Artest Reenacts Palace Brawl
I found this video over at Fanhouse and I’m not sure if it makes me like Ron Artest more or hate him more. He just seems like a jackass. But it is funny how he screwed the Pacers franchise because of this story!
The Heat Are Confused
So, Dwayne Wade says this
“But me and Pat Riley are not against each other. We both want the same thing. We’re just in two different positions.”
Then Riley says this
”There can’t be any major franchise changes made without his commitment,” Riley said last month. “He knows this. I’m going to do the best sales job I can. Whatever we do going forward is going to be predicated on that.”
I’m confused about what the issue is here. Why does Wade not want to feel wanted? Why is Riley not talking to Wade about these issues? If Wade really cares, wouldn’t he and Riley work something out so that the Heat can move on and make a better team? Are they really going after AI?
The Heat is exploring sign-and-trade options and is in talks with several free agents, including former MVP Allen Iverson, who has listed Miami among his preferred destinations.
Oh, boy, let me tell you guys…don’t do it. Wade and AI backcourt would be fun to watch if you like to watch two guys compete against each other on the court. That should be fun. The Heat just seem confused and are stalling for what seems to be an inactive summer. The signing of AI isn’t going to give them much to be honest. Let me step away from my bias and be up front, he is a good player who has clearly lost a step or two. They need to fix other things. So, signing AI can help, but Wade isn’t going to be happy if that’s their only move.
More LiveTweeting, Day 3
Well, we’re back with some more fascination tweets from ESPN’s David Thorpe. Let’s get right to it.
It will be interesting to see if NBA players will foul Hansbrough often as a rookie. He’s a foul magnet, but will he be as a rookie?
Well, it is the NBA, so no he won’t be, that’s obvious. Still, foul magnet? Isn’t that giving him a little too much credit? He isn’t the next Shaq.
Suton has a lot of holes in his game. Izzo is a genius.
Suton? Holes? No way! I thought he was going to be an all-star in the NBA! Listen, he honestly wasn’t that great at MSU. He was good in the system. Reminds me of a guy like Brian Butch for my Badgers. Someone who was solid, but would be incredibly worse if in another system.
I have to go home to see my family. Sorry to cut this short.
What? No!!! What a slacker. I need my tweets to tell me if Roy Hibbert is getting faster throughout the day or eating a lot according to Coach Thorpe!
Livetweeting Isn’t ESPN’s Strength
It’s a tough job to have to live blog anything. Now, we can see David Thorpe “livetweeting” the NBA summer leagues. This has got to be a tough assignments. It’s one thing to attend the summer league, but to actually have to make insightful comments…ouch. Still, it is perfect for us to comment about:
Ryan Anderson hits back to back 3’s. He’ll play some this year I think.
This is based on absolutely nothing, but I don’t think he’ll play much this year.
Robert Swift may have the most ironic name in the league.
Huh? Anyone want to explain this one to me?
Someone needs to tell Courtney Fells that electing to take step back 22 footers is not how you make a team.
That someone is you David…tell him!
Once again, I’m impressed with Coach Ewing. Smart things are just spewing from his mouth.
Like? Anything? It doesn’t get much broader than that.
Guys are bent over and in unathletic positions, and they lose their balance.
That’s pretty graphic right there. Can we get a better explanation when dealing with this “unathletic” positions?
Gotta love pg’s who turn down the open layup to get a teammate a dunk. Nice job Kevin Krueger!
No, you don’t gotta love those pg’s. I love the guys who have an OPEN layup and just make the basket!
That’s it for now. I’ll be back with day 3 of Thorpe’s tweets on Thursday.
Sheed Not Missing Link
I’m here to battle the notion that the Celtics got their “missing link” with the signing of Rasheed Wallace today. Sure, I’m biased, being a Pistons fan, but let’s go through and debate shall we?
isn’t the dominant inside presence of O’Neal, doesn’t run the floor like Jefferson and can’t defend quite like Artest. But what Wallace can do — specifically defend two positions and provide valuable inside-out scoring –
–Stop there!! Can’t run, can’t defend, but can defend. Weird. Let’s just say that Sheed was a great inside defender, and, at times, can still be. The inside-out scoring idea is a bit of an oxymoron because of the word “inside.” Sheed won’t go down low and I’m sick of hearing how good he could be if he did. He won’t, he never did. What he will do is stretch the defense by sitting at the 3-point line.
Wallace has the size and skill to score in the paint
Which he doesn’t use…
his three-point shooting (35.4 percent last season) will open up the floor for slashers
Not an amazing total, especially for someone taking 300+ threes a year. That’s a lot of missed threes.
Wallace can also defend power forwards and centers, the latter on display when he capably guarded Dwight Howard
This is a great point. He is the reason Orlando couldn’t handle the Pistons last year. (I’m not being sarcastic here)
Keeping Wallace’s emotions in check…will be a group effort. The Celtics proved they could integrate a mercurial player when they brought in Stephon Marbury, who played the second half of last season without incident.
Marbury is completely different. It wasn’t his emotions that were the problem, it was that he hated the Knicks and the Knicks hated him. Sheed is, at times, lazy and impossible to communicate with. He isn’t able to control his emotions and that’s an issue.
Boston’s only concern with Wallace is his quick temper, which tends to explode at critical moments. If he can control his emotions, the Celtics will once again be a serious threat next season.
Clearly, this sounds a lot easier than it is. The key phrase is “critical moments.” Sheed lost his temper when the team needed him most. The Celtics will be a threat, sure, but Wallace isn’t the savior some may think he is going to be. On that note, thank you to Rasheed who was a great player for the Pistons for five years. I’ve always said that they don’t win the championship without getting Sheed.
If He Can Keep His Cool, Wallace May Be Missing Link For Celtics [SI.com]
MJ vs. Kobe Debate Becoming Stale
I know it’s fun to argue who is the greatest player ever, but it gets old after a while. Especially when it is the same debate over and over like Tiger vs. Jack, or Kobe vs. MJ. Well, the latter was used over at FoxSports.com today and talked about by Charley Rosen:
I don’t believe there’s any discernible difference in the athleticism of Jordan and Kobe, but I do think that M.J.’s competitive edge was sharper and more intense.
You hear this a lot, Kobe doesn’t have the “edge.” This isn’t an argument! There is no science behind a statement like this. Two people can act differently on the outside and can be competitive in different ways. This makes as much sense as when people say that a team “wants it more.” Yeah, that’s why the Magic lost, Kobe and the Lakers wanted it more.
Also, Jordan was never much of a team leader
That’s a thriving endorsement.
Kobe is a better 3-point shooter than M.J. — except in the clutch, when they were both deadly.
Another weird argument that is often thrown around. M.J. was clutch, no doubt, but if they’re both deadly and Kobe is, in general, a better 3-point shooter, than Kobe wins this round.
For Kobe to surpass Jordan, he needs to win two more championships
After four, don’t you think the number of championships should be low on the priority list in this argument? And where does he come up with that number? Robert Horry has seven championships. If we’re going with this logic, he’s better than Jordan and Kobe. Oh, and Horry was clutch!
Pistons, Dumars Get Unfair Treatment
If you happen to make it to foxsports.com today you will see a link to this video. In it, Randy Hill talks for 1:45 about the situation in Detroit. I try not to get my hometown teams too involved in this site, but I couldn’t let this one go. I have four beefs with this little segment.
- Hill mentions that Curry never had much of a chance: This is a common thought, but let’s all be honest, Curry was brutal as the head coach. He would use the oddest of substition and lineup patterns, he somehow managed to piss off Rip Hamilton (by supposedly not personally talking to him), and he got swept by, albeit, a better Cavs team.
- Oh my goodness, Darko is back! Hill tries to paint a picture that this is pretty much all Dumars’ fault. Why? Well, he picked Darko over Carmelo and Bosh. For the last time, the Pistons don’t win a championship without that ill-fated move. There is no Rasheed Wallace that pushed them over the top. It was one pick in 2003 (6 years ago), can we move on? Furthermore, don’t be surprised if Bosh is wearing a Pistons uniform next season.
- Bill Laimbeer will not coach this team. There is no way that they would try another rookie NBA coach. Not going to happen so why even bring it up on a national website?
- Hill doesn’t admit that Dumars has a plan. Sure, he traded my favorite player ever in Chauncey for a team intrusion that is AI, but if he doesn’t make that move there is not much of a future here. They would have lost before the NBA Finals, and they would not have nearly the cap room they have now, meaning long rebuilding process.
The fact is Dumars could turn out to be a very smart man. He brings in a veteran coach in Doug Collins, makes a trade for someone north of the border *cough, signs Gordon and Villanueva, and the biggest down year is losing in the first round of the playoffs. That sounds like a pretty amazing rebuilding process to me.
A Few Words On Rubio Situation
The Ricky Rubio situation in Minnesota is somewhat bizarre. Nobody seems to want to say what is actually going to happen. Well, on to the quotes.
“The last thing we needed to do was be demanding and assertive. Not now,” Kahn said. “I don’t know how this is going to play out. There could be a lot of twists and turns. But I don’t feel any self-imposed pressure that this needs to be resolved or concluded in any short fashion.”
This is an interesting quote because he’s basically saying we don’t want to piss Ricky off, we have no idea what is going to happen, and we expect this to be a distraction all summer. Not exactly the thriving endorsement you want to hear from the new GM.
If Rubio decides to play in Minnesota, “he will be the starting point guard the day he walks in the door,” Kahn wrote in a letter to Timberwolves fans after the draft.
Maybe I’m spoiled, but if Joe Dumars drafted someone and then said he was starting no matter what, I would seriously question how we are determining starting lineups. Hype doesn’t always equal all-star at 18.
“The organization needs to be very patient,” Kahn said.
I guess that’s better than lying to your fans, but does anyone feel like the T’Wolves are expecting a 20-win season?
Grading The Draft Grader
The NBA Draft is a fun time to speculate how the teams did. Of course, this is almost as hopeless as creating a mock draft, but I still enjoy to see what people think. Here are my favorite clippings from expert Chad Ford.
Analysis: I think it’s too early to know what grade to give Golden State. Grade: Inc
Well, we new that. You can use that statement for any team! His point is that Curry could be traded. Yes, but Hedo Turkoglu could go to Europe, and that didn’t stop ESPN from telling me the Magic’s “projected lineup” which somehow didn’t include Vince Carter, but did include Hedo.
Analysis: There is no “A” in Clippers. The franchise has been sometimes snakebitten and almost always inept.
Well, an A for the Clippers isn’t too hard when they have the most no-brainer pick in the a long time correct? In all, they still only had one pick (which they couldn’t screw up) and Griffin was that one. Not an A for effort on this grade.
So, to recap: The Wolves traded two key players on their roster, Randy Foye and Mike Miller, and took back bad contracts, to get the No. 5 pick, a questionable move. Then in the draft the team got the two guys they love, Rubio and Flynn. Terrific. Then GM David Kahn announced his idea to have Rubio and Flynn play together in the backcourt. Huh?
This might not fit with the idea of this website, but, to be serious for a second, all night I was wondering how many guards the T’wolves wanted. They finally did get rid of Lawson, but now they have some interesting decisions. I agree with Ford that one of them will probably get moved, but, as of now, Minnesota will be a jump shooting team, which doesn’t seem to work to well in the playoffs. This night reminded me of my Lions insisting on picking wide receivers, and we know how well that worked out.
Greatest Number 1 Pick?
SportsNation polls are always entertaining. Especially when they ask if we care about soccer.
Here we have the current poll on the site asking
“Which player was the best no. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft in the lottery era (since 1985)?.
There choices include Tim Duncan, Patrick Ewing, LeBron James, Shaq, and David Robinson. They left some key players out, however. I say Olowakandi, Kwame Brown, and Danny Manning to be much more deserving.
In all seriousness though, no AI or Yao? I get most those players have rings on their fingers. I’m more just saying that there are a lot of amazing number 1 picks so the question itself is incredibly hard. Wait, did I just give ESPN credit for a poll that made us actually think?
NBA Finals Missing More Than Lebron
Kobe Vs. Lebron was supposed to be the greatest matchup in recent NBA history. People were crowning the Cavs after dismantling a weak Pistons team and a young Hawks team. There were articles about them going 16-0! I quickly put things in perspective. I’ll be honest part of me is pretty happy that the hype didn’t come true. I’m never a huge fan of basing sporting events on the big superstars. The Kobe/Lebron matchup didn’t really excite me too much. What did excite me was the Cavs/Lakers matchup. It is obvious the casual fan is less interested in the Finals now that Lebron is gone. Hell, ESPN’s latest poll shows 43% of people less interested. I think it’s going to be more than Lebron that is missing from this series. Read more
D-Wade Reaction Fun
Posted by Scott on July 6, 2009 · Leave a Comment
Here are some great reactions from the story that Dwayne Wade wants the Heat to win. First, my quick opinion. Can you blame the guy? I don’t get why he needed to make this situation known through this avenue though. He’s also putting a bunch of pressure on himself I would think. On to the comments:
D-Whine…classy and oh so witty.
That is quite the guarantee. Especially since Lebron will take up about a billion dollars in the Cavs bankroll. I can’t believe there would be nobody who would disagree with this guy…
…oh, I like that one.
Wade Will Stay if Team is a Title Contender [FoxSports]
Scoring Champ Wade Says Heat Must Contend To Keep Him [CBSSports]
Filed under NBA · Tagged with fun with comments, Heat, Wade