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.