Mark Byron

Banishing the Cylinder Dance

There's one Goodyear mini-ad (for the quick "sponsored by" slots) where the blimp deflects a ball towards the rim, then taps it in on the rebound. Minor problem; using American rules, Mr. Blimp's basket would be waived off for offensive goaltending (basket interference to be technical) since the ball is "in the cylinder" on the put-back. It would be legal under FIBA international rules, since balls are fair game once they hit the rim there.

The D-League has been playing with using the FIBA goaltending rules for the last two years and Henry Abbott over at TrueHoop is giving it a thumbs up. That would let rebounders freely go after balls rather than do that "can't touch it, can't touch it" hand dance while it's in the cylinder; in a macho world of rebounding, nothing is quite as wimpy as that cylinder hand jive. Well... maybe some of the Oscar-caliber floppers.

Bulk Rates on Nameplates

The New Jersey Nets have four players named Williams. Deron, Sheldon, Shawne and Jordon all suited up last night against Detroit. As far as I can tell, that sets the NBA record for most namesakes on the same team and ties the major league basketball record. Based on databaseBasketball.com's records, Dallas's ABA team of 1972-73 had the ultimate basketball Jones, with Rich, Collis, Larry and Nick Jones all suiting up for the final incarnation of the Chaparrals.

Thirteen teams have had a trio sharing a last name in a given season, most recently with the Clippers having three Davises in 2008-2009. Interestingly, Jones has been tripled or better four times and Johnson three times; Smith sits in third place with just two troikas, along with a pair of Williams triplets.

Hoop Hopes

The Pistons trimmed down to only 13 players after letting three low-rent invitees go yesterday. Jake Voskuhl never saw the light of day during the two-game preseason; I was surprised how long it had been since he was at UConn (2000).

However, they only have four guards on the roster; Stuckey, Knight, Gordon and Bynum. Austin Daye can play some 2 if need be, and the Pistons looked good with a Knight and Daye backcourt in Tuesday night's first quarter.

That does leave two slots open, and one might go to Manny Harris, who got let go by Cleveland today. A free combo guard with Detroit and U of M roots might not be a bad addition, especially if the Knight and Daye experiment works and Ben Gordon gets amnestied under the bus.

Of course, that makes too much sense, so it likely won't happen. If the freezer burn has healed up, he'd at least be a good guy to have as an insurance policy.

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Kris Humphries as the most disliked player? Most pitied is more like it. I have refrained from commenting on his short-lived marriage, but opposing fans sure will let him have it. Given the million-dollar wedding ring, there is a PG-13 pun with his surname waiting to happen, but not here.

Prior to his foray into the tabloids and the young woman best left unmentioned, he was a journeyman power forward. There are a lot more Despicable Mes out there in the NBA than he.

Saturday Fast Breaks

Rip Hamilton was let go by the Pistons; they negotiated a buyout rather than use the one-use-only amnesty clause. Da Bulls are lusting after Rip; I could see him fitting in as an additional piece to the puzzle there rather than being the alpha dog in Detroit.

Chauncey Billups has been visited by Santa's brother Amnesty Claus, where the Knicks let him go in order to be on the receiving end of a Tyson Chandler sign-and-trade. This might be a bit sacrilegious, but would that Melo-Amare-Chandler front line be one of the best frontcourts in my lifetime? It's a notch behind the Celtics Bird-McHale-Parish package, but not by much.

Meanwhile, it would be interesting to see if the Pistons might take a flyer and put in a low-ball offer on Billups in the amnesty auction; the team offering to take on the largest chunk of his contract gets him, with the old team stuck with the rest of the contract (for cash-only purposes-it gets zeroed for salary cap purposes). He has a good history in Detroit and would be welcome by the fans there with open arms and let Joe Dumars atone for the largest blunder in his tenure as GM of trading Billups for AI (no, picking Darko over Melo wasn't the worst; with Anthony at the three, Tayshawn Prince doesn't emerge as a defensive stopper and the chemistry of that championship crew would be altered badly). It would also allow Stuckey to slide to the 2 and give Brandon Knight a mentor at the point.

Stuckey is still not under contract, so even that is an open question. The waving of Rip makes signing him more likely, but Stuckey could get signed-and-traded for a big man as well.

CP3-POed

Tomorrow is opening day of the NBA signing season, and teams are doing informal agreements leading up to the formalization day on Friday.

The blockbuster of the night was the proposed trade sending Chris Paul to the Lakers in a three-way with Houston and New Orleans. Pau Gasol would be heading to the Rockets, while Kevlin Martin, Luis Scola, Goran Dragic and Lamar Odom and a Knicks 2012 number one would be heading to the Big Easy.

With Paul slated to be a free agent after this season, getting a starting 2, 3 and 4 along with a serviceable backup point guard and a #1 is a fairly good haul for the Hornets. With only six players under contract, getting four people back for one actually works. Jarrett Jack and K-Mart in the backcourt, Odom and Scola along side Okafor upfront with Ariza as your first forward off the bench (or start Ariza and let Odom reprise his Laker role as super-sub) is a playoff-level rotation. I don't see the Hornets getting hosed here; let's hope young Ms. Kardashian likes gumbo.

The Lakers went from being loaded on the front-line to being somewhat barren, relying on Andrew Bynum to stay healthy and anchor the middle and to have either Luke Walton or Metta World Piece (ne Ron Artest) be up to form. However, with an All-Star backcourt, you can afford to have a hole in the middle, since you could be getting 50 points a game from the starting backcourt.

Houston seems to be getting the short end of the stick at first glance. Patrick Patterson might be ready to fill in for Scola at PF, but this seems to be the prelude to another signing in the near term, since Houston lowered their payroll by quite a bit here.

The kicker here is that New Orleans is owned by the NBA; some owners in town for the finalizing of the new CBA are protesting and want commissioner Stern to stop the trade. If Paul is being allocated to the big-market Lakers at the detriment of the Hornets, that could be a valid beef.

If the league owned Houston, I'd be concerned. Houston seems to be doing a salary dump, but the deal seems plausible for New Orleans. There isn't a lot of star power in the players the Hornets are getting outside of Odom, who married into a reality show and anchored the national team last summer in winning the World Championship and giving the US team the summer off from any must-win action. Scola is more of a lunch-bucket pro and while Martin can score 20 for you, he doesn't seem to be the second coming of Kobe.

It will be interesting to see if this trade stands. A lot of owners are ticked at not getting Paul, but he was likely to go to a major-market team if left to his own devices; he wasn't likely to end up in Indiana or Charlotte.

[Update 115AM Friday-It looks like the trade has been vetoed by Stern. Exactly why would be a good question to ask. Is it the Houston salary dump? Or is it the Mamba-CP3 package in  LA just too scary for the rest of the league?]

Hot Stove Hoops

I'm working back into blogging after finally getting over a month-long bronchitis bug. Hopefully, we'll be getting back to multiple posts a day going forward.

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Baseball's offseason trades and signings has the long-standing nickname of the Hot Stove League. Such a moniker doesn't work well for basketball, for its downtime is during the warm weather months where the AC-League would be more like it.

Except for this year, where the NBA finally got a deal with the players set over the weekend. That means that there will be a rush of activity in December between the start of training camp and free-agent signings on the 9th and the first games on Christmas Day. With our first serious snow coming this evening (only 1-3 inches, so it won't shut much down), we could use some old-school BTUs cranking as we look at things.

The Pistons have an interesting dilemma, where a one-time contract amnesty has been created with the new CBA; do you use it on Rip Hamilton, Ben Gordon or Charlie V?

Villanueva is overpayed for what he produces; he looked like a good fit as a replacement for Rasheed Wallace when he signed, but Charlie is 6-11 two-guard without a good defensive or rebounding game. That being said, a guy who can match up with opposing bigs off the bench and can play a stretch-four is worth having around.

That makes the first two of the troublesome troika most likely to mistakenly catching flak from conservatives ("Yes, I'm in favor of amnesty... Rip is badly overpayed"). With Rodney Stuckey better suited to the two, Detroit has three twos and time for 1.5 of them. Hamilton can play some small-ball 3, while Gordon isn't built for that double-duty. A Stuckey-Rip backcourt with rookie Brandon Knight getting about 25 minutes off the bench seems plausible; Stuckey can slide to the two with Knight in the game, and all three could go for a few minutes mid-halves.

 

Brain Burps Big and Small

I was watching a documentary on Dixie the other day; one of the comments is that one of the worst things you can say in Southernese is "Bless his heart", for that usually means someone did something stoopid or otherwise came up short.

Rick Perry, bless his heart. As a teacher, I've had my memory go AWOL on occasion in the middle of a class and had to look something up or ask a better student the missing factoid. However, I didn't have the misfortune of doing it on national TV in the middle of a presidential debate.

I watched the first hour of last nights debate, which wasn't much of a debate, as most everyone had overlapping views on the economy and "what he said and what she said" was the main order of the day. Mitt graciously passed on a question of whether he'd hire Herman Cain in the middle of his ethical cloud and even Ron Paul made partial sense, given that he had to stay away from foreign policy and blaming Iranian nukes on the US installing the Shah a half-century ago.

Thus, I missed Perry's mental air-ball. It doesn't help his persona, since folks outside of the south take 20 points off of your IQ if you speak with a drawl and an extra 5 points for being from Texas. He seemingly won't live this one down, not unlike Howard Dean's post-Iowa war cry back in 2004.

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Herman Cain now has two public accusers. It's an odd place to have a polygraph test settle a nomination race, but that might be Cain's best path. If he is seen not to be nervous when he disclaims any charges of sexual harassment wrongdoing, that should be enough for most Republican voters. Yes, some folks can give a false negative on a lie-detector, as they are so sociopathic where they can lie without being nervous about it, and some naturally nervous folks can give false positives. Thus, a polygraph can't be totally trusted as evidence in criminal cases, but they can be in the court of public opinion.

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If we're talking brain burps, the NBA is on the verge of a massive one. They seem to be close to settling on a 50-50 split of revenue and are working on the cap-and-trade issues (salary caps and team-changing rules in this case, no global warming here). Both sides will lose more than the 3% they're fighting for (the players had 53 as their bottom line and owners had been shooting for 47) by trashing the 2011-12 (mostly 12 at this point) season over it.

Hopefully, cooler heads will prevail. However, there are a lot of egos who don't take getting dissed lightly, and hotter heads could well blow up the NBA as we know it.

 

Hopaway Bride

TCU looks like it is changing its mind and is going to go to the Big 12 rather than the Big East. The Big East didn't make much sense other than as a way to get into an AQ conference; the Big 12 is in their back yard and TCU makes a good swap-out for A&M in a reconstituted South division. The Big East will get a $5M exit fee for a team that never played a game in it; there's a one-liner there, but I can't quite make it work.

The next problem is filling in the Big 12 North, which is down to four and may be down to three if Missouri jumps ship for the SEC. Louisville, West Virginia and BYU might be possibilities, as might Memphis and Cincinnati.

There might not be much left of the Big East once the dust settles. Sending Louisville, WV and Cincy to the Big 12 and UConn and Rutgers to the ACC would polish off all but South Florida from the Big East's football schools.

This looks like someone is playing a Sim NCAA game with real life.

Coed Nekkid Musical Chairs

Here is where things seem to be ending up once the balls stop bouncing in the college sports game. It looks like five major conferences will emerge, the ACC, Big 10, SEC, PAC-16 and what I'm christening the Fly-Over Conference scopping up the Big12 and Big East refugees.

PAC 16
Inland	Coastal
Texas	USC
Texas Tech	UCLA
Oklahoma	Standford
Oklahoma State	Cal
Arizona	Oregon
Arizona State	Oregon State
Utah	Washington
Colorado	Washington State

That makes a nice neat break, with the old PAC8 getting back together again.

ACC
North	South
BC	UNC
Uconn	NC State
Syracuse	Duke
Pittsburgh	Wake Forest
Rutgers	Clemson
Maryland	Georgia Tech
Virginia	Florida State
Virginia Tech	Miami

Once again, if the rumors of Rutgers and UConn are true, you get a nice north-south break, rather than the awkward one we have at present.

SEC
West	East
Texas A&M	Florida
LSU	Georgia
Arkansas	South Carolina
Missouri	Alabama
Mississippi St.	Auburn
Ole Miss	Tennessee
Kentucky	Vanderbilt

My friends in Lexington won't like getting UK sent west, but the other alternatives would either send Vandy west or break up the Alabama-Auburn Iron Bowl. This seems to be the most stable package for the SEC. One could see the Oklahoma schools coming in, but the inertia seems to have them pointing west.

Big Ten
North (Legends)	South (Leaders)
Michigan	Penn State
Michigan State	Ohio State
Nebraska	Indiana
Northwestern	Purdue
Minnesota	Illinois
Iowa	Wisconsin

There isn't anyone left in the region that would be a good fit. Notre Dame might work here, but you'd need a dance partner, which is in short supply among the available free agents. Missouri would be a good option; Iowa State would make sense geographically but not economically, as it doesn't add many eyeballs. However, if Mizzou heads to the SEC, the Big 10 seems set, with the exception of changing those funky division names.

Fly-Overs
West	East
Baylor	South Florida
Kansas	Cincinnati
Kansas St	Louisville
TCU	West Virgina
Iowa State	Notre Dame
BYU	Memphis

This is very flexible. I see 12 teams, for it gets you to a playoff. You could do this with nine teams, leaving Notre Dame, BYU and Memphis out; Memphis is a C-USA school, but would round out this conference rather well.

The Big East would get taken down to a smaller, basketball-centric core, shorn of its football schools, but the core of mainly Catholic big-city Rust Belt schools makes more sense.

I'm not sure how coherent 16-team conferences are. You'd likely play teams in the other division once every four years in football, if you go with a nine-game, round robin with in the division format. The WAC tried that back in the 90s and had the original ganstas go off and form the MWC. It makes more sense from a TV contract basis than it does from an academic basis.

Defusing an F-bomb

Here's an interesting piece from ESPN's TrueHoop blog where Joakim Noah was discussing letting loose with a word rhyming with maggot towards an abusive fan over the weekend. Kobe's pocket was lightened earlier this season when he unleashed a dual f-bomb (the classic one followed by the maggot one) at a referee after a bad call.

Arnovitz: How homophobic is an NBA locker room?

Noah: Not at all.

Arnovitz: But f----- is tossed around without people even thinking about it?

Noah: Exactly. But a lot less than you probably think.

I don't know what locker rooms of the 2010s are like, but the playgrounds of the early 1970s had the maggot-rhymer used as an all-purpose put-down. Back then, we'd be more aware of homophones in English class than homophobia; such people in real-life were a distant theory as far as I knew. The pejorative was oft saved for people either on the un-macho side or just for someone you didn't like.

Thus, Noah may well be right; people use that term without cross-referencing homosexuality, just like a classic f-bomb may have nothing to do with sexual activity in the mind of the speaker.

That being said, it comes from a British term for a cigarette butt. A little more appetizing than a maggot, but not much. People might taught about someone welshing and gypping them without thinking that they are insulting southwestern British and Roma respectively.

Best not to insult at all. Easier said than done.

How's Your Bracket Monkey Doing?

Here's an interesting thought. There are 83232 different Final Four permutations if you picked the brackets at random. Given the odd layout of this year, we had one 18-team region, two 17s and a 16, so the math is 18*17*17*16.

Thus, if you borrowed a platoon of monkeys and let them do 6 million brackets at random not unlike the famous Wall Street Journal stock monkey, they'd get about 75 that had Kentucky, UConn, Butler and Virginia Commonwealth. Only two humans managed that over in ESPN's contest.

Three of those four were feasible. UK has at least four future NBA players on the roster; the trio of one-and-done baits in Lamb, Jones and Knight will be likely needing an agent within the next 13 months if not next month and Josh Harrellson may have played his way into at least an NBA training camp if not a late-first, early-second round pick with his NCAA play. Liggins and Miller might make the next level as well.

UConn has a good lineage and got hot at the right time, winning their last nine games, an unprecedented five games in the Big East tourney and then four more in the Big Dance.

Butler did this last year, so even though they seemed generously seeded at 8, they had the Underdog thing down so cold, you swear they stole Simon Bar-Sinister's freeze-ray.

The bracket Kryptonite was VCU. An 11 seed in a play-in game? Even a VCU alum would be hard-pressed to dream that big. However, in this someone crazy season where no team really stands out, a top-60 team (the 11 seed would suggest low-40s, but the computers didn't like VCU) can get hot and rattle off five straight. If UConn can do it in the Big East, VCU can do it in the NCAAs.

I'll miss the first half of the first game teaching on Saturday (yea!) but this will be an interesting weekend.

Pearls of Lesser Price

When Michigan was mopping the floor with Tennessee (75-45) this weekend, I was mentioning to Eileen that this would likely be the last game Bruce Pearl would get with the Vols; a series of NCAA violations on top of the worst thumping seen in an 8-9 seed matchup put Pearl in roughly the same spot that Rich Rodriguez was after laying an egg in the Gator Bowl along with bringing sanctions upon the Michigan football program for the first time in memory.

Had RichRod won the bowl game, the powers that be in Ann Arbor might have been more willing to give him another year; that didn't happen and Brady Hoke is now the big man at the Big House. Likewise, a run to at least the second weekend of the NCAAs might have bought Pearl some time, but the first-round stinker was the last straw.

Pearl seemed to be a good guy, at least before all the news came out. A lot of the rule violations weren't exactly corrupt and evil; having a recruit over to a cookout at the coach's house and talking to a recruit in passing out of season were against the rules, but not exactly capital offenses. Lying about them is another matter, and that is likely what got the plugged pulled on Pearl. News out of Knoxville has him on the way out.

Jim Tressel is another seemingly good guy who's darker side got seen; he fibbed about when he knew about his star players' transgressions and was given a two-game sit-down by OSU. To Tressell's credit, he personally extended the suspension to five games to match the punishment the NCAA gave the players involved.

Tressel made OSU a school that was hard to dislike, even for a Michigan kid raised on the Bo and Woody wars. This will knock the cache of OSU down a notch, for the football program has had had a near-pristine record with the NCAA. Tressel himself carried the kind of choir-boy facade that made him on a par with folks like Joe Paterno or Coack K as ambassadors for college sports; not so much now.

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On an encouraging note, Billy Gillespie has landed on his feet after two years in limbo, getting a coaching gig at Texas Tech after Bobby Knight's son Pat got the ax. 2009 was his annus horribilis, getting fired from UK after failing to get them into the Big Dance and then getting into a DUI. He isn't a bad coach, just one that wasn't quite up to either the pressure or the PR requirements of being the Grand Poobah of the Bluegrass.

Billy Clyde had a good run at Texas A&M before getting the UK gig, so Texas Tech would be a good fit. He can focus on being a good ballcoach and not have to be the face of the school and the state. The Peter Principle doesn't always have to apply, letting people take downward moves after hitting jobs where they're overmatched.

One and Underdone?

Michael Wilbon's waxing about basketball's good ol' days when players had to stay in school longer and gets Jay Bilas in for backup-

"Now, it doesn't mean we're not going to have a great tournament; I think it could be an even better tournament than we normally have because it'll be volatile and it'll be fun to watch. The competition still is going to be great. But the quality of play is not what it has been. We've still got outstanding players; we don't have the tremendous superstars that are older that we used to have."

Bilas continued, "This is something the basketball community, the NBA included, is going to have to put its arms around because it's not just hurting the college game; it's hurting the NBA, too ... and the NBA product could be even better than it is, and right now I think it's outstanding."

As one who caught the UK bug while living in Lexington, it would have been nice to see the cadre that Calipari brought in last season get a second shot at the title after laying an egg in the regionals. However, John Wall is learning more basketball playing an 82 game NBA season with Washington than he would have playing a 30ish-game season at Kentucky. Likewise, Demarcus Cousins is getting a better basketball education at Sacremento.

Would the NBA be better if those two were forced to spend a second year (or more) playing college ball? If that were the case, why were teams hot to draft them back in June? If the NBA were better without them, the team formerly known as the Bullets would have sent Wall to the D-League like Houston did with Wall's UK running mate Patrick Paterson for a time earlier in the year.

If you made the current one-and-done rule requiring players to be a year out of high school before going to the NBA a three-and-done like the NFL does, you would have a crop of sophmores and juniors playing college ball. Brandon Knight would be coming off the bench for UK (or play for another school in the market for a starting point gaurd since Wall and Eric Bledsoe would be hogging the starting backcourt spots for two more years) and create a deeper UK team.

However, would the NBA be better with four guys off of D-league rosters than the four UK underclassmen who went pro this year? I think not.

It is nice to see players develop in college, to mature in their game and to see them develop a legacy at the school other than one fleeting season of promise like the UK bunch did last year. However, keeping folks who are ready for the next level in an extended period of indentured servitude (yes, tuition and room and board at a good school is nothing to sneeze at, but it's a fraction of the millions they make at the next level) doesn't help the game that much.

Bilas makes his living covering college basketball, so he has a vested interest in seeing that brand strengthened. Seeing folks like Grant Hill or Kalin Lucas stay for four years is better for fans of their schools than the one-and-dones that litter the modern landscape, but college is supposed to be preparing folks for life.

If one of my undergrad finance students had a million dollar offer from an investment banking firm, I'm not going to tell him to stay in school and finish his BBA; he can do that part-time while making the bongo bucks. That won't happen too often, but old-school folks would like to do just that with basketball stars.

Does the one-and-dones level the playing field? Yes, the more mature teams from mid-pack power conference schools and mid-majors can use age and treachery against youth and inexperience, so we see more parity in college ball and more teams with barely-above .500 records make the field, even adjusting for the extra three teams in this year's field.

However, that is just a side-effect of a somewhat free market in basketball talent. Shumpeter's creative destruction winds up doing a number on college dynasties, since if a team is good enough to win a title, it usually has an underclassman or two who will move on to the next level; the Florida team of a few years back who came back for a second title rather than go pro is the exception to the rule.

Q School

The tyrant, surrounded by a small but loyal group of African mercenaries, fends off dissent amongst his subjects...the Kuester story is interesting. What, you thought I was talking about Libya? At least Q only benches the dissidents rather than taking machine guns to them (hey, that's one way to clear some cap space).

A number of Pistons missed the shoot-around in Philly yesterday afternoon, supposedly in revolt over Kuester still being in his position. That left Q with six healthy loyalists; DaJuan Summers played 39 minutes, which is probably more than he's ever played in a game in his life unless a Georgetown game went OT. I haven't seen such a mass benching in pro ball; it felt like the college coach suspending the whole starting five and having the team manager come off the bench at point guard.

The trade deadline has come and gone, so you can't trade the malcontents. You realistically can't cut them all. While you don't want the inmates running the asylum, these aren't inmates; they're adult pro athletes. If they collectively are having problems with a coach, it's easier to hire a new coach than to hire a new roster; it's not like Joe Dumars can call Kelly or Manpower and have them send out a temp small forward and point guard.

This is getting hard to watch. Except a new coach by the end of the weekend, for the Pistons aren't going to last with a six-man rotation.

Just Don't Call Them Gores' Tippers

The Pistons have a new owner lined up; billionaire investor Tom Gores has reached a deal to buy the team. Gores is LA based at present, but grew up in the Flint area and went to MSU.

That should help the club going forward; the club had been somewhat in limbo after owner Bill Davidson died; his wife and kids weren't interested in keeping the club and had been looking for a buyer. Tigers/Red Wings/Little Caesars maestro Mike Illich had been interested in creating an entertainment juggernaut by buying the Pistons, the Palace stadium and the two suburban concert venues that are part of the Davidson's empire to go with the downtown venues Illich already owns, but the two couldn't come up with a price.

Now, Gores has to make some tough decisions in the next few weeks. Rip Hamilton has been a well-paid observer as of late, only getting in one good stint off the bench in three weeks, getting a string of DNPs otherwise. Some sort of closure might be called for, whether it be a trade or a buyout. However, such a buyout will require the Pistons writing Hamilton a eight-figure check for a discounted portion of the next season and a third's pay; that's a call that the Pistons couldn't easily make until they knew who would be writing that check.

 

Dennis Rodman's getting his number retired, on April Fools' Day. No comment, other than that he was one of the better defensive players and rebounders in his prime; he even wasn't the rolling freak show that he became later in life while with the Pistons.

Rip Having A Hot Streak Flash

Here's an interesting Bill Simmons ESPN piece on aging basketball players; most players tend to jump the shark, or go through The Change as BS puts it, when they hit between 900 and 1200 games on the NBA odometer.

Let's test that with Rip Hamilton, who is currently getting an Alpo diet from the Pistons brass. 822 regular season games (and holding;-) and 125 playoff games. That's 947, which puts him right in the early stages of NBA menopause.

He may well be the fifth best guard on the Pistons, which means he is odd man out and gets the DNP-Coach's Decision even when he's healthy; he doesn't fit the rotation and it would be too cruel to put him in during garbage time.

That's why a trade or a buyout would be the best solution right now. He's getting paid like he's on the other side of the curve and thus is hard to trade, unless the Pistons want another overpaid shark-jumper back in return.If this lingers past the trade deadline, you might see a buyout.

Rip R.I.P.?

It's looking more like a Carmelo Anthony deal to the Nets is going to go down, with Richard Hamilton being part of the deal. The previous piece on the deal had the Pistons sending a #1 to New Jersey, but their half of the deal is now Hamilton (and possible unused rookie Terrico White) to Joisey for Troy Muphy and Johan Petro and a Nets #1.

Murphy is supposedly looking to be bought out of his contract, but he could be a serviceable big off the bench or even starting if he can be talked into relocating to Motown. His contract is up at the end of the year, so the Pistons and any new owner can retool with two near-max contract slots and a spare first-round pick.

This might not help the Pistons much in 2011, but it sets up a potentially fruitful off-season.

A Few Small Repairs

Orlando seems to be on the verge of a major overhaul of their roster, looking to ditch Rashard Lewis and Vince Carter and get back Hego Turkoglu, Jason Richardson and Gilbert Arenas. Two deals are in the works, one sending Lewis to DC for Agent Zero and the other sending Carter, backup center Marcin Gortat and Mickael Pietrus to Phoenix for Richardson and Turkoglu.

Lewis has been having an off year and could use a change of scenery. Carter is still a good player, but he is becoming more of a supporting player than an alpha dog, a good third or fourth option rather than the guy who gets the ball in crunch time. Getting Arenas out of DC is a good move, but it would take another underperforming max-contract to match up with him, and Lewis is a good match.

The Magic could have an interesting lineup which could create matchup fits. Their crunch-time lineup would be a small-ball set with incumbants Dwight Howard and Jameer Nelson along with the three newcomers, with Turkoglu playing a small 4 and Richardson playing a small 3. They could set up a version of the inside-out game with Howard and four wingmen who could all drain threes. Brandon Bass might start to give some heft against starting power forwards, with either Richardson or Turkoglu coming off the bench to create that small-ball set.

The Pistons could use such a makeover, but that's another post.

Crazy 8s

I've enjoyed being able to watch the Pistons again on a regular basis, but it has been a rough year so far for them, having gotten off to a 6-13 start. They got off to a 0-5 start and have thus been 6-8 since that slow-out-of-the-gate stretch.

They are starting to get their money's worth out of Charlie Villenueva and Ben Gordon and Greg Monroe is beginning to figure out how to be an NBA center; that gives them some interesting depth where their second unit has as much firepower as their first unit. They still need one more guy at power forward, a void created when Jonas Jerebko was hurt in the pre-season; trying Austin Daye at the 4 didn't work (it created some mismatches, but Daye got the worst of it even has he was giving it his skinny best) and Jason Maxiell isn't quite a full-time starting 4, either.

That being said, they're fun to watch even if the wins aren't quite pilling up.

They're at the rear of the Central Division and only a game ahead of last-place Washington. However, they are only a game and a half out of the eighth spot in the east, currently held by Cleveland and Toronto. That's not much to make up.

If the Pistons can figure out how to make their rotation work and get Jonas back by playoff time, Boston or Orlando or (if they can get in gear) Miami might not want a hot Pistons in a first-round best of five. Pollyanna, perhaps, but it beats waiting for the Tigers to start training camp.

 

The Dark Days of the Soul

Here's an interesting piece from ESPN's Henry Abbott on Greg Oden. Oden has had a string of bad luck since turning pro three-plus years ago, having a string of injuries that has had him playing only a quarter of the time. His latest left knee surgery has him looking at another year of rehab before trying to get back out on the court.

Oden likely doesn't have to worry about his finances, having signed a rather nice contract as the first pick in the draft in 2007. However, he does have the long grind of yet another set of rehab to get back to playing shape, wondering if his body will actually stay healthy once he does get the knee gets back.

Oden's adult life has been mostly physical rehab. A well-compensated life, but a tough one.

Abbott compared rehab to a day at home with the roto-rooter stomach "flu".

For a day, I tried life without positive thinking, and found it brutal. Oden's embarking on yet another year like that. Tough.

Physically, it's just work. Psychologically, though, that much work with that little payoff ... it's a bear. I suspect Oden is up to it -- what choice does he have? But as long as he's facing all that, let's press pause on that outdated talk of Kevin Durant, Sam Bowie and the like. None of that matters today.

For the basketball outsider, Durant was the stud picked behind Oden in the draft who was has lived up to his potential, having led the US team to the world title this summer and led the NBA in scoring last year. Bowie was a similar bad-luck center picked by Oden's Blazer club in the 80s, thought well enough to have been picked ahead of Michael Jordon in 1984 but who never could stay healthy for the first half of his career.

There are a lot of Greg Odens in our churches, people who have talent but can't quite live up to it. They either run into health issues, or have a series of layoffs, or other things that weigh them down. They don't have the kind of career track that people want to see in a Victorious Christian Life(TM) and might not be as fun to hang around with at the church picnic.

However, it is those people who are stuggling,for whom God or someone has stacked the dice against them, that need extra care.

"Alopecia... She's my seester."

Actually, that's the condition that Charlie Villanueva has that makes him hairless. It only looks like he's in chemo or a candidate for Larry's hairbrush slong.

While the Celtics were in town, KG trashed talked Charlie V as a cancer patient. Not cool.

However, the Pistons in the paint are a bit anemic; I plugged for a Tayshawn-for-Kaman trade this summer and the Piston writers are now on the case.

Don't Try to Box Him Out, St. Pete!

Maurice Lucas passed on; he was the power forward for Portland's '77 title team. He was, in my mind, the prototype power forward, muscular and no-nonsense.

I still remember a Lucas story from The Breaks of the Game-

One story that comes to mind out of that book was Halberstam's description of power forward Maurice Lucas' college days at Marquette, where the very tough nominally Protestant black guy for a tough part of Pittsburgh interacted with the Jesuits. A lily-white picture of Jesus got Lucas' attention, where he commented something to the effect of "He didn't look like that. I've seen pictures of people in that part of the world; they're dark."

He died of bladder cancer; that had to piss him off.

Slow Feet, Fast Hands

Here's an interesting line from Ben Wallace, who managed to strip John Wall during yesterday's pre-season match with the Team Formerly Known as the Bullets-

"My feet ain't as quick as they used to be, but my hand speed still the same," a grinning Wallace said.

Grammar isn't his strong suit, either. That reminds me a bit of tennis, where aging stars are still very effective at doubles, where volleying is more a part of the game and hand-eye coordination is a much larger factor than in singles, where chasing down balls requires more foot speed.

Interestingly, the Pistons have been going with a Prince-Daye combo at forward the last few games. Daye is tall enough at 6'10" to play the 4 but rails get upset when they get compaired to Daye. Thinking back to the Bad Boy era, John Salley wasn't exactly Mr. Universe either, but he played an effective power forward.

Jonas, Oh Brother!

Bad news for the Pistons; 3-4 swingman Jonas Jerebko tore his Achilles last night and will be out about six months. That would likely mean he's out for the regular season after today's surgery. In addition, second-round pick Ternco White broke his foot.

White would likely have been buried deep on the Piston bench, but would be a nice addition as a 6-5 combo guard that would likely be the twelfth man on the roster. That will likely open up a spot for a fifth guard until White's back up to speed.

Jerebko's going to be harder to replace. We'll likely see Charlie Villenueva be the starter at power forward and having Greg Monroe be the first big man off the bench; Jason Maxiell goes from being the fifth man in a four-man rotation to being part of the rotation.

Monroe looked like he knew what he was doing, making nice passes and not seeming too overwhelmed with the level of play. He did get into a bit of foul trouble in the first half, but that's not uncommon for a rookie big man. Big Ben will have to watch his back, for Monroe might have his starting spot sooner rather than later; not that Wallace will mind, he's a team guy and would accept coming off the bench if needed.

Motown Musings

Two interesting pieces in the to-blog-box on Detroit sports.

One is this piece proposing that Will Bynum become the starting Piston point guard and have Rodney Stuckey be a combo third guard getting starter minutes.

That's not a bad idea, since Stuckey is more of a penetrating two than a one. The problem with that on this Piston club is that Rip Hamilton fills that role on the starting unit. If you bring Stuckey off the bench playing some two with Bynum and some one with Ben Gordon (who is more of an outside shooter), his skills will be better utilized, especially if you throw Austin Daye in the mix as a point-forward on the second unit.

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Johnny, we hardy knew ye. Damon was put on waivers and claimed by the Red Sox; the Tigers now have to either arrange a trade with Boston, let him go to Boston without compensation other than the Sox picking up the last month of his contract, or reclaim him off waivers. Damon can veto the deal via a no-trade clause, but might want to mend some fences in New England after bolting to the hated Yankees.

The Tigers have a number of good outfielders and have to find a long-term spot for Carlos Guillen who is not quite the answer at 2B. Left field or DH is his natural spots right now, and that is Damon's gig at present. It makes sence to let Damon go and play out the 2010 string with Guillen and the farmhands in left and using the salary spot that Ordonez's departure will open up to either get a good left fielder (moving Boesch to right) or catcher for 2011.

[Update 5PM-Damon vetoed the deal. Hey, a logjam of young outfielders isn't all that bad.]

Sports Musings

In Europe, they call exhibition games "friendlies." They're warming up for the World Basketball Championships, and we had one friendly between Greece and Serbia that wasn't friendly at the end; a baseball-style bench-clearing brawl broke out, and Serbia's Nenad Krstic (formerly of New Jersey and now with Oklahoma City) got out his inner Bobby Knight and threw a chair... at a Greek player. He spent a day in gaol for his outburst; don't do that on the other country's home turf.

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The US was better received in it's two-game set in Spain this weekend. They got off to a slow start Saturday before comfortably handling Lithuania; the closest thing to nasty they had was a flagrant foul by the Lithuanians on Rudy Gay on a fast break.

The Lithuanians had a gambling web site logo on the backs of their jerseys. It's a step back from 1992, where the Grateful Dead sprung for a tie-die Deadhead-style uni. 

Sunday, the Spanish team took the US to the wire before losing by one. The Spaniards play NBA caliber ball, even with Pau Gasol out. They had Ricky Rubio coming off the bench for them, and he looked all the world like the guy Minnesota spent a lottery pick on last year. He can start on most NBA teams at either the 1 or 2 right now and might have been the best point guard in the building yesterday.

The US will have to have all hands on deck in 2012 if they want to win the Olympics, for the second string of stars that are playing in this year's team may not be enough to beat Rubio and both Gasol brothers in 2012. Any rematch in Turkey will be on a neutral floor rather than the home game Spain had today, but a win is no shoo-in now that teams like Spain and Argentina can field teams that would go deep in the playoffs in the NBA.

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Interesting piece on the 3-4 reemerging as the defensive set of choice, or a 3-3-5 variant with a flexing safety-linebacker hybrid. I recall a number of teams would run a 4-2-5 with a middle-linebacker/safety hybrid in years past; Michigan used to call the flexman the wolfback

When you have more teams running spread offenses with four and five wide receivers (or people put out wide at least), it's hard to cover five receivers with seven non-down players. That creates at least three one-on-one coverages and plenty of gaps that can break down into big gains.

Plus, it's easier to get 250-ish linebackers than 300 pound down linemen.

Midnight Basketball... and Football

Two stories in the news involving odd hours. The first is a 24-marathon that ESPN is putting on to kick off the college hoops season come November. Central Michigan gets the graveyard shift, playing at Hawaii starting at 4AM Eastern. Given the time zone, that would be 10PM local time, which isn't that late for college kids. Michigan State gets a 10PM start that evening EST versus South Carolina.

The other story comes out of Dearborn, where Fordson High is having 11PM football practice this month... not just as a Midnight Madness promotional thing, but everyday. Dearborn has a large Arab community and about half the team is Muslim; since this is Ramadan, they can't eat or drink during the day, so practicing in August heat, even in a northern state like Michigan, is a real problem.

Since the sun doesn't set until about 9, the players will need time to eat and digest their post-sundown meal, so starting much earlier than 11 would be hard. Such accommodation to Muslims will probably make some usual suspects on the right apoplectic, but I'd rather see these kids practicing on the graveyard shift than in the graveyard from heat stroke.

Clearing the Logjam

The Pistons signed Tracy McGrady to a one-year league-min deal. The problem there is that there isn't a lot of playing time for him at the wing right now with Rip Hamilton and Tayshaun Prince at the 2 and 3 and Ben Gordon spelling both; the Pistons often play some small-ball sets with Gordon at the 2 and Rip and the 3 in the middle of a half.

Add to that the emergence of Austin Daye as a Tayshaun Maxi-Me (Daye's two inches taller, so he can't be a Mini-Me) and there isn't a lot of playing time for McGrady. So, we either have McGrady as an overqualified 10-min-a-game performer getting Daye's minutes and maybe cutting back on the small-ball set with Rip at the 3...

...or we get a trade of one of the incumbents. Here are some possibilities

Tayshaun to Cleveland for a future first-rounder. He fills the void at small forward left from that chalk-tossing guy from Akron. Since the Cavs did a sign-and-trade with Miami, they have a 14.5M trade exemption for LeBron, and would be able to eat the 11.1M contract of Prince and still have 3.4M left for a mid-level type player in the middle to fill in for Shaq and Z. Detroit could get a draft pick back, possibly one the ones the Heat sent north.

Tayshaun to Toronto for Joey Dorsey and a first rounder. The Raptors don't have anyone compelling at the small forward and they have a 14.5m trade exemption from that other Superfriend to use as well. Joey Dorsey and a Heat first rounder might be a good deal. I liked Dorsey as one of Coach Cal's guys at Memphis when he looked like a young Ben Wallace; having the original there to tutor him would be interesting.

Tayshaun to Minnesota for Kevin Love. They have 9 M of cap room, so Detroit would need to take at least 2M back in contracts. Love would look nice in a Detroit uniform, and with Michael Beasley coming to town, he might be tradeable since they now have a logjam at the 4. Laugh if you want, but Darko would look good as a back-up big man, but he can't be traded right after reupping as a free agent; that might be a feasible trade come the trade deadline if Dumars can take the ribbing for bringing His Big Goof back (it was Tayshaun's emergence as the SF of the future in the previous year that made Darko look better than SF Carmello Anthony at the time as a fit for Detroit).

Tayshaun to Portland for Marcus Camby. If Portland is willing to assume that Greg Oden is going to be healthy for once and not be the second coming of Sam Bowie, the are a good big man too rich and could use a good small forward like Prince. 

What about locales for Rip?

Rip to the Knicks for Eddie Curry. The Pistons would be rolling the dice here. If they got the mid 00s Curry back, it would be good, but it would be problematic if he were the toxic presence he's been in the last two years. If the Knicks throw in a draft pick to get Curry's contract off the books, I'd consider it, especially if they did a bit of due diligence and saw that Curry wouldn't be a locker-room cancer. Antonio McDyess was in a similar spot in his career when the Pistons got him and he regained his productivity.

I'd have a heart-to-heart with McGrady and see what he though of Curry while he was with the Knicks late last year.

Rip and Jason Maxiell to Denver for Kenyon Martin- Martin would give some offensive low post presence they don't presently have. I don't like giving Maxiell up, but he seems to be the odd man out going forward with Greg Monroe's arrival and Jonas Jerebko's emergence as a quality 3-4 tweener; plus, Martin has a bigger contract that needs a second player for a cap match. Martin has one year left on his deal, so if Monroe winds up making Martin a super-sup, his contract goes bye-bye and Detroit has a cap slot to use. It also brings the Palace Guards back together in Denver.

Rip to Utah for Mehmet Okur. With Al Jefferson arriving in Denver, Okur might become a bench player in the new regime. The trade doesn't quite match on salary, but Utah has some trade exemptions they could use.

Any one of these trades looks feasible. We shall see.

Hoopza, Hoopza!

Good news for Pistons fans. Mike Ilitch has throw his hat in as a potential bidder for the club. He already owns the Red Wings and Tigers and there is no NBA rule against such cross-ownership.

There would be some interesting synergies for Ilitch. He owns the Fox Theater concert venue in downtown Detroit, so adding the Piston's Palace of Auburn Hills would give him another venue to book. Having all three non-NFL clubs in town would put him in position to start his own local cable network if he didn't like what Fox Sports Detroit was offering for rights. Also, such a trio could create some one-stop shopping for advertisers.

Beyond that, Ilitch has a reputation of not being stingy, being the NHL's version of Mark Cuban in paying well to build the Red Wings into a winner (without the theatrics, however). The Tigers haven't quite responded to that touch quite yet, although they have been in the hunt and won the 2006 AL title.

The Pistons could do far worse for an owner.

We are all Quitnesses?

Here's a sad but cute shtick done by a Cleveland microbrewer; a bitter ale tagged Quitness in dishonor of LeBron's going south. That's a bit too bitter, although it is a good pun off of the "we are all witnesses" slogan that a certain shoe-maker plugged.

I haven't chimed in on The Decision yet. Miami seems a bit trite, a bit too cosmopolitan for an Akron kid. Chicago would have made more basketball sense, with a better supporting cast and a similar Big 10 vibe. However, it isn't hip like Miami is; every other reference had him "going to South Beach."

He moved on more than he "quit." How many people have triple-doubles and are accused of being a quitter? This is one time where I actually side with Jesse Jackson on one of his cause celebs; James was being treated like NE Ohio owned him and that taking a more interesting offer was backing out on a binging social contract.

Miami wouldn't have been my choice, but it was LeBron's choice.