Fan-tastic?

Not so fan-tastic or fan-friendly

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 19:30:00 +0000

A while back I wrote the league asking about the broadband league pass. If you pay for NBA league pass, you can have the games streamed to your computer, a very nice feature. However, I only want the broadband stream. I don't own a television, so I don't purchase a cable package, and I'm certainly not going to buy both when the NBA is already putting games out over broadband.

They never got back to me. I'm imagining that once they read the line "I don't own a television" the email was immediately moved to trash.

If anyone out there from the league ever reads this... you could do very well offering a broadband-only package to people like me. I don't have a huge budget for entertainment and the cost of television + cable + extra league pass package isn't realistic right now. But I would pay a reasonable monthly fee to see the games online, and I doubt it would cost the league much at all. Games could even be offered on slight delay over Netflix or iTunes or some other media center; since I live on the west coast eastern games start too early anyway, so I wouldn't mind a few hours lag. Just a suggestion...

Technorati Tags:
NBA, Televised basketball

Kevin Garnett - Also no regard for human life?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:26:00 +0000

Earlier in the post-season, LeBron got a nice dunk against the Celtics that was immortalized with the announcer's line "Lebron James - WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE"

Last night Garnett got a similarly sick dunk on Theo Ratliff... I hope this one catches on too. Good lord, this is a massive throwdown/posterization. I don't think Garnett is known as a particularly epic dunker but this is just a freight train jam:

Who's going to the Hall?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:39:00 +0000

This is one of those useful-but-fun areas of speculation in sports, although I suppose it has some use to the truly degenerate gambler who wants to place wagers on the outcome of Hall of Fame voting.

Justin at b-r.com has produced a simple but accurate multivariate regression to estimate hall of fame likelihoods for all active NBA players. Hard to argue with the top of the list (well, the last three are iffy because great stats combined with scant playoff success is certainly no guarantee):

The second tier is a little more interesting (players with 10% chance or better of making the hall):

I think a better method could probably be found, but I can't imagine one getting near 100% accurate. It's very very easy to predict who will NOT make the hall of fame, and the casual fan could do it at a glance. For example, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no one on the Cavaliers aside from LeBron James has a chance in hell of being selected. Check back in 20 years, but I'm almost sure I'm 100% accurate on that barring Damon Jones taking a grotesque amount of steroids and actually trying to play within 20 feet of the basket on either end.

Obviously the real chucklers here are Marbury and Francis, the two absolute punch-lines for the-basketball-team-formerly-known-as-the-Knicks. It's almost impossible to remember that up to 2005, Marbury was a dominant 23/3/8 every season, with some pretty impressive stats like leading the NBA in total assists in 2003-04 and missing 2 total games over the course of four years in his prime. Francis was rookie of the year, a versatile 21/6/6 PG, and regularly a league leader in minutes played and assists per game. Although I never saw him play much, he was sort of a beefier Iverson, with less overall scoring but similar skills and getting to the rim and more rebounding.

While those players at least offered some flashes of brilliance, I have a hard time believing Antoine Walker will ever get the call to Springfield. When I looked up his career achievements, I came up with this:

Leader in three-pointers taken three years running.
Six years in league top 10 for turnovers.
Once got 6 votes for MVP. Wait, WAAATTTTTT???!

If you're wondering about Cassell - surely a long shot to make the Hall - he's in there because the model weights championships very heavily. If that's true, then a win with the Celtics this year could profoundly help his cause. Very few players have won three championships since the Bulls dynasty ended, and the few who have are already at the top of the list (Kobe, Shaq, Duncan, Parker).

You can see that the young stars who've put up pretty good numbers on pretty good teams present the most interesting case. I can't see how Shawn Marion's chances are going to improve very much unless Miami really dominates, or he has the complete green light on offense. Elton Brand on the other hand has a decent shot

Below this you see the second tier stars who've either put up decent numbers on great teams (Billups, Ginobili, Rasheed Wallace) or great numbers on mediocre-to-bad teams (Gasol, Jamison, Baron Davis).

Pau Gasol's Biggest Fan: Lamar Odom

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:32:00 +0000

Sports Illustrated is now exploding with florid odes to Odom, leading off the article with the heady claim that "the overall effect he has on a game is unmistakable in a Garnett-like way. He just does whatever has to be done and he does it in a quiet, efficient way." (full story here)

It continues with the same laudatory tone, reminding us that "At 6-foot-10, 230 pounds, he's a near-impossible matchup for opponents -- too big and strong for most small forwards to guard, too quick and too good a ball handler for most power forwards." Hmm.

Let's not forget that Lamar Odom was supposedly the core piece of the Shaq deal. Of course we all knew the Lakers weren't getting full value for Shaq - there was simply no such thing as full value. And while Brian Grant's almost instantaneous decline probably was a disappointment, he was never more than a 15/9 player at his very best, and closer to 11/7 for his career. Odom was the do-it-all, impossible-to-categorize, All-star on the make that made this worthwhile.

Pretty much all of that was accurate, except it applied to Caron Butler instead of Odom. After being traded in the now-epic Kwame Brown deal, Butler broke through in every area, combined 20 ppg with top-10 status in steals per game, free throw shooting and minutes. He's showing up everywhere in the baroque statistics of 82games, from top clutch players (in a similarly august category as Baron Davis, Chauncey Billups and Chris Paul) to best scorers on inside shots (69%, just below Amare and KG and well above of dunk machines like Dwight Howard and Tyson Chandler).

(By the way, someone should really write an entire column on the "worst jump shooters" in the 82games shooting statistics. Is it really possible that Andrew Bogut, supposedly a "finesse" big man in the Vlade Divac/Bill Walton mold, shoots 29% on jump shots, and is blocked 10% of the time in spite of being over 7 feet?)

OK, I was ready to lay off Odom until I read the last paragraph:

The furthest thing from his mind is to be recognized as a high-scoring superstar. "I don't really approach the game like that," he said.

Iverson, defensive specialist?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 16:31:00 +0000

Every few weeks I check 82games fishing for a new esoteric statistic.

OK, I'm scanning this and it looks reasonable... "savvy veteran" who flops a lot (D Fisher)... center who can't block shots (Bogut)... center who can't block shots (M Moore)... young undersized point guard (Lowry)... OK, that's a bit odd... center who can't block shots (Pryzbilla)... IVERSON?!

I'm sure people will slag this stat as "best flopper"; in fact, 82games made that joke themselves. But I'm still pretty impressed that a soon-to-be 33-year-old 165 pound guard would crack the top 10. Obviously you're tough if you have a spiderweb neck tattoo, but given that so many blue-chip scorers mail it in on defense as soon as they hit their late 20s, ranking in the top 10 in charges drawn is still impressive.

Complete list here.

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NBA

LOL David Thorpe

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 16:57:00 +0000

My questions never get through on these ESPN chats, but there are still some pretty funny moments from David Thorpe...

Not bad...

Getting better

I lol'd.

Nice one!

Take me back to the spring of 1999

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 16:37:00 +0000

This blog lies pretty dormant until the playoffs each year, partly because I don't have cable television and partly because I'm a graduate student trying to finish my PhD during the school year. But the playoffs always draws me back, even though I still don't have a television and I gather my news largely from the blog-world, NBA.com and the sports sites.

Fanhouse had a great preview series and offered a few historic Youtube for inspiration's sake. I missed most of them, but the 76ers vid caught my eye.

Doesn't this take you back to the beginning of the end for Penny Hardaway? Before the Knicks, before the comebacks, just the post-Shaq pain:

Unbelievable that Iverson is still putting up numbers in the playoffs while Penny is long gone.

Blazers-Kings, My First Live Game in Years

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 00:39:00 +0000

I was vacationing in Oregon for the last few days, and I had a chance to see a Blazers game. Living a) in Canada b) without a television, I almost never have a chance to see NBA games anymore, so I leapt at the chance. My interaction with the league comes from sites like FanHouse and TrueHoop, with the occasional YouTube highlight mixed in. Now finally, a real live game, with peanuts, beer and drunken yobs swearing next to you.

Here's the box score from the game, followed by my thoughts on individual players:

SACRAMENTO KINGS (starters):

Brad Miller: People had given him up for dead, but he still owns a very nice all-around game for a center. Final line 15/8/3 with 1 block and 1 steal. Really bullied the younger big men on Portland down low.

Beno Udrih: I guess he's the lead point guard in the post-Bibby era. Looks very middle-of-the-road, probably slightly above average in the milieu of NBA PGs: a lot better than Delonte West and Jordan Farmar, but a cut below Mo Williams or even Bibby. Not much of a shooter.

Kevin Martin: good but one-dimensional. Draws some truly horrible calls with his quick-release shot and acting; at least two were pretty unforgivable on the replay. Didn't look great from long distance but otherwise definitely a solid 20 ppg guard, and there aren't too many of those around.

Mikki Moore: Doesn't do much besides rebound, but does that well. No offensive game outside of 5 feet. Decent post defender.

Ron Artest: Still a force to behold. I had written Artest off after his season-long suspension a few years back, but he can still play. Most noticably, he is physically dominant even in the NBA. Artest is far stronger than most other players, especially in the upper body, and he was killing Brandon Roy in their matchup. Although Artest has minimal hops - I'm not even sure he can dunk - he was very effective down low.

SACRAMENTO KINGS (bench):

Anthony Johnson: largely irrelevant. Just dribbled around, committed several fouls, and fed Artest the ball a few times. On the downside of a pretty mediocre career.

Shelden Williams: Only played 5 minutes, nothing special. Doesn't have much of an offensive repertoire or shot from what I can tell. Looks like he could be a turnover machine (bad handle).

John Salmons: he's had a nice season but it wasn't his day. Never involved with the offense or defense, didn't play the fourth quarter.

Francisco Garcia: dead-eye shooter who probably decided this game. 5/7 from three-point range, 23 and 6 overall. Doesn't have a ton of moves but buries the open shots.

Spencer Hawes: Young big man in development. Thin and gawky but holding his own against the similarly proportioned Channing Frye and LaMarcus Aldridge. Didn't do anything too spectacular or bad in limited play.

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS (starters):

Brandon Roy: Fresh (or not so fresh?) off of a team-high 28 minutes in the All-Star game, Roy was largely shut down by Artest. He shot 5/18 in 40 minutes and attempted zero free throws. A respectable line of 11/8/6 but a poor game overall.

Jarrett Jack: terrible shooter, but a good distributor on the perimeter.

LaMarcus Aldridge: not there yet. A few nice turn-around jump shots but also some easy misses inside. Worse, Brad Miller was having his way down low, getting second shots and passing the ball easily. Aldridge did have three blocks, but I remember Miller putting it right back in, plus the foul, on at least one of them.

Joel Pryzbilla: same as he's been his entire career. 6 points, 9 rebounds in 18 minutes. He's OK, but he's just never going to break through.

Steve Blake: reminds me of a friend I used to play with regularly. Good fundamentals but too small and a tendency to hold onto the ball just a little too long when setting the offense. I'm not really sure why he's the starter.

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS (bench):

Martell Webster: largely a no-conscience gunner. His line: 18 points, 3 rebounds, 0 assists. He has a very nice-looking high-elevation outside shot. The crowd likes him, as he displays a lot of emotions after both makes and misses. I believe he's also a Pacific Northwest local, which I think is part of the Blazers' new player development strategy (out with the Zach Randolphes, in with the Brandon Roys). Contributed the one and only highlight reel dunk of the game when he blew by Kevin Martin.

Travis Outlaw: Very exciting, high-upside young player. Fast, smooth jump-shot from 20+ feet. Pretty good finisher. A bit of a black hole, doesn't pass the ball much once it's in his hands. Initially tagged as a breakout player by Eric Wong on 82games, he has flagged in the last few weeks down to averages of 12 and 3 with less than 0.5 assists.

Channing Frye: I'm not sure what happened to him over the past few years. Two years ago he was a genuine rookie of the year candidate in New York, the lone bright spot on that perpetual train wreck of a franchise. Now he gets limited minutes, limited shots, and An excellent free-throw shooter; unfortunately, he didn't shoot any.

Sergio Rodriguez: I've heard interesting things about this guy, but McMillan didn't really get him in the game long enough to do anything. Since they like to have Roy at the point, and already have Jack and Blake, it's hard to see where Sergio's career is going.

Taureen Green: Stuck in a major minutes crunch, traded a few days later.

Raef LaFrentz: Still in the league? Still making $12 million this year and next?!

Josh McRoberts: Career minutes < 5.

Summary: The Blazers mostly got out-shot by a very hot Kings team. The Portland perimeter defense was very weak, rotating late and letting the shooters (Garcia, Martin) and even the non-shooters (Artest, Miller) knock down open shots. Sacramento shot 10/19 from outside the arc (!) and 17/21 from the line (also !). Artest had his way with a smaller, younger Blazers squad that lacked the muscle to stop his drives.

The players traded for Bibby don't look like they'll have much of an impact on the Kings.

Great to be an arena after a long hiatus from the NBA. Nothing quite compares to seeing it live.

Technorati Tags:
NBA, Portland Trailblazers, Sacramento Kings

Bucks mid-season write-up from Brewhoop

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:44:00 +0000

If there's one team that suffers from a severe lack of media attention, it's the Milwaukee Bucks. Bad team, small market, unpopular shrinking city, and your marquee player is the god-fearing, non-dunking Michael Redd. For some reason, this somnolence even spills over to the blog world; in contrast to vibrant blogging scenes for some of the league's worst teams, the Bucks barely even

However, I've found the one exception (actually there are a few others): Brewhoop. They've gone where ESPN dare not tread, full mid-season grades for the entire Bucks down to the NBDL prospects. Much appreciated by expatriate Bucks fans living out of state. Here's a snippet:

While it's never a good sign when [Royal] Ivey is starting for your basketball team, the Bucks have racked up a surprising 5-4 record with him as a starter. Has taken over David Noel's role as the team's designated huddle dancer during player intros.

Brew Hoop: Time for Semi-Arbitrary Midseason Grades!:

Players Prefer Jackson, D'Antoni

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:57:00 +0000

An NBA player poll asking "Which head coach would you most like to play for?" revealed pretty unsurprising results. Phil Jackson (nine championships) and Mike D'Antoni (shoot as much as you want and have fun doing it) were tied for most preferred coach.

After that were the grand old men of the league: Gregg Popovich, Don Nelson and Jerry Sloan. Other coaches mentioned by at least 7 players included Rick Adelman, Nate McMillan, Pat Riley, Doc Rivers and Avery Johnson.

One interesting note in the article: rookies mostly wanted to play for Jackson, perhaps because they grew up watching the golden-era Bulls; players 30 and up mostly wanted to play for Popovich, probably because they've been in the league long enough to experience the Spurs steamroll the playoffs year after year.

FanNation |

The SI Staff's Blog | SI Players NBA Poll

As a long-suffering Milwaukee Bucks fan, I'll express surprise that Terry Stotts didn't make the list. Maybe he'll win the survey of D-League players this year...

Bonus: searching for Terry Stotts I come across an old Detroit Bad Boys post entitled... "Terry Stotts: 'It's Hard Out There for a Pimp.'" Worth it for the photo at the bottom of the article.

(Via SI Home.)

Outdoor Games in the NBA - I love this idea

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:39:00 +0000

FanHouse reports that the Phoenix Suns are planning an outdoor basketball game in Southern California. Since hockey recently had a big fan success (and front page New York Times story) with an outdoor game, why not an NBA game under the sun?

I think it's a wonderful idea, especially for the fans. Outdoor games are how most of us learned the game, just as amateur skaters fondly remember pond hockey. I wouldn't be surprised if most NBA players had a fondness for outdoor games; Gilbert Arenas went down to Southeast D.C. to play a summer league game two years ago, and pros still love to play in Rucker Park during the summer.

Unfortunately, when you read further you'll find the proposal is only for a preseason game. I suppose the players' union might have objections to playing outdoors vis-a-vis liability, exposure to fans, possible injuries, the playing surface. (This is just speculation, maybe they love the idea).

Suns Hope to Play Outdoors: "

(Via FanHouse - NBA.)

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NBA, Suns

Marc Stein on the last five blockbusters

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 17:20:00 +0000

While I don't read as much ESPN media as I used to, I strongly recommend Chad Ford's podcast.

But I liked this Marc Stein article quite a bit:

Weekend Dime: Evaluating the last five blockbusters - NBA

As indefensible as a Shaq trade appeared at the time, Stein makes a pretty good case that the Lakers got the best deal of anyone who traded a superstar. Had the Lakers shown a bit of savvy and not chased Kwame Brown, the Bryant-Butler-Odom combination at the 2-3-4 would be as fearsome as anything this side of Allen-Pierce-Garnett.

(Via ESPN home.)

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NBA, NBA trades, ESPN

Shaq: Most Decrepit Ever

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:23:00 +0000

Basketbawful, one of my favorite sites, has started daily documentation of the worst in the NBA. I loved the latest:

The newly crowned MDE (Most Decrepit Ever) finished with 7 points, 6 rebounds, 1 assist, and three turnovers. ...Shaq: Okay, I can't let this go. I've brought this up several times over the last couple years, but the Big Washed Up once promised us that he would retire if he was ever 'only as good as David Robinson.' Well, I'd absolutely and without question take the end-of-his-career David Robinson over today's Shaq. At least The Admiral was still a sturdy rebounder and (more importantly) a defensive presence. And he could stay on the floor more than 20 minutes a game. Moreover, Robinson was able to understand that his skills were declining and accepted a lesser role for the betterment of his team. Shaq, on the other hand, thinks the Heat's problems would be solved if he was getting 20 shots a game. Yet when you watch the Heat consistently make runs with a smaller, faster, more defensively-oriented lineup, it becomes clear that's just not true. In fact, the question doesn't even seem to be whether Shaq should be getting more shots, but whether he should be starting or backing up Alonzo Mourning. The Diesel has officially entered into the 'Washington Wizards Michael Jordan' phase of his career; he's no longer even close to what he once was, but he can't accept it, and yet for some strange reason nobody feels completely comfortable in writing him or his team off.

Plenty more good stuff there, I subscribe to their RSS feed these days.

(Via Basketbawful.)

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NBA

82games post on ideal fantasy league setup

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 21:02:00 +0000

Interesting post by Eric Wong, the resident fantasy expert at 82games, on the best structure for a fantasy league. His criteria:

Rotisserie. If you're not familiar with fantasy sports, the two other options are points (discussed more below) and head-to-head. I really don't like head-to-head, although points is pretty good because of the flexibility. Rotisserie means teams are ranked in order and assigned points based on where you are in the league: first place in assists gets 10 points in a 10-team league, while last place gets 1 point. This is done on a weekly basis and the highest overall score wins (More on rotisserie scoring here)

No turnover penalty. This is more controversial and we don't adopt it in my league. His argument is that since turnovers are highly correlated with overall skill (e.g. Kobe Bryant and Steve Nash are usually near the top of the turnover per game category), it doesn't make sense to mute the positive effects of these players. So you only count positive categories, not any negative ones.

Auction drafting. This is a new concept to me and I can definitely see the appeal. Rather than a simple ordered draft, each GM receives a fixed amount of money and has to bid to complete a roster. Blue-chip players like Kobe may cost you one-quarter of your entire budget, while the last few players on a 12-team roster may cost the absolute minimum since no one else wants to big on them at all. This ostensibly adds another layer of skill to drafting. Almost everyone knows that picking LeBron overall is smart; but how much are you willing to pay for him? Twenty percent of your entire team budget? More? In a pure draft, there's no trade-off. Just draft Lebron first overall (that's what I did) and move on down the line hoping to get Kidd or Kobe next.

Auction free agent pickups. Similar to auction drafting, each team gets a budget to spend on free agent acquisitions. This adds more skill as well; when Gilbert Arenas goes out for several months, it's the fastest to the computer to pick up Antonio Daniels and his added minutes. When you play across a lot of time zones, as I do, this makes even less sense, since there's no way we'll be online at the same time so it's just a coin flip regarding when the news comes on the wire. In the auction format, teams must bid for free agents on the wire - so how much is Larry Hughes really worth now?

Broad position categories: I really agree with this one, although we haven't implemented it in my league. Rather than separate roster spots for PGs and SGs, just have G, F and C. I would take this even further if I could and just have "big" and "small" as the two categories, but I don't think that's possible, at least not on the Yahoo league where I play. Since many of the dominant players at any position are hard to categorize - Is Iverson a point guard? Is Shawn Marion a four? - broaden the categories to avoid roster juggling problems.

I like all of these ideas. However, the league I play with a friend is quite different. We do points only, standard draft and waiver pickups. We do have turnover penalties, though I'd rather we didn't. There are a few fun but pointless wrinkles, like added points for flagrant fouls and ejections (giving Stephen Jackson and Rasheed Wallace a little extra value), a small bonus for minutes played, and an interesting format that penalizes players shooting less that 40% while rewarding those shooting above it. Here's the full format:

Overall Fantasy Points = 0.1*Minutes + Field goals - 0.4*Field goals attempted + 0.2*Free throws attempted + 0.5*Free throws made + three pointers + points scored + Offensive Rebounds + 2*Total Rebounds + 3*Assists + 2*Steals + 2*Blocks + 3*Ejections + 2*Flagrant Fouls - 0.5*Turnovers

Whew.

What you can see from this format is that high assist/high three pointer players are extremely valuable. A single three pointer is worth 4.6 fantasy points: 1 field goal made + 1 three-pointer made + 3 points - 0.4*1 shot attempt. One three is worth the equivalent of 46 minutes, or a 6/8 night at the free throw line.

All-arounders have pretty great value in this league: Caron Butler, Josh Smith, Antawn Jamison, Ron Artest and Andre Igoudala are all great top-30 player because they contribute in all of the high-value categories: assists, steals, shot-blocking as well as decent scoring.

Jason Kidd is an absolute monster in this league, but Baron Davis is the dominator: he's currently the #3 overall player in the league, far ahead of Kobe, Yao and Garnett.

Here are the top 10 players in this format:

Lebron
Dwight Howard
Baron Davis
Chris Paul
Carlos Boozer
Steve Nash
Kobe
Kidd
Iverson
Chris Kaman (!!!)

In the past two years, I've played in two very weird formats. The first was 4 teams, 12 players per squad. In other words, we only played with the top 50 players in the NBA. Now that may not sound very challenging, but it was, for two reasons. First, last season had such an insane run of serious injuries to premium players - a partial list would include Yao, McGrady, Artest, Pierce, Amare, Ray Allen, Gasol, Arenas, Shaq, and on and on - that we ended up constantly juggling our lineups and swapping in second-tier players. Secondly, there was very little margin of difference between the teams, since while one squad have Nash, Kobe and Kidd, the other would have Dirk, Yao and KG.

Still, we decided this was just too shallow a way to play for the whole season, so we doubled it: 4 teams, 25 players per squad. Now we're digging a bit deeper into the lower tier of the NBA: some pretty middling players like Marko Jaric, Rajon Rondo and John Salmons have roster spots in this league. With only two bench spots, there's not really any art to constructing your rosters for the week, since there's room for everyone to play every game. But there is a lot of scrabbling at the bottom, swapping out marginal players for someone hot. We've had 47 waiver wire transactions so far; I've already swapped Ben Wallace on and off my team several times as I tried out Brendan Haywood, Sam Dalembert, and Troy Murphy. Squeezing something out of the wire is essential because the draft has locked up every quality player imaginable, and we're left fighting over Ricky Davis, Randy Foye and Darko.

Fantasy Basketball Rankings, Projections, and Analysis by Eric Wong AKA Roto Evil: ""

(Via 82 games.)

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Fantasy basketball, NBA

I'm sure they do this on purpose...

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 17:36:00 +0000

So I open the Sports Illustrated NBA page and see the list of top stories:

Carter breaks hand bone? Sounds like pretty significant news - Vince Carter going down with a preseason injury.

Click through and you get this story:

Nuggets' Anthony Carter breaks bone in hand

If the title wasn't sufficiently vague, of course, I never would have clicked on the link in the first place. Even the most die-hard fantasy prospector probably isn't looking for the latest Anthony Carter news.

The Offseason Really Lags: Second Installment

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 00:03:00 +0000

As promised, a few more cliched offseason stories...

The junk swap: Teams trade their overpaid, dysfunctional players for each over in hopes of improving chemistry. Case in point: Juwan Howard was traded from Houston to Minnesota for Mike James. Does that help Minnesota? I can't see how, Howard is years beyond his prime and has no shot; that's a diffu
The "throw-in": players involved in the blockbusters desperately hope to be relevant in new situations. Delonte West would be a nice example of this.
Pointless free agent signings: I'm thinking along the lines of Jamaal Magliore, Desmond Mason and Mikki Moore. Extremely marginal players who are supposed to boost the fortunes of mediocre, fringe-playoff clubs (New Jersey, Milwaukee and Sacramento in the above examples). You might hear some nonsense about "if Magliore can return to his all-star form" or "Moore led the league in shooting percentage," but I don't think anyone seriously expects these players to do more than give a few fouls, relieve the starters and make a few wide-open dunks. Anyone who's seen Magliore or Mason knows they have zero offensive game; my suspicion is that Moore will immediately fall into the group of "marginal players who looked pretty good with Jason Kidd." Like Steve Nash, very middling players tend to have near-all-star seasons playing with Kidd because his style provides opportunities for high-percentage shooting and increased scoring. One only needs to look at Tim Thomas' problems on the Clippers on Kenyon Martin's on the Nuggets to see the influence of premium PGs on marginal forward production.

More later... let's get this season started...

The Offseason really lags - Part I

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:11:00 +0000

I just can't muster the gumption to write as vigorously during the offseason. The stories, as far as I can tell, are pretty thin. We'll start with these three and work three a day through the week:

(Just for fun link: Calvin Booth - a career pictrospective from Bullets Forever)

Team USA destroys all competitors in Olympic qualifiers. You can say that this is significant, important, the dawning of a new era. You can argue about whether outside shooting is the difference (this article will convince you otherwise, though). You can evaluate where they rank vis-a-vis other Team USA incarnations. But it all seems pretty pro forma to me. Additionally, I haven't seen any of the games televised, so there's precious little media input besides bored full-time sportswriter and a few highlights of LeBron jams. Verdict: no story here until at least the 2008 Olympics, and possibly not even then.
Minor players sign contracts, or switch teams. Cf. Jackie Butler, Jamaal Magloire, Steve Blake, Matt Barnes, Chucky Atkins. Today's news (such as it is) says Charlie Bell, the budget Milwaukee combo guard, received an offer from the Miami Heat. I don't say "budget" to cast aspersions, Charlie Bell gives pretty good decent bench production and an NCAA championship pedigree, if you put any stock in that, for the rock-bottom price of $744K (don't forget to scale your mind to NBA prices - anything under a million is a rookie or a serious bargain). That's around what they pay David Noel, whose main claim to fame is winning a college dunk contest, to play garbage time. UPDATE: Bell signed the offer sheet. It just keeps getting worse for Milwaukee, doesn't it? Verdict: Nothing very significant happening at the margins. Maybe the "Steve Francis to Houston" thing has an impact, either very positive or terribly negative. See Forum Blue and Gold for a nice review of the Western Conference offseason.
Greg Oden gets microfracture surgery. Now we're talking... that's a real story. It deepens the historical link between Oden and Sam Bowie, which also implicitly deepens the connection between Kevin Durant and Michael Jordan. Now I know, I know: all the experts are telling me that this is a totally different situation. I hear you, and honestly I don't know much about Oden and Durant since I barely follow college basketball. But it just can't be good, and at the very least "Oden's injury trashed the morale of the city." As always, a great headline from AOL Fanhouse on this one: Blazers defend Oden's Knees, Themselves

Back tomorrow with three more.

Great Post on Defensive Rankings

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:19:00 +0000

While offense has been pretty easy to quantify, defensive basketball measures have been pretty unsatisfactory. Everyone understands that you can get a lot of blocks (Adonal Foyle) or steals () and still be a very poor defender. Measuring how well you defend involves effectively measuring the other player: how often they miss shots, turn the ball over, or generally fail to do effective things. This is pretty infeasible from aggregate box scores, because it's hard to tell who was guarding who, when and where the points came from, and other relevant factors.

82games, and the associated information revolution (cf. Popcornmachine, APBRMetrics, shot charts) has made tremendous strides in this direction.

Here's the latest incarnation: the defensive composite score. I really like where this is going; it throws out box scores completely and combines defensive +/-, d-rating (see b-r.com for an explanation) and counterpart PER into one metric.

The second round of results look good. The list of best defenders includes the obvious candidates - Garnett, Duncan, Bowen, Yao, Okafor - without which this measurement would lose all credibility. But it also captures the specialists and lesser known names like Tyrus Thomas, Devin Harris, Joel "The Vanilla Gorilla" Pryzbilla and Rajon Rondo.

Most convincing are the statistics for bad teams. Look at Washington (one player above the median), Milwaukee (5 players in the bottom 20%) and Seattle (all players in the bottom half of the league).

A lot has been happening

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:40:00 +0000

Since I last posted, which doesn't really seem like that long ago, plenty has happened:

Quasi-blockbuster trades involving big time scorers (Ray Allen, Zach Randolph) and former, probably-never-again big time scorers (Wally Szczerbiak, Steve Francis).

Draft hype/speculation/postmortem surrounding the Odurant year. The report so far from summer league is that, well, Durant and Oden are having a bit of a hard time adjusting. Oden had 10 fouls in his first game*, while Durant shot 5/17 in the first game, then 4/19 in the next. Guess he has a green light to shoot?!

The Yi saga continues. I just don't know what the Bucks were thinking here, but I often think that. Here's a good post on the latest problem, Mo Williams' impending departure.

Darko-fest 2007 is heating up. The latest is that Memphis (?) wants to sign him. Just how long can you have potential?

And as far as out-and-out weirdness, how about a video of a guy with a hand-held camera heckling Stephen A Smith during the draft?

* I know what you're thinking, but yes, for some reason 10 fouls are allowed in summer leagues.

I should plug a very cool plug-in for Mac called gSpell that greatly expands spell-checking capacities. I don't know about you, but I have a pretty hard time spelling Szczerbiak correctly; this program scans Google News for likely corrections that Firefox and Word are never going to detect.

Yi Jianlian?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 02:38:00 +0000

I need to have a big backlog of posts on the draft and other things, but for now all I can say is... the Bucks selected Yi? That doesn't make any sense. This is an international incident. If this starts something, then sports blogging will become far more relevant than before.

This can't be true, can it?

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 18:08:00 +0000

Basketbawful reports Greg Ostertag is contemplating a comeback. Obviously, during one of the richest drafts in NBA history, the demand for slow centers with no passing or scoring skills is at a peak.

Bonus link: Ostertag's cameo in the lyrics to The Roots' "Ain't Saying Nothin' New"

Runnin up the steps and lookin for a weapon
But you come out wavin a white flag; that's why
I just backslap that ass like Shaq did Ostertag

Link Roundup - Grizzly Fate, Kobegate, Bogut Hate

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 15:26:00 +0000

Don't have time for a real post today, so here's what's happening around the Association:

What is Iavaroni thinking? Nice post from The Painted Area on the rough task of taking over as Grizzlies head coach. Problems include extreme franchise poverty (relatively, this is still the NBA), other bottom-feeders getting better while your team treads water, and lack of television exposure.

Many many posts on the Kobe video. It's interesting to catch a star candidly ripping on his team at the mall; however, few people seem very surprised by this, except maybe Andrew Bynum, who must feel terrible.

Nice article on TrueHoop about Andrew Bogut ripping the NBA lifestyle. It's mostly taken from this Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald article, with some nice quotes like:

The public's got it right, a lot of NBA stars are arrogant and like to spend lots of money and have lots of girlfriends and all that. The smarter guys don't do that. They like to live a regular life and want to retire and be set up. About 80 per cent of them go broke by the time they retire or come close to it.

The blog 20 second timeout evaluates Rick Barry's criticisms of LeBron James' game. The author concludes that while it's not fair to rip Mike Brown for the futility of the pick-and-roll against the Spurs, the other critiques - a bad shooting motion and poor fundamentals like rebounding, covered up by outrageous athletic skill - are spot on.

Here comes the Offseason

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 02:16:00 +0000

The brooms have been put in the closet until next season, so let's run down the stories for the summer:

Potential Kobe trade. I really can't see this happening but we'll all follow closely. The latest report is that "he'll push for a trade."
Potential Garnett trade. See above.
Potential Marion trade. See above.
Potential Bulls mega-trade. Never happens.
Drama surrounding the draft. Kevin Durant is taking a lot of flack but I think he'll be fine (note: I say this having seen Durant play exactly once... but the hype can't be totally wrong, right?)
Structural changes to the game. This is definitely the most intriguing story. During the playoffs commentators mentioned modifications like a wider court or a stricter penalty for flopping. Here a story about 11 foot rims (?). While the new ball wasn't successful, the league could certainly stand a few of these other changes. Anyone who watched the playoffs was treated to far too many incidental foot-out-of-bounds calls from the far wing.

Enjoy the summer, all.

Let the Pointless Offseason Trades begin

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 18:35:00 +0000

SI reports that the Timberwolves acquired Juwan Howard from the Rockets for Mike James. I can't see how that makes any sense, except to telegraph the fact that the Timberwolves will be drafting a guard this month.

Let the offseason my-crap-for-your-crap swap begin.

Well, At Least One Game of the NBA Finals was Close

noreply@blogger.com (Adam) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 01:36:00 +0000

I watched, and I tried to believe. My apartment, alone on the block in this pursuit, was alive with the oohs and aahs of missed LeBron layups and errant Cleveland three-pointers. In one voice, we cheered the Cavs and respectfully jeered the establishment in the form of Tim Duncan.

But it was all for nothing. The Cavs lost and they're toast.

Now people are trucking out the sunny side of this loss. To wit:

The Washington Post argues that losing the first finals, sometimes quite badly, was a ritual endured by many of the top stars like Shaq, Isaiah, and Hakeem.

TrueHoop says LeBron's refusal to argue the final no-call was planning for the future. Hmm.

Adrian Wojanrowski is a lot less optimistic, though.

Deadspin has nothing sunny, though, just an assessment I fully support: game 4 should be skipped by the viewing public. I just can't bear to watch an NBA finals game played only for dignity's sake.

I believe the fun fact from last night's game is that it was the lowest scoring game in finals history. Does that count as fun?