blakecouey

I think I dislike Kobe because he's so overrated. There have been articles devoted to the greatness of Kobe's bricks. Some have him as the second greatest of all time. I think he's a top 15 player maybe 12th, but all of the bias towards him along with his arrogance made me dislike the man.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.  Kobe isn't even the greatest Laker of all time, no chance he's #2 greatest in the history of the game.

I'm gonna win my bye week, I guarantee it.

The obvious choice is Beverly, just because he plays with such intensity and peskiness being all over the floor at all times.  

 

I'd give a nod to Parsons too, although I'd really like to see him stop passing off open 3s.

McHale not playing Asik, is he penalizing him for going public with the trade request?

Protecting him from injury for the trade?

Tactical choice?

Or mere idiocy?

This is not the way to treat a pro like Asik, who always worked hard, did not complain or ask for the limelight.

McHale should have talked to Asik, explain his choice, which as far as I can see, he didnt.

 

How didn't he complain?  He's ASKED FOR A TRADE.  I'm confident he aired his complaints well before that, and if he didn't then it's his own fault.  

 

He's been so professional that he told management/reporters that he no longer wants to be a part of his team.  A guy doesn't want to play on your team, ok-don't play.  It happens in Pro Sports, and I can't blame the guy, but to blame McHale for how he's handled it- ABSURD.

Six games in and people are already questioning our team, and more specifically our best player. It's like people don't see LeBron, Wade, and Bosh yell at Chalmers anytime anything bad happens, whether it was his fault or theirs.

The information from the link 2016Champions asked for:

 

Link: http://insider.espn....d-foul-strategy

 

Here's the thing about Hack-a-Dwight, or Hack-an-anybody: The player has to be an exceptionally bad foul shooter for this strategy to have much merit. Emphasis onexceptionally. It works with Ben Wallace or DeAndre Jordan. With just about anyone else, it's highly questionable.

Take Thursday night, for instance. Dwight Howard is a career 59.5 percent foul shooter and has done slightly better than that each of the past three seasons. But let's take 59.5 percent as his chances of converting any given free throw. Sending him to the line for two shots produces an expected return of 1.19 points from the foul shots, a scoring rate better than that of any offensive team in the history of basketball. Just sending him to the line time after time is one of the worst percentage moves a team could possibly make.

It gets worse, though. Howard will miss 40.5 percent of those foul shots, and 20.25 percent of those misses will be on the back end of the pair. It's nice to assume that all 20.25 percent will end up with the defense, but it's also unrealistic. The offense rebounds about 1 in 10 missed free throws, and that mark tends to go up for a bad foul shooter. Simple observation backs up this point -- offensive players waste little effort pushing for position when Chauncey Billups is at the stripe, but they fight like mad when Andris Biedrins steps up.

But let's say 1 in 10 of those boards goes back to Orlando, giving the Magic a new possession. That means 2.025 percent of Howard's misses still generate points; assume league-average efficiency on the new trip and that's another .021 points for the offense.

So now you're giving up an average of 1.211 points -- a breathtaking offensive efficiency level -- for the privilege of piling up fouls on your players. That's compared with a normal offensive season, but remember, too, that this year has been anything but normal. Offensive efficiency is down across the league, as noted below, so the points surrendered by this strategy are even more than normal.

Once you factor in offensive rebounding, the break-even point for this strategy in the 2011-12 season is about 48.5 percent -- slightly less for a team with a rebounding disadvantage, slightly more for one with a rebounding advantage. And that doesn't include the attrition factor from having players accumulate fouls.

Howard, at 59.5 percent, was far too proficient for this strategy to be likely to benefit Golden State. Instead it foiled a pretty good effort at the offensive end. The Warriors scored 109 points on just 99 trips against one of the league's better defensive teams … and still ended up losing, largely by riding Hack-a-Dwight down the toilet.

Bizarrely, the Warriors didn't foul Howard in the one situation when it made completely obvious sense -- with 21 seconds left in the third quarter and Orlando playing for the last shot. In that instance, the expected points of Howard free throws would have been nearly offset by the points Golden State scored on the offensive possession it just created.

On to the Harbingers:
 

 

 

1. Speaking of free throws, the Bucks and Pistons combined to go 41-for-41 from the line Thursday. I'm not sure people appreciate what an amazing feat this was -- for comparison purposes, Howard had fewer attempts and missed 18 times. Most players shoot better than Howard, of course. Normally, NBA teams shoot about 75 percent from the stripe, and the Bucks and Pistons haven't deviated significantly from that so far this season: Milwaukee entered Thursday night's game at 74 percent for the season, Detroit at 77.8 percent.

The odds of such teams producing perfection in 41 attempts? 1 in 69,111.

Wait, it gets better. There are only 1,230 NBA games in a normal season, plus roughly 90 playoff games. That's 1,320 total games, meaning you'd expect to have to wait about 52 years to see this happen.

So bravo to anybody who carved out time for Bucks-Pistons on Thursday night. It might not have felt as if you were watching a once-in-a-lifetime event, but apparently you were.
 

 

 

 

 

2. If you think things have been ugly, your eyes have not deceived you. Some ugly numbers back up that point: The league median offensive efficiency mark is a paltry 99.5, a far cry from last season's 104.6. Although efficiency normally goes up a couple of points as the season progresses, it appears we'll fall well short of last season's offensive numbers.

The secondary stats back that up -- and point to the lockout as a major culprit. Take foul shooting, for instance -- the league average is just 74.3 percent, down from 76.3 percent a year ago. Three-point shooters are also having trouble finding the mark, at 33.9 percent compared with last season's 35.8 percent. Again, we can expect those numbers to rise over the course of the season, based on recent history, but they'd have to rise much more sharply than in past seasons to get us back to 2010-11 levels for the season as a whole.

Similarly, teams are at .442 from the field after making .459 a year ago, and they turn it over about 1 percent more often -- a bigger deal than it might sound.

One canary in the coal mine is that rates of free throw attempts and 3-point attempts are down slightly. These are the two most efficient shot types, and they normally are somewhat countercyclical -- if one goes up, the other is likely to go down. The fact both are down is a good indication teams are just having a harder time getting quality shots.

The only thing that hasn't changed is offensive rebounding. That had been in decline for the past several years, but thus far teams are grabbing exactly 26.3 percent of their missed shots, scarcely different from the 26.4 percent of a year ago.

About the only good news I can offer is that things are still much, much better than in 1998-99. That season, the league shot an impressively bad .728 from the line for the season and only one team averaged a hundred points a game. There's been some bad basketball recently, but anybody over the age of 20 has seen much, much worse.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3. After seeing Charlotte's Boris Diaw in person Thursday night, here's my complete scouting report: Woof.

It's hard not to notice that the Bobcats lost by 30 on a night that their starting power forward was outscored 30-0. It's equally hard not to notice that Diaw's conditioning is getting into Eddy Curry territory or that, despite his considerable girth, he appears to be absolutely terrified of contact. Which takes us to this amazing stat: Diaw has drawn two free throw attempts the entire season.

TWO!!!

He's a starting NBA frontcourt player who has played 348 minutes and taken 104 field goal attempts; if he keeps up that rate all season, he will have by far the lowest FTA/FGA mark of all time. His FTA/pastry ratio should also set a mark.

It's so befuddling for Charlotte because Diaw is probably its most talented player. Even in his Michelin Man costume, he's averaging nearly five assists a game, and he has become an effective midrange shooter. Perhaps the Bobcats thought moving him to power forward Thursday night and giving Byron Mullens the start at center would invigorate Diaw to attack against smaller opponents, but he looked more passive than ever.
 

 

 

 

4. Don't sleep on Cleveland, people. The Cavs are 18th in the daily power rankings after an impressive 101-90 win in Phoenix on Thursday night, and Kyrie Irving keeps impressing. He had 26 points in 28 minutes, including an impressive dipsy-do around Steve Nash and under Marcin Gortat for a lay-in, and held his own against Nash at the defensive end.

With Anderson Varejao at his pestering best (17 boards, and such nimble feet that he denied an inbound pass to Nash for nearly five full seconds and forced the Suns to waste a timeout), Antawn Jamison still pumping in points (let's not talk about the defense part), and a second unit of Ramon Sessions, Daniel Gibson, Alonzo Gee andTristan Thompson regularly outplaying its foes, the Cavs are the No. 8 team in the East right now.

And if they do manage to squeak into the postseason, what a story that will be. Because their probable opponent would be the likely No. 1 seed in the East … Miami.

Great season.  Im bummed about the loss, but it's easier to take knowing we could've just as easily been swept.  I must say I lost a lot of respect for the Thunder during this postseason, due to all the BS and hard fouls that were unneccesary(I'm biased though, and I'm sure our guys gave them a few bruises as well).  As for the season, we made huge strides.  We've got a team now that gels to a point, even though there are still a few cracks to fix, but hopefully that will be fixed in the offseason.

We've got a lot to do this offseason, although it should be easier now than past years, since we've got our superstar locked up.  Hoping that we can make some headlines and be even more of a contender next season.  

I'd absolutely bench him for the game.  The odds are stacked against us for the series, what's the difference between losing in 4 and losing in 5? Pride maybe, but that's it.  Our team should already be proud, we've played really hard against one of the best teams in the league and if it weren't for some mistakes(which are to be expected with a new young team) we could've at least come out with 1/2 wins.  If he plays and gets injured further it helps no one.  

Merged this topic with the one started only two days ago titled "Asik for Defensive Player of the Year".  Please check to see if there is a topic that your post should be in before starting a new topic.  Thanks

KG is the player I hate most.  As has been said several times, he has no class on court.  Rondo would be on that list as well, adding in the dirty plays he has been involved in the last few years(neck grab/clothesline of Wade opening day this year, kicking Battier last year during playoffs..etc).  The guys can both play, but the anger issues kill them in my opinion.  

 

I hate Kobe.  I respect the hell outta him because hes a great player(maybe not great teammate though).  

 

Huge Lebron fan, and aside from a FEW comments he's made, I don't see any reason to dislike him.  You can't get on him for getting foul calls when he's barely breathed on as it's the refs calling the fouls.  Maybe he overreacts, but he's trying to win, and 95% of all players show an overreaction to contact in an attempt to get a foul.

 

Westbrook is a joke, I don't take him seriously enough to get irritated at his antics.  He's good, but he will be the demise of that team and likely ruin any title chances they have until he changes his shoot first mentality. 

 

I dislike Dirk and Kidd a lot, mostly for their destruction of Houston the last few years.

I don't like Blake Griffin either.  Being overrated and childish are his main problems.

We had this same discussion a few weeks ago, and if I remember correctly the consensus(of the 3 mentioned teams) was Memphis should be the easiest, and the Clippers would be the toughest(but maybe the most entertaining to watch).

 

And no JohnnyGold, the last time we played Memphis was in December, where we won by 25 at home.

Improvements: My team.

Not sure, hoping to get it resolved soon though, it's never been this bad. Maybe one of the spam bots will leave us a post on how to get rid of them once and for all, lol.

Asik hasn't had near the bad stretch that Lin has. A week ago he had 3 double doubles in 4 games, and is ALMOST averaging a double double for January(his worst month as a Rocket so far). It's hard to fault a guy for not being offensively productive when he wasn't brought in for his abundance of offensive production-be thankful for the 9+ points he gives you. Lin on the other hand has far underplayed the expectations placed upon him.

Also, it's very unlikely that two teams that want the same guy do a deal together sending the guy to one or the other. David West isn't a consolation prize worth dropping Horford for, in hopes that Dwight will join them in the summer.