Not so fan-tastic or fan-friendly

A while back I wrote the league asking about the broadband league pass. If you pay for NBA league pass, you can have the games streamed to your computer, a very nice feature. However, I only want the broadband stream. I don't own a television, so I don't purchase a cable package, and I'm certainly not going to buy both when the NBA is already putting games out over broadband.

They never got back to me. I'm imagining that once they read the line "I don't own a television" the email was immediately moved to trash.

If anyone out there from the league ever reads this... you could do very well offering a broadband-only package to people like me. I don't have a huge budget for entertainment and the cost of television + cable + extra league pass package isn't realistic right now. But I would pay a reasonable monthly fee to see the games online, and I doubt it would cost the league much at all. Games could even be offered on slight delay over Netflix or iTunes or some other media center; since I live on the west coast eastern games start too early anyway, so I wouldn't mind a few hours lag. Just a suggestion...

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NBA, Televised basketball

Kevin Garnett - Also no regard for human life?

Earlier in the post-season, LeBron got a nice dunk against the Celtics that was immortalized with the announcer's line "Lebron James - WITH NO REGARD FOR HUMAN LIFE"

Last night Garnett got a similarly sick dunk on Theo Ratliff... I hope this one catches on too. Good lord, this is a massive throwdown/posterization. I don't think Garnett is known as a particularly epic dunker but this is just a freight train jam:

Who's going to the Hall?

This is one of those useful-but-fun areas of speculation in sports, although I suppose it has some use to the truly degenerate gambler who wants to place wagers on the outcome of Hall of Fame voting.

Justin at b-r.com has produced a simple but accurate multivariate regression to estimate hall of fame likelihoods for all active NBA players. Hard to argue with the top of the list (well, the last three are iffy because great stats combined with scant playoff success is certainly no guarantee):

The second tier is a little more interesting (players with 10% chance or better of making the hall):

I think a better method could probably be found, but I can't imagine one getting near 100% accurate. It's very very easy to predict who will NOT make the hall of fame, and the casual fan could do it at a glance. For example, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no one on the Cavaliers aside from LeBron James has a chance in hell of being selected. Check back in 20 years, but I'm almost sure I'm 100% accurate on that barring Damon Jones taking a grotesque amount of steroids and actually trying to play within 20 feet of the basket on either end.

Obviously the real chucklers here are Marbury and Francis, the two absolute punch-lines for the-basketball-team-formerly-known-as-the-Knicks. It's almost impossible to remember that up to 2005, Marbury was a dominant 23/3/8 every season, with some pretty impressive stats like leading the NBA in total assists in 2003-04 and missing 2 total games over the course of four years in his prime. Francis was rookie of the year, a versatile 21/6/6 PG, and regularly a league leader in minutes played and assists per game. Although I never saw him play much, he was sort of a beefier Iverson, with less overall scoring but similar skills and getting to the rim and more rebounding.

While those players at least offered some flashes of brilliance, I have a hard time believing Antoine Walker will ever get the call to Springfield. When I looked up his career achievements, I came up with this:

1. Leader in three-pointers taken three years running.
   
2. Six years in league top 10 for turnovers.
   
3. Once got 6 votes for MVP. Wait, WAAATTTTTT???!

If you're wondering about Cassell - surely a long shot to make the Hall - he's in there because the model weights championships very heavily. If that's true, then a win with the Celtics this year could profoundly help his cause. Very few players have won three championships since the Bulls dynasty ended, and the few who have are already at the top of the list (Kobe, Shaq, Duncan, Parker).

You can see that the young stars who've put up pretty good numbers on pretty good teams present the most interesting case. I can't see how Shawn Marion's chances are going to improve very much unless Miami really dominates, or he has the complete green light on offense. Elton Brand on the other hand has a decent shot

Below this you see the second tier stars who've either put up decent numbers on great teams (Billups, Ginobili, Rasheed Wallace) or great numbers on mediocre-to-bad teams (Gasol, Jamison, Baron Davis).

Pau Gasol's Biggest Fan: Lamar Odom

Sports Illustrated is now exploding with florid odes to Odom, leading off the article with the heady claim that "the overall effect he has on a game is unmistakable in a Garnett-like way. He just does whatever has to be done and he does it in a quiet, efficient way." (full story here)

It continues with the same laudatory tone, reminding us that "At 6-foot-10, 230 pounds, he's a near-impossible matchup for opponents -- too big and strong for most small forwards to guard, too quick and too good a ball handler for most power forwards." Hmm.

Let's not forget that Lamar Odom was supposedly the core piece of the Shaq deal. Of course we all knew the Lakers weren't getting full value for Shaq - there was simply no such thing as full value. And while Brian Grant's almost instantaneous decline probably was a disappointment, he was never more than a 15/9 player at his very best, and closer to 11/7 for his career. Odom was the do-it-all, impossible-to-categorize, All-star on the make that made this worthwhile.

Pretty much all of that was accurate, except it applied to Caron Butler instead of Odom. After being traded in the now-epic Kwame Brown deal, Butler broke through in every area, combined 20 ppg with top-10 status in steals per game, free throw shooting and minutes. He's showing up everywhere in the baroque statistics of 82games, from top clutch players (in a similarly august category as Baron Davis, Chauncey Billups and Chris Paul) to best scorers on inside shots (69%, just below Amare and KG and well above of dunk machines like Dwight Howard and Tyson Chandler).

(By the way, someone should really write an entire column on the "worst jump shooters" in the 82games shooting statistics. Is it really possible that Andrew Bogut, supposedly a "finesse" big man in the Vlade Divac/Bill Walton mold, shoots 29% on jump shots, and is blocked 10% of the time in spite of being over 7 feet?)

OK, I was ready to lay off Odom until I read the last paragraph:

The furthest thing from his mind is to be recognized as a high-scoring superstar. "I don't really approach the game like that," he said.

Iverson, defensive specialist?

Every few weeks I check 82games fishing for a new esoteric statistic.

OK, I'm scanning this and it looks reasonable... "savvy veteran" who flops a lot (D Fisher)... center who can't block shots (Bogut)... center who can't block shots (M Moore)... young undersized point guard (Lowry)... OK, that's a bit odd... center who can't block shots (Pryzbilla)... IVERSON?!

I'm sure people will slag this stat as "best flopper"; in fact, 82games made that joke themselves. But I'm still pretty impressed that a soon-to-be 33-year-old 165 pound guard would crack the top 10. Obviously you're tough if you have a spiderweb neck tattoo, but given that so many blue-chip scorers mail it in on defense as soon as they hit their late 20s, ranking in the top 10 in charges drawn is still impressive.

Complete list here.

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NBA

LOL David Thorpe

My questions never get through on these ESPN chats, but there are still some pretty funny moments from David Thorpe...

Not bad...

Getting better

I lol'd.

Nice one!

Take me back to the spring of 1999

This blog lies pretty dormant until the playoffs each year, partly because I don't have cable television and partly because I'm a graduate student trying to finish my PhD during the school year. But the playoffs always draws me back, even though I still don't have a television and I gather my news largely from the blog-world, NBA.com and the sports sites.

Fanhouse had a great preview series and offered a few historic Youtube for inspiration's sake. I missed most of them, but the 76ers vid caught my eye.

Doesn't this take you back to the beginning of the end for Penny Hardaway? Before the Knicks, before the comebacks, just the post-Shaq pain:

Unbelievable that Iverson is still putting up numbers in the playoffs while Penny is long gone.

Blazers-Kings, My First Live Game in Years

I was vacationing in Oregon for the last few days, and I had a chance to see a Blazers game. Living a) in Canada b) without a television, I almost never have a chance to see NBA games anymore, so I leapt at the chance. My interaction with the league comes from sites like FanHouse and TrueHoop, with the occasional YouTube highlight mixed in. Now finally, a real live game, with peanuts, beer and drunken yobs swearing next to you.

Here's the box score from the game, followed by my thoughts on individual players:

SACRAMENTO KINGS (starters):

Brad Miller: People had given him up for dead, but he still owns a very nice all-around game for a center. Final line 15/8/3 with 1 block and 1 steal. Really bullied the younger big men on Portland down low.

Beno Udrih: I guess he's the lead point guard in the post-Bibby era. Looks very middle-of-the-road, probably slightly above average in the milieu of NBA PGs: a lot better than Delonte West and Jordan Farmar, but a cut below Mo Williams or even Bibby. Not much of a shooter.

Kevin Martin: good but one-dimensional. Draws some truly horrible calls with his quick-release shot and acting; at least two were pretty unforgivable on the replay. Didn't look great from long distance but otherwise definitely a solid 20 ppg guard, and there aren't too many of those around.

Mikki Moore: Doesn't do much besides rebound, but does that well. No offensive game outside of 5 feet. Decent post defender.

Ron Artest: Still a force to behold. I had written Artest off after his season-long suspension a few years back, but he can still play. Most noticably, he is physically dominant even in the NBA. Artest is far stronger than most other players, especially in the upper body, and he was killing Brandon Roy in their matchup. Although Artest has minimal hops - I'm not even sure he can dunk - he was very effective down low.

SACRAMENTO KINGS (bench):

Anthony Johnson: largely irrelevant. Just dribbled around, committed several fouls, and fed Artest the ball a few times. On the downside of a pretty mediocre career.

Shelden Williams: Only played 5 minutes, nothing special. Doesn't have much of an offensive repertoire or shot from what I can tell. Looks like he could be a turnover machine (bad handle).

John Salmons: he's had a nice season but it wasn't his day. Never involved with the offense or defense, didn't play the fourth quarter.

Francisco Garcia: dead-eye shooter who probably decided this game. 5/7 from three-point range, 23 and 6 overall. Doesn't have a ton of moves but buries the open shots.

Spencer Hawes: Young big man in development. Thin and gawky but holding his own against the similarly proportioned Channing Frye and LaMarcus Aldridge. Didn't do anything too spectacular or bad in limited play.

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS (starters):

Brandon Roy: Fresh (or not so fresh?) off of a team-high 28 minutes in the All-Star game, Roy was largely shut down by Artest. He shot 5/18 in 40 minutes and attempted zero free throws. A respectable line of 11/8/6 but a poor game overall.

Jarrett Jack: terrible shooter, but a good distributor on the perimeter.

LaMarcus Aldridge: not there yet. A few nice turn-around jump shots but also some easy misses inside. Worse, Brad Miller was having his way down low, getting second shots and passing the ball easily. Aldridge did have three blocks, but I remember Miller putting it right back in, plus the foul, on at least one of them.

Joel Pryzbilla: same as he's been his entire career. 6 points, 9 rebounds in 18 minutes. He's OK, but he's just never going to break through.

Steve Blake: reminds me of a friend I used to play with regularly. Good fundamentals but too small and a tendency to hold onto the ball just a little too long when setting the offense. I'm not really sure why he's the starter.

PORTLAND TRAILBLAZERS (bench):

Martell Webster: largely a no-conscience gunner. His line: 18 points, 3 rebounds, 0 assists. He has a very nice-looking high-elevation outside shot. The crowd likes him, as he displays a lot of emotions after both makes and misses. I believe he's also a Pacific Northwest local, which I think is part of the Blazers' new player development strategy (out with the Zach Randolphes, in with the Brandon Roys). Contributed the one and only highlight reel dunk of the game when he blew by Kevin Martin.

Travis Outlaw: Very exciting, high-upside young player. Fast, smooth jump-shot from 20+ feet. Pretty good finisher. A bit of a black hole, doesn't pass the ball much once it's in his hands. Initially tagged as a breakout player by Eric Wong on 82games, he has flagged in the last few weeks down to averages of 12 and 3 with less than 0.5 assists.

Channing Frye: I'm not sure what happened to him over the past few years. Two years ago he was a genuine rookie of the year candidate in New York, the lone bright spot on that perpetual train wreck of a franchise. Now he gets limited minutes, limited shots, and An excellent free-throw shooter; unfortunately, he didn't shoot any.

Sergio Rodriguez: I've heard interesting things about this guy, but McMillan didn't really get him in the game long enough to do anything. Since they like to have Roy at the point, and already have Jack and Blake, it's hard to see where Sergio's career is going.

Taureen Green: Stuck in a major minutes crunch, traded a few days later.

Raef LaFrentz: Still in the league? Still making $12 million this year and next?!

Josh McRoberts: Career minutes < 5.

Summary: The Blazers mostly got out-shot by a very hot Kings team. The Portland perimeter defense was very weak, rotating late and letting the shooters (Garcia, Martin) and even the non-shooters (Artest, Miller) knock down open shots. Sacramento shot 10/19 from outside the arc (!) and 17/21 from the line (also !). Artest had his way with a smaller, younger Blazers squad that lacked the muscle to stop his drives.

The players traded for Bibby don't look like they'll have much of an impact on the Kings.

Great to be an arena after a long hiatus from the NBA. Nothing quite compares to seeing it live.

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NBA, Portland Trailblazers, Sacramento Kings

Bucks mid-season write-up from Brewhoop

If there's one team that suffers from a severe lack of media attention, it's the Milwaukee Bucks. Bad team, small market, unpopular shrinking city, and your marquee player is the god-fearing, non-dunking Michael Redd. For some reason, this somnolence even spills over to the blog world; in contrast to vibrant blogging scenes for some of the league's worst teams, the Bucks barely even

However, I've found the one exception (actually there are a few others): Brewhoop. They've gone where ESPN dare not tread, full mid-season grades for the entire Bucks down to the NBDL prospects. Much appreciated by expatriate Bucks fans living out of state. Here's a snippet:

While it's never a good sign when [Royal] Ivey is starting for your basketball team, the Bucks have racked up a surprising 5-4 record with him as a starter. Has taken over David Noel's role as the team's designated huddle dancer during player intros.

Brew Hoop: Time for Semi-Arbitrary Midseason Grades!: