Self Promotion

I made a post about basketball on my other blog so I thought I should link to it here.

Your 2009-10 Lakers

Wise man Gasol and giddy, overexcited Kobe

Bynum: Are those glasses? You’re wearing glasses? I eat nerds like you for breakfast.

Artest: Whoah. Guys. Look. I’m not dribbling but the ball is still bouncing. Whoah.

Lamar Odom is too cool to do silly things like drive to the basket, so he has to have a bored face when doing so.

Derek Fisher, a player or a spectator? A little of both.

No one cares about Agent Zero anymore

Gilbert Arenas wants to change his number to 6. But wait you say, Lebron is doing that too. What a copycat! Or it could be something far more sinister.

At the beginning of this season, Arenas said that he was giving up the whole Agent Zero shtick and be more serious. Well, that phase ended faster than a speeding bullet(!) and it was back to Agent Zero status. Now the number 6 is interesting. If you recall the movie Goldeneye, James Bond (007) is betrayed by his partner Trevelyan (006). Gilbert obviously plans on playing with someone who wears number 7, and reenacting the movie. He’ll be a good teammate, score a bunch, get a couple of dimes, and get the team in position for a playoff run. Then at the last minute, he’ll try to have #7 shot by an army of Russians (with really bad aim). This is very scary!

Here’s a list of some notable players who are wearing the number 7 this season.

Ben Gordon, Al Harrington, Jermaine ‘The Drain’ O’neal, Lamar Odom, J.J. ‘Duke pretty boy’ Redick, Brandon Roy

Rasheed Wallace: Better or Worse?

Rasheed Wallace has taken 3 three-pointers combined in the last three games.

[…]

According to his game logs on Basketball Reference, the last instance of Sheed attempting three or fewer triples combined over a three-game span happened during the last three games of the…2005 season.

from CelticsHub

Sure, Rasheed Wallace may have taken a low amount of 3’s the past three games but maybe it’s not the good news that people seem to think it is. Jacking up 3’s is never a good thing, especially when Wallace has so much potential in the low post. But is this drought of 3’s really a product of Rasheed finally learning how to best utilize his talents, or is it merely a problem that you wouldn’t see in the simple box score? I myself have not watched any of the recent Celtics games, and I am far too busy at the moment to actually look at numbers. But I can imagine a handful of scenarios where this dropoff in 3’s is only a precursor to something far worse.

• Rasheed Wallace is losing his vision, so he has had a foot on the line when he has been attempting a 3, nullifying it into the longest two possible.
• Rasheed Wallace has lost all confidence in shooting 3’s. Even when wide open he opts to pass it to the unopen man, or even worse, pretend to fumble it away.
• He has a gambling problem, and he is trying to win a bet that he won’t shoot more than 10 3’s the rest of the season.
• His arms are too weak now, so he doesn’t have the range anymore.
• That white spot on his head is a tumor and he is dying.

Portland Trailblazers Cursed

First you have Gregory Oden injure himself every single season. Then you have your backup center get injured too. And then you have your own coach sustain a leg injury. Worst of all, you have 80 year old Juwan Howard as your center. And now, your injured center gets injured again.

Portland Trail Blazers center Joel Przybilla, already out for the season with a ruptured tendon in his right knee, re-injured the knee while slipping in the shower Saturday and will require surgery again this week, the team said.

Being a Trailblazers fan now is almost as bad as being a Knicks fan.

The Return of Maggette

Maggette is back. Look how happy he is! Yay!

Unfortunately he forgot how to shoot a basketball. At first I thought they were fighting for a rebound, but nope. This is a Josh Smith block on a Corey Maggette “shot”.

Lakers at Heat Thoughts

Disclaimer: I didn’t actually watch the game. The only thing I’ve seen is a picture of Dwyane Wade smiling, and the box score. And from that, I can’t be too worried about this one game as a Lakers fan.

Two things immediately jump out in the box score. Lakers free throw woes, and the blazing accuracy of Miami’s three point shot. The Lakers shot 15-25 from the charity stripe, good for 60%.  If they had shot their season average of 77%, they would have scored 4 more points, which isn’t insignificant in a 3 point game. On Miami’s side, Quentin “every team keeps trading me” Richardson shot 7-11 from 3 point range. Fire.

Just based on box score alone, I’d just chalk this up as a disappointing loss.

An Adventure in Advanced Statistics: Free Throws

All numbers from Hoopdata and www.nba.com . And when I say adventure, I mean I look at numbers and copy and paste interesting ones.

League Free Throw Average: 75.8%

Best team: Dallas Mavericks (81.5%)

2nd Worst  team: Orlando Magic (72.3%)

Absolute worst: Detroit Pistons (71.4%)

Dallas being up there makes some sense. Dirk Nowitzki shoots a sizable chunk of his team’s free throws, and he’s a great free throw shooter (no need to fade away/be soft when no one is guarding you!). Orlando being low makes sense too. Dwight Howard gets the most free throws in the league, and he’s not that great at them. For a long time, Orlando was the worst in the league percentage wise.

But wow, Detroit. Their low % can be traced to one thing. The Ben Wallace free throw. 2-20 in the past 5 games. Even scarier is that Detroit shoots 71.5% on free throws at home, and 77.3% on the road. In fact, they seem to shoot a lot better in general while away.

29.6% vs 36.7% for 3’s.

44% vs 46.6% overall.

Their two best players, Rip Hammie and Tayshaun Prince, were injured for some games so I took a look to see if they had played more road games than home games. Results of a quick glance? No they haven’t. Talk about home court disadvantage. Oh, and talk about sucking too.

Yao Ming is tall

Almost looks like a normal couple in the rain, until you realize Yao Ming is like a thousand million feet tall and his wife Mrs. Ming is like a thousand million feet minus a “Yao head”™ tall.

They’re both basketball players. One has to wonder if they talk ball during breakfast. Perhaps they talk about how to defend the pick and roll, or how to set a proper screen, or how Yao becomes useless when he is fronted. Only soon to come  baby Yao will know.

The Baby Eater

 

Jason Maxiell eats babies. Jason Maxiell meets Big Baby aka Uno Uno aka Glen Davis aka Ronald Glen Davis. Jason Maxiell the baby eater is reaching for the ketchup.

Rejection

A little late on this but here goes. I had heard about T-Mac sending Lebron a message about how great it is to play in New York (if you like losing) but I hadn’t heard about Lebron’s response.

From the NYPost:

T-Mac and LeBron have been in communication. "He's a good friend,'' McGrady said at the morning shootaround at Quicken Loans Arena. "He wanted to see me back on the basketball court and congratulate me on being back. I sent him an email that said: "I'm in the Big Apple. I'll see you here next season.''

LeBron's response was a "LOL.''

Now I don’t know how legitimate this is. Maybe it’s just a joke and I’m not seeing it. Only way Lebron is in the Big Apple next season is when he’s there to drop a triple double against the Knicks. Also, who’s to say T-Mac won’t be playing in China by then anyway?

Pacers at Lakers

Today the Indiana Pacers take on the Los Angeles Lakers. What’s that you say? What is a Pacer and what is a Laker? Well, I don’t know either. Maybe their team logos will help us solve this mystery.

Nope.

Celtics interested in Michael Finley

The San Antonio Spurs waived Michael Finley today per his request to be released. The deadline to be a free agent still eligible for the playoffs was today. Right off the bat, the Boston Celtics have expressed interest in signing him.

Finley is 36 years old, and has played in 25 games this season, averaging 15.8 minutes and 3.7 points on 38.1% shooting. Despite that, I can see how this might work out for the Celtics. Ray Allen is 34 years old, KG is 33, Paul Pierce 32, Scalabrine 31 (not that he really matters), Rasheed Wallace is 35.

These players are getting up there in terms of their basketball life, and they’re not going to get younger. So why not try to make them *feel* younger by bringing in an old dude? They might look at Finley and realize that they have to try extra hard this year because in a year or two they’ll become useless too. Fear as motivation? Why not.

Michael Jordan’s Ownership Starts Out Poorly

As you may have heard, Michael Jordan has bought the Charlotte Bobcats and will officially take over by the end of March. To celebrate, Jordan decided to pick on a rookie in a game of Horse.

One of Michael Jordan's first acts since reaching a deal to buy the Charlotte Bobcats: losing two games of H-O-R-S-E to guard Gerald Henderson.

A trash-talking Jordan attended the Bobcats' shootaround Monday morning before their game against Dallas, challenging the rookie Henderson to a shooting competition after the workout.

While Jordan made a free throw with his eyes closed and relentlessly needled Henderson, he couldn't hold him off in either game.

Gerald Hender-who? Henderson is a rookie guard who has played in 29 games this year and has shot 33.8%, albeit in limited minutes. And Michael Jordan still lost. At least he chose to compete against a guard though. MJ may end up challenging Tyson ‘I can only score when Chris Paul sends me an alley-oop, oh and I’m injured’ Chandler during the next shootaround to regain his pride.