Ah, sweet fall, when young men's minds turn to

NBA training camps and the new basketball season.

The best of the season previous that I've seen to date has recently gone up at McSweeney's. Relevant for hoops fans everywhere and for Celtics fans looking for possible context to Doc's looming decision to start the season with a three SF starting lineup.

Sox tix.

Anyone want to see the Sox this weekend? I have an extra ticket. How about you, mmazz?

Daryl Morey on Ainge's strategy

Before he left to become the new GM of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey was part the Celtics braintrust. One of those MBA-quantitative-analyst types, Morey liked to stop in as a guest speaker at stats classes at MIT.

He's apparently doing the same thing in Houston. The following is some notes that were typed up by a Rice student who claims to have sat through the a recent Morey lecture, as posted on the APBR message board. Further down the thread folks like Dean Oliver comment. For those interested in the Celtics, the final paragraph has some interest.

The lecture just ended, and I figured I'd give you my update. It was only an hour with questions and all and was not done for a very knowledgeable (basketball-wise) audience, so it wasn’t revelatory or anything. But, he had some interesting things to say.

He said their goal was to be a championship-caliber team, meaning top 4. And his role is getting the right players and then optimizing those players. He talked about how baseball is highly measureable and linear and clean and easy, but basketball is harder because there are more things that are interdependent.

He said in basketball there are essentially four factors that are paramount: shooting percentage differential, free throw attempt differential, rebounding differential and turnover differential, with the shooting being by far the most important. And, he showed some statistics to this end. He also showed stats for teams with a dominant center, which had a heavier focus on percentage and FTA, and made turnovers basically inconsequential. He showed some stats from the championship teams and talked about how great Rudy was at maximizing the scoring percentage differential.

He then did a stacked column graph showing how a roster should be built compared to how the Rockets have been built in the past, ranking each player in importance and efficiency and graphing them on minutes played. One thing I thought was interesting from the ’06 graph was that he had Swift and Hayes higher in the pecking order than Howard (even though Howard had more minutes). In the ’06-’07 graph, they had swapped Yao and McGrady’s spots so that Yao was first. They didn’t list past them and Battier though for privacy’s sake.

He showed us a website he uses – a service called Synergy Sports Extranet – that provides data and video clips by player. We looked as Sebastian Telfair. The website breaks all of each player’s video down by type play, provides data on how good he is at it and provides all the video of each event. He said, knowing the strategy of the coach, you can look at the abilities of a prospective players in those areas where you can expect the coach would ask a lot in. He also pointed out that if you have a style that is uncommon, you can get players cheaper because the skills they have to offer are not in high demand.

To questions, he mentioned that:
• Van Gundy does a very good job of bringing the data they generate to the players and at translating that to what they do on the floor.
• Leadership is very important in basketball (unlike baseball), but it is very hard to quantify.
• Jeff can get above average rebounding with bad rebounders from a good scheme. He also said that the valuable and rare rebounders are the guys who can get the contested balls, and Hayes is very good at that.
• On the business side, most of the profit is made on the appreciation of the team. And, there is also a huge tax write-off in owning a team. Otherwise, owners want to not lose money, but cash flow takes a backseat to winning, generally.
• Winning is a virtuous cycle and losing is a vicious cycle. It is a dangerous game since you have to lose for draft picks, but not so much that you are the Hawks. He mentioned that since the Celtics only had 1 star, they were investing in a number of promising young guys in hopes of being able to package them for the second star next to Pierce. Still hasn’t happened.

Those of us who spent some time speculating about possible Ron Artest, Allen Iverson and Kevin Garnett trades in the last year and have been thinking along these lines. We should all be hoping for monster years from Al Jefferson, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair and Kendrick Perkins, since they have the upside to potentially bring back a legitimate All Star talent in a trade.

For whatever its worth

Chris Mannix over at SI has got lots of free time on his hands. He's an NBA writer and ran out of off season stuff to write about three months ago. I've got free time because I'm an NBA fan and its early September. Hence this post.

Today Mannix dreams up a 'six coaches on a hot seat' piece to fill some space at the end of a column.

Six coaches on the hot seat
1. Doc Rivers, Boston
It's year three for Rivers and Paul Pierce isn't getting any younger. A playoff berth is a must.

2. Isiah Thomas, New York
Just how owner James Dolan will define improvement remains to be seen, but Thomas has to show he can win with the talent he assembled.

3. Eddie Jordan, Washington
Yes, Jordan signed a three-year extension but GM Ernie Grunfeld won't be afraid to pull the plug if the defense doesn't improve.

4. Jerry Sloan, Utah
Let's be clear: Larry Miller will never fire Sloan. But another year of mediocrity and Sloan will show himself the door.

5. Jeff Van Gundy, Houston
The talent is there. Van Gundy has to prove he can win outside of New York.

6. Sam Mitchell, Toronto
Don't be surprised if Mitchell is the first one to go. A slow start by the Raptors will give Bryan Colangelo all the cover he needs to bring in Phoenix assistant Marc Iavaroni.

My only reaction to this is that if Jerry Sloan were ever to leave Utah and still have a pulse then of course Doc Rivers should be fired in about 15 seconds.

At last, some good news

I've been pretty consistently down on the state of the Celtics for most of this last season. Most of our recent draft picks impressively failed this last season to justify Ainge's optimism that they were on the verge of becoming above-average players. The Szczerbiak deal exchanged what I saw as two relatively tradable middling contracts (Ricky Davis, Mark Blount) for a single large, painful one. The free agent market and this last draft were largely barren of players that were going to really make a difference. Ownership seems unwilling to trade Pierce and unable to surround him with more than role players. It's been a good time for pessimism.

Yesterday brought a sliver of good news, for those who care about geeky things like payroll management. 21-year old center Kendrick Perkins is reported to be signing a four-year contract extension with the team that is relatively incentive-based. The guaranteed money comes in at only ~$4M/year, with incentives that might add another $1M/per. Despite having basically no basketball coverage for a couple of months it’s, surprise surprise, the Herald that breaks the story.

This is unconditionally good news for several reasons.

- The classic risk associated with drafting high school standouts is that you may have to pay them starters’ money before you know whether they can produce like one. With this deal the Celtics will have Perkins cost-controlled on a below-MLE contract for the first eight years of his career.
- Even if Perkins never becomes more than a solid rebounder and defender-- in effect a strictly average ~25 mpg NBA center-- he will be at least modestly underpaid for the life of this contract. Possible comps (Etan Thomas, Dan Gadzuric, Adonal Foyle, Jamaal Magloire) are all on contracts that pay $6-9M
- There was a real risk that if Perkins hit the free agent market next summer his price tag would have been bid up to the annual free agent fever that has led to 90% of NBA MLE signings being paid 25-50% more than they're worth. Under this scenario the Celtics either pay Perkins an inflated contract that hurts the team for the next 5~6 years (the 'Mark Blount' scenario) or sign-and-trade him and spend the next few seasons watching to see if a different draft pick will pan out (the 'Marcus Banks' scenario).

Time to come clean: during past debates about Celtics basketball I think I predicted that it would cost in the neighborhood of ~$8M to resign Perkins next summer. I'm more than happy to be proven wrong.

Perkins is 21-years old with real athletic potential. The Celtics now have him cost-controlled until he is 26. In two seasons he might be no better than Sam Dalembert, and making $6M less a year. If he can add an offensive, low-post game and/or become a top-shelf rebounder and defender the team will have a real asset on its hands. While we're talking about good news associated with a likely lifetime rotation player-- and not someone you build a strong playoff team around-- it’s still good news all the same.

Fake Edit: Hollinger's extension prediction also overshoots the mark:

Kendrick Perkins, Celtics
Conditions are smiling upon the Celtics' young center, as $10 million-per-year deals for such middling centers as Nene Hilario, Tyson Chandler, Eddy Curry and Samuel Dalembert portend great wealth for the 21-year-old strongman. And unlike those others, Perkins is a bull in the paint who can punish opposing post players. As a result, the Celtics would probably rather overpay a little now than have to overpay a lot next summer.
Forecast: Five years, $30 million

Peter King: Clairvoyant or well informed?

In his Monday Morning Quarter Back column, Peter King observes

I think New England's much-too-tough win (51 receiving yards by wideouts) and Seattle's offensively punchless 9-6 win at Detroit say one thing to me: This Deion Branch thing has to get resolved one way or the other, and very, very soon. It's clear to me he's not going to report to the Patriots until at least Week 10 (so he gets his year of credited service toward free-agency), so New England has two choices. It can give in and pay him $6.5 million a year or so, erasing the current one-year, $1.05-million on his contract and starting over. Or it can rekindle talks to trade him. In my mind, Seattle, which has offered a second-round pick and a later draft choice, needs to get serious and step up and surrender its first-rounder in 2007 if it wants to get the deal done. I just don't see the Pats forgetting this year's dough and handing Branch six- or seven-percent of their salary cap.

For reference: Javon Walker was traded to Denver for a second rounder and Donte Stallworth went for Simoneau and a 4th rounder. At first blush this deal with Seattle appears to be very good value for Branch.

It obviously doesn't help us at WR this year, but I'm not sure that was even our biggest problem yesterday. I'm only a semi-educated football scout, but our pass-blocking was absolutely awful in the first half. On many possessions our tackles and tight ends couldn't stay in front of Buffalos outside rush and Brady had almost no time to do anything with the ball. Brady was extremely classy about it in the papers this morning, making no mention of his offensive line and throwing himself under the bus over the whole thing. Is Branch an upgrade over Reche Caldwell? Sure. Given a choice between that upgrade or better execution by our O-line yesterday, however, I take the later.

Anyone who watched the whole season in '01 has to feel pretty good about where the Pats sit this morning.

EDIT: The Pats have reportedly one of the best rookie WRs of the last draft coming back from a minor ankle injury in the next couple of weeks. They also recently traded for Doug Gabriel, who was reported as starting in preseason on a Raiders team loaded with Randy Moss, Joey Porter and Ronald Curry. The Pats running game looked fantastic yesterday. I have no problem going forward with a two-TE power offense for several weeks, seeing if Gabriel or Johnson can provide 90% of Branch's productivity this season, and seeing what we get with a mid-1st round pick next spring.

EDIT 2: I'm deliberately staying away from CHB's highly unfortunate tangent into football this morning. It was a classic mailed-in piece where Shaughnessy simply took the easiest, laziest storylines (e.g. laying yesterday's passing attack woes on the absence of Deion) and cranked out a template CHB column, complete with comparisons to the Red Sox and shots at Patriots fans.

Best of luck, Deion

Just walked down the street for lunch and the ESPN broadcast in the pizza place was reporting Deion Branch to the Seahawks for a 2007 #1 draft pick.

Are you ready for some football?

As we kick off our SweetDue fantasy football season, I thought I'd post my favorite "newsbreaker" from our new league manager service:

09/07/06 12:10 PM
THE NEWS
Tom Brady has had a phantom shoulder injury that has now lingered over three seasons. Brady appears on the Patriots week one injury report as "probable – shoulder."
Our View
Brady set what is believed to be a modern day record by being listed as "probable – shoulder" for 29 consecutive weeks until week 15 of last year, when he actually had a legitimate injury and was listed as questionable with a "right shoulder/shin" injury. There is obviously nothing wrong with his throwing arm, but it will be interesting to see if Bill Belichick continues treating his injury report like a joke all year. By week 17 Brady will be just one week away from the magical, and likely unbeatable, 50 mark. Good luck, Tom!

Couldn't have said it better myself.

See ya, Boomer.

ESPN.com says the Sox are shopping David Wells and expect to see him go, confirm what I told me office neighbor this afternoon: The Sox are toast. But then we all knew that already.

I'm sorry to see him go, but hope he can win something in his last season. It was fun to watch him pitch in the fifth game of the Yankees series last Monday, notwithstanding the context, a reminder of what he could have done this year if not for a poorly placed line drive.

Stupid Headlines

This can't be the first time that something like this has come up, but I laughed heartily when seeing the short ESPN headline of New York's win last night, highlighting the success of their starting pitcher:

"Yanks Wang wins 15th"

Chris

Bob Ryan needs a drink, or a therapist, or both

I haven't been following the Red Sox as closely this year as in years past. Certain distractions (one of which some of you were at) have kept me from following the team as religiously as my father and brother, to name two. This may be part of the reason why a sweep by the Yankees doesn't hit me as hard as some.

Yesterday afternoon Bob Ryan sat down to his word processor and decided to do a whole lot of venting. A piece that runs down every disappointing thing that he can think of about this year's squad ends with the following:

The truth is that this is not a good time to be Theo Epstein. For two years running, he has been unable to construct a viable pitching rotation. Theo was cut one year of afterglow slack, but overheated fans, already in a bloodthirsty mood, are downright rebellious now that the Yankees have humiliated their team with a five-game sweep.
The truth is that in this perverted sports climate, the other team is never just allowed to be better, even for a day, let alone a series or a season. No, no. Blame must be affixed. Heads must be severed.

Once upon a time, losing brought a brief period of sorrow. Now it brings rage. The rest of the season, I fear, will not be much fun.

The truth is we need to sit down and figure out what sports are all about. We've lost our way.

Truth is, I've only been to one game at Fenway this year, watched perhaps one game a week on television, and spent less time over at SOSH than in years past. That said, I don't know anyone in Boston who feels the way Bob does.

I know a lot of people, however, who feel the Sox have had the kind of disappointing, lousy year (injuries, underperforming acquisitions, old pitchers falling apart) that happens to lots of teams all the time. Only one baseball team a year gets to have everything go their way and win the World Series. In today's sports climate, another team is almost always better.

With about half the payroll, Theo and the Sox are leading the Yankees in recent championships, 1-0. Let's say hypothetically that current Sox management is only good enough at their jobs to win one World Series a decade. While all that losing might send Bob to an asylum, it would still make the team significantly better than most.

Good news!

It took some work to find good news at Fenway Park today, but here it is:

ESPN baseball analyst Peter Gammons was at Fenway Park on Saturday, his first visit to a major league stadium since his brain aneurysm in June.

Gammons visited both clubhouses before the game between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox. . . .

Gammons and his wife, Gloria, watched the game from owner John Henry's box. A note welcoming him to the game was posted on the scoreboard during the sixth inning, drawing an ovation, while a recording of Gammons singing the Chuck Berry song "Carol" was played over the loudspeaker.

No TV here.

Since I wasn't watching, can someone tell me which of the Sox' cornerbacks got beat for that touchdown in the top of the seventh inning? Ouch.

Rem-dog rendered speechless

I missed this part of last night's TV coverage, when Dennis Leary stopped by the broadcast booth to make a fundraising plug for New Orleans firefighters, and ends up riffing on Mel Gibson and Kevin Youkilis. Poor Remy doesn't seem to know whether or how to shut him up.



EDIT: credit where its due: Deadspin and Seth Mnookin. Mnookin clues me in the guy with Leary is Lenny Clark who is a recovering alcoholic, hence Leary's reference at the end to 'you've been there yourself'.

EPL ahoy!

I'm sure that you've already seen this guide to picking a EPL team, but perhaps not this one. I have to admit that I understood less than half of the second, from which I assume that it's pretty good.

As for YNWA, this is a pretty enthusiastic version from a Liverpool - Chelsea championship league match:



The crowd gets going at 1:09. The music kicks in at 2:00

Will we walk alone?

A story in today's Financial Times (page 18) about the purchase of Aston Villa by Cleveland Browns owner Randy Lerner notes:

Other US football team owners are interested in expanding their sporting interests over the Atlantic. The Kraft family, owners of the New England Patriots, have been linked to Liverpool FC.

I had started to gravitate toward Arsenal, largely on the strength of Nick Hornby's book Fever Pitch, but a Kraft purchase of Liverpool could swing me over.

So, time to familiarize ourselves with Liverpool? If you watched the World Cup, you know stork-like striker Peter Crouch. Midfielder Harry Kewell was the key to the Australian offense, and his absence against Italy was one of the reasons the Sockeroos looked so flat. Much of the rest of the squad is a mystery to me, but not the captain, Steve Gerrard. He had a terrible World Cup -- he kept knocking field goals trying to replicate this sort of thing:



And I've posted this before, but it still amuses me. A Liverpool song, to the tune of "Que Sera."

Steve Gerrard Gerrard
He hits it from 40 yards
He's big and he's f***in hard
Steve Gerrard, Gerrard

"Take a bow, sir. You have been immense."

Boomer.

Has David Wells just saved the season?

Will anyone miss Harry Sinden?

Will Teddy Bruschi be 100% this year?

Where will Allen Iverson play next year?

Which Premiership team should I root for?

#61 still stuck on #9

After a torrid start, Bronson Arroyo is still looking for win #10.  He failed in his 8th consecutive try this week.  One might think that would cool off fans upset that the B's traded him for Wily Mo.  Well, put me firmly in the camp of people who say this trade was still a mistake.

 

To be fair, I'm willing to give Pena more time to pan out.  You can't judge a trade when the key player in it has been on the DL for most of the time since the deal.  But here's what I wrote about Arroyo back on March 20th.

Far be it from me to question Theo and the gang. But Arroyo was a pretty valuable player/trading asset, and Pena doesn't seem fair value, at least not yet. Arroyo is relatively young (29); under contract for three years in what should be his prime; puts up consistently good ERA and win totals (admittedly on a great offensive team); and is never, ever on the disabled list. (He supposedly has the proverbial "rubber arm; in fact, I read once that he doesn't even ice down after games, which is pretty much unheard of.) That's a great guy to have at the back end of your rotation or in your bullpen, particularly for $3m per year or so.

So far this year, Arroyo is 9-7 with a 3.31 ERA.  Even if you assume his ERA would be significantly higher in the American League, particularly pitching in the AL East, I think it's safe to say it would probably be about where it was last year, when he went 14-10 and had a 4.51 ERA.  But more significantly, here's the key stat:  157.2 innings pitched.  That's better than any Sox pitcher this year -- Curt Shilling tops the list (152.1 innings), followed by Josh Beckett (134.1) and Tim Wakefield (119.2).  No other Sox pitcher is over 100.

 

While Arroyo's innings would undoubtedly be fewer in the AL (just like his ERA would be larger), his durability would be a great asset to a team that has been throwing pitchers like Jason Johnson and Dave Pauley out there.  Hindsight is 20-20, but wouldn't it be nice to have a 4th or 5th starter who could have pitched about 115-130 innings so far?

The Bledsoe Face

Bill Simmons writes about the "Peyton Manning Face" often enough that I think it's become part of the sports lexicon.  Can't wait until the "Drew Bledsoe Face" is also in the dictionary.

Time to break a long silence

Of all things to motivate me to figure out how to use this blogger account again, I didn't think it would be Boston Globe sports coverage. But I was very distressed to read the discussion of Peter May's horrid Paul Pierce contract article. I admit that I have lately fallen into the casual fan category for the Celts, and thus was not aware of the contract specifics; I was fooled by May's poor reporting, wondering if the new contract was necessary and valuable. Globe sports writing is a significant part of the discourse of the Boston (and even national) sports scenes, and the general tendency of readers is not necessarily to passively accept what media show, but to think within the categories that media present (thank you, Professor William Gamson of Boston College). However untruthful, the discourse he creates can wind its way into the talk of other fans and become part of how they perceive the situation.

Has anyone seen any significant follow-up from May (apology/clarification), or from the Globe? A mistake of this magnitude for a reporter is grounds for suspension or firing.

On a completely different topic, I hope everyone was watching Big Papi come through again last night. Out in the West, it happened during the tail end of dinner. I had left the game on after cooking, and was chatting with my girlfriend when I heard the crowd start to get excited when the first two men reached base. I jumped up to watch the end, and of course celebrated rambunctiously after the homer. I think I have some relationship repair-work to do now...but worth it for Big Papi!

Chris