booth52

#12. Elton Brand

2005-10-11T23:18:00.000-07:00

#12. Elton Brand
Position: PF
Ht/Wt: 6'-8" 275lbs
Age: 26

Career Stats:
19.5ppg
10.4rpg
2.0bpg
1.10psa

Fun Fact:
Apparently the Clippers = Cameron West with Brand being joined by fellow Devils Maggette, Daniel Ewing, and Shaun Livingston, who went against The Family when he bolted to the NBA.

Fun prediction:
The Brand & Maggette combo, along with Mobley, Livingston, and a rejuvenated Samiam, will take the Clippers to the playoffs. On the brink of advancing past the 1st round however, midseason pick up Trajan Langdon will choke in the closing minutes and foil Duk... errr, the Clipper's championship dreams.

Stepping into the confession booth

2005-10-11T22:23:00.000-07:00

Alright. Let's just get this out of the f**king way right now. I did NOT have Manu in my top 10. Let's all take off the homer glasses for just a second and acknowledge that The Sickness did have The Timmeh's help, along with that of a wee frenchman, the defensive ankle breaker that be Bruce Bowen, and of course the ever under-rated Raaaaashoo!

In MY LIST, I had Ginobili #15. Rightfully a respectful distance from the top 10.

Ray Allen was #19.

Yes. Manu is better than Ray. You may now step up and rip off my Sonics badge of loyalty. I hope someone can take satisfaction from that sentence.

Ever so briefly, what are some of the more popular opinions on why Sugar Ray should be considered better than Manu?

-He's the superstar! the guy on the team that not only fills up the stat sheets, but breaks backs, nails coffins and seals fates of opposing teams when it comes to The Crunch. And yes, truly it is a responsibility only an elite few can carry on their shoulders (unlike Dy-Lan "the whole world rests on my shoulders!" of Da Band fame).

And yes, this is true of Ray. The Kings game in which he was hearing signals from outer space comes to mind. More importantly Rashard's panty performance in that same series.... don't even get me started. Only proves the importance of having someone who won't wet himself when a Man is needed. There IS something to be said for having a guy willing and able to make the big shot.

And 05 playoffs/finals Manu did exactly that.

-But Ray's a waaay better offensive player, right?
Ummm, not really.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/ginobma01.html
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/allenra02.html

While Ray undoubtedly is one of the game's pre-eminent pure shooters, Manu averages more pts per shot attempt, and has a higher usage rating than Allen. I'll say it again, as great an offensive talent as Ray is, he'd be even better if he drove in more often and took advantage of his gawdy FT%. I mean, does anyone even remember that Ray partook in the Slam Dunk contest once!? Do you Ray? Huh? Do ya?! In de face Ray! Shoot it in de face of that damn muther bastard!! At least once in a while please!

-But surely age will catch up to the balding Sickness right!!
Manu: 27
Ray: 29
To do list for Senor Allen: call up MJ and Reggie and learn the ancient art of The Basketball Crane: ye' olde fadeaway jumpshot with leg overly extended to catch the defenders body and get to the line move.

-He's a better defen...
Uhhh. No.

That about sums it up.

Oh yeah. F**k Manu. F**k Bowens. F**k TP. F**k you and your whole MF'ing crew. Thug life 4-eva beeyatch!

go sonics!! yeahh!!

and back to our regularly scheduled program.

#11. Andre Kirilenko
Position: SF
Ht/Wt: 6'-9" 220lbs
Age: 24
Nicknames: hmmm...
Fun facts: Shiba's website is best seen to be fully appreciated. If I interpret correctly Alfredo's fantasy world would include endlessly playing with children, spending countless hours on the computer, and owning a menagerie of dogs, horses, pumas, and jaguars (move over Jacko, you've got company.) He also likes dill, ice cream, and non-alchoholic cocktails. (that'll be one cosmopolitan bartender... with a cherry and umbrella please.)

The skinny on The Skinny: 1.15PSA, 13.4ppg, 6.1rpg, 2.2apg, 2.4bpg in 30.6mpg career averages. And a damn fine defender and teammate. With great hairstyles.

#9 Dirk Diggler

2005-08-19T01:20:00.000-07:00

#7. Dirk Nowitzki
Position: PF-C
Ht/Wt: 7'-0"/ 245 lbs
Age: 27
Fun Fact:Enjoys reading and playing the saxophone in his spare time

Dirk Nowitzki. A truly underhyped, underappreciated, offensively unguardable player. Seriously, he's 7'something, has a decent post game, good handles, and a great outside touch (1.16 career PSA). Oh, and he can also hit the 3ball (.375 career). All from the 4-spot. If the late 80's and early 90's were the reign of the Centers, I think it's safe to say that we are somewhere in a PF age of renaissance with Garnett, TD, Nowitkzki, Amare, J.O. and so forth playing in the NBA.

Purely statistically speaking Dirk had the 5th best season in 05, based on Hollinger's PER stat. (just to reiterate, do not misinterpret me by misinterpreting Hollinger and his PER stat. The PER rankings do not directly correlate to best player and I'm not taking it to mean so, just as he's quite often alluded to. Just used as a reference point, so don't misquote me and insult his stat when i throw it out there only as a basis for argument. Now, as we were.)

In 04 Dirk was 9th in PER.
In 03 Dirk was 6th in PER.
Roland Ratings (i.e. +/- goodies)?
In 05 he was 4th
In 04 he was 19th.

If you were to throw all those tidbits into a nonbiased ranking machine, Dirk would definitely have to come in higher than 9th (I actually have him 7th). So why does he drop so low? One word: Defense

But...hooold-up-wait-a-minute! (woot! woot!)

Contrary to popular belief, Dirk ain't that bad a defender. Not only that, but he also ranked above Amare defensively, one of my main reasons for nudging Amare over Dirk in my list. So... where does that leave me?

1) Conclude that I wuz wrong.
2) Conclude that Rosenbaum is nutty.

Naturally, I chose the latter. Kidding. Some things that make me feel comfortable with keeping Amare>Dirk are: with regards to the rosenbaum stat, Amare's name is inconveniently missing, leaving him anywhere between 11-49th on the list. Meaning he theoretically could be the 12th best PF defensively, and leaving a non-existent difference between he and Dirk. And also, I'm still not fully sold that Rosenbaum's stuff, while crazy cool and all, hasn't got all the kinks fixed yet. Another factor that came into play was Dirk's poor performance in 05 playoffs (though I didn't put TOO much value into that)

So, while I begrudgingly admit I may be wrong in throwing Amare over Dirk, KG,TD,Shaq,Kobe, & T-Mac still get the nod over Dirk, IMHO.

And furthermore, I'll freely admit, if Dirk truly is an above average defender, I have no doubts his skinny-scrawny whiteness influenced me into believing he was a weak one-on-one defender that couldn't bang in the paint, provide a tall, physical presence naturally desired from the 4-spot/a guy of his height/wingspan. I would also tend to believe that in strictly looking at his physical ability I discounted a possible edge he had in basketball smahts, i.e. not missing def. assignments, playing good help D.

And on to no. 10.

Should the Sonics match Damien Wilkins' offer sheet?

2005-08-06T11:20:00.001-07:00

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/sonics/2002423819_soni06.html

Damien Wilkins has supposedly signed a 5yr $15M offer sheet from the T-Wolves. Not coincidental I'm sure, is the fact that former assistant Sonics head coach Dwayne Casey now runs the team in Minnesota.

Because of his Restricted Free Agent status, the Sonics' have the option of matching that offer and keeping him.

Here are some comments from devoted Sonics' fans at the Sonics P.I. forum (here's another one done a while back as well when rumors of him going to Portland started circulating) and other places that both root for and against matching the offer:

Here are some general thoughts on why the offer shouldn't be matched:

1. Wilkins turned an above his normal ability-type post season into a gawdy contract he's not deserving of/capable of backing up with a consistent performance
2. 15M/3M per year is overpaying for someone of Wilkins caliber
3. Furthermore, that type of money is overpaying for a role player
4. He ain't that good (tied to 1... and 2... and 3 as well I suppose.)

Here's his stats (from my stat site of choice)
Here's ESPN's stat site which shows and allows you to compare his 05 and playoff performance:

With regards to him playing above his head in the playoffs, leading to this contract, that is false. If anything you'd have to argue he played above his head in both the playoffs and the regular season since they were almost identical.

The numbers:
05 Stats: 17.9mpg 6.3ppg 2.3rpg 0.9apg 0.8spg
Neat-O stats: 13.4per .27 3P% .500 TS%

So why exactly are so many fans so excited to pay that man his money? For me, quite simply it was what I saw out of him from watching him play. If I may go generic broadcaster on everyone, this guy played great minutes when given the chance. He showed flashes of brilliance offensively. Showed a keen eye, quick first step, and great on the ball/off the ball defense. Wasn't afraid of the limelight and was willing to take the open shot. He's got that "it" factor folks.

Now, tying into the money... I'm a little too lazy (as usual) to compile the numbers and spit out the average, but if you go through the large NBA team/player salary database at hoopshype you won't find practically any veteran player (i.e. player NOT still tied to a cheap rookie contract or signed off the street/NBDL contract) who makes less than 3M. To say 3M is overpaying for Wilkins is effectively saying that his abilities can easily be matched by a player roaming the non-NBA, non-drafted world, i.e., you can pick up a player either from the draft, or from NBDL league, who is just as good.

And of course, therein lies the difference. Is Damien Wilkins destined to be an overpaid 0-12 min per game 8th-10th man off the bench type player? Forever destined to mediocre status or even worse destined to a Mateen Cleaves-cheerleader-on-the bench-status... for 3M per year? Or will he be a solid 12-20mpg 6-8th man off the bench type guy. Will he be one of those off the bench high energy/change of pace type guys with stats and ability justifying keeping him over filling his role with a much cheaper journeyman type player?

To summarize, I believe:
-Wilkin's 05 post season = 05 regular season = MINIMUM capability of Wilkin's 06 and beyond
-3M per year is not overpaying for a quality role player
-Wilkin's has the potential to be more than just a quality role player

And that's all I have to say about that.

Splitting hairs...

2005-08-05T00:20:00.000-07:00

#7. Tracy McGrady
Position: SG
Ht/Wt: 6'-8" 210lbs
Age: 26
Fun Fact: Part of Tracy's deal with the Rockets is that he has his own jet

Another deviation between myself and Matt on this one. I had T-Mac ahead of Kobe by the narrowest of margins. Thought process:

Here's Kobe's stats.

Kobe has the edge in scoring efficiency, T-Mac has a slight rebounding and blocking ability advantage. Ability to create shots, wether posting up, the pull-up J from downtown, driving in, creating And-1 situations, & highlight reels? Kobe edged him out in this fun stat this year (both top 5) although T-mac has a career edge. Splitting hairs really. Kobe's got 3 rings to T-Mac... so there's THAT too.

To me the decision came down to 3 things: Being the Man i.e. "Clutchability", Defense, and Versatility.

Clutch factor: playoff game on the line, down by x, x:00 minutes, or seconds remaining, who do you want with the ball? Two years ago, I give Kobe the outright edge. But post 05 Season /Playoffs McGrady performance? Post 05 regular season Spurs-Rockets game in which T-Mac scored a gajillion straight points with 30 seconds to pull of the improbable comeback? T-Mac's finally realized he's a great big bear, and is finally using his fangs and claws to tear up NBA rabbits everywhere. He's all growns up peeps.
Advantage: Draw

Defense: Again edge used to be outright Kobe's The generally accepted notion several years ago was that Kobe was a +defender and T-mac had the ability, but was non-committal/lazy on the Def. end. I'm not sure that edge exists anymore. If it does, I would guess the gap is no longer that huge between the two. So, regarding the present/immediate future, guarding SG's I'd call it a slight wash b/n the two, maybe a slight edge to Kobe.
Slight advantage: Kobe (maybe)

BUT, T-Mac is 6'-8" (kobe's 6'-6") with a considerably longer wingspan and, as shown in the Dallas series, has the ability to guard when the occasion dictates, the other teams star SF or PF. I'm not saying he locked Dirk down in that series, but that ability, to me, is a huge plus.
Advantage: T-Mac

Yet again, like the KG over TD choice, I have no problem with others preferring Kobe over T-Mac. But for me, it's T-Mac in 05.

(And if you consider my choice Kobe-hatin' influenced, read on.)

No. 5, With A Bullet

2005-08-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

#5. Shaquille O'Neal
Position: C
Ht/Wt: 7'-1" 300lbs
Age: 22
Nickname: Shaq, Shaq-Fu, The Diesel, Superman, The Big Aristotle
Fun Fact: His name means "little warrior" in Arabic
Fun Fact #2: In his IMDB profile, he is "credited" with both acting and producing Kazaam & Steel.

Coming in at No.5 is a player both myself and Matt pegged in at No. 4.
05 Skinny: 22.9ppg, 10.4rpg, 2.3bpg, 1.17PSA, with a 27.0 PER

Don't really have much more to say about the big guy that wasn't alluded to in my 2 spot post. He's a giant among mere earthlings. A game changing enigma, a game-planning nightmare, and a quote-making machine. His game? Overwhelming, Overpowering, ever-intimidating... yet rarely as entertaining as the AI's and T-Mac's of the league. If he had ever taken my advice he could've had a realistic shot at challenging Jordan for G.O.A.T.. His penalty for such an atrocity is being dropped to #5 on some loser bloggers' list. That is all.

My 7 degrees of Shaquille O'neal connection:
Last week I went with my sister ring shopping in L.A.. We went to all the appropriate and classy joints first like Tiffany's, Blue-Nile.com, (sadly there was no Shane Company, located next to the I-5...) etc... In the end she ended up going with Shaq's personal distributor of duy-mends, Tony.

Tony's shop is located in downtown L.A. The downtown L.A. east of 8-mile. One block away from To-ni's shop some folks were peddling Dianetics (is this where Tom Cruise had his revelation?) to passerbys on the sidewalk, besides a shop selling 50,000 different 2-pac t-shirts for a buck-99. 'Bout a block to To-ni's shop I passed by the largest pile of dog s**t, aptly placed on the middle of the sidewalk, I have ever laid eyes on. It's smell was actually overwhelmed by the piss-foul smell sunk into the sidewalks. His store had the most welcoming steel bars adorning it's windows I've ever seen.

Tony was sporting one of the largest diamond encrusted crucifix's I've personally seen and was wearing a yankee cap, brim flat and to the side, with a throwback jersey. Tony's security guard looked eerily reminiscent of the huge convict Ed Norton got his s**t pushed in by in American History X. Tony's receipt was hand written.

And BTW: Tony had the deals going. If you're ever rolling by downtown L.A. in need of some duy-mends I highly reccommend seeing the guy who outfits Shaqs ears and wrists with the goods.

And now, you have a friend in the diamond business.

(And now, back to our regularly scheduled programming)

Lost in the hooplah...

2005-08-02T22:15:00.000-07:00

The largest trade in NBA history occurred today.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2122976

Heat obtained: Antoine Walker, Jason Williams, and James Posey, Andre Emmet (?)and D.R. to a Roberto Duenas
Grizzlies obtain: Eddie Jones and Raul Lopez
Boston obtained: Curtis Borchart, Qyntel Woods, D.R. to Albert Moralles, (2) 2nd round Heat picks, and cash
Charlotte obtained: Rasual Butler, Kirk Snyder
Utah obtained: Greg Ostertag

Lost in the shuffle is the fact that, hidden in the process, Antoine Walker, he of the <1.00 pps, and minus/minus statistical fame, was given a 6yr-53 MILLION dollar contract, greater than the combined contracts of SAR and Stro Swift. (A run on sentence worthy of a running joke)

That is funny to me.

That is all.

Step Aside Diesel...

2005-08-01T21:14:00.000-07:00

#3. Amare Stoudemire
Position: PF/C
Ht/Wt: 6'-10" 245lbs
Age: 22
Nickname: S.T.A.T.
Fun Fact:
1st time he dunked: 13yrs old.
1st time he reverse dunked: 14yrs old.
1st time he dunked off the backboard off of a Steve Nash head-bounce pass: 22yrs old.

05 Season Stats: 26.0ppg, 8.9rpg, 1.6bpg, 1.26PSA, 26.6 PER

Impressive? Not really. Not compared to his encore performance in the playoffs:

05 Playoff Stats: 29.9ppg, 10.7rpg, 2.0bpg, 54FG%

Before venturing into this list I felt certain that I would have Shaq in the 3 spot. Several reasons pushed him down, or more appropriately, charged Amare up the list.

1. Relevant stats: All things considered, the two had relatively even super-good years. Shaq clocked out averaging 22.9ppg, 10.4rpg, 2.3bpg, 1.17PSA, with a 27.0 PER. Push comes to shove, I'd give the edge to Shaq. But not by much.
2. Age: Stoudemire: 22, Shaq 32. This needs to be considered to estimate the effects the 32 to 33yrs old transformation will have in Shaq's 05 performance and likewise Stoudemire closing in to the peak 23-29 age group when players tend to shine/get it together/peak, before slowly eroding in ability. Also tied into this is the higher likelihood that Shaq spends considerable time off the court due to injuries.
3. Circumstance: 04 Shaq had 03 Lakers, 08 Kobe, and 100M other reasons to motivate himself to lose some weight and throw down an up yours to the haters!- type season on the masses. Not this time around big fella.
4. The other side of the court: Defense.
Getting lazy, I'll just copy some of what Matt mentioned, for which I agree with wholeheartedly:

DPOY should never, EVER (period) go to a guy under 6'-10". Look, the NBA is not a one-on-one matchup. Being a lockdown perimeter defender will only get you so far if you don't have somebody to funnel towards... a non-negligible part of defense is rebounding... great defensive teams have somebody anchoring the middle. Defending the basket. Blocking and changing shots.

This was the initial reason I was leaning towards shaq initally. Given the option of an outsanding 5 vs. an outstanding 4 of similar talent/ability, I go with 5. And likewise down the line, sizewise. Call it an offshoot of the Bill James' defensive order of difficulty/skill theory (C, SS, CF... uhhh, ballboy, mascot, manager... or something like that).

For two players of abilities as close as Shaq and Stoudemire, Shaq should come out on top in the end because of his ability to effect the game from the defensive end. The problem is, he's no longer THAT dominating a defensive presence. In the 05 Regular Season, Miami actually allowed 1.4 less points per 100 possessions when O'neal was off the court. Opposing teams also shot a better eFG%. The kicker? A majority of these minutes his substitute in the lineup was Michael Doleac (Doleac logged in 1142min compared to Alonzo at 242m, FYI). Caramba. So, while these numbers cannot be used to directly compare him to players on other teams, it does tend to indicate, to me at least, a reduced ability to impact the game as behemoth shot blocking/play altering presence in the middle (be it due to a loss in step or from his tendency to play the most panty pick and roll help defense known to man is your call) and nullifies any position advantage he had in my eyes over Stoudemire.

Years from now you're gonna be telling your grandkids that you were witness to one of the most overpowering forces ever to take the nba hardwood. In my opinion, the odds are about even that you will be referring to Shaquille O'neal circa 99-2001... or Amare Stoudemire circa NOW-2012. Shaquille O'neal 2005 will be nowhere near the discussion.

Sonics to sign PG Rick Bunson

2005-08-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

http://www.lockedonsports.blogspot.com/

Quick analysis:
While I would have obviously have preferred to see A.D. back, this to me sounds reasonable over fighting over the table scraps left in the PG FA market that be Earl Watson and Co.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/b/brunsri01.html

Guy is 32 years, saw his most significant playing time last year for which he showed a good Ass/TO ratio and shot the 3 at 37%, the two top qualities I'd like to see from a backup guard, should the sonics implement a similar offense to last year. And since he's only being signed to a 1 yr min. deal, I have no reservations about signing a 30 something backup PG. What's more, choosing not to throw more money at this position may imply that the Sonics will throw enough money to retain the Radman. Cool indeed.

The List

2005-08-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

Updated Monday

What started as a simple Sugar Ray vs. Manu debate a couple of months ago has officially mutated into a full blown epidemic. Starting today, myself and Matt at Spursblog will be forming

The List

Question: Rank every single player in the NBA. Best to worst. That simple.

Much like Milwaukee, we're saying f**k it and completely disregarding any form of salary ramifications typically tied to such an experiment. There will be no "Corey Maggette is better than Michael Redd for 90 million different reasons..." arguments (THAT,will proven much more simply with a few simple pluses and minuses) And Upside? You wanna talk about a guy with upside? Watch this...right here! Bam! (yet more royalties going to the SG's way)

Because of the survivor style simplicity of the rules Dwyayayyane Wade will have to prove his merits of being the better Superman sidekick over the Anti-Christ Kobe Effin Bryant based on actual immediate performance/expectations only, and NOT on his abilities to grow into his underoos and eventually becoming The Man.

FYI, the way I interpreted the question was to assume all players were FA's, contracts doled out for all were equal regardless of talent & endorsement disparities. And as simple as it sounds you couldn't imagine the frustration I endured trying to decide between player x over player y * infinite. But I digress.

So, without further adieu....

1. Kevin Garnett
2. Tim Duncan
3. Amare Stoudemire
4. Lebron James
5. Shaquille O'Neal
6. Kobe Bryant
7. Tracy McGrady
8. Dwyayne Wade
9. Dirk Nowitzki
10. Manu Ginobili
11. Andre Kirilenko
12. Elton Brand

Ticketing in at No.1...

2005-08-01T11:56:00.000-07:00

#1. Kay Gee: Kevin Garnett aka The Big Ticket
Position:F-C
Ht: 6'-11"
Age: 28
Fun fact:
Quote from Garnett's Mother: "He was so long. Twenty-three inches."
-Garnett's mother, Shirley Irby in describing the difficulties it took to deliver son Kevin during a 26 hour delievery.

(hehe.)

I'm sure many people who begin reading this will immediately disregard this list altogether from the fact that Timmeh isn't at his proper location, perched atop the list.

But, quite simply, the numbers don't lie:

Top PER ranking 2 of the past 3 years? KG (including last year)

Top Roland Ratings 2 of the past 3 years? KG

Stats over the past 3 years:

Tim Duncan
22.0ppg, 12.1rpg, 3.2apg, 2.7bpg, 0.8 spg and two rings
Kevin Garnett
23.2ppg, 13.6rpg, 5.6apg, 1.7bpg, 1.5stp, and zero rings

The two glaring reasons why I believe so many people discredit the mere notion of KG being better than Duncan are:

1) the rings on Timmeh's fingers
2) the higher consistency at which Duncan has reigned at the top of the hill.

Take a look at the numbers for yourself:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/g/garneke01.html
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/d/duncati01.html
http://82games.com/rolandratings0405.htm

Over their collective careers, I would wholeheartedly agree with the deafening majority that Duncan indeed has both performed consistently better and accomplished more than KG. But in picking one of the two to build a team around for a one time shot at the 'ship, I don't hesitate in trusting what the numbers show, that in 2003 The Kid finally figured "IT" out and transformed himself from merely mortal all-star to Uber-top 5 player and in seasons 04 & 05 arose even higher to outright take the champeeenship belt, in a Florida-esque tight and controversial manner, from the defending lb4lb title holder Timmeh The Toolman Duncan (A.W.E.S.O.M.-O. says that nickname is lame!).

As stated by Spursblog reader Rocat in this comment debating the issue:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/sungo/112062779717328551/

"..evidently, and quite unbeknownst to me, KGvTD has become an either/or bright line of faith. I happen to think TD is better, maybe. And only a little bit. Let's face it, you don't have to hate one to love the other. They're both extraordinary players...."

I will openly listen to anyone arguing the merits of TD being at the top of their list. I mean seriously, look at his career stats at b-r.com: those are just some silly ridiculous bananas and oranges type numbers and you quite often do forget just how MF'ing great this guy is/has been. But this isn't an argument over who is/will be considered the G.O.A.T., but rather the G.O.Next.Season.

Furthermore, I will not bother to join in on a conversation which considers the argument laughable because of the whole Duncan's 2 rings to none advantage declaring the subject null and void. That is a futile excercise. Let it go, indeed.

And besides, over 3 years that ring total averages out to a measly .008 rings/game. Not even a blip on the radar! (I keed, I keed.)

Now to declare the runner up I hand the conch over to blogger #2...

Falling under the booth52 radar

2005-07-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

Throw it down big man!

How on earth did I forget to include this guy in my Sonics offseason gameplan? I could've sworn he was a RFA, but apparently he's for sale to the highest bidder:

Here's the skinny on Stephen Hunter:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/h/huntest01.html
http://82games.com/04PHO17D.HTM

Briefly the positives to his game for which I'd like to get him in a Sonics uni:
-size: 7'0" with the wingspan similar to Rasheed and Camby
-age: 23
-blocks per 48 min: 4.7
-notes The Cat in The Hat as his favorite book in his nba bio
-price: relatively cheap for the young center/pf with athletic/defensive ability TUP combination type player I covet.

Quick analysis, I'd rank the following accordingly, give or take:
-Chandler (upside bumps him up)
-Camby
-Sam Damme
-Stro Swift
-Stephen Hunter
....
-Eddeee Curreee
....
-Jerome James

Dead or Alive Stephen, you're coming with me. (If I had a choice)

Yup... this is my reader

2005-07-27T01:10:00.000-07:00

(I believe I'm legally bound to pay any possible royalties that booth52.blogspot.com may ever procure to Simmons by now.)

So a couple of months back, a reader who goes by the name of Digby Warmflash (why people choose to use pseudonyms I have noooo idea- booth52.) commented in my introductory post here at booth52. Apparently this jive turkey is trying to pull the same underhanded two faced trick I pulled to the good folks at The Soul: use a well established blog to gain fame and fortune and leave them once you've become a full-blown blogging diva, taking all their s**t with you. (it's mine now! i'm keeping it!)

Jokes on Warmflash: unfortunatley for him he picked a site that:
a) is about as established as my stool after eating 5 alarm wings from Wing Dome
b) has a reader base of about 3, counting my mama... and yours (oooohhh! schnap dawg!)
c) is run by a retard... with exceptional typeing skills.

But I'll humor him anyways. Here's his post, which IS, IMO, certainly well thought out and argued... and hence has no reason whatsoever being here! Read his 1st comment as well, for more insight into his Sonics' thoughts: basic gist was the hoped for 05 following lineup:

Digby's 05 ideal Sonics roster:
The roster would effectively be:
PG: Ridnour, Daniels
SG: Allen, 1st round pick
SF: Lewis, Wilkins
PF: Chandler, Collison
C: Davis, Swift

Not bad. Looove the idea of a core of Allen, Chandler, Lewis... WITH A.D. still in the mix. Unfortunately the Allen contract blew this option out of the water. I think my pre-offseason signing line-up looked 1) not as initially talented, but 2) filled with TUP and promise for a New Hope a couple of years down the road, and 3) most definitely realistic as evidenced by the outcome so far of the offseason.

Booth52's ideal 05 Sonics' lineup:
STARTING PG: A.D. (my homedog bro bro's.)
Backup PG: Ridnour (still would get significant minutes, but having him here allows us to retain Daniels and upgrade the backup PG spot over any other conceivable scenario)
SG: Cuttino Mobley for either a 3 yr 7-8M per year contract (to entice less years) or 4 years at 5-7 per (the dependable Seiko watch in lieu of the gawdy Rolex's in the front display that be Allen/Joe J./Redd (haha), and Hughes)
backup SG/SF: Wilkins (my n**ga. wait a sec, I'm not black. I can't say that. Someone please help me. Seriously. Dawg.)
SF: Lewis (really, it's easy to forget the great season he had after the hooooorible (my best Walton impersonation... I apologize) offseason. Give him a break guys he's only 20-something or other.
SF #1a: Vlad (with liberal amounts of The Radman at the 4 spot in the +/- friendly small lineup we'd employ often)
PF-C: The doppleganger group continues in05 with a lineup of Stro Swift (I'm down on my knees baby, please choose me!), Collison, Evans and/or Fortson
Bench: Swift/ Draft choices and the obligatory cheerleader: Matteen Cleaves.

With cash to spare for an option of another quality player or pocketed for the 06 offseason. My initial thoughts to this lineup were to 1)mimic the depth of last season, which imo, was a key to their success, 2) keep the underrated Radman and Daniels, 3)drop the overpriced Allen, 4)have legitimate semi-valueable trading pieces in expiring contracts or legit talant to wheel and deal as possible at the trading deadline and 5) take full aim at the 06 or 07 'ship. With the core of Vlad/Lewis/Stro hitting their stride, Collison/Rid/Rob Swift (we can pray) and Wilkins donning their racing shoes, and Daniels/Mobley still quite capable at ages 31-32.

(btw, I think upside was quite possibly the most overpriced value of this offseason, as has folded out till know, in-lieu of forgetting to evaluate what's left in the tank of some the NOT old players like SAR, Mobley etc... It wasn't shocking necessarily but one of the more interesting subplots i noticed in the offseason signings, along with the more realistic valuation of bigs, and overvaluation of the so called premiere SG's. I digress.)

A goal and a reasonable method... that's all I'm asking Wally! Puhhlleeeeeese? With a cherry on top???

So yeah, here's his comment:

Booth,Long time no talk.

Got your e-mail a few weeks back. I've been on vacation for the past 3 weeks or so, and before that took a bit of a sabatical from basketball, but eventually came to the conclusion that basketball and basketball statistics are a simplified (and free) form of crack. So here I am.

Since your thread is primarily about Daniels, I'll try to stick mostly to it.

First off, I agree that Daniels is superior to Ridnour. Most valuation metrics support this.

I also think Daniels' $6 million/year contract is fairly valued, although I have doubts as to whether that will be true in 3 years, given the typical declines of PGs at around 32 years of age.

Re-signing both Daniels and Allen, however, at a combined average annual price tag of of just over $22 million/year, doesn't let the team upgrade at where it needs to most in the short-term - the low post.

Had they done so, depending on the order they would have re-signed them, especially Allen, the Sonics would have had about $12 million (and that factors in the elevators built into player contracts) to play with under $49.5 million in order to fill at least 4 roster spots.

Big name post players like Dalembert, Curry, Big Z, Chandler (who must have spooged his pants after the Dalembert deal), and Gadzuric were all unrealistic since each of those would have eaten up at a minimum 75% of the remaining cap space. Also, of that list, Chandler is the only one who appears likely to be worth the bloated contract for the next 4 years.

With those options gone, the Sonics would have then fielded a team looking something like this:

PG - Ridnour and Daniels
SG - Allen and Kittles/J. Barry/best available SG cheaper than R. Murray
SF - Lewis and WilkensPF - Collison and Fortson
C - D. Davis and Swift

The roster would have been filled out by Mateen Cleaves and other filler

This clearly would have been a downgrade from last season, and wouldn't have offered any real upside until (and if) Robert Swift and/or Petro become players.

I think the team, by not re-signing Daniels, still has some ability to maneuver for the near and far future.

I had hoped, perhaps foolishly, back in March that the Sonics could have signed both Allen and Tyson Chandler, but it seems that Chandler's stock rose since then, in part because of Dalembert's ridiculous salary. Also, Chicago would almost certainly have matched any offer for Chandler, especially if Curry were to leave.

At any rate, not handcuffing yourself with Daniels' contract means the team will have, depending on whether they are able to find suitable one-year contracts for this season, possibly $9-10 million to use next summer. Possibilities would include young/productive big men, like Chris Wilcox, Nene, Drew Gooden, Nazr Mohammed.

Basically, in re-signing Allen, considering the financial position of the franchise and the fact that they don't have a MLE to hand out, it seems almost impossib

Digby Warmflash 07.26.05 - 3:18 am #

I'm reserving comment on his take until I can further study this Dale Davis theory, which has caught on like wildfire in the P.I. forums. One thing I WILL say: Tyson Chandler is the clear cut grade D VVS1 jewel of the 05 FA bigs, no matter what speculations Chad Ford continues to drop in his "news articles about the "cream of the big men crop" Sam Damme.

And here's Davis' vitals btw, which I suppose do NOT indicate a need a clear cut need for life support as I initially thought:
http://basketball-reference.com/players/d/davisda01.html
http://82games.com/04IND17D.HTM

So, thanks again to Mr. Digby "I'll be your huckleberry" Warmflash.

Now to go place the over-under in Vegas on when we'll be graced with the digby.com website...

Antonio Daniels to Sign with Wizards

2005-07-19T23:19:00.000-07:00

(Officially pouring some Old E over the casket of the Sonics 2004. I'll never forget you dawg... One. )

Observations:

5 years @ 30M: Slightly above the MLE. Antonio Daniels IS 29. But over the past two years he's had a PERs of 19.7 and 18.0. As stated before... the Booth52 goal for any team should be to assemble a team highly capable of winning a championship.

If you're a Sonics' fan, especially this year, that age thing definitely crosses your mind when thinking about players. Ray Allen 29 going to the big 3-0. Daniels, 29 similarly...

Collison, Ridnour, Swift, Petro.... Lewis to a certain extent. Our young core that we will build around. Our core that will take us to the promised land... What to do, what to do...

IF you believe that the best opportunity for the Sonics at a championship run lays beyond 3 years... I fully concur that Allen and Daniels should have been let go in lieu of other younger options.

I don't think we need to have such a long term goal/mindset. My main problem with the re-signing of Allen, was NOT his age necessarily, but what ability the Sonics could have in assembling a championship caliber lineup around, not him, but his 17M per year contract. It don't work, plain and simple.

Over the next 3 years, Ray Allen and Antonio Daniels, barring injury and not taking into account Daniels' moving to a new roster/gamestyle, should perform at a level similar to this year for the next year or two, and depending on their personal physical ability/health, a slightly to moderately lower level in years thereafter.

Furthermore on A.D.:

For reference, according to the basketball messiah, an "average" player would clock in at a PER of 15 and the uber-good Michael Redd, who got paid a ransom's note by the now uber-good Milwaukee Bucks (harhar) had PER's of 19.9 & 18.3. That Uber-good player would also have a +/- of -2.0 for 04, but hey... $1, $2, $90,000,000, what's the difference amongst friends, right?

And to put the cap on perspective: Luke f***king Ridnour (henceforth the official name for good ol' #8) had PER's of 13.1 and 14.6... and a plus minus stat in his "breakout" 04 year of -7.5. Yeah, yeah... basketball's a team game, it's not played in a vacuum, and stats can't truly take into account the intangibles of the game. So while all y'all who disagree with me hang out in THE REAL WORLD and watch Ridnour execute amazing no look behind the back left handed passes (and casually observe, post missed assignment mind you, opposing point guard X hit an open layup/12' J) cementing the argument that he's officially The S**t, I'll just hang out here with my kooky numbers and dream the dream of a sane Front Office/Coaching staff doing the right thing and offering A.D. the starting job, a 4 YR 22M deal, in essence upgrading both the starting PG position AND the backup starting position for the 05 Sonics over any other possible scenario that could be conjured up. And to reiterate, Luke's a good player. I like having him on the team. Especially at his contract status. But on a championship contending team he's not delegated the role of premier player/starting PG.... ESPECIALLY to the consequence of negating the attaining of a much better player. This outright handing of the starting PG spot to him drives me nuts. He'd be an ideal backup on a championship team. As is, he's an O.K. starting PG on an O.K. team. Alas. Twasn't meant to be.

And ANOTHER thing:

I think that so far the Wizards have had an OUTSTANDING offseason, (primarily due to the fact that they made a dollar out of fifteen cents with that Kwame for Caron trade... NOT due to the fact that I think Kwame's a dud... moreso because all they had was the RFA rights to a player they had no desire whatsoever to bring back):
Gilbert Arenas at 23 at SG
A.D. at PG
Caron at SF
Jamison at the 4 spot
Haywood at the 5 spot

They essentially traded Kwame @ 5M+/-, Hughes 13M+/- for A.D. at 6M & Caron at 2M and player(s) X at remainder....

Seriously... The Arenas/Jamison/Hughes trio, along with Haywood, were eliminated by the Bulls. Even taking into account young players growing and team chemistry coming into play that trio, and more importantly their attached salary, would have never realistically challenged for supremacy in the NBA. Now? They've STILL got a good core, good enough at this moment to be a 5-8 seed, yet with enough flexibility to make other moves, sign other players, and wheel and deal with valuable player/contract commodities. I'm jealous.

And sad.

Sonics annoint Weiss as head coach.

2005-07-18T18:31:00.000-07:00

Seattle Supersonics appoint Bob Weiss as 05 Head Coach

Big whoop-tee-frikkin-doo/oh no-the world is ending.

I have no doubts that once the Sonics play according to their talent level assembled and hit the playoffs as an 5-8 seed and lose in the 1st round of the playoffs:
1) the year will be considered a loss, since the team no doubt SHOULD have improved their results from last years squad. I mean, golly, geez, heck! We re-signed Ray Allen! Yay.
2) a large part of the blame of this supposed failure will no doubt fall on the shiny noggin of Weiss. Nevermind all that nonsense about looking at the team assembled folks, when you have a guy like Weiss heading your team, you're destined to... not be good, and when you have Mac-10 you're destined for greatness.

Just for the record, I would've preferred:
a) signing Nate at whatever amount/years PROVIDED the signing did not influence in any way the ability of the team to sign players
b) signing either Casey/Weiss over the rotting corpse that is one time NBA Great Lenny Wilkens. (Lenny, you're soup's getting cold, why don't you come on inside and rest them dogs by the warm fire?)

With regards to Casey over Weiss... my belief is that the more unknown identity in Casey would've presented a more intriguing coaching option. But, of course, I have no knowledge whatsoever of the two, so I really don't give my belief any credit whatsoever. The point made over in The Soul that Weiss has a proven track record of not doing much with a talent base does pose some interesting points.

I took a brief glance at those 3 seasons in Atlanta and I will agree that his prior experience does nothing to suggest he is a good coach. All in all that 90-92 Atlanta squad:
1) did decline in team performance once Weiss took the reigns over from Fratello
2) more of the decline could be attributed to a team remaining stuck in neutral while other teams players' grew up/improved and simply passed them by.
2) I don't think they underperformed by much: i.e. they finished in the middle of the pack in the Eastern Conference to teams that were as talented, if not moreso than them.

All in all, the Weiss coaching move has been the least intriguing Sonics' related offseason move thus far and, IMHO, will have the most insignifcant effect on the team in comparison to the player signings/non-signings the team makes.

That is all.

booth52 posting schedule

2005-07-13T11:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight(7/13/05): My Ideal Sonics' offseason signings

Tomorrow or day after: 05 FA Analysis pt. 1- A closer look at the 2005 Shooting Guard Spending Spree

Weekend: 05 FA Analysis pt. 2- The pendulum shift: Power Forward/Center signings - The disappearance of the NBA Frankenstein?

Next Week: The Official NBA Player Rankings

(note: Schedule subject to delay/postponement/cancellation due to the whims of booth52/booth52's work schedule/Netflix delivery of Soprano season 5-disc 3&4)

To wet the appetite:
05 Signings:
Ray Allen (5yrs-85M)
Michael Redd (6yrs-90M)
Joe Johnson (5-70M)
Larry Hughes (5-65M)
Mobley (??? 5-42M)

Zadrunas Ilgauskas (5-60M)
Dan Gadzuric (6-36M)
Shareef Abdur Rahim (?-MLE?)
Udonis Haslem (5-33M)
Chandler
Dalembert
Swift

04 Signings
Dampier (7-73M)
Blount (6-42M)
Zach Randolph (6-84M)
Adonal Foyle (5-41.6)
Carlos Boozer (6-68M)
Mehmet Okur (6-50M)
Rasheed Wallace (5-57M)
KMart

Quentin Richardson
Jamal Crawford

There's something going on here... And I'm gonna get to the bottom of it.

just woke up from my after work nap... anything I missed?

2005-07-06T23:04:00.000-07:00

Edited Thursday morning:
This is a post I did in may regarding re-signing Nate Mcmillan. I have additional thoughts which I'll add in a new post later today.

http://booth52.blogspot.com/2005/05/nate-mcmillan-dilemma.html

Here's an article from the Tacoma Trib with actual thoughts from Mac-10.

http://www.thenewstribune.com/sports/story/5004723p-4568679c.html

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2101994

http://nbaspurs.blogspot.com/2005/07/money-talks.html

http://seattlesupes.blogspot.com/

http://www.supersonicsoul.com/

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/forum/boards/viewtopic.asp?topicid=61850

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/forum/boards/viewtopic.asp?topicid=61859

Woah. I believe I'll need to sit down for this one.

I may talk about this tomorrow. We'll see.

The Ray Allen Contract & The 04-05 Sonics: A Brief(?) Retrospective

2005-07-05T23:05:00.000-07:00

“My job is to get us to the play-offs. What happens after that is f**king luck*.”

Billy Beane in Moneyball.

"We just lost the moon."

Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell in Apollo 13.

(*Booth-brief sidenote: I am of the firm belief that, while Lewis no doubt quoted Beane correctly, Billy himself does not actually believe that playoff results are solely or primarily based on luck, and furthermore that some of his more recent GM moves have actually been designed to acquire parts specifically designed to increase the probability of winning in the postseason.)

So for those select few NBA & Sonics fans that have been stuck in a vacuum for the day, allow me to enlighten:

Ray Allen has agreed to a 5 yr $80M contract with the Sonics. There is an extra 5M in performance bonuses, which will no doubt kick in when he performs his leadership duties and buys Johan Petro a burrito from Tacos Guaymas and takes Robert Swift suit shopping at Earl’s Big and Tall shop.

Sometimes it’s easier to get somewhere when you know where you want to go. So, to reiterate, here is Booth52’s goal/destination for the Supes:

To put forth a team highly* capable of winning an NBA Championship.
(*highly added in ammendment 1 to the booth52 constitution)

Now, some people may have a different goal. As stated above, Oakland A’s GM and Booth American Idol Billy Beane stated his (implied) goal: to assemble a competitive team able to get to the playoffs (year in and year out). You could go Chris Mullin’s route and have a goal of creating the most overpaid team. Or mimic the Rockets’ organization and attempt to create the U.R.O.A.T.: Ugliest Roster Of All Time. But as for me, I’ll hang out on that limb and have my sights set on becoming a contendah.

So, with that being said, what exactly would/did that entail for the Sonics this offeason?

To answer that question you’d first have to estimate what exactly the Sonics were last season and how close they actually were to being a contender.

Sonics 05:
Record: 52-30 (6th best)
Accomplishments:
-Won NW Division
-Advanced to 2nd round
And the kicker:
-Fought, scrapped and stood toe to toe with the eventual 05 NBA Champ Spurs to 6 games before narrowly losing in 6 games and displaying a gritty, in a highly contested 7 game series. Well, golly geez heck, if it weren’t for a missed Daniels free throw, a Ray Allen shot bouncing the other way, why, we could’ve taken game 6! Momentum, and intangibles would henceforth follow and there’d be game 7 for us too! And since the Spurs beat the Pistons it only makes sense that if we were that close to beating the Spurs, and if we got rolls and bounces that the Spurs got and won that series (hell, as we SHOULD have!)… why, we’d be World Champs right now! And that of course means we were the best team in the NBA last season.

So there you have it: 2005 Sonics: a free throw and a couple of rolls and bounces away from being the best team in the NBA.

In lieu of such daunting evidence, I’d like to do my silly thing and pick some random stat and base my opinions off of them. Here we go. (Spinning the wheel… woooooshhhhhh! Click… Click…… Click. )
04-05 Regular season Team Scoring Differential

Team Pt differential/Game
1 San Antonio Spurs 7.8
2 Phoenix Suns 7.1
3 Miami Heat 6.5
4 Dallas Mavericks 5.7
5 Houston Rockets 4.1
6 Detroit Pistons 3.8
7 Seattle Supersonics 2.4
8 Memphis Grizzlies 2.3
9 Sacramento Kings 2.1
10 Denver Nuggets 2.0
11 Minnesota T-wolves 1.5
12 Chicago Bulls 1.1
13 Boston Celtics 0.9
14 Cleveland Cavaliers 0.8

(Courtesy of Dougstats.com)

So here we have my crazy stat of the night off which I will use to assume the Spurs were the best team of 05 and, coming in 7th, our friendly neighborhood Supersonics. In between the two layeth a 5.4 scoring differential… uhhh…differential. (Delta-U-Delta represent! Woot! Woot!) For those of you unawares that’d be akin to the scoring differential between the Supes and the Seattle Storm (tap, tap… this mike working? All night folks. Be. Here. All. Night.)

I got no more stats to throw your way, but I fully believe if you re-did the 05 season over again a 100 times, a good 90% or so of the time the Spurs would come out on top. Similarly, but accounting for the more volatile outcomes of a smaller sample size, the Spurs, or the best team in the league, would similarly come out on top in the playoffs about, oh 75.28% of the time.

The 05 Sonics? Caught fire in the beginning of the season, flamed out in the middle. All things evened out and we finished 6th in the L record wise. In the playoffs, we tied for 5th-8th place in playoff outcome. And yes, if not for the Spurs going And-1 on us and breaking ankles left and right, and if not for Rashard’s penis inverting into his body to create an orifice we would have had an excellent chance to win, but still at less than 50% odds, to be generous. Hell, I picked ‘em to win. But I was fully aware that I was riding a hot slot (hehe) and going against the odds. The Spurs, while proving to be a very beatable best team in a 7 game series, were the best team in 05 and while they clawed and scraped their way through a 6 game series with the gutty Sonics, and relied on the Magic of Big shot Robert/Bob in the finals, were still the best of the best. And regardless of outcome, the Sonics were the 7th or so best team in the league.

So:
1) Is reassembling a team that was the 7th or so best unit in the NBA adherent to the goal? Or is a gameplan required that provides for the potential for a better team possible of contending?
2) Does resigning Ray Allen to a 5 yr – 80M contract constitute a step towards either assembling a team that will be at least the equal of last years team (giving them a 8.59% likelihood of winning a championship)? Could it even potentially be a step to a team with a better shot at contending?

Answer:
1) Yes. With a twist. (you put the liiiime een de’ coke…) If the Sonics were capable of bringing back/assembling a team that would have a similar talent base/ winning ability, with the added kicker of a healthy Radmanovic (or equivalent) and a Rashard one year removed/wisened by the 05 playoff debacle, I’d take that. Beggars can’t be choosers and quite honestly, that would be the best I could possibly hope for: to have a team get us to another game 6 vs. the champs with another roll of the dice try at 1st place.

2) No. Here’s just one reason why:

The reshaped Sonics landscape:
Assuming 49.5M payroll (est. salary cap)

PG: Luke Ridnour (1.7M)
SG: Ray Allen (16M)
SF: Rashard Lewis (8.5M)
PF: Nick Collison (1.8M)
C: TBA

Bench:
PG: TBA
SG: TBA
SF: TBA
PF: Danny Fortson (6.8M)
C: Robert Swift (1.8M)
X: TBA
X: TBA

Used Cap: 36.6M (see*)
Remaining: 13.5M*
(*This is prolly more if Allen’s contract is spread out in ascending fashion, as is typical.)

So, the Sonics have 13.5M to shape out their roster, to... fill out the rough spots. They have 6 positions to fill. There are a myriad of options that could now be taken, but I’m guessing that the money is gonna be divvied out something as follows:

4.5M+/- on a backup guard
3M +/- to resign the Human Highlight’s younger brother’s cousin’s momma’s stepson’s uncle Damien Wilkins.
4.5M+/- on a center/pseudo PF/Stiff
1.0M on a backup SG/SF/PG pseudo-type-player.
0.3M on Matteen Cleaves
0.3M on cheerleader #2: Kirsten Dunst. (Yeah, that’s right, I went there Matteen! Oh no you di’int! Bring. It. On.)

I see no probable outcome in which an 05-06 team will be a better basketball team than last years. Even assuming that Wilkins can show solid to above average production in 25-32 minutes, assuming Allen matches his 05 output, Lewis continues his ascension, even with an improved Nick Collison, even with a more intellectual Daniel Fortson (you come into this house right this minute young man!) cutting down on his hack act get his minutes ave. up to 13min. a game, even with Luke, you are the chosen one, Ridnour darting pretty no look bounce passes left and right averaging 14, 9, and 6 blown defensive assignments a game…. There is no frikkin frakkin way the team will be close to as good as the 04-05 team. Antonio Daniels, Vladimir Radmanovic, and the magic hanging in the 04-05 air are being seriously downplayed from their roles as key contributors to the Sonics’ success.

And 05-06 will painstakingly prove it.

(for those aiming the "what f**king plan do you have that would put them into contention smartass?" gun my way... short answer: sign 1 or 2 more appropriately compensated to younger talents, resign Radman/Wilkins, hand over the starting spot to A.D. and get his ass back here, and have enough financial/roster flexibility to wheel and deal next offseason. Yes. rebuild and more realistically contend in 1, 2, or even 3 years.)

Like my hopes/goals for the Sonics, I’m out. Like trash on a Thursday.

Seattle Supersonics Resign Ray Allen

2005-07-05T08:53:00.000-07:00

Seattle Supersonics Resign Ray Allen

So it's official... sort of.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2100705

According to Chad Ford, the deal is done. I'm holding off on an analysis until I see the final numbers. But, supposedly

a) it's for 5 years, as opposed to the 6 max
b) it's for more than the 75M initially offered.

Check out an analysis I did back in April. Booth McD nailed the numbers down. But as to his call... Now the question is, is Ray Allen's playoff performance and the Sonics run enough to sway my opinion any? Hmmmm...
http://booth52.blogspot.com/2005/04/talking-jibba-jabba-laying-down.html

Looking back at the 04-05 Lakers... AND responding to maggette comments

2005-07-02T23:20:00.000-07:00

The article:
http://booth52.blogspot.com/2005/07/trade-allen-for-maggette-are-you-nuts.html

The comments:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/booth52/112002435983925042/

But Kobe/Tmac/Shaq have other offensive weapons with FT being one of them. And a lot of Maggette's FTA come from 1on1 moves, which is detrimental to the team (other players) passing flow. Hense low +/-. I don't know if you've ever played bball at competitive level, playing with a guard that does a lot of 1on1 move and FTs in throughout the game kinda make you moving less without the ball. Kobe's 10+ FT coupled with horrible FG% led them to records worse than the other team in LA.
mrcoffee 07.02.05 - 11:44 pm #

The problem with those stats is you can't take them in a vacuum. You need to take into account the quality of the teams that they're on and the focal point of the opposing team's defensive scheme.Ray posted his numbers as the #1 option on a team that finished first in its division and won 50+ games. Maggette posted his numbers as the second option on a team with a solid post player, that sadly, was one of the worst in the Western Conference.Ray always had the opposing team's best defender on him, and their defenses were always designed to limit him as much as possible. Maggette, on the other hand got his points as Brand passed out of the post or hit him as a cutter.Don't get me wrong, Maggette is a great player. He is a fantastic finisher with a reliable jumper and shot from the line. But he doesn't have nearly the touch that Ray has, or the ball-handling skills, or passing skills, or ability to take over a game and rattle off 13 points in a row.Maggette is a less athletic Desmond Mason with a better jumpshot and slightly better handle. Put Elton Brand on the Sonics and Ray's numbers would improve by a reasonable degree. To say Maggette is close to Ray as a basketball player is quite a reach IMHO.
Guru 07.02.05 - 11:54 pm #

O.K. I was initially typing a response in the comments but my run-on/tangent thoughts type posting habit quite simply got the better of me.

Quick answer: Never played at a competitive level. Not even HS sadly. Just a weekend/after work pickup games at the gym type of guy at my peak, now I hardly get the chance to play. If that automatically disqualifies me in your mind of being able to speak intelligently on the subject, you are free to leave now, no offense taken.

Kobe's 10+ FT coupled with horrible FG% led them to records worse than the other team in LA

Warning: I'm using this one little sentence to break out into a rant I meant to spew previously but somehow got forgot about/misplaced.

-This comment bothers me. Greatly. While I'm NOT trying to stuff words/thoughts into mrcoffee's statement, there is a small implied thought that I get from that sentence that mirrored popular opinion-articles regarding the 05 Lakers and the Anti-Christ Kobe f**king Bryant.

There were several popular opinions out there about the 05 Lakers team:
A) They sucked. Supremely. More appropriately they failed in some underlying set of GOALS predetermined for them that season.
B) The cause of their departure from greatness resides solely to primarily in the body wearing the number 8 jersey for several reasons.
-1. He chased Shaq away. Shaq was the primary reason for the Lakers dynasty. The swing in records seen by the Lakers and Heat is proof that the trade was horrendous. If Shaq had resigned with the Lakers, the team would have still been contenders.
-2. He chased Phil Jackson away. Phil Jackson is a large cause for the Lakers winning ways. With him they would have been a winning team.
-3. He is not a team player.
-4. He is a ballhog, his game is not "winning" basketball.
-5. He is overhyped/not as good a player as many previously/still think.
-6. He is one baaad man. And his wife ain't all dat! Like, ohmigod, do i hate his guts becky!!! Only a Laker/Kobe lover could truly not hate this guy.

1st off, in regards to sucking, yeah, they actually kinda did. They finished 34-48, 11 games out of the 8th spot. I remember Marc Stein's numerous "the Lakers aren't going to get in the playoffs," and all his proud "I told you so" articles after the Lakers proved him right. There were countless other sportswriters who wrote similarly.

What the pundits so easily seemed to glance over in their gloating were the countless other factors. Like, oh, I don't know...
How about injuries?
Games missed:
Bryant: 16 games
Divac: 67 games
George: 67 games
Odom: 16 games
Mihm: 7 games
Grant: 13 games
Walton: 21 games

And what about these missed games:
Tomjanovich: 40 games

So, you have numerous key players missing huge chunks of game, on a team without much real depth in the first place requiring significant playing time from guys with names like brian cook and tierre brown... Your top 2 players miss key games... your in a season of MAJOR transition which include completely changing offensive schemes, roster personnel, coaching etc.... your head coach, widely considered a great coach in his own right, has health complications and is forced to resign... you not only change coaches midseason, but also try to reincorporate some of the triangle offense with a bunch of guys who haven't used it before, to a coach who hasn't used it before... The Lakers had this crapload of stuff dropped on them during the season but it didn't really matter to the beat writers. Shaq (and the Heat) were flourishing in Miami, Kobe (and the Lakers) were floundering in L.A. The only logical response/output to write about was Kobe killed the dynasty/is overrated blah-blibbity-blah-blah-blahblahbaalhbalahhh. It was the soup du jour which was spoonfed/shoved down our throats unmercifully, the topic with the flashy headline, the attention getter, the girl with the tits AND ass, the natural response. Aaaargghh!!! I HAAATE that s**t.

So, to counterpoint:
A) The Lakers didn't actually suck THAT bad. It was widely stated preseason that if the Lakers got an 8 seed it would have been a shocker, and should be considered a positive 1st year step for the new team. While the Lakers did finish 34-48, before a prutal 3-19 season ending slide they were actually 31-29. Throughout much of the season they WERE sitting pretty at the 7 or 8 spot, or at the very least close to it. And to discredit the importance of the factors above for the flashier Kobe's a b***h, Shaq is gone articles was craptacularly bad journalism.
B)
1. The hypothetical 2004-05 Lakers version of Shaq would have been nowhere near the equivalent of the 04-05 Heat version of Shaq. These same writers/observers wrote tons about the chip on shaq's shoulder, the gleam in his eyes, he of something-to-prove status, he listening and obeying GM orders to lose 30lbs and come in shape into the season. That Shaq would have never ever set foot into Staples center wearing a Lakers uni. Never.
2. I'm not a big believer of placing tons of adulation/credit for a teams success/failures on a coach. I personally believe numerous other coaches could have won 6 rings if given the teams Phil was blessed with. If you disagree with that... that's cool... Well F**k you too! ;)
3, 4, & 5. Generic broadcaster mantra #32,670: Great players play on great teams, elevate their teams to winning basketball/greatness. Great players are measured by their teams greatness. This response is getting waaayy too long as is. I'll just simply say to everyone that has downgraded Kevin Garnett from greatness due to the T-wolves miserable season (yeah, I'm talkin to you sports guy! You broke my heart Simmons, you broke my heart.) to everyone who thinks much more lowly of Kobe after this season: remember exactly what you think of them right now. Imprint it into your head. Jump on, jump off, it matters not. But please, just remember this present opinion years from now.
6. Kobe's wife IS hot. Kobe Bryant is a jerk. I do not like him. I do not like the Lakers. I do not like green eggs and ham. But Kobe's still a helluva player.

... AND NOW, further on to the comments:

Humor me please by taking a look at this list, these numbers now.

You know, when I look at that list, setting aside what it's indicating, the 1st thing that pops to mind is that this is a list of the top offensive players in the league. I don't think it's a coincidence that players that include in their game an affinity to getting to the rim and getting fouled. But i suppose you could look at this and infer that this validates the whole star players get the star treatment in the nba too. You could...

Listen, I concur with alot of what both mrcoffe and guru are stating. You can't blindly trust stats. You can't. Ballhogs do affect the flow of the offense. And stats do not incorporate the thousands of other factors that we SHOULD account for when evaluating players. This all ties in rather well with an old post that I wrote a while back trying to compare Allen with Manu. Manu was statistically better than Allen last year. But yes, the other factors should not be discredited. Allen showed he could shoulder the burden of being the PTPer of a team (this guy's sensational! listen to the cameron crazies going crazy!! yeah baby!!) as well as being able to produce transcendent individual playoff performances.

But I am not an idiot hanging out in a vacuum. Honestly. I wish I COULD quantify those uncountable efforts. I fully believe that they are quantifiable, but we simply haven't gotten around to it yet. But... do we then simply disregard credible facts/numbers because of their incompleteness in judging the whole picture? What of GM's? Should they throw away the stat sheets when deciding which direction to go personnel wise when choosing between two players whose backgrounds put some credible doubt into the numbers? With ALL the inconsistencies and anomalies they don't take into account, these numbers are still the most valuable litmus test we have. Some moreso than others.
And, quite simply, regarding Maggette & Ray,
1) the similarities in PER/output is too close to discredit an assumption that Maggette will be an adequate replacement for Ray, at the least
2) the difference in likely salaries between the two is way too huge and important to discredit as well in the evaluation. The value of Maggette, taking this into account, in my mind ends the argument for the validity of the make believe trade.
3) I think it's ludicrous to consider FTA's/the game/play that provides them as a negative quality of a player
4) to be the broken record, I'm NOT fully convinced that you can't compare numbers between a second option type guy vs. a 1st option type guy. But yes, you have to look at this factor among many others to avoid being an idiot.
5) and regarding the idea that Brand on the Sonics would increase Allen's numbers: If anything I think that would have a slightly negative impact on his output (the gawdy numbers like ppg etc) but in all likelihood increase his PPS, eFG. The reverse would likewise hold true for maggette.

And here's a link of a post made by a Clipper's blogger/writer, done in March.
http://www.hoopsworld.com/article_12025.shtml

One.
Booth52

He's Making A List, Checking It Twice...

2005-07-02T12:02:00.000-07:00

The 2005 Free Agency Period aka The Sonics shopping spree.

For the present moment let us forget about NEEDS. Let us not focus on NEEDING to resign Ray, NEEDING Mr. Sonic Nate McMillan to return, & NEEDING to take a hit out on Wally Walkah. With that being said, on with the list. We've got a big sweaty wad of cash sitting in our pockets. Here's a thought. How bout we don't go out and immediately pay off the loan for the '04 Accord sitting in the garage. We's gots options peeps! 0% interest! Rebates! Discounts! Brand New! Slightly used but still servicable! Let's go out and check out the dealerships no?

The Players in this High Stakes Hold em Final Table (& chip count*):
(Who say's you can't have too many analogies? )
*Assumes 49.5M Salary Cap
*Numbers extrapolated from the salary figures at hoopshype.com. Aside from including bogut's contract, they don't take into account money set aside to sign up drafted players. Chad Ford's got differenet numbers here.)

Charlotte (39.5M in cap space)
Seattle (32M)
Atlanta (29.5M)
New Orleans (23M)
LAC (20.5M)
Chicago (27.5M) assuming Chandler and Curry opt out
Cleveland (28)
Milwaukee (22M)
Washington (12.5M)
Dallas (Mark Cuban, Infinite*M)

Seattle Roster:

It’s mine! I’m keeping it now!
Rashard Lewis 1yr left at 8.5M (believe there might be a PO at 07)
Nick Collison at 1.8 (signed through 07 w/ PO at 07)
Luke Ridnour at 1.7 (signed through 07 w/ PO at 07)
Robert Swift at 1.8 (signed through 08 w/ PO at 08)
Danny Fortson at 6.5 (6.9 in 06. Yay. We got the ol' sparkplug back. Yay.)
Petro at X (yay.)
Gebalalalalle (double yay.)
(This is, at least to me, the Sonics 05 team. I'd much rather see it that way than mentally consider Radman/Allen and company as part of the team until they are signed elsewhere. That thought proccess is folly, and leads to the inevitable Booth52 burning his clothes and crying in the shower scene when Ray Allen bolts to join King James and the Cavaliers. hehe. I keed. I keed.)

Don’t pack your bags just yet.
Damien Wilkins RFA
Vladimir Radmanovic RFA
Reggie Evans RFA
Ronald Murray RFA

The 15M-dollar question:
Ray Allen UFA

We’ll miss you little buddy:
Antonio Daniels PO-will opt out- UFA

So we’ve got your resume here, mmm-kay, and we’ll let you know.
And don’t call us. We’ll call you.
Vitaly Potapenko UFA

Don’t let the door hit your rotund ass on the way out:
Jerome James UFA

The Free(?) Agents:

UFA’s:

Ray Allen and The Replacements
Ray Allen
Michael Redd
Larry Hughes
Cuttino Mobley
Bobby Simmons
Latrell Sprewell

Long, Big, & Stiff(s)
Sam Dalembert
Theo Ratliff
Stromile Swift (my man crush of the moment)
Zydr… uhhh. Z.
Shareef Abdur Rahim
Donyell Marshall
Jeroooomme!
Antoine Walkah!!
Darius Miles
Dale Davis

2nd options/backups to Rid (don't EVEN get me started)
Antonio Daniels (preparing the break-up mixed tape right now. Please don't go baby! Come back to me!)
Earl Watson
Jeff McGinnis
Dan Dickau
Gary Payton
Damon Stoudamire

The bargain bin:
Glenn Robinson
Jahidi White
Bo Outlaw
Ervin Johnson
Mark Madsen
Tyronn Lue
Darrel Armstrong
And Company…

RFA’s

You want em?! Not without a fight, you won’t!
Joe Johnson
Tyson Chandler
Eddie Curry

We can avoid the fight, if you just give me your PB&J sandwich right now.
Kwame Brown
Vladimir Radmanovic
Jamaal Tinsley
Marko Jaric
Kyle Korver
Brendan Haywood
Gerald Wallace
Jason Collins
Primo Brezec
Udonis Haslem
Dan Gadzuric
Reggie Evans
Flip Murray

Options (Those not specified are player options)
Keith Van Horn
Jalen Rose
Grant Hill
Jamal Mashburn
Bonzi Wells (TO)
Eddie Jones
Nick Van Exel (TO) at 12M, I believe it’s safe to bump him to the UFA list
Bobby Jackson (TO)
Devean George
Austin Croshere (TO)
Cliff Robinson

Alrightee. So there's the list/basics. Coming soon is my proposal for where we throw the cheddah around and the roster I'd ideally like to see compose the 2005-06 Seattle Supersonics.

Trade Allen for Maggette... are you nuts?

2005-07-01T22:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry I didn't provide a link, I couldn't really find one. There's been articles/rumors from "reliable insider sources" claiming the Clippers are targeting Ray Allen. One of the latest rumors I've seen floating around is a trade of Ray Allen for Corey Maggette and Chris Wilcox. I'd just like to start off immediately by saying that is the most ludicrous trade scenario I could possibly imagine. And while both Elgin Baylor & Wally Walker have participated in some questionable player acquisitions this one would have to immediately bumped to the top. It is a completely one sided trade.

I would NEVER give up Corey Maggette for Ray Allen.

Yeah, that's right, I would rather have Maggette than Ray Allen. In a f**king heartbeat.

Now before you go turning the page, let me continue to say that right now, as of this moment, Sugar Ray is the better player than Corey. But the difference is more razor thin than I believe most expect:

Here are the relavant stats:


        Allen   Maggette Allen age 25
mpg     39.3    36.9     38.2
ppg     23.9    22.2     22.0
rpg     4.4     6.0      5.2
apg     3.7     3.4      4.6
efg     49.8    45.7
PER     21.38   20.34
PSA     1.11    1.15

For more in depth numbers jump right in:

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/m/maggeco01.html
http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/a/allenra02.html
http://hoopshype.com/salaries/la_clippers.htm
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3080/career
http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/players/3336/career

Does anybody else look at these numbers and see a huge difference? Yet people whom I usually trust don't even consider Maggette a top 50 player.

Top SG's of the league: Kobe, T-Mac, Wade, Manu, The Truth, Sugar Ray, Joe Johnson, Redd, Hughes, VC, Rip, Ben Gordon... really? Maggette couldn't crack this list? A travesty. I'm ashamed of you Mr. Simmons, really. You've got season tix to the clips, have seats to watch this guy play and can't see gem in front of your eyes.

Let's be devil's advocate for a sec: What about the playoff dependability of Allen you say? Yeah, I'll concede that. With Ray, we know he's capable of performing "in the clutch." There is a possibility that Corey is just a statstuffer and that when it comes down to taking the final shot or playing well in the playoffs his nuts will shrivel to the size of raisins We'll call it the Rashard Syndrome. And considering we've already got Rashard pulling that crap, we can't possibly have these two unknown quantities, without leadership capabilities, leading our team right? Baloney. I'm giving Lewis another chance to redeem himself and giving Corey one as well to prove he's got the balls. What else? Oh yeah, he's a leader/great chemistry guy. He talks to Damien Wilkins after practice? Eats lunch with A.D.? A natural born leader? Read The Alchemist ?Gawd, please end this crap. Not two years ago, Allen was being labeled the exact opposite at Milwaukee. Pure perception, all of it. I ain't gonna let this crap get in the way of pulling a MF'ing A trade.

Here's the stats that I find the most compelling:
Corey Maggette
05- 6.72
06- 7.28
07- 7.84
08- 8.40

Those numbers are what Maggette is locked up for in terms of salary per year. That's about 30M for 4 years from a guy who has averaged 20pts, 6 boards, & 3 dimes over the best two years in 36mpg. He's also 25 years old. Allen was reportedly offered a 5yr-75M dollar contract. That averages out to about 15M a year. He turned it down. I would infer that not only does he want more money, but along with the new CBA, he'll want the extra year the Sonics can legally give him.

So let me get the options straight: Ray Allen at 6 yrs 90M or Corey Maggette at 4 yrs 30M. Ray Allen at age 30-36 vs. Corey at age 26-29. Really?

Point is: What is of more importance to me is not simply comparing Allen to Maggette, but more importantly comparing the product/output you get from the 15M a year given to Allen compared to the 15M paid to Maggette (6-8M) and player(s) X at 9-7M. A 9M dollar player folks, in addition to Maggette who will, if not match or exceed Allens offensive output, at least come close. Imagine Tyson Chandler and Corey Maggette compared to a tandem of Ray Allen & Nick Collison. I can go through a hundred other scenarios folks. I really can't understand how people could not see the TUP to this trade. Lewis, Maggette, & player C (& maybe D) leading the Supersonics revival to the glory days... Please stop with the tease Chad Ford/Marc Stein. I can't take any more.

If this trade rumor has any legs to stand on, I say we get Elgin on the phone and get it done before he wakes up. I would be even willing to throw in a future 1st rounder, or even (gasp!) Swift or Petro to get this deal done. Even more if need be.

Rashard, Maggette, Stromile Swift, A.D., Pot. Collison, Rid, Radmanovic, Fortson, Damien Wilkins, Swift. Lawd have mercy!!! With cash to spare.

I would have to wet myself if that scenario ever happened.

Please Elgin, make my dreams come true. Youuuu can doooo it!

The way of the future

2005-07-01T00:33:00.000-07:00

Howard Hughes: [talking of Juan Trippe] He owns Pan-Am. He owns Congress. He owns the Civil Aeronautics Board. But he does not own the sky.

As I've stated before the initial reason I started commenting/posting at Supersonicsoul is because it was one of the 1st Sonics fan sites I came across. Well, just in case anyone is unaware like I was, there are quite a few more sites out there Sonics related (when i get around to updating this blog, I'll appropriately link these)

Sonics Forums:
Seattle P.I. Forum (the one I've been frequenting lately, lots of informed fans)
realgm.com/boards (prolly the largest fanbase, I think)
sonicscentral.com (from what I can tell, it used to be a pretty established forum, but you can almost see the tumbleweeds rolling along when you come in now)
Justbball.com
basketballboards.net/forum
prosportsdaily.com/forums

And of course the blogs:
http://www.supersonicsoul.com/ (still going strong)
http://seattlesupes.blogspot.com/ (read worthy at the very least for the hottie pic updates, if not for the humorous POV)
http://sonicscentral.com/blog/
http://bremertonians.blogspot.com/ (seattle sports in general)
And I'm sure there's even more out there I'm unaware of.

Seriously, there are diehard fans out there, alot of whom are actually quite intelligent, and you can pick practically any of these sites to fulfill your Sonics' jones and pass the time away listening/reading what others have to say about Allen, Nate, & Co. The problem I suppose is that they're not all congregated at one uber-site. That is if you consider that a problem or a nuisance. I initially thought it was.

During the playoffs I came across two really good Spurs forums:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums
http://www.spursreport.com/forums

They both have nice interfaces, a large fan base that congregate at each, and were/are highly entertaing to read, especially during the Spurs-Sonics series. That was when I initially started thinking why the hell doesn't natural selection thin out the herd and save us the hassle of having to go to multiple sites?

Is it that bad a situation to have multiple sites to choose from? In and of itself either of the Spurs forums would be adequate reading/forum-ing alone. But having both out there gives you the choice between two great products with slight nuances. And reading both only heightens the team fanatic experience to an extremely unhealthy level. The combination is almost as great as the invention of the Red Bull + (insert your choice of alchohol here) mixed drink. I mean, seriously, what the hell was I whining about again?

So while I would ideally wish the herd of sonics forums gets trimmed down to 2 or 3 really well established sites, much like the Spurs forums situation, all things considered, I'll take the situation as is as opposed to option B: an internet with only one Pan Am Sonics forum owning the skies over the Atlantic.

-And regarding The Aviator, pretty good flick methinks. One thought in particular: Alan Alda (and Baldwin as Trippe as well)/the director/writer did a good job creating the despisable character Sen. Brewster. Without the Brewster & Trippe characters/nemesis plotlines working well, I doubt the movie would have worked/I would have liked it.
So here's the thing: I'm fully aware that's what the characters were meant to provide for the story, and to look at it from a skewed angle, that the moviegoer is fully manipulated by the script/acting/directing into rooting for the hero/against the villain. It's a vital part of the plot/movie and without it the movie goes nowhere.
For me, a movie doesn't work when I feel/am made aware of the manipulation by bad packaging and handling (had a sexual reference analogy here but to keep it P.C. has been edited out) from the director/actor/writing. You know what I'm talking about: the over the top villains/performances, cheesy villain lines/sequences, straight up in your face plotlines practically spelling it out for you: that is the bad guy, this is the good guy, bad guy killed good guys (insert family member loved one here)- don't like that guy, root for this guy. So regarding The Aviator, it was either good cause it was good or simply because my palate/intelligence for movie watching has eroded into nil. And keep in mind, this is coming from a guy who stood up and clapped along with the rest of the audience during the closing credits of Independence Day at the theatre. That movie rocked! Bill Pullman as the president... giving his speech... goosebumps Bill... you ah a smooth talkah! you ah, you ah! (yet another obscure, out of nowhere reference that noone but the retarded would possibly catch) haha!

-and, oh yeah, don't put money on it, but i think some actual sonics' related posts are forthcoming. hopefully a cheap allen trade rumor post might come tomorrow. free agency beckons, my friends! this should be interestin

Draft thoughts

2005-06-28T12:38:00.000-07:00

Just so I can look back and see what a dumbass I was I'd like to write down my current thoughts on the players:

Good to close to great players:
Gerald Green
Chris Paul
(slight dropoff)
Marvin Williams
Danny Granger

Starting lineup quality players:
Hakim Warrick (I foresee a Marcus Cambyesque career, hopefully without the inuries. Potentially a good to great player... with tremendous upside)
Sean May
Deron Williams
Martell Webster
Channing Frye (although the potential to become the next loren woods is also there)
Salim Stoudamire
McCants
A. Blatche (18rbg & 8bpg... in HS. but still!)
Vasquez
Felton

Duds:
Bogut (maybe a bit too severe, but I doubt he'll justify a top 3 pick. Not quite a Darko, but nowhere near a Dirk/Gasol either.)
Charlie Villanueva (for those of you who don't recall he was the guy that placed second to Lebron at the McDonalds slam dunk contest. I believe that will be the highlight of his career. That and being able to impersonate the bad guys in Double Dragon.)
Luke Schenscher (If the Sonics get him, it'll be density)
Simien & Turiaf (just a hunch, like the rest of this crap. not horrible NBA careers, just not noteworthy either, I'd guess. I'd guess 8th man of the bench 8-10m a game types. they just don't have that IT factor. haha.)

I also don't think Hodge is gonna amount to much. No clue on Ike Diogu and Chris Taft or Bynum. Or anyone else for that matter.

Speculations post Spurs-dynastification

2005-06-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

Here's the appropriate links 1st off:

Where I got word of the Allan Houston Clause: CelticsBlog. The blogging world never rests people.

The Allan Houston Clause article: (Please note this is the Daily News and any story originating from them should be doubted until proven correct- I'm pretty sure this is the Vecsey newspaper):
Under new CBA, Knicks have one-time option to buy out any player. Money still counts against the salary cap, but not luxury tax.

The Trade:
trade that would send Quentin Richardson and a conditional future first-round pick to the Knicks for Kurt Thomas

So, 1st off, that Houston Clause, while it doesn't aid as much as it seems to, sounds full of it to me. It seems like something Isaiah/the GM's pushed for but one that'll likely be of more benefit to the players, allowing the high market teams to continue to lavish $50M contracts even after sporting a crazy bankroll already.

If you're a GM dumb enough or unfortunate enough to get stuck with a Houston-type contract, I say you should pay the punishment. Hell, in my Fantasy Football league last year 7 teams bypassed taking Peyton Manning over running backs in a league that gave 6pts for a TD pass. Was there a redraft done after a couple of games to placate the idiot GM's? Hells no! (A FFL league champeeenship ain't no joke fellas.) The clause is basically the equivalent of giving a GM the right to carry around a backup pair of undies in case he soils himself. This ain't preschool folks, I don't need no stinking badges, and the only way the mentally impaired GM's of the league are gonna get eliminated is through the process of natural selection(?)/evolution darwin style. There's a reason the Dodo bird didn't make it. The damn thing had wings, couldn't fly, and had s**t for brains. Let's just move on.

As for the genius move of landing Q.... hmmm.
Knicks roster:
Backcourt: Marbury, Crawford, Q, Penny, Trevor Ariza, Houston (if move doesn't go down)
Frontcourt: Tim Thomas, Mo Taylor, Sweeney, Jerome Williams, Malik Rose

For comedic purposes you must head over to Hoophype.com's Knicks salary info to complement this. Tim Thomas 14M, Penny 15M, Starbury 16.4, Crawfard 6M, Q 6M... That's funny to me. I believe Knickerblogger or some other Knicks site (i'm paraphrasing, and probably incorrectly too) pointed out the fact at the Malik Rose trade that trying to cut salaries pre 06 for the Knicks wasn't really logical so adding salaries that compounded to the salary cap until then wasn't as terrible a thing as casually observed. The reasoning made a lot of sense but to me this trade, as is/left alone, doesn't. Even with Thomas' obsession for stockpiling SG's disguised as PG's I'd be shocked if the roster stayed as is without him trying to swing another deal to form a more typical 5 man squad of sorts. Shooting Guards and Power forwards and large salaries, oh my! NY certainly ain't Kansas (or seattle for that matter) Toto...

Also in the works:
Danny Ferry to be GM of the Cavaliers, and Rex Chapman likewise to be GM of the T-Wolves. This stuff is also funny to me. Rex Chapman... Geez, he MUST be a good guy to oversee personnel decisions since he helped get Nash, The SuperDuper MVP of the NBA, to the Suns. As much as I disdain the Walkmeister, I feel in much more competent hands knowing that Oliver and Cho are whispering sweet somethings into the ears of The Wizard of Ineptness. Nevermind that Sund GM signing crap. Purely a smokescreen. DeanO, I am trusting you to grab the wheel and steer the SupesShip towards the promised land when Captain Wally turns his head. Don't let me down.

Look, I don't discount the idea that former players may be competent GM's. I'm just highly dubious of the selection process if one of the qualities the hiring was based on was for this fact. Intelligence and rational thought are priorities 1a and 1b, playing experience priority #28,690 when it comes to selecting the head of the org. Ferry stands a decent chance of being a decent GM cause he's been (hopefully) learning some stuff from Buford in the Spurs org. But Chapman? Really? The guy who brought up the whole race card issue for the Nash MVP voting during the playoffs? Ughhh. I feel fairly confident in my ignorant belief: Chapman's gonna be a waste of money as a GM. At the very least.

Oh yeah, regarding the new CBA.
a) I'm fairly certain that this will result in Ray resigning with the Sonics. If not, Allen will head over to another team via a trade with the Sonics to capitalize on that extra year that the Sonics can give him. Allen at 15M+, Mac-10 at 5M+.... Antonio Daniels has officially left the building. I'll miss you little buddy.

And regarding the Spurs title and post celebration:
For the 1st time in a long time I watched a team win a championship... and felt a certain amount of sadness/envy. I haven't really talked to Matt yet about how much he's enjoying it all, but I'm hoping he's properly savoring the moment.

Watching games 5-7, the Horry magic, Billups in the clutch, Manu, Duncan... the celebrations, the Parker rap... watching the Spurs and the Pistons duel it out, 2 teams I hold no emotional/fanatical ties to, all for the opportunity to hoist above their heads a rather lame looking trophy... Sometimes sports moments just creep up on you and make you realize why you care about games and teams in the 1st place. This uninteresting, slow paced, boring finale came out of nowhere and provided that for me. I want that champeenship feeling sometime in my life and dammit I'm gonna enjoy the moment when it comes.

Oh yeah, if anyone is reading this and is noting just how much more crappy my writing has become... you needn't bother, i'm fully aware. I have no idea how matt does this juggling blogging/work thing.

This is one bad ass motha..

2005-06-22T12:10:00.000-07:00

“A voice, which must have come from God, whispered to me to drop the panga (machete) and thrust my hand in its wide-open mouth. I obeyed,”

M’Mburugu = My New African Idol

-I bet it was a neighbour with a twisted sense of humor who told him to drop the machete.
-73 years old folks... I'll consider it a victory if I can refrain from wetting my bed at night at that age or get an erection on an annual basis.

An instant classic...

2005-06-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

This was the first game i've watched of this finals. I've been reading/told this was a boring series.

The final 3 minutes of the 4th quarter:

3:01 79-80 Chauncey Billups made Free Throw 1 of 2.
3:01 79-81 Chauncey Billups made Free Throw 2 of 2.
2:46 Manu Ginobili made 9 ft running jumper. 81-81
2:27 81-83 Richard Hamilton made jumper. Assisted by Chauncey Billups.
2:19 San Antonio Full Timeout.
2:15 81-83 Rasheed Wallace Shooting Foul. His 4th Personal Foul.
2:15 Robert Horry made Free Throw 1 of 2. 82-83
2:15 Robert Horry made Free Throw 2 of 2. 83-83
2:00 83-85 Rasheed Wallace made 8 ft jumper. Assisted by Chauncey Billups.
1:47 Manu Ginobili missed layup. 83-85
1:46 Robert Horry offensive rebound. 83-85
1:46 Robert Horry made tip shot. 85-85
1:29 85-87 Chauncey Billups made 7 ft two point shot.
1:16 Robert Horry made 25 ft three point jumper. Assisted by Tony Parker. 88-87
1:01 88-87 Richard Hamilton missed jumper.
1:00 Tim Duncan defensive rebound. 88-87
1:00 88-87 Richard Hamilton Personal Foul. His 4th Personal Foul.
1:00 Tim Duncan missed Free Throw 1 of 2. 88-87
1:00 San Antonio offensive rebound. 88-87
1:00 Tim Duncan missed Free Throw 2 of 2. 88-87
0:59 88-87 Tayshaun Prince defensive rebound.
0:59 Detroit Full Timeout.
0:51 88-89 Chauncey Billups made driving layup.
0:33 88-89 Rasheed Wallace Shooting Foul. His 5th Personal Foul.
0:33 Tim Duncan missed Free Throw 1 of 2. 88-89
0:33 San Antonio offensive rebound. 88-89
0:36 Manu Ginobili offensive rebound. 88-89
0:33 Tim Duncan made Free Throw 2 of 2. 89-89
0:33 Detroit Full Timeout.
0:17 89-89 Chauncey Billups missed layup.
0:16 Bruce Bowen defensive rebound. 89-89
0:16 San Antonio Full Timeout.
0:01 Manu Ginobili's layup blocked by Ben Wallace. 89-89
0:00 Tim Duncan offensive rebound. 89-89
0:00 Tim Duncan missed tip shot. 89-89
0:00 89-89 Rasheed Wallace defensive rebound.
0:00 End of the 4th Quarter.

Just wanted to find this for my own recollection of a consecutive series of 9 possesions (depending on how you define possessions) where the two teams, challenging the top 2 defenses in the league in crunch time of a pivotal game 5, converted on NINE STRAIGHT possessions, to keep the teams within 2 points of each other THROUGHOUT THE QUARTER. In a finals game. A game 5. Against the top 2 defenses. Wow.

Since I'm not I diehard fan of either team, I'm not really as emotionally involved in the series. Yet I'd have to believe this was one of the 10 greatest finals games I've witnessed. (My personal NBA history only dates back to the last of the Laker-Celtic series in the 80's.)

Among the intriguing subplots:
-The Wallace f**kups (The Weber Timeout and The Botched Double off of Horry.)
-The compelling play throughout, but especially in the 4th & overtime, when a few select players spit in the face of SABRmatic folk everywhere by building on the lore of The Clutch Player (and the Choke Artist) (and yes, I know this ain't baseball and that stuff don't crossover as easily as Billups does.)
-Groundhog Day aka The Cornerstone aka Mr. Fundamental goes for 26 and 19.... yet ends up being saved by the Man In Black- Mr. Will Smith... err.. horry. Let's see: Duncan as the greatest PF of all time, taking the mantle away from The Mailman? Throwing up solid/spectacular numbers in both points and rebounding? Check. Dissappearing/choking at the end of a crucial game? Check. We have liftoff. (Did anyone else think of Jordan's strip of Malone when Duncan lost the ball/missed those free throws?) (stirring up a pot of hatemail i'm sure)
-Billups looking Isaiah Thomas-esque...
-Yet being overshadowed by Horry
-And having the final play taken away from him for option #2,954: a struggling Rip Hamilton on the block, throwing up, along with flailing elbows, junk in the final shot of the game.
-(note to self: Rip 2005 Finals= Lewis 2005 Playoffs vs. Spurs)

And regarding the final 2 plays:
-The Spurs ran the play for Manu to get the ball in the corner and drive. Duncan was not option 1 in the play. Duncan did not pull a Scottie Pippen. Manu was trapped in the corner & Horry reprises Toni Kukoc's role and plays the hero. Should Duncan be applauded for not demanding the ball, as the reverse held that Pippen was bashed for bitching about his noncall? Is the old "true superstars demand the ball in game on the line situations" something we should seriously question from now on?
---Result of play: Game winning 3. Right call/play. Spurs/Pop are smart
-Similarly for Detroit. Billups has the mojo going throughout the game. Looks unstoppable in the 4th and OT, positively clutch and fearless going into the lane. Yet they set the play up for Hamilton. Should Billups be criticised for not demanding the ball? Is the old "true superstars demand the ball in game on the line situations" something we should seriously bring up now?
---Result of play: Game losing shot. Wrong call/play

I guess that's right. I guess.

-Also, regarding the obvious f**kup by Wallace on leaving Horry... The play had the spurs inbound the ball to Manu in the corner. Wallace comes to double. Manu has the ball in the corner, with boundaries on two sides, and the ++ on the ball defense and long wingspans of Tayshaun Prince and Rasheed Wallace converging on him. If Wallace was half a second faster, Manu half a second slower, I think we'd be singing a different song right about now, and it would not end in Wallace bashing/Horry praises.

-Robert Horry, Robert Horry, Robert Horry. On his 1st few shots converted the initial thought that came to mind was that his legendary status may be the largest reasoning for his legendary status... Eveytime he made a shot the thought in everyone's head, the words spoken out of every nba analyst, is Rob's clutch. If Joe schmoe were to make a 3, make it 2 in the same situation, that wouldn't happen. Of course, I'm not really thinking this right now/anymore... My bad Rob.... You know i was just playin!!

-More Horryisms:
Years from now we're gonna be discussing what a great dynasty the Spurs are. We'll be talking about where they rank in comparison to the 70-80's celtics, the 80's lakers, the 90's bulls...
If Rob doesn't make that shot we'd be wondering where these pistons rank among clutch playoffs teams like the early 90's pistons or late 90's rockets.

If Horry misses, we'd also be talking about the inadequacies of Duncan. The non clutch factor. The what coulda been for a team loaded with such talent, such potential.

Likewise in 02, Horry made that shot and sank the Kings. Webber: inaduquate/choke artist overrated. Peja: likewise. Kings: what could have been.

Robert Horry: A monkey wrench thrown into the space time continuum of the NBA World. Somewhere in Bizarroland The dynastic Kings and Pistons are smiling.

road trip musings

2005-06-06T18:13:00.000-07:00

Does anyone here know of the arcade classic game Supershot?

http://www.bmigaming.com/games-basketball.htm
Supershot
supershottoo
more supershot
even more supershot

(BTW, Don't you just love the age of the internet? Anyone even remember netscape? AOL? Momma.com? It would have been an arduous task to obtain the name, much less a picture of one of these games before, I found 4 sites in 5 minutes. Sweet. And has anyone else heard, or used, this internet 2 thing? Apparently you could download an entire movie in like a minute or the entire Jenna Jameson collection in two. That's f**king nuts. Anyone else look back nostalgically on the 96-98 years when you downloaded songs off of ftp sites in 15-20 minutes with total glee at the absurdity of it all? The excitement of the upgrade from an 18.8 to a 33.3 modem? Or when cablespeed and T1 & T3 were still revolutionary stuff? Nuts, i tell you.)

If you don't know of Supershot, shame on you. It's a game that simulates shooting a basketball. To the naked eye, it was essentially the same game, but to the knowledgable the differences were telltale & obvious. First off, the hoop was lower to eye level. That accompanied with the cage on the top prevented you from shooting with a true arc on your shoot. Secondly, the ball was a lot smaller. The whole follow through and rotation are nowhere near as comfortable to do with that small a ball. No follow through. A guy could be a 80-90% shooter on a regulation free throw but would be KILLED by a Supershot pro if he tried using that in this game. My friend would beat me mercilessly in this game and I always busted out my natural male reaction "Let's take this s**t to the courts now buddee!! I'll f**king bust you for real beeyatch!" (It'd be 1:00 in the morn and I'd be dead serious about finding a court to back up my bravado. Inebriation Roooolz!! And so does dictionary.reference.com!)

When you played Supershot you HAD to adjust your game and your mindset. This WASN'T basketball. This was Supershot. Lose the arc. Ditch the rotation. F**k the follow through. Once you adjusted your mind that this was not the same as the free throw could you begin to get good at this game.

So here's my point. You know those Nike Michael Vick Experience commercials where the guy get's on that roller coaster like ride imitating being Mike "You know how I get down" Vick in a real life NFL game? The one with the classic girlish scream at the end?

Supershot(c) = The NBA Shaquille Oneal Free Throw Experience

Shaq is a monster of a beast, and we earthlings often forget this fact. Matt's estimated (or possibly has privvy to the knowledge) that the diesel's dong is 24 inches long, which would make the distance from his thumb to his index fingertip 2 frikkin feet! Alright, maybe that's an overstatement, but even if his hand was just 1 foot long it'd still be significant enough to make holding & shooting a regulation basketball a different experience altogether. Go crumple some paper into a ball earthling, shoot it into a trash can, and compare that experience to a basketball. There IS a difference.

He's also a 7 foot tall guy. I'm 5'-9". When you're looking UP at the 10' rim, it becomes natural to have a higher arc in comparison to a 7' guy. Like I said earlier I don't blame bigs for not having arc on their shot. The rim's straight ahead; hence the missiles launched by the big fellas. Us 5'-6" earthlings easily deride them cause we don't put ourselves in their size 15 shoes. If you'll also notice some of the better FT% 7'ers had the proccess down of bending their knees(lowering starting point of shot) like Olajuwon. (The Dream is of course the exception rather than the norm, everything about his game seemed like that of a PG-SG: the sick ball handling, the shimmy shake, the ridiculous repetoire of moves... I don't think we will EVER see another 7 footer with the basketball grace of Hakeem. EVER.)

(BTW- I would've loved to add some data here showing the ft% average of all 7 footers vs. the average ft% of guys, say, 5'6"-6'0", to 6'-6'6" etc. I feel pretty safe in assuming that the data would've shown a decided advantage in ft shooting to the smaller guys. Maybe I will some time later. Somehow I doubt it though.)

We've all heard that Shaq has hired numerous different FT shooting trainers to teach him how to shoot. I have no doubts that a) these guys know how to shoot free throws and b) they're probably teaching how THEY shoot FTs. The idiots.

BE THE BALL. If I were to teach Shaq how to shoot I'd do either one of two things:

1) Let him shoot underhand, two handed style.
Harhar. Yer stoopid. That'd look sooooo gay! But the method has decided advantages. First it adds a natural arc to the shoot, since it comes from a lower point of trajectory. The only negative to it is the natural rotation is opposite to that desired. But hey it's still a whole lot frikkin' better than a supershot FT. The other advantage would of course be that we, the fans, would have the pleasure to witness a 7' 350lb behemoth HOFer Center shoot girly style. Honestly, how awesome would that be?

2) Train Shaq to aim higher. What I would do is ingrain(?) into his head that it's natural for him to shoot towards the hoop ("it's not your fault Shaq, it's not your fault") till he broke drown and cried on my shoulder and b) stop this madness by putting up some plexigass between he and the rim, about, oh, 12 ft tall or so for FT practice shooting. Maybe put up nudie pics of a great big grizzly bear a couple of feet above the rim to get him thinking/looking up a bit. And I'd taser the som'bitch anytime he clanked one on the glass. Scratch behind his ears when he got the rotation down. Rub his face in doodoo everyime he threw up a few. I might also consider starting him on training wheels like you do any kid learning how to ride a bike, by starting with a larger rim, and giving that man some candeeee!! every time he made one (positive reinforcement, negative reinforcement, the basics for the basics kids.)

Act now Shaq and I'll throw in a free Ginsu knife! And if you're not fully satisfied, return my ass in 30 days for a full refund! (Isn't that ahmaaazing Nancee! And how!!)

So the answer to the age old question: What exactly do you think about when you're in a car for 18 hours straight? For me, it was Shaq's hands and Supershot.

debating the debatable

2005-05-31T15:34:00.000-07:00

Pity me... & call 1-800-C O L L E C T

I've been MIA for a while and feel like I must apologize to the 1 or 2 folk that get lost in this wide WWW and find themselves on this site.

I've been meaning to jump into an argument that I've been having with Matt at Spursblog for quite some time regarding the enigma that doth be Manu Ginobili; In particular, where does he rank in comparison to The Crybaby, Jesus, or that's Mr. Shuttlesworth if you're nasty, (actually the best nickname i've found so far for Allen is Sugar Ray, which originated for me at least from the sonics vs. the world blog guy.)

Unfortunately, I've been extremely busy doing non-scratching my balls and typing about it stuff that I haven't been able to maintain a steady dose of retardedness on this blog. Hopefully when I get settled down in Cali, that'll change. Hopefully.

The other reason I haven't been able to set forth a firm opinion on the whole thing is the hugantic nature of the task itself. I've been dying to respond intelligently, but the thing is... I can't.

Hi: My name is Booth52, and up to about a year ago, I was a complete idiot(Hello booth), as opposed to being just a partial one now. I had no knowledge whatsoever of eFG's and TPS's (Lumbeeeerg!!!!! Just-a-moooo-ment!), +/-'s and PERs. 82 games was nary a blimp on my radar, and APBR sounded like something I'd definitely want to avoid. But now that I have 82games.com, APBR.com, & Basketball-reference.com, and the vast amount of wealth of knowledgable NBA fans with keyboards all over the place, my life has changed, for the better, and so can yours!!(insert wink here, accompanied with pearly white smile, front tooth sparkling)

Matt's been deluging me and basketball blogging surfers everywhere with pretty damning evidence that Manu is providing to show that he is indeed a MF'ing A player (Manu, not Matt), and quite possibly the better of Mr. Shuttlesworth (....gasp!! air! i need air!) The gawdy PPS, +/-, PPG, the defense, the hair, the Divac-esque Oscar performances... the COMPLETE package peeps. My flippant replies to him have I believe both infuriated and discredited any semblance of intelligence I may have tricked him into believing I had.

But while the playoff PPS numbers that Ginobili has thrown out this year are in all likelihood valid, the Fact that Danny Schayes (WTF is Danny Schayes anyways?! Is he white? Can I score his jersey? Cop his CD?) is the all time leader and that Baron Davis and BJ Armstrong join the prestigious PPS list leaves me to not blindly believe the info until I can fully study and understand what the data implies. Same thing with the +/- stats. Manu is currently leading the playoff pack in this regard... but so are Alfred and E. Jones over their superhero counterparts D. Wade and Shaq. Just like there is an Antoine Walker & Reggie Evans for every PPG & RBG leaderboard, there are the Brendan Haywoods' of Roland Ratings, and on and on...

Well whoop-tee-f**king-doo... but what does it all mean Basil?

Here's the gist: I'm not fully comfortable yet with my understanding of these numbers to go fully agreeing or disagreeing with any claims based on them. If a player led the league in PPG, eFG%, PPS, +/- you'd feel comfortable with an assertion saying he's the best player in the league. But what of the numerous situations where you compare two players of similar stats, one better in one quality over another, and reverse? It's enough to drive a man crazy! NASH fo' MVP yo! No wayyy! U R sooo dumb! No, you are!! Jibba-Jabba-Jabba!!

I plan on being somewhat capable enough to throw out an informed opinion eventually. I've got a full intention of grading out the 2005 NBA Free Agent list with some form of intelligence to boldly predict the Sonics should trade for Tim Duncan should he become available, and eventually throwing out my own top 50 players or something of the sort. This whole writing down your opinions and standing by your word leaves you with the inevitable choice of a)spending large amounts of time getting your facts straight or b)eating crow (mmmmm.....). Hopefully my sloth-like nature prevents me from grabbing a fork on a regular basis. But for now, let me just end by saying: Ray Allen Roooooooolz!!!! Yeahhhh!!

The Nate McMillan Dilemma

2005-05-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

Who do you choose?

Last year, Jim O’Brien was one of the most coveted coaches available in the 04 offseason. He ended up signing for 4yrs and 16M dollars with the Philadelphia 76ers. Today he was fired.

Two years ago, Jeff Bzdelik was being touted as a coaching mastermind, someone who optimized the abilities of a marginal to awful Nuggets squad. Half a season later, in Dec 04, he was fired and blamed by some for the lack of great play from his team. After firing Bzdelik and trying out Cooper, the Nuggets made the move to hire former Sonics coach George Karl, who seemingly propelled the team to an inspirational 2nd half run which landed them the 7th seed in the Western Conference, and the title of “team nobody wants to play in the 1st round.” Mike D’antoni was named 2005 NBA coach of the year. He’s been lauded for being the architect of the resurgent Sun’s fun & gun offense, largely by “coaching” the move of not calling too many set plays and letting Nash freestyle with his new toys in Stoudemire, Richardson, Johnson, and Marion. In 2004 Hubie Brown was named coach of the year for turning around the Memphis Grizzlies and teaching them how to play team basketball. Jerry Sloan was a close 2nd for similarly getting his no talent Jazz team to outperform expectations and flirt with a playoff seeding. One year later, pretty much the exact same Grizzlies team struggled out the gate and Hubie resigned due to health reasons. In Utah, the Jazz upgraded players but still had one of their worst seasons….

In 2004-05 Nate McMillan "led" a Sonics team, which for the most part remained the same personnel wise from the year before, to a 15 game turnaround and a NW division title.

Before going further I think it'd be appropriate to lay out a few job requirements & qualities that should be the basis of evaluating a coach:

Mandatory Coach skills that are readily observed & evaluated:

Game management:
Proper player time distribution- knowing to play Ray Allen 38 minutes and Mattin Cleaves 0. Proper planning such that you almost always have at least one of your 2 stars, main scoring options on the court at all times.
Proper usage of timeouts: example- when you’re team is getting a 15-3 run shoved down their throats by the opposing team and the players have that deer in headlights face going on.

The X’s and O’s:
Play calling during game- (especially if team IQ is marginal, i.e. you don’t have a john Stockton type running the point able to understand to throw the ball down to your money player, recognize mismatches etc.) Having a play ready for a down by 1 with 2 seconds remaining situation. Game planning for opposing teams, specific matches/mismatches. Adjustment to in game flows/injuries/trends etc.
Overall team style & emphasis- determining offensive sets that team should use based on coach’s knowledge & preference & personnel. Should I run the triangle offense to get my superstar open looks? Is this team properly built to run a full tempo game? Should we slow it down? Give the bigs the green light to go aggressively for the offensive rebound and accept a decrease in transition defense? 6-7 man rotation or 8-10 man rotation? Does personnel allow me favorable small 5 man lineups? Yadda yadda yadda.

The intangibles:
qualities that are more ambiguous, not easily quantified/observed.

Motivation:
In game- Can he light a fire in his team during halftime or during a timeout called while the other team is making a run? Or settle them down if need be?
Season wise, can the coach pull the team together in the midst of a losing streak? Keep them focused during a winning streak? Avoid the letdown game against the Charlotte Hornets?

I think the first set of coaching “skills” should be considered mandatory. Furthermore, being their profession, the more basic abilities should be as comparatively simple as tying one’s shoelaces or being able to pee upright. The intangible set... that is something that I leave to the Walton's & John Thompson's of the world to analyze.

Here’s another caveat. I’m not sure if everyone is aware of this but most teams actually employ more than one coach! The Sonics are blessed to have Dwayne Casey & Bob Weiss as assistant coaches to Mcmillan. Both are highly regarded in the league, and I believe one of the two actually came close to landing the head coaching job several years ago over Nate. Popovich has Carlesimo in San Antonio, Don Nelson had Avery while he was leading the Mavs. What of these assistant coaches? How much do they contribute?

Phil Jackson is widely regarded to be a great coach. If I were to guess, I believe knowledgeable NBA minds would say he’s a great game management coach, with a high basketball IQ, & a great motivator. Obvious qualities he does possess, mmm-hmmm, intangibles see not you he holds as well, mmm-hmmm.

But he was also paid 6M a year while with the Lakers and rumors persist that it will require even more to sign him this offseason. You know what? If you’re a team like the Lakers 02-04, with the personnel set up for a title run, with the cash flow available to throw 6M a year to a coach and still be able to employ a couple of superstars and some moderately priced role players, I’d say employing Jackson would be a good decision.

So, I guess the question I’m getting at is this. Is the head coach truly deserving of all the praise lavished on a good coaching job and similarly do they deserve blame for a poor team performance in turn? If the guys at APBR ever could (and, really if anyone can, it’s gonna be the guys at that think tank.) I’d love to see someone come up with something similar to a win share analysis that shows the extent a coach can have on the impact of a game and season.

I don’t know. I do not fully discount the possibility that a coach can have as much of an impact as a player. What I tend to believe at the moment, without hard data to prove one way or the other, is that a coaches ability to affect a team’s success is overestimated by many. I believe there is more evidence, and it stands to logical reason, that the players themselves have a more decided outcome on the games.

In regards to the Seattle situation, let’s be realistic: the Sonics are strapped for cash. Apparently the guys up top bought a house with an interest rate 10 points higher than every other homeowner, then witnessed a few years later the market actually dictate banks/cities were actually obligated to pay for half of their house. A combination of bad luck, poor foresight has left the Sonics’ in the unenviable position of being in a decent market, yet still struggling to break even, even in combination with staying under the salary cap. Sad.

So, if Mcmillan gets an offer of 4 years 20M contract, give or take, I vote to let him walk. Promote Dwayne Casey or Bob Weiss to the head coach position at a more palatable 1-1.5M per year, & have the Sonic genius duo of Dean Oliver and Rich Cho pluck out an adequate assistant coach from the discount bin and do the same thing all over again when should the market dictate Casey/Wise deserve a large contract of their own.

The Sonics have a multitude of holes to fill this offseason and a minimal budget from which to do so. A player will have an infinitely further reaching impact on the game and season outcome than the guy who gets paid to prop up a designer suit, cross his arms, look constipated at appropriate times, have the ultimate self control to never pick his nose during game time, and master the pat a player on the butt as he comes in from a timeout move. Let’s understand this and spread the wealth accordingly.

Just to infuriate (myself even) I’d like to close with the old cliché:

Great players make great plays. The game is won on the court by the players.

Recent NBA Coach contracts:
Avery Johnson: 4 year 10M contract (this year)
Jeff Van Gundy 4 year 18 million dollar contract. (2003- in 2005 he got extension of unknown amount)
Jim O’brien: 4 year 16M contract (last year)
Larry Brown: 5 years 25M (2 or 3 years ago)
Phil Jackson- 5 year 30M deal with Lakers, new contract supposedly will trump this contract.
Popovich- 3yr 20M extension (back in 03, but for duties as Spurs coach and GM)

Random observation:
On the 3pm pac time SC, Rachel Nichols was doing a spot from the Miami arena pre game 1 Heat vs. Pistons: Behind her was some stupid heat dance team comprised of 20 or so senior citizens practicing a Macarena dance bit that will be unleashed to a game 1 crowd that will undoubtedly giggle at the cuteness/absurdity of it all and politely clap thereafter.

Here’s the kicker, the Heat are in Miami. Miami. A city I’m told that is teeming with beautiful women, silicone & saline implants so abundant, they'll have to brush them away from their faces. Is there really a need to go after the old folks doing a dance/action primarily done by young folk, therefore it’s funny yuk-yuk-yuk shtick? The Mariners pull this gag EVERY f**king game here at Safeco with their grounds keeping crew doing their thang, but it’s somewhat understandable cause a) it’s a baseball game with a different demographic b) it’s a baseball game and for some inexplicable reason I’m sure is associated with the words “Tradition, pastime, America’s, favorite,” MLB doesn’t do cheerleaders, or “dancers” as I believe they prefer to be called, & c) it’s Seattle and we simply don’t have the beauty pool that Miami does.

Oh yeah, and Rachel Nichols... I like her. Alot. I particularly enjoy her lisp, specifically how she closes with “from (insert location here), this is Rachel Nichols, E S Peyyeeennn.” I believe I may be the only person in the world who gets such a kick out of such a small detail. Yeah.

An introduction long overdue

2005-05-17T19:45:00.000-07:00

Some of you may know this already, but prior to this site, I was writing in another site: www.supersonicsoul.com. First off, it’s a great site. Nice look, good content, if you’re a Sonics fan and aren't already doing so, I suggest taking frequent trips there sometime.

My first post originated quite simply out of 1) boredom, & 2) a keen interest in the NBA, particularly the Sonics, being that I’ve lived in the emerald city for the past 8 years. To reiterate, I should not be considered to be a diehard fan. Plain & simple truth; I have no storied past of following this team since childhood, for which I both admire and feel sorry for those diehards who have lived and died with this team, through the good and the bad.

Well, in the midst of a 2-3 month long sabbatical from work, I was finally able to come along The Soul in my internet meandering. I admired their devotion to their team, and in pure innocence wrote my first bit on the Supes and emailed it to them. Paul, who I believe created the site, was awesome about the whole thing, and did me the huge honor of posting my email on his site. Before the ink was even dry on that 1st post, I had already emailed Paul my 2nd one and, realizing it was the only course of action that would free him of my pestering, he actually gave me the keys to the Porsche, and direct access to post on Supersonicsoul.

First off, I really need to say thank you to Paul & Supersonicsoul for the generosity and opportunity they gave me. It should have been noted much earlier, in huge bold print the minute I started this mockery of a site. I had an absolute blast posting on The Soul and have nothing but best wishes for Paul and the site. I hope it continues to flourish.

So why the hell am I here on this blog now? Quite simply, creative differences. I needed an outlet to talk about stuff that was heavy on my mind that was non-sonics related, like why Betty Rubble is hotter than Wilma Flinstone, the time I dropped a deuce that looked like Elvis, or reason #2,068 The Creek didn’t actually lose it’s entertainment value at the end of it’s shelf life. And you think I’m kidding. Just wait, the 10,000 word articles are just waiting to be unleashed. I believe it will start with why The Cutting Edge was a great movie.

The other reason I left was because of a difference of opinion on how to handle good ol’ disagreements that occurred on the site. There was a tendency to take disagreements & arguments wayyyy too seriously on the site at times and, on rare occasions, to take/make it personal. I just didn’t get it. IMHO, a blog is a frikkin’ blog, and taking anything about it too seriously was just ridiculous.

So, just like Andy Dufresne, I realized it was just my time to go. I still have my clothes with which I crawled through five-hundred yards of shit smelling foulness...

And so was born booth52.blogspot.com. Anyways, thanks to all who come to my site for some strange reason. I have no idea how long I’ll be doing this, how intently I shall post, nor what future direction the blog will take. But I hope my retarted musings can at times entertain, and always be taken as the asinine, fool-hardy opinons of a madman.

Regards,
booth52

"Increase the size of your log!"

2005-05-17T15:55:00.000-07:00

Actual quote/line from my statcounter.com site. I believe it is referring to some database thingy... I think.
Coincidentally the page it was on was titled:
"Came from booth 52"

We now return you to our regularly scheduled broadcast for mature & responsible adults.

Going down the rabbit hole

2005-05-17T12:40:00.000-07:00

2005 NBA Playoffs
Western Conference 2nd round
San Antonio Spurs vs. Seattle Supersonics
Series tied 2-2
Game 5: Tonight 6:30PM pac time at The SBC center

It's been 6 months and 1 fortnight since the 2004-05 season inagauration debacle at L.A.. More than 1/2 a year since the preseason hoopla all but buried this team and laid us to rest...

In my series prediction, I laid out a gargantuan list of things that needed to go right for the Sonics to do the impossible. I assure you, nowhere in that list did I account for 1) losing Vlad for the series, 2) Allen limping off in game 1, 3) Rashard shying away from the playoff spotlight, & d) Lewis stubbing his damn toe. It is preposterous to me what this team is doing in light of those losses. What we are witnessing right now, in my opinion, is more improbable than our season's accomplishments. The Spurs are the best team in the NBA. Yeah that's right, better than the Champs, better than The Boy Wonder and his band of misfits. Nothing will deter my opinion of this.

Yet here we are, 200 days later, watching our Sonics go into a pivotal game 5 in the Second round of the playoffs against The Mighty Spurs. Still standing: chest out, chin up. And tied 2-2. Un-f**king-real. I've blatantly pirated Simmons' material, joking about cutting the mighty Russian, Drago being the Spurs. The Supes have been hit below the belt with a wicked haymaker, and are sporting a swollen left eye that can barely be seen out of... And yet the Russian is STILL bleeding, in complete disbelief that his opponent yet remains standing.

I'm completely incapable of making further predictions on this series. That rabbit hole beckons; there is no way of knowing what lays beyond in the darkness. F**k it, I am officially jumping in.

The pilot has officially turned ON the "Believe" sign.

Sonics in 7. Onward.

Breaking down myths (or trying to at least)

2005-05-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

Question that popped up while thinking what Luke, A.D, & Wilkins are gonna bring to the table in tomorrow's Seattle vs. San Antonio game 5 played on the road at the SBC center:

Old NBA Adage 3,059: (aka The Kenny Smith backup pre game line when I just arrived 1 minute before going on air.)
In the playoffs the homecourt advantage shows up in the performance of the role players. Role players play better at home than they do on the road. (Implications galore in this statement)

Is this adage true?

Split stat FG% 2004-2005 Season
Seattle GTG’s:
Allen:
Home: 43.7 (49.3 3p%)
Road: 41.9 (40.0 3p%)
Lewis:
Home: 43.1 (36.9 3p%)
Road: 49.2 (43.7 3p%)
Seattle role players:
Daniels:
Home: 46.3 (36.1 3p%)
Road: 41.1(22.8 3p%)
Ridnour:
Home: 39.3 (43.5 3p%)
Road: 41.8 (31.4 3p%)
James:
Home: 53.9
Road: 47.6
Radmanovic (IR but thrown in for the hell of it):
Home: 42.3 (35.9 3p%)
Road: 35.8 (38.3 3p%)

Trends:
Allen, A.D., & Rid, shot the trey considerably better at home. A.D. overall shot worse on the road. Lewis strangely shot better overall on the road.

To test out Kenny’s assertion let’s take a look at the 04-05 postseason and I’ll categorize Ridnour, & Daniels as role players and Allen as a go to guy. Please note this is a sample of a grand total of just 9 playoff games:

Ridnour:
Home: 20-52 38.5% (3pt: 3-9 33%)
Road: 14-34 41% (3pt: 1-5 20%)
Daniels:
Home: 20-46 43.5% (3pt: 1-7 14%)
Road: 13-26 50% (3pt: 3-6 50%)
Allen:
Home: 46-101 45% (3pt: 14-34 41%)
Road: 37-70 52% (3pt: 12-31 39%)

To properly analyze the adage we’ve got to first understand what it implies. Does it mean:
1) Role players shoot considerably worse on the road than compared to at home always? Or just in playoff games? Or in playoff games they shoot considerably worse on the road than compared to typical season road stats? Is it an implication of a large fluctuation between the two stats?
2) Does the yang to this ying exist, as I believe Kenny implies, that Go-to-guys’ fg% do not deviate as greatly as role players?
3) And of course how the hell do you define a role player exactly? The unknowns to this adage are endless.

I’ll assume it implies GTG’s road fg%’s vary slightly if at all compared role players, who should see a significant dip in season vs. playoff road shooting %.
Allen: Road % shot up from 41 to 52
(Home% roughly the same from 43 to 45%)
Rid: Road % from 42 to 41, roughly the same
(Home% roughly the same at 39%)
AD: Road % jumped from 43 to 50% in playoffs
(Home% down from 46 to 43%)

Allen & AD's road shooting % have gone up in the playoffs, while Rid's has remained steady. No conclusion at all from this mess. If anything, my hunch would be this adage holds no truth whatsoever, but being as I can’t/don’t care to spend any more time to try and prove it, I’m not gonna be throwing my own nonsense around.

(To properly analyze this adage, I would have ideally liked to get players with a large amount of games played in the playoffs for a larger sample size. I was thinking along the lines of a Steve Kerr vs. Michael Jordan postseason/reg season efg%’s comparison. Alas, there’s no site with these numbers readily available. And of course, you’d need like 25 or so Kerr-type players vs. 25 Jordan players to really begin to feel comfortable with any results… You’ve won this time Kenny… but one day I will have my numbers ready! Beware, I shall return! Oh yeah, and I can take you in a game of horse too! I'll counter your over the backboard money junkball shot with my own patented 1 bounce shot from the top of the arc.)

And it's now a two to TWO series!

2005-05-15T19:40:00.000-07:00

Ay caramba! Se' la vie.... Sombitch! Wha' happened?

Seattle 101, San Antonio 89
Series tied 2-2
Next Game: Tuesday at San Antonio 6:30 PM Pac time

Player(s) of the game:
The Sonics backcourt. Ray Allen led the charge with 32 points on a breathtaking array of moves, including a drive and dunk on Horry's mug that willed every single behind off the seats in the Key. Antonio Daniels added in 19 points and 7 dimes on 8-13 shooting. Have I mentioned that I have a man crush on Daniels yet? Seriously, alot of people feel he screws up the flow of the game when he has the ball in his hands. To that I say phooey. I'm giddy right now. Sorry. I think Matt summed it up best when he said after a reckless A.D. drive to the lane which netted him a trip to the free throw line: "A.D. would run into a brick wall to get some free throws."

Oh yeah... there was someone else... who was it? Luuuuuuuuuke!! Please come out for your curtain call. 20points and 6 assists with 3 steals, he was downright frisky tonight. Two of my gripes with Ridnour are 1)his defensive inefficiencies against quick slashing point guards like Parker and 2)his unwillingness to take shots the defense gives him. Tonight 1) because of Lewis' departure we saw alot of a 3 guard lineup of Rid, A.D., & Allen, & Rid thankfully slid over to defend Barry on many occasions instead of trying to defend Parker. 2) After making a few shots, Rid's confidence was through the Key Arena roof and in the 3rd quarter he threw the ball up without remorse, running one handed floaters off the glass, over Spurs' wingspans, 16-20 footers off of curls... Great game Rid, let's see that confidence in your game/shot spill over to game 5.

Breakdown:
-Lewis left out of the lineup with a bruised toe and the Mac-10 goes smallball with a starting lineup of Rid, A.D., Allen, Evans, & J.J.. And the Supes took the game in convincing fashion. ALot of people are gonna take this along with 'Shards poor play in the series to mean we're better off without him playing. Not the case: I still believe Lewis needs to be a factor in the series/playoffs if the Sonics' are to have a chance at taking the series. And let's all calm down from this high while we're at it: All the team has done is hold serve. There is still the task of taking 2 out of 3 over the remainder of the series, with 2 played on their court... And they are still The Spurs folks, let's not diminish the remainder of the task left ahead of the team.
-Sorry, gotta hand out one more game ball. Damien Wilkins... every time I get to see him play extended minutes, I come away impressed. Defense, heady play, willingness to take the shot given to him. My favorite line of the night... 5 steals & 1 block from the nephew of the Human Highlight. He also had 15 points, 3 of which came on an outlet pass 3 which he confidently stepped into, something which his bench counterpart Ginobili seems unable to do for some unknown reason. I can't wait to see what this guy can do in a season with a steady diet of 20-30 minutes a game. He's gonna make you proud one day, I promise you... And Harry, Jimmy, Trent, wherever you are out there, fuck you too! Hoooo-hah!!

Question of the night:
Can the Sonics repeat the night's energy and hustle for a game 5 away from the Key?

Sonics-Spurs Game 3 observations & Game 4 thoughts

2005-05-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

Game 4:
Sonics vs. Spurs Round 2 matchup
4:00PM Pac time at The Key
Spurs lead series 2-1

Game 3 observations:
-Bowen repeatedly funneled ray to his left, with Duncan or another big shadowing intently. Result 0-xxx shooting in 4th.

-Lewis yet again was a no show. There were in fact several wide open 3’s which he pulled a Manu on & glossed over for a tentative pump fake drive in… and stop to throw an outlet pass to a reset D. Sad. I can’t talk more negatively of Lewis anymore.

-The gene pool for the nosebleed attendees is markedly kiddie pool shallow. Some highlights:
Parker/Manu/Duncan at the foul line:
“Viva la U.S.A.!" (actually one of the better ones)
“You guys are charity stripers! Spurs are charity striping! You guys are getting all your points from the foul line!" (huh? I’m confused, is this meant to be an insult of some sorts? An indirect comment for the officials? Even their neighboring cheering sections were confused at this.)
“You suck!" (In reference to Bowen. Honestly, is there anything wrong with keeping it simple and using this should your imaginative lines suck ass? K.I.S.S.)

-As much as I criticize Ridnour and applaud Daniels over him, over the 8 playoff games, they have performed almost equally with regards to +/- stats. I personally would still prefer Daniels to take as many minutes at the point as possible without messing with his abilities. Ridnour has been an able floor general, no doubt, but A.D.’s offensive play making/creating abilities are something Ridnour simply cannot imitate, and with the dissapearance of the No. 2 option in this series it’s been big. Oh yeah, and did I fail to mention the whole defensive liability thing?

-I cannot imagine a situation in which Jerome James gets another 6 open lanes for a dunk in this game. With the logs he threw on the flames with THAT statement and the Spurs being the defensive juggernaut they are, I fully expect them to adjust and take the James pick and roll for a dunk play out of the equation.

-On a similar note, matt has been dead on with his noting that Nazr Mohamed is a bigger defensive liability than is seen by the casual observer, looking at the stat sheets. If Pop doesn't give more minutes to the Solid Slovenian, add this to his deficiency stat, along with being a Scrooge with the timeouts during runs by opposing teams.

-In the Key, myself and Matt were totally oblivious of the free throw disparity till Matt’s insider reporter notified him so. We both agreed it wasn’t obvious in watching the game live that the Sonics were getting a brunt of the calls going their way, unlike in the early quarters of game 2.

Game 4 thoughts:
-I am terrified of what the possible mindsets of the two teams will be like entering this game. I have no doubts the loss, the James’ comment, Popovich giving his players a new arsehole, will have the Spurs ready to prove something out of the gate.

-On the Sonics’ side, I am deathly afraid of a possible letdown in the first from a feeling of holding serve, and feeling a little too complacent after proving themselves able to hang with the mighty Titans. If we’re down by no less than 6 points at the end of the 1st, I will consider that a victory. Seriously.

-As horribly as Lewis has been playing, not having him in for Game 4 would be a huge blow to the Sonics’ chances. If he is out of commission I pray his minutes get divvied up by Daniels/Collison/Fortson and… the human highlight’s cousin. I’d love to see more minutes of Wilkins hounding Manu on D. It’s a good thing. I think.

Danny Fortson Fun Facts:
2005 Season: 0.25 Fouls per min, Theoretically fouls out in 23.5 min
Round 1: 0.40 Fouls per min, Theoretically fouls out in 14.8 min
Round 2: 0.63 Fouls per min, Theoretically fouls out in 9.6 min!

That is crahahazeee! Roving reporter crazy tetherball head man out... Back to you E.J.

Too bad the band left members behind

2005-05-12T11:40:00.000-07:00

What could have been...

Seattle Supersonics vs. San Antonio Spurs
Game 3:
7:30PM Pac time, Thursday May 12, 2005 @ The Key

The location has changed. The problem remains the same.

I’ve been far too depressed and too busy doing my stupid stand-up routine to properly throw a proper evaluation on the series and its evolution, or more appropriately its deterioration in terms of the Sonics’ hopes.

San Antonio is up 2-0. You could argue that all they’ve done up to this point is hold serve and should we do the same over the next two we’d be right back in this thing. You could. I don’t have the heart to argue you out of that stance. Much like you, I’ve still got my dunce/fan cap on and will be tormented by it till the bitter end. This is gonna be slightly incoherent babble, but here goes…

Dissapointment #1
The single most disappointing aspect of the series so far has been the mysterious disappearing act of Rashard Lewis. 2005 NBA All Star. The other part of the Sonics’ 1-2 punch. The Past, Present AND The Future.

2005 Season stats:
20.5 points, 5.4 boards, 46%FG 40%3PFG
2005 Postseason:
17.6 points, 4.7 boards, 42%FG, 23%3PFG
Round 2: games vs Spurs:
20.5 points, 5.4 boards, 44.5%FG 0-7 3PFG

Not that much there really, but factors aside from post-injury play:
-Sacramento’s game plan was to take Lewis out of the equation with repeated passive to aggressive double teams from a combination of different looks on the double team. Lewis showed a VERY poor ability to recognize the double team and proper decision, be it the outlet pass to the correct open man, or possibly going baseline if given the opportunity from a weak, poorly executed double team.
-It’s not a coincidence that ‘Shard’s 0-7 from the arc against the Spurs. As has been heavily documented they have the best 3 pt defense in the league, by a wide margin, and there has barely been a 3 point shot taken by the Sonics not contested by the opposition.

Here’s the kicker for me in all of this. The Spurs, as anticipated, decided to throw Bowen on Allen and have decided to guard Lewis, on many an occasion 1-on-1, with generous helpings of double teams mixed in. Furthermore, his defender has come from a platoon consisting of the following: 6’-7” Brent Barry (a terrible defender), 6’-6” Manu Ginobili, Robert Horry, and on some occasions Nazr, Bowen, Parker!, & even Udrih! I am dead serious!

Plain and simple, for the Sonics to win Rashard Lewis has to rise up to the fans’ lofty expectations that he is a legitimate player of All Star offensive ability, more than capable of taking advantage of every instance he is given that 1-on-1 mismatch. I noted in my preview of the series that if the Spurs were still using this strategy on Lewis come games 3 or 4 it means 1) Lewis has failed in his responsibility & 2) We’re f**ked. Check. Check.

There is NO excuse for Lewis not demanding the ball as he looks down and sees Barry or Manu on him. Even IF the double team comes and it forces the ball out of his hands, it still, with proper passing/intelligence, leaves the team with an advantage with the Spurs D out of sorts scrambling to reset and putting a man on players/the ball. I’m seriously beside myself watching Lewis shy away from the responsibility/opportunity.

Spurs fan’s are gonna come in here and see a deranged Sonics’ fan with a foolish belief that Lewis has a better game than he really possesses. They may partially be right. Lewis was not wholly consistent through the season in his post up game. Much like the team, he simply didn’t bring it every game and was actually invisible at times. But for those who watched 82 games, they can attest to the fact that Lewis’ play progressed as the season went, that is until his injury and his post-season malaise.

Dissapointment #2
The Sonics played 82 regular season games; 63 were played with Radmanovic & 19 without*.

With Radman:
Points scored- 100.5
Points allowed- 97.1
Point diff- 3.4
3PM- 8.5
3PA- 22.6

Without Radman:
Points scored- 93.9
Points allowed- 95.2
Point diff- (-)1.3
3PM- 6.8
3PA- 20.8

*I actually ran this stuff in a previous post with about 8 or so games left in the season to kind of show Radmanovic’s effect on the team aside from his personal stats: i.e. he spreads the floor, causes defensive problems for opposing teams. Like that last post’s stats, these numbers of course have other mitigating circumstances, noise, as the statheads like to call it. Lewis was out a certain number of games as was Allen. The disappearance of solid play from The Fort. Strength of opponents is not taken into account etc… And again, it’s no shock to anyone who has seriously, or even casually, followed the team: The 1st half Sonics were playing at a superior level to the 2nd half team (in particular the 1st third of the season vs. the last third.) What this stuff does indicate, but not prove, is that Radmanovic has more influence on the Sonics' performance than most people realize, or would care to admit.

Here is my summary of that old post verbatim regarding a particularly tough Sonics' late season losing streak, including grammatical mistakes:

So again you might ask, what the hell’s your point? Simply put, the current state of guarded pessimism taken on by Superfriends everywhere is a bit misdirected at this current time towards the nosedive the team is in. I don’t consider the slide any indication at all of the team’s ability to win (in the playoffs). I don’t care if the team as is loses by 3 or 30 to the Lakers, cause they ain’t gonna do s*** in the playoffs as is. Rashard is expected to return after a few more games, and Vlad’s tour of duty in IR is scheduled to end either today (if you believe the 4 week timeline) or by the start of the playoffs. What is of importance is the team’s ability to re-incorporate two of their most important players back into the fold, and to again develop that chemistry that made the offensive execution a thing of beauty during the first half of the season. If they’re not able to do this, consider the Season record your only present (this) year, cause the Sonics ain’t going nowhere in the playoffs without a little of that magic they conjured up in the beginning of the season.

Now, BEFORE I get the expected crap, I am NOT throwing this out as an excuse for the Sonics poor play or for their 2-0 series deficit to the Spurs. This is NOT an exclamation saying that with Radman we’d be just as good as the Spurs, or you’re so lucky you didn’t catch at full strength type nonsense. I’ve believed and said this at the halfway point of the season, at the end of the season, and at the start of the playoffs: The Spurs are the best team in the NBA. Should they do what they need to do, it should result in a trophy in their hands when all is said and done.

What I am trying to say is simply… this effort we’re seeing is NOT representative of the full capability of the 2004-2005 Sonics. I had wished and hoped that THAT team would have shown up. It would have been fun to watch. Lewis continuing his evolution and making San Antonio pay for the Barry/Manu insult... Ray winning his inferno deathmatch duel with Bruce... Our combo standing toe-to-toe with the mighty Duncan-Manu heavyweight… Radmanovic hitting outlet rainbow threes... Hanging in, hanging in, resilience shining in their eyes... It truly would have been fun. But I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

Game 2 Recap: We lost

2005-05-11T11:39:00.000-07:00

Sorry to the readers there's no full game recap yet. For now, hopefully you can tide yourself over by heading over to nbaspurs.blogspot and read the running thread myself, Matt & Co. did at his site (I was hoping a change in venues would equally shake up the outcome: Negative)

Anyways here it is. I (or another Soul member) will update this stuff later today.

http://www.haloscan.com/comments/sungo/111577381119112726/

That was fun...

2005-05-08T23:38:00.000-07:00

A picture speaks a thousand words...

San Antonio 103, Seattle 81
Spurs lead series 1-0
Next Game: Tuesday at San Antonio at 6:30PM

Player(s) of the game:
To single out one player would be a shame. The Sonics made the entire Spurs team look like a bunch of superstars. But for consistency's sake let's do this. Tony Parker had 29 points on 11-18 shooting and had 9 points on 4-4 shooting in the 1st 8 minutes of the game. I have promised not to mention certain topics for the remainder of the playoffs so, readers, please read between
these: ---- "____ _______" -----.

Breakdown:
- Welcome back to Earth, Jerome and all us demented Sonics fans.
- If anyone attempts to justify the injuries as being the primary cause of this Sonics' loss, they will have all commenting privileges taken away.

Reasons to remain optimistic:
- Crickets chirping...

- X-rays? Negative. Hallelujah.
- Due to NBA playoff guidelines, there was no technical way that the Spurs could count that can of whoop-ass for anything more than a 1-0 series lead.
- Collison, for the few brief moments he was in there, looked like he carried some the late season, 1st round, energy minutes over into this game.
- Lewis, for a very scant few minutes in the 4th, reattached his frank and beans to his groin, and got a few promising slop points in at the end.
- (Heading to kitchen, scrounging through cabinets, looking for any more straws to grasp. Negative.)

Question(s) of the night:
- Can Ray be as effective playing ball on a sprained knee as he is playing the gee-tar and singing?
- Lewis: You've lost... that no-one-can-stop me feeeeling, woa-oah, that unstopabble feeling. Can you get it back in time to make it a series?
- Will the Sonics read and react?

Spurs-Sonics Game 1 thread

2005-05-08T11:36:00.000-07:00

Gametime: 5:00pm Pac Time on TNT

In case any of you are gonna be sitting at home watching this, feel free to do your yelling and screaming, and venting out your anger here.

Game on!

Added on May15, 2005-
Here is a link to the Game 1 thread:
http://www.haloscan.com/comments/supersonicsoul/111559171394103289/
For some strange reason Spursfans really enjoyed the torment I endured:
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=15329

And the band played on…

2005-05-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

2005 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Round 2:
#2 San Antonio Spurs vs. #3 Seattle Supersonics
Game 1: Sunday, May 8, 5:00PM Pacific time

Bench & Starting matchups/comparison:
I don’t really feel comfortable doing one since these teams, the Sonics especially, actually have bench guys playing more minutes, and in at crucial minutes at the end of the game (at least I hope so.) For the Spurs I fully expect to see Horry taking over at the 4 spot & Duncan shifting to the 5 spot. For the Sonics I hope the finishing combination will include effective contributions of James, Radmanovic, & Collison. Lastly you can go to ESPN, Yahoo, CNNSI etc. and get a much more involved analysis than I’d give. Try Chad Ford; I think he’s got Vitaly Potapenko being the X-factor or something.

Here are the lineups that concern me:
Spurs finishing 5:
Duncan
Horry with occasions with Rasho instead
Bowens
Manu
Parker

Sonics finishing 5:
James with generous portions of Collison in an undersized rotation
Even distribution of Collison & Radmanovic
Lewis
Allen
A.D.

Ideal distribution of Sonics time (5 spots at 48 min = 240 minutes)
Ray Allen: 42 minutes (39min season average)
Rashard Lewis: 40 m (38)
Antonio Daniels: 35 m (27)
Jerome James: 25 m (17)
Nick Collison: 25 m (17)
Vlad Radmanovic: 25 m (30)
Reggie Evans: 15 m (24)
Danny Fortson: 14 m (17)
Luke Ridnour: 14 m (31)
Damien Wilkins: 5 m (-)

Plays I’ll be looking out for:

When Sonics have the ball:
1) Set play: Lewis and Allen on the wings, Evans slightly to one side of the key, James/Collison/Fortson setting the pick for Rid or A.D. at the top of the key. At onset of pick and roll, Lewis and/or Allen go to motion, using Evans pick to rub defenders off and find an open spot outside, usually on opposite wing they started at. Pick man rolls, PG drives and decides whether to 1) drive to the hole and shoot 2) drive & kick out to an open Lewis or Allen, 3) hit the rolling pick man or Evans.
2) Set play: Lewis and Daniels isolated on one side. Remaining players on other half with a typical configuration of Radman setup for a straightaway 3 and Allen for an elbow 3, with Evans or Fortson in position to chase an offensive board. Lewis and Daniels run a pick & post in which Lewis takes the PG to the block and sets up Calabro for a “there’s a mouse in the house!” call with a high percentage post up opportunity, or 2) defenders sloppily switch off pick and A.D. gets an open lane to the hole for an easy shot or 2 free throws, or a rotating defense which leads to an outlet pass to a waiting Radman or Allen.
3) The cat & mouse play (or the Reggie Miler special): PG with the ball at the top: 4’s and 5’s (and maybe Rashard as well) setting picks, SG running through both picks to rub his defender off of him for a catch and shoot. The effectiveness in which the Sonics will be able to get the ball to Allen off this play for a clear shot without Bowen still stuck on him like glue will speak volumes as to who’s winning the Sonics O vs. the Spurs D match up.

When the Spurs have the ball:
1) Parker and a big (Rasho or Horry primarily) executing a high pick and roll at the top of the key. The best defense against the pick and roll I’ve seen recently was from last year’s Pistons. Billups wouldn’t even have to call the switch and the big (Sheed) would AGGRESSIVELY use his mobility to close the gap on the speedy PG, and use his wingspan to prevent a quick pass out. PG would be forced to stop his dribble and/or reset the offense, allowing the defense to reset itself as well. It kinda helps when every guy on the team is a + on the ball defender. Now that I’ve mentioned Billups & Wallace… imagine Parker & Duncan/Rasho/Mohammed running this against Ridnour & James. That is a nightmare sequence. James does not possess the lateral mobility or the basketball IQ to stop Parker from driving off the switch, Ridnour does not possess the toughness to fight through the screens (just watch how many times he gives up on a screen due a lack of toughness, there are just so many hidden f**kups on Ridnour’s part that are attributed to other players it pisses me off), and or the PG will see the breakdown and pass to the cutting big man or the big man posting on Rid, which will cause defensive rotation, big man getting it a high percentage shot from a wide open teammate.
2) Duncan on the block, particularly on the left (or right?) side either facing his defender up and taking the 16-18 bank shot his defender gives him, or posting/getting by with a quick first step and driving into the key (almost never goes baseline) for a high percentage 4-8ft shot.
3) Spurs on transition: Because of the Sonics’ tendency to allow the 4’s and 5’s to go after an offensive rebound opportunity, it is paramount that Rid/Allen/Rashard and their bench counterparts stop transition penetration from Parker/Manu/Udrih and force them to setup their half court O, (and allow us to set up the D)

For the Sonics to win ALL of the following must occur:

1) Ray Allen & Rashard Lewis must come close to matching the offensive output of Tim Duncan & Manu Ginobili.

2) All indications are that the Spurs will go with a game plan of Bowen on Allen. This will mean that:
a) The Spurs game plan will be to minimize Allen’s efficiency with Bowen, minimize the output of the other 3 players with 1 on 1 D, and force Lewis to prove his ability to reliably score against the likes of Ginobili or Horry. To reiterate: Lewis must decisively win any 1-on-1 matchup against Ginobili or Horry.
b) The game plan will be to passively or aggressively double team Rashard when he gets the ball and, unlike in the Kings series, prove that he’s capable of evading the double team by going baseline to the rim, splitting the double team, or making the correct outlet pass to rotate the ball to an open man/shot.
If the Spurs are still on one of these game plans come game 3 and 4, it will mean that Rashard failed to adjust to the defense and is not capable of providing a reliable enough offensive production/output to complement Allen. Translation: We’re f**ked. An ideal Sonics situation would be Rashard being crazy effective forcing Pop to place Bowen on him and Manu on Allen, and the Sonics duo capitalizing.

3) Tony Parker must be limited to 3 monster games min, meaning of course, in 4 of the games the Lewis/Allen duo will only have to contend/match the output of the Timmeh/Manu duo for the Spurs. This will require either one of the following or a combination:
a) Parker will pull his inconsistency act, not have a great shooting night, lack confidence in his shot to be effective on several nights. Maybe we can send Eva some lingerie and some Oysters the night prior to the game to weaken the Frenchman’s legs come game time…
b) A.D. or possibly Damien Wilkins will be effective in limiting the drives Parker takes resulting in open 6-8 floaters, lay-ins, passes to open players. Ridnour will be chained to the bench during this time and only allowed on the court when Brent Barry or Beno Udrih assumes the PG spot for the Spurs. And maybe one restroom break at halftime.
c) The Sonics will be marginal to above average in their defense of the high pick and roll.

4) Jerome James will NOT have to go Bizarro on us and chip in with 15pts & 10 boards a night. What is needed of him is to be defensively active, with fast enough footwork/reaction to stay out of foul trouble and be in proper position to alter Parker floaters & the maniacal-Manu lefty lay ins. Numbers wise the team will need a minimum average of 25 FRISKY, ENERGETIC, & SMART minutes, 8 or so rebounds, and several blocked/ altered shots a game.

5) The defensive rotation off of a Tim Duncan double team must minimize the number of wide-open Spurs 3-point shots. If the combined shooting stats from Parker/Bowens/ Udrih/Manu resulting from poor rotation results is 5 or so made treys at a 45% clip or greater, score this a failing grade. Also, proper rotation execution must be made by our 4's & 5's when our 2 & 3's go flying towards Manu/Parker/Barry beyond the arc, and they subsequently drive in. There's going to be a bunch of Supes running around like monkeys reacting to San Antonio ball movement/penetration/player movement, and its gotta play itself out like controlled chaos for the good guys.

6) Collectively, the production that the Sonics get from the 96 minutes at the 4 and 5 spots must give us a decided advantage over the Spurs counterpart sans Duncan. This means you Nick Collison, Reggie Evans, Danny Fortson, & Jerome James. You guys must at least double the output of Rasho Nesterovic, Robert Horry, & Nazr Mohammed.

7) The Radmanovic/Daniels/Ridnour trio will average roughly 22 pts/game. I’d specifically like to see this group counteract any production from Parker during the 4 Sonic victories.

For the Spurs to win:
Any scenario not containing ALL the factors stated above will provide the Spurs with a series victory.

O.K. Before you skewer me with statements like “Where’s No. 8: The kitchen sink?” please take a look each one of those addendums individually. None of them is a mountain moving request and they certainly fall within the realm of this team’s capability.

But for all of them to occur in the series? Indeed, the odds are staggering against the Sonics, and an application would need to be written for the hand of God to make a series appearance. Yes, the Spurs are that much better.

The odds are that grim for a Sonics victory. Almost as grim as… the odds of the Sonics entering the playoffs as the No. 3 seed… As slim as the preseason chances for the 2005 NW Division Championship banner to end up hanging under the Key Arena roof... As unlikely as the chances of a naïve high school kid, agonizingly watched by a nation having his lottery dreams crushed in the 1998 NBA draft, blossoming into that rarest of species: an All Star plucked from the 2nd round junkheap... As improbable as the Jerome James’ 1st round outburst coinciding with Lewis taking time to regain that unstoppable feeling & A.D. getting his legs back…

This to me is everything the playoffs are about. Dreaming the impossible dream. Seeing the mountain defiantly standing in the way of glory, and defiantly walking forward in turn. I’ll be watching this team doing the same from the nosebleeds of The Key in games 3 & 4. I’ll be in full denial mode of the task ahead of the Supes, screaming myself hoarse. I hope to see you there too. Game on.

Sonics in 7. Onward.

Testing....

2005-05-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

blah blibbity blah blah

Where have the NBA Giants gone?

2005-05-05T11:34:00.000-07:00

An experiment gone awry... & The Next Coming?

Now that we have this brief respite from meaningful Sonics games, at least until the Spurs handle their business, here’s some filler material, until the folks here at The Soul tackle the task that is the 2nd round analysis:

Some of you young’uns may not believe this, but there was a time not too long ago when the NBA actually had centers with skill.

I went back to the early 1990’s, particularly years 91- 93 and came up with this list.

The Elite:
Patrick Ewing- HOF
Hakeem Olajuwon- HOF
David Robinson- HOF
Shaquille O’neal- HOF
Pretty Darn Good:
Alonzo Mourning
Dikembe Mutombo
Brad Daugherty
Not so much, but still offensively talented/serviceable*:
Kevin Duckworth
Vlade Divac
Moses Malone (still had a few miles left in years 90-92)
Rik Smits
Derrick Coleman
Robert Parish (HOFer but not in the late 90’s, still serviceable from 90-92)
Rony Seikaly
Sam Perkins
*(Please go to basketball-reference.com to refresh your memories on some of these guys before you start ROFLMAO, and understand I’m merely saying they did have some skill.)

There were 27 teams in the League: Of those, 4 had HOF’ers, 7 had All Stars, and 15 had decent centers with marginal offensive capabilities/game affecting ability.

Here’s my point: during that age, there were a bunch of teams who had centers with capable offensive game or game influencing capabilities. You couldn’t deny the face staring straight at you from the 7’ body tossing 8ft jumpers over your team: they were beings that had to be deliberated on and accounted for. If you went into a playoff series facing one of those 4 teams with the HOF’ers or one of the 7 teams with the All-Stars without someone/something to combat them, they would make you pay, probably with your playoff life. I believe the reaction to this was two-fold:

1) Where/how can I get me one of those?
2) Where/how can I get me someone to stop one of those (particular the select studs at the top.)
For those teams on the outside looking in on this phenomenon there was one particular reaction: we can build one of these guys for our team.

And so the novel idea was formed: Size was the premium and talent & skill the by-product of work/experience that could be nurtured into the player given time. Like a Chia-pet, a team could simply purchase a starter kit from K-mart, add water, sit their ass on a lawn chair, and watch their investment grow into a gifted center of equal offensive/game changing ability. (One example: Purchase (1) gangly 7’-0” rookie, sit on bench, watch games from bench, hire once great center to teach aggressiveness, teach skill, work out X amt of hours to change body to desired product, add 20-30lbs, wait 2-4 years – become All Star.)

GM’s whom fans and owners entrusted with their teams fate thus began the their ill-fated experiments. What came out of their laboratories was a Frankenstein monster for the NBA: a mutated being bearing only a passing resemblance to the giants they were meant to imitate. They walked around with awkward gaits, had barely acceptable control of their appendages, were zombie-like in their reactions/ hand eye coordination and they mercilessly terrorized their cities for years on end with their terrifying long-term multi-million dollar contracts.

All of you people entering this Supersonic team site know very well of these creatures I speak of. Jim McIlvaine… Calvin Booth… Chris Dudley… Michael Olowakandi… Rasho… Adonal Foyle…Brian Grant… Non-Bizarro Jerome... Potapenko… The monsters were unleashed on the League and nothing was ever the same again.

But, just like Mary Shelley’s story, the fan realized (or should have, at least) that the true monster was not the misshapen being now forced to wander the world in shame in their tricked out Cadillac Escalades, but rather the mad, God-playing, GM’s that created them… (Translation: F**k you Wally Walker.)

Fast-Forward to the present time:

Check out the list of centers in the league today:

The Elite:
Shaq- HOF
Pretty Darn Good/O.K.:
Yao Ming (some may throw him in with Shaq)
Not so much, but still offensively talented/servicable:
Z. Ilgauskas (maybe he should be with Yao)
Brad Miller
PF’s 6’-10” or less in height/playing stature, playing the 5 spot with offensive game or impact power:
Amare Stoudemire
Ben Wallace
Emeka Okafor
Rasheed Wallace
Marcus Camby
Frankenstein’s still roaming around in the league:
Mark Blount
Shawn Bradley
Brian Grant
Booth
Raaaasho
Olowakandi
And on and on….
(The omission in this list is the cause of this post; please bear with me.)

Take a look at that list:
There is just one guy who can truly dominate the game from the 5 spot. There are only 2 others who you could justify as having a decent enough offensive game. The rest of them? Either A) they’re 6’something” PF’s disguised as “centers” in the 5-spot who you could/should better defend with 6’something” players of your own, or 2) 7’ stiffs without sufficient offensive skill to need to truly concern yourself over/ require some crazy acquisition on your teams part to counteract.

I don’t know exactly what happened, but much like the woolly mammoth, the great centers of the NBA have disappeared, with only a few still in existence. Maybe it’s a cyclical thing and in its next manifestation the League will once again be the land of talented giants. Regardless, I think it would be wise to 1) learn from the past mistakes of our ancestor GM’s and B) not feel the need to risk unleashing further abominations in a league which no longer requires a solution to great centers.

And now here comes 2005 playoff Jerome James, lumbering around right in front of our very eyes. How appropriate is it that we have a genuine Sasquatch sighting here in Key Arena, in the Pacific Northwest. We’re awestruck at the sight. Could it be? Is this real or am I dreaming? WTF is going on here!?!

I’ve called him Bizarro Jerome on occasion because of the infrequency of his appearances on our planet. But now, these 5 straight playoff game sightings… Is he a creature genetically brought back from the DNA of the extinct NBA Center of the past? I’m stumped. But you know what? If I’m a GM and this offseason I’m faced with the decision, I take a look at recent history and I make certain I don’t become the Frankenstein of my team.

Jerome James: Free Agent? You can take him, I’ll pass.

Voting results:
Who will Jerome James most closely resemble in the 2005-2006 season?
Jerome James season 2004-2005 - 27
Jerome James 2005 playoffs round 1 - 9
Zydrunas Ilgauskas - 4
Yao Ming - 1
Jim McIlvaine - 8
Total votes - 49

Game 5: Pickin' Time

2005-05-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

To me predicting game 5 is equivalent to predicting the Sonics playoff chances in its entirety. True contenders take out the pretender Kings in 5. As Barkley says, championship teams stomp on their necks when they have 'em down. Should the Sonics end it in 5, optimism will blow the roof off the joint here at the Soul, and maybe it’s justifiable. That trophy would feel oh so tantalizingly close to our grasp…

I’m sorry to burst this post game 4- bubble of euphoria, truly I am, but I just can’t see it: This team is not there yet. There are the Spurs, Heat, & Pistons at the top, and the Sonics are at a rung somewhere below them (yeah, I know, I doubt I could come up with a wimpier statement!)

Reasons I’m still pessimistic after game 4:
-To beat the dead horse yet again, I believe A.D. is by far a better player/option at point guard over Rid. The fact that Ridnour has been outperforming him leads to one of two conclusions: Ridnour has been playing basketball at a higher level than he did in the regular season or Daniels has been playing at a worse level than his regular season performance. Of those two, and based on watching their playoff performances, I’m going with the latter. Daniels 2nd half performance in game 4 was promising however.
-Lewis has not played to a level that is required of him for this team to truly take it to the next level. C'mon Lew! Don't fight that feeling anymore! Remember? The one where noone could stop you? Please say you remember. (Oh yeah, maybe that whole injury thing is a factor too.)
-The X-factor, Radmanovic, has been playing below average to downright awful. He’s clearly not in full form yet (did you see the errant pass directly thrown at Peja for a 2 points at the end of the Game 4 1st half? I couldn’t even imagine a retarted kid learning how to play basketball doing that.)
-Danny... Daniel Fortson (you come into this house right now mister!! You’re in big trouble!) over the past 3 games: 17 points… in 31 minutes of play… due to FOURTEEN personal fouls. The game-changer refuses to drop his hack-act. Sure, you can blame the officiating, but let’s be honest, it’s THE glaring flaw in his game and he refuses to adjust.
-And Jerome… seriously, I could write a whole book on my feelings about this guy. To summarize, I don’t trust the mirage. Wish I could, but I just can’t do it.

Prediction:
Game 5: Bibby reads and reacts, Jerome settles down, Kings make a valiant last stand, & Sonics provide us with inconsistency yet again. And I get the strangest feeling we're gonna see a mini-fracass with an imploding Fortson in this game as well.
Final Score: Sacramento 104- Seattle 103

Playing for a penny (or two)

2005-05-01T23:34:00.000-07:00

Half-man/Half the Offense

Seattle 115, Sacramento 102
Sonics lead series 3-1
Next Game: Tuesday at Sacramento 7:30PM Pac time

Player of the game:
Ray Allen was simply sensational: 45pts, 4 boards, 6 assists, & 4 steals. Regardless of the play, defender on him, or defensive scheme, Allen scored at will. In a segue/interview shot before the game by TNT that was almost an omen of his performance Ray Allen said something to the following extent when describing the deceptive quickness/ease of his shot: It’s like a man trying to catch a fly with his hands; he thinks that he’s got the fly (with his quick hand movement) but the fly escapes. To the fly, the hand is in slow motion. Everything feels like it’s in slow motion when I’m shooting. Again, I’m paraphrasing, but you get the idea.

Breakdown:
-Repetitive, I know, but Allen & James great play in the series has the Sonics on the verge of advancing to the next round. Would the Kings stars play any better had they been in contract years, as Allen and James are? Sounds reasonable to me. And, another thing, how great would it be if corporate America handed out guaranteed multiyear contracts to cubicle gophers? Can you imagine the discrepancy in performance from workers with and without contracts?
-After his heroic game 3, Bibby came back with a suspiciously quiet game 4: 13pts on 4-17. Read and react: the mantra of the playoffs.
-The broken record: Jerome James coming through again with 17pts, 8 boards & 4 blocks. To my eyes his play in games 1 & 4 were slightly more energetic & valuable to the team (being a more offensive, rebounding, and defensive presence) than his play in games 2 & 3. Really though, WTF is that to nitpick over? My apologies Bizarro Jerome. You can be my wing man anytime. (Bulls**t Ray, you can be mine...)
-I am the first to scream the belief that A.D. is the superior option at PG over Rid, but Luke has clearly been the better option in the series. Take a look at these numbers for further info.
-Radmanovic had a terrible defensive performance. Kings’ players were totally taking advantage of him at times. Also, there was one play where Rashard was defending Peja 1-on-1, and could’ve taken a slow moving elbow/clearout to the face for an offensive foul, but didn’t. He saw it coming and moved his face out of the way to avoid injury. I doubt I would’ve taken it, I’m sure many star players wouldn’t have as well, but the Artests, Bowens, & Wallaces of the league sure would have.
-horn-tootin’: I predicted Allen & Lewis would combine for 60pts and Seattle would win 113-108. Final numbers: The duo got 64pts and the score was Seattle 115- Sac 102.

Question of the night:
Let’s try this one more time: What now are our adjusted expectations for the series, heading back to Seattle up 3-1?

Only one prescription for Game 4!

2005-05-01T11:31:00.000-07:00

The folks at ARCO arena have the prescription to Rashard’s fever… More Cowbell!!!

Before reading any further please read this link.

Alright. It’s funny what a 1st lost game on a road trip may do to expectations. From dreams of a possible Kings sweep & of unleashing the monster that be Jerome James to the rest of the unsuspecting playoff teams to now contemplating a potential 1st round exit…

To start with, I always felt the following:
-Sonics at full strength vs. Kings full strength would result in Seattle advancing in 7 (or 6)
-Sonics weakened (i.e. Lewis & A.D. injured to partially effective) vs. Kings weakened (i.e. 2 of Peja, Miller, B-Jax trio injured to partially effective) would result in Seattle advancing in 7 (or 6)
-Sonics with a gimpy Lewis & A.D. vs. Kings full strength would result in Kings in 7 (or 6)
Updated:
-Sonics full strength w/Bizarro Jerome: 2nd round, taking the Spurs to 6 games (or 7) and with EVERYONE playing at their absolute peak, possibly winning the ‘ship.

That said, the Rashard injury/absence to me is the single most dominating series/playoffs subplot for the Sonics. From the Seattle Times :

Lewis declined to answer questions after the game, but he was asked if he was OK physically and nodded.

It is in the volume speaking absence of words that Rashard showed after that demoralizing game 3 loss that I took the most solace in.

That folks, sounds like someone who feels like he has a gargantuan chip on his shoulder... Someone who has a hunger for nothing short of redemption in game 4… Peja & Co. beware...

Rashard Lewis has a fever, and the only prescription is MORE COWBELL!! And since they’re still in the bell-clanging friendly confines of ARCO arena, in the immortal words of generic baseball broadcasters everywhere: Let’s play two!

Prediction:
Kings yet again perform admirably with the backing of the homecourt crowd, but…
Sonics bounce back with overall inspired play & Lewis comes back in a major way & combines with Ray Allen to score 60+ points min. Result?
Seattle 113 - Sacramento 108

It's pickin' time yet again folks... You make the call, what's the game 4 outcome? The prize: free soup for you!

Oh yeah, and there’s this fun little tidbit:

"And Evans -- you talk about Vlade [Divac] being a flopper? This guy is taking it to a whole new level. He goes down when the air conditioning comes on.
"They're doing their jobs, but I think there's times when they go overboard, and I think the officials should be aware of that."

-Adelman on the atrocious officiating and ridiculous flopping job done by the opposing team in the Sacramento-Seattle series. I’m Crash Davis, letting you, the loyal reader/batter, know that a fastball is coming up straight down the middle… Please, take this present, and hit it out of the park. And please don't go disrespecting my pitcher by lollygagging before running the bases...

Kings refuel at Arco, take Game 3

2005-04-29T11:30:00.000-07:00

Bibby taking it to the Sonics

Sacramento 116, Seattle 104
Sonics lead series 2-1
Next Game: Sunday at Sacramento 7:30PM Pac time

Player(s) of the game:
Mike Bibby and the Elbow (see below) Brothers: Kenny Thomas & Brad Miller. Final numbers: Bibby- 31pts, 6rebs, 4asts. Thomas & Miller- 36pts & 10 rebounds. As Simmons would say: And it’s NOW a two to ONE game series. Re-write the state of the union Lewis, it’s a whole new ballgame.
For the Sonics Allen poured in 32, and Jerome James, much to Cuttino Mobley’s ire, had another great performance with 22pts and 9 boards.

Breakdown:
-Pre-game decision: Mike Tirico & (ughhhh) Tom Tolbert or Calabro & Ehlo. Hmmm… Tough call.
-Pre-game decision #2: Fortson going with the ponytail over the pigs.
-As you may all know Sacramento runs this Princeton style offense. Super-duper All Star Chris Weber used to handle the task of hanging out at the elbow of the FT line and decide whether to a) drive, b) dish to guards in motion all over the place (especially off the curl) or to Peja chillin’ at the arc, or d) shoot the open J. Because of his versatility from the 4 spot (especially pre-injury) he was good at this. Well now that he’s gone Thomas & Miller are the primary guys taking this job on. The Sonics dared the big men to shoot the open shot in games 1 & 2 and for the most part this “defense” was effective. Today, in game 3, James & Co. were once again giving the shot to them, only this time Miller & Thomas were making them pay. 1st half? 9-16 for 23 points. Sacramento: 54 points.
-We may never again see the incompetent Jerome we’ve all come to know and love over the season. If, due to this, he gets the Wally Walker 5year multi-million $ blue plate special like McIlvaine & Booth did, please proceed to the Seattle Center with a loudspeaker and try to talk me off the edge of the Space Needle.
-Speaking of oddities, Ridnour now has back-to-back games with 2 blocks. Yikes.
-In the 2nd qtr, during a Sonics run, Ray got several 3-point plays by aggressively taking it to the hole. If he ever added a consistent desire to drive and look for the foul (aka The Fortson Special), it would add a significant addition to his game by allowing him to utilize that gaudy FT% of his.
-Adelman had Jackson & Bibby out on the floor together for extended periods of time. This combo worries me since it leaves either Allen or Ridnour forced to defend a playmaker with a quicker 1st step than them. Of course, this is only a concern if Jackson has his pre-injury speed.
-Rashard, yet again, played passively, going 0-6 in the 1st half, with very few aggressive moves to the rim. He finished with a very quiet 9 points.
-I believe the 3rd qtr went as most pundits predicted the series would: scoring in bunches off of great shooting & smooth offensive execution/questionable defense: Seattle scored 36 & Sacramento 38.
-So let me get this straight, Kings shoot (or are held to, whichever you prefer) 39 & 42% in games 1 & 2 and lose, and in game 3 shoot 50% and win. Really?

Question of the night:
Can the Sonics take the series with Bizarro Jerome taking over Lewis’ production should Lewis fail to assert himself throughout the series and should Jerome continue to play at this ridiculous level?

Inside the NBA (and Capeside)

2005-04-29T11:29:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I just couldn’t resist

Some topics here at Supersonicsoul are just lightning rods for controversy: Luke vs. A.D., Dreads vs. Headbands, Ray Allen: superstar or soon to be super overpaid, Bizarro Jeromes: fact or mythical being… I’ve said my peace on most of these and I’ll leave it upon the smarter minds here to decide.

Some other thoughts-

-The 2 games on TNT last night went as predicted with Pheonix beating the Grizzlies 108-103 and the Spurs rebounding in a major way, blowing out the underrated, why is nobody giving us our respect, blah-blibbity-blah-blah uber-team Denver Nuggets 104-76. Please remember to get back on the wagon you started on folks, buckle your seatbelts, and await the no smoking sign to be turned off as we exit this small amount of turbulence to clearer skies ahead.

-I had to check on our neighborhood blogger Matt’s health the other day after the Spurs game 1 loss. Seriously, emotional wreck and nervous breakdown are understatements when describing his status. He’s busy on a project deadline, and actually left me a stern, jittery, slightly incoherent voicemail warning me not to call him with results of game 2 because he wasn’t gonna find out the outcome till he went home and watched the TIVO recording and didn't want me to spoil it. Please light a candle for him, he needs help…

-John Thompson during the phoenix game: speaking of defense, “I just love the way that Sonics team plays defense….” Huh?!?

-John Thompson… announcing a Phoenix game, talking about great defense, and referring to the Supes. Is this funny? May I laugh at this? (I absolutely HATE those commercials.)

-Dallas vs. Houston game 3 tonight 6:30 Pac time on TNT: I know you’re all diehard Sonics fans in here, but please do yourself a favor and get involved in this series. It’s the clear AND cream of the 1st round crop.

-Chuck, don’t listen to EJ and Kenny. Spurtability is too a word! My ex used it do describe my bedroom skills. (Gotta give them that O-face! Oh-yeah! You know what I’m talking about!)

-Oohh that Veronica! She's so arrogant, I hate her! What a b***h!

-I’ve been much too preoccupied of late analyzing the backs of my eyelids, but today I actually got up early and caught up with The Creek:

Creek updates:
-Dawson is filming a movie: it’s a rip-off of Saturday Night Fever and he’s shagging the hot lead actress.
-Pacey is sporting a wicked goatee and going out with the token hot girl with an English accent (Shouldn’t the show be giving royalties to Friends by now??)
-Holy crap! Token hot English girl’s name is Emma! Can..., I..., BEEE…, any more unoriginal?
-To give her an edge, they’ve got Joey working as a waitress in some dive bar… and she’s also banging the dark and mysterious bartender with a chip on his shoulder. Cliché’s galore folks.
-Dawson’s mom started doing acid and joined a biker gang… Just kidding. It was crystal meth…
-It’s the Christmas episode and the cast is sporting outfits 58c-64b from pages 24-26 of ye olde J. Crew catalog. How nice. Subliminal promo tie-ins. Please, just shoot me. And also get me that periwinkle blue scarf with the frolicking reindeer knitted in while you’re at it.
-Joey’s dad is apparently done serving his 5-10 for being the drug czar/crime lord of good ol’ Capeside (that premise always KILLED me) and is participating in the yuletide shenanigans.
-Huge shocker here, Dawson’s conscience forces him to drop the smoking hot actress. Young Leary must hold the record for most amount of ‘tang left untouched due to moral obligations.
-Joey’s roommate and Pacey’s ex-girlfriend came home with them; She’s apparently now an alcoholic and pill-popper and just crashed Pacey’s car into a picket fence. The new car was purchased from some illegal funds Pacey’s been obtaining. I’m trying to read between the lines but I’m still not sure if he’s now been turned into a pimp, hitman, or consigliere to some Mafia overlord.

Please note: All of the preceding occurred in just two episodes.

I’m sorry to keep on with this topic, but on a previous post I said that the wheels fell of the show sometime. Well, I was only halfway right. The wheels were actually taken off by West Coast Customz, replaced with deuce-deuce w/ Pirelli tires, they turbo-supercharged the engine, gave it a whole new cherry red paint job (with flames)… and Mad Mike threw on like fifteen 30” HDTV screens on that mutha… and a cappuccino maker.

Dawson’s Creek: Congratulations… you’ve officially been pimped.

And now back to our regular NBA/Supersonic schedule.

Sonics hold serve; Can break, set, & match point at Arco be next?

2005-04-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

Not the 1-2 punch I was expecting…

Seattle 105, Sacramento 93
Sonics lead series 2-0
Next Game: Friday at Sacramento 7:30PM Pac time

Player of the game:
Let's give props to both Allen & James. Allen had 26 pts, and several shots at the end to seal the deal and Jerome.... well, I really don't know what more to say about him right now. For the 2nd straight game Bizarro Jerome showed up with these silly stats: 19pts (on 9-11 shooting) and 9 boards. His average over the two games is now 18pts, 12 boards, & 3 blocks. It was rightly mentioned by chunkstyle that foul troubles have often been the bane of his game, and for the first two games he's held himself in check on the hacking...

By the way: The TV crews at both TNT & Foxsports have been beating this news bit of Jerome James being cut by the Kings, given his clothes in a plastic bag, and coach Adelman advising him to think of a career change to death. It is an interesting tidbit, but I'm hoping they come up with something new come game 3.

Reasons to feel good:
1) There were contributions to be seen from all the guys that played minutes tonight. Aside from Reggie, who contributed with 8 boards, and Wilkins (who got in for only 1 minute) every player scored at least 8 points.

Reasons to be cautious:
1) The Kings scoring trio of Bibby, Stojakovic, and Mobley combined to shoot 14/37 for 34 points and were not even involved in the late 4th quarter Kings run. I don't know if others will see this as a good or bad thing (maybe it's neither) but the Kings stars/go to guys have not really played well as of yet in these two games. Can we really expect this to continue? From my seat, I didn't see stellar defense being the cause of this.

Fun stat of the night:
Luke Ridnour had an efficient floor general performance with 6 assists and 0 turnovers.... and 2 blocks! If you can recall seeing those blocks in the game please let me know cause those totally passed me by.

Other notes on the night:
-After game 1 Rick Adelman decided to attempt to take Lewis on the post out of the equation early, with repeated aggresive double teams that forced the ball out of Lew's hand. For the few situations where Lewis had Peja 1 on 1, he resorted to the jab step-fall back J instead of driving or backing him further in for an easy shot. This crap may be O.K. vs. the Kings but it just won't do come round 2. Lewis needs to be a little more aggresive in the post.
-Mike Dunleavy on Jerome James: "you can't stop him, you can only hope to contain him." Discuss amongst yourselves.
-During halftime Kenny "the Jet" Smith stole my material!! On Vlad's contribution to the team he mentioned the Sonics record pre & post Radman injury. Heeeyahhh!!! Now gimme some candeee!
-The officiating was horrible for the Nets vs Heat game, with a majority of the close/questionable calls going the Heat way. I hate seeing that crap happen.

I'm dying to throw some new predictions, questions on the series outcome here, but some superstitious folk may consider that bad luck... For those brave readers who don't carry around crosses and cloves of garlic, what are your thoughts? Are the Kings done? Can the Sonics s...., sw.., swe.., well you know what I'm getting at.

Holy Crap! The Playoffs are here!

2005-04-21T11:26:00.000-07:00

Quick, call Vegas! The Pope has laid out his playoff picks!

For those of you who were out visiting another planet this week, there was some rather big news occurring on earth. Yup, that’s right, the Western Playoff Seeds were set! Here they are:

Contenders, toe the line:
1) Phoenix Suns vs. 8) Memphis Grizzlies
2) San Antonio Spurs vs. 7) Denver Nuggets
3) Seattle Supersonics vs. 6) Sacramento Kings
4) Dallas Mavericks vs. 5) Houston Rockets

As promised, we got THE exclusive interview with the highest authority possible: The newly elected Pope Benedict XVI.

For those questioning the validity of this interview: trust me, it’s legit. I met Joseph (Jo, I called him then) Ratzinger on a train while traveling Europe in the summer of 95. The train stopped at Vienna, where I was to switch to another one, but Jo came to me with a unique proposition: get off with him in Vienna to spend the remainder of the night continuing our talks. I agreed. It was magical… At the end of it, we parted ways and lost contact… that is until I caught him on TV becoming the most powerful being on the planet. Through some hard work, I was finally able to get into contact with him and he accepted my proposition for an interview. Anyways, here’s the transcript:

-Booth52: First off, congratulations on the whole pope thing. Must have been a big day for you.
-Pope Benedict XVI: Yes, thank you. I feel truly blessed to be given this responsibility to lead the people of the world to the light of God. In fact, I have been given the message to direct the church in a radical new path, which includes… (The remainder of this particular dialogue has been edited due to article length restraints. We now fast forward to the more interesting portion of the interview.)
-Booth52: Alright Pope, down to business. Many folks don’t know this, but you are a HUGE NBA fan. Care to drop some insight on the playoffs?
-Pope Benedict XVI: (chuckling) Yes, you are right. In fact, most of the Cardinals are. The reason the voting actually took so long was because we had the games showing in the room. Once the playoff seeds were set, Cardinal Arinze set up the church pool for the playoffs and we got back to the whole voting thing. It’s unfortunate about Arinze’s gambling problem; I think it’s what cost him the vote… Anyways, the questions: proceed, my son.
-Booth52: Let’s focus on the Western Conference: In the 1. vs. 8. match up, we have the Suns vs. the Grizzlies. Your thoughts?
-Pope Benedict XVI: Yes, of all the matchups in the west, this is the one I find least intriguing. I just don’t see Memphis offering any competition for Pheonix. They come into the playoffs losing 5 out of 6, and having no true go-to player on their team. Gasol? He’s untested. I see a monster series from Stoudamire and an easy Suns victory in the series.
Pope’s Verdict: Phoenix advances 4-0
-Booth52: Can’t argue with you there Pope. Now 2 vs. 7: San Antonio vs. Denver.
-Pope Benedict XVI: Ahh yes. There always seems to be one of these matches with a top seeded team facing the surging at the right moment team. On paper, this looks like the match up with the most potential for an upset and I see many pundits foreseeing a competitive series. Alas, God doesn’t show his divine plans to the weak and the foolish. When the Nuggets are on, they get a lot of points off of drives into the lane, wide open dunks & alley oops by K-Mart, Camby, & Co. That type of stuff is just not going to happen vs. San Antonio. They’re way too sound defensively. San Antonio should take this in 5. That is unless Duncan is hurt, but my sources tell me he is going to be fine.
Pope’s Verdict: San Antonio advances 4-1
-Booth52: Alright, let’s switch off here and go to the 4-5 matchup: Dallas vs. Houston.
-Pope Benedict XVI: Yes, now this is an interesting match-up. While Phoenix & San Antonio are rightfully deserving of their elite status, I believe these two teams should be considered as the second tier of teams in the race, being clearly superior to Seattle, Sacramento, Denver, and Memphis. They both have legitimate superstars that will demand the ball down the stretch in Mcgrady and Nowitski. It'll be a close series and if the NBA ends up showing all four Miami-New Jersey blowout games over this series, may the Lord have mercy on their souls. I’m not too sure who’s gonna take this ser… wait, what’s that? (looking up) Oh. Houston in 7.
God’s Verdict: Houston advances 4-3
-Booth52: Wow! Really? The 4-3 upset huh? O.K., time for the series that matters: Seattle vs. Sacramento.
-Pope Benedict XVI: I’m sorry to bring you bad tidings, but your Sonics shall not prevail over the Kings. Bibby’s sick tattoo will be rewarded by the Lord with repeated one-on-one defense from Luke Ridnour, and he will average 25-5-8 for the series. His prayers for a miraculous healing of Stojakovic, Miller, & Jackson have also been answered, and they too will perform well. The series will go the distance, but the Kings will prevail.
Pope’s Verdict: Sacramento advances 4-3
-Booth52: WTF! You gotta be kidding me! You can’t say that on this site! I don’t know if you’ve been truly paying attention, but the Sonics, while not an elite team, are good and certainly capable enough of disposing of the Kings. Lewis seems recovered from his injury, and I expect he & Allen to average 55pts between the two of them, with Lewis scoring some key buckets in the 4th quarters of several games. Along with solid supporting performances by A.D., Collision, Ridnour, and Fortson/Evans, I see the Sonics taking the series in 7.
-Pope Benedict XVI: I find your lack of faith disturbing my son. I’ll pray for your soul.

Well, there you have it folks. NBA picks from the Holy one himself. Now go call your bookies and cash in on the scoop.

An (Anti-)Climactic night

2005-04-20T23:25:00.000-07:00

Anwar, Lebron, & the Cav’s were eliminated in a night of intrigue

I was pleasantly surprised to find several intriguing subplots still left on the last night of the regular season. Here are the highlights from the night:

Cleveland 104, Toronto 95
New Jersey 102, Boston 93
-The 8th seed in the Eastern Conference was still up for grabs heading up to the last day, with Cleveland needing a win and a New Jersey loss to Boston to capture the 8th seed. The games were being played simultaneously, with the Cavs game ending just a few minutes prior to the Nets game. To add to the intrigue the Cavalier’s opponent was the Raptors, who, with a victory could have pushed the Anti-Christ, Vince Carter , out of the playoffs.

In Toronto, James had a monster all around game, posting a triple-double (27-14-14), and leading his team to a 23 point lead by the end of the 3rd. At the same time, over in Boston, the Celtics took a 58-47 lead at halftime, only to have Jeff Van Gundy rip into the Nets at halftime and cause a furious 3rd quarter rally, outscoring the Celtics 32-8 in the 3rd quarter. The Nets were then able to withstand a 4th quarter rally by the Celtics to hold on for the win and clinch the 8th seed, and a 4-0 pummeling from the Heat in the first round. Stern not happy. Lebron go bye-bye to playoffs.

Indiana 85, Chicago 83
-Chery Miller caught the game from the stands.
-The Pacers, with the victory, were able to clinch the 6th seed. That’s HUGE. For those unaware, the 7th and 8th seeds in the east challenge the Pistons and Heat respectively in the first round, while the 6th seed sees a massive drop in competition by getting the Celtics.
-EVERYONE in the audience was wearing I love Reggie Miller t-shirts and holding up Reggie signs.
-Reggie was definitely aware of the cameras being on him. Completely playing to the crowd & cameras with forced, over-dramatized actions like long talks with journalists on the sideline, way too enthusiastically powdering his hands in his pre free-throw/game ritual... They even had this inane pregame huddle/celebration after announcing Reggie that was… I really couldn’t do it justice with a description. You know what? F**k it. 16 years in the league, spanning the times of Larry and Magic, Michael, Scottie, Charles, Hakeem, and now Garnett and Lebron. His career could be seen as a time capsule of the leagues growth and evolution. Take a bow Reggie, I salute you.
-In a similar fashion, in a nationally televised game in March versus the Lakers, in which he turned back the clock for 39 points, He did the exact same thing. Check out the 4th-quarter flow of this game:
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/playbyplay?gameId=250318011&period=4
The Pacers were up by six with 27 seconds remaining. For some strange reason, the Lakers felt they were still in this thing and fouled Miller THREE times prior to the conclusion of the game, giving him six free throw opportunities. With 27 seconds remaining and his team up by six, Reggie did an extended version of his hand chalking at the announcer’s table ceremony, egging on the crowd ovation, prior to EACH free throw opportunity. If I recall the game ended at 1am Pacific Time. (BTW, it was a classic Miller time performance and I do not blame him for reveling in the moment.)

Deborah and Raymond
were involved in some kind of wacky domestic dispute . I believe Ray’s mom was somehow involved.

Sacramento 132, Pheonix 107
-Bobby Jackson, on the IR for practically the entire season, was activated for the last game, in a test to see how effective he could be for the Kings in the playoffs. The result?
A lively performance, going for 15-6-5 in 16 min. Bobby Jackson DEFINITELY looks like he will be a factor in the Kings-Sonics match up. With the combination of Bibby and Jackson at the point, I believe it’s time to consider having some loyal Sonics fan take one for the team, and kidnap Luke Ridnour for the entirety of the series, Celtic Pride style.
-Also, while they didn’t play, it was announced that both Brad Miller and Peja Stojakovic (wearing nifty matching tan sierra suits behind the bench,) would be activated for the playoffs. Brad Miller was shown in a highlight shooting around during the pre-game warm-ups. Come back now Radman, you are needed!

Anwar Robinson
-was eliminated . Damn you, Scott Savol!!

In cruel heartbreaking fashion,
the Bobcats beat the Pistons, 97-86. That, added with the fact that the NEW ORLEANS Hornets lost to the Clippers, left them in a tie for the worst record in the league at 18-64 instead of the outright title for the Bobcats had they lost.
Some quotes:
``It's just great to go home like this, with a win and on a good note,'' Okafor said. ``We didn't win a lot of games this year, but we played hard in all of them and it's great to get a reward in the last one.''
The Bobcats played with one eye on the out-of-town scoreboard because Charlotte holds Cleveland's first-round draft pick, a lottery pick because New Jersey beat Boston on Wednesday night to end the Cavs' playoff bid.
``This win, the fans, getting that lottery pick ... we deserved something good to happen to us,'' Charlotte coach Bernie Bickerstaff said.

Congratulations, Bernie. Congratulations.

Note to readers:
You are not going to want to miss tomorrow’s post on Supersonicsoul.com. We were able to get THE INSIDER SCOOP on the Western Conference Playoffs with a VERY special guest interview, EXCLUSIVE to this site. You were warned. Bookmark us now.

Halftime Heroes: A Study In Futility, & Catching up with The Creek

2005-04-20T11:22:00.000-07:00

Any relationship to Dawson or Billy Bob, Jeff?

Thinking about the possible playoff match between the Sonics and the Rockets got me to thinking:

If Billy Bob could rally the Permian High Panthers with an inspired speech, if James Van Der Beek can do the same with the West Canaan Coyotes , does it then lead to the potential existence of a real, living, breathing coach having the innate ability to inspire his team?

The beat downs I’ve witnessed the Sonics take in the 3rd qtr vs. the Rockets this year led me to take a quick look at the possibility that Van Gundy was one of these mythical creatures.

Observation:
In the 3 games in 2005 in which the Sonics faced Houston, the Rockets came out into the 3rd quarter with inspired play in 2 of them.
3rd quarter Hou vs. Sea scoring:
Game 1: 15-17
Game 2: 22-6
Game 3: 34-26
Total 71-49=22
22/3 games = 7.1 pt differential per 3rd quarter

Hypothesis:
Jeff Van Gundy is a great coach. In particular, Van Gundy has the ability, not found in all coaches, to inspire teams/players to increased performance output through motivational speaking. In particular, for this experiment, this ability is inherent in the transformation the Houston Rockets 2005 team achieves during halftime, and witnessed in their brief performance surge in the 3rd quarter following.

Procedure:
Take the Houston 2005 season 3rd quarter ppg differential, and compare it to the ave. quarter diff of the Rockets other 3 quarters (data through 80 games):

Analysis:
Total ppg Scored: 7575-1891=5684/80 games/3 qtrs= 23.68
Total ppg Allowed: 7297-1806=5491/80 games/3 qtrs= 22.88
Differential: +0.80 pts/qtr

Total pp 3rd qtr Scored: 1891
Total pp 3rd qtr All: 1806
Differential 85/80games/qtr= +1.06 pts/qtr

Results:
The pt differential seen between the average of quarters 1,2, & 4 are +0.80 per qtr. The pt. Differential for the 3rd qtr is +1.06. The difference is +0.26, about a quarter of a point.

Conclusion:
Not a DAMN thing!! While there is a ¼ point differential that may suggest Van Gundy does have some ability to inspire during halftime, that difference in all likelihood is too marginal to make any credible statement, considering all the other variables not taken into account in the test. What we can conclude is that the 3 games witnessed by my eyes (which indicated a huge ability by Van Gundy) were much too small a sample to make any logical assumption. Lesson learned: I am an idiot. Price paid: 45min of my life.

Reason #15,284 unemployment doesn’t suck:
-Being able to catch the Dawson’s Creek episode where Dawson’s dad dies, and the following episode as well. In-f**king-credible! For the rest of you that missed it, (huge spoiler alert!) in episode unknown of season 3-5 of the series, the writers, in a vain attempt to resuscitate the show, killed of a main/supporting character (they had previously exhausted all love triangle/interest options.) I remember catching the premiere season of Dawson’s Creek in the dorms and finding a new guilty pleasure, that is until the wheels fell off (maybe the damn thing never had wheels to begin with.)

So anyways, how do you go about killing off the father of the main character? End of the show, Mr. Leary goes out to buy groceries, leaves store with ice cream cone, gets in jeep, and on the way home (while doing the gratuitous scene where you sing along to some song on the radio, which has thankfully left my brain) the ice cream drops from the cone, he bends down to pick it up, and... BAM!!!! Cue car crash noise, fade to black, roll credits. Needless to say, I was locked in for the next episode (the reruns on TBS are shown in back to back blocks.)

So the next episode: classic premise, death of a side character, grieving main character shots, reminiscing scenes (they chose this thing where each one of the characters had a shot/scene where they were talking/remembering a particular poignant moment they had with the Dad (surprisingly Mr. Leary was still available to do these scenes.) You would think that under this premise the actors could pull off a few tear inducing performances… let me tell you, if you’ve never seen quality acting before, watching this episode won’t change that status. It was a certifiable train wreck of performances. From Dawson’s mom (how do you NOT hit the grieving widow part out of the park?? It’s like a hanging slider just begging to be taken for a ride,) to Dawson’s Dad (fully understand why the writers killed him off,) to Dawson himself (will we ever see a Mox-ian performance from Van Der Beek again?) it was brutal, awkward TV throughout. Needless to say, I loved every minute.

Final Rating- Two wildly enthusiastic thumbs up!

On a sidenote, I’ve caught several other episodes from this unknown season, and it’s brilliantly bad throughout. Today, Joey ( Katie Holmes) was singing in a rock band. Dee-liteful .

There really aren't enough superlatives to adequately discuss this show. And I believe I’m done emasculating myself now.

Booth.52@gmail.com

Talking Jibba-Jabba & Laying Down The Monster

2005-04-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

Mike McD doesn’t feel good about Ray Allen’s looming contract status & neither should we

I’ve caught the numerous heated debates on this one. Here’s my thought on the whole thing. Comments both agreeing and criticizing my opinions are wholeheartedly welcomed, and eagerly anticipated. And if you’d like to have me sit in on your home table to take me down, I’m in.

Points to clarify before I go on:

-Ray Allen, at this point, is a top 15 to 30 player in the league. I wish I had a more firm position for you to agree/disagree with, but to be honest, I haven’t compiled enough data yet to form one. A list could be forthcoming.

-Ray Allen, right now, is a legit superstar of the league, deserving of his due credit.

-Ray Allen, along with Rashard, formed the backbone of the Sonics 2004-05 team and they should be given their due credit to the surprising success achieved this season. Who deserves more of the credit is also still undecided, but methinks the pendulum is in the midst of a swing to the other side…

-Removing Ray Allen and inserting Ronald Murray will NOT result in a wash. While I may verbally applaud the play and contribution of A.D, Radman, Nick, Reggie, & Danny far more than him, Ray Allen is undoubtedly a far superior player to any of them. I ain’t no fool spouting nonsense jibba-jabba.

If the last few years’ NBA signings are good indications (and with the new CBA looming, they may not be) I believe the following situation will unfold:

Ray Allen is going to get several 4 year offers, a couple of 5 year offers, and the Sonics, in a decision come upon through a combination of player evaluation, organizational need, and media and local pressure, will offer Allen a 5yr contract in the range of 70-75M. Unfortunately, some team other than the Sonics is gonna throw the gauntlet down and, as KGB would so eloquently put it, pay that man his money: 5years at a whopping 80-90M.

Now, let’s put on our Sonics’s GM cap for a sec. (I believe there may be one available hanging on the bedpost of Calvin Booth’s boudoir, left there by Wally.)

You’ve got position at the final table of a winner take all tournament. The button is sitting in front of you. Action starts with a bullet, with Dead Money beginning the hand by throwing free money into the pot, Ray Allen. Everyone else in front of you bows out. You’ve got a respectable hand; say a pair of Jacks, and you feel good about your chances heads up against the loose player. But you’ve got the small and big blinds still to deal with; them, anticipating your move, you, anticipating theirs. You make the smart, yet tentative decision; merely play in terms of pot odds, and just call the bet. Then the dreaded response: low blind calls, followed by the big blind calling as well. Flop comes J-8-9, all diamonds. You’ve caught your set, but the flush and straight draw scare the bejeezus out of you, so you once again check. The nightmare sequence happens: Low blind goes all in, Big blind calls. The amateur bows out, but RayRay’s still sitting in that pot, waiting for the winner to claim him.

So what’s the proper action?* Forget the Oreos folks, they’re not necessary. You know it, I know it, and Mike McD knows it: Stare Teddy straight in the face and say with conviction: “I’m laying this set down. It’s a monster hand & I’m gonna lay it down. I’m not going to draw against a made hand.” For the most part you played the hand as well as you could have, and you simply have to move on, with all thoughts set on the real goal: winning it all.

Ray Allen is sitting at the apex of his career right now, or maybe more appropriate a plateau; he’s got 2-3 years left to wander up there and enjoy the view, but make no mistake, he will soon reenter the stratosphere of star to mediocre star status. Look at Reggie,Ray, and plan your future accordingly.

Miller Time is fast approaching for Ray Allen

If the Sonics are smart they will too. “The 2004 Sonics aren’t coming through that door folks!” “Charles isn’t walking through it either!”

We’re going to have to accept that inevitability, we simply can’t afford not to. The price is too high, and the product falls too short of the goal. But fear not, we will build him to be stronger, faster….

So, if you’re so damn smart what the hell do you propose, you ask? Ehhhh…. Pass? Kidding, offseason recommendations to come… in the offseason.

By the way,

Regarding superstar professional athletes and egregious amounts of cash being thrown their way? I hold absolutely no ill judgment for them for obtaining or trying to obtain the highest sum possible. While I may mourn their loss, I do not consider leaving a team for another a form of personal or organizational betrayal.

It’s a bit of a stretch, but I like to think of their situation in relation to the situation of most people living in corporate America. Imagine a scenario of you working for a company, being bound to that company by a previously agreed on contract, which was of a lower value to one you could now obtain elsewhere, regardless of being over or under paid/rated. Then you’re day comes and company A offers (insert salary here), a comparable salary to other peers you know, and company B (and C, and D…) offered you salary A*(enter insane multiple here). So, wtf would you do? “Aw shucks, well if I were happy at my old company, I’d stay there. Hell they’ve been loyal to me for all these years; it’s darn time I repaid the favor. The grass will always appear greener on the other side, yuk, yuk, yuk.” If you believe you’d say something along this line, my congratulations to you on a great attitude and superior morals… and for making me throw up in my mouth.

I will NEVER blame Arod for a payroll greater than this country’s GDP ,
Jim McIlvaine signing for 35M over 5 years, Calvin Booth for signing for 34M over 6, or Ray Allen for whatever sum he is able to extract this summer. Blame Tom Hicks, blame the unholy Wally Walker, and blame Dan Gilbert & Usher .

The term really doesn’t do it justice but, simply put, don’t hate the playa, hate the game. These folks deserve none of your derision for doing the same thing that 99% of America would do in the same situation, and are entitled to in this great country. I mean c’mon!! I thought this was America! Huh?! Isn't this America!? I'm sorry, I thought this was America!

(Now officially off the soapbox, chopping it to pieces, pouring kerosene on it, lighting it up, and jumping in. I disgust myself sometimes.)

*Note: After going over this crap, I came to the conclusion that my call wasn’t quite right. I had initially thought that the only outs would be to get the 4 of a kind, which is actually not the case. Against the likely straight or flush possibilities, a full house would work just as well. So, let me see, say the game was six handed, 12 cards off the deck, assume nothing good comes on 4th street, 4 cards off the deck, with let’s see 1 J, and 3x3=9 possibilities to pair the board, that’s 10 outs/(52-12-4=36cards) and a 27.8% chance, approximately 1:3.5 pot odds. The right play in all likelihood would be to call. For the assumption that a 4 of a kind was needed, it would have been 1/36: a 2.8% chance, and unless the pot was that big and my stack that small, not the right move. My apologies for not being The Master .

Mixed feelings...

2005-04-17T11:19:00.000-07:00

Spree thinking about his starving family, and Wally thinking about more bench time

Seattle 109, Minnesota 94

Some quick thoughts:

- Ray poured in 34pts and 10 boards, Rashard had 28, and Ridnour had 10pts and 11 assists with no turnovers. The two teams combined for just 19 turnovers and hovered at 50% FG shooting, implying to me that either both teams were playing extremely efficient offensively and/or, true to the common perception of the teams, they really were unimpressive defensively.

- I feel for Kevin Garnett. Read what Matt at San Antonio Spurs Blog had to say about his whole situation. That goes ditto for me. KG is simply one of those players, like A.I, that I genuinely root for and enjoy watching regardless of what team he’s on. Probably shouldn’t say this on this blog, but I was actually hoping that the Wolves would pull off the miracle and grab the 8th seed from Memphis (meaning I was also partially rooting for them to beat the Sonics today,) if simply to give KG something to reflect positively on.

- In further regards to Garnett, I always felt bad for him when Charles Barkley (whom I absolutely love watching/listening to and who is deserving of his own column by me at some point.) and the rest of the TNT crew would get on him for not being a true superstar because he couldn’t get the T-wolves past the 1st round of the playoffs for all those years. I was glad when they finally gave him his due credit last year, and found him absolutely blameless in the Wolves excruciating loss to the Lakers in the Western finals last year.

- A great Division Championship soundbite from Jerome James here. He must’ve missed that Crash Davis interview course.

"It's like a high, a rush. I can understand why MJ [Michael Jordan] and [Scottie] Pippen worked so hard after they won their first one," said Jerome James, who was flanked by sons Mason, 2, and Dallas, 4. "This is so sweet. You wait all of your life as a professional athlete to accomplish something like this.
"It's what all the sweat and tears, all of the hard work, the pain pills, surgeries and ice and film and all of that crap and fussing and cussing and fighting and pulling and everything combined — it's worth it all today. To see my teammates and to be in this room of brothers and to enjoy each other on this level. The camaraderie, the love, the passion. It's like church.

Just guessing, but I don’t think Jerome James attends Catholic mass. Maybe his church doles out 40’s with communion or something cause it sounds like a party up in that motha.

- Vlad watch day 151:
Vladimir Radmanovic, who is on the injured list because of a stress fracture in his lower right leg, walked on a treadmill wearing a weight-bearing vest yesterday in Seattle. McMillan said there's a 50 percent chance of him returning for the start of the playoffs.

Before you leave..

2005-04-15T11:17:00.000-07:00

Seattle 97, New Orleans 92

Seattle Supersonics: 2005 NW Division Champs

Ray Allen goes for 32pts (and 7 assists) to negate Lewis going 1 for 12 on the night (1 for 12, is that line real?)

-Great PR move on the Sonics organization part at the end. After the win, after the now traditional team huddle at midcourt, the players remained on the court to hand out t-shirts, frisbees and a crap load of other autographed goodies. Antonio Daniels was even signing and giving away a shiny set of new kicks; damn it, why the hell do I get the games with free balloons... In addition, fox NW got in on the act and interviewed practically the entire team afterwards with the standard, great to be here, what’s good, what’s next stuff. Seriously, it's these little things that the Sonics did after the game tonight that endear fans to teams, and sell future tickets.

-I don’t have insider access to his brain, but I think Calabro was reigning himself in from berating fans for leaving prior to the outcome of a blowout victory. I found him suppressing his thoughts kinda funny.

I don’t consider it messed up at all that fans want to leave blowouts early… but I will say that under the situation, them playing a game so reminiscent of the good times of the early season, winning after a 6 game losing streak, and knowing it was a division clincher should’ve brought enough interest till the end of the game to warrant the 10-15 extra minutes in traffic. Whatever, their loss; I mean free Antonio Freakin Daniels autographed kicks for chrissakes!

-Small thing that only interested me: actually thrown up during the telecast was a +/- stat for Rashard Lewis’ influence on the game and commented on by Ehlo. Maybe the revolution will be televised?

-Wait, another praise for Ehlo?? In the 3rd, Ridnour was pushing the ball up and made a beautiful pass/lob to Rashard, who was just barely open and ahead of the defenders. Unfortunately he wasn’t able to dunk it, instead resetting himself (and the D) and passing it out to Allen for a jumpshot. Ehlo immediately caught it and made the comment that if that was 20 or so games ago, that’s an alley oop. Here’s to hoping it will be one come playoff time.

My congratulations to the team for the season's accomplishment.

Mavericks, PG’s, Chicken bones, and Earth Stewards

2005-04-14T11:15:00.000-07:00

Dallas 95, Seattle 90

Do my eyes deceive me?

One of the things I try to force myself to do while watching games is to avoid the inevitable visual positive reinforcements I may make in regards to opinions on players. I only caught some of the 1st and 4th quarter of tonight’s game, but one of the sequences I caught was in the 4th. It started with Wilkins playing generally good D on Nowitski (but getting the rookie on established star foul call,) then on the ensuing play being involved in a Dallas turnover, and then in a forthcoming play stealing a pass for a breakaway dunk. I don't intend on getting in my car and heading over to a Sonics team store to purchase Wilkins’ jersey (which I guess isn’t for sale to the public.) based purely upon those few minutes of play. There's just simply not enough data there to prove or disprove my thoughts on a guy, even if it does support my hunch. I’m still sticking to my belief that he’s worthy of some playing time though, even during the playoffs. Cut into the playing times of Luke, Jerome, Flip, and the Potato.

Other notes on a game that I couldn’t get fully involved with:

-Rashard Lewis made his return, scoring 12 pts on 5-13 (1-7 3pt) shooting and looking somewhat tentative especially in the 4th quarter. Hopefully he can regain the swagger that had him declaring “It just feels like no one man can stop me.” The Sonics’ playoff chances rest on it.

-Seattle remained in the game partially by outboarding Dallas 45-30, with 16 of those coming in the offensive end, 8 of those by Mr. Glass. It's gonna be sad seeing the breaking up of the 3 power forwards come the offseason.

-Van Horn and Nowitski on the same team requires a sharper attention to the game than I had. Can someone put a frikkin’ bell on Nowitski or something, so I can immediately differentiate him from the Ute?

-I didn’t catch it, but apparently Bizarro Jerome made an appearance in the 3rd quarter. Well done Jerome, I suppose 1 quarter’s worth of work is worthy of a $55,000 per game paycheck.

Other points of interest:

-While I may chastise Ridnour’s deficiencies an ungodly amount of times, I will concede that he does have some skills and assets, such as his genuine point guard mentality and his nice assists/turnover stat. More importantly, because he's still locked into his rookie salary of 1.5-2.5M per year, he is good value player on the roster. But the fact remains, anything Luke does, I can do better. I’m gonna be beating this dead horse repeatedly: A.D. simply provides a better option at PG for the Supes. Daniels not only shares in Luke’s ability to run the team, find open players, and shoot the ball, but he also plays defense at an above average skill, and provides more offensive ability than Rid. The only skill that Luke marginally excels over A.D. in is 3pt shooting %, and I’ll be damned if that’ll sway my vote enough. If you don’t believe me go ask Mr. Roland, he’ll point you to the truth.

-I don’t intend to fully delve into the Sonic’s upcoming personnel decisions till after the playoffs but I will say this: if Mr. Daniels ends up signing for something around the tune of 3-4 years at 4-5 million per (which is what I expect since that’s what this guy got in a similar deal and situation last year) I’d fully endorse the move. I seriously hope he hasn’t priced himself out of our league.

-I’ve been perusing Seattle newspaper’s online as well as the regular sites in hopes of finding some word on Vlad’s expected return. I finally was able to dig this up at Foxsports today:

Sat Apr 2 2005 - Vladimir Radmanovic had the cast removed from his broken right fibula. The organization won't know until the week of April 18 whether he will be available for the playoffs. His regular season is over, though.

And to reiterate, from Yahoo sports is this:

McMillan said he does not expect reserve forward Vladimir Radmanovic to return before the end of the regular season. Radmanovic was placed on the injured list March 18 with a stress fracture in his lower right leg.

Translation: We’re f***ed. I think reasonable adjusted expectations may be to pass the first round, and maybe steal a game or two from the 2005 NBA champs.

– Finally, during my Radmanovic research, I also caught that Percy Allen of the Seattle Times on Sunday beat me to the punch on the Curse of the Sonics big men that I briefly commented on here. My apologies for failing to mention Haywood and the X-Man in my comment. While we may be onto something, I believe Dan Shaughnessy’s legacy shall remain safe.

A few lines from that article:

The e-mail from Dragon Wolf Medicine Woman was sincere and informative, and so we talked the other day about the possibility that the Sonics are cursed.

The supernatural theory originated a couple of years ago during a conversation with Spencer Haywood while he was lobbying the Sonics to retire his number.
Haywood made mention that he placed a hex on the team and would only lift the spell upon receiving confirmation that his No. 24 jersey would hang in the rafters.

"I'm from a place where we know about voodoo and stuff like that," said Haywood, a native of Silver City, Miss. "I got some chicken bones around here, so I used some old Black Magic like that boy in Boston did to the Red Sox. This stuff is real, man."

My favorite lil’ nugget of the article came here:

"On some level, they are aware of what's going on, perhaps not consciously," said Ms. Medicine Woman, an ordained minister, spiritual healer and Earth steward….

There you go ladies and germs, the decay of American civilization in a nutshell. When any individual that goes by the email moniker of “Dragon Wolf Medicine Woman” can so easily attain the prestigious title not only of ordained minister but Earth Steward as well… well, I think it might be time to consider that move to Canada. My congratulations to Mr. Percy Allen for digging deeper and going that extra mile to find the real stories that need to be told…

Pass the mic...

2005-04-13T11:09:00.000-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, we invited a fellow blogger to post a story on Supersonicsoul. This week, we recieved this piece from one of our loyal readers, Booth52:

A Sonics Playoff Preview Precursor:

With the Playoffs looming over the horizon I thought I’d take the opportunity to throw in my two pennies on the Sonics and their a) recent struggles and, of more interest to me, b) their chances in the playoffs. I thought I’d drop a post here and should you deem it at all interesting/post-worthy, I’d like to tackle a few other Sonic-subjects in more depth.

Quick side note: I really have no desire to add to the crowded field of Sonics blogs (for which I’m grateful to both sites for) out in this here internet thing. If anything I’d love to enrich the site with my humble opinions on the team, sending in some posts from time to time. My inspiration spawned off of reading an Oakland athletics website you may have heard of (http://www.athleticsnation.com/) and the game threads of red sox games by the diehard redsox fans at sosh. I read a bunch of other nba blogs and they seem to be in their infancy stage when compared to other more established sites with regards to a community vibe. Anyways here’s my first attempt at a post.

Stating The Obvious:
First off, a brief response to the Sonics recent struggles. The team is in the midst of a 4 game losing streak. In reality, they have been playing mediocre to awful basketball for a longer period than that.

Over the past 7 games, the Sonics have compiled a 2-5 record. If we are seriously evaluating the skid, we should count them for at most a 1-6 record since at least one of the two victories vs. Memphis and, Portland, should have really been discounted considering their poor play.

But, for my amusement, let’s go back a bit further say, how about 13 games? Their record since then: a very pedestrian 9-7. Some interesting tidbits:

Sonics pre-3/18:
3P%: 37.5
3PM/G: 8.5
3PA/G: 22.7
PPG: 100.5
PPG All: 99.8

Sonics post-3/18: (13 games total as of April 10)
3P%: 33.3
3PM/G: 5.5
3PA/G: 20.3
PPG: 95.1 (not including 14 points scored in overtime vs. NY, 7 of which came via the charity stripe with the Supes up by 5 with 38 seconds to play)
PPG All: 99.8 (Our recent defensive inadequacies will conservatively and mercifully be ignored for simplicity of comparison)

That PPG differential comes out to 5.4. For those that don’t consider that to be much let’s put that into context for the season: overall the Sonics (50-26) have, up to this point averaged 99.5ppg scored and 96.9ppg allowed. If we were to find a team who gave up a similar amount of points and scored roughly 94.1ppg(99.5-5.4) what would we come up with? How about this team (93.4ppg, 97.4ppga)?

So exactly what separates the previous team, that was (record wise at least) making claims to being one of the top 4 teams in the league, to one now garnering comparisons to the 4th worst team? Simple: Their names are Rashard Lewis and Vladimir Radmanovic. Since Lewis’ injury the Supes have thrown together that 2-5 record (again, realistically 1-6 or 0-7) and since Vlad was sidelined with a stress fracture on his right leg, the Sonics have made 3 less treys a game and scored on average 5 less points a game. I cannot stress enough the Radman’s importance to the team, particularly by forcing the opponents to extend their defense, having a normally paint roaming potential rebounder, shot blocking/averting 3-4-5 man having to respect Vlad’s 3pt shooting ability. Not to provide some generic tv broadcaster’s response, but he simply makes that offense flow better.

So again you might ask, what the hell’s your point? Simply put, the current state of guarded pessimism taken on by Superfriends everywhere is a bit misdirected at this current time towards the nosedive the team is in. I don’t consider the slide any indication at all of the team’s ability to win (in the playoffs). I don’t care if the team as is loses by 3 or 30 to the Lakers, cause they ain’t gonna do s*** in the playoffs as is. Rashard is expected to return after a few more games, and Vlad’s tour of duty in IR is scheduled to end either today (if you believe the 4 week timeline) or by the start of the playoffs. What is of importance is the team’s ability to re-incorporate two of their most important players back into the fold, and to again develop that chemistry that made the offensive execution a thing of beauty during the first half of the season. If they’re not able to do this, consider the Season record your only present year, cause the Sonics ain’t going nowhere in the playoffs without a little of that magic they conjured up in the beginning of the season.

Overtime:
Some opinions/topics I’d love to drop an analysis on or merely ramble on about Simmons style:

-Damien Wilkins Has played himself into some quality P.T. for the team. He and A.D. are the team’s top perimeter defenders, and he should be used accordingly for certain player matchups. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: 12-15 minutes max young man, you ain’t your uncle.

-Rashard Lewis on the right side posting up should, in all circumstances, be considered the Sonics offensive option #1. (Just for the record, if you had told me 2 years ago that Lewis would have one of the top 20 most efficient iso-post up games in the league I would have simply laughed at you. If you had told me that six years ago, after the sonics put him out of his draft day misery, I would’ve strongly considered offering to purchase your medication.)

-In particular, the most efficient offensive play the Supes have in their playbook is A.D. and Lew isolated on one side, executing the pick and post to perfection, leaving either Lewis on the block with an undersized guard on him (can I get a “mouse in the house” comment from Calabro? Amen, brotha.), or A.D. wrecking havoc driving into the lane.

-Luke Ridnour is highly overrated, and much of it is due to his skin tone (No, I am not Spike Lee under a pseudonym, defaming yet another white player.) Hearing Ehlo and Kevin drool over the guy eerily reminds me of McCarver and Joe Morgan going gaga over the intangibles of Derek Jeter.

-Ridnour’s deficiencies on the defensive end are most evident against quick, penetrating, offensive minded guards. (Interpretation: get him the hell out of there against the Parker’s, Marbury’s, and Franchises of the League) His inabilities to work the A.D/Lew Pick and finish in the lane are often understated. (Note to Ehlo: driving into the paint, not having the offensive ability to create/score, BUT being able to continue your dribble, is not a basketball talent to be praised.)

-Damien Wilkins Has played himself into some quality P.T. for the team. He and A.D. are the team’s top perimeter defenders, and he should be used accordingly for certain player matchups.

-I am absolutely dumbfounded by Ronald Murray and have no idea if he would be a legitimate star in this league with some decent playing time.

-Jerome James, at best, is an average to slightly above average center. Unfortunately, THAT is the Bizzaro Jerome James, and he only makes an appearance approximately 1 in 10 games. The first few minutes of each game should be spent by Mac-10 determining if the alter ego has shown up and act accordingly, providing Matteen Cleaves a clapping, chest bumping-during timeouts sidekick.

-SuperDanny (He of the 10pts, 8+ rebounds, 3+ offensive rebounds resulting in putback attempts resulting in two free throws and the occasional And-1 situations performances) NEVER appears in the same game that Bizarro James shows up in. Furthermore, +/- Uber-Collison of recent playing time, has miraculously emerged to alleviate the mysterious disappearance of SuperDanny. While John Hollinger of ESPN.com briefly touched on the scary potential of a Reggie-Forston rebound transformer, he’s merely scratched the tip of the iceberg. If someone can debunk my theory that Bizarro Jerome-Uber-Collison-SuperDanny & Reggie all actually share the same brain and merely barter it off at the bench during timeouts, please notify me ASAP. Evidence will be required.

-Signing Ray Allen to a 4 (or worse 5) year contract beyond $75M would be a mistake of McIlvaine-esque proportions. I will not argue about this. Contending for a 8-5 seed in the playoffs over the next 4 years and then moving into a rebuilding mode is not what I consider success. All personnel moves should be made with the sole purpose of leading towards a team capable of contending for a title. A Lewis-Aging Allen combo with intermediate surrounding players taking up the rest of the meager cap space WILL NOT provide for this requirement.
More ramblings to come.

Booth.52

It may not look like much

2005-04-12T13:26:00.000-07:00

But in my mind, and when it's done, it's gonna be a thing of beauty....

This is where the Idiot-Savant material will be

2005-04-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

Start off with a compilation of John Thompson's best work...
Add in some Jerome James material...
And finish it off with a dash of Chuckster highlights...

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