TrueHoop reader Fabrizio emails: "I´m writing from Madrid, Spain. I just wanted to let you know that above all, Rudy Fernandez is becoming the best player of the tournament and I can assure you that next year you are gonna be flipping out with this kid. He is becoming a great passer, and he will be feeding Oden thanks to his x-ray vision. Imagine Manu Ginobili at 22. That is Rudy. Your Portland Trail-Blazers made a key decision drafting him."
I wrote about second-round contracts, and wondered who had the best ever. Maybe Anderson Varejao. Brian Windhorst of the Akron Beacon-Journal emailed: "He signed for three years and $2.6 million fully guaranteed three years ago. This does not include his buyout from FC Barcelona, which the Cavs also paid for. Varejao was the first pick of the second round (by Orlando) the last year in which Minnesota didn't have a first rounder due to the Joe Smith penalties. So his agent, rightly, said he deserved a three-year guaranteed deal as if he was a first rounder."
Very interesting idea from an economics graduate student: scrap player salaries, and only pay the winning team. Sure would make everyone play hard, right? It's way too extreme -- for one thing, you have to pay employees who show up for work, even if they're not effective. But not a bad idea -- handing out stacks of cash each night to the winners. Maybe it should be some percentage of salaries.
Houston's Daryl Morey tells Randy Kim of AOL why we should all respect the Spurs' front office: "When asked if there's one team that he'd like to model the Rockets after, the Rockets GM is quick to mention Buford and Gregg Popovich's Spurs as the franchise that best knows how to navigate the NBA's tricky talent landscape while also winning games. 'You can look at lots of teams getting a Tim Duncan-like player, like maybe Kevin Garnett in Minnesota, and the pieces don't form around him well,' says Morey. 'But I think that (Buford and Popovich) have done a tremendous job of taking a smart, methodical approach to maximizing the talent around Tim Duncan. I'm extraordinarily impressed by the Spurs and hopefully we can copy just a small piece of what they've been able to do.'"
Ian Whittell for ESPN.com on Luol Deng vs. Thabo Sefolosha as Britain played Switzerland: "At stake was not only promotion to the A Division of the European Championship (which allows a nation to enter the qualifying tournament for the 2009 Euros in Poland) but also a year's worth of bragging rights in the United Center locker room. The winner -- by a knockout blow that 'Prince Naz' would have been proud of -- Luol Deng. His line: 31 points, 12 boards, 4 assists and 3 steals. Sefolosha: 21 points, 9 boards and 5 fouls (fouling out in international ball). More importantly, in a tie that will be decided by aggregate score over the two games or "legs," Great Britain won by a 74-41 score line that looked like the sort of winning margin the U.S. was amassing in between those trips to the casinos in Vegas this summer. 'This isn't over, you can't say that,' Deng said. 'But obviously we want to finish off a great summer in style so we need to concentrate on the job in hand.'"
The latest salvo in the PER wars, from Tom Ziller writing at Ballhype, who seems to be disproving the idea that one of PER's flaws is that, as a per-minute measure, it inflates the value of the work scrubs do in their short work against other scrubs: "We cannot look at any of this data and say 'Increased minutes leads to increased per-minute production (aka efficiency)' just as we cannot and should not say 'Increased minutes leads to decreased per-minute production.' But this data does indicate a positive relationship between minutes and efficiency. The factors and/or causes of the relationship aren't known to us at this point -- some folks deeper in the muck might have private inklings; perhaps deeper investigation has been hashed and fried in the bunkers of Quicken Loans Arena or the Pepsi Center, or even in John Hollinger's basement. Who knows? All we do know -- based not only on this study, but the previous (exemplary) work of Basketball-reference.com's Justin Kubatko and Hollinger (via Knickerblogger) -- is that an increase in playing time DOES NOT cause a player's efficiency to falter as a rule. So stop saying it does."
Check out NetsDaily. It's really an unbelievable blog, and it's totally anonymous. It has news like when the re-launch of the team website will be official, where team executives are going on their scouting trips, and transcripts of investor conference calls. Whoever is running this thing is plugged in. Totally wish I knew who that was.
A court ruling in the case of the disputed ownership of the Atlanta Hawks leaves everyone still not knowing what's next. A prayer, of sorts, from Sekou Smith of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: "Chop it up any way you'd like, but know this, the major hurdle for the Hawks the past two years has been the looming presence of this ownership feud and how it would impact whatever potential moves were made. The proof of just how fortunate this ruling was for the Spirit group will be told by how fast they buy Belkin out, fix this team and get a playoff caliber squad on the floor at Philips Arena. I know that's simplified a bit, but we're dealing in a sports world that doesn't have the patience the Maryland Court of Appeals does when it comes to handling business (we spent two years waiting for them to tell everyone to start over from the beginning?)."
Allan Houston worked out for several teams in New York yesterday, including the Knicks, Nets, and Heat. Ira Winderman of the Sun-Sentinel is hearing what I have heard: Houston was impressive.
Basketball fan watches how-to DVD. Basketball fan hates many aspects of DVD. Basketball fan watches anyway, and now can't stop singing the praises.
Isiah Thomas, still making friends. A friend of mine made a good point: if the Knicks, and Thomas, win this case, will anyone be impressed with their character? My friend says that in the minds of sports fans, they're bucking to be next "Teflon" defendants, not good guys.
Have you ever noticed that Mark Cuban says something during the national anthem? Here's what he says. It's pretty amazing, and kind of makes me wish I had thought of it.
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treak for the Cash
