Even Bill Simmons can't resist

Random Knicks bashing his latest mailbag column:

 

Q: To what would you compare the scene in the randomly placed smoker's lounges in the Las Vegas airport?
-- Marcus Guerriero, New York

SG: Hmmm ... you're talking about the most hopeless, desperate, depressing social setting on the planet -- everyone in that room has hit rock bottom and doesn't seem to care whether they live or die, but they're so addicted to nicotine that they're willing to share this smoky, cancer-ridden, glass-enclosed space with 10 other complete lowlifes. And that mere realization ruins their will to live even more than it was already ruined. It's like the spirit in the room has been collectively broken. And there's no going back.

In other words, it's just like the crowd at the average 2005-06 Knicks home game.

Fun with graphs

Lowpost has put up a simple graphing tool that allows you to chart the win-loss records of different NBA teams over the course of the season. While it doesn't tell you much that a few minutes with ESPN's season schedule data and Excel couldn't, it's fun none-the-less.

For example, this graph shows the records of the Timberwolves and Celtics pre- and post-trade. After the first ten days (when Wally was dealing with his wife's C-section, injured and largely unable to practice with the team) the Celts have been close to a .500 team.

It's like a traffic accident

None of us can stay away from the Knicks. I'll post about something else soon, I promise. I do love a folk song with references to the luxury tax threshold AND Jessica Alba, though.

SweetDue presents... the ballad of Isiah...

Ugh

This is either the saddest story I've ever read, or a perfect commentary on contemporary American culture and values.  Or both.

Gomes Watch Update

No shockers here.  Continued solid play, despite the expected reduction in minutes as healthy bodies return to the lineup.

 

After 23 games in the starting lineup, he's averaging:

    35.0 minutes, 8.3 rebounds, and 12.4 points

 

After 16 games, it was:

    36.6 minutes, 8.6 rebounds, and 13.7 points

 

After 8 games, it was:

    39.1 minutes,  9.1 rebounds, and 12.1 points 

 

If you assume that Gomes's production is mostly due to effort and activity (as B has asserted), the rebounding stats make perfect sense.  As his minutes have declined from 39 to 35 (or to put it another way, he's only playing 90% as much as he was after 8 games), his rebounds have declined exactly proportionally (8.3/9.1 = 91%).  But more impressively, his scoring is actually increasing.  As his minutes declined to 90%, his points have increased to 102% -- (12.4/12.1 = 102%).  A lot of that had to do with some monster games during the middle 8 games of this stretch where he scored 27 and 29 points on consecutive nights.  If you discount those two games, his points also mirror the exact same decline seen in rebounds (10.9/12.1 = 90%).  Interestingly, discounting the rebounds for those two games don't impact his rebounding numbers much (8.1/9.1 = 89%).

 

Foolish consistency may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but it one helluvan asset in the NBA.

Basketball reports from outside of Boston, pt. 2

The McDonald's All-American game was televised last night on ESPN. Holy cow. Can we just skip this draft and go straight to next year?

Greg Oden is a freak of nature. The same way Shaq was when he first showed up at LSU and you couldn't believe that someone could be that tall, that strong, that quick and that coordinated all at once. If Oden walked into practice tomorrow he'd be the second best player on the Celtics. I have no problem with any team that trades all their assets for 2007 lottery picks and tanks the season for a chance at getting this guy.

Other players that jumped out at me include Gerald Henderson, son of that Gerald Henderson, who should be great in the backcourt for Duke next year. Chase Budinger, who looks too much like Brad Lohaus for his own good, was fantastic. He'll be playing forward for Arizona. If only there was someone on this blog who lived down there and could give us updates next year. I could never tell which of the Lopez twins was doing what, and since they'll both be playing for Stanford I don't see that getting any easier. Kevin Durant is an athletic freakshow.

If only we could use our draft pick this year to take someone from this crowd. I'd happily wait a year for them to show up.

Basketball reports from outside of Boston, pt. 1

Patrick Reusse of the Star Tribune sounds like he'd be pretty happy to redo the last several months

It was also the 31st game since the large trade with Boston that was supposed to create an improved nucleus for the second half of this season and the future.

Those of us who figured getting rid of Wally Szczerbiak and his inflated contract for four players with a chance to contribute was a wise move have been proven incorrect.

When we endorsed the deal, it was based on the belief Ricky Davis was a better all-around player than Szczerbiak. He's not. Ricky's not an outside shooter, he doesn't get to the basket often, and, shockingly, he's not much better defensively than Szczerbiak.

Marcus Banks has gotten what amounts to a 30-game shot at point guard -- and the mistakes he makes in late March come with the same frequency as they did in late January.

Mark Blount is what the Boston people said he was: a 7-foot jump shooter, with many more years of contract left than Michael Olowokandi. The only guy better than advertised is forward Justin Reed, and that's as a 10-minute reserve.

It gets worse: If the Wolves want to bet that Banks will get better, they will have to use much of their mid-level exception on him, since he's a free agent. And there would go the best chance to bring in one of those veterans Kevin Garnett wants as a teammate for next season.

What Kevin McHale's big trade has done is create more dead wood on a dead team.

An NBA coach familiar with the Wolves' situation (no more hints) looked at all those contracts when the trade was made and said: "This is their team for the next four years."

He goes on to say that if the choice is to trade for Starbury or use a KG trade to nuke the roster and start over, he'd rather trade for Starbury. But he sure doesn't sound happy about it.

Movin' on up

There are apparently media reports out of Texas that the next GM of the Houston Rockets will be Daryl Morey, currently SVP of Operations and Information for the Celtics.

On principal, I'm wildly in favor of seeing former strategy consultants do well professionally. A buddy of mine who is a Sloan graduate has seen Morey talk several times since he joined the Celtics and has been vaguely impressed by his intelligence and ability to talk about sports while using lots of MBA-jargon.

I can't imagine that a Celtics pedigree is currently helpful in job interviews, but if assuming Daryl lands this job he was persumably as persuasive as he needed to be.

EDIT: Confirmed in the Houston Chronicle. Morey will be an assistant initially and then move up to the GM position in a year.

EDIT 2: I vaguely remembered Morey being mentioned in some dubious posting on the Celtics website this last summer. Here are some quotes:

The growing appetite NBA front offices have for this outsider-generated data has, in turn, created a market for hiring these statheads on staff. They're employed largely as advisers, not decision-makers, but it's not far-fetched to think that they'll be pulling the strings in the near future. Among the most promising from this group is Celtics senior vice president for operations Daryl Morey, 31, who graduated from MIT's Sloan School of Management and considers Bill James, the patron saint of quantitative analysis in sports, to be his role model.

While Morey by no means ignores points per game, rebounds per game and other statistics popularly held up as benchmarks of success, he also recognizes that those numbers can inflate (or deflate) a player's value. Instead he is constantly looking for other, more obscure indicators of success such as turnover ratios, eFG% (a weighted field goal percentage that takes into account the added value of three-pointers) and productivity per possession. Yet all of these apparent abstractions have a clear bottom line. "It's the same principle," says Morey of the comparisons with Moneyball. "Generate wins for less dollars."

Making other players on the floor better is an important but difficult skill that Executive Director of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge looks for when he is evaluating a player. One reason Ainge pursued free agent Brian Scalabrine during the off-season is Scalabrine’s ability to succeed in this area.

While this skill is difficult to isolate statistically, an approach is possible to see if the numbers indicate Scalabrine’s reputation in this area. First, we looked at the group of 4 players who played the most minutes, as a group, with Scalabrine last year: Jason Kidd (538 minutes together), Vince Carter (424 min.), Jason Collins (524 min.), and Nenad Krstic (435 min.). For each of these players, we examined how that player performed when Scalabrine was on the floor vs. when someone else was playing with this lineup.

That has led Morey and the Celtics to such players as Dan Dickau, whom the Celtics acquired in a sign-and-trade this summer from the Hornets for a second-round draft pick. During his first two years in the league, the 6-foot point guard was renowned more for his moppish hair than his skills. After being traded from the Mavericks to the Hornets last season, he was, for the first time in his young career, given a chance to play significant minutes, and he averaged 13.2 points and 5.2 assists. But those statistics told only part of the story. What attracted the Celtics to Dickau were some less-heralded numbers. His ratio of 4.7 assists last season for every bad pass is on par with the 4.8 average of Steve Nash, widely considered to be the game's premier pure point guard. One can reasonably surmise that playing with better players, Dickau would have had a higher ratio. This is not to suggest that Dickau is a Nash-caliber player, only that, at the price of $7.5 million over three years, Dickau might have been undervalued by the market.

If Morey was pushing for Veal and Dickau last summer on the basis of numbers than I hope he has learned to recognize the profound limitations of stats in basketball analysis. Given how painfully bad Dickau was prior to his injury its safe to say that at $7.5M/3yrs he's most certainly not undervalued by the market. He's lucky to have a job in the NBA.

When given a cheap shot, he takes it

Celtics play New York tonight

Starbury and Garnett

New York Daily News has this interesting item on Stephon Marbury's desire to be reunited with Kevin Garnett -- in New York.  Of course, what GM or player wouldn't want to add Garnett to their team, should the T-Wolves decide to trade him?  But as the Daily News piece makes clear, the Knicks don't have a lot to offer.  Their lottery pick this year belongs to Chicago, and their best young player (Channing Frye) is out with a torn knee ligament.  Which leads me to this question, which I believe I've asked before -- what teams besides Boston have a combo of young players, big contracts, and draft picks that might entice the Wolves to give up Garnett?  For example, the C's could offer Raef LaFrentz, Gerald Green, Al Jefferson and (the resurgent) Tony Allen, plus picks.  Of course, that would only be palatable for the T-Wolves if they were committed to rebuilding from scratch.  So what else is out there?  Have any of the big NBA writers done anything on this?   

 

By the way, here are my favorite Marbury quotes from the piece:

"I would say that playing back with Kevin, that would be something that would be talked about forever."  

and

"As far as basketball, I haven't had that much success as far as winning."

Right on.

We pause to consider this moment in Celtics history

With eleven games left in the Celtics season it's worth noting that we're coming up to a long-awaited moment. After the Celtics finish their game with the Heat on April 19, the last of Vin Baker's $8.3M/yr buy-out settlement finally comes off the books. It's been three years that we've been paying the guy to get hammered and doze through team meetings in New York, Houston and now LA. Four years total of paying for what might have been the worst, most inexcusable trade in franchise history are finally coming to an end. Thanks dad, indeed.

This parting ain't sweet sorrow; it's just sweet. And long long overdue.

Here we go again

Ron Borges takes Bill Belichick to task in his Football Notes column this week. The main thrust is that Belichick's vaunted "plans" for how to build a team don't seem to be working out all that well this offseason, in large part because players and other teams have "plans" too, and not all of them include what the Patriots have in mind.

Let's set aside for the moment how ridiculous the premise of the column is -- I mean, after all, of course players and other teams have their own plans and ideas. It's not like the Patriots somehow summon Svengali powers and make the rest of the NFL do their bidding. But regardless, Borges uses this flimsy rationale to once again take pot shots at Belichick. To wit:

That's the problem with putting so much of your faith in plans and so little of it in players. Sometimes the plan works. Sometimes others intercede. And sometimes you end up with Tyrone Poole, Duane Starks, Chad Scott, Chad Brown, Monty Beisel, and Jarvis Green expected to make significant contributions to another trip to the Super Bowl.

True, last year's acquisitions weren't spectacular. But they were joining a very deep and very talented team -- a team which had it not melted down against the Broncos might very well have won its fourth Super Bowl in five years. None of those guys was supposed to have a huge impact on the team. And which one of them contributed to the loss against Denver? None. It was the old reliables -- Troy Brown, Kevin Faulk, Tom Brady, and yes, the great Adam Vinatieri. And despite that, they easily could have won that game if a few breaks went the other way. I'm not suggesting that the best team didn't win the game that day -- the Broncos clearly outplayed the Pats. But is there anyone out there who actually thinks that the two best teams in football met in the Super Bowl last year? Frankly, the Pats, Broncos and Colts were all better than those teams. All right, back to Borges:

In professional sports, you can't plan for everything. For much of the time since Belichick and Pioli arrived in Foxborough, they've hit on their plans well in excess of the norm. They were right on some big decisions like signing Rodney Harrison and Mike Vrabel, getting Dillon when he was cheap, drafting Richard Seymour, Dan Koppen, Matt Light, and several other solid starters. (Leave out Tom Brady, because when you draft a tight end from Harvard ahead of a guy who wins three Super Bowls, that's not a plan -- it's luck, which every successful plan needs.) No plan works all the time, however. Neither do the majority of the players you import. You have hot streaks and cold streaks. Sometimes fate intervenes. Sometimes bad luck. Sometimes you might even make a mistake. That's how it is.

All right, Captain Obvious. Great analysis. Yes, the Pats made some brilliant moves, and others haven't panned out. And yes, some of football (and life) is based on luck. But when the methodology has produced 3 Lombardi trophies, why are you so quick to jump on them? Despite having an off year, the team had a solid shot to win its fourth trophy -- despite losing Rodney Harrison and (effectively) Corey Dillon!

Maybe Borges comments on le affair Vinatieri are the most revealing:

Last week, there was much debate on talking-head radio about the defection of Vinatieri, who left for more money and a place where he felt wanted. It was fascinating to listen to the Friends of Bill, who once fawned over Vinatieri while mocking a guy they called ''Mike Vanderjerk," explain how suddenly the man was now ''Mr. Vanderjagt" and he was a better kicker than Vinatieri.

Vinatieri was suddenly the 19th-rated kicker in the league while Vanderjagt was sixth. Vinatieri's kickoffs were no longer deep enough. His field goals weren't long enough. His consistent conversions of every big kick since 1999 were ancient history, even though he did it twice more last season. Conveniently, the fact that Vanderjagt missed a 46-yard kick indoors on his home field with a playoff game on the line against the Steelers was downplayed, as was the fact that, regardless of how deep Vinatieri's kickoffs went, they went deeper than those of Vanderjagt, who doesn't kick off at all. The FOBs even talked about Vinatieri's age, as if 34 were decrepit. Vanderjagt is 36, but who's counting if he's coming to Foxborough?

They didn't talk about the fact that only one kicker among the top 19 scorers attempted fewer field goals than Vinatieri or that Vanderjagt kicked 11 more extra points, which was nearly half the difference between them. They did talk about how Vinatieri was now overpaid, because we all know no one in the NFL except Scott Pioli can add and subtract. Then Vanderjagt signed with Dallas and he was back to being Vanderjerk again.

So in a nutshell, here's what apparently bothers Borges: Belichick and Pioli are willing to stick to their performance/economics analysis of player evaluation, and some knee-jerk fans on sports radio support them regardless of what they do because they've won 3 Super Bowls. Um, Ron? Maybe you should just realize that most sports radio is entertainment directed at the lowest common denominator (hence the homophobic jokes and such), and not actually based on in-depth thought or analysis. After all, isn't that a columnist's job?

The Chicago Bulls.

Bill Simmons on the state of the Chicago Bulls:

20. Chicago
Now here's a coach I love: Scott Skiles. When the Bulls beat the Clips in L.A. last month and Skiles worked Dunleavy like a speed bag -- it was the best coaching job I've seen in two years. Seriously, look at that Bulls team. They don't have a single top-15 player at any of the five positions except for Kirk Hinrich. Their two best scorers are 40 percent shooters. They have no size at all except for Tyson Chandler (the very poor man's Marcus Camby) and Mike Sweetney (who's eating himself out of the league). And yet they have an outside chance for the eighth seed, which would give them consecutive playoff appearances if that happened. Imagine what Skiles could do with a real team?

Is it just me...

...or does MLB have its head further up its you-know-what than any other sport? Now they're trying to ruin fantasy baseball.

It's official

The Celtics season as a whole hit garbage time last night when, flipping over from BC-Villinova during the ad breaks, we got to watch Gerald Green defending LeBron James. Thanks a ton, kids! It's be great. Good night.

Good thing Bradley lost?

Fellow Mid-Majors Say Missouri Valley Suddenly Acting Like It’s Better Than Them

Friends and acquaintances of the Missouri Valley Conference say the conference has started acting as though it’s superior to them in the week since it received four bids to the NCAA Tournament and saw two of its teams qualify for the Sweet 16.

“Yeah, it’s like all of a sudden they think their s—t don’t stink,” said the Metro Atlantic Conference. “We called them up the other night to congratulate them on their success and they were all curt with us and said: ‘Uh, sorry. But I have to go. I’m supposed to go to the mall to hang out with the ACC.’”

The Metro Atlantic is not the only mid-major to notice the Missouri Valley’s attitude change.

“We always used to hang out together, commiserating on how tough it was to compete with the power conferences,” said the Mid Continent Conference. “And then I see them during the NCAA Tournament at a bar with the Big East and Big Ten, buying each other expensive import beers and thinking they’re the coolest cats in the place. And when I walked by them at the bar all I get from them is some lame nod like: ‘Hey, ‘sup man,’ as though they hardly even knew me. Apparently they thought their big, fancy friends the Big East and Big Ten wouldn’t think they were cool if they were friends with the lowly Mid Continent Conference. Whatever. Screw them. We didn’t forget where we came from when Valparaiso made a run a few years ago. But then we’re not phonies.”

Despite the claims of its fellow mid-majors, the Missouri Valley Conference says it hasn’t forgotten where it came from.

“I don’t think we’re really acting all that different. I think it might just be that the other mid-majors are jealous of the attention we’ve been getting, that’s all,” said the MVC. “But, you know, conferences like us don’t get a lot of opportunities to be mentioned with the big boys. This might be our only shot to make the jump from mid-major status to major status. If that means changing our appearances a bit and hanging out with the ACC and Big East, so be it. We wouldn’t begrudge the other mid-majors doing it if they were in our shoes. And, to be honest, if they would try a little harder like we did, the big conferences might want to hang out with them, too.”

No matter the reasons for the MVC’s change in behavior, its fellow mid-majors will be rooting against it come this weekend.

“We’re all going to get together over at the MAC’s place to watch them lose,” said the Northeast Conference. “It will be good for them to get put back in their place by getting whooped up on by the big conferences. And, if they apologize to us and come back hat in hand, we’ll take them back into our lowly, pathetic ranks where they belong.”

SportsPickle.com

Thank god for small favors

Our winter of departures may be ending with at least one hero sticking around. ESPN reports that Troy Brown, only the most admirable Patriot of my lifetime, has agreed to another contract with the team. No word yet if once again he was offered more money by the Saints.

Glorious things of thee are spoken

Better than a cup of coffee is the perk that comes with a plausible and interesting trade rumor. Today in the New York Post Marc Berman has this to say about the New York Knicks

The Knicks traded their own lottery pick, which could be No. 1 overall. However, if the season ended today, they still would have the 24th and 29th selections in the NBA Draft.

Larry Brown has hinted he could foresee the Knicks packaging Denver's and San Antonio's first-rounders with an expiring contract (Maurice Taylor) to move up.

With the lottery weak, teams might want to fall back to get an extra pick. One mid-lottery selection the Knicks have interest in is LSU's 6-9 athletic shot-blocking forward Tyrus Thomas, who faced Duke last night in the Sweet 16.

In fact, Brown has told confidants he thinks Thomas should be considered for the No. 1 pick, though most scouts see the freshman as mid-to-late-lottery choice. Brown is on record saying he'd rather have Eddy Curry than either of the top players mentioned for No. 1, Adam Morrison or J.J. Redick.

Quick aside: Even before Redick destroyed his own lottery aspirations by being absolutely dominated the other night by the less talented but slightly larger and more athletic LSU guards, it's pretty stupid for Berman to go saying he might be the #1 pick. Sophomore girls at Duke can be forgiven such sentiments. Certainly no NBA scout shares them.

That aside, this is clearly a story planted by Brown in the media for possibly any number of reasons: to try to influence the Knicks front office, establish himself as a potential GM and therefore survivor of the blame-game with Isiah, to distract attention from the mess on the court, or just because he has always pulled stuff like this.

Let's take a leap of faith here and for the moment speculate the New York front office is actually considering this. Why does this set my heart all a'flutter? Well, Mo Taylor's $9.1M expiring contract matches up pretty nicely with Raef LaFrentz's $10.6M deal. Now that Babcock is out of Toronto there are only so many GMs that might be desperate and stupid enough to trade for Raef.

Berman's third paragraph is exactly backwards. In a shallow draft the Knicks are going to discover that their end-of-first round picks are the least valuable commodity out there. Unlike the second round picks a few selections later, the contracts of firsts are guaranteed meaning that you're stuck paying several years of salary to a player that (in this draft) you may decide in six months you never want to see again. In the 2003 draft several teams sold picks in the 20s for the equivalent of a few thousand dollars they were so eager to get rid of them.

If the improbable happened and the Celtics ended up with the Lakers pick, they might go into the draft with a 7-9 selection (their own) and a 14-15 selection (Lakers). If they were able to use one of these picks on a players like Brandon Roy, move the other with Raef for Mo's expiring deal, and roll the dice with whatever late-round gamble Danny wants to take on this year... well I'd be pretty blissfully happy with the draft.

I've written before about my concerns that Raef and Wally's humungous contracts, combined with any new deal for Pierce, may lead us to sign-and-trade a bunch of our young talent rather than pay the luxury tax. The prospect of getting out of Raef's deal a year before having to resign Perkins is worth a whole lot indeed. And if we're trading with New York there's always the prospect of getting a bargain. Just ask Orlando, Phoenix, or San Antonio.

Marketing halftime.

Further to our conversation about marketing minor-league basketball, Slate has a piece about how the NBA entertains during halftime.

Bonds sues.

Barry Bonds' lawyers say he's going to court tomorrow to try to get the profits from the new book detailing his steroids use. I've got a longish post up at AIP about it.

Yowzers

With only a little garbage time left at the end of the Celtics-Raptors game Tony Allen rifled an alley-opp to Gerald Green that hit hard and high off the backboard. Green, whose head is level with the rim, reached way back and up to corral the ball and slam home what was an absolutely insane dunk. If I can find a video feed somewhere I'll post the link.

Sure hope the dude can learn to play basketball, he might be a lot of fun.

EDIT: I'm not sure how to link, but there's a video clip up on the NBA main page. On replay it's clear the best basketball in the play is Orien Greene's touch pass ahead to Tony Allen to get the break started.

EDIT 2: Here you go. Unfortunately, it's the feed with the Toronto announcers, who get all huffy and shit.

EDIT 3: Here you go, this time wtih Tommy and Mike.

Non-abortion related news from South Dakota

Stu Whitney from the mighty Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports that the NBA may be getting ready to acquire the Continental Basketball Association-- including the mighty Sioux Falls Sky Force-- to merge with the NBADL before the 2006-07 season.

I am not just bringing this up as an excuse to mention that I have attended a Sky Force home game and had a grand time.

There seem to have been at least two problems with the NBA's plans to create a baseball-esque minor league system. First, each NBADL team is currently affiliated with up to four NBA teams, none of which have hiring and firing control over personnel. Second, there is very little track record of players going on to NBA careers as a result of playing selfless team ball in the NBADL. Both of these result in NBADL coaches and players having conflicted incentives, at best, when it comes to working with, developing and cultivating the prize young talents sent to them by NBA franchises.

Danny Ainge has given this as a reason he changed his mind about optioning Gerald Green to Florida, despite Green's crying need for playing time. Danny's opinion when he pulled Green out was that play in the NBADL was so self-promotional and lacking in team offense or defense that Green was losing his good habits and learning bad ones during his time there. With no control over the coaching staff or the other players on the roster there wasn't much Danny could do about this.

Baseball's minor leagues work in part because the coaching staffs are all hired and fired by the parent team, who gives them strict and specific instructions about how to play and develop which young players. The young players know how much communication goes up and down the chain of command and so have an incentive to perform well and also be good soldiers. The long track record of the minors as a pathway to professional success makes people more willing to buy in to the system.

When a committee is responsible, no one is responsible. One step towards giving the NBA a more effective development league would be to give each team its own farm club, with absolute control over personnel and roster moves. Expanding the NBADL from 8 to 16 teams would be a step in this direction.

Does this make Doug Flutie our current starting kicker?

Well, for some reason I find this far more depressing than McGinest, Arroyo, Givens, Mueller, or any of the other inevitable off-season departures. As the biggest Pats fan among us I can only assume MMazz feels the same way.

What especially stings, if true, are the rumors coming out of Green Bay that Vinatieri made it clear he wanted to finish his career in domed stadium. It's not a terribly rational reaction but for some reason the idea of an athelete switching teams for money doesn't bother me while the idea of an athelete switching teams so they can pad their career stats does. Or at least, when it's this athlete is does.

Al Jefferson's trade value slips a notch

Normally the national sports media is at least a few steps slow in picking up changes in how well or poorly someone is playing. Kelly Dwyer of SI becomes the first national I can remember seeing who points to Al Jefferson's uninspiring play this season. It's a minor note in the bottom of a long catch-all column, but still a small if unfortunate development for whatever off-season trades Danny's cooking up.

Most of us had huge hopes for Al Jefferson this season. This was supposed to be the first of his 15 seasons as Boston's dominant low-post threat, and though Jefferson has disappointed, we won't blame Danny Ainge for this. Some have pointed to Ainge's offseason designation of Jefferson as Boston's lone untouchable trade option as a bit of heavy-handedness that got to the kid's head, but that can't be trusted. Instead of rocking fat and sassy through the summer months, he came to camp in shape and ready to play. Unfortunately, it was a sprained left ankle that really got him off his game, leaving him hesitant and unsure in his moves or footwork, and the Celtics sputtered.

The C's are sputtering no more, courtesy of Ryan Gomes' brilliant play (13.4 and eight rebounds since Feb. 12), but Jefferson can't get on track. Since his return on March 1, the kid hasn't looked right, averaging 6.3 points and four rebounds in 14 minutes. As usually happens with ankle sprains, he overcompensated, developed bad habits and ended up spraining his right ankle on Feb. 3, which put him on the shelf for the rest of the month. The Celtics have 14 games left in the season in which to engender some confidence in their once-and-future rock down low.

It's an error in our favor, so I'll not objecting, but I don't know what summer camp Kelly was watching in which Jefferson showed up in shape and ready to play. If anything, Jefferson's poor play in the Vegas summer league and in preseason was pretty remarkable, especially to those who saw how well he had played in the Indiana series four months earlier. This was the subject of several posts on the email listserve that pre-dated this blog, including a few by our Arizona bureau chief, who's been strangely silent lately.

TMI Dept., Yao's Feet Div.

Del Harris was coach of the Chinese National Team in 2004, and he remembered watching Yao take his sneaker off after the first national team practice he coached. "It was all red down by his toes, and when he took the sock off and you saw the toes -- well, let's just say it was one of the most disgusting things I've ever seen," Harris recalled Sunday. "If you were even the slightest bit squeamish, that thing would have made you vomit."

After letting his toe fester for years, Yao finally underwent surgery in December after an infection spread to the bone. Harris said he has seen a huge difference in the way Yao is now able to run the court pain-free . . . .

Chris Sheridan at ESPN.com. Hope he relied on hearsay, and didn't do any actual reporting for this piece.

Trust and the Arroyo deal

The Boston.com staff have posted some notes on WEEI's interview with Theo Epstein regarding the Arroyo trade.  The only thing of any interest to me comes at the very end where the hosts asked Epstein about the contract which Arroyo signed in the off season.  (To sum up: a below market deal at approximately $3m per year, with the express intent of it helping him stay in Boston, even though he didn't get a no-trade clause; Arroyo took the deal against his agent's advice, on the understanding that the Sox weren't actively trying to trade him.)  Here's Epstein's paraphrased response:

I’ve seen it repeated about a ‘gentlemen’s agreement,’ ... I talked to Jed Hoyer about the contract. The topic came up, but we said we cannot guarantee you’ll not be traded. There was nothing hot. No imminent trade talks. But certainly things change over months. There was no gentleman’s agreement. No handshake. Obviously he wanted to stay in Boston. It’s tough to do to someone who’s been a loyal soldier, enjoys being in Boston. But have to do what’s best for the organization.

I can only imagine what the denizens of talk radio are saying (I'll soon find out as I'm heading home in 5 minutes).  But it's left to Mike Wilbur at Boston.com to discuss the potential impact this has on the Sox.  His lead says it all:  "The moral? Don’t make any gentleman’s agreements with the Red Sox."

 

Regardless of whether there was a gentlemen's agreement or not, this isn't the first time the Sox have come out looking bad from what should be a routine transaction.  They stepped on toes in acquiring Kevin Millar off waivers; they nixed the Lyle Overbee deal with Colorado; and now they trade away a player who had just signed for (a lot) less money than he could have in order to stay in Boston.  I don't know if reputations mean anything at that level of baseball, or if money/talent is the deciding factor in all deals, but Theo has a long career ahead of him, and I can only hope he's protecting his reputation. 

 

For what it's worth, sentiment is running about 60/40 on Boston.com that the Sox screwed Arroyo big-time.  Of course, if the Sox win another World Series, nobody will care whether Pena turns out to be Phil Plantier or Jeff Bagwell, and whether Arroyo wins 2 or 20 games.

ArmchairWiki

Todd Zywicki, who almost has the name for it, points out this new project.

Red with anger?

Like t.s. and MMazz, many Reds fans are down on this trade. The following come from www.redszone.com/forums/:

Right about now Wayne Krivsky has to be feeling like he just sobered up after a long night in Pat Summit's hotel room.

Reds got ripped off.

Krivsky's first trade = F+

I'm not surprised to see WMP traded but I was hopeing to get better pitching for him.

Even if WMP struggles to reach his ceiling, he's far too talented to give up on for the likes of Bronson Arroyo. What's Arroyo's upside? We've seen it.

I can just envision Pena just mashing w/ the BoSox.

They traded away a decent commodity for absolute junk, that's how.

Good organizations don't flip Pena talent for Bronson Arroyo garbage

The old line goes that home fans over-value their own talent and under-value that of other teams. Who's right this time? I guess we'll see.

Grounds for divorce

Winning the SweetDue fantasy football championship this last season got me about ~$35, which is only one of many reasons you won't see me following Sam Walker's example. Sam decided to devote an entire year to his fantasty baseball team: paying out $50,000, hiring two full time employees and flying around the country to watch players in person. No word on what his final record was.

I can now add this to my list of things that would presumably cause E. to leave me once we're married.

Bronson Arroyo to Cincinnati for Mo Pena.

This blows. So much for the hometown discount Arroyo accepted when he signed his deal. (Surely the Sox will take a hit for abusing Arroyo's good will, unless something else is going on here.) And Pena struck out 116 times last year with only 20 walks. Wonderful.

Early observations from the NCAA tourney

While my better half has been staying with t.s. and the nephews for most of the last 10 days I've had far more free time to watch basketball than is probably good for me.

And while I've haven't watched anything close to all the games that have been on TV, two draft prospects in particular have jumped out at me.

Joakim Noah - 6'11" PF from Florida. Wow. Plays with a ton of energy and is all over the court on defense. Not very strong but is quick and intelligent enough to be a fantastic interior presence either in zone or on help D. Ballhandling is good enough to successfully bring the ball up the court against the full court press. Reminds me of a less offensively talented but more enthusiastic Marcus Camby, when the later was at UMass. Doesn't have much of a back-to-the-basket game, but that can be taught.

Brandon Roy - 6'5" SG from Washington. Not the most athletic SG out there, but a great all around player. Boy is he fun to watch. Somewhat like Pierce in his ability to consistently get to the basket despite not having the quickest first step in the game. Uses a great sense of court spacing to create mid-range jump shots. Because he doesn't look like a top-tier athletic talent he probably won't ever become a lock-down perimeter defender or a crowd-pleasing, ticket-selling dunker. Will certainly be compared unfavorably to players like Rudy Gay and Tyrus Thomas in this regard. He plays hard on every possession, however, and clearly understands the game. If you like Ryan Gomes' game you'll really like Roy as well. Easy to imagine him as an excellent starter and complementary player on a team with existing All Stars and shooters.

T.O. to Dallas

What's the over/under on how long it takes for Bledsoe to start showing that sad look he gets when things aren't going so well? I say about 4 games.

McNabb couldn't stand Owens. Jeff Garcia couldn't stand Owens. And both those guys have a pulse. I just don't see Mr. Low Self Esteem meshing with T.O. , particularly once Bledsoe starts tossing up those hold-the-ball-too-long-and-nearly-take-a-sack interceptions.

Don Banks calls it a fascinating marriage. More like an uncomfortable shotgun wedding where everyone is joking, "See you at the divorce." That being said, you can bet Bledsoe/TO will be a hot Fantsay combo this year.

Gomes watch

Not to beat a dead horse, or worse, post a dead thread, but here's the latest update on everybody's favorite Celtics rookie.

 

One game after posting his worst stats since moving into the starting lineup (4 points and 6 rebounds in just 21 minutes against the Grizzlies), Gomes got back on track with a 11 rebound, 11 point effort on 5 of 7 shooting in 39 minutes last night. 

 

His stats since moving into the starting lineup?  I'm glad you asked:

 

36.6 minutes, 13.7 points, 8.6 rebounds

 

If he were to average those stats over the course of the entire season, he'd be in the top 20 in the league in rebounding (at 19th, just behind Drew Gooden, and ahead of Zach Randolph) and top 60 scorers in the league (tied for 59th with Bobby Simmons).  I took a cursory look at the players he compares most favorably with, and one player's stats stood out: Sacramento center Brad Miller.

 

37.1 min, 15.3 points (50th in scoring), 7.9 rebounds (21st in rebounds)

 

Miller's salary for the next 4 years?  $11m per year.  Ryan Gomes?  Not so much.  Of course, one is a legitimate 7 foot, passing center, and the other is an undersized power forward.   But still.

 

Getting back to Gomes, I'll leave you with one final thought:  his field goal percentage, currently at 57%.  To put it in perspective, if Gomes had enough attempts to qualify on the NBA leader board, he'd be second in the league behind Shaq's 59% FGP.

That faint rumbling...

...coming from the sports bars of Allston and Brighton has been the sound of (4) Boston College and (13) Pacific playing to a 34-34 tie at the half.

Go Eagles!

"Throws like Mary."

It's only March, and Johnny Damon has shoulder tendinitis.

Ron and Kobe, redux

Charley Rosen has a typically detailed and insightful breakdown of last night's game between the Lakers and the Kings. As we discussed back at the beginning of March, Celtics fans have some reason to follow the Lakers efforts to make the playoffs and hope for the worst. Bill Walton has been singing hosannas to the Kings recently. Does the gruff and faint-praising Rosen agree?

In truth, the Kings are indeed slightly more physical than they have been in recent seasons. But perhaps not as rough-and-tough as they'll need to be to advance past the first round come the playoffs. They still depend on outside shooting, on Miller's passing from the high-post, and on getting out and running.

Did Artest succeed in his pre-game boast? Absolutely. Under the constant pressure of Artest's stubborn defense, Bryant was never able to create and sustain any kind of offensive rhythm.

Trouble is, if Artest gives the Kings a bona fide stopper, there's only one of him. The fact that none of his teammates can play a lick of defense will ultimately abbreviate the Kings' season.

There is doubtless much joy in Sacramento this morning, because with the Kings win over their arch-rivals and the antichrist from southern California they have moved ahead of the Lakers by a half game in the standings. Sadly for Celtics fans this doesn’t mean the Lakers are out of playoffs. While Sacramento has been making their climb the Lower Mississippi Watershed Hornets have been losing 7 in a row, and 9 of 11. The Lakers remain the 8th seed in the West, and we’ll have to hope they can be overtaken down the stretch by the less inspiring Hornets and Jazz.

Well, that was ugly

Over an 82 game season there are going to be a bunch of games when you just look awful. Last night we had bad match-ups all over the court and then played lousy basketball on top of it. The Grizzlies are one of the best defensive teams in the league and held Pierce to only 14 shots; Ryan Gomes could do nothing with the quick and 7' Pau Gasol; Al Jefferson managed to commit 6 fouls in 12 minutes; Memphis dominated in the paint, collecting 14 more rebounds and taking 21 more foul shots; etc. etc.

This morning Steve Bulpett includes the following in his column:

At the end of the first quarter, Paul Pierce tried to loudly rouse the troops.

“It’s just focus,” he said. “That’s all it is. C’mon, this is the difference between us winning at home and on the road.”

Pierce’s attempts at motivation were noble, but they were of no use. The Celtics were sleepwalking in Memphis. For their lack of effort, they earned a 93-76 loss to the Grizzlies and an even steeper incline in their playoff climb with three games still left on the current road trip. That they would come out so poorly in such an important game was more disturbing than disappointing.

“Especially on the road with so much at stake for us at the end of the season,” Pierce said. “I don’t know what it was. Just poor execution on our part. We seemed like we just didn’t know what to do.”

“We were trying to follow our schemes,” Raef LaFrentz said. “We left Tsakalidis alone. That was a little bit by design, but it came back to bite us in the butt.”

The Celtics, meanwhile, could find no stride at all. Their lack of ball movement was in striking contrast to the pattern they’ve been setting.

“It seemed like they really had us scouted well,” Pierce said. “They knew all our plays.”

Which is more than he could say for his own team. At one point in the second half, Pierce came out of the game and informed Rivers that three Celts knew the play and two didn’t.

Hello.

Not to make a big deal out of this, but that sure reads like Pierce and LaFrentz are indirectly taking shots at Perkins and Jefferson through the papers. And while I’m not sure I mind them doing it, I believe it marks a first during their careers in Boston.

Jefferson especially has been anointed the future of the franchise since his great summer league showing a year and a half ago. In a move they may now regret the franchise spent his first year in Boston trumpeting his potential. There’s little question that his play since then has fallen well short of expectations.

The troubling thing is that so many of his flaws suggest a potential lack of motivation. After playing 126 games and more than 2000 minutes of professional basketball he continues to struggle with the kind of simple defensive rotations that college sophomores his age make routinely. His ability to quickly make the appropriate passes out of double-teams remains well behind that of Perkins, who has played less at the same age. The results of last off season’s conditioning work were uninspiring, at best. He showed the requisite skill and motivation to put together a great playoff series last year against Jermaine O’Neal and Indiana only to sleepwalk through much of the summer league and fall. He appears to very visibly dislike playing with any pain or aggravation. I could go on.

Jefferson received almost no coaching in high school, as his coach admitted in multiple interviews around draft time. He had never been sent to the weight room, forced to learn many plays, or taught any kind of team defense. He put up ungodly stats in high school playing against central Mississippi kids a foot or two smaller than him. It’s not clear that before he arrived at the Celtics he had ever worked hard at basketball in his life.

I’ll admit to worrying now that the Celtics may have erred in heaping such praise on him and his talent at the beginning. Where internal motivation may be lacking the team may now be belatedly realizing that he needs more of a kick in the ass than he’s been given. Doc has been preaching all season that players need to earn their time on the court with good play. Pierce and LaFrentz may now be turning up the pressure on the kids to get it together and play like pros.

Most and least improved

Mike Goodman over at HoopsAnalyst has a post on the most (statistically) improved players from '05 to '06. His stat of choice is an aggregate per minute stat, persumably of the kinds of things that end up a box score, although he doesn't specify. It would be interested in see how this compares to most improved in terms of weighted +/- stats of the kind Dan Rosenbaum calculates, potentially on UNC's powerful mainframe computers.

In any event, the 6th most improved player of '06 according to Goodman's numbers? Delonte West. Others of note: Smush Parker, Kobe Bryant, and old friend Tony Battie making an appearance. Clearly, players that have been given a more featured role in their offense this year look very good by Goodman's measures.

Also logging an appearance, on the opposite end of the list: the fast-declining Raef LaFrentz.

>sniff<

How sad are we to lose David Givens?

Like shooting fish in a barrel

I should probably cap the number of posts per month in which I comment on the current state of the New York Knicks. The themes haven't really changed much all year. And yet, my sense of the narrative structure of tragedies is that there should always be some point when outrage and dispair turn into resignation.

Anyway, how much more dysfunctional can the team get?

Stephon Marbury, who has resisted Larry Brown's demands on and off all season, said in a published report yesterday that he plans to go back to playing like "Starbury," his description of the freelancing style he prefers.

In a pregame interview with the Newark Star-Ledger in Charlotte, Marbury said he tried to change his game to fit Brown's controlled style emphasizing ball movement and an inside-out attack in which the point guard creates open shots for others first, but the result is a 17-44 record rather than a winning season and a playoff berth.

"So what do I do now, as far as the way I play?" Marbury said in the interview. "I go back to playing like Stephon Marbury, aka 'Starbury.' I haven't been 'Starbury' this year. I've been some other dude this year ... When you watch the games, that's not Stephon Marbury."

Keeping up with the Jones

Things haven't been all rosy in Minnesota since the big trade and it doesn't look like they're on the verge of getting better. The Wolves went 3-10 in February and are currently on a four game losing streak. How's KG like playing with Mark Blount? We can only guess.

Garnett tore into some of his teammates who were joking around in the locker room after Saturday night's 110-102 loss to the Phoenix Suns at US Airways Center.

Garnett, upset by some of the banter he heard, came out of the training room and yelled at them.

"I don't like to speak from a frustrated mind," Garnett said later in an even tone after most of his teammates had cleared the locker room. "There's no way we're playing one of the best teams in the (expletive) league and you're not hyped, you're not up. But the atmosphere in here is like we won. This (expletive) hurts."

"The focus here, it's got to hurt when you lose," Garnett said. "I don't know if it's like that. I've never been one to hold my tongue, and I never will. This (expletive) hurts. If we're really trying to make a run for this thing. … We've got (20) games to go."

"We're trying to make the playoffs, and we need everybody to comply with that."

Interesting word, comply. I guess being genuinely motivated is out of the question, hunh?

Countdown to the next big Kevin Garnett trade rumors article on ESPN: ten, nine, eight....

More on Mr. Gomes

Peter May chimes in on the emergence of Ryan Gomes today. He notes that Gomes scored 27 and 29 points in back-to-back games last week, a feat not matched by any second round pick since Sam Mitchell in 1989. While that particular stat doesn't impress me very much, it's additional confirmation of what we've been discussing for a while -- Gomes is a stud second round pick. May even mentions the possibility that Gomes could be a first-team All Rookie selection. Quite a feat for someone who didn't get decent minutes until February. And by the way, for those who missed it, Danny Ainge confirmed what everyone already knows earlier this week: Gomes has to be considered part of the "core" for the future of the Celtics.

NFL labor deal

Lost amidst Ron Borges' hagiography of Jonathan and Bob Kraft is confirmation of what I thought all along about the NFL labor negotiations. The deal wasn't so much about negotiations with the union, but about negotiations amongst the owners on how to divvy up the enormous amount of money the league generates. And yet, while every journalist who covered the league recognized these two key components, they seldom differentiated which was most important. Why is that?

What next?

Bill Simmons:

Whether they miraculously sneak into the playoffs or not, Ainge's rebuilding plan will be shelved this summer, and only because you can't waste Pierce's prime when he's playing this well. That's the long-term effect: With a boatload of draft picks and two appealing young talents (Jefferson and Green), Ainge has enough assets to overpay for an All-Star -- whether it's KG, Jermaine O'Neal, Chris Bosh or whoever -- then compete with Pierce, Delonte, Gomes, Perk, Wally, All-Star X, Free Agent Signing X and whatever assets remain after that trade. If he decides on proceeding in any other direction, he's a moron.

Gentlement, start your engines.

Another look at Gomes and stats

A big difference in Gomes' recent play has been his shift to PF, where he uses his quickness and speed to get around the other team's big men and either get to the hoop or create an open jumper for himself. Doc Rivers was apparently on WEEI a little while ago commenting that the Celtics only ran one play for Gomes against the 76ers last night, in which he missed his shot. All 29 of his points, therefor, came from his taking shots that were available to him as part of ball movement and crashing the offensive boards.

How much better is he playing now compared to the fall? 82games.com keeps very handy records of each players' PER* by position, as well as the PER for the player they are matched up against at the time. PER is a forced-ranked scale, with the league average for productivity set at 15.



The danger of drawing conclusions from small numbers applies here, as Gomes' minutes at backup SF earlier in the season were really pretty limited. This also demonstrates what we all already know: that Ryan's contributions on the offensive end have improved dramatically since he has been given free reign at PF. That said, it's interesting to note that he was apparently doing a better job on defense against SFs earlier this season than he has been lately in the paint. This is perhaps to be expected. The result, unfortunately, dilutes some of his many offensive contributions as is shown by his rather modest net PER of +1.3

'*' For those who want a refresher on PER can look for an initial explanation here.

Amazing.

At what point are we obliged to rename the blog after Ryan Gomes, or something?

A big brother.

Gilbert Arenas got you thinking ill of the average NBA player? Check out this take on Adonal Foyle.

No love lost

With 0:14 left in overtime last night Gilbert Arenas nailed a 17-foot jumper over Paul Pierce to give the Wizards a 1-point lead. Although I missed it at the time, this was apparently Arenas' message to Paul after making the basket:



Add one more to the reasons Pierce looked particularly cheerful and happy immediately after hitting the game winner at the buzzer.

Paul Pierce, talismanic

In related news, the coach of the Argentinian national team has this to say about USA basketball and Pierce:

OLAVARRIA (FIBA World Championship) - Argentina coach Sergio Hernandez reckons Team USA will only deserve to be called the 'Dream Team' at this year's FIBA World Championship if they adopt a genuine team ethic.

Argentina beat the US in an Olympic semi-final in 2004 before winning the gold medal and Hernandez replaced Ruben Magnano as coach after the later decided to enter club coaching in Italy.

Responding to the announcement of the United States' preliminary 23-man squad for August's tournament, Hernandez is not surprised by the omission of Allen Iverson, a Team USA co-captain in Athens.

"I say all this with a lot of respect: if you want to play like a team, you must leave out Iverson first," Hernandez explained.

Hernandez feels there is always a danger with the US of individuals putting themselves ahead of the team, something he believes is endemic in the NBA.

Hernandez is not shy himself of singling out individuals in a squad he accepts will be one of Argentina's chief rivals for the title.

"Kobe Bryant is the star player," he said. "After him, I think that there is Carmelo Anthony and Paul Pierce. Pierce is a talismanic player."

I have absolutely no idea what this means. But it sounds cool.

Another moment in history

With 31 points last night Paul Pierce has now scored 30 or more points in 12 of his last 13 games. He is the first player in the history of the franchise to accomplish that.

Paul Pierce is winning basketball games with future CBA All Star talent like Orien Greene, Brian Scalanbrine and Michael Olowokandi playing major minutes and the injured and poor-dribbling Tony Allen logging half the night at PG.

If you ain't watching the team these days you are missing the greatest basketball to be played by an individual in a Celtics uniform in twenty years.

More on Bonds

Here's the full excerpt in SI. Quite a read.

[I edited the link to point to the first page, and won't even point out that you could get to this through the comment I posted hours ago. Pllbbbt. --t.s.]

Adventures in marketing (latest in a series)

The two best players in college basketball right now are supposed to be J.J. Redick of Duke and Adam Morrison of Gonzaga. Redick is officially listed as 6'4" although there have been whispers that he is closer to 6'2". Morrison is listed as 6'8".

All of which makes me find this cover photo from Sports Illustrated somewhat interesting.


The exact heights of basketball prospects-- like the ages of international baseball prodigies-- is the subject of much speculation by fans and deceit by agents and others. The official measurements taken at the Chicago pre-draft camp are as close as you get to a consistent, objective measurement. The 6'8" Gerald Green, for example, turned out to be 6'6" in his socks and a little over 6'7" in shoes.

It's hard to know what to make of this cover shot, which could be the result of lots of different real and photo-shopped alterations. That said, if this photo is undoctored and Morrison is really barely taller than Redick, then he, his agent and however many other people care about the large sums of money that depend on his eventual draft rank are fools for letting him pose for this picture in the first place. The big giant knock on Redick is that he is supposed to be too small, and slow, to defend NBA SGs for 40 minutes a night. If you're a SF prospect whose barely taller than the midget you might not want to trumpet that to the world.

Morrison is the pride of Spokane and the Supersonics, Blazers and Timberwolves are all supposed to be very high on him for the obvious marketing reasons. I'm starting to hope the Celtics land a top 3 pick so they could trade the rights to Morrison for a much lower pick and assets. Perhaps they could trade a top 3 pick and Raef to New York for a future Knicks #1 and Mo Taylor's expiring deal.

Observations of a basketball junkie

Kelly Dwyer over at SI.com clearly likes the NBA enough that he seems to enjoy spending his evenings watching lottery teams duke it out. Today's offering has relatively flattering things to say about the Celtics, compared to the rest of the NBA's basket cases.

Every season a young team or two makes an exciting dash toward respectability in the season's final months, even with their postseason status (or lack thereof) assured. The Mavericks got their act together toward the end of 1999-00, the Clippers made up for lost time in the two seasons following, while the Bulls ('02-03), Cavs ('03-04) and Warriors (last season) all followed suit.

Admirable those efforts may have been, they often didn't foretell much. Of all the teams listed above, only the Mavericks made the playoffs the following season. Such efforts, however, make for a solid night out -- or in my case, a solid night in front of the tube, with my eyes glued to the fits and flailings of a 22-win team even as the Pistons and Spurs dominated some three channels away

On the Celtics, he observes

The Boston Celtics have won four of seven since the All-Star break, hardly the stuff that memories are made of, but they've developed into a fascinating watch. Paul Pierce is next to unstoppable at this point, only falling short of the Kobe-LeBron-AI scoring troika because his team's offensive philosophy (if one can call it that) doesn't boast the singular focus that his counterparts in Los Angeles, Cleveland and Philadelphia do.

Pierce takes 28.1 Boston possessions for every 40 minutes he plays, the ninth most in the NBA, and a step below the comparative work of Mssrs. Bryant (35.3), Iverson (32.8) and James (31.1). Qualify it however you want. Blame Pierce's teammates, Doc Rivers' offensive "schemes," or the fact that the Truth is a wee bit slower than the league's three leading scorers. But from this laptop, Pierce's career year deserves some recognition. He shouldn't be penalized for falling short of that vaunted 30 points per game mark (a number Pierce has hit in 12 of his last 13 games).

It is the group and contributions surrounding Pierce that is worrisome.

Al Jefferson was supposed to act as the team's bedrock in the low post, and while his 8.3 points per game and 5.3 rebounds (in 18 minutes) are OK, he hasn't looked comfortable all season. Two dodgy ankles will do that.

Kendrick Perkins has turned a corner in averaging 4.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, 1.4 blocks and nearly three fouls in the same amount of time, but he's also been on the shelf for close to a month with a bum left shoulder.

Rookie Orien Greene couldn't put together 20 points a night if he were locked in an empty gym with an eight-foot hoop and Steve Nash passing him the ball, but his name sounds like a sweet jazz-fusion group (where three of the members have mustaches, and two own guitars), and he makes the passing lanes his own. This guy will lead the league in deflections around the same year the NBA starts to make this an official stat.

Tony Allen has not been himself all season: he's lost athleticism due to a knee injury and seems over-eager to please in the wake of offseason difficulties.

At least Ryan Gomes has been a revelation. Afforded big minutes over the last three weeks, he's averaged 13.4 points and 8.9 boards in his last nine games. Yes, we thought him capable of this sort of play coming out of Providence, but this was in a best-case-scenario.

And finally, Delonte West is simply one of the finest young point guards out there. Hopefully his body will hold up to repeated attempts at pinning each of his opponents shots to the backboard.

If you're curious about his opinions of Toronto, Orlando, Golden State and others feel free to click through the whole piece.

Quel jackass.

It's not exactly a news flash that Barry Bonds is a miserable human being or that he's been using steroids, except that today it is. If you're following the story, you might want to look at this version at SFGate, which is a little more detailed than some others. In particular, you get a better sense of what a creep Bonds is. Here's a taste:

Anderson, the childhood friend who became Bonds' constant sidekick[,] . . . learned the hazards of spending time around Bonds . . . .

"If Bonds told you to do something, you had to drop everything and do it." . . . "If you were slow to comply, or if you tried to explain why it wasn't such a good idea, Bonds would get right up in your face, snarling, calling you a 'punk bitch,' repeating what he wanted and saying, 'Did I (expletive) stutter?' You had to suck it up and take the abuse and the humiliation -- everyone did."

Peter May's none-too-subtle take on the C's

Peter May has this advice for the current Celtics: shoot for the lottery.  He makes many of the same arguments that have been made in this space, but in essence echoes RM's thoughts about it being better to tank with grace than to over-achieve for a first round playoff exit.  Towards that goal, he recommends benching Raef and playing the young guys more (no doubt either giving B an aneurysm or a profound sense of vindication) so as to give the C's a lot of hard fought, close losses.  It's an interesting read, but there's at least one unnecessary dig: "Maybe Ainge should bring in the master, M.L. Carr, to steer the ship the rest of the way."  Ouch.

Hoping for peace (labor-wise).

Smells like good news.

Gladwell, again

I'm late coming to the Bill Simmons-Malcolm Gladwell party, which in general is a lot of fun and not just because I vicariously like stories about hot bartenders hitting on nerdy looking guys with bad haircuts. Before commenting I should admit that I haven't read either of his books, although I've enjoyed some of the commentary that has sprung up around them (hat tip to t.s. for the link).

In his conversation with Simmons, Gladwell- who previously raves about how much he liked Moneyball-- has fun throwing his own economics analysis at professional sports.

is it enough to say that GMs behave this way because it's more fun? An economist would say that people pursue high-risk strategies when they are protected against the consequences of failure. The technical term for this is "moral hazard": When the federal government agreed to guarantee the safety of deposits in savings and loans, the savings and loan industry in the 1980's went crazy and made tens of billions of dollars in ridiculous loans. Their thinking was: If we score, we score big. If we lose, the government bails us out. That's the moral hazard of insurance. Don't general managers have the same kind of moral hazard problem? If you hit a home run, you're a genius. If you screw up, the dumb owner you worked for prior to the dumb owner you work for now will always give you another chance. So why not just always swing for the fences? It's the old boys club in the front offices that causes the problem. Somebody out there is going to give Thomas and Babcock another chance, and so long as that's true there's no incentive for any GM to behave better.

The idea that GMs face no costs for failed personnel decisions is more convincing if you believe, as Gladwell quips here, that there will always be another owner to hire you. With a limited number of franchises in the NBA, and a fair amount of longevity among executives, that next job can be a slow train coming. John Gabriel and Jerry Krause, just to name two winners of the NBA Executive of the Year award, have been sitting home unemployed for years. I wonder if they would describe swinging for the fences in the same way.

Gladwell's earlier observation that he would be a better GM than Isiah Thomas by avoiding all but the most conventional wisdom may be accurate. His approach, however, seems more appropriate to settings where finishing in the middle of the pack is good enough. In the stock market, for instance, the overwhelming majority of the time your investments don't lose money if the next guy takes a high-risk gamble that pays off. Over the last several decades the average returns for most benchmarks have been enough to provide for most people's ideas of retirement. In the NBA, however, following Gladwell's approach gets your solid team bounced in the first round of the playoffs for the next decade. As he freely acknowledges this dynamic in his discussion of his own hypothetical GMing it's a little strange that it doesn't seem to register as an alternative explanation to his application of moral hazards to GM behavior.

Ah, well, perhaps I shouldn't take too seriously an email exchange that is clearly in good fun. Gladwell strikes me as very talented at coming up with riveting images and descriptions of situations. This is obviously an important, and relatively rare, skill for a writer to have. His comparison of employer-sponsored health care to the New York subway has stayed with me longer than 99% of what I read in February.

Parenting, with David Wells.

Today's Globe:

As Wells finished up with the media his son, Lars, soon to be 7 and named after Metallica's drummer, was being chased around the clubhouse by Beckett, who was in full uniform.

''Just hit him with it," Wells said, referring to the bat in the kid's hands.

''He already did," Beckett said.

This came a few minutes after Lars Wells had picked up some chewing tobacco.

''Take a dip," Wells said, challenging his son.

The kid began to smile and walked away, stunned and not sure what to do.

Wells, turning back to the group, said, ''He'll puke his brains out."

I kinda hate to ask this.

Does Chauncey Billups' performance lately vindicate Rick Pitino, at least somewhat? (But where is Ron Mercer now?)

Players poll

Random surfing on SI's website led me to this page: a poll questioning whether professional athletes in the four major sports would "welcome an openly gay teammate." The majority of athletes in all sports said yes, running anywhere from 56% in the NFL to 79% in the NHL. But my favorite part was this tidbit:

Among baseball players, 67.8% of those who said they would rather play for the Red Sox than for the Yankees also said they would welcome a gay teammate. Of those who picked the Yankees, only 54.2% said "yes."

Bill Simmons and Malcolm Gladwell.

Worth checking out if you're a fan of one or both.

How has the Wally trade effected Pierce's game?

One of the big arguments made in favor of exchanging Ricky Davis for Wally Szczerbiak was that the later was a better 'fit' with Pierce on offense. Wally has historically been a higher-percentage outside shooter, and more efficient offensive player, who supporters saw as the better complement to Pierce's repeated defender-drawing drives to the basket. Critics of the trade pointed to Wally's inability to create his own shot on offense as reason why the Celtics were now less dangerous and easier to defend than they had been before.

It's been several weeks since the trade and listening to this debate I've found myself wondering: what do the numbers say?

The data used here was downloaded after the win against LA but before the loss to the Heat. I've only had spare minutes to poke at it and have done far less than I originally intended, but will post it now before it slips further into obsolescence.

Here are Pierce's stats for the 41 games played pre-Wally and the first 14 games since the trade. The later includes 2/21 against Utah and 2/22 against Portland in which Wally played a combined 3 minutes. Pulling these two games out of the data actually changed the numbers very little, so I've opted to leave them in.



So is Pierce playing better with Wally than he was with Davis and Blount? Well, I guess that depends on what you consider better.

Watching recent games it is clear how often the team turns to Pierce to carry the load on offense, and these numbers are consistent with that observation. Were he to average 22.5 field goal attempts per game over a season it would easily surpass his previous career high of 20 in '02-'03. It would also establish Pierce as one of the absolute top 'volume shooters' in the league. Only Kobe and Allen Iverson have averaged 23 or more shots per game over the season to date.

Which of Pierce's other numbers have gone up? Well, in addition to the 4.7 more points he's scoring on 5.2 more shots, his share of the team offense is also up. Prior to the trade Pierce scored 26% of the Celtics points on the season. Since the trade he's accounting for 32%. For context, the three top scorers this season in the NBA-- Kobe, Iverson and LeBron-- are responsible for 37%, 33% and 31% of the points their teams have scored.

Where is Pierce being less productive and/or efficient? Well, in several other areas that are captured by these basic stats. His FG% is down and his three point FG% is way down. So is rebounding. Other stats (turnovers, fouls, blocks, etc.) all look worse since the trade although the change is relatively small compared to those I list here. Given the small sample number of games played I'd be nervous about reading too much into them, individually.

It's also worth pointing out, partly as an indicator of how incredibly well Pierce has been playing this season, that his post-trade drop in FG% brings him down to the team average, which on the year is 4th best in the league. The almost 50% shooting he produced prior to the trade was just a ridiculously high number for a team's primary offensive option. A piece of analysis I have not done (calling all geeks!) is to compare the Celtics team FG% before and after the trade. On the year they are 46.7%. Perhaps that Doc Rivers and his offensive system aren't all bad after all.

In aggregate we're seeing a different kind of production out of Pierce since the trade. Ironically, it looks to me more like the kind of player that for two years we've been hearing the team doesn't want him to be. To be clear: I think Paul and Doc are doing what needs to be done given that the exchange of Davis and Blount for Wally exchanged two players that could create their own shots for one who can't. The team may not have any choice but to have Pierce 'go Kobe' most nights for them to have a chance to win.

At the same time, I don't think it's a coincidence that Kobe, Iverson and Pierce all play for highly flawed teams whose best aspirations are to be blown out of the first round of the playoffs. Does 'going Kobe' indicate the Pierce is playing better, stepping it up, etc. etc.? Perhaps. He sure is jacking up more shots. I guess if given the choice I'd rather have the pre-trade Pierce's stat line and better complementary players than Wally.

The beat goes on

Howard Beck in the NY Times today frets over the possibility that the current Knicks team will be the "worst ever." By worst ever, he means their final record. They need to win six of their remaining games to avoid the most losses in a season ever by a Knicks team.

But regardless of their final record, is there even a question that this is the Worst Knicks Team Ever? When you have the highest payroll in the league, posess the most untradeable players and contracts, run up one of the worst records, and have traded away your future picks, I'd say that qualifies as the WKTE hands down. Even the Clippers, who set the gold standard for NBA futility in the 80's, 90's and early 2000's, saw good players come through and fielded decent teams from time to time. Sadly, there's not even a flicker of hope in Knickersville any more.

Bring out the gimp (part 2)

The Herald introduces the prospect of Wally needing surgery:

The Celtics are going to have to find some pine time for Wally Szczerbiak if he is to be of help at the end of games. His left knee is continuing to bother him to the point where he can’t be himself when the game is on the line.

“My knee starts to tighten up a little bit in the fourth quarter, and I just can’t move,” Szczerbiak said yesterday. “It just starts locking on me, breaking down a little bit. I’ve got to figure out a way to stay strong for the fourth quarter. That’s going to be the next challenge.”

Asked if he is considering surgery, Szczerbiak said: “I don’t know. We’re going to re-evaluate that as the knee goes. We’re keeping an eye on it and monitoring it. We’ll just have to see how it responds.”

Szczerbiak faces the dilemma of whether to work hard to strengthen the knee or rest the injury, but he said he will take the fatigue from the lifting rather than the pain of a weak knee.

Looking for a reason to root for Ron and against Kobe?

It can be difficult to follow all the permutations of future draft picks that Ainge has traded for and away in recent years. Two in particular, however, appear pertinent enough to this season's stretch run to be worth understanding in detail.

The Gary Payton-Chris Mihm trade two years ago transfered to the Celtics the rights to a future Lakers first round pick which was lottery protected last year, top ten protected this year, top five protected next year, and so on. I suspect to Mitch Kupchak's surprise the Lakers stumbled out of the playoffs last season and so they kept their pick and used it on high school prospect Andrew Bynum. Their obligation to us rolled forward to this next draft. If they end up with a selection in the top 10 they retain it, otherwise it transfers to Boston.

As part of the Antoine Walker reacquisition at last year's trading deadline the Celtics promised to send the Atlanta Hawks the lowest of their first round picks in the next draft in which they have multiple selections, provided that lowest pick is outside the lottery. Atlanta later traded the rights to this pick to Phoenix as part of the Joe Johnson deal.

In other deals (Jiri Welsch to Cleveland, Mark Blount and Ricky Davis to Minnesota) Boston has acquired the Cavs first round pick in 2007 and the Timberwolves first round pick in 2008. Both, I believe, have lottery protections that I would have to look up.

Considering how all this might play out over the next six months, a few scenarios present themselves. I have listed them here, roughly in order of decreasing probability.

1. The Celtics end up in the lottery and the Lakers hold on to the 8th seed in the West, good for the ~15-16th pick in the draft. The Lakers pick transfers to the Celtics who pass it on to Phoenix (via Atlanta).
2. The Celtics remain in the lottery and the Lakers fall out of the playoffs. The Lakers end up with the most likely draft slot for their record, somewhere between #11-14. Consequently, their pick transfers to the Celtics. Because of the lottery protections in Boston's deal with Atlanta the Celtics retain the rights to this selection, despite having multiple picks in the first round.
3. The Celtics remain in the lottery and the Lakers both fall out of the playoffs and move up in the lottery to a slot in the top ten. LA retains their selection. Both LA's debt to us and our debt to Atlanta/Phoenix roll over for another year.
4. The Celtics make the playoffs but the Lakers don't, ending up with a #11-14 pick. The Celtics send their lower selection (this time their own) to Phoenix.
5. The Celtics make the playoffs and the Lakers don't, end up with a top ten pick. Lakers and Celtics both retain their own selections. All obligations roll forward one year.

Anything other than #1 or #2 is enough of a stretch that I'd be surprised to see it happen. Which of these outcomes is preferable hinges, it would seem, on whether you prefer a #11-14 pick in this year's relatively weak draft or to take your chances with next season. The most likely scenario would seem to be that the Celtics would end with three picks next year-- their own, LA's, and Cleveland's-- with the Cavs pick likely to be at least in the 20s. So would you rather have the #11-14 pick this year or the worst of these three next year? The better you think the Lakers or Cavs are likely to be next season the more you should want the Lakers to be losing games now.


__________________________________

What brings all this to mind?

Well, the Lakers have just lost two of three games to lottery teams (losses to Portland and Boston, win over Orlando) and appear to have cooled off from their December momentum. The 2-6 slump with which they started February included loses to such powerhouses as Charlotte, New Orleans/Oklahoma and Atlanta.

Closing in behind them are the Ron Artest-Mike Bibby-Brad Miller Sacramento Kings, winners of 8 of their last 11. Having been well out of the playoff hunt for the first half of the season the Kings are now only a game and a half back of LA with 25 to play.

How should Celtics fans want this to play out? Pick now or pick later?

You know things are bad when...

...even Slate is slamming Isiah Thomas for ruining the Knicks.  For the record, I heard no fewer than 3 radio hosts blast Isiah Thomas in the last 48 hours, and none of them worked for WEEI.

Open season on Isaiah.

During Saturday night's game against the Washington Wizards, newly acquired New York Knicks guard Steve Francis was about to inbound the ball when a heckler shouted, "Hey, Stevie, where you going next?" As the Washington Post described it, the well-traveled Francis looked back at the fan casually and shot back, "To the bank." And in a single moment, everything awful about today's New York Knicks had been encapsulated.

And Michael Crowley's just getting started.

Compounding it all is the bizarre judgment of GM Isiah Thomas, whose acquisition of Francis almost seemed like a prank—the work of some stoned teenager with a PlayStation trying to construct the most ridiculous team possible just for laughs.

I guess its not too early to talk draft

A few minutes playing with this suggests that Chad Ford's version of the Celtics draft board has the following players in the following order:

Rudy Gay, SF, Connecticut
LaMarcus Aldridge, PF, Texas
Ronnie Brewer, SG, Arkansas
Rajon Rondo, PG, Kentucky
Tiago Splitter, PF, Barcelona

Another favorite

One of Nike's first commercials with Lebron James was somewhat controversial. Spike Lee, among others, panned it as pushing a stereotype of black atheletes and the black church.

While I'm nowhere near Nike's target demographic, I gotta admit: I loved it. Some of what Nike does so well are the little touches: The choir full of WNBA stars, Dr. J and Jerry West cast as church elders up on the dias. Bernie Mac's great opening line that the 'the chosen one asked the soul of the game for court vision'.

Here's the 30-second vision. If I can find the full 60-second take somewhere I swap that in, because it's even better.

Take 2

Like Mike.

Watch this.