Archive for November, 2008
Second place in both leagues? Woot woooooot
Here’s a break down of what has happened so far this season. I had a team of underachievers that finally stepped up and are playing the way I expected them to.
In league #1, here are ther moves that I’ve made so far:
Being an idiot, I dropped Nene, who would have been a great late draft pickup, but nope. I’m an idiot and dropped him, then picked up Tyrus Thomas. Then I dropped Thomas immediately and picked up Blatche, dropped Beno Udrih for Farmar, dropped Rondo for Rudy Fernandez, and then made my best move of the season. I dropped Blatche and picked up Mario Chalmers to give myself another guard. I figured that he would be decent, but he’s putting up solid numbers, especially in a 12 team league. Then yesterday, I just dropped Jamario “underacheiver” Moon, and picked up CJ Miles, then dropped Mike “Injured” Dunleavy for Delonte West. We’ll see how that one pans out.
Bosh has shown that he should definitely be considered a top pick in the draft after putting up huge numbers to start the season. He’s one of my untradeables, along with Danny Granger. Here’s my new starting lineup that has gotten me into 2nd place:
PG: Chauncey Billups
SG: CJ Miles
SF: Danny Granger
PF: Chris Bosh
Util: Brad Miller
Util: Kendrick Perkins
My main issue now is what to do with CJ Miles if he’s still playing well when Jason Richardson comes back from his injury. Not too bad of an issue to be worrying about. But once again, 2nd place baby!
At the beginning of the weekend, PJ Carlesimo was fired from the OKC Thunder after their horrible start to the year. This morning, Eddie Jordan was fired by the Washington Wizards. Let’s take a look at these 2 firings and see who is next.
First, PJ has never been a great coach. Then, he was given a crappy, underachieving team in turmoil. Seattle/OKC had issues all summer long with the whole transition in moving from Seattle to OKC. Then you have guys like Durant, Green, and Westbrook that will be you FUTURE stars. They’re nowhere near that right now. This is a young team with no true identity, and they’re still growing. They’ve shown no signs of even being a decent team, let alone a .500 team. A lot of times, a bad record does truely point back to bad coaching. In this case, it wasn’t just the coaching. You can’t blame your coach when you haven’t given him anything to work with. Toss Phil Jackson or Gregg Popovich in there and you’ll end up with the same freakin results.
Second, Eddie Jordan. Alright this one you can blame on the coach. You’ve got a team with Caron Butler and Antawn Jamison, who played extremely well last year, and now you’re one of the worst teams in the league? Something isn’t right here. This is a team with a solid core of players, and several young players on the rise. A coaching change was necessary here.
Hmmm, who is gonna get fired next? I’m callin that Dunleavy is gonna get fired from the Clippers by the break, and the rest of the coaches should be safe. Dunleavy lost Brand, but he wasn’t around much last year anyways. This perennial celler-dweller picked up Camby and B Diddy while keeping the rest of their core players. But now they’ve traded away Mobley and Tim Thomas. Those were 2 of their more consistent players, especially with Mobley’s recent play. Tim Thomas is just one of those hard nosed guys that can help out most teams, without any glaring weaknesses. Zach Randolph’s locker room cancer isn’t gonna help anyone either. Good luck, Dunleavy.
We already know that Shaq is on the decline, but he’s still a dominant force. Steve Nash is still a premier PG that always puts up solid numbers against the Lakers. The Lakers have only lost one game during this young season. Amare Stoudemire is putting up All-Star numbers once again, and at his natural PF position. Andrew Bynum is coming back from a major injury and is beginning to get adjusted, proven by his 18 pt, 9 rebound, 3 block game on Tuesday. Trevor Ariza, Jordan Farmar, and Lamar Odom are fueling a high powered bench mob for the Lakers. And then there’s just Kobe and Gasol. Bad blood, great game. If those things don’t fire you up for this game, maybe this will:
So over the summer and even during the playoffs, the league had announced that fines would be handed down for flopping to try to get calls. After and average of 10-11 games per team, still no fines handed out?
While watching the Lakers vs. Bulls last night, I noticed some pretty obvious flops. Most of these plays did show a little contact, but not nearly enough to send a player flying. It seems as though every game that I have watched, there have still been players flopping. Doesn’t seem like it’s gotten any better.
I do understand that the league might take a little longer to review every single play watching for flops, if they even intend to do that, but come on Stern. You announced a new rule change that could highly affect the game play for the better, then you don’t carry it out? Get you minions to start making the correct calls.
I’m a die-hard Lakers fan, but just in last night’s game, you could probably fine Sasha Vujacic for a couple of plays, Fisher on another one, and then Nocioni on the other end. That’s 4 fines that should be handed out, but won’t. Apparently, Stern’s announcement to start fining players for flopping was jsut a hoax. Nice practical joke, David.
From Ball Don’t Lie:
Just when you thought things couldn’t get any worse for the Dallas Mavericks …
Owner Mark Cuban has been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly dumping shares in Mamma.com — The Mother of All Search Engines — upon learning it was raising money in a private offering. Gulp. Here’s a snippet of the SEC press release, via The Huffington Post:
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged Dallas entrepreneur Mark Cuban with insider trading for selling 600,000 shares of the stock of an Internet search engine company on the basis of material, non-public information concerning an impending stock offering.
The Commission’s complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, alleges that in June 2004, Mamma.com Inc. invited Cuban to participate in the stock offering after he agreed to keep the information confidential. The complaint further alleges that Cuban knew that the offering would be conducted at a discount to the prevailing market price and that it would be dilutive to existing shareholders.
Straightforward explanation, with help from the Wall Street Journal: The SEC alleges Cubes sold his entire ownership stake after learning that Mamma.com was raising money through a private investment in a public entity, or PIPE. The next day, the company announced the PIPE financing and shares of the company dropped by more than 10%. By selling his goods, the SEC alleges, Cubes avoided more than $750,000 in losses.
So much for buying the Cubs or landing Stephon Marbury …
Update: It’s not much, but we have a short legal response on Cuban’s blog: “I am disappointed that the Commission chose to bring this case based upon its Enforcement staff’s win-at-any-cost ambitions. The staff’s process was result-oriented, facts be damned. The government’s claims are false and they will be proven to be so.”
This is just plain dumb. Here comes the government again trying to mess with a smart business person. Cuban, like anyone else, decided that since he was going to lose money, he sold his shares. Isn’t that jsut the smart thing to do? It’s like owning the Charlotte Bobcats, knowing that you’re going to lose money EVERY year, but not selling.
Yeah, so Cubes knew that certain things were going to happen that would have caused the loss, but again, isn’t that just being a savvy business person? Imagine yourself owning a large company, and you know that in a few months your stock was going to drop and you were going to lose a huge amount that you wouldn’t be able to recover. Isn’t selling off your stock while it’s still worth something, just the intelligent thing to do? Sometimes laws like insider trading just have too much leeway as to what constitutes insider trading.
I’ve never liked Cuban personally, although I have always thought that he would make a great replacement for David Stern one day. But in this case, I have no other option than to side with him. The guy was just trying to save himself some money in a slumping economy. Leave the guy alone. There are people out there that have done plenty worse things.
According to Ball Don’t Lie:
According to Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle (via Fanster), Matt Barnes, Steve Nash and Rafer Alston have all received suspensions for their role in Wednesday’s lame Phoenix Suns-Houston Rockets shoving match.
Barnes and Alston will miss two games for starting the third quarter scuffle, while Nash will miss just one for slipping on an imaginary banana peel. In addition, Shaquille O’Neal was fined $35,000 and Tracy McGrady was fined $25,000 for their roles in the altercation.
No word on whether Ron Artest was given a shiny gold sticker for good behavior.
How is Nash going to get only a 1 gamer when Alston and Barnes got 2? Nash instigated the whole thing. Barnes charged into Alston on purpose, Alston retaliated, they got in each others’ faces and yelled at each other for a bit… then in comes Nash with an elbow. That’s the point where it escalated into a full on cat-fight. T-mac probably should have been hit with a 1 gamer also for throwing Nash to the ground, but oh well, Stevie deserved it. Nash, you might want to remember that you’re a lot smaller than guys like T-mac and Yao. Either way, dumb fight. Dumb result. If’ you’re gonna get suspended either way, I say you throw a few punches and at least make the suspension worth it.
The Lakers are apparently trying to catch up with the Tennessee Titans, and they’re getting pretty damn close to doing it. They’ve had a few close ones in there, but for the most part, the Lake Show has just dismantled any one that has crossed their path. With Kobe only scoring more than 30 points one time so far this year, the Lakers still managed to enter last night’s game with 20 point average margin of victory… uhhh are you kidding me? When the hell was the last time that has happened? (It’s early, and I’m not gonna bother with the research)
Let’s take a quick look at their games so far this year.
Season opener: Stomped Portland (a supposed threat this year) by 20 points, 96-76. Bynum didn’t need to play a whole lot of minutes this game since Oden got taken out with and injury.
Clippers Round 1: 117-79. Nope that’s not a typo, it actually WAS a 38 point win. It could have been a larger margin, but I guess the Lakers didn’t want to run up the score on the cross-towners.
Denver: 104-97 Close game that shouldn’t have been. Melo was having and off night, and so was Iverson. They let… is this right? They let ANTHONY CARTER go off for 20 points and K-Mart go for 18? Wow. Finally a defensive letdown. Eh, still held them to under 100 pts.
Clips Round 2: 106-88 Another stomping of the Clips. Why is there even a second team in LA? They’re the red-headed step-children of the SoCal area. Might as well send them up to Seattle. They’re used to having a losing team up there. LA? Not so much.
Houston: 111-82 Walked all over Houston. T-Mac stunk up the building. Yao was held in check by Bynum. Artest? Uhhh dude, you have 4 other guys on the floor with you. Stop trying to go one-on-one all the time. As much as I love his game and intensity, he’s apparently running the Black Hole offense. Houston, we have a problem… fuck that was cheesy.
Dallas: 106-99 Uhh thanks, Trevor. Without you the Lakers would have lost this one for sure. This game, although the Lakers were down most of the game, showed how powerful this team really is. They locked down and Ariza came through. Lakers just had too many weapons for Dallas to deal with.
NOLA: 93-86 Chris Paul had a mediocre game for the most part, but then lit up Fisher and Farmar in the 4th. Good thing the Lakers built a 20 point cushion.
Is it just me, or have the Lakers really not allowed ANYONE to reach the triple digit mark this year? That old saying about defense winning games is definitely true here. The Lakers are holding teams to and average of 86.7 while scoring 104.7. Simply disgusting. Phil Jackson has transformed this team into a defensive powerhouse. Yeah, they can still score, but it’s all about D this year. The Lakers are allowing the least point per game? Can this really be happening?
All I have to say is, THANK YOU DREW AND TREVOR. Finally some guys that can change the game with defense. Offense comes and goes, but the defense needs to be there. Now let’s just see how long they can keep it up.
For any of you who aren’t familiar with JD2K over at lakersground.net, you have to have to have to start checking out his videos. He has ridiculous HD highlights from each game all year long. I’m not sure how he does it so quickly, but it seems like he has his videos posted before the game is even over. OK not really, but they’re normally up within hours of the game being over.
Check out this msot recent one from last night’s game against Dallas. Ariza is a beast. That rebound and dunk, then the block on Stack? WOW. We got rid of Brian Cook and got THAT? Thanks, Kupchak. You’re officially my hero.
Alright, Philly is now 6 games into the season, which for a guy with Brand’s talent and skill level should be enough to start getting himself accustomed to his new team and their play style. Let’s take a look at his numbers.
Currently, he’s averaging 14.7 pts, 11.8 boards, 1.2 assists, and .6 blocks. The rebounding numbers look good, but didn’t they sign him to a huge contract so that he could be a factor on the offensive end also? And for a big man that’s supposed to be a solid passer, 1.2 assists? .6 blocks? Ummm. Not even gonna comment there. I guess he’s leaving the blocks for Dalembert since he’s on my fantasy team.
Alright, so currently, I wouldn’t say he’s even close to being worth his contract. But then again, if a guy like Luke Walton is being paid $5 million a year to be the 4th SF off the bench, then I can’t really complain about Brand’s contract. Or Brand’s contract could be compared to Ben Wallace’s huge 4 year contract worth $52 mil that he signed a few years back. But then again, Brand signed a 5 year $82 mil contract… just a bit bigger than Wallace’s.
I really don’t know what’s going on in Philly, but hopefully he’ll get on track soon. The numbers aren’t computing as of this moment though. I’ll give him at least another month before officially calling him over-paid though.
Actually, it’s just a really funny commercial.
Here’s another one.
Who ever came up with these commercials needs a raise. A huge raise. And props to BigHaDaddy over at Lakersground for finding it.
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Just some thoughts on happenings around the league, responses to the media and other bloggers, and just a good place for you to spend time instead of actually working.
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