NBA

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NBA Western Conference Playoff Preview

It took just about all 82 games to figure out, but here he how the final seeding ended up for the Western Conference:

1. San Antonio Spurs

  • Last season: Lost to the Phoenix Suns in the Conference Semi-Finals
  • This season: Best start in franchise history and had the best record in the league until the very last game of the season. (The Bulls ended up 62-20 and the the Spurs ended up 61-21.) However the team lost six in a row this season for the first time since the Tim Duncan era.  The Big 3 of Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili spent much of the season healthy, but all suffered injuries toward the end of the season. Duncan missed 4 of the 6 games of the losing streak. Ginobili hyper-extended his elbow at the 2:14 mark of the first quarter of their season finale against Phoenix on Wednesday.

2. Los Angeles Lakers

  • Last season: NBA Champions
  • This season: Went 17-1 immediately following the All Star break, but then lost 5 in a row and barely beat out the Junior Varsity Spurs squad and needed overtime to beat the Sacramento Kings in their season finale.
  • Notes: I can’t help but wonder if the Lakers will be able to “turn it on” for the playoffs. One last match up with the Spurs on Tuesday, could be a potential Western Conference Final preview. However, the Spurs have the #1 seed locked up and Coach Gregg Popovich chose to rest his starters. Lost Andrew Bynum to a hyper-extended his surgically repaired knee in Tuesday’s game versus the Spurs. Bynum suffered a bone bruise and is expected to available for game one of the first round.

3. Dallas Mavericks

  • Last season: Lost to the San Antonio Spurs in the first round
  • This season: Re-signed Dirk Nowitzki after some speculation following the early and unexpected playoff exit at the end of the 2009-10 season. The Mavericks lost Caron Butler to a knee injury in early January and Coach Rick Carlisle says a first round return for Butler is highly unlikely. The Mavs have not beaten a Western Conference playoff team since January 19.
  • Notes: Despite being the third best team in the West, behind the Spurs who have been having a franchise season and the defending champions, it seems as though Mavs fans have given up on the post season. A recent article in the Dallas Star-Telegram pegs the Mavericks as “an aging team trying to slap together one last miracle run for Dirk Nowitzki.” Could it be true? A series of playoff runs in the 00s, including 2006 playoffs when they were up 2-0 on the Heat, shows the Mavericks as a team built only strong enough for the regular season. You know what they say, always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

4. Oklahoma City Thunder

  • Last season: Lost to the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round
  • This season: The acquisition of Kendrick Perkins at the trade deadline seems to have given the Thunder the inside presence they were lacking. Despite the top 3 teams going through their own struggles, the Thunder have won 16 of their last 20 games. Proving that this young team is one that could cause problems for some of the older teams in the West. (Side note: After watching the All Star game, my roommate and I now randomly scream out “Durantula!” ) This team is scary as they are young and up and coming. They have a long time to be a powerhouse in the Western Conference.
  • Notes: Denver Nuggets Coach George Karl hopes to avoid the hot Thunder and play the Mavericks in the first round. The team has won 5 in a row and looks to make it 6 as they play the Milwaukee Bucks in tonight’s season finale.

5. Denver Nuggets

  • Last season: Lost to the Utah Jazz in the first round
  • This season: The team spent most of the season dealing with the “Carmelo drama.” Most people might have expected a complete collapse after losing their franchise player, but the Nuggets are 17-4 since the trade. The Nuggets and the Thunder are playing well going into the playoffs and whoever makes it to the second round will prove to be a tough opponent.

6. Portland Trailblazers

  • Last season: Lost to the Phonenix Suns in the first round
  • This season: LaMarcus Aldridge was probably the biggest All-Star snub this season. Despite having only Marcus Camby being the only player on the team with deep playoff experience, this team will be bothersome to the Dallas Mavericks in the first round. Do not be surprised if this is the team in the Western Conference to pull the upset.
  • (Side note: When was the last time Greg Oden did anything to be effective? Besides as a bench warmer? The man made $6.7 million this year doing nothing. I know, I know he’s injured, but he will always be one of those players we’ll wonder, “what if?”)

7. New Orleans Hornets

  • Last season: Did not qualify for the playoffs
  • This season: Started out just as hot as the Spurs with a 12-5 record through November, but went through at 7-9 slump in December and their play has been so-so ever since. A perennial favorite in the Western Conference since Chris Paul joined the team, this season has been slightly better than last.
  • Notes: Owner George Shinn gave up control of the team to the NBA shortly after the season started, leaving many to wonder if we’ll be looking at the Kansas City Hornets in a couple of seasons.

8. Memphis Grizzlies

  • Last season: Did not qualify for the playoffs
  • This season: Ended with a record of 46-36, improving 6 games in the win column from the 2009-10 season.
  • Notes: The Grizzles are 0-12 in the playoffs, having been swept by the Spurs, Suns and the Mavericks in the first round. After a four year absence in the playoffs, the Grizz are making a return. Even though they are the eighth seed, the Grizzles are not to be taken lightly this year. They split the season series with both the Spurs and the Lakers and won the series against the Mavericks, 3-1.

Here’s what I think will happen: Spurs, Lakers, Nuggets, Trailblazers make it out of the first round, though not without a fight. If any of these series go less than 6 games, I’ll be surprised. Trailblazers and Spurs in the Western Conference Finals and then the Spurs to play whoever comes out of the East. Could I be wrong about the Spurs? Sure, but as a life-long fan, I have to believe.

NBA Playoffs Preview: Eastern Conference

Apologies in advance to fans of Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks and Philadelphia 76ers. Your teams are decent but aren’t worth talking about (remember these words when all three of them push their opponents to seven games).
Pure Sex Appeal

 

The Chicago Bulls: Unless you live under a rock there’s no question that this season’s biggest surprise has been the fantastic showing by the Chicago Bulls. After back-to-back .500 seasons and getting clowned by LeBron James and his crew of flunkies, the Bulls went out and pulled off one of the best Plan B’s in sports history. By pairing basketball-obsessed coach Tom Thibodeau with humble-bot Derrick Rose, the Bulls established a locker room where maximum effort was expected and defense a priority.
TV Analyst Ramblings:

  • It’s the Defense, Stupid: The Bulls have been #1 in defensive efficiency for the majority of the season. In the playoffs where the pace slows to a crawl and half-court offense reigns supreme, can the Bulls keep their rotations tight and continue to contest shots?
  • Bulls Bountiful Bigs Banging Boards: Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah have combined to miss over 60 games, but thanks to incredible depth the Bulls’ rebounding has not missed a beat. However, both starters are going to need to play much better offensively than they have in the past month in order for an extended playoff run.
  • The Man from Sudan: Luol Deng has been a much-maligend player for the duration of his Bulls tenure. He’s gone from overrated to underrated to overrated to now the second most important player on a possible title team. Deng is the only non-Rose player who can create his own shot, and his ability to play huge minutes while providing elite defense has been a major factor for Chicago’s success.
  • Do You Know Who This Kid Is?: Derrick Rose is good at basketball, to explain why would be futile.
Like a Bosh

The Miami Heatles: Oh, LeBron James. Little did anyone know that your incredibly self-absorbed and idiotic “Decision” would have been the greatest thing to happen to the NBA since baggy shorts. Thanks to one person’s delusion that no one would be upset about taking a televised dump on the city of Cleveland, the NBA’s ratings have skyrocketed. In the post-Jordan era this has been one of the most successful seasons yet.
TV Analyst Ramblings:

  • In Miami, Basketball is 3-on-5: By now everyone knows about the incredible talent and production of the Heat’s 3 big stars. Bosh, Wade and James are not only incredibly gifted two-way players but they’re also efficient. The problem all season has been, what the hell happens when Miami faces a good defense that can take those 3 guys out of their element? The answer, not so much. The Heat have the worst bench in the league on a PPG basis, and thanks to salary cap constraints haven’t been able to find any impact players to pair with their stars.
  • Boys Don’t Cry: Miami’s struggles against elite teams has been well-documented. Other than sweeping the season series over the Lakers, they have not fared well against the league’s top teams. Even worse is that they seem to choke in every big game, and that the rest of the sports world seems to revel in their missteps. With two of the best closers in the game it was assumed Miami would handle crunch-time with ease, but it hasn’t been the case. Will the Heat actually run plays that work well (like say, a James/Wade pick and roll) or will they just keep forcing each guy to isolate every time?

 

I got nothing.

The Boston Celtics:  2008-2011 record before the All-Star game: 116-43. After the All-Star Game: 50-33. Injuries, age, trades and inconsistent play have put the Celtics on a roller-coaster ride for the past three seasons. They have ranged from the clear-cut best team in the league to a team that no one fears. A shocking deadline deal that sent starting center Kendrick Perkins to Oklahoma City has seemingly sent the team, famously close-knit, into a tailspin. But this is a veteran group that encountered similar struggles last year and almost won the title.
TV Analyst Ramblings

  • Rajon Rondo, defunct Alien Cyborg: While the media fixates on the Boston Three Party of Pierce, Garnett and Allen, the dirty little secret about Boston is that they live and die based on the play of Rajon Rondo. A late 1st round pick who wasn’t supposed to amount to much has turned into one of the game’s best passers and a strong defender. He also has a worse jumpshot than my dad is a gaping piece of shit, but that’s another story. His play since the All-Star break has noticeably dipped and without a rejuvenated Rondo don’t expect Boston to get very far.
  • Will Shaq See the Court?: 74 year old Shaquille O’Neal made another pit-stop on the “Fuck I gotta get more rings than Kobe before I retire” tour when he signed with Boston. It was actually a match made in heaven as he accepted a reserve role and gave the Celtics one of the deepest benches in the league. However, Shaq has only played 37 games this year and last week injured himself by walking down the court (no joke).

The New York Knicks: I’m going to just come out and say it, I hate the Knicks. They are annoying, their fans are annoying, the Garden is annoying, Spike Lee is annoying, the admiration people have for this franchise is annoying. They don’t play any defense, Carmelo Anthony is one of the more overrated stars in recent memory and Amar’e Stoudemire gets less rebounds on a per minute basis than a barstool.

That said, they’re incredibly fun to watch and there are few arenas in the NBA that can get as rowdy as MSG. Mike D’Antoni is a gifted offensive coach who apparently lost the part of the brain that tells you basketball is also about preventing the opponent from scoring. Knicks fans have been suffering for quite some time and I think I can live in an age where Isiah Thomas isn’t running the most valuable NBA franchise into the ground. Also, Walt Frazier is a gift from heaven, everyone should cherish him.

Predictions: Bulls, Heat, Celtics, Magic all make it to the 2nd round. Bulls and Heat square off in the Conference Finals, Miami wins in 7 games.

 

Ballin’ at the MIT Sloan Sports Conference

Right now, some of the brightest minds in Boston aren’t meeting to discuss nuclear research or an exit strategy for Afghanistan, but rather the concept of a “hot” shooter in basketball, whether there is such a thing as team chemistry, and how LeBron James will impact future labor negotiations.

Since 2007, the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference has attempted to bring the most innovative and thoughtful personalities in sports to discuss a wide range of topics. It has grown in popularity each year, mostly thanks to the attention given by perhaps the most famous sportswriter in the country, Bill Simmons. The conference attacks issues present in each sport, but I’m going to focus solely on basketball and some of the more interesting topics brought up.

At this time, the typical NBA fan looks at the box score on ESPN and sees the standard statistical measurements:  Points, rebounds, assists. But anyone who’s watched or played basketball for a long time knows that games are often won not just on big buckets, but on key defensive stops, proper spacing to run plays, or battling for loose balls. If you watch a telecast the announcers will most likely call all these things “intangibles” or “Team A wants it more than Team B.” Of course players are humans, and humans are prone to emotions such as laziness, or an intense desire to compete. But what if teams could quantify effort? What if they could measure how hard a player worked?

We’ll likely never achieve that Holy Grail of analysis but advancements like Adjusted Plus/Minus have shed new light on how lineups are constructed in the NBA and how we measure the effectiveness of so-called “specialists” like Shane Battier or Bruce Bowen. Instead of looking at numbers in a vacuum, we’re now seeing more teams embracing context This sounds rather simplistic, but both the people who run the sports teams and those who write about them for a living are notoriously slow to adapt.

Another interesting debate rose out of Malcolm Gladwell’s famous “10,000 hours” theory in relation to falling star Tracy McGrady, who at one time was one of the most dynamic players the league had ever seen. His former coach Jeff Van Gundy suggested that McGrady was somehow too skilled for his own good, which led to a decrease in practice time. In contrast, the practice habits of Ray Allen were brought up. The all-time leader in 3-point field goals made obviously spends a lot of time practicing jumpshots. But did you know that Allen practices so much that he’s capable of taking 1,000 jumpers at the exact same release point?

The most exciting (I use that term loosely) development for me was a presentation made by Sandy Weil. A number of NBA teams have enlisted the services of a company called STATS, LLC. They install a number of high-tech, 3D cameras in various arenas, which are then capable of capturing every movement on the basketball court and the exact location of each player. Spacing is key in basketball, whether it’s getting enough separation from a defender to take a jumpshot or creating passing lanes for cutters. This obviously affects the percentages of shot attempts, and not surprisingly the less space a player has to operate the less efficient he will be.

Another interesting find with these cameras is that the efficiency of catch-and-shoot (the bread8and-butter play of guys like Ray Allen and Reggie Miller) is much higher than almost every other shot. So while isolation-heavy guys like Carmelo Anthony earn a ton of superstar accolades, he isn’t necessarily an elite player because the bulk of his scoring comes in less than ideal situations (obviously he’s still really damn good). Also, shot attempts earlier in the shot clock go in at a higher percentage than those that come later. This correlates well with teams that force a lot of turnovers or play at a fast pace (Boston, Golden State, Phoenix).

The potential of this technology is vast. Teams could start charting shot percentages for their players in every situation and tailoring plays that maximize their strengths. For example, Warriors guard Monta Ellis is primarily thought of as a high-volume scorer who lacks traditional point guard skills. But shot attempts off his passes have a 60% success rate, so while he may not have great vision he is capable of breaking down defenses and creating good looks for his teammates. This is obviously just the surface of what was covered, but obviously without attending it’s hard to fully grasp the complexity of a lot of the topics. But it’s an exciting time for sports, or at the very least sports nerds.

Our National Nightmare is Over – Carmelo Now One of Three Remaining Knicks

Praise LeBron. The story that refused to go away, sort of like Brett Favre but with players that weren’t washed up and likely to thwart their team’s best Super Bowl run in 12 years, is now over.

Dikembe and the Technicolor Dreamjersey will look great on Lady Mutombo.

Carmelo Anthony, whose wooing of and by the New York Knicks has been the center of attention all season in the NBA, is finally with his beloved team. His time with the Denver Nuggets was nearing an end anyway, so trading him made perfect sense for George Karl and co. Even considering the Knicks got a top 10 talent in ‘Melo, it seems like they gave up an awful lot to get him. Consider the concessions the Knicks had to make to get the deal done:

  • Parting with six players – Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Timofey “Opulence, I has it” Mozgov, Anthony Randolph’s rap sheet, and the ghost of Eddy Curry
  • Shipping three draft picks and $6 million
  • Forcing Spike Lee to wear a Nuggets hat whenever Denver plays in New York
  • Knitting a huge throwback Nuggets jersey for the Statue of Liberty Statue of Mutombo complete with Dikembe’s voice repeating “WHO WANTS TO SEX MUTOMBO?” on a loudspeaker
  • 33rd St renamed Colfax Avenue and only hybrids and 4x4s are aloud to drive on it
  • Mark Sanchez now has to name his first born son with that 17 year old girl John Elway Denver Sanchez
Stan, one of the other Knicks under contract in 2012.

Assuming Carmelo signs a max extension, the Knicks currently have exactly four players under contract after next season – Carmelo and Amar’e Stoudemire (each making around $20 million), and two guys from the Bronx named Stan (making approximately $15/hr). Much like the NFL’s current labor troubles explained excellently by my colleague here, Stop Crying, There Will Be an NFL Season (Maybe),” the NBA is about to have a labor showdown of their own. The result will most likely be a much lower salary cap and much less flexibility for teams with multiple high-earners.

Will it work out? Eh, maybe. It makes the Knicks completely relevant again (at least for the rest of this season and maybe next) but the window is short. Gambles like this almost always work out better for the superstar’s new home than their old one, but this may be the one case where the Nuggets got the better end of the deal.