy to me:
Beasley scores way more (26.2 versus 14.9) on better shooting from the field (.532 versus .477) from the line (.774 versus .712) and from beyond the arc (.379 versus .337). Beasley's a forward who snags 12.4 rebounds per game (to Rose's 4.5) while Rose is a guard who gets 4.7 assists per game to Beasley's 1.2 while their turnovers are similar (2.9 for Beasley to 2.7 for Rose). Chad Ford's rationale for the pick doesn't make me feel much better about Rose:
Everyone likes scorers and rebounders, which is why Beasley is so appealing. Statistically, as John Hollinger shows, he's one of the best college prospects ever.
However, Paxson is in desperate need of a leader who's willing to sacrifice for the team -- a guy whose value doesn't always show up in the box score, just the win column. He had to be grinning from ear to ear when Rose said, "I'm an unselfish guard that's willing to do anything to win ... I mean anything."
Those intangibles aren't nothing, but the Bulls look to me an awful lot like a team that needs someone who can hit shots reliably and good rebounders are always welcome. Apparently Rose played much better at the end of the season, and if you throw out the first half of his season then the numbers look better for him though Beasley is still better.
I've been remiss -- any thoughts on Boston's crushing win.
I've been thinking, as have a lot of folks, that the Lakers are going to be monstrous next season if Andrew Bynum is able to return at anything like the level he was playing earlier this season. That still seems probable to me, but it's not clear that Bynum solves the defensive problems that mostly seem to me to be holding LA back.
Lotta ups and downs in this one. The Lakers don't at all look to me like a team that's poised to win two in Boston, but plenty of weird stuff has happened so far. Consider this your game five thread.
The answer, of course, is that it would be absurd to judge Duncan's entire career on the basis of one game during which his teammates shot 22-59 from the field, including a combined 10-30 performance from Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. I doubt that anyone thought for one moment about writing such a stupid, slanted article about Duncan in the wake of that game. So it is worth asking why so many people--from heavy hitting mainstream writers to Joe Blogger--instantly had such a visceral anti-Kobe Bryant reaction to game four.
Is this really so hard to figure out? I think if Kobe weren't a rapist people would have fewer visceral anti-Kobe reactions. Across a whole variety of dimensions, Kobe's not "boring" like Duncan but by the same token nobody is predisposed to knock a solid citizen who sports four rings. Obviously, Kobe's extracurricular activities aren't stricty relevant to assessing his hoops skills, but I can imagine greater injustices than an athlete being judged unusually harshly due to his record of bad acts in real life. The fact that Kobe's partisans insist not only that he's an excellent basketball player, but that he deserves to be compared to the clearly superior Jordan doesn't help either. Most guys' fans are prepared to accept a compliment.
I've seen some sentiment to the effect that the Lakers' collapse in Game 4 "proves" the invalidity of comparisons between Kobe and Michael Jordan. That seems silly. The reason comparisons are illegitimate is that Jordan was clearly a much better player.
Kobe Bryant's a great scorer, and in his highest-scoring season (2008) he earned 35.4 points per game. But Jordan scored 37.1 ppq in 1987. And Jordan did it by shooting more efficiently, with a TS% of .562 to .559 for Kobe. In terms of scoring efficiency, Kobe's best season was 2007 when his TS% was .580, but Jordan bested that five times (1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, and 1996). In Kobe's best rebounding year (2003), he got 6 per game, which Jordan bested in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, and 2003 and tied in 1991. Kobe topped out at 5.3 assists per game in 2005. Jordan got more in 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993. Kobe's best year for turnovers was 2002 when he only gave it up 2.6 times per game. Jordan did better in 1986, 1991, 1992, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, and 2003.
There's just no comparison, and it shouldn't be considered some huge knock on Kobe to observe that he was and is a clearly inferior player to the best player ever. I feel like even though Jordan is generally acknowledged as the greatest, people actually wind up underestimating him because the Jordan they remember best is the Jordan of the second threepeat. But that player, great as he was, was in his thirties and only a shadow of the peak-performance Jordan of the late-1980s and early 1990s.
UPDATE: Consider that in the 1988-89 season Jordan averaged eight boards, eight assists, three steals, and 32.5 points per game shooting 54 percent from the field and 85 percent on free throws; Kobe's never put up anything remotely comparable to that.
If the Lakers can't hold a 70-50 lead in a must-win game -- in a building where they were 9-0 in these playoffs -- how are they going to drag themselves out of a 3-1 hole?
Which has never been done in Finals history.
As he himself acknowledges, "I suppose you could counter with a reminder that the Celtics just pulled off their own Finals first." And, indeed, you could. Obviously, you'd be crazy to place an even odds bet on the Lakers at this point but the mere fact that no team has ever come back from a 3-1 hole in the Finals doesn't mean it's impossible. On the contrary, if the NBA survives for years and years at some point it's inevitable that someone will do it. And the current situation, where Boston has an older team coming off a grueling playoff run and currently suffering from a lot of injuries seems like as good a time as any. Certainly, I'll be watching game five with interest and not just assuming a Boston win.
Boston goes way down then comes back to win, going up 3-1 and making themselves pretty prohibitively favorite to win the series. Nice performance by the much-derided Lamar Odom, though. Lakers fans, meanwhile, have nothing to complain about as the Bynumful future of their franchise seems very bright.
The officiating in the 2002 Lakers-Kings series was definitely problematic. That said, I think the very fact that that series is so well-known for its dubious officiating casts some doubt on Tim Donaghy's allegations of rigging. What he's done is basically take two conspiracy theories that are already well-known and say they're true. It's exactly what you would do if you were making something up. I would expect a real whistleblower to not only confirm some already widespread suspicion but also bring me something totally unknown or obscure.
But whatever the truth of the matter, as with everything surrounding Donaghy the league wouldn't be in this position if not for the fact that the overall quality of NBA officiating is legendarily low. In large part, that's simply because it's an objectively difficult game to officiate correctly. But the league rarely seems to me to show a ton of interest in improving things, or to be even slightly disturbed by refs' biases in favor of home teams, or even just of the general sentiment that it's fine and proper to use different standards of officiating in different games or at different points in the game clock.
LA takes the game and we have a series. Boston was 8-18 on three pointers but only 29-83 from the field overall. That means they made 21 two point shots out of 65 attempted -- just 32 percent, way worse than the shot from behind the arc. That can't happen often.
As expected, Agent Zero is opting out of the final year of his six year, $65 million deal. He's hoping to get a big raise, but it's hard for me to see how he gets it. There are only a couple of teams with the cap space to give him big money, and I don't envision either of them doing it. Wizards management says they'd like to resign him. I'd like to see him resigned, too, but I hope they drive a hard bargain with him. Arenas is a player worth having on your team, but not a player worth paying any price for -- if someone else offers him a giant contract, let him walk.
I should have posted a thread on this earlier, but: NBA Finals, woo! I think last night's game was an example of what a fallacy it is to think that only the fourth quarter matters (or whatever) in the NBA. Given the way LA outplayed Boston near the end, they clearly would have won the game if not for the fact that the Celtics managed to build up this huge lead earlier.
At any rate, I fully expect the Lakers to come on strong when the series shifts back to California. LA has, I think, a somewhat better team but Boston has home court advantage so I think we should continue to expect a very competitive series.
Left Sudan as a refugee when you were a little kid and grew up in Canada? Well, no visa for you:
Shooting guard Bol Kong has drawn interest from a number of universities and recently received a scholarship offer from Gonzaga. It is the defense he has met off the court that has slowed him -- and could prevent him from ever playing for the Bulldogs or anyone else in the United States. Kong, 20, is originally from Sudan, which is listed by the United States as a state sponsor of terrorism. Although he has lived in Canada since age 7, he does not hold citizenship there. He has been denied a visa to study in the United States three times, and it is unclear if he will ever satisfy the requirements for entry.
I'm sure this kid's a huge threat and I, for one, am glad that he'll be wreaking his havoc north of the border.
It's really too bad that ABC has the whole NBA Finals and we won't be able to get any of TNT's wildly superior broadcasting teams. My pick is Lakers in 6 and thought I'm not happy about my choices I'll root for LA.
You can get your NBA draft combine results here. As reader DM observes, "not a ton of surprises, though both Rose and Beasley measured pretty short relative to expectations." At 6'2" 1/2 in shoes, though, I'd say Derrick Rose comes in at tall enough to play point guard, even if his size isn't super-impressive. Beasely, who's definitely looking short for a power forward at 6'8" in shoes, is a somewhat more interesting case.
In recent years, there've been a series of undersized power forwards -- Craig Smith, Carl Landry, Chuck Hayes, Paul Millsap who slipped very far in the draft due to their small stature and then wound up having decent success in the league. One thing we've learned from that experience is that rebounding is one of the stats that's most directly projectable from college to the NBA -- guys good at pulling them down are good rebounders irrespective of size. Beasley certainly seems to fit the bill. What's more, he measured a 7' wingspan and a solid standing reach of 8'-11" and those factors often turn out to be more important than height.
Once you abandon the artificial four-games-to-two framework that the media has tried to impose on the series, a very different picture emerges, with the Celtics leading by a mere 549 points to 539. Yes that’s right, the margin between the two teams is less than one percent—a tie, for all intents and purposes. This is probably the closest Conference Finals in NBA history, though I will thank you not to check on that.
It's the end of the Flip Saunders era in Detroit. I understand the Pistons' thinking here, but given that the guy only had one year left on his contract I'm sort of wondering who's the better coach Detroit thinks they're going to sign this offseason. If Mike D'Antoni were still in play or something (I envision him using Rasheed Wallace primarily as a Euro-style shooting center) that would be one thing, but what's the next move here? To me, at least, it's not as if there's been some huge stretch of egregious coaching errors holding the team back.
It's the matchup the hater in me was dreading. Already the hiatus is filling with stuff about the top ten moments in Lakers-Celtics history and hearing how "Meaning no disrespect to 28 other teams, thanks for getting out of the way." But the good news is that we have a scenario where I think it's pretty clear that L.A. is the superior team, but they're not wildly superior and Boston has home court since the Lakers played much of the season without their current roster.
Consequently, I think the outcome's genuinely in doubt. I'd give the edge to L.A. but I'm surprised to see nine out of ten ESPN.com people agreeing with that since my level of confidence in that pick is pretty low.
Because the Detroit Pistons have been in the mix for so long, there's a certain sentiment of finality around the squad once again falling short in the Conference Finals. But it does seem worth pointing out that their future actually looks pretty bright. They have no bad long-term deals on the books whatsoever -- they're two highest-paid players ('Sheed and Billups) are their two highest-paid players, and the two guys on long-term deals (Billups and Tayshaun Prince) are the ones you want on long-term deals. They have several talented young players in Stuckey, Jason Maxiell, and Amir Johnson who it's reasonable to expect to see improve and who could probably step up to play a bigger role if necessary.
Consequently, can plausibly afford to trade part of its current core (most likely 'Sheed or Rip Hamilton) if a good opportunity comes along but can also plausibly afford to say "no" to potential offers and hold out for a better opportunity. All things considered, the extent to which this franchise has been well-managed continues to impress. One can't, however, help but wonder how things might have turned out if not for their unfortunate 2003 draft choice.
The NBA is going to start fining people for flopping, beginning next year. I should let Matt weigh in, but this does raise the question of whether Manu Ginobili will go broke by the All-Star break.
I'm glad Ta-Nehisi brought up the Red Sox as a metaphor for how racist people and institutions can end up punishing themselves, because I think the metaphor can be extended even further. In 2002, the new Sox ownership started a comprehensive effort to address the team's racist legacy by, among other things, equipping a 16-team baseball league run through a network of black churches. Given that African-American representation in the Major Leagues is at its lowest point in more than twenty years (8.2 percent of MLB players are black), that seems to be an appropriate investment. The Red Sox Foundation, the team's charitable arm, also formed a partnership with the Dimock Community Health Center in Dorchester in 2004, helping keep its Teen Center open.
I'm not saying that any of this represents reparations for the virulent racism that kept black players out of Boston for so long, and that inspired such poor treatment of black players when they finally got to put on Red Sox uniforms. But I think that the new ownership, when it decided to confront this ugly chapter in Red Sox history, did an intelligent thing. They looked to community needs that the team could meet in ways that leveraged its unique resources: access to baseball equipment and training. They didn't just give away free tickets, they made an investment, and took action consistent with the principle that if you want to reconnect with people divided from you by race and economics, you meet them on their turf.
I'm not sure what the model would be for Obama to do that, given the nature of campaigning, especially the nature of his campaign, and given that he doesn't have any obligation to make up for past institutional and individual wrongs. But if he wants to be the person starting conversations about the impact of those wrongs and how to overcome them, starting in Appalachia, on someone else's ground, seems like a good idea.
Tuesday was, to my mind, the first full-fledged day of low-skies-shirt-sticking-to-your-back summer here in D.C. And because of that, when I sat down to watch the Red Sox game last night, I cranked up the AC, broke out the salted peanuts and opened up Once More Around the Park, which, even though Roger Angell sides with the Mets over the Sox in 1986 in "Not So, Boston," is one of the finest collections of baseball writing ever published. (A Great and Glorious Game is a close second.)
Warning to all, ye who enter here: I am an unrepentant baseball sentimentalist and Red Sox fan. Deal with it.
NBA conspiracy theorists must reckon with the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers, the biggest ratings draw in the league, received some of the worst officiating of the playoffs tonight in San Antonio. No contact with Spurs players was too minor for the officials to blow the whistle. The first half was particularly egregious: Lamar Odom and Derek Fisher were forced to sit out with foul trouble, and what should have been a double digit halftime lead was only six points.
But stop right there, because on the last play of the game Fisher clearly fouled Brent Barry and the refs didn't make the call. So, let the conspiracy theories commence. Still, on balance, the Spurs got the vast majority of breaks tonight. And Barry should have taken Charles Barkley's advice and jumped into Fisher directly, rather than trying to get off a clean shot. If he'd done so, he surely would have gotten three free throws.
As for the Lakers, they now go up 3-1 and continue what has been a remarkable playoff run. I was skeptical a few nights ago when the TNT crew speculated that this Lakers team might be as good as the Lakers championship teams from the early part of the decade. But now, on the heels of very impressive series' wins over Utah and Denver, they are a win away from vanquishing the mighty Spurs in five games. (Remember, too, that they have been playing in arguably the best conference in NBA history).
All those who dearly love the NBA have been forced to become Celtics and Lakers fans over the past two weeks for the simple reason that a Pistons-Spurs finals is too painful to even contemplate. And this is what makes the unbelievable cluelessness of Celtics coach Doc Rivers a huge, huge problem. Last night he insisted on playing veteran point guard Sam Cassell for 17 minutes, with predictable results (no points and no assists). Normally I could let this pass without comment, but the possibility of Detroit once again playing into June is a threat to decent Americans everywhere.
If you aren't a serious NBA fan, but have tuned into any Boston games, you probably found Rivers to be a likable figure. Unlike most coaches he will smile and display excitement, and even seems to have a rapport with his players. But his coaching in the playoffs has been absolutely dreadful (for the fullest take on this see Bill Simmons).
As a friend put it (in jest) this morning, "Don’t you think the NBA has to get involved at this point?"
Back when Kevin Garnett was a fantastic player stuck in crappy teams in Minnesota, Bill Simmons was in the habit of blaming the Timberwolves' lack of success on Garnett, rather than on his bad teammates. Then Garnett got traded to Boston! And Boston became the best team in the NBA! And Simmons loved Garnett! But now Boston seems to be underperforming in the playoffs, so naturally Simmons blames KG. But in truth, Garnett's playing almost exactly the same -- a few more minutes, leading to more points but with a slightly lower FG% (though a slightly higher FT%) and rebounds and he's managed to turn the ball over slightly less often.
Consider instead blaming Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, and Leon Powe who are actually playing substantially worse than they did during the regular season leading, naturally enough, to worse outcomes for Boston.
Thrilling Lakers comeback, and Chicago beats the odds to win the lottery. I feel torn about these developments. My fundamental perspective as a fan is that of the hater who likes to see the mighty brought low. I bonded with Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, and Tony Parker when they crushed the Shaq-Kobe juggernaut in 2003. By 2008, San Antonio has arguably become the evil empire. But despite enormous success since 1999, San Antonio still doesn't really rank up their as an "elect" franchise like L.A. and it rankles to see a team become so good thanks to such a one-sided trade.
In the short-run perspective, in other words, the Spurs are the juggernaut possibly unseated by an upstart Laker franchise. But taking the longer view, the Lakers are still the juggernaut. Chicago winning the lottery, meanwhile, just reeks of rigging. Sure, why not send the number one draft pick to Chicago, all we need to do is tweak the raffle! Now of course last offseason it seemed like the Bulls were going to be good and then, inexplicably, all of their young players regressed instead of progressing. Consequently, the franchise is basically impossible to project.
The risk posed by Paul's success, however, is that it's going to lead analysts to look at other guys who are excellent ballhandlers who make the occasional "ohmygod I can't believe that's possible" move and who are too short to succeed in the NBA, and conclude that they can have Paul-like levels of success. But it's impossible to tell from watching highlights and very hard to tell from watching games, the small-but-real differences that have made Paul's 2007-2008 campaign much better than Allen Iverson's. Paul pulls down 6.2 percent of available rebounds, Iverson grabs 3.8 percent. Iverson's effective field goal percentage is 49 percent, Paul's is 52 percent. These are very small numbers, but they add up to large differences over the course of a season and it's not really clear that even Paul will be able to continue performing on this level, much less that other undersized guys will be able to find enormous success.
Are assists routinely misattributed by the official scorekeepers as David Friedman alleges? I'd like to hear more about this than one game's worth of tracking and some complaints from Oscar Robertson about how the kids have it too easy these days, but it's a provocative suggestion.
I was over on ESPN's website hoping to read something interesting previewing tonight's Spurs-Hornets showdown (I think New Orleans will win and San Antonio will get an infusion of foreign talent during the offseason -- Tiago Splitter, etc. -- and win the 2009 championship when the odd-numbered year gives them the edge) but instead my eye was caught by this eye-catching headline: "Wade buys mom a church after she completes turnaround".
Can you even buy a church? I wondered. But it turns out that Wade didn't so much buy his mom a church as he bought a building in which to house a church that she founded a bit back. My assumption is that it's not actually possible to buy a church or other non-profit institution, though presumably one non-profit could be folded into a larger, richer one in a purchase-like scenario. Anyways, consider this a basketball/church thread.
I've blogged before about the case of Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee sprinter who was going to be barred from competing in the Olympics on the theory that his high-end prostheses give him an unfair advantage. Now it looks like he's getting the green light. I, for one, welcome our new prosthetically enhanced overlords.
If there comes a time in the future when sprinting is completely dominated by double-amputees using prosthetic legs/feet, I think this is clearly a decision that's going to have to be revisited. But that doesn't strike me as an especially likely outcome, and the Olympics will certainly benefit from the addition of an interesting plotline.
At the start of the playoffs, I felt like the Celtics were pretty substantial favorites to win it all. Right now? Not so much. It still seems like they'll beat Cleveland and I'd pick them to win against Detroit, but the Lakers are definitely looking like the superior team at this point. After all, one of Boston's advantages was supposed to be its much easier path through the playoffs. Instead, they can't win on the road even against markedly inferior teams.
Another thing about "playoff experience"-based doubts about the Hornets is that it's not entirely clear how inexperienced the team really is. Starting center Tyson Chandler went to the playoffs with Chicago in 2005 and 2006, Peja has a ton of experience in the U.S. and internationally, Morris Peterson was in the 2007, 2002, and 2001 playoffs, guys like Bonzi Wells off the bench have experience, etc.
Now obviously Chris Paul doesn't have playoff experience and he's an important part of the team. But after watching him play in the first round, was there any reason to think he'd suddenly dissolve in round two? The Hornets may yet lose the series (though they probably won't -- tied series after four games almost always go to the team with home court advantage), but if they do I don't think experience will be the problem.
Still, everyone knew that but relatively few imagined them being in a position to eliminate the San Antonio Spurs. In particular, many would have agreed with David Freedman who writes "I thought that the Hornets' lack of playoff experience would hurt them in postseason play." It's difficult, however, to see any clear evidence that lack of playoff experience has any genuine tendency to hold teams back. The teams that win usually have playoff experience because normally the best team in year N was at least pretty good in year N-1 and because playoff experience is pretty widespread in the NBA generally.
In the last 20 years, only one player shorter than 6-6 -- Allen Iverson -- has ever gone No. 1. When in doubt, NBA GMs almost always opt for a big man. However, as we watch point guards such as Paul, Williams and Tony Parker dominate in the playoffs, the thinking is beginning to change. It's no longer considered a given that a big man is the key to winning in the NBA.
Tony Parker is a very good player, but realistically he's the third-best guy on that team. Certainly anyone who's looking at the San Antonio Spurs, 1999-2008 and thinking to himself "maybe a big man isn't the key to winning in the NBA after all" really ought to pay more attention to that Tim Duncan guy. Similarly, Deron Williams is a young player that any team (except the Hornets) would be thrilled to have, but the one-two punch of Okur and Boozer is nothing to sneeze at in terms of big men.
Paul makes the point better, this season at least he's having a genuinely dominant season in the way that normally only big men have -- the talent distribution curve for backcourt players is generally much flatter and it's rare to have someone stand out from the pack the way Paul has. But it seems to me that it would be pretty crazy to toss out decades worth of information indicating that the odds favor going with the big guy purely because Paul had a fantastic season this year. Weird things happen in life, which is what makes it interesting, but to just expect that every talented college point guard is now going to put on Paul-caliber performances is crazy.
The officiating issue is the most obvious one to point to, but it's always seemed to me that the scale of home court advantage is too big to be explained this way. If this were the dominant factor, I think I'd expect to see teams' point differentials be similar at home or on the road, but they'd have better records in the close games at home. But instead the effect seems big and systematic. And as Kevin says, what's weird here isn't just that home court advantage exists, but that it seems bigger than the advantage in football or baseball, even though in football the crowd can (and does) interfere with visiting team play calls and baseball stadiums differ dramatically from each other.
Here in Round 2 of the NBA playoffs we're seeing once again that home court advantage matters a lot -- out of eight total games, seven have been won by the home team. Which makes me wonder -- is anyone aware of any good research on what the home court advantage consists of? Why should it be so strong?
Mark Leibovich floats the idea that Hillary Clinton's done Obama a favor by toughening him up with an NBA analogy:
But there is a competing view that says that Mrs. Clinton, rather than being a spoiler, has in fact been an unwitting mentor to Mr. Obama, a teaching adversary who made him better. Could competing against Mrs. Clinton have improved Mr. Obama as a candidate in the same way that competing against Larry Bird and Magic Johnson in the 1980s made Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan champions in the 1990s?
I know it's very hard to convince people of this, but the transformation of the Bulls into a powerhouse dynasty had nothing to do with Jordan improving. From the numbers it's pretty clear that he had his best seasons in the late 1980s. Not only did Jordan have his highest per game scoring averages in those years, but he was a more efficient shooter, wracking up TS%s above .600 for four years straight in the 1988-1991 seasons. The Bulls just started winning championships when Jordan acquired better teammates.
But having better teammates didn't actually help Jordan by taking pressure off of him and letting him take fewer low-percentage shots. It's just that a slightly off-peak Jordan was still a phenomenal player and suddenly he was surrounded by other quality players and started winning championships. Also note that the "Bad Boys" Pistons won championships in the 1988-89 season and the 1989-90 season so I'm not sure it's quite right to say that Isaiah Thomas was a champion "in the 1990s." The implications of the above for the Democratic primary are, however, not large.
Mike D'Antoni to the Knicks -- just when you thought the Dolans couldn't devise any new, extremely costly quick-fix solutions to their franchise's problems. Chad Ford calls is "an improbable home run that could immediately turn the fortunes of a franchise in desperate need of optimism" and says "D'Antoni will bring a pedigree of exciting, winning basketball that should inject new life into a tired Knicks franchise." Why, yes, this is exactly the thing to turn around a franchise that hasn't seen a marquee coach since, well, Larry Brown just a little while back.
Seriously, at this point isn't it obvious that it's the search for improbable home runs that's the problem here? When your roster doesn't contain good players, you can't win. And when the roster contains lots of players on bad contracts, it's hard to trade for better ones. The only solution is to admit that this is the kind of problem that it would take several seasons to solve and to stop trying to create an atmosphere of optimism.
Paying some ridiculously large sum of money to Mike D'Antoni does seem like the kind of expensive, won't-work quick fix that would appeal to the New York Knicks management, so I kind of hope that happens. Remember when Larry Brown was going to cure what ails the team? Well that didn't work, and helping a listing team learn how to play defense is the sort of thing Brown has done well in the past.
D'Antoni's a good coach in my view, but what the Knicks really need to do is focus on the fact that their roster doesn't have enough good players. Absent canny draft choices, good free agent signings, or a lucky trade the team is just bound to be terrible. Under the circumstances, they may as well save money and hire a caretaker coach while trying to rebuild the team.
I wish Mike D'Antoni well, but Chicago seems like an odd choice of destination considering that the Bulls have been constructed around a defense first gameplan and that's hardly what D'Antoni's known for. On the other hand, the way in which Chicago spectacularly failed to meet anyone's expectations this year certainly seems to argue in favor of a change in direction. It was so strange to watch a pretty good and very young team regress so far.
Word is that the Wizards are planning to resign Gilbert Arenas and Antawn Jamison. That all simply raises the question resign them for how much money? Jamison is unquestionably a good player, and Agent Zero was a good player when he was healthy and presumably will be again -- they're guys that, all else being equal, it's good to have on your team, but all else is rarely equal.
Gilbert, in particular, keeps talking as if he expects a max deal and I think that'd be crazy. The maximum salary rule is a great opportunity that allows a select number of lucky teams to underpay elite players -- guys like Chris Paul and LeBron James are never going to be able to do what Shaq and Kevin Garnett did and get paid their real market value. You don't want to blow that kind of opportunity on lesser players unless you've got good reason to. This year, Jamison's earning $16 million and Arenas is earning $12 million and I seriously doubt there's another team in the league that's in a position to offer either of them more than that. And yet, sometimes you see a franchise do what Orlando did with Rashard Lewis last year and overbid the market for no real reason.
Several weeks ago, a colleague turned me on to David Freedman's 20 Second Time Out blog about the NBA. I don't really agree with all the themes Freedman develops, but one very solid point he's been making is that despite Greg Popovich's sterling reputation and solid track-record of success, his love of hack-a-X plays -- whether "X" is Shaw or Tyson Chandler or whomever -- doesn't make a great deal of sense.
To get it down to cold, hard math the NBA's top team in terms of offensive efficiency this year, Phoenix, scored 1.11 points per possession. Even if you assume no chance of offensive rebound that's equivalent to giving up two shots to a 55 percent free throw shooter. And that's the average for the best offense in the league. San Antonio only gives up 0.95 points on its average possession which is equivalent (again, wrongly ignoring the possibility of an offensive rebound) to giving up two free throws to a 48 percent free throw shooter. In general, bad as guys like Shaq and Chandler are at shooting free throws, for either of them two free shots is still a more-efficient-than-average offensive possession.
As I say, Popovich's love of this tactic is unusually odd since the Spurs are a very good defensive team. The Wizards, by contrast, are a not-so-hot defense that was at times facing off against Ben Wallace who's even worse than Shaq or Chandler, creating a situation where hack-a-Ben really might have been a good idea.
Most NBA fans are sort of dimly aware of European professional basketball without really knowing much about it. But this year is the Euroleague's 50th anniversary, and here's an interesting rundown of their history from Ian Whittell. Here's the top 50 Euroleague players of all time.
To return to the Allen Iverson discussion from the other day, the point was not to deny that the 2007-2008 Denver Nuggets are better than the 2007-2008 Philadelphia 76ers. The point, rather, was that if Iverson was as good as many people say he is, the Iverson-Miller swap should have made Denver much better than it was before the trade while Philly should have gotten much worse. After all, if Iverson is really much better than Miller, then swapping them should have that kind of impact. But you didn't see that kind of impact. Because Iverson's not genuinely much better than Miller.
People like to bring up the 2001 76ers in this regard. After all, they had Iverson and not much in the way of offense besides Iverson, and not withstanding that they had playoff success in a weak East. But Iverson & co. actually put up exactly what you'd expect -- a mediocre offensive effort that ranked, in efficiency terms, 13th out of 29. What made them viable was excellent defense -- 5th out of 29. After all, besides Iverson they had Dikembe Mutombo, someone who's still capable today at the age of 9 million of helping to anchor a first-rate defense.
And, yes, I think Carmelo Anthony is somewhat overrated, too. But the larger point is just that you keep hearing from Denver fans that the team is "underperforming" and has "so much talent." The reality is that Denver's better than most teams, and the reason it's not better than it is is that the talent's not quite as good as many people think.
Talk of the Phoenix Suns firing Mike D'Antoni seems petty misguided to me -- there are some things to be said in favor of the idea, but realistically what better coach is going to emerge? Meanwhile, it's pretty clear that over the years Phoenix has been sabotaged by management. Not necessarily even by bad management, just stingy management -- the Nash/Stoudemire/Marion core was very successful and won a lot of games, but the teams fielded always lacked bench, depth, and flexibility.
And the Suns could have had more depth pretty easily -- they were the sort of squad usable veteran role players like to sign with, and they could have used their first round draft picks on players. Instead, they never made the sort of signings that Boston did to fill out its roster this year or that Miami and San Antonio have done in the past, and they essentially sold draft picks. There were totally cognizable reasons for that behavior -- they saved money -- but they weren't good-faith efforts to field a championship-quality basketball team and they were Mike D'Antoni's fault so it seems perverse to blame him for not bringing any rings to Arizona.
Can someone tell me why the Nuggets stink so bad? Two superstars - check. Great rebounder/shot blocker - check. Solid role players - check. Fat ugly coach - check.
The obvious answer would be that, as some people have been saying for a long time, their "superstars" aren't really that great. Instead, Simmons offers:
Come on, the Nuggets had no heart all season. None of this was a surprise. When the going gets tough, they get going. In their defense, it's tough to get motivated to win a title when you've already broken the "Most tattooes on one team" record. How do you dip into the well and get fired up after that?
You would really think that the experience of the Iverson trade would have caused a few people to reconsider this stuff. Before the trade, Philadelphia was a pretty bad team and Denver was a decent one. Then Allen Iverson was swapped for Andre Miller in a move that was widely expected to help Denver and hurt Philly in the short-run. But that hasn't been the outcome. The obvious conclusion is that the Iverson-skeptics were right all along and he's just not that good. Denver fans should be asking themselves how good their team might have been if they'd been able to execute the reverse deal -- something like Carmelo Anthony for Andre Iguodala, Samuel Dalembert, and a draft pick.
All season long, I'd been resisting the temptation to proclaim the Wizards "better without Arenas" but the evidence from this playoff series against the Cavaliers is really tending to change my mind. The fact that Agent Zero has a solid backup in Antonio Daniels is what makes this work, but the whole rest of the team really does seem to play with both more defensive intensity and more tactical acumen in key offensive situations without Gilbert. Certainly I don't think it's a no-brainer at this point that Arenas should be paid more money if he chooses to opt out of his current contract.
The Steve Nash Era in Phoenix has been a pretty amazing thing for NBA fans (especially those of us with no allegiances to any other Western Conference contenders) to behold. When the Suns signed him to his deal, the move was pretty widely criticized, but with Nash and Amare Stoudemire in the mix the 29-53 Suns of 2003-2004 became the 62-20 Suns of 2004-2005 and electrified fans with an up-tempo game. Then Amare went down with injury and the 2005-2006 Suns stunned us by going 54-28 with the previously unheard-of Boris Diaw serving sometimes as center sometimes as a backup point guard.
Then Amare came back the next year, they won 61 games, and lost again in the playoffs. I was hoping to see them do better, just as I was hoping to see them do better this year. I think a lot of us were. It was a great story, and they played a really fun style. And now with the Shaq trade and last night's first round exit, it seems like that era's over. It's hard to imagine Shaq or Nash or Grant Hill getting any better next year and hard to see what kind of moves they can make. The window has closed, and it's too bad.
That LeBron James is a pretty talented player, huh? I think he's going to go places in the NBA.
Beyond that, I don't really understand Eddie Jordan's notion that the Wiz should close games with Agent Zero iso plays. I think the Wizards and the Cavaliers are about equally matched teams. But the Cavs' best player is much better than our best player. Our advantage is that it's a game of five-on-five.
Sorry for bastardizing "Leo the Late Bloomer," one of my daughter's favorite bedtime stories and a true classic. But I couldn't help it. Not only has Rajon Rondo's belated emergence been the most fascinating subplot of a storybook Celtics season, but he's just like the character in that book. Like Leo, Rondo never spoke. Like Leo's father, Celts fans spent an inordinate amount of time wondering when Rondo would "draw" (in this case, play with consistency) or "write" (in this case, bang home open jumpers). Leo had patient parents who believed in him; Rondo had veterans such as Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, role models who provided the confidence and toughness he desperately needed, eventually springing him from his on-court shell and altering the course of his career. We always hear about the value of young teams adding veterans, but after watching the effects over the course of an 82-game season, it's probably impossible to exaggerrate the importance of polished, professional, competitive, proven veterans on young guys who don't know what the hell they're doing.
I think this is pretty far off-base. The reality is that Rajon Rondo played pretty well for a terrible 2006-2007 Celtics team. When you added Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to the mix, had Paul Pierce play a full season, and rounded out the rotation with some decent veterans, the team was much better. That put Rondo in a position where people notice that he plays pretty well. But relative to last year, he's rebounding is a bit worse, his free throw shooting is a bit worse, and his field goal percentage is better. None of that would be shocking for a guy of his age, but it's especially non-shocking when you consider that it's harder to rebound when you're competing with the Big Ticket and better teammates give him more open looks.
He's a pretty good player, and deserves credit for contributing to the team. But there's no dramatic transformation here.
As a Shaq-trade skeptic, I was feeling vindicated by the initial set of post-trade Suns games. But then Phoenix went on a nice run, and the trade's advocates were feeling vindicated. I held to the true faith, and I think I've been vindicated as Phoenix has now managed to go down 3-0 against San Antonio even though the reconfigured squad was allegedly designed specifically to match up against the Spurs, and even though this looks like a weaker Spurs team than what they've given us in recent years.
Went to last night's thrilling triumph over Cleveland, and I have to say that when I saw Gilbert Arenas limp off the court my hope -- in the absence of any television commentary to tell me exactly what was happening -- was that he'd be too hurt to get back in the game. The team isn't "better without Arenas" per se, but it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the team plays with more intensity on the defensive end without him. That's not merely, or even especially, a reflection of Arenas' defensive skills (or lack thereof), it's broader and more systemic -- a switch seems to go on that says "oh no, Gilbert's not around, we'll only win if we play defense!" which, in the end, leads to more success over all.
Is it possible that we all somehow managed to forget about the San Antonio Spurs? No exciting trades or thrilling storylines this season, but they've looked pretty damn good in two games against Phoenix. Meanwhile, the Suns are seeing that one cost of the Shaq trade is that they lost a very good perimeter defender and now don't have a real way to guard Parker and Ginobili on the outside. Maybe some of the guys who looked too old during the regular season were just taking it easy and are ready to buckle down now? Given that it's an even-numbered year, I bet they don't get the rings and take the offseason to retool some of the secondary players, but still it's amazing how San Antonio manages to sneak up year after year.
What to say about last night's disastrous Wizards game? I suppose the point to make is that LeBron James' 30/12/9 night, though impressive, wasn't really all that awesome. The nature of the Cleveland squad is that you ought to be able to give up that kind of ground to the King and still win the game. The problem is when you let the non-LBJ Cavs shoot 53 percent from the field.
That and, um, you've got to score. People kind of forget that last years' Cavaliers squad's success was really driven by their defense. LeBron is probably the best offensive player in the game, but his teammates were sufficiently woeful last year that the overall Cleveland offense was pretty middling. But the defense was top-notch and credit for that goes well beyond James. Last night, though, the Wizards offense was pathetic. Hopefully my boys can turn things around back in DC.
Wow. I wasn't particularly planning to watch the Pistons-76ers series -- nice upset. This will be more grist for Dave Berri's mill as he tries to convince the world that Andre Miller is better than Allan Iverson.
As we head into the final minutes, let me just note that there's something a bit odd about a rivalry that's this intense -- driven by three-straight first-round playoff matchups -- between teams that are basically unimpressive. I mean, it would be a genuinely shocking Black Swan event if either of these squads won a championship. Probably nobody outside of DC or Cleveland really cares about this matchup, but we care a lot.
Here's the margin of victory differentials for the Western Conference. As you can see, Utah and Phoenix both underperformed in terms of wins and losses relative to the margin of victory metric, whereas the Hornets and Spurs both overperformed. Margin of victory is, however, the better predictor of future performance.
Okay. In the East. I have Boston and Detroit and Orlando all winning easily (shocking). I think my Wizards will beat the Cavs this time in round three of the NBA's most mediocre rivalry. Next up, Detroit beats Orlando (of course) and (of course) Boston beats Washington and then beats Detroit
In the West, I'm taking the Lakers, Hornets, Jazz, and Suns though I'd really like to see San Antonio prevail and vindicate my skepticism about the Shaq deal. Then I think Lakers beat Jazz and Suns beat Hornets, further un-vindicating my skepticism. Then Lakers beat Suns.
It's funny, those two don't play the same position, but DeShawn told Caron that he'll guard LeBron (sounds like a children's nursery school rhyme) so that Caron can rest his legs. DeShawn was like, "I'll run him around and play D on him and get the fouls so you can just go off on the other end." So we have our own little gimmicks we're brewing. With a team like the Cavaliers and a player like LeBron, all you need is distractions. We got to be Bush. We got to be Bush-league. We're having everybody talking about the war, when we just want to get the oil. We're Bushing it. That's all we're doing. We're trying distract LeBron over here while we try to get some wins over there. That's all we're doing.
Of course if the war had gotten us some oil, it would have at least gotten us something. But last I checked, oil costs more than ever.
UPDATE: Perhaps if Agent Zero bought Heads in the Sand he'd be in a position to offer a more nuanced critique of the Bush foreign policy. Matt Berman says it's "highly readable and filled with great insights."
So it seems that Bill Simmons wanted to do a podcast with Barack Obama. It also seems that Barack Obama wanted to do a podcast with Bill Simmons. Speaking as a new media professional, I can tell you that "major presidential candidate" is usually the kind of podcast guest that people like to have. I bet a Simmons-Obama podcast would have been widely listened to and gotten a lot of attention. Naturally, ESPN decided the right thing to do was kill the idea and cancel the podcast with the Daily News noting that "It's of interest that ESPN president George Bodenheimer has supported Republican Sen. John McCain's presidential bid with a donation of $1,000."
Everyone's dying to know my picks for the big NBA end-of-the-regular-season awards, right? Defense Player of the Year is, I think, pretty simple -- Kevin Garnett is the anchor of what's not only the best defensive team this season, but actually one of the best defenses of all time. So there.
Tradition dictates that Rookie of the Year should go to Kevin Durant for taking the most shots and thus acquiring the highest points per game average. But I think that's kind of bogus, and as a Durant fan I want to keep the pressure on him to actually shoot accurately and re-acquire some of his rebounding prowess from college. So I say Al Horford. Carl Landry is clearly some kind of basketball god but he didn't play in enough games.
Coach. I hear a lot of talk about Byron Scott who is, in fact, a good coach. But I think you need to give this award not to the "team many underrated in the preseason" but to a coach who faced some clear coaching challenges. In my view, that's Rick Adelman who's steered the Rockets past Yao Ming's injury.
Most Improved: Chris Paul. He's improved a lot!
Plus it's a consolation prize for Paul, because the Most Valuable Player is Kobe Bryant. As is well known, the MVP award is handed out on a highly arbitrary basis. Thus, LeBron James is ruled out for his team being too middling even though nobody thinks this is his fault. Similarly, the best player on the best team always deserves a hard look but Kevin Garnett hasn't scored the requisite 20 points per game. It's down to Kobe and Paul and it fundamentally comes down to Paul being younger and how "it's Kobe's time." So he wins.
That said, I do think every sportwriter who criticized KG's lack of "leadership" or some other BS during the past couple of years when the Timberwolves were bad owes him a personal apology. It's almost as if even the greatest players can only succeed with some good teammates.
UPDATE: Oh, yeah, sixth man. Obviously, that's Manu Ginobili.
I get the sense that a lot of folks are letting the thrilling nature of the Western Conference race blind them to the fact that no matter what happens out there, you'd have to judge the Celtics to be pretty serious favorites against any of these teams. Note, for example, that their superior record isn't a result of weaker competition -- they're 25 and 5 against the West which is much better than any of the Western Conference teams. To be sure, if Andrew Bynum makes some kind of miraculous recovery that could be a different story, but otherwise I'd rate them as a definite "buy" with their contract currently available on Tradesports for less than $30.
Photo by Flickr user Terren in Virginia used under a Creative Commons license
A lot of proponents of the Shaq deal are now claiming vindication, but while the trade's certainly worked out better for Phoenix than I expected, I'm not at all certain they're right. Obviously, having a healthy Shaq playing right now is better than having an injured Shawn Marion not playing. But if you think, as most people do, that the Matrix could play fine were the Heat not tanking then I still don't really see it. In March, Shaq offered Phoenix 13.5 points and 10.4 rebounds whereas Marion offered Miami 13.6 points and 13.0 rebounds. Shaq turned it over more than Marion did. And if the trade helped Phoenix's interior defense, it's hurt them on the perimeter.
So, Yglesias, how do you explain the Suns' success since the trade? Well part of the answer is recalling that at the time of the trade Phoenix was sitting atop the Western Conference with a 34-14 record. It was always a really good team. But since the trade Amare's started taking more shots and so he's now scoring somewhat more points and the team's doing no better than it was previously. So while there doesn't seem to be a blunder here, once you consider the cap implications it still doesn't look so hot to me. When you consider the fact that if Phoenix's ownership had been willing to spend like this just a little while back, they could have resigned Kurt Thomas and not sold their draft picks, and they'd be in even better shape today.
Andy Rotherham notes that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have perilously low college graduation rates, and yet schools actually know how to give people the help they need to stay in school they do a pretty good job with their athletes and what's needed is to extend the same kind of support to everyone.
Incidentally, anyone persuaded that the NBA game is insufficiently wide open and exciting should definitely check out tonight's Denver vs. Golden State matchup. The teams are basically tied for the last spot in the Western Conference playoffs, both are quite good, and the play at the fastest and second-fastest paces in the league. Should be a very exciting game.
I think the Warriors are sentimental favorite for basketball fans everywhere, so I'll definitely be hoping they win. The Nuggets are, however, are perennially interesting team for anyone interested in basketball statistics. Conventional commentators are constantly overlooking Denver's defensive prowess because the team plays at a high pace.
I don't think anything or anyone is going to stand in the way of the Celtics' march to the 2008 NBA Championship. Still, it warms this Boston-haters' heart to know that the thoroughly mediocre Wizards seem to have their number.
That said, I find that my distaste for the Hub is actually on the decline. It was very frustrating to me to constantly be hearing Kevin Garnett blamed for the Timberwolves' problems (he didn't have enough "leadership" it seems) when it was eminently clear that he was one of the top players in the game and just saddled with terrible teammates. This year, I think he's gotten his vindication and that's all to the good, even if it does bring cheer to the undeserving people of Massachusetts.
New York magazine goes long and deep on the disaster of the Dolan/Thomas Era. I will say that I think knocking Thomas for poor draft choices is a bit unfair. Yes, there are guys you wish he'd taken who he passed on, but the draft is inherently uncertain and I think his record in that record stands up as totally okay.
The Wizards have been using Gilbert Arenas as the "face of the franchise" for a while, but last season many fans came to suspect that Caron Butler might be the team's best player -- a theory their continued mediocrity success without Arenas this season seemed to support. In terms of adjusted plus/minus, however, Antawn Jamison's the man not only the best on the team, but actually one of the most valuable players in the whole league. For that matter, he looks great in terms of regular plus/minus, too. These stats can be misused because they make a player's quality in part a function of the quality of his backup, but I think they do provide a useful perspective given how much of the game's action doesn't seem well-captured by individual-level statistics.
Hillary Clinton says George W. Bush should boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Steve Clemons says she's wrong. In the real world, can anyone imagine this making a difference either way, either to US-China relations or to the PRC's human rights conduct? I can't. If we actually tried to ruin the olympics by withdrawing our athletes and trying to get other countries to do the same, that might at least hurt someone's feelings, but it hardly seems worth debating the merits of doing something totally trivial.
Still, in retrospect I really do wish they hadn't given the Olympics to China. It would have been much better to award the games to some other city, for the official rationale to just be that the other city was better on the merits, but then for off-the-record there to be some suggestion in the press that China's authoritarian politics might have played a role. Not that the IOC thinks there should be political criteria! On the contrary, IOC members were so eager to avoid politicizing the games that some shied away from the idea of an inevitably-controversial Beijing Olympics.
It's clearly not viable to have a formal "no human rights abusers shall host the Olympics" rule, but it couldn't hurt for the world's democracies to signal, informally, that a more rights-respecting government would help China achieve the sort of recognition as a great power that it's looking for. But now that the schedule's already been set, it's hard to see any protests as doing anything other than showing how ineffectual the west is in its efforts to prod China to change.
Ever since two one-sided deals sent Kevin Garnett to Boston and Pau Gasol to Los Angeles, I've been thinking about how pleased the NBA central office must be about the prospect of reviving the storied Lakers-Celtics rivalry with a meeting between two historic large market franchises in the NBA finals. It occurs to me, however, that there's a very plausible scenario in which the league gets something catastrophic like a New Orleans—Detroit matchup. Especially out West, we've got closely matched teams in quality and huge gaps in marketability between squads like LA, Phoenix, Houston (think of the China market -- and, yes, they've learned to love T-Mac over there) and laggards like New Orleans and Utah. Look for conspiracy theories to abound if the officiating in the playoffs seems to smile upon the more marketable squads.
Photo by Flickr user TheMikeLee used under a Creative Commons license
How much should we think about a player's per minute stats versus his per game stats? Dave Berri argues:
Let me close by noting that I don’t think that people should solely look at WP48 or just per-minute stats. If you did that, Jerome James - who posted a 1.341 WP48 - would have been the first half MVP. James, though, only played five minutes in the first half of the season, so his WP48 doesn’t really mean much.
Although I do think people need to look at more than per-minute numbers, I also think people need to stop focusing solely on the per-game stats. Specifically, when we are looking at players who played at least 30 minutes a contest, we shouldn’t penalize players whose minutes are closer to 30 than to 40. Such penalties — as we see in the case of KG — can easily cause us to miss the obvious.
I think the players who are playing at least 30 mpg are exactly the players we should penalize for lower minutes. After all, a great player who offers you 32 minutes per game is genuinely less valuable than a great player who offers you 40 minutes per game. Things like stamina, injury resistance, and ability to avoid foul trouble are all part of what makes for a useful player. It's the players who play less than that who we shouldn't penalize. Of course you don't want to rely on tiny samples like in the Jerome James example, but a guy who's playing well in 15 minutes per game is probably limited to 15 mpg by coaching decisions -- decisions that might be wrong, or might indicate a jam-up of good players at the same position one of whom should be traded -- rather than fatigue.
J.A. Adande correctly notes that "Coach of the Year often is a way to cover up bad predictions" and this will likely redound to the benefit of New Orleans coach Byron Scott since the team is doing better than expected. It's worth asking, though, if anything especially surprising happened. When you get right down to it -- not really. They didn't make any offseason moves that turned out much better than expected, they haven't seen a rookie turn out to be a great contributor, and they haven't seen an unheralded guy emerge into greatness.
Chris Paul was a great player last season and he's even better this season, but that's really what you expect from a young player. The main difference, it seems to me, is this -- thus far Paul has missed two games over the course of the season, whereas last year he missed 18. David West has missed six games this season, whereas last season he missed 30. Tyson Chandler has missed three games, but last season he missed nine. It's hard to win the games when your best players don't play, especially when you're a team with a bad bench. Have those players available more, and the team does better. New Orleans' success wasn't widely predicted (though there were exceptions) since they didn't do so well last year, don't have a distinguished pedigree, and didn't do anything interesting in the off-season. But their success has mostly amounted to everyone doing what they did last year but being injured less.
Does anyone out there who's seen more Golden State games this season then I have no why Andris Biedrins only plays 26.6 minutes per game. It seems to me that if I had a good young big man on my roster and no backup center, that I'd give him some more burn than that. After all, the Warriors score more points while giving up fewer points when Biedrins is playing and that whole "better offense and better defense" thing is usually what you're looking for in a player.
I'm on the road in Morgantown, West Virginia so I missed Gilbert Arenas' dramatic return in tonight's loss to the Bucks. Gilbert played well -- 17 points on reasonably efficient shooting in 20 minutes -- but precisely as one might have feared, the Wizards' Gil-free improved defense seems to have gone missing.
Agent Zero says "People who usually have microfracture are usually big players who get off the floor. I don't jump, I don't get off the floor." I dunno, I'm pretty sure he does jump:
It is true that these knee problems are normally associated with big men, but when you get down to it it seems like it's probably a bigger problem for a perimeter player. A tall guy with skills can be valuable to his team even if he's a bit slow and doesn't jump very well. A guy like Arenas, however, really depends on his quickness to make plays.
Is John McCain really only 5'7"? As Kevin Drum points out, it's been a mighty long time since we've elected a short person to the White House. To be sure, the shorter of two tall candidates sometimes wins, but this is another matter entirely.
You've got to wonder why the Nationals asked Bush to throw out the first pitch at the new stadium -- it was pretty much inevitable that he'd get booed by a DC crowd. And rightly so, the man deserves to be booed. But the fan's deserve a first pitch thrower who's not so boo-worthy. Couldn't they have gotten Mayor Fenty to open the Nats' season and sent Bush to a minor league game in Utah or some other place where he's still got a good approval rating?
Dave Berri notes that despite the sense you frequently get of the NBA declining in popularity, attendance is actually way up:
In 2006-07 the average NBA team attracted 726,954 fans during the regular season. And this was the all-time record. Let me repeat. Last season the NBA - which Shanoff says is declining in popularity - set an all-time attendance record. And this is a per-team average record (of course they also set a record for total attendance).
To put this mark in perspective, 20 years ago - during the peak of the Boston-LA rivalry — the NBA’s per team average was only 550,190 fans. Across the past 20 years, while the U.S. population has grown 23.8%, NBA attendance has grown 38.7%.
So more teams and higher average attendance -- that seems pretty good. What's probably going on is that thanks to the proliferation of media everything has more of a niche vibe than it used to. Back before most people had cable, anytime anything was on television at all it was somewhere between 1/3 and 1/7th (depending on where you lived) of the total things available to watch on TV and there were no DVDs or websites or OnDemand offerings to provide further options. So anything that got above a certain "it's on television" threshold automatically acquired a certain air of mass relevance that, these days, is very hard for anything to achieve.
Asked for the root of his hopefulness, Stern referred to “the wellspring of optimism that resides within me” and the “renewal presented by the draft” and the preseason. “And I do know that the ownership of the Knicks is committed to improving the team,” he said. “It’s just my perpetually optimistic self.”
I think Stern should start moonlighting as John McCain's Iraq spokesman.
The New Republic asked for my thoughts on the Israeli-Arab conflict and the appropriate U.S. policy response how to improve the NCAA tournament. Results here.
Donnie Walsh has definitely had some success over the years with the Indiana Pacers, but the idea of recruiting him away from Indianapolis and to New York seems a bit odd. Walsh will be leaving Indy on a sour note, after several seasons worth of his team being in decline. The Knicks seem like they need a guy on his upside, someone who's been having some success and now is going to take on a bigger job.
Meanwhile, I wonder what Larry Bird's plan for turning the Pacers around is? Trading away the team's unpopular-with-the-fans "bad character" guys in exchange for overpaid white guys who don't play basketball very well hasn't turned out great and it's hard to undue mistakes like that.
Malik Rose comes off the bench to deliver a team-high twenty points on 8-13 shooting in New York's 93-114 loss yesterday to the mighty Minnesota Timberwolves.
From the annals of silly sports punditry, I just heard Doug Collins explain that the Rockets are doing better because the team added "high-energy players" who've "revitalized Tracy McGrady." T-Mac's clearly an excellent player, but if you look at the numbers there's just no denying that he's performing below the peak he established during his first three seasons in Orlando. Houston didn't add players who revitalized McGrady; they've got a bunch of role players who are playing well so the team's winning more games than it did at the beginning of the season. McGrady, however, is playing just the same.
When considering a basketball player's quality, you obviously need to consider position. But still, certain kinds of crude position adjustments seem to me to produce perverse results. For example, see Dave Berri's comment on Rashard Lewis:
Lewis is listed at 6'10" and Hedo Turkoglu, the Magic's starting small forward, is listed at the exact same height. What's more, Turkoglu is a somewhat better rebounder than is Lewis. But it can't be right to say that if the Magic were to start calling Turkoglu the power forward and Lewis the small forward that Lewis would suddenly become worth paying more than he is now. The ability to guard multiple positions is an asset. If Lewis couldn't hack it at the four and had to be played strictly as a small forward, he'd be a less valuable player, not a more valuable one.
The Houston Rockets just got their 22nd straight victory and uncontested posession of first place in the Western Conference. Both teams saw disappointing shooting from their stars (33 percent for Kobe, 25 percent for T-Mac) but the difference is that Kobe took over a third of the Lakers' shot attempts while McGrady for more like a fifth of the Rockets'. There's that, and Houston's continued ability to pull quality role players out of thin air. First there was Carl Landry, then he went down with injury, and now Mike Harris, who was playing in China as of 10 days ago, delivered six points and six rebounds in ten minutes.
Gilbert Arenas seems to be getting close to returning to the Wizards lineup. Sara maintains that you can tell by his off-kilter play during those few games at the start of the season that Gilbert was psychologically shattered by the initial injury and is never going to be the same player again. I've never heard her use the term "swag" in regard to this theory, but to students of Gilbertology I think the relevance should be clear.
I'm not, however, really sure I buy it. What's more, Gilbert wouldn't need to be all that good for reallocating minutes away from the likes of DeShawn Stevenson and Roger Mason, Jr. to constitute a net improvement for the team. The real issue is that the Wizards have survived Gilbert's loss by becoming a much better team defensively. I'm not sure exactly what caused that (defense is, as ever, under-analyzed and under-discussed so I have no real idea what could cause it to improve) but the trick will be to not let it go away when he comes back.
Excessive use of the word "Cinderella." It comes up in the NBA, just not as often. Google search hits for "George Mason Cinderella": 355,000. Google search hits for "Golden State Warriors Cinderella": 70,000. And I dare any writer to go up to Stephen Jackson and compare him to a fairy-tale princess.
And, yes, I know nobody agrees with me about this.
Went to the Wiz-Cavs game last night that featured Caron Butler's return from injury. After sitting through any number of Wizards games featuring lackluster crowds, it was thrilling to be at a serious rivalry matchup with a packed arena and an audience prepared to really cheer and boo. Something that at least looked to Wizards fans like an egregious non-call on a three second violation even prompted clearly audible protests from the stands. It was good stuff.
Of course, the fact that the good guys won didn't hurt. I'm really hoping we can manage to get into that fifth seed in order to produce yet another Cleveland-DC playoff matchup.
Meanwhile, I note the following quasi-optimistic take on the 2007-2008 Wizards. Basically, they're about as good as the 2006-2007 edition. Given that this year we haven't had the services of Gilbert Arenas, some pundits have taken to talking about how the greater ball-sharing, etc., that the current squad offers makes them actually more effective without Gil. In reality, this year's team scores 107.9 points per 100 possessions (11th in the league) whereas last year's version scored 110.1; the reason the results have been similar is that the defense went from yielding 110.6 points per hundred to giving up only 108.2 per hundred. If Gilbert can come back and restore the offense to its former glory while the defense stays in touch with the skills it's learned this year, the team can graduate from "mediocre" to "prettty good."
Isaac Chotiner, longtime Rockets fan, pens an appreciation for Houston's incredible ongoing streak. There's no way they're going to break the 33 game record, but they only need one more win to move into second place on the all-time NBA streak list.
Meanwhile, eighteen in a row! I'll be rooting for whoever comes out of the West (probably Lakers or Spurs) against the evil Celtics, but Houston's definitely my sentimental favorite in the Western. What's more, a schedule of New Jersey at home, Atlanta on the road, and Charlotte at home with no back-to-backs makes a 21 game streak seem plausible.
I often say to myself while watching NBA games, sure this is pretty interesting, but it would be so much better if we switched up tournament rules so as to minimize the odds chance of the best teams advancing while also massively degrading the talent-level of the athletes. After all, what kind of basketball fan would want to see the game played by the best basketball players out there? Not me! Far better to see competition where the average guy couldn't make it in the Spanish or Italian pro leagues. Three cheers for mediocrity.
I hope the current winning streaks by the San Antonio Spurs and Houston Rockets will throw the panicky trades of Dallas and Phoenix into some relief. Both the Mavs and the Suns seemed to have taken the attitude that if LA was going to make a blockbuster deal that improved the team, that, damnit, they had to make blockbuster deals of their own without giving adequate consideration to whether or not the deals were helping. Meanwhile, other West teams who chose to just tweak and improve are in good shape.
Maybe the Lakers will win in the end, especially if Bynum comes back at full strength. And if they do, they do. It's hard to compete when a good team gets to add a player as good as Gasol without giving anything up. But flailing is not the answer.
I think Barack Obama has a much stronger chance of beating John McCain in the general election. I think Hillary is flawed in many ways, and particularly if you look at her husband's unwillingness to release the names of the people who contributed to his presidential library. And the reason that is important -- you know, are there favors attached to $500,000 or $1 million contributions? And what do I mean by favors? I mean, pardons that are granted; investigations that are squelched; contracts that are awarded; regulations that are delayed.
As I wrote in my Los Angeles Times op-ed on the subject, Hillary Clinton has, to her credit, recognized that George W. Bush's undisclosed library fundraising is a problem and sponsored a bill to ensure that the next President of the United States can't do what Bush and her husband are doing. And Bill says that if Hillary wins, then he'll disclose. But that's too late -- the election is happening now, and people deserve to know now. We do know that "Denise Rich. Ms. Rich gave the foundation $450,000 while her fugitive ex-husband, Marc Rich, was seeking a pardon on tax-evasion and racketeering charges" and that other donors as of 2004 include various Wal-Mart-linked individuals and foundations, Haim Saban, Qatar, Kuwait, the Saudi Royal family, etc.
In the wake of Boston's fairly comfortable win over the Detroit Pistons it's perhaps time to revisit the obvious point that this is a really good basketball team. Kevin Garnett has consistently been one of the top players in the league, and now for the first time ever he's playing alongside another legitimately great player in Paul Pierce. Ray Allen's not really the force he once was, but he's no slouch, either. And contrary to how things looked over the offseason, Boston's now got reasonable depth. Rajon Rondo is pretty good and Kendrick Perkins is good enough. Add on to that Glen Davis, Eddie House, James Posey and now P.J. Brown and Sam Cassell off the bench, and you've got a really great basketball team.
I kind of lost sight of the Celtics because they fell off their seventy win pace and then there were blockbuster trades out west, but the slip was driven by injuries. When healthy, I see every reason to think they'll win the championship.
Photo by Flickr user The Mike Lee used under a Creative Commons license
I was looking at ESPN.com's "Hollinger stats" page and was surprised to see that in terms of Hollinger's PER stat, Durant is the 26th best small forward in the league. Not great, by any means, but good enough to be a starter somewhere. And, indeed, by the formula Durant is just ever so slightly below average.
I'd been under the impression that Durant was actually playing terribly. So I looked up the breakdown. It seems that in terms of scoring efficiency, Durant is pretty bad -- 50th among small forwards in true shooting percentage. As a rebounder he's worse -- 55th best rate among small forwards in rebound rate. 52nd in turnover ratio, and 53rd in assist ratio. Basically, he seems to be a bit worse than the fiftieth-best small forward in the league. That's probably good enough to get some minutes as a backup, especially since in light of his age he may well improve if he gets a chance, but it's a far cry from 26th best as Hollinger's aggregate statistic makes him out to be. What accounts for the difference?
Well, it turns out that Durant does excel at one thing -- getting plays called for him. He's got the third-highest usage rate among small forwards. But does he really deserve to get the level of credit for this that Hollinger's giving him? I mean, if you're not a very good player, your usage rate ought to be low. Using tons of possessions isn't helpful if you're at Durant-like levels of effectiveness.
Jeff Van Gundy explains in a cool feature for the Play website. Given that defense is half of basketball, there's shockingly little discussion of it in the sports media. Everyone knows that Boston has put together a great defense this year, but you don't hear much about what makes it so great except for vague allusions to Kevin Garnett's "intensity." I'm sure he's intense, but there's more to it than that.
Gilbert Arenas cleared for practice but no schedule for returning to playing. I've got my fingers crossed that he won't have lost a step when he does get back.
The Wizards are now 4-1 over their past five games, despite Caron Butler and Gilbert Arenas both being out with injuries. This is a major improvement from the early days of the Butler injury when we were losing left and right. What accounts for the difference? Well, I notice that the team has ditched Kanye's "Stronger" as opening music in favor of quasi-local Clipse's "Roc Boys" which I think is worth about 2.6 points per game all on its own.
The Wizards' injury situation gets worse and worse as it seems Caron Butler has a "labral tear" which is worse than what they though he had. He's out indefinitely. Arenas is out indefinitely. And there are so many bad teams in the East that there's no guarantee the Wizards can even manage to sink low enough to snag a high lottery pick for the trouble of our ruined season.
Barack Obama offers his endorsement to the San Antonio Spurs, terming them his "second-favorite team" after his hometown Chicago Bulls:
It seems a bit non-credible to me for Obama to cite the Spurs' no-flash, play-the-right-way image as the decisive factor. The Obama-esque element of San Antonio's team is the unlikely cosmopolitanism of the roster. In current NBA terms, though, Obama may be most like the Lakers -- a juggernaut that came out of nowhere.
The same Chad Ford article I mentioned early says that Andris Biedrins "falls somewhat into the Anderson Varejao category: energetic big man whose stats don't tell the whole story in terms of on-court contributions." But the story the stats tell is that Biedrins is a pretty good basketball player. Unless, that is, by "stats" you just mean "per game scoring average." But my stats say that Biedrins' ten points per game come on just seven field goal attempts. They tell me that he's also averaging ten rebounds and one block per game, and he's doing all this in 27.5 minutes as a young center who's coach likes to play small ball.
Ford's not wrong about Biedrins, the numbers say exactly what he's trying to say, namely that Biedrins is a good player and that especially given his age your team would be glad to have him. But for some reason he thinks these attributes are intangible when, in fact, they're right there in the numbers.
There's a piece up on Hoopsworld arguing that the Denver Nuggets have a ton of talent but can't break into the elite because of a pick-up game mentality. I'm not so sure. One piece of alleged evidence in favor of this is the idea that Denver puts forth a "poor overall defensive effort." But according to Basketball Reference their defense is seventh in the league. That's pretty good. Certainly it's better than their offense, which is only thirteenth in the league.
I think people misunderstand Denver because, once again, of the pace illusion. Denver plays at the highest pace in the league, so if you look at points per game their offense looks better than it is, and their defense looks worse than it is. The fact of the matter, however, is that despite the fact that Allen Iverson and Carmelo Anthony are both alleged to be elite superstar scorers, their offense is distinctly mediocre because neither of them are actually very efficient scorers.
Chad Ford, previewing the 2008 free agent class, says this about Gilbert Arenas:
Arenas has turned himself into a max player the past few years, and despite recent knee troubles, will likely opt out of his contract to cash in on his newfound celebrity status. While he continues to maintain publicly that his first choice is to re-sign with Washington, it's not inconceivable that, given his eccentricity, he could change his mind. The biggest issue for Arenas is the same that plagues all the other free agents: Who else really has the money to pay him?
I'd like to see Agent Zero stay in Washington, but I hope the team drives a hard bargain. A "max player" is, in my, a player who somebody wants to offer a max deal to. As Ford notes, the only two teams likely to have significant cap space are Philadelphia and Memphis. He reports that "Grizzlies GM Chris Wallace has sent signals that the team might not spend its estimated $12 million in cap room this summer" and that "the Sixers will have around $10 million in cap space." Currently, Arenas makes $12 million. By opting out of the last year of his deal, he's made it clear that he wants a raise, but I don't see how he could get one unless the Wizards make an unforced error and pay him more than he can command on an open market.
If I were Ernie Grunfeld, I'd let Gilbert test the market waters to his heart's content and then unless wildly unexpected happens just beat the best offer he gets. The odds of being able to resign him for what he's making now -- or, indeed, somewhat less -- seem pretty good.
It was striking to me that during the pregame coverage of the Pistons-Suns matchup yesterday none of the commentators seemed to be acknowledging the basic point that the Marion-Shaq deal was a risky and controversial move. Instead, it was being covered in a totally rah-rah as if it were a Gasol-style no-brainer. Obviously, many people do think it was a smart move for Phoenix to make, but surely the commentary ought to reflect the fact that a lot of people think it was a blunder.
The upshot, naturally enough, was that Phoenix got blown out. Sample size is obviously far too small to make big hay out of the team going 1-2 since the trade and those were all good teams, but still. It's certainly strange, though, that the Phoenix defense is so up and down bracketing that great performance against Boston by giving up 130 points to LA and 116 to Detroit.
Steven Dubner asks the question. I don't think a categorical answer can be given. Rather, I think the point is that cheating may facilitate certain kinds of things -- the setting of new home run records, or aging star players making amazing comebacks from injury rather than fading to black -- that we like to watch. What's more, some cheating plays as a kind of clever "gamesmanship" that attracts at least some admirers.
On the other hand, it's well-known that many sports restrict the quality of the equipment that can be used by high-level athletes in order to prevent the sport from becoming impossibly dull to watch. Cheaters who break those kinds of rules are almost certainly going to detract from the public's enjoyment of the sport. Somewhat similarly, it seems to me that many people actively prefer the inferior level of skill, strength, and athleticism on display in college basketball. Competitions deficient in top-notch basketball playing draw in fans who like to see lots of passing and jump shots. Under the circumstances, it seems to me that performance-enhancing drugs would probably make the NBA less popular (though not to me personally or others who find the college game stultifying) as the players get even stronger and faster.
This Houston-Hornets-Grizzlies trade seems remarkably pointless. None of the players involved are any good, and what does New Orleans want with a point guard? Meanwhile, the huge Cleveland-Seattle-Chicago three-way is a bit confusing as well. Wally Sczerbiak's three point shooting would be a very effective weapon alongside LeBron James, but they play the same position. Still, all things considered this deal seems helpful to Cleveland.
Meanwhile it's pathetic that given the assets Chicago at one point seemed to have lined up to acquire Kevin Garnett or Pau Gasol or Kobe Bryant that they're instead picking up Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden. Don't miss Josh Levin on how crazy NBA trades have gotten thanks to the intricacies of the salary cap.
Well, looks like Jason Kidd is getting traded to Dallas after all. The deal that eventually wound up getting made is worse for Mark Cuban's pocketbook, but better for the Mavericks, in that it winds up depriving Dallas of less depth than did the original conception of the trade. I still don't like this deal very much for Dallas, but merits aside it's worth considering the impact on Dallas' style of play.
The team still has, to some extent, the reputation it acquired during the Don Nelson / Steve Nash years of being an up-tempo run-and-gun team. In reality, under Avery Johnson the Mavs have become a sluggish, isolation-dependent team. This year they're 26th in the league in pace and 19th in terms of the proportion of baskets that come from assists. Last year's version of the team was 28th in pace. The year before they were 26th. These kinds of numbers are normally associated with an offense being "bad" since slow pace isn't amenable to high point totals and slow, isolation-oriented offenses can get kind of boring to watch. But Dallas has consistently put together a very effective offense using this style of play.
It's not, however, the kind of style you normally associate with Kidd, who's a poor shooter but an excellent passer. His Nets teams have always run a middling pace and featured many assisted baskets. Is Johnson going to try to fit Kidd into his style, and count on him mostly to provide defense and rebounding while running plays for Dallas' other scorers, or is he going to try to put together a dynamic offense more focused on Kidd's passing skills?
Looks live Devean George is vetoing the ill-advised Kidd-to-Dallas trade. The Nets and Mavericks are still trying to work things out, but Mark Cuban ought to take the opportunity to listen to reason and cancel the deal. Did you know that Dallas' two most effective five man units involve Harris and Diop, both of whom would be shipped out in the trade? Listen to Hollinger, don't do the deal.
I don't think this Jason Kidd trade is a very smart move for Dallas. Kidd is still a better point guard than Harris, but at this point in their careers the margin doesn't justify giving up so much additional stuff in order to get him. In particular, when you swap Kidd for Harris you're getting better rebounding and defense in exchange for worse shooting. That's fair enough, but the other players Dallas is sending to the Garden State are going to cost them defense and rebounding. On top of that, trading young for old and giving away picks and expiring contracts in the process hurts your team's future.
Basically, like Phoenix, Dallas seems to be responding with panic to the Lakers' acquisition of Pau Gasol. But just because a conference rival improves doesn't mean that a trade that didn't make sense a month ago suddenly does make sense today. If Andrew Bynum returns healthy, then the Lakers will be a very difficult team to beat. There's nothing written into the fabric of the universe that guarantees there are any possible trades San Antonio or Dallas or Phoenix can make to become better than LA. Oftentimes, teams become very good because other teams agree to make stupid trades with them -- that's what happened with Boston, and that's what happened with LA. Teams in that situation can only hope that some other team wants to come along and make a one-sided desperation deal. But instead of waiting cautiously and hoping for a sweetheart deal, Phoenix and now Dallas are making panicky moves.
It seems to me, though, that the one thing you never want to do in the NBA personnel market is put yourself in a position where you feel like you "have" to do something. You "have" to move Kevin Garnett, so you accept cents on the dollar. You "have" to sign a big-ticket free agent so you give Larry Hughes a huge deal. You "have" to respond to recent big trades, so you give away draft picks and depth in exchange for a smallish upgrade at the point.
Chad Ford writes up six better deals that Phoenix could have made for Shawn Marion. Of course not trading Shawn Marion would also have been a good move. This whole thing makes their decision to let Kurt Thomas walk seem all the more baffling.
It occurred to me that maybe Dave Berri has some counterintuitive argument as to why the Shaq-Matrix trade makes sense for Phoenix. The answer is no. Instead, he has a counterintuitive argument that even if Shaq were to return to his 2004-2005 season level of production the trade still wouldn't help Phoenix. And, of course, that's not going to happen.
Meanwhile, an additional consideration here is that Shawn Marion is not only better, cheaper, and younger than Shaq, but he logs more minutes per game. Indeed, he plays more minutes per game than anyone else on the Phoenix roster. So expect to see more Brian Skinner and Boris Diaw in the future. The (rare) defenses of this trade, meanwhile, don't seem to grasp that just because Phoenix was relatively unlikely to win a championship pre-trade hardly justifies doing a deal that makes the team worse. The Wizards aren't going to win as presently constituted, either, but that doesn't mean Ernie Grunfeld should go do something ridiculous. Maybe if Phoenix hadn't sold those draft picks they could have struck gold. Anything but this.
Okay. I thought that this trade talk might just have been an election-induced hallucination. But apparently Phoenix is seriously considering doing this. A few points. One, as Hollinger says, it's bizarre to be making a big deal of any sort if you're the Suns:
The Phoenix Suns have the best record in the Western Conference, 1½ games ahead of their closest rival. They have the best scoring margin in the conference, and the best offensive efficiency in the NBA. They're 8-2 in their past 10 games (while outscoring opponents by nine points per game). And the Suns have a slew of home games coming up because their early schedule was so road-heavy.
On top of that, you don't even need to subscribe to an especially strong form of the "Shaq is dead" thesis to think this is a bad deal. The Matrix is a very, very, very good basketball player. An excellent defender, a great rebounder, and a very efficient scorer. And he's a great fit for the Suns' system, which doesn't rely on him to "create his own shot" but does need someone like Marion who can offer speed and shooting at the four spot. It's on top of all that that you need to look at Marion as a guy who's offering basically peak-level performance while Shaq is past his sell-by date.
Looks like the DCPD's finally gone and busted up the prostitution ring working out of the Washington Plaza Hotel in Thomas Circle. I wouldn't normally post on a local issue like that, but these are the hookers that Wizards F/C Andray Blatche got arrested for soliciting. Notwithstanding his troubles with the law, Blatche is having a breakout season in which he's catapulted himself from "interesting prospect" to "okay player" status so with any luck he can find himself a classier brand of call girl at this point.
I'd like a bit of what the Phoenix Suns are smoking if they're seriously contemplating this deal. I understand that there are some Marion-related chemistry issues, but he's six years younger than Shaq and already at this point in their respective careers Marion is more productive. Shaq's going to mesh with Phoenix's up-tempo offense? Who's going to replace Marion as a wing defender? It doesn't make any sense.
Obviously, Eli Manning won the Super Bowl on Sunday and nobody can take that away from him. That said, efforts to crown him the hero of the city seem to me to founder on the fact that scoring 17 points isn't an especially impressive performance for an NFL offense. Patriots opponents scored more than 17 points eight times during the course of the past season, but all of those teams lost.
The difference-maker was that the Giants defense held New England to just 14 points. Teams that score 14 points tend to lose games whether or not the opposition musters a great quarterback to face off against them.
I just heard David Tyree on CBS news attributing his astounding catch to . . . God. I guess it's not really my place to say, but I always find this idea that God is intervening in the big game sort of bizarre. Beyond the theological implications, it's sort of like saying the games are all rigged.
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor put this out yesterday:
A reminder - seven years ago, a patriotic group of Americans had to make a choice between conventional experience and change they desperately needed. It wasn’t an easy decision. Both options were compelling in their own right, but when it was time to make a decision, the choice was clear. The New England Patriots started Tom Brady over Drew Bledsoe, and Brady went on to be the MVP of Super Bowl XXXVI. Now that’s change we can believe in.
One question that arose about the new Pau-ered Lakers is how effective they can be with Lamar Odom at the three. Some evidence is provided by the 82games.com's five man units page for the Lakers. Their most popular lineup this season has been Fisher-Bryant-Walton-Odom-Bynum. Second most popular has been Fisher-Bryant-Walton-Odom-Brown. But their third most popular lineup -- Fisher-Bryant-Odom-Radmanovic-Bynum -- has actually been more effective than either of those two. And Pau Gasol is a clear step up from Radmanovic, so I think they'll be fine.
Wow. Pau Gasol and a second round pick heading to LA in exchange for Kwame Brown, Jarvis Crittenton, and future first-round picks in 2008 and 2010. I'd have to say the Lakers' shot at a championship just got a lot better.
It was clear to me that the Giants weren't going to beat the Green Bay Packers. But then again, it was also clear to me that the Giants weren't going to win their other two playoff games either. Thus, the mere fact that the preponderance of the available evidence strongly points in the direction of a Patriots win doesn't really prove anything. Thus, I predict that New England will wind up getting the loss they so richly deserve.
Over the past 23 games, San Antonio has beaten all the bad teams and lost to all the good ones. In other words, it has been an average team.
This in defense of the proposition that the Spurs might actually miss the playoffs:
Even with all that, it's still hard to imagine a San Antonio team with the likes of Duncan, Tony Parker and Ginobili missing out on the playoffs entirely. But throw in an ankle sprain to one of those three and put them in a conference where 48 wins might be needed to gain entry to the postseason, and it's a different story. That's why the Playoff Odds say there's a 1-in-4 shot of the unthinkable happening.
A playoffs without the Spurs seems hard to imagine. Even so, this is an even numbered year so anything could happen. The real question is whether the legendary Spurs machine is breaking down in a larger sense, leaving them unable to make the numerologically determined bounceback to win the 2009 NBA Championship.
Photo by Flickr user Compujeramey used under a Creative Commons license
Via Andrew, Barack Obama talks about getting roughed up by Hillary and Bill Clinton: "This is good practice for me so, you know, when I take on these Republicans I'll be accustomed to it."
I have no idea if he genuinely means that, but it's true either way. Given Bill's status as an ex-president and party figure, I do wish that he, personally, were not so involved as an anti-Obama surrogate, but I think it's good for the rival campaigns to really go after one another. It's politics, and people who want to succeed in it need the practice.
John Hollinger says "I don't understand why they don't just give Noah the job already. He's been far better than Wallace." Since I went on record as a proponent of the Wallace signing at the time it happened, I was vaguely hoping to find some evidence to debunk the idea that Noah's been far better, but as you'll see below the evidence is hard to find:
Given the age difference, the case for giving Noah the lion's share of the minutes seems to get even more compelling. The experience will probably help him improve whereas the extra wear-and-tear can only hurt Wallace. Meanwhile, bad signing. Noah, however, is making all us veterans of Manhattan private school basketball programs proud.
My friend Jeff pointed out to me that the obvious solution to the Wizards' Etan Thomas problem is for Ernie Grunfeld to work out a trade for him before he gets healthy enough for Eddie Jordan to put him back in the rotation and ruin things. Given that the team is basically fine with Thomas injured, I'd be willing to trade him for just about anything but we need $6 million in salary to match so it's a bit trickier than just dumping him off for a couple of undesirable draft picks or something.
As a human being, I'm obviously glad that Etan Thomas seems to be well on the road to recovery. As a Wizards fan, I'm worried. Brendan Haywood is playing his best basketball ever and playing a big role in keeping the Wizards good even with Gilbert Arenas out, and Andray Blatche and Oleksiy Pecherov both look like reasonably promising guys who deserve a chance to develop. Thomas' return just promises to throw a good situation into disarray.
Well, nobody thought the Giants would win tonight, but nobody thought they would win last week either. Or the week before that. I remember that after the Giants won their first game of this season my dad was worrying that if they won too many Tom Coughlin might not get fired. And now the hopes of a whole nation of haters rest on their shoulders.
New England and Green Bay are favored to win, and I think I have nothing to add to the conventional wisdom on this score. But make your case for the Chargers or Giants if you're so inclined.
Barack Obama's campaign fires back on the Magic Johnson issue, noting that he was an All-Star starter as a rookie and referencing his historic performance in the 1980 Finals.
Hillary Clinton, looking to emphasize that some of her best friends are black, had Magic Johnson record a radio spot (via Ambinder) to play in South Carolina:
This is Magic Johnson. On the court and in life, successful leadership comes from hard work and experience. That’s why I’m endorsing Hillary Clinton for President. We have great candidates this year, but I believe only Hillary is a proven leader, with 35 years’ experience dealing with challenges facing America. Are you looking for better jobs, universal health care, better treatment for veterans, opportunities for your children? Then you want Hillary Clinton for President. My rookie year, we won our first game on a last second shot. I was so hyped. But the captain of my team said, “take it easy rookie, it’s a long season, it’s a long road to the championship.” He was right. Winning comes from years of hard work and preparation. Whether it’s winning championships or a President who can lead us back to greatness, I’ll always want the most prepared and experienced person leading my team. That’s why I’m asking you to join me in voting for Hillary Clinton for President.
Okay, fair enough, but the Lakers won the championship in Magic's rookie season. I suppose that squad was really led by seasoned veteran Kareem Abdul-Jabar, but it still seems like a mixed message. Now the Michael Jordan story maybe shows you need to gain experience before you can win championships.
Photo by Flickr user ChuckyPurdue used under a Creative Commons license
For instance, assaults increase by about 9% when a community hosts a college football game, vandalism increases by about 18%, and DUIs increase by about 13%. We also find evidence that upsets result in larger increases in crime than games that do not produce an upset. For instance, an upset loss at home is associated with a 112% increase in assaults and a 61% increase in vandalism. We discuss these results in the context of psychological theories of fan aggression.
The primary's been making it hard for me to follow the NBA as closely as I'd like, but wtf is happening with my Wizards. First we beat Boston. Then we beat Boston again. Then we . . . lose to the Knicks. I've got tickets to tomorrow's rematch, and I'd had it marked down in my calendar as a definite win. Now -- who knows? Meanwhile, I'm trying to puzzle together whether or not there's any reason to worry that an eventual return of Agent Zero might harm the team's improved defense. It's possible that the Daniels-Arenas backcourt that Eddie Jordan liked to use pretty often is just super weak. DeShawn Stevenson rarely looks impressive to me, but the plus-minus stats indicate that he's contributing on defense.
I was in the car during the Colts-Chargers game, and I have to say that it didn't seriously occur to me that the Chargers might win the game. I'm of two minds about the consequences. On the one hand, the Patriots must be stopped, and it seems that Indianapolis would have had a much better chance of doing so than will the Chargers. On the other hand, I find Payton Manning deeply annoying and don't really want to root for the Colts. In a Pats-Chargers context, by contrast, I can happily back San Diego.
The powers that be in the Wizards front office decided that my 21 game ticket package should include neither of DC's home games against the Celtic, and I'm now doubly-pissed that I missed the game when it turns out to be a big upset against the erstwhile top team in the league.
The powers that be in the Wizards front office decided that my 21 game ticket package should include neither of DC's home games against the Celtic, and I'm now doubly-pissed that I missed the game when it turns out to be a big upset against the erstwhile top team in the league.
Back in the summer of 2005 I was giddy about the way Pat Riley was wrecking the Heat's future in a desperate and doomed-to-fail effort to win the championship in 2006. Unfortunately, he actually did win the championship. But now, as John Hollinger observes, the team is totally screwed and needs to blow things up:
All year, speculation has had Miami trading its expiring contracts (Jason Williams, Ricky Davis, Dorell Wright) to get another player and kick-start a playoff push. But actually, the Heat needs to go in the opposite direction. They should begin unloading the likes of Mark Blount, Williams, Davis, and perhaps even Udonis Haslem, tell Wade to take a break until he's truly healthy, and figure out how to get back into the mix another year or two down the road. Because at 8-27, it sure as heck ain't happening this year.
Sounds like good advice to me. I'd keep Haslem, though, he's young and pretty good. You just need to let the expiring contracts expire, let the team be bad, get a draft pick, let Wade get healthy, etc. I'm not sure what you can get in exchange for "the likes of Mark Blount," though. He doesn't seem like an in-demand player.
The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell pronounces himself a "Gibsologist" comparable to a Kremlinologist. Explains he's been studying the man for over 25 years. Fails to predict his resignation. Column runs on the very day the resignation happens.
With all of DC's biggest political addicts all up in New Hampshire, the only thing anyone in town really cares about is Joe Gibbs resigning as head coach of the Redskins. Seems to me like it's for the best.
Lurking near the end of Tom Edsall's excellent piece on the Clinton campaign's efforts to retool we get this WTF moment: "In private, some of Clinton's supporters are deeply disdainful of Obama. 'He is the candidate of the "identity left",' said one, dismissively." These sound like some talking points straight outta 1988 to me.
Speaking of undeserved good press coverage, Eli Manning played a good game, beat Tampa Day and suddenly I'm hearing guys on television speculating that we may look back at this game as "the day Eli Manning grew up" or some such nonsense. Sure, we may do that if, over the rest of his career he suddenly starts playing like his brother. But there's no reason to expect that whatsoever. Manning's not so bad that he's never put a good game together.
But take a below-average NFL quarterback, surround him with some other talented offensive players, and he's going to play well some of the time. That's just the basic math of it. Meanwhile, 24 points is only slightly above league average -- it's not as if we witnessed some dominating offensive performance.
I think the Redskins can take Seattle today. DC's played much better than the Seahawks in recent weeks, and I think Seattle's NFC West schedule has been pretty weak. I'd feel more confident, though, if not for the whole home field advantage thing. That makes it a very close matchup. Still, no reason a 'skins fan shouldn't feel optimistic. As Thomas Boswell writes, "In all, Washington coped with seven games against teams that are in the playoffs and four others against 8-8 teams" wheres "played nine games against teams with a losing record."
(Along these lines, expect me to miss whichever of this evening's debates conflicts with the Redskins game)
I think Kansas will beat Virginia Tech, but the real winner of the Orange Bowl will be John McCain as the merest thought of football reminds voters of his toughness.
When I was complaining about the sweetheart deal that Kevin McHale gave to the Celtics, some people were defending it in comments. At the center of any such defense is, necessarily, an overrating of Al Jefferson. Make no mistake, he's a pretty nice player. In particular, he's a very good rebounder. Even here, though, a simple look at 12.1 boards per game -- good for fourth in the league -- is a bit misleading. Look at him in terms of rebounds per 48 minutes or rebound rate and he drops down a bit.
But it's on the scoring front where Jefferson's status as a solid 20-10 guy looks most suspect. His usage rate is sky-high and he plays a lot of minutes per game. That bumps up his points per game despite the fact that, as you can see above, his shooting efficiency is kind of unimpressive for a center. One doesn't want to overstate the case here, he's obviously a nice prospect. But there's reason to think he's not really as nice as he seems -- surrounded by terrible players in Minnesota they're giving him tons of shots and he's scoring some, but other prospects on this list (Biedrens and Bynum come to mind especially) might well be putting up better numbers in Jefferson's situation.
I know some people feel that the Celtics have had a soft schedule, but I feel like the extent to which they're dominating the league isn't well appreciated. But to get a taste, look at what Dave Berri noted a couple of days ago: "The Bulls in 1995-96 won 72 games and posted a differential of 13.0. This is the best mark in the league since 1973-74. The Celtics currently have a differential of 14.9. Yes, the current Celtics are posting a better mark than the team considered the best in NBA history. To give this result even more perspective, the Spurs differential this season is 6.9 (which is very good). Still the Spurs mark is only about half of what we see from Boston."
And of course that was before yesterday's 19 point win on the road against the Lakers. Right now, the Celtics average margin of victory -- around 14 -- is leaving everyone else in the dust. It's not just the best in the Association, they're putting up historically great numbers:
Of course that same table shows that not every team that starts out better than the '96 Bulls ends up with a better record than the '96 Bulls. But coming on the heels of the Patriots' perfect regular season and the Red Sox' World Series win, decent non-Boston people need to seriously contemplate the possibility of a record-breaking Celtics season. And, indeed, of all the Boston sports triumphs the Celtics are surely the most egregious: Kevin McHale trades away one of the best players in the league for peanuts. To his former team. Whose general manager is an ex-teammate and good friend. After having rejected numerous better offers. In any well-run fantasy league that would have gotten vetoed.
I don't like to think that I'm single-handedly responsible for the Pats' big win, but looking back the momentum does seem to have shifted about exactly when I posted about the game. Oh well. I suppose on some level I'm glad to have seen history made. The fact that the Patriots have looked eminently beatable in several of their games will only make the playoffs more interesting.
Yesterday we learned that "if President Bush and Ms. Rice can produce a settlement in the Middle East between Israelis and Palestinians and an end to North Korea’s nuclear program, it would give them claims on success that would significantly improve their historical reputations." Today, I see Chad Ford's analysis of DeAndre Jordan's draft prospects, "Jordan would be the No. 1 pick in the draft if he were producing anywhere near the numbers of the guys ranked ahead of him."
I, too, would be a higher rated prospect if I were better at basketball.
It seems the owner of the Washington Capitals has a blog and he's taken note of my ice girls advocacy. I know purists hate it but, eh, hockey purists should probably move to Canada.
When I went to a Capitals game in February I came away with the view that professional hockey needs some kind of equivalent to the cheerleaders of football or dance teams of the NBA. Commenters drew my attention to the fact that some teams do actually do this. Here, for example, are the Dallas Stars Ice Girls:
Went to the Caps game last night, though, and still no ice girls. Pretty thrilling win,t hough. From an NBA-fan perspective it's a bit sad to see how much more engaged and knowledgeable the crowd at the Caps game is compared to the Wizards' fans. I almost feel like we need Gilbert Arenas to contribute to the team by offering pregame seminars and when you're supposed to cheer and boo and so forth.
I doubt anyone's surprised that Scott Skiles got fired, but doing it on Christmas Eve just seems mean. What's more, the team was actually improving -- they started 2-10 and they're 9-16 now, so the new coach may well wind up getting credit for an improvement that was already happening.
Meanwhile, John Paxson might want to consider firing himself. I supported the Ben Wallace signing at the time, but it obviously hasn't worked out very well. But trading away Tyson Chandler for nothing never made sense on any level. Then I've never heard of a team flirting with so many deals to acquire a superstar and then come away with nothing.
Evidently the question of whose better is a controversial one, and many of ESPN.com's writers think the right answer is Kobe. I was toying with the idea of making a chart, but this is so not even close that it's hardly worth borrowing. Suffice it to say that LeBron is scoring more points on better field goal percentage and better true shooting percentage, plus he has a higher assist ratio and a lower turnover ratio. Plus he's a better rebounder, and he has a higher usage rate (i.e., does more to carry his team).
It's true that Kobe's a better on-the-ball defender, but unless the Lakers have changed strategies radically without me noticing they don't normally use him in a defensive stopper role so it's not as if, in practice, his edge on this front is so crucial as to outweigh the fact that he's worse across all these other dimensions.
Reviewing the strange death of the Chicago Bulls a little while back, I concluded that "the only really plausible theory is that Chris Hayes left the Windy City to become Washington editor of The Nation and the Bulls are too sad to play." Well, I went with Chris to the Wiz-Bulls matchup last night and, naturally enough, Chicago won. So score one for my theory. To save his job, Scott Skiles desperately needs to persuade Chris to move back.
Dave Berri looks at the Wizards' surprising resilience in the face of Gilbert Arenas' injuries. The insight that Caron Butler has been playing really, really well will surprise nobody. He does note, however, that Brendan "Haywood is simply taking more shots from the line and the field. And perhaps surprising to some, the increase in Haywood’s shot attempts has not caused his shooting efficiency to decline." And since Haywood was always a fairly efficient scorer, this has helped thus validating my longstanding decree that Eddie Jordan needs to play Haywood more. Beyond that:
Is there any evidence Agent Zero is missed? Yes, but it’s free throw attempts where we see an impact. Last year this team took 29.6 free throw attempts per game. This year the team is only taking 25.2 shots from the line each game.
Intuitively, a scorer who serves as the clear focal point of his team's offense ought to have a lower scoring efficiency than he would have were he able to shift into a more secondary role. Playing alongside other skilled scorers should, in short, open up more opportunities for quality shots. Ray Allen seems like a good candidate for this effect, going in one offseason from being the first option in Seattle to having the third-highest usage rate on the Celtics where Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce share the load.
As you can see, it hasn't happened. His usage rate is lower "true shooting percentage" (a figure that takes into account free throws and the fact that three pointers are worth three points) than during his Seattle days, but his TS% is nothing special -- lower than it was last season, which, in turn, is lower than it was the season before. But perhaps it's just the effect of aging. Kevin Garnett's usage rate is at its lowest point since the 1997-1998 season and he's posting a career-high TS%.
Jim Henley fesses up: "I’m officially wrong about the 2007 Redskins as of last night. I predicted 4-12; they’ve got a good chance of doubling that. They are not an awful team. Rather, they have earned a descriptor too easily bestowed in today’s NFL: mediocre." He worries, however, that recent successes "will tempt the staff . . . to take it for validation of their overall approach."
Well, just to further enhance Jim's worries about complacency, it seems to me that one might look at an 8-8 season (assuming, of course, the Skins can achieve that lofty feat of mediocrity) that featured a young quarterback, tons of offensive line injuries, and the murder of a key defensive player points to good things for the future. Of course, Zombie Sean Taylor's not going to be suiting up to shore up the secondary, but it would seem perfectly reasonable to hope for modest improvements in Jason Campbell's game plus fewer injuries to produce a better result next season.
I'm watching the Packers-Rams game, and during some interstitial segment Fox was showing a montage of Brett Favre playing. The audio track was Pearl Jam's "Better Man," specifically Eddie Vedder intoning about the impossibility of finding a better man. In context, this really doesn't seem like something one should be saying about a sports legend:
Waiting, watchin the clock, its four oclock, its got to stop Tell him, take no more, she practices her speech As he opens the door, she rolls over... Pretends to sleep as he looks her over She lies and says shes in love with him, cant find a better man... She dreams in color, she dreams in red, cant find a better man... Cant find a better man (2x)
The terrible New York Knicks and the awesomely feisty local media environment in New York City is truly a match made in heaven. It's mighty hard, after all, to imagine anything prompting this lede from a DC paper:
NO BULL, KNICKS CAN'T TAKE CHICAGO LIGHTLY By MIKE PUMA December 14, 2007 -- Isiah Thomas wears rose colored glasses to protect his eyes from permanent damage. As president and coach of this catastrophe, it's safer to stare into the sun and count to a thousand than watch the Knicks without those glasses.
Right on. People used to hearing about the Knicks being bad may be overlooking the fact that they're actually considerably worse this season. Last year, they were 17th in offense and 24th in defense (in efficiency terms). The year before that, they were 25th in offense and 26th in defense. This year they're 26th in offense -- a new low! But they're also dead last in defense -- another new low! In short, they're really, really, really terrible and there's essentially no end in sight.
Everyone new that the new Boston Celtics were going to be a good team. But I think a lot of people -- myself included -- have been surprised by just how good they've been. Certainly, I wasn't envisioning this level of defensive domination. One person who's not surprised, though, is schtevie at the APBRmetrics forum who noted on August 3 that if you believe in the adjusted +/- stat that it predicted "that the Celtics will outscore their opponents by between 10 and 13 points per 100 possessions, which would put them in the same league as the greatest Bulls team, which had the highest margin of all time (around 12, if I recall correctly)." He also noted that the estimate might be biased downward because "there is no reason to believe that the Celtics will fill out its roster with replacement level players as there will be an incentive for decent veterans, looking for a ring, to come along for the ride. Also, it was assumed that the current remaining youngsters only had replacement value, and I suspect (at least in the case of Rajon Rondo's) that this isn't the case."
And, well, it's all true. Their efficiency differential is a ridiculous 16 points per hundred possessions. Boston opponents should consider themselves lucky that the Celtics only play 93.6 possessions per game, thus keeping their margin of victory to only 13.8.
I assume the greater accuracy of the adjusted +/- relative to other ways of looking at the situation has something to do with the fact that it can, in principle, do a much better job of capturing the defensive half of the game, which is really where Boston has distinguished itself.
I just can't believe that Roger Clemons was implicated in the Mitchell Report. His post-40 career renaissance and massive increase in muscle mass just screamed out "here's a clean guy." Shocking stuff.
Watching the Mitchell Report press conference now. I'm left once again to wonder if the NBA has a performance enhancing drug problem lurking beneath the service. Why would it only be baseball? There's no test for HGH, right? Here's what David Stern had to say to congress about the NBA's drug policy.
During the offseason, John Hollinger's Caron Butler forecast argued that "Although his trend line says the jumper is becoming more of a weapon each year, I'm not sure Butler can keep stroking those 20 footers at quite the clip he did last season." I'm not sure I understand why Hollinger chose to go against his own projections formula, which saw Butler's field goal percentage going up, but as you can see above, Hollinger was dead wrong. Butler's shot's become more accurate and his true shooting percentage has skyrocketed to above Kobe Bryant or LeBron James.
It's tempting, in a narrative sense, to attribute Butler's emergence to the Gilbert Arenas injury that it's done a lot to offset. The reality, though, seems to be simply that Butler's learned to shoot from beyond the three point arc. As you can see, his percentage on the longball was formerly in the "he really can't hit that shot" range and now he's a good three point shooter. The move from average 1.1 treys per game and making 25 percent of them, to hitting 47 percent of 2.5 per game is worth substantial scoring efficiency on its own terms. And, of course, the ability to hit that shot opens up other aspects of your offensive game.
In my view, he's probably playing better this season than Arenas was last year, but even with Gilbert injured he's still the clear focal point of the Wizards' marketing and the branding inside the Verizon Center.
I couldn't say I want to see the Patriots go 16-0, but I'd certainly like to see them try their best to do it -- no resting of starters, no saving it for the playoffs, etc. In short, what Henley said:
Idiot sports radio personalities - and I apologize for the redundancy - constantly ring variations on The Patriots realize that the real prize isn’t going undefeated, it’s winning the Super Bowl. Nonsense. Somebody wins the Super Bowl every year. The NFL has had 41 of the things and they don’t look like they’re going to stop staging them any time soon. There are plenty of Super Bowl champions. There’s only one post-merger, undefeated champion. Why pass up a chance to make history?
Quite so, quite so. Besides which, everyone knows the Super Bowl become a bit of a joke, a meta-event above and beyond everything and everyone that, at this point, feels only vaguely football-related. A 15-0 team playing its last game, by contrast, is something every football fan in the country will want to see.
I know Eddie Jordan doesn't like Brendan Haywood, but every time I watch the Wizards play this season he starts the game, he plays pretty well, and then he winds up playing unaccountably few minutes. He's got the best rebound rate on the team (16.5), and he's shooting a good percentage (.556) so even if he's not a serious offensive threat it's not like you're accepting a huge liability in exchange for that rebounding. And yet he only gets 26 minutes per game even though the Wizards don't have a real backup center on the roster. Maybe his conditioning's just bad.
Photo by Flickr user Compujeramey used under a Creative Commons license
Before the season started, I thought the weakness of the Boston Celtics was going to be defense. Ray Allen seemed like a clear liability, Paul Pierce is unimpressive, and look beyond the "big three" I didn't see much of anything to help out on this end. Kevin Garnett, obviously, is brilliant defensively, but it's a team game. Boy oh boy was I wrong about that. Boston's defense is not only the best in the league, they're by far the best in the league, a fact that may be somewhat obscured by the fact that they play a middling pace whereas San Antonio and Detroit go at a crawl.
The chart plots points allowed per hundred possessions relative to the league median. The very worst teams in the league -- New York and Minnesota -- both allow 5.7 more points per hundred than the median. Boston, by contrast, allows 5.5 fewer points per hundred than does the next best team. In short, not only is Boston the best, but the gap between the best and the second best is enormous. They're leaving everyone else dead in the water.
ESPN.com's John Hollinger playoff predictor seems like an uncommonly dumb feature. It starts by using his interesting but flawed PowerRankings formula and then "Based on those rankings, each day the computer plays out the remainder of the season 5,000 times to see the potential range of projected outcomes. The results reveal the most likely win-loss record for each team -- and how likely it is for each team to make the playoffs, win the NBA title, win the lottery, and so on."
All this serves to do, however, is exaggerate flaws in the original model by compounding them over and over again.
I wanted to know whether or not there was any meaningful correlation between pace and offensive or defensive efficiency and Dave Berri kindly ran the numbers for me and came up with the answer "no". Obviously, teams that choose to play fast will end up in a lot of high-scoring games while teams that play slow will end up in a lot of low-scoring ones, but playing fast doesn't actually compromise the quality of your defense and shifting to a run-and-gun doesn't promise to help your team score.
As Jim Henley says, just because Gregg Easterbrook believes something doesn't make it false. Football teams are way more eager to punt than reputable statistical analyses of the situation suggest they should and Arkansas' Pulaski High School, where the coach was so impressed by the statistical case against punting that he abandoned punting altogether, is having success with their new strategy.
One popular theory as to why the Bulls suck so bad has to do with the idea that the team is tuning out Scott Skiles who has a reputation as a hardass whom everyone hates. The fly in the ointment of this theory is that coaching- or effort-related collapses usually seem to happen on the defensive end, but the decline in the Bulls' defense has been modest and probably attributable to something like the fact that Ben Wallace is a year older and was having some ankle problems at the beginning of the season. The collapse on offense is hard to explain in these terms -- Chicago was a middling offensive team last year based on a lot of jump shots; this year they're also a jump shooting team running a very similar offense, they just can't make any of the shots.
Maybe last season they were just incredibly lucky. Maybe they've just been incredibly unlucky this year. Vulnerabilities to the vagaries of probability has long been considered one of the problems with the jump shot offense, but the scale and uniformity of the problems are striking.
John Hollinger runs the numbers on why the Bulls are so terrible, and it winds up looking pretty mysterious. The Bulls took a mild dip from first in defensive efficiency to sixth in defensive efficiency, but their offense has crumbled from 20th last season to dead last. Indeed, "if they keep this up they will rank as the worst offensive team in history relative to the league." What's more, Hollinger reports that all of Chicago's players have gotten worse on offense, "every key player is performing vastly below his career norms with the exception of Joe Smith." Andres Nocioni? Slightly worse. Luol Deng and Ben Wallace? Somewhat worse. Ben Gordon and Tyrus Thomas? Much worse. Kirk Hinrich and Thabo Sefolosha? Wildly worse.
This is all the odder for the fact that most of these guys are young players who you'd generically expect to improve, and a couple of them are playing for new contracts after turning down pretty good extension offers in hopes of snagging the big bucks.
The only really plausible theory is that Chris Hayes left the Windy City to become Washington editor of The Nation and the Bulls are too sad to play.
John Hollinger runs the numbers on why the Bulls are so terrible, and it winds up looking pretty mysterious. The Bulls took a mild dip from first in defensive efficiency to sixth in defensive efficiency, but their offense has crumbled from 20th last season to dead last. Indeed, "if they keep this up they will rank as the worst offensive team in history relative to the league." What's more, Hollinger reports that all of Chicago's players have gotten worse on offense, "every key player is performing vastly below his career norms with the exception of Joe Smith." Andres Nocioni? Slightly worse. Luol Deng and Ben Wallace? Somewhat worse. Ben Gordon and Tyrus Thomas? Much worse. Kirk Hinrich and Thabo Sefolosha? Wildly worse.
This is all the odder for the fact that most of these guys are young players who you'd generically expect to improve, and a couple of them are playing for new contracts after turning down pretty good extension offers in hopes of snagging the big bucks.
The only really plausible theory is that Chris Hayes left the Windy City to become Washington editor of The Nation and the Bulls are too sad to play.
One issue that comes up now and again is whether a player is likely to shoot more efficiently if he plays alongside other good players. Intuitively, the answer is "yes." If you need to carry the offense single-handedly, the defense can collapse around you and it's hard to score. If you play alongside other stars, by contrast, the defense is spread out and you can get easy shots. But just because it sounds reasonable doesn't make it true. Some evidence is suggested by the above chart of the Celtics new "Big Three," Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen, all of whom shifted from being the clear focal point of an offense to forming one leg of a more evenly-balanced offensive stool.
As we can see, all three saw their shooting efficiency take a tumble last season and now they're doing better. Even more strikingly, all three are putting up career-high numbers in True Shooting Percentage thus far this season. That's not definitive proof that they're scoring more efficiently because they're scoring together but it's suggestive. Certainly it'll be interesting to see if that trend holds up over the course of the season. Another good case to look at would be Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson.
Celtics beat Knicks, 104-59 (!), thus forcing us to spend the rest of the season attaching a proviso to any discussion of Boston's prodigious average margin-of-victory stats.
I was looking at this latest iteration of efforts to use adjusted +/- statistics to evaluate NBA players, and it served as a reminder of how frustrating I find it that such a large proportion of efforts to apply quantitative tools to the analysis of basketball are dedicated to these searches for magic formulae to assess player quality. There are other, more interesting and probably more fruitful, lines of inquiry where quantitative skills could shed some light.
For example, there's a popular conception of a link between pace and defensive orientation -- specifically the idea that teams that choose to play at a fast pace are sacrificing something in the defense department. On the most naive level, that's simply because a high pace leads to more points being given up. But I think it's generally assumed that it holds up in efficiency terms as well. The 2006-2007 Phoenix Suns, for example, were first in offensive efficiency, third in pace, and fourteenth in defense. But is this really true? If you look at the data season-by-season is there a correlation between pace and defense? When pace changes leaguewide, does scoring efficiency also change? Then there are lots of interesting team level issues to ask. Intuitively, some teams' offenses are optimized for the fast-paced style and will function less efficiently during games that wind up being played at a slow pace. And vice versa also probably holds. But are there some teams who are making a mistake? Squads who score more efficiently when they play slower, but usually try to play fast?
I'm too lazy to actually conduct research into those questions, and I'm not even sure I know how to calculate a coefficient of correlation correctly these days, but I'd read someone who wanted to do it.
Chad Ford's preview of the 2008 free agent class is subscriber-only, but there's no need to read it since the only part that matters is here: "But given current projections, only one team -- the Philadelphia 76ers -- will have enough money under the cap to spend on them. Even the Sixers won't have max room if (a) they have a large cap hold for a high first-round pick and (b) they decide to give Iguodala and Louis Williams, both restricted free agents, big deals this summer."
So, basically, nothing's going to happen. There are a bunch of stars who could opt out of contracts and sign elsewhere, but nobody can pay them, so they'll all get contract extensions instead.
It's best to follow actual news stories on actual news sites, but I thought I should acknowledge the sad death of Redskins safety Sean Taylor after he was shot in Miami by an intruder.
Went with my dad to watch the Knicks beat the shockingly woeful Bulls and whatever one may say about Isaiah Thomas or the Knicks, there's no question that the crowd at Madison Square Garden is light years better than anything DC has at the Verizon Center. The level of intensity and spontaneity and fan understanding of the events on the floor is off the charts. It's easy to see why the owners want to build a new facility with more and better luxury boxes and sightlines, but they've got a pretty good thing going with their fanbase and their home crowd despite the crappy teams, and they'd better not screw it up.
Back last season when he wasn't getting any burn, I'd be yelling "Blatche!" at opportune moments from my seat whenever the game wasn't looking very competitive. Well, thanks to the departure of Calvin Booth and the injury to Etan Thomas it looks like this season is Andray's chance to play, and everyone in the Verizon Center was going wild last night at his beautiful line of 26 points on 12-14 shooting plus eight boards and a block in 29 minutes. Breakout game, woo! And, yes, he still can't really play defense, but this is still the Wizards.
Back in July, Jeff Klein wrote about perennial expectations that some success on the part of Iraq's national soccer team would bring the country together. As he notes, it keeps not happening: Soccer doesn't stop civil wars. And now we read in an article headlined "Iraq says the worst is over in Baghdad" that "The newfound calm, which continues to be shattered by occasional car bombs and roadside blasts, did not come soon enough for four members of the Iraqi national soccer team who fled during a trip to Australia and requested asylum."
So after that terrible start, the Wizards are on something of a roll, winning three in a row as Gilbert Arenas starts playing much more like his own self. Meanwhile, the perennially disappointing Brendan Haywood has really been stepping up this season, offering 10 rebounds and 2 blocks in thirty minutes per game, plus pretty efficient scoring. Admittedly, small sample, but if Haywood can keep up this improved play (and the additional minutes opened up by Etan Thomas' injury; minutes that I think he should have been getting all along) there may be hope for this team yet.
Big day in the thrilling world of Division I-AA sports as Harvard is set to play Yale for the Ivy League title in the annual Game. Certain Longhorns of my acquaintance have been known to disparage the Harvard footballing tradition, but as you can read here football as we know it -- the "concessionary rules" -- were developed precisely to facilitate the playing of this most rivalrous of rivalry games. And where else can you find fight songs in Latin:
Illegitimum non Carborundum; Domine salvum fac. Illegitimum non Carborundum; Domine salvum fac. Gaudeamus igitur! Veritas non sequitur? Illegitimum non Carborundum—Ipso facto!
Josh Markovic (Mimmiville): Can we finally come the realization the KG is much better than Tim Duncan?
John Hollinger: That annoying 4-0 deficit in championship rings is putting a bit of a dent in your case.
I don't think either player is "much" better than the other by any reasonable definition, and this sort of ring-based argument (by which logic Robert Horry is better than KG or Charles Barkley) gets tossed around all the time, but is this really what we need from ESPN's stats specialist? Couldn't Hollinger at least have made a reference to PER? Well, since I want to try out my new copy of Numbers here's a PER comparison:
The striking thing is that Hollinger's arbitrary formula actually backs up his rather silly line of argument. Out of the ten seasons Garnett and Duncan have both been in the league, Duncan has been better than Garnett six times and Duncan has won the championship four times, and Duncan was better than Garnett in all four of his championship seasons. Of course, Hollinger's same formula says Garnett 2006 was better than Duncan 2006, Duncan 1999, or Duncan 2001 and it didn't get Garnett a ring. Indeed, Hollinger's formula says Garnett reached a level of excellence in 2004 and 2005 that Duncan's never reached. Now that's hardly the last word in this debate, but since it's Hollinger's own formula you'd think he could make some reference to it.
I somehow hadn't realized that this afternoon's Wizards-Haws game, which wound up providing the 'zards long-sought first win, was even happening at all.
Can't say that sitting in the stands for this disaster is making me super-optimistic about the nineteen home games left on my ticket package. Over the offseason I found myself becoming semi-convinced by the Dave Berri analysis that Gilbert Arenas was less central to the Wizards than was often assumed -- that he was being overrated and the non-"big three" teammates underestimated -- but now that we see Gilbert with a knee injury and the whole team looking awful, I'm provisionally back to the conventional wisdom.
As John Hollinger points out, it's not just that Diesel's playing badly right now, it's that even if he gets back into shape and improves Miami needs him to be outstanding in a way he probably can't be anymore at his age: "But the Heat's championship hopes depend on Shaq being more than a 'nice' player. He's taking up $20 million a year on a team that refuses to pay luxury tax, so he pretty much needs to be a superstar. Those days appear long gone. Even if Shaq matches his second half numbers from last season, he's a borderline All-Star at best."
What's more, his contract goes through the 2009-2010 season when Miami will also apparently be paying Mark Blount $8 million so I think Dwayne Wade is probably looking at being out of contention for some time.
Photo by Flickr user SporTech used under a Creative Commons license
Obviously, decent people follow the NBA, but for those of you who look forward to bowing down to our Canadian overlords once their vast freshwater reserves give them global hegemony, you might want to check out the most comprehensively curated hockey blogroll in the universe.
Scott Lemieux makes an argument I offered during a bloggingheads segment with Ross, namely given the extremely low quality of Commentary's current output are we really so sure that John Podhoretz was a nepotism hire? As Scott writes, "Given that the actual content of the journal seems to be sixth-rate defenses of failed imperialist schemes and feeble Republican hackery" why shouldn't J-Pod be able to do the job as well or better than anyone else.
In a somewhat more serious vein, one should note the "small world" problem here. The vast majority of intellectuals are on the left. But precisely in order to counteract this leftward domination of the traditional intelligentsia and traditional intelllectual institutions, the conservative movement has over the years dedicated a considerable amount of energy to building a large network of counterestablishment institutions and publications of various sorts. What's more, because this counterestablishment is the product of a specific political critique of the intelligentsia and its impact on American politics, the tendency is for counterestablishment institutions to be much more explicitly political than what you see in traditional intellectual institutions.
The result is that the demand for certain forms of conservative intellectual output appears at times to threaten to outstrip supply. The relatively small number of outlets for liberal political commentary can draw on a vast cadre of liberals scattered throughout the arts and academia. On the right, though, there's more output but less input. As a result, you have Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for the Journal of International Security Affairs (published by JINSA), Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for The Weekly Standard, Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for National Review, Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for The Wall Street Journal, Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for The New York Sun, Claudia Rosett writing about how the UN is evil for Commentary and so on and so forth.
Under the circumstances, almost any hire is going to wind up being "nepotistic" on some level. You're dealing with a very, very, very small world that sometimes appears large because of the large number of institutions involved. But the actual number of people is small, and there tend to be large overlaps in personnel and funding sources. Overlaps, nepotism, and incestuous circles are hardly unknown on the left since that's a pretty small world on its own terms, but it's even more the case on the right in a way that makes these distinctions a bit meaningless.
Kobe not only demanding a trade, but also apparently demanding that Luol Deng not be part of any deal with Chicago is bordering on the lunatic. There's no way Kobe can manipulate the situation to guarantee that he lines up on a championship team. But the current Bulls frontcourt includes Ben Wallace, Tyrus Thomas, Joakim Noah, Luol Deng, and Andres Nocioni plus some other backup types. That's more guys than the team needs to win games if they can upgrade from Ben Gordon to Kobe Bryant at the two.
Indeed, in a lot of ways a Gordon & Deng for Kobe (plus somehow the salaries need to match) trade would result in the ideal situation for him because the resulting team, while definitely in contention, would also be a squad where it made perfect sense for Kobe to take a ridiculously high proportion of the shots.
Some people would use my oft-troubled record as a political prognosticator to derogate the validity of my NBA predictions, but check out last year's picks. They were full of accurate predictions, including that Dallas would win the Southwest but San Antonio would take the championship, though I obviously underestimated Toronto, Golden State, and Detroit.
I suppose it's worth saying something about the rumors flying that Kobe Bryant might get traded to Washington, since I heard someone repeating them excitedly at the corner store. In fact, though, the only observation I have is about the cosmic injustice of conference imbalance. Last year's Lakers went 42-40, whereas the Wizards went 41-41. So the teams did about the same. Except, of course, that if you swapped the entire Lakers roster for the entire Wizards roster, the Wizards would get much better and the Lakers would get much worse. The two teams, after all, compiled their similar records playing against very dissimilar competition.
Gilbert Arenas gets his big profile in The Washington Post magazine. In my experience, a lot of us Wizards fans are experiencing a bit of cognitive dissonance over the whole Gilbert phenomenon. When I first moved to town and the Wizards were, as they are today, a middling franchise capable of making the playoffs in a weak Eastern Conference, nobody in DC seemed aware of that fact. It's not really been a basketball town historically, the Wizards/Bullets had been terrible for a long time, and everyone wanted to talk about the Redskins or the new baseball team.
But for DC's NBA fans there was this treat — a charismatic underrated combo guard with at times questionable decision-making and commitment to defense, but an unquestionable nose for scoring and various delightful quirks. Now over the past twelve months or so, Gilbert seems to have leapt from underrated to overrated — he's on the cover of NBA Live, I saw his jersey prominently featured in the NBA Store in New York, etc. — and I'm not sure he realizes that he owes his fans in DC something more. In particular, a winning basketball team. In double particular, the Wizards defense was so bad last season that it seems to me that something as simple as a little leadership by example from the team's star player could do a lot to boost the defense from "awful" to "below average" and win a ton of games. But I'm not at all optimistic that it'll happen.
Season starts tonight; I'm going to make a bold prediction that San Antonio will beat Portland. Also I figure, given the evenness of the year and all, that San Antonio won't win the championship. Instead, I'll take Dallas for best record in the West, followed by Houston, San Antonio, Phoenix, Utah, Denver, Lakers, and New Orleans in roughly that order. In the East I have Boston (beyond the obvious, I think Rajon Rondo is better than people think) followed by Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Washington, Orlando, and Miami. Obviously, a Bulls-Lakers deal for Kobe could change that, though the current asking price of Gordon, Deng, Thomas, and Noah seems clearly too high.
I was hoping Dave Berri's Eastern Conference forecast would contain some crazy counterintuitive predictions we could hold him to, but Boston #1, Chicago #2, followed by Detroit and Cleveland closely matched for third and fourth best teams seems pretty sensible. I'm glad, however, to see yet another person predicting that the Wizards will miss the playoffs. I was getting frustrated with this one and done business, but now that everyone's saying it's a non-playoff team, making the playoffs and losing in six will feel somewhat satisfying again.
So when I sat down to watch the Redskins-Patriots game yesterday afternoon, I was under no illusions that the ultimate outcome of the game would be anything other than a Skins defeat, but wow, what domination. I had read, of course, about how good the Pats were and seen the highlight reels, but this was the first game of theirs of watched this season and it was a thing to behold — I find myself seized by a vague, nameless horror so mystical and well-nigh ineffable that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. Good luck, Colts....
I'd been a little unsure what to think of the Charlotte Bobcats' prospects. It seemed to me that they could, in principle, be a playoff team in the weak east. In practice, though, this is a team that appeared determined to give major minutes to its worst player in order to avoid admitting that they shouldn't have drafted him. But now with Adam Morrison out for the year with a knee injury, there may be some hope for him yet. Then again, any organization that could have given Morrison thirty minutes per game last season can surely find whole new things to screw up.
Hollinger's preseason writeup for Charlotte had said of Morrison "he's either going to get better or he's not going to play, but there's no way he's going to soak up 2,000 minutes and be as abysmally bad as he was last season," but I'm really not sure why he was so optimistic that they would come to their senses had injury not forced their hand.
Noam Scheiber notes some evidence that Mitt Romney's not a real Red Sox fan and asks "What is it with these presidential candidates and their baseball loyalties?" The thing of it is that it's hard out there for a politician. I remember when I was an intern in Chuck Schumer's office and for some reason the question arose of Schumer's favorite football team. The staff took the view that it would be impossible for him to ever express a view on the subject, because given that he'd spent his whole life living in the city he wouldn't be credible for him to be anything other than a Giants or Jets fan, but since the Bills play in New York State and the Giants and Jets don't, he couldn't very well root for anyone other than the Bills. Thus, he had no favorite football team.
After announcing a forthcoming cartoon show or something, Gilbert Arenas goes on to address the Halo 3 cheating allegations at considerable length on his blog. Tom Lee scrutinizes the charges and the defense and says: "it's true that this isn't as vile as the glitch-based cheating that's also rampant on XBL. So it may not be necessary to call David Stern just yet. Tell you what, Gilbert: bring home a playoff appearance this season and we'll forget the whole thing ever happened." I'll agree with that.
Wizards center Etan Thomas is undergoing heart surgery today and will miss the season. One's heart goes out to one of the NBA's real good guys, but as a Wizards fan I also hope this will help Eddie Jordan get over his irrational dislike of Brendan Haywood.
As everyone knows, the Wizards are very good offensively on very bad on defense. To improve as a team, the best thing to do is to pick the low-hanging fruit and try to get the defense up to "below average" rather than "incredibly awful." And the easiest way to do that is to give Haywood more minutes. As you can see from the on court / off court numbers, the team is very slightly better on offense with Haywood in but substantially better on defense. Big Brendan's no great defender, but that's precisely the point -- the team's in a position where merely having an average interior defensive presence on the floor makes a big difference.
I hadn't realized that the 76ers acquired Reggie Evans last month. Obviously, for a team in desperate need of a power forward this becomes an any-port-in-a-storm kind of situation, but I think Evans is a pretty underrated player. Certainly, "a backup who's being forced to start" isn't how I'd describe a guy who had a league-leading 23 percent rebound rate last season. Obviously, five Reggie Evanses aren't going to get you anywhere, but he seems like an extremely useful player to me -- one who can really shine given the chance to start.
Photo by Flickr user thanasim25 used under a Creative Commons license
Sometimes I daydream about the moment when Apple will realize that it should reach a product placement deal with a prominent political blogger such as myself and give me a bunch of cool free stuff in exchange for me writing about it. But now along comes Gilbert Arenas, apparently ruining things, by making companies think you can't trust a blogger with an endorsement deal:
Adidas executives learned that day what an increasing number of marketers have found -- that pitchmen armed with a blog can be tricky. Blog posts are typically candid and breezy, not the kind of safe, stock answers that athletes are often advised to give in postgame interviews, says David Carter, executive director of the USC Sports Business Institute in Los Angeles.
My commitment to any potential sponsors is that in exchange for free stuff of a sufficiently high quality I will eschew both candor and breeziness. I, after all, am a professional blogger, not some basketball player moonlighting.
Another reason to expect Charlotte to improve is Morrison. He's either going to get better or he's not going to play, but there's no way he's going to soak up 2,000 minutes and be as abysmally bad as he was last season.
Really? Morrison seemed like a bad draft choice, but Charlotte picked him anyway. Then he played terribly but Charlotte kept playing him. Why should we just assume they'll get smart about this? What if they keep on doing what they've been doing?
The Washington Wizards may not know how to play defense worth a damn, but they do have one asset in spades that other teams lack -- political magazine writers moonlighting as basketbloggers prepared to defend them from John Hollinger's smears -- so let me quote Chris Orr from The Plank on his prediction that the Wizards will go 33-49:
Hollinger comes to his cataclysmic conclusion by making incontrovertibly true observations (the Wizards play atrocious defense) and downright odd ones--e.g., suggesting Caron Butler is going to get worse because he just had "a career year at 27." First off, Butler has improved every year for the last three years, so this wasn't some kind of strange outlier. (Indeed, the "career year" was only marginally better than his previous year--18.41 PER to 17.11 PER, using Hollinger's own vaunted stat for overall performance.) As for the fact that his best year so far came at 27(!), I'm not even sure whether Hollinger thinks that's too old or too young; it seems to me a pretty typical place to have a (to date) career year.
The real question, however, is whether or not we can proclaim the Wizards to be the Association's bloggiest team. Agent Zero himself is a blogger. Dan Steinberg's DC Sports Bog for The Washington Post sets the pace for newspaper sports blogging. And, of course, the team has its following among the world's highly trained professional political pundits. Advantage: Wizardsphere.
John Hollinger's Western Conference forecasts are up at the ESPN site. It's Insider-only content, but he's going with what I imagine will be the controversial idea that Houston will finish number one ahead of San Antonio and Dallas (numbers two and three respectively). His argument rests, in part, on the fact that last year's scoring differential predicted 57.4 wins as opposed to the 52 that the team actually got, so he sets that as the baseline. What's more, he says, "the addition of more players who can create their own shot is going to be a huge benefit to the offense, which was excruciating to watch last season." And, indeed, despite his reputation as a ball hog, Steve Francis was a pretty efficient scorer last season.
I know this is what a lot of people have been waiting for. For all the shoeheads out there, allow me to introduce you to the adidas GilIIZero. I was calling them the Gil 20s, because that’s how it’s pronounced, but when you go to buy them in the store (which I know you will) it will say GilIIZero on the box. I just wanted to clear that up so you don’t get confused and think Boyz II Men has a shoe or something.
This just seems like a terrible idea. In many fonts, the capital "I" looks so close to a lower-case "l" that the shoes appear to be the GilllZeros with three "l"s.
Wizards forward Andray Blatche, arrested in an August 2 prostitution bust around Thomas Circle, will be attending some kind of seminar for Johns. It seems that it "features lectures by police officers and prosecutors on the laws regarding prostitution, safe sex and the dangers associated with soliciting prostitutes." Could this possibly be useful? It seems like an obvious waste of everyone's time and money. It's not like these people are hiring hookers by accident.
So during last night's Redskins-Eagles game, we all remember the moment when the Skins had the ball on the 11 with 14 seconds left to play in the half, right? They were down 6-3 and the right thing to do, clearly, was take a shot at the end zone and if the pass went incomplete, go kick a field goal. But instead Joe Gibbs . . . sent in the field goal team. Fortunately, Eagles coach Andy Reid noted that this was a ridiculous play and called a timeout, giving Gibbs a chance to reconsider, call a pass, score a touchdown, and go on to win the game. Wasn't that a bit odd? Who changes their mind in a situation like that? And what was Gibbs thinking the first time around?
The Redskins are on Monday Night Football tomorrow night, so some friends and I are planning on going to a bar to hang out and watch the game. The logical candidate would seem to be Nellie's, a newish sports bar that just opened up this summer. Nellie's is, however, not just a sports bar, but a gay sports bar.
Now, all else being equal, I guess my inclination would be to avoid the local gay sports bar and head for the local conventional sports bar, except . . . Nellie's is the only sports bar in the neighborhood. So what I'm wondering is what does one do under the circumstances to keep the gay sports bar gay? After all, breeders like sports, too, and it (a) sounds like a great place to watch a game and (b) has a"somewhat remote location from the vortex of DC's urban gay culture" so isn't going to just turn into a heterosexual sports bar?
Apparently playing soccer makes you dumb. Or, to be precise, heading the ball frequently leads to "mild to severe deficits in attention, concentration, and memory." Nevertheless, I think one has to assume that, all things considered, this is still a safer pursuit for your kid than American football.
Looks like Greg Oden will probably miss the entire season with a knee injury. It seems to me that at this point we should consider the possibility that Oden may be officially Injury Prone, which is really not what you're looking for in the savior of your franchise.
I've been remiss in not doing any blogging about the revelation that Bill Belichick's defensive schemes seem to involve cheating. To me, the potentially excellent shadenfreude value here is diminished by the fact that the main alternative to the Patriots is the . . . also loathsome Indianapolis Colts. All of which is to say that Ross is right about dynasties. One, especially if they're not too dominant, can be good for a league by giving everyone someone to hate. But a dynastic rivalry soon enough just becomes tedious for everyone not from the two cities involved.
Photo by Flickr user Silas216 used under a Creative Commons license
Since it worked, of course, Joe Gibbs is going to wind up not taking criticism for his odd decision to kick the early field goal instead of continuing to run the football, but I still don't like the decision. Not only does it seem wrong on the merits to me, but it seems strange to start off your season with a vote of no confidence in your running backs.
First 'skins game of the season: excellent. CBS not broadcasting the game in HD for some reason: not at all excellent. I'm a little baffled by this decision. At this point in time, virtually all sporting events seem to be available in HD and nothing get better ratings than the NFL.
Okay, well, readers will be aware that I'm not an especially close student of the college football game. That said, I'm well aware that Michigan is supposed to have a good football team. Instead: They suck. Like really, really, really badly. But why are they so terrible?
And what's wrong with the rankers that they had this stinker of a team listed at number five. Meanwhile, Bob Farley point out that had Appalachian State lost last week, then today's Oregon victory would have done much more to vault Oregon forward in the standings. This sort of thing, to me, is a big part of what makes college football dispiriting compared to properly organized sports.
Okay, Team USA Basketball got the job done in the FIBA Americas Tournament, and we're now guaranteed an Olympic berth. That we had to play for the spot at all is, however, a mere testament to how far the program has fallen after its disappointing performances in '02, '04, '06. To celebrate, a clip from the glory days, Vince Carter's dunk of death:
Onward to Beijing. Basketball's one sport they won't need to cancel due to air quality concerns.
Less than a week 'till the Saints-Colts matchup that kicks of the NFL season, and already the former Soviet republic of Georgia is getting into the mood by having their Republican Party rip off the Houston Texans' logo. Not knowing anything about Georgian political parties, I can say that I don't care for this one's name. Industry Will Save Georgia seems like a cool name for a party.
Looks like the diplomatic mission to Hong Kong spearheaded by Senator Herb Kohl (D-Bucks) has paid off, and Yi Jianlian is going to play for Milwaukee after all. Will he be any good? Hollinger (subscribers only) says it all depends on Yi's real age. If he's actually 19, he's a promising prospect. If he's actually 23, this is guaranteed bust territory.
Photo by Flickr user PhatAlbert used under a Creative Commons license
A skeptical Ann Friedman links to a Guardian article proclaiming the "feminization" of the internet:
Forget the 20-something man playing online fantasy football and selling motorbike parts on eBay. The internet has a new user.
When a British newspaper writes "football" they mean "soccer," right? But do people really put together fantasy soccer teams? The whole fantasy sports concept seems heavily dependent on the availability of statistics, and soccer doesn't seem to me to have enough.
I actually watched some of the US Senior Men's Basketball team demolishing Canada yesterday afternoon, and I have to say that that was some boring, boring stuff. I'm all for the US fielding better teams than what we had in '04 and '06 but the kind of dominance that seems on display in this FIBA Americas tournament is just profoundly dull. The good news is that NFL is just around the corner and the long, dark sports desert of the summer is coming to an end.
Chris Hayes reports on the nationwide grassroots movement to stop the construction of the NAFTA Superhighway, a Mexico City to Toronto corridor "four football fields wide" where "equipped with high-tech electronic customs monitors, freight from China, offloaded into nonunionized Mexican ports, will travel north, crossing the border with nary a speed bump, bound for Kansas City, where the cheap goods manufactured in booming Far East factories will embark on the final leg of their journey into the nation's Wal-Marts."
The story of the activists mobilizing against this highway is sort of inspiring except there are no plans for any such highway. It's all made up. The resulting article is a fascinating look at the populist backlash.
Dave Berri makes the case that the Bobcats are likely to improve up to a level of solid mediocrity next season, and it doesn't even involve any wildly unorthodox statistical claims. Have I mentioned how demoralizing the Wizards' lack of offseason moves has been? I can easily imagine not making the playoffs now. I'm not sure there were any brilliant moves left on the table, but the team could have used something.
I don’t know what it is about the game that has changed—maybe it’s my preferences that have changed—but I don’t enjoy the game very much any more. I think the problem is that there are too many people on too small of a court. Sometimes I feel that I’m watching a rugby scrum, waiting for an orange ball to pop out towards the hoop and hope that there is no whistle. My solution would be to increase the size of the court, which of course won’t happen since the court is constrained by the size of arenas. I think this would open up more passing and reduce fouling.
If you wanted to do something along these lines, the smart move would be not to make the court bigger (constrained by arena size), but to make the game four-on-four instead of five-on-five and then possibly make the court somewhat smaller (but not as much as 20 percent smaller). That would open the game up without requiring bigger arenas, and would also serve to de facto un-dilute the talent pool.
I, however, basically agree with Tyler Cowen that I like the existing NBA just fine and don't really care that others don't like it. One thing that's true of basically all of the existing American sports leagues is that if you eliminated some of the poorly-performing franchises things would be more fun for the fans of the remaining ones.
As a Nancy Pelosi apologist and a Barry Bonds apologist, I'm glad to see Pelosi standing up for San Francisco values and hailing Bonds for taking his "rightful place among sport's immortals."
This via guest bloggin' Steve Bainbridge who also correctly notes that baseball is kind of dull. Which seems like as good a time as any to mention that, in my opinion, Oleksiy Pecherov would benefit from some 'roids.
ASTERISK WATCH....Barry Bonds has finally hit home run #756. Can we now please go back to ignoring him?
I say: No. The man holds the record for most career home runs and most home runs in a single season. What's more, not only did he hit 73 home runs in 2001, but he also "managed to shatter two of Babe Ruth's longstanding records -- most walks (177) and highest slugging percentage (.863) in a season." That record of walks stood until . . . the next season when he drew 198. Then in 2004, he drew 232 which helped hold him to 45 homers but helped power him to an OBP of .609, a major league record. He had nine different seasons with over 30 stolen bases, plus two 29 SB seasons and a 28 SB season.
He is, in short, the greatest offensive player in the history of baseball. Not being someone who pays much attention to baseball, I don't pay a ton of attention to Bonds, but it's silly for people to just shut their ears and pretend this didn't happen. Yes, it appears that during the period when Major League Baseball had no steroid policy, he took steroids. And the day when MLB invalidates all the other records from the Steroid Era -- rescinds the World Series titles and the division penants, takes back the Cy Young awards and the Golden Gloves, etc., etc., etc. -- I suppose it would make sense to take Bonds' achievements away too. But until that happens, the records are the records and he played better than anyone else.
In non-NBA sports news, Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron's home run record last night. This opinion is, presumably, valueless since I'm not really a baseball fan, but I take a controversial pro-Bonds position. It's unfortunate, perhaps, that the holder of an important record should have played during the steroid era. Still, I don't see the achievement as meaningfully "tainted" by allegations of Bonds' steroid use.
The use, after all, is presumed to have happened during a time when steroid use was widespread in the league, presumably by, among others, the pitchers whose pitches Bonds was hitting and the fielders who were running down his fly balls. If there were some evidence that the introduction of steroids into the game biased things overall in the direction of more home runs, that would be one thing, but my understanding is that research doesn't show that. See, i.e., this paper PDF: "Before we can reach any conclusions about the contribution of steroids to performance in professional baseball, we first must know something about home run hitting. What was home run hitting like before there were steroids? What is it like now that there is some evidence of steroid use? In a nutshell, the answer is that there are no differences." Bonds is the greatest hitter to ever play, steroids or no.
Photo by Flickr user FemaleTrumpet02 used under a Creative Commons license
It looks like yesterday's rumored Kevin Garnett trade has come to pass and the Big Ticket is heading to Boston in exchange for "a package of players that reportedly includes Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff and at least one first-round pick." Reactions:
Due to the utter lack of depth, this is going to be a less-than-overwhelming team despite the starpower -- maybe 45-50 wins.
Since it's the Eastern Conference, 45-50 wins could easily make for a Finals-caliber team.
And of course this makes Boston an attractive destination for free agents still on the market.
Most of all, though, the fact that Minnesota put itself in a position where this rather sad offer was the best they could do is just terrible, terrible general management. In particular, it's pretty astounding that no Wolves-Bulls trade came together back when PJ Brown's expiring deal was still on the table.
I was all prepared to proclaim this a valuable resource for anyone interested in professional basketball statistics, but I actually have no idea what I would do with all that information presented as hard-to-read text files. No doubt it's useful for someone, who could import the data into some other kind of program or something, but I'll stick with basketball-reference.
I just want to make clear that if, as Marc Stein is reporting, the main sticking point preventing a Timberwolves-Celtics trade for Boston to acquire Kevin Garnett is the big ticket's "well-chronicled unwillingness to play in Boston," that though this blog likes to engage in some Boston-bashing now and again it's hardly that bad a town.
The NBA desperately needs Kevin Garnett to be playing on a contending team and, frankly, he and his sad Minnesota crew just might contend in the East. Garnett plus Paul Pierce plus Ray Allen is, on this coast at least, a powerhouse. It does seem, though, that the real stumbling block here should be less a question of where Garnett wants to play than the simple fact that beyond Pierce and Allen, the only asset Boston has is Al Jefferson. Jefferson's a good prospect, sure, but you'd want more than that if you're Minnesota. Can they ask for every first round draft pick until the end of time?
If you ignore all the shots he missed, he sure put together an impressive summer league performance:
In the real world a .333 field goal percentage isn't what you're looking for. Sadly, though, these games seem to have zero predictive value, so there's really no speculation worth having.
A Phoenix fan puts together a decent case that corrupt ref Tim Donaghy may have fixed Game 3 of the Suns-Spurs playoff series in San Antonio's favor:
The case would be stronger, however, if the fan had actually restricted himself to calls (or non-calls) Donaghy made, instead of throwing in the kitchen sink. That said, we're obviously going to need to know more about this. One hopes that the FBI investigation will produce a reasonably definitive account of which games Donaghy was bending.
I understand that the NBA is a business and that in the business world, business is business, but what's happening to the Phoenix Suns is pretty maddening. The Suns are giving away their first round draft picks in 2008 and 2010 as a sweetener to get the Seattle Supersonics to take Kurt Thomas -- a legitimate rotation player -- off their hands in exchange for nothing. The draft-related cost cutting thus far hasn't been so bad, but even though Thomas is hardly the league's best player, it's very difficult to see how to square ditching the guy you use to guard Tim Duncan (or Yao Ming!) with a good-faith effort to win a championship.
Hasn't been one of the NBA's better-known officials, but that's about to change as he turns out to be the one accused of betting on games and slanting his officiating to help cover spreads.
Wow. It looks like the FBI is investigating an NBA ref who was betting on games he was officiating, twisting the calls to impact the point spread. This probably isn't going to get people to think any better of the already much-derided NBA officiating quality.
Steve Francis signs on with Houston. This has suddenly become a very deep team, though it would have been a more likable one without this signing. I feel like he should have gone to Cleveland.
John Hollinger says the Houston Rockets had the most offseason improvement:
In the big picture, the Rockets aggressively addressed their three main problems: stagant offense, point guard and power forward. Between the coaching change, the additions of James and first-round pick Aaron Brooks at the point, the pickups of Scola and Butler up front, and the de facto addition of Wells, this team suddenly looks loaded. At this point in the offseason, nobody has upgraded more than this club.
I tend to agree. Is it possible that the West now has the four best teams in the league? This sounds like a better lineup than Cleveland or Detroit can muster.
The Spurs trading Luis Scola and Jackie Butler for what amounts to nothing is a bit puzzling. Scola, in particular, seems like a good player. Given his age, he lacks superstar potential but according to John Hollinger's Euroleague formula, based on his translated stats he "projects as one of the few Euros who could start in the NBA immediately." He's mature, he has experience winning at the highest non-NBA levels of competition available, etc. He seems, in short, like an asset you wouldn't just give away -- to a rival team, no less.
That said, at this point "maybe RC Buford is a moron" doesn't seem like an incredibly plausible scenario. What's more, given that Manu Ginobili and Fabricio Oberto are on the team, it's hardly as if the Spurs organization is driven by a pathological loathing of Argentinians. Nor do they seem like the kind of people inclined to arbitrarily discount accomplishments in the ACB or international competition. Indeed, the reverse seems to be the case. The Spurs would seem to be in a much better position to evaluate Scola than anyone else is. So what do they know? What do they think they know?
Chucky Atkins says he's "looking forward to winning a championship in Denver" as he replaces Portland-bound Steve Blake on the Nuggets. Size-wise, Atkins doesn't seem like a great backcourt-mate for Allen Iverson, but he can hit the three which is a great fit for Denver's personnel. He had his best season by a large margin last year at 31, which was weird, but the Nuggets really aren't paying him very much so even if that turns out to be a total fluke they're covered. It's still probably not championship material, but it'll be fun to watch the New Nuggets play a whole season together.
It seems that the Sacramento Kings want to pay $18 million over three years for the services of Mikki Moore, based on his breakout season lats year. The trouble, as Dave Berri points out, is that there was no breakout -- he just played more minutes, and had essentially the same per minute production.
His scoring efficiency was up a bit from his career average, but his rebounding was down a bit. Overall, it was an above average year, but not enormously above average, and the dude's 31 so it's not as if these were flashes of promise likely to be built on in the future.
In many cases, the battle between agent and general manager is not a fair fight. On one side you have the agent, a professional negotiator who spends all year thinking about how to drive up the player's price. On the other side you have GMs, many of whom are former players who have seldom handled negotiations. They usually had agents for that.
Fascinatingly, Ford mentions this and then just lightly moves on. But doesn't it seem like a big deal? It's a business job. Why don't teams hire people with business experience?
Signs with the Bobcats for the bargain price of $57 million over six years. Rashard Lewis, we'll recall, got a $110 million. And it's true, of course, that if we neglect the fifty percent of the game known as "defense" that Lewis is a slightly better player.
Chad Ford reaches exciting new heights of hyperbole in his writeup of 2008 draft project Alexis Ajinca who's said to be a "Super long, wiry forward with nuclear athleticism." Yes, nuclear.
Freakish is out.
And the wingspan?
"Amazing 7-foot-8 wingspan" so no worries.
We still need wingspan. Nevertheless, he's only the 87th best prospect overall but might be good a good prospect "maybe two or three years down the road."
Photo by Flickr user Dyxie used under a Creative Commons license
China's censored news media takes a stand for freedom, urging Yi Jianlian to ignore his agent's concerns about playing in Milwaukee. "Yi, stand up and speak for yourself," China Daily said, citing an article in the Beijing Evening Post. "Don't hesitate anymore and don't let anybody control your life."
Of course, an alternative interpretation is that it really is Yi who doesn't want to play for the Bucks, the Chinese government is trying to pressure Yi to go to Milwaukee (perhaps as part of an invasion plot in conjunction with Venezuelan space terrorists), and this business about Dan Fegan is just an effort to give Yi a face-saving way of backing out.
I feel like Dave Berri's missing my point here: "Now we have the argument that the value of Lewis should not depend upon position played. The numbers tell us that playing Lewis at power forward will cost Orlando rebounds. But we should ignore this fact and simply give Lewis extra credit for making an effort."
No. This is what I'm saying. Suppose you have two players. One is Rashard Lewis, excellent small forward (according to Berri's numbers) and average power forward (again, according to Berri's numbers). Now you have a second player. Call him "Lashard Rewis." Rewis puts up Lewis' exact same numbers, but if his coach tries to insert him as a power forward he refuses to play. Which player is better to sign -- Lewis or Rewis? Berri says it's Rewis -- Rewis will have a better position-adjusted Wins Produced number. I say -- and basic common sense says -- it's Lewis.
In any situation where Rewis could help the team win by playing small forward, Lewis can do it, too. But some situations will arise (suppose your starting power forward has fouled out and your backup power forward sucks, while your backup small forward is an above average player) where Lewis is a more useful player to have on your roster. It's true that teams employing Lewis do well to remember that he's much more effective as a small forward than as a power forward (assuming that's true) but it's also true that it's better -- more useful to your coach and GM -- to be able to "play out of position" with a modicum of success than to be totally useless.
That said, it's slightly absurd to even discuss positional matchups within the Wins Produced framework because it doesn't deal with defensive matchups at all. Is Player X quick enough to "downsize" and stay with his man? Is he tall and strong enough to "upsize" and not get pushed around? The Wins Produced framework doesn't differentiate between (very useful) players who can guard multiple positions, and (unfortunate) players who defend two positions because they're equally ineffective at both spots.
Chauncey Billups signs with Detroit for five years and sixty million dollars, with the fifth year as a team option. John Hollinger noted month ago that Billups has the characteristics of a point guard who ages well -- he's big, he's an excellent shooter, and he was something of a late-bloomer -- so the is likely to give Detroit good value. And, if he does wind up falling off the cliff three or four years from now, the team option lets them dump him. All very convenient. Still, it's hard to avoid the sense that the Pistons' window may have closed unless Joe Dumars can pull something more dramatic than resigning his existing star.
Photo by Flickr user Farlane used under a Creative Commons license
Marty Burns says Darko Milicic could be in line for a biggish payday:
Milicic is expected to command a multiyear deal starting in the $7 to $8 million range. Some say that's optimistic, given that there are so few teams with any cap room.
Assuming he winds up unable to pull off anything more than the midlevel exception, I think the Lakers have to sign him, just so the world can experience the Kwame/Darko All-Bust front line. Those two, Kobe Bryant, plus some Chinese dude from the ABA would be priceless.
Lewis is a comb0-forward, which means he has logged minutes at power forward and small forward in his career. WP48 is calculated by comparing a player relative to the average player at his position. Because power forwards tend to rebound at a higher rate than small forwards, power forwards tend to offer higher levels of productivity. So when Lewis is compared to players at the four spot, he tends not to look so good. Relative to small forwards, though, he can be very good.
To illustrate, consider last season. When Lewis played power forward his WP48 was only 0.096, which is close to average. At the three spot his WP48 was 0.209, which is above the “perfect” mark.
This is more than a little perverse. Good power forwards are hard to come by. That Rashard Lewis is capable of performing competently in that role is an asset he has as a player. But thanks to the WoW position-adjustment method, it registers as a problem for his game. If he was much, much worse at playing the 4, he'd never be asked to do it, and his WoW rating would look much better. But in the real world, he'd be a less valuable basketball player.
I promise that my initial intention in setting out to do some research for this post was to cast a little doubt on the widespread-on-ESPN.com assumption that Ray Allen's career is about to head off a cliff. That led me to Basketball-Reference.com which judges Allen's career thus far to be substantially more similar to Mitch Richmond's than to anyone else.
Unfortunately, between the 97-98 season (when he was 32) and the 98-99 season (when he was 33), Richmond experienced a sudden and dramatic decline in playing ability, transforming overnight from a star-quality player to a decided state of averageness.
Photo by Flickr user Skidrd used under a Creative Commons license
I'm a Mark Cuban fan in the vast majority of respects, but this certainly seems to put him in serious WATB territory:
That's according to Don Nelson's attorney, John O'Connor, who said Cuban is suing Nelson, claiming the Warriors beat the Mavs in the first round because the Warriors' coach -- and former coach of the Mavs -- had "confidential information and he [Cuban] wants to enjoin Don from coaching against the Mavericks."
Maybe O'Connor's badly misrepresenting the substance of the lawsuit or maybe there's some hidden aspect to this that I'm unaware of, but this certainly seems pretty ridiculous. There are former members of the Spurs organization sprinkled throughout the league (Mavericks coach Avery Johnson, for example) and they don't recuse themselves from playing against San Antonio.
Photo by Flickr user KK+ used under a Creative Commons license
Not only is Spanish guard Juan Carlos Navarro leaving Winterthur FC Barcelona to join the Washington Wizards, but he seems to have a well-entrenched nickname in Spain "Bomba Navarro," as seen on his official website, BombaNavarro.com, available in both Catalan and Castellano dialects (no English, sorry).
The inefficiency of the NBA personnel market is always a marvel to behold. The three point specialist is a type whose value varies substantially from situation to situation and while if Navarro works out that'll of course be good for DC, you'd hardly put the Wizards on the list of the top five teams who could really use a three point specialist. Someplace like Cleveland, Houston, or Utah (where they always seem to be on the lookout for white guys in general) would make a lot more sense.
I attended a secret Midcoast Blogger Summit yesterday in Ellsworth, Maine with two of the FreeDarko crew who are up in the Mount Desert area at the moment. Talk naturally turned to How to Save the NBA. Unfortunately, I forgot to present my actual idea on this before leaving. My thought, though, is that the intrinsic competitive imbalance problem driven by the short supply of tall people (see also here or, more briefly, the reason you pick Greg Oden with the number one pick) would best be addressed by adopted a European-style system of having multiple tiers of play with teams promoted or demoted according to how they fare.
Obviously, the details could go in a few different ways, but in broad outline you might do three different divisions -- Division A, Division B, and Division C -- each with 12 teams. At the end of the season, the two worst teams in Division A would get demoted to Division B for the next year. The two worst teams in Division B would be demoted to Division C. But Division C's two best teams would get promoted to Division B, and Division B's two best teams would get promoted to Division A. The result is that almost every team would have "something to play for" throughout the season.
I think this business of signing Rashard Lewis to a maximum contract is madness. They could use this as an example in a class on the "winner's curse". Cap management matters in this league, a lot. You just can't be throwing that kind of money at a sub-par rebounder who's terrible at defense no matter how good a shooter he is. John Hollinger begs to differ:
Plus, with Billups and Carter intent on re-signing with their respective teams, Lewis was the single best "portable" free agent available. Getting the No. 1 guy rarely fails as a free agent strategy; even if Lewis somehow fails to live up to his Seattle numbers, the Magic still are getting a quality player.
Larry Hughes is laughing all the way to the bank on the basis of this theory.
Jason Zengerle lets us know that Sacramento Kings draft pick Spencer Hawes is a global warming denialist. Hawes is also, I think, a solid candidate for bust status in light of his poor rebound rate and TS%, especially since the overrated white collegian is a well-known draft phenomenon (which makes how low Nick Fazekas went in light of his stats even more puzzling).
“I found that pitchers from the South are not more likely in general to hit batters,” [Thomas] Timmerman said in a telephone interview, “but they are much more likely to hit batters after giving up a home run, or after a teammate has gotten hit the previous half-inning.”
Timmerman speculates that this may be due to the honor culture of the south. Boaz extends the hypothesis to say that perhaps the issue is not Dixie per se but the Scotch-Irish tradition (see Michael Lind and especially Senator Jim Webb), noting that "Two of the top non-Southerners on the list, Jeff Weaver and David Wells" are from Southern California, where the white population has traditionally been heavy Scotch-Irish.
Meanwhile, from the "what are they thinking" files the Seattle management seems to have spent too much time reading Free Darko or something. They draft Kevin Durant, an amazing talent, but someone who, unfortunately, plays the same position as their second-best player. Thus, they decide to trade their best player for another rookie small forward.
Presti sees this glut as a benefit, not a hindrance. He wants players who can play a variety of positions and give a commitment to defense.
Um . . . okay, but defense starts from the inside out and this is a deal that leaves the Sonics with diddly squat in the middle. If they're going to play with this lineup, though, they should really find a way to get Don Nelson to coach the team.
This Zach Randolph trade feels a bit funny. After all, one of the few things the Knicks don't need is a low-post scorer who's a bit suspect on the defensive end and in terms of focus and effort. But insofar as they got him for cheap, it seems that the Knicks pulled off a solid deal, strange as those words are to type. Meanwhile, Portland either has a lot of faith in Channing Frye as a prospect, or else very little faith in Randolph. I tend to think it must be the former, since even if they were absolutely desperate to rid themselves of Randolph he seems to me like a guy that more than one team would be interested in getting their hands on.
When I was asking how to pronounce "Yi Jianlian" my focus was on pronouncing "jianlian." If the SportsCenter team is to be believed, however, we're supposed to pronounce "Yi" as "ee" rather than the way that seems natural. Since my own family name begins with a "Y" pronounced like "ee" I won't complain about this, but I do want an explanation.
John Hollinger's gone where stat guys normally fear to tread and attempted to devise a formula aimed at projecting college players' likely levels of NBA success. He backs himself up, naturally, with historical arguments looking retrospectively and what his formula says GMs should have done. Here's his results for the 2003 draft:
Obviously, if you passed on Dwayne Wade and Chris Bosh to grab Michael Sweetney, you'd feel pretty dumb, but for every Sweetney there's a Darko. All in all, the results seem to be okay. The interesting thing, though, is that the formula winds up giving a ton of weight to steals ("This is the one item that gets the most weight, actually -- it's even more important than PER!), to blocks, and to offensive boards along with giving players a big bonus for being young. The formula also tells you to give a boost to guys who nail three pointers, and to watch out for people who are too short -- or too ineffective on the boards -- for their position.
At the end of the day, the method winds up sounding a lot like "scouting." Instead of relying too heavily on how successful a college player the guy was, you look at his game results for signs of athleticism (steals, blocks, offensive boards), specific skills (pure shooting), and appropriate physical assets. You give a big bonus to younger guys, because you figure they'll learn. The formula doesn't really have much to add to this. It doesn't, in particular, do much to resolve any draft conundrums. Faced with an undersized power forward who was a successful rebounder in college, do you think he'll be one of those guys who continues to enjoy rebounding success despite being short (Paul Millsap) or one of those guys who's too short to handle the pro game?
A formula that helped answer questions like that would be tremendous. This one, not so much. It does, however, do the good service of cautioning against drafting the Adam Morrisons of the world -- guys who seem like unpromising pro prospects but who random sportwriters will just assert possess the "will to win" or something.
I blundered in my post criticing the use of the "touchback" metaphor by misstating what a touchback is. A safety is when you get tackled in your endzone. A touchback is when the other team punts or kicks it into your endzone and you choose to take the ball on the twenty yard line rather than attempt a return.
Either way, my main point stands. The so-called "touchback" provision of the immigration bill requiring illegals to return to their country of origin before applying for one or another form of legal status bears very little resemblance to a touchback in football. It does, however, seem to have a lot in common with tagging up in baseball.
Photo by Flickr user banker12 used under a Creative Commons license
The latest developent in the long, painful saga of the Senate's consideration of immigration legislation is the decision by Republican backers of the bill (presumably with White House support and at least grudging acceptance from some Democrats) to sponsor an amendment expanding the "touchback" requirement for illegal immigrants who want a "guest worker" visa. In the original "grand bargain," illegals would only have to go home to their country of origin when their visa expired, or in order to apply for permanent legal status (i.e., to get on the "path to citizenship"). Under the amendment, they'd have to go home to apply for the guest worker visa.
Not only is this a bad provision, but it's a really inept metaphor. A "touchback" is when you get tackled in your end zone in football. What they seem to have in mind here is something akin to "tagging up" in baseball after a fly ball is caught. In that scenario you have to go back to the base you came from, touch the bag, and then you can run to the next one.
