Down the stretch last night, when the Cavaliers really needed a bucket, I was surprised Delonte West wasn't on the floor. (The man has mad game.) Granted, the lineup they had was playing fantastic defense, and it's hard to argue with that. But I found myself watching, and saying for the thousanth time: "oooooh, nice offense Cleveland." One other point about last night: did you see how many shirts LeBron James was wearing? He checked into the game, and then before taking the court whipped off one long-sleeved blue shirt. That exposed a second long-sleeved blue shirt, with the word "Cavaliers" on the front. That one had to come off, too, of course. And when it did, what was underneath? Another long-sleeved blue shirt. This man overachieves.
David Thorpe on the Lakers: "... until somebody beats this Lakers team in L.A., I won't predict it will happen. They are a driven, confident, deeply talented team, but one that needs to realize they are in for a true fight against another heavyweight."
Tyson Chandler, on his NBA.com blog, talks about Chris Paul have a joint birthday party at the zoo with Chandler's daughter, who is turning two. He also talks about the one time he let himself think ahead to a possible championship: "The only time I allowed myself to go ahead was before the playoffs started, when we had a meeting. Coach said he did it back in his era. The Lakers used to do it and he did it in New Jersey when they went to the Finals. They got together before the playoffs started, the wives and the players, and they just had a dinner. We had our dinner and Coach made everybody stand up and talk about playoffs and just whatever they wanted to say. And at that moment, it became very serious to me how passionately guys want to win a ring. You know, you got guys at the end of their career, and they're like 'This may be my last run' or 'I only have a few left' or 'This may be my best chance.' There were guys like Bonzi that really touched me. He stood up, addressed me, David and CP, and was like, 'I want a ring.' He was like, 'You guys can take me there. This may be my last chance and I want some hardware. It lies on your shoulders and I just want y'all to go out there, play hard and just give us that opportunity to be there, to have a chance. I'm gonna do my part. We're all gonna do our part, but you guys take it up to another level. For a lot of us, this is our last chance.' And it really hit me, because I'm gonna be in that situation one day, where I'm coming to the end of my career. And I'm gonna need some young guys to help me win, and I hope they step up to the challenge like we're playing for them right now."
The case that Kobe Bryant should have done a better job of thanking Mitch Kupchak for his part in that MVP award. I get the point -- without hanging on to Bynum, and getting Pau Gasol, Bryant probably never gets that deal. But who knows that transpired between Bryant and the team to make Bryant a tad sheepish? And in the end, isn't the Gasol deal -- a large influx of salary and luxury tax -- really something that the owners should be thanked for? Especially in the week that Mark Cuban claims that GMs don't even have the power to consummate deals?
There are many different ways to use box score information to rank players. Larry Bird had a system whereby you pretty much take all the good numbers (points, rebounds, blocks, assists etc.), add them together, and subtract the bad numbers (fouls, turnovers etc.). People like John Hollinger have found that it is more useful to weight those things differently. For instance, a turnover is more damaging than a miss, right? With a turnover, your team forfeits any chance of the shot going in, and has no shot a rebound. So, surely you should weigh a turnover a little more than a missed shot. How much more? People argue about that kind of stuff all the time, (and usually end up respecting PER more than they did before). But now there's a pretty cool project called the People's Statistics Project, which lets regular people like me and you fill out a survey, to say how much different statistics should be weighed. It takes all of our thoughts and applies them all-time greats and current players, in rankings. Right now the best all time, according to this list, are Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, David Robinson, Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Kevin Johnson, Karl Malone, and Hakeem Olajuwon. Pretty good list! For this season, the best players are Chris Paul, LeBron James, Amare Stoudemire, Steve Nash, Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Deron Williams, Tim Duncan, and Allen Iverson.
A segment of Matt Kamalsky's DraftExpress assessment of Udonis Haslem, makes me think that a ton of players could, if they put their minds to it, do a lot of the things that Haslem does well. (Same goes for Zydrunas Ilgauskas -- couldn't a lot of big men learn to shoot like that?): "An excellent defender who gives consistent effort, but seldom has an easy matchup. Has the lateral quickness and defensive footwork to effective defend the high post. Terrific on the pick and roll, which is what made him such a great compliment to Shaquille O'Neal. Hedges screens with great timing, and then flies back to cover his man. Does a good job using his body to deny penetration. Contests his man's shots, but isn't a presence rotating over from the weakside, due to his lack of size. Will grab a lot of rebounds. Always puts a body on his man when a shot goes up. Scraps for loose balls. Plays an effort based, intelligent style of defense."
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