niremetal

Detroit turned Woody down too. And he had a history there. Now it's Minny or nothing. And I'm thinking even Minny isn't stupid enough to hire him. Sorry, but it's just sad northcyde. You're pretty intelligent when you post about most stuff, but you, Nineoh, and a few other folks around here are the only people left in the world who seem to think that Woody was a decent coach. The Hawks' performance in the '10 playoffs left no doubt in the minds of most people. A banged up team that couldn't have won 20 games during the regular season stretched the Hawks to 7 games because it took Woody 3 humiliating losses to realize that the switching defense wasn't working. Then came the train wreck of the Orlando series, where Woody was the only person in the known universe who didn't seem to get that shutting down Howard was not the key to stopping Orlando's offense, and where Woody had no Plan B for when the JJ/Jamal ISOs broke down. Woody's inability to make adjustments was on display for all the world to see. How you didn't see it, I'll never know.

The House of Moses All-Stars: A+

Charley Rosen used to be one of the best basketball writers out there. He's been losing it the past couple seasons, but I think this article was pretty spot-on. Mike Brown's grade seemed to me to be as much a prediction as an actual grade. And the prediction frankly seems generous to me. The only difference between Woody and Mike Brown is that Woody had JJ and Brown had LeBron. Neither knew how to make adjustments, which inevitably doomed their teams to failure when they ran up against teams that could disrupt their simplistic offensive schemes. And northcyde - I guess I commend you for sticking to your guns despite the fact that LD showed more coaching acumen in 3 weeks this past April/May than Woody did in 6 years. Woody almost dropped a first round series to a Milwaukee team that was missing its two best players and starting Kurt Thomas at center and then saw his team get blown away by Orlando in the most lopsided series in the history of professional basketball. LD took the same group, beat Orlando with a game to spare, and took the team with the league's best record to 6 games. Scratch that, I can't commend you for sticking to your guns. Woody was the most miserable epic failure of a head coach I've seen in any sport. LD actually had people talking about the Hawks as ECF contenders for a couple weeks. I'm not ready to crown LD as a "great" coach, but he's already shown himself to be 300x the coach that Woody was.

Correct! Yeah. It's easy to call these guys "busts" and talk about them as if they were video game characters...and then stories like Bowdler's remind us that even for athletes, there are more important things in life than what happens on the hardwood. Here's the article, for those who've never read it: http://hamptonroads.com/2006/02/former-nba-players-quest-life-and-love-home And the "six months later" follow-up: http://hamptonroads.com/node/136691

Guy on the left (I hope that's obvious, but hey, you never know)

Yeah. Especially since teams can't trade away their first round picks in even 2 consecutive years (unless they acquire another first round pick). But I definitely stand by "any two players on the roster plus draft picks" as part of a trade to get D12. It'll never happen, but hey it's lockout summer.

The rest of the team wouldn't stay static if we somehow pulled off a D12 trade. In the NBA, 1 superstar > 2 borderline All-Stars. I don't like it, but it's true. Bring in Dwight, and we'll have a much easier time attracting role players at a good value. I think the path to title contention is much easier with Dwight than it is with Josh and Al (or Joe and Josh or Al and Joe).

Shaq created a monster. Before him, top big men tended to be the strong and (relative to stars at other positions) silent types (think Mikan, Wilt, Kareem, Parish, Hakeem). Then Kazaam came along and it all went to hell. That being said, I'd trade any two players on our roster plus our draft picks for the next decade to get D12.

NBA coaches choose the All-Star reserves. I think they're slightly more qualified than you to judge the quality of the players they see. And they've chosen him 5 straight times. But hey, if that's not enough to satisfy you, then congratulations on being a hater.

How many times do NBA coaches have to select JJ to All-Star teams before his haters stop hating? You can't keep your heads in the sand forever.

I agree, for the most part. The consistent profitability of the NFL makes them, in my view, the league that the other pro sports league should try to emulate. And the NFL (and the MLB and NHL, for that matter) doesn't even have the international appeal that the NBA does (although with the appeal comes competition that the other leagues don't face). But, I don't like the "no guaranteed contracts" thing. Let whether a contract is guaranteed or not (or only guaranteed up to a certain amount/time) be determined on a case-by-case basis - which you kind of see now with player/team options, but the NBA does have too strong a presumption toward guaranteed contracts, I think. Other than that, phase in a hard cap pegged to league revenues. Add something akin to the franchise tag in order to maintain some incentive for players to stay "home." Remove the maximum contract and rookie scale contracts, which create market distortions (like, say, LeBron James being restricted to making no more than Chris Bosh or Joe Johnson, and Blake Griffin to no more than a mid-level player) and create too many situations where it makes sense for top players and prospects to consider playing in lesser leagues overseas. Oh, and get rid of the minimum age rule. I used to be in favor of it, but I've been convinced by enough people that it makes little sense to tell Derrick Rose he has to spend a year playing college ball and taking fake classes. I have mixed feelings about revenue sharing. Some level of it is necessary to ensure the league doesn't become like the MLB, where the league has increasingly lost the interest of large parts of the country because the local team isn't competitive. On the other hand, you don't want unprofitable or poorly-run teams living off the bankroll of the well-run and profitable ones. They need to find the right balance - the NFL has done so (there are no Clippers or Royals in the NFL, and I think every team is profitable), but the NBA won't be able to do quite the same thing since they can't get the supermassive TV revenues that the NFL gets. They need to try to increase the pot of league revenues, and I think a major untapped market is for online streaming rights. The League Pass Broadband system is cool for diehard fans, but I gotta think that they could make more money by selling all or some of those rights to third party entities like NBC Sports, ESPN, Eurosport internationally, etc.

If they are members of the players' association - or want to be in the future - I'm pretty sure they can't play in any NBA-affiliated leagues.

Curiouser and curiouser...

It is definitely, definitely not just NBA players. It's a problem among athletes in every major pro sport where you can go from being in school and making no money to being a multimillionaire overnight.

My Verizon contract ran out several months ago and I've been going month-to-month with them ever since. It's not that I'm particularly unhappy with Verizon, but it seems like a rip-off compared to the no-contract carriers since I don't have a smartphone and have no real desire to get one. I just want a phone and plan that will allow me to talk and text at will, and maybe occasionally check my email (though even that is not a necessity). Anyway, let me know your thoughts.

I bet on Nadal too. My boss said Djokovic. I'm not looking forward to the abuse I'll be experiencing at work tomorrow morning... Djokobitch won Wimbledon. Ugh.

Assuming there aren't any continuing legal obligations to the NBA during the lockout, the only thing stopping the players would be the possibility of injury during these games. If I were them, I'd still do it though. It would be a great way to show the owners that they - far moreso than the NBA brand/marque - are what puts butts in seats and money in the bank.

I actually watched a replay of the match last night. Federer didn't choke. Tsonga's serve was just absurd during the last three sets, and he made some incredible shots to secure the necessary service breaks against Federer in each set. I've seen Federer choke before - last year's US Open semifinal against Djokovic immediately comes to mind. Matches where Federer was just spraying groundstrokes all over the place and missing 50+% of his first serves, or where (like against Del Potro in 2009) he refused to make obvious adjustments to his gameplan when things weren't working. This wasn't a match like that. This was more like, ironically, Tsonga's dismantling of Nadal at the '08 Australian Open. It wasn't that Federer played bad. It was that Tsonga played incredibly well. I honestly think that Murray, Djokovic, and Nadal would all have lost to Tsonga yesterday as well, and that Federer would have beaten Lopez, Tomic, or Fish. That being said, the 2004-2007 model of Federer (you know, the one that won 11 of 16 majors) doesn't lose this match. The current, older model of Federer (29 is like 70 in tennis years), however, is just a bit too slow to deal with the ridiculous shots that Tsonga was making. I was spoiled by seeing Federer at his peak in action. It's hard to get used to the idea that he's just not as good as he was in his prime.

Gotta say, D, you've been on fire these past few weeks. Great post.

Before the tournament, I said Tsonga was my dark horse pick at Wimbledon. Never have I been so sad to be right: http://www.wimbledon.com/en_GB/scores/stats/day17/1503ms.html

...eagerly awaiting Mark Cuban's counterblog...

It'll be interesting to see if the "our owners are cheap meme" will continue when new owners come in and spend no more than the ASG has. No owner in the NBA would be spending the luxury tax on this team at this time. That would basically be throwing millions of dollars down the drain, which smart businessmen just don't do. Regardless, I look forward to new ownership. Not because our current owners aren't spending enough, but rather because they meddle too much in decisions that should be the exclusive province of the GM.

I thought there was a way to change your handle without opening a new account?

Why are people still talking about the Josh for draft picks rumors as if they were true?

He was at the top of his game in Sports Night.