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4th March, 2010 - 12:42 pm
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| Current Features |
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STANDING 10: LeBron's Physical Gifts Not Matched By Mental Toughness
The dominant seven-year rule of LeBron James suddenly transformed into an ordinary citizen deferentially serving in Miami-Wade County. He had chosen to go from king to underling.
MOCK DRAFT: 2010 NBA Mock Draft, Version 5.0
An interesting week of prevalent deception is nearly over and the actual picks are hours away. Hundreds of hours have been spent watching the 60 players that 30 teams hope will improve their club in the coming years.
TEAM RANKINGS: Final NBA Power Rankings For 09-10
The Cavaliers were ranked first in the regular season for the second consecutive season. Following them in the top-five were the Magic, Jazz, Celtics and Spurs, while the Lakers were a surprising 11th.
PLAYER RANKINGS: 2009-10 Individual Awards
While the MVP, DPOY and ROY voting should be easy, the All-NBA teams and the other awards are more difficult to correctly determine.
LOCKER TALK: Nash, Cleveland, & Orlando
Steve Nash could draw trade interest this summer and Cleveland isn’t overlooking Orlando…
CLASSICS: Hakeem Vs. Ewing: Who Was The Better Center?
Born within six months of each other in opposite corners of the world, two seven footers who are finalists for the Basketball Hall of Fame this fall are two of the best ever to play the center position.
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By Christopher Reina
The Sam Presti
Durant Wants to Sign Extension This Summer With Thunder, FanHouse, Chris Tomasson:
Just my own two cents on this one, following up Tomasson's excellent reporting on Kevin Durant's comments that he plans to sign an extension.
Durant is in a different situation than LeBron James because he still doesn't have the big second contract and playing out his rookie deal before becoming an unrestricted free agent in 2012 wouldn't make sense financially, but there is absolutely a sense of maturity in his comments that we're not seeing at all from LeBron.
Regardless of whether he stays of leaves, there are people in Cleveland both in the stands and in the front office that have cause for disappointment in the way LeBron has courted speculation. I don't think distractions are what necessarily keeps teams from winning titles and his free agency doesn't appear to be a distraction to the Cavaliers, but criticism will absolutely follow LeBron if they don't win a title.
I am completely empathetic to Cleveland's sensitivity on how they have had to deal with circling vultures for a few years now, but LeBron truly is the only one to blame and Kevin Durant just proved it.
The Kevin Pritchard
Media Row Report, BlazersEdge, Ben Golliver:
Brandon Roy was out of the locker room before the media swarm could engulf him. Perhaps the first time that that has happened at a home game this season. Roy had showered and dressed and was hanging with his family in the back hallway prior to the conclusion of Nate McMillan's comments. Roy fnished 6 for 16 from the field, getting 10 points at the free throw line. Roy seems to have most of his explosiveness back (he tried to bang on someone's head during the second half and then laughed about it) but he also seems to avoid pushing off his right leg when initiating his dribble moves. During warmups, his balance didn't quite seem right. Nate McMillan left Roy in deep into the fourth quarter despite a dominating lead. He surely did this to ensure that Roy's "Shake" would not needlessly increase. Roy finished with 22 points (15 in the second half), right on his season average.
The Gar Forman
A Whole New Playoff Race, Blog-A-Bull:
If they cleared more salary at the deadline and more substantially hurt their present-day team, and they missed the playoffs, would the luster have worn off of the 'team on the rise'? Maybe the same changes plus Hinrich gone, and Noah hurt on top of it (though maybe Tyrus stays in that scenario? still productive, if a pain in Vinny's arse if that's the case) they get to be too overmatched and truly go into a tailspin.
But if they were still competitive, and Rose was showing off in winning them a couple games they shouldn't, even if they missed the playoffs would that really have been a much more different free agent pitch? The more this free agency approaches, the more I feel like the Bulls are powerless in recruitment anyway. The decision of the biggest of free agents to come to the Bulls will be serendipitous if anything. So if all else is equal, maybe if the Bulls had to do it over again they would've focused more on the 'move money' goal of the deadline instead of making the playoffs, which they may not do (and likely won't do so impressively) anyway.
The Ernie Grunfeld
The Foye Point Guard Experience, TruthAboutIt.net, Kyle Weidie:
Although he’s mostly played below expectations, or at least has made less progress as a fourth-year player than one would have hoped, Foye hasn’t been a complete disappointment. He’s learning and it shows … and as Ernie Grunfeld, Flip Saunders, and just about anyone else in the NBA will tell you, “It’s a process.”
Does any of this mean there’s true promise for Foye to be the franchise’s point guard of the future. Likely no. When I recently forced two colleagues to quickly answer the question of whether Randy should be back with the team next season, the return came up two ‘nays’. My third made it unanimous. That isn’t to say Foye can’t break through his reserve combo-guard ceiling. Chauncey Billups certainly bounced around before becoming a star.
With over 30-percent of the season left (25 games), there’s plenty of time for Foye to make his mark on the “process.” It’s just that it takes a long time to develop excellent point guard decision-making skills in the NBA.
The Daryl Morey
On Defense and Out Collective Identity Crisis, Red94, Rahat Huq:
Subconsciously, what makes matters worse is that not only are the Rockets poor defensively but their appearance gives off the impression of such an outcome’s inevitability. In addition to a creampuff frontcourt, we now also have the most physically underwhelming backcourt in league history.
But how warranted are the concerns? It would be foolish to assume that management is somehow oblivious to the importance of defense – Daryl Morey himself has gone on record as saying that for title contention, it is necessary for a team to rank in the top 10 on both ends of the ball.
I think what we are seeing is the manifestation of a belief that it is easier to manufacture defense than it is offense...
…Without a superstar, if playing multiple defensive specialists, no matter how intricate the system, the offense will never be elite. This isn’t college – at the NBA level, there’s only so much a system can do to help inferior offensive players generate points.
But on the other end, weak individual defenders can be masked through a strong system; good team defense can be manufactured through an entrenched philosophy.
Brooks and Martin are both undeniably bad. But with the return of Yao, their assignments can once again be funneled towards the middle. With increased familiarity, players will learn to rotate and cover their spots. You can teach players to commit to transition defense and aggressive double teams; you can’t teach them how to shoot, pass and dribble.
The Tony Reagins
Abreu's Hit Chart, Orange County Register, Sam Miller:
Entire weeks go by without Bobby Abreu flying out to right field. That’s no exaggeration.
If Abreu pulls the ball, and elevates it, he’s getting a hit. So, it would follow that Abreu would want to pull the ball when he can with authority. Pitchers don’t want to let him, so they feed him pitches away. Abreu’s batting eye forces them to bring the pitches far enough inside to make them hittable, right? The guy should be almost unstoppable.
Unfortunately, umpires don’t allow it.
Looking at Torii Hunter and Bobby Abreu, we can see that umpires in general have wildly inconsistent strike zones depending on which side of the plate the batter bats from.
The Jim Hendry
Sabermetrics gains ground with Cubs, Chicago Tribune, Paul Sullivan:
New Chairman Tom Ricketts told fans at the Cubs Convention he expects the organization to use sabermetrics as a tool more often for player decisions and evaluating opponents while still valuing the human component.
The Cubs didn't hire a full-time numbers cruncher until Chuck Wasserstrom was named manager of baseball information after the 2003 season.
"We've always done more than people thought," Hendry said. "… We've always factored that in. But I'm always going to be a scouting guy first. You can skew statistics to frame it the way you like it.
"Some statistics that a lot of people think are always vital to making decisions, they should be a part of the equation, but not the be-all, end-all. … You factor a lot of stuff in, not just ‘Oh gee, that guy has a high or low on-base percentage.' "
According to the numbers, Hendry seemed to make the right moves when he signed free agents Milton Bradley and Aaron Miles last year.
The Howie Roseman
Peppers, Sproles among free agents who could help Eagles, Philadelphia Daily News, Les Bowen:
At defensive end and just about everywhere the Birds need help, except maybe the interior of their offensive line, a viable option might be to just wait for the draft. NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock recently called this the deepest defensive draft in 8 years. It's not fantasy to think that the Eagles could get a defensive end and a safety out of the April 22-24 draft who could help right away, without paying anybody $14 million this year. Lots of running backs and a decent crop of linebackers are expected in the draft, as well.
But this is a story about free agency. Several days from now, if the Eagles don't end up signing anybody of note, well, keep that previous paragraph in mind.
The Doug Wilson
Sharks Make no Moves on NHL Trade Deadline, San Jose Mercury News, David Pollak:
While the general manager said the lack of activity was a compliment to both the players in the locker room and prospects in Worcester, he also acknowledged that lack of salary-cap space was also a factor.
He also noted that there were significant differences between the current team and the one that was eliminated in the first-round of the playoffs last spring.
"Since the end of last year, we've picked up 12 new players," Wilson said, "so we've had a lot of changes to this point."
Daily Briefing of RealGM Links
Draft Report on DeMarcus Cousins of Kentucky: Strong and big, legitimately 6’11”, exceptionally agile with pure basketball instincts, yet not advanced to the point where he’s already at his ceiling of potential. The best rebounder in college basketball and enough all-around ability to play in the NBA immediately. Sounds like a prospect all 30 teams in the NBA could use?
…DeMarcus Cousins is a more conventional big man and that makes him a hugely valuable commodity in the upcoming draft. He doesn’t have the Hall of Fame upside of teammate John Wall, but he is as likely to end up in the top percentile amongst his positional peers as Wall is amongst the NBA’s incredibly deep collection of point guard.
The Point Guard Bumper Crop: One of the reasons the quality of the NBA has kicked up is due to the dramatic increase in the quality of the point guard position. Here we rank the 34 best in four different tiers.
2010 Season Preview, Minnesota Twins: The Twins have a nice team but are fortunate to be in the AL Central.
Beyond Sports
What Lewis Carroll Taught Us, Slate, Seth Lerer:
Toward the end of his life, in 1896, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (also known as Lewis Carroll) published a survey of his professional work as an Oxford mathematician. Symbolic Logic set out to clarify the confusion he saw at work among the academic logicians of his day. Logic emerges, in this volume, as something of a game: rule-governed, yet arbitrary. It is not the dry purview of the pedant, but the imaginative landscape of a creative mind. Indeed, the book concludes, logicians often think of things like the cupola of a proposition "almost as if it were a living, conscious entity, capable of declaring for itself what it chose to mean." But Dodgson warns that we should not simply "submit" to the "sovereign will and pleasure" of these terms. Instead, "any writer of a book is fully authorized in attaching any meaning he likes to any word of phrase he intends to use."
'Extinct' frog found after 30 years, AP, Owen Pye:
A species of frog thought to have been extinct for 30 years has been found in rural Australian farmland, officials said Thursday.
The rediscovery of the yellow-spotted bell frog is a reminder of the need to protect natural habitats so "future generations can enjoy the noise and color of our native animals," said Frank Sartor, minister for environment and climate change.
Wilco (The Sandwich Shop), Pitchfork:
Have you ever bitten into a turkey sandwich and thought, "I wish this sandwich had a little more Wilco in it?"
Nobody has, but that didn't stop the creators of Toronto's Sky Blue Sky Sandwich Company Ltd from opening their Wilco-themed stuff-between-bread shop. That's right: each sandwich is named after a Wilco tune. So if you're in the mood for bananas and honey on whole wheat, you're in the mood for a She's a Jar. The California Stars boasts "Juicy pieces of chicken mixed with mayonnaise, celery and pieces of apple. Served on our very own white or brown bread and toasted to your liking."
In Toronto, no less, eh? I would have guessed Chicago for Wilco. I would have guessed a Great Lake Swimmers sandwich shop for Toronto.
Send me a direct message on Twitter if you've been here. I've been planning a pilgrimage to Toronto ever since they build the SkyDome in 1989 and this might finally send me north.
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