Hibbert has only played two games against teams with losing records so far in January, and Philly is the seven seed right now. They've still got the Nets and Raptors this month and February looks to be much kinder with the Cavs, Nets, Bucks, Wizards, Bobcats, Wolves, and two against the Pistons on the schedule.
Really interesting article on ESPN that debunks a widely held myth about Kobe Bryant being the best closer of all time. I like the Lakers and it was an interesting fucking read. They are getting better and better with basketball stats, but of course they will never get to the level of baseball. TrueHoop. I made a comment a few months back about how I thought the Lakers home announcing crowd was rather boring. In Chicago we have Stacey King who makes watching Bulls games a fucking event. He has a ton of catch phrases and its hard to get tired of them. They even made a soundboard so you can play with them on NBA.com. I wish the world could be exposed to him, it'd be awesome. He's nuts and EXTREMELY biased. Fucking great. Play with it here.
This is simultaneously my favorite and least favorite thing about watching Celtics games when I'm back home in the Boston area. Tommy Heinsohn is of the opinion that no Celtic has ever been correctly attributed a foul. Ever. It's almost like he thinks there's a anti-green conspiracy amongst refs. It's both hilarious and tiresome.
So this has led to a ton of talk recently in the hoops blogging community: Absolutely fantastic article from Henry Abbott on whether Kobe is "clutch." Like him or not, everyone should read that article. Some Youtube clips of ridiculous fakes.
Excellent article. My feeling watching the games was that Kobe relishes the big moment and is fearless in attempting tough, low percentage shots, but he is no more successful at them than he would be any other point in the game. Sometimes he makes them and it's amazing, and more often, he misses. Decent list, but you have to include Deron Williams in any such discussion. He isn't as quick as a Chris Paul or Rajon Rondo, so he relies more on fakes and his crazy cross-over;
Uh that asshat blogger wants to use D. Rose as an example but doesn't put him on the list or even honorable mention? D. Rose says fuck that. Also with that clip, you'll experience some wonderfully biased Stacey King sounding like he's the most professional And 1 color commentator ever.
That's the gist of it. He is actually less successful in crunch time, presumably due to more attentive defense. One of the main problems is that, in some ways, Kobe is a relatively easy player to guard in crunch time. You know he's going to try his hardest to shoot. There's a very low chance that he'll pass, set a pick, move without the ball to attract attention, etc. Guard the shot, and go from there. In a subsequent post, Hollinger makes a good point: it's not Kobe per se that is the problem. In fact, if you match shot situation/location/defense, Kobe is probably near the top of the list. The problem instead is isolations. Crunch time iso plays lead to poor shots, and Kobe loves going iso at the end of the game rather than running a planned offense. It's likely a style problem, not an ability problem.
Yes, exactly. The difficulty of Kobe's shots in the last moments of a game are always exceptionally high, because he takes the ball one-on-one, gets double teamed, and then launches a ridiculously tough fade-away 15-25 feet from the hoop. When he makes it, people, especially Lakers fans, go berserk. And making them even 31% of the time is pretty damn impressive...but considering the league average is 29.5%, and other elite players are at a healthy 35+%, wouldn't you rather have one of them in crunch time, running a structured offense? And of course, the subsequent justifications and "rebuttals" from Laker/Kobe fans are a laugh riot.
I'm a Kobe fan and I actually meant to post this article when I posted that "TrueHoop" link, but didn't post it right. I think the most interesting thing about that article is that it says Kobe's clutch goes down in the post season. Which I think is crazy. Especially since so many people are sold on him being the ice cold assassin closer. He goes on to say Kobe is fucking insanely effective in the triangle and its the most effective offense in the league but when clutch time comes, he fucks it all up, or as Phil said earlier this year "screws it up" by going Mr. Big Shot. Real solid analysis there. What other false narratives are there about players that everyone seems to ignore?
Mentioned in the same article, Billups is absolutely horrific in terms of crunch-time scoring, (3 of 27 was the quoted figure) vastly worse than Kobe is, but is considered the second best clutch guy in the league. Also, Hollinger's recent analysis that Al Jefferson is a poor defender is simply wrong. He's actually quite good, but gets scored on a lot because Millsap is so poor and undersized on that end, and thus, Jefferson is always the last line of defense in very tough situations. And that's not even getting into how many problems Raja Bell and often, CJ Miles have in rebounding or guarding some of the quicker perimeter guys in this league. Simmons' narrative that Garnett is some MVP contender is hilariously stupid, but I guess anyone that isn't a Boston homer already knows that. There are a lot of other ones. Mainly, it stems from not watching the games, ignoring a portion of the data set, or judging a player based on reputation or even what they did a few years ago, not this season.
All-Star reserves have been announced; <a class="postlink" href="http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=AhwuxZ.XIqkrvFs6azjdMKC8vLYF?slug=ap-all-starreserves" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_ylt=A ... arreserves</a>
Holy shit. These two games on TNT have been fucking crazy. LeBron James made the smuggest 3 pointer ever made. Then later Antonio McDyess makes the clutchest fucking tip I've ever seen. I know the Lakers are crushed now, they almost came back and won that game. They played great defense and they almost beat the best team in the league with Kobe going 16/10/9. If the Lakers play like they just played against the Spurs against everyone else, they'll slaughter them, all the way up to the Spurs. The Spurs are just too good. Jefferson is hitting 3s like he's shooting on a playschool rim a foot away. I hate the Spurs so much. Oh and not sure if you guys saw my man D. Rose last night against the Clippers. I didn't watch the last 5 minutes of the game but I'm pretty sure they limited Griffin to 2 dunks. One was an alley-oop against Korver which was sick, but it was against Korver. Vinny Del Negro played Griffin way too much and Griffin turned a shade of salmon no man should ever turn. He asked out of the game twice. As much as I loved VDN's hair, he's a terrible fucking coach.
Can somebody let me know when the Clippers are on national TV again? I'm watching Denver right now and it's depressing. Carmelo looks like he would rather be letting a buffalo take a diarrhea dump in his ear than make any attempt at playing competitive basketball right now. I really, really, really want to hop on the Blake Griffin bandwagon before it's too late.
The finish to that Clippers game had some PATHETIC calls. That wasn't a jump ball, and flagrant foul my ass (not that it probably would have mattered, but still).
I don't know why you feel that way about Melo; I just watched the Jazz-Nuggets game, and Anthony was consistently attacking the basketball, playing his heart out. He doesn't strike me as a player who is dogging it.
I'm going to have to argue with you about Melo. Have you looked at his stats compared to last year? He's taking about the same amount of games off, maybe a few more. I think his game suffers here and there because his wife is up in his ass every single goddamn night. He's not trying to quit on the team because that fucks up his future money. I bet if we could get info on his games and the nights his wife was out of town not bitching at his ass to line up with his good performances we'd see some interesting shit.
Thoughts: 1) The fact that Kevin Love wasn't named was criminal. Same for Nash. 2) Overall, the squads are quite good. Who would you take off for Love/Nasha? I guess Griffin or Duncan at big and Manu at guard, but they have earned their spots. 3) I feel like Joe Johnson is questionable (you could argue that Allen is too, but I'm a homer), but there's no real snubs in the East.
I actually wrote an article on a basketball site about why Love AND Blake Griffin don't deserve to be on the All-Star team. On an individual talent level, they're as good as anyone in the NBA. But All-Star selections reward winning teams, and should continue to primarily do so. (Hence why I was fine with Duncan and four Celtics making it in this year) Obviously, that's just my perspective, and there are arguments to be made that Love and Griffin should make it in because they are legitimately great, but it's far from "criminal". I would have actually taken LaMarcus Aldridge over Love or Griffin. He is probably not as good as either, but plays for a winning team, one that has no business being even remotely close to .500. Now this I don't get at all. Tell me; which of the current All-Stars should Nash replace? By my count, the West has three point guards; Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and Russell Westbrook. All three of them have played better this season by both visual evidence and statistics than Nash has, lead significantly better teams, play more minutes, and are more involved in their team's every play. And whereas Nash is an awful defender, all three of the current All-Stars are at least decent on that end. If you're arguing Nash should replace someone else, that's four point guards on the team. Too many. So what exactly is criminal here?
I'll grant you that criminal is a slight exaggeration. You have this habit of only reading portions of posts, and then ignoring the remainders. If you had bothered to read to the second bullet point, you would see that I made exactly this point. However, statistically speaking, this year is near-identical to Nash's MVP year. One year, he puts up numbers X, Y, Z and is MVP. Another year, he puts up basically the same numbers X, Y, Z and he's not even an All Star. The only difference is teammates. In fact, I would regard his numbers this year as more impressive, since he's getting 11 assists a game with shitty help. Push comes to shove? Paul & Westbrook are having better seasons according to PER, and Williams is almost as good with much better D and a winning team. If any of them had been left off, I'd even more aghast. I'm just saying that Nash absolutely got the shaft after putting up an amazing half-season so far. Here you and I depart. In my opinion, this is NOT what the All-Star game does, or at least not primarily. Otherwise, Aldridge or Zach Randolph would have been chosen over Love. The game exists to a) entertain, b) reward individual achievement, and c) reward team success. In said order. You could argue that it should reward team success, but as of right now it's primarily an exhibition for fan enjoyment, showcasing the league's best players. And with 15.5 rebounds per game, Kevin Love is one of the league's best players this season. Also, you talk about point guards, but technically speaking, neither the fan nor coach ballot differentiates between the PG and SG position. I'm mildly curious what would have happened if they had accurately listed Duncan at center. I think he actually might have beaten out Yao. He got 0.84 million votes against a deeper pack of forwards, while Yao got 1.15. Maybe Duncan would have picked up enough votes that instead went to Bynum, Nene, Okafor, Haywood, etc. to displace Yao. Edit: ESPN now has Blair at center, Duncan at PF. Am I imagining things? Wasn't the reversed for most of the season?