Sports Talk, Rumors and Other Contrarian Insights

First, let me address the Georgetown loss by saying…

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!

Oh boy, did that feel good.

I will make no secret of my dislike of the Hoyas.

It has roots in many different places.

First, I feel like the DC sports media has always loved Georgetown more than Maryland, even though the Terrapins are 9 miles outside the city and on the District’s metro service.

There have been many years where the Hoyas were so-so and Maryland was a sweet 16 team, yet we would hear way more about Allen Iverson than Joe Smith.

Second, I strongly dislike the school itself. Georgetown is an elitist school that has no right to be. They like to pretend that they are on-par with the likes of Harvard, Yale and Stanford, yet they aren’t even close.

Check out the national rankings for college’s every year. Georgetown is usually in the 30’s, where the other schools are in the top-15. The feeling of superiority that Georgetown has is perceived. They only ranked about 15 more spots higher than Maryland last year.

They do have a great law school and med school, but their undergrad is not much better than Maryland.

Third, Georgetown always seems to steal the elite talent in the area and DO ABSOLUTELY NOTHING with it. All the while, the University of Maryland rarely gets the talent that Georgetown gets, yet somehow has been a more successful program in the last 15 years.

Lastly, I can’t stand the idol worship of John Thompson. First, he is annoying to listen to on the radio. He doesn’t discuss sports, he just tells you you’re wrong if you don’t agree with him. Also, he fell off in his coaching career greatly at the end of his tenure at Georgetown. During that same time, Gary Williams was coaching his butt-off at Maryland and continues to coach well today.

So, I savor watching Georgetown sulk home after losing to Ohio. This picture sums up the whole game:

Georgetown never wins with any of the talent they have in recent history.

Roy Hibbert, Michael Sweetney, Allen Iverson = NOTHING BABY!

And, I hope the trend continues.

AS for the rest of the LEAST, Notre Dame lost to Old Dominion.

I don’t think that was as big a surprise as people thought. ODU came out of a tough battle in the CAA, and were the only team to make the tournament from the conference. They played and executed better than Notre Dame, and showed the continued poor coaching of Mike Brey over the years. This guy always has superior talent, yet never wins with it.

Marquette was surprising, but Washington always seems to play well come tournament time, so maybe it shouldn’t ne so shocking.

And then there is Villanova.

OVERTIME?! ROBERT MORRIS!?

Most people couldn’t even tell you where Robert Morris is (It’s in Pittsburgh).

If they had managed to lose to Robert Morris that would have been so sweet. Not only for the sounds of brackets being ripped up across the nation that would have ensued, but also because it would show that ‘Nova is one of the mentally weak teams in the country.

To swoon at the end of the year, and then let that carry over into the tournament, I think at some point it’s not the coaches fault and the players need to take some responsiblity.

Anyone who has St.Mary;s in the sweet 16 should feel very fortunate.

I think the long shot is coming home.

An MVP. 4-time NBA Champion. Finals MVP. 7-time first team defensive player. 2-time NBA scoring leader.

All by the age of 31.

Pretty Impressive, right?

The guy who has accomplished all this is Kobe Bryant.

I was thinking the other day about a comparison that is often made in sports: Kobe Bryant and Micheal Jordan.

Most of the analysts in the sports world haven’t dared to possibly compare anyone to MJ and have that person come out on the same level as MJ.

I am going to dare.

I think that the numbers are starting to show that Kobe Bryant might be the closest thing to MJ that the game has today.

Not only is he the closest too, he might actually be this era’s Jordan. The most dominant and special offensive player in the game, that also has the ability to clamp down and play some of the best defensive basketball in the game.

An when it’s all said and done, Kobe Bryant could be remembered as the most dominant player in the game.

I know that most are going to roll their eyes at the prospect of saying that at this point in Kobe Bryant’s career, he has matched MJ, and might have the potential to finish with a more dominant career than Jordan.

Now, I am first going to dispel the two most common arguements on why Kobe cannot be called as good as Jordan.

First, everyone points to the fact that Kobe had Shaq on his team during the first three-peat. I don’t quite understand why this is immediately a deciding factor that Jordan is better.

Jordan had one of the top-50 greatest athletes of all time on his team in Scottie Pippen. Why is it held against Kobe Bryant, but not Michael Jordan?

Lastly, Kobe has made 2 appearances in the NBA finals without Shaq, winning 1 title. Shaq has made two appearances without Kobe winning 1 title. Jordan never had to play without Pippen.

The teams that Michael played on with Scottie during the first three-peat were not not any worse than the teams that the Kobe/Shaq Lakers won with.

Jordan averaged 31 points in 1991, followed by Pippen at 18 ppg, Hoarce Grant’s 13 ppg and Bill Cartwright’s 9.5 ppg.

Kobe averaged 22.5 ppg in 1999-2000. The Lakers were lead by Shaq’s 29.5 ppg, but also had healthy a contribution from Glen Rice in 15.9 ppg, but after that there is a significant drop off, where Ron Harper was the next biggest contributor at 7 ppg.

In actuality, when you take the 1999-2000 Lakers and compare them to the 1990-1991 Bulls, the Bulls appear to statistically be the better supporting cast to their stars.

Also, if we look at the statistical data, the 1999-2000 Kobe Bryant-led Lakers averaged 107.3 ppg, while the Bulls scored 110 ppg. That would lead the conclusion that the Bulls were a superior offensive team, but we also need to look at the pace average of these teams.

Pace average is a stat that measures the amount of possessions of a team during the game. This will allow the difference between teams ppg to be equalized. If one team possess the ball 100 times and scored 100 points a game, and another scores 100 ppg on 90 possessions, the ppg are not equal, and the 90 possession team is more efficient.

In this case, the Bulls led by Jordan did score more a game, but the Lakers averaged two less possessions, meaning that the numbers are actually about on par with each other assuming two more field goals made.

Also, the Lakers only gave up 98.2 ppg, while the Bulls gave up 105.2, leading us to see not only were the Lakers scoring on par with the Bulls, but they were superior defensively, of which, Kobe Bryant was the leader, garnering first-team defensive honors that season.

Second, many pundits like to point to Jordan’s perceived dominance. Unfortunately, the dominance might have been more marketing muscle than actual dominance.

To qualify my statements though, I am not saying that Jordan wasn’t dominant, but rather his dominance over other NBA players today might be more perception and marketing than actual fact.

And when one looks at the numbers even closer, Kobe only attempted 1,183 shots and 403 free throws, where Jordan attempted a whopping 1,837 shots and 699 free throws. Taken in context we can derive a statistic called true shooting percentage, which basically gives the free throw it’s rightful integration into the regular shooting percentage.

Any number above 50% is considered very good. 60
% is considered great. For a quick analyzation of the number read this from NBA.com:

So what is true shooting percentage and what makes it so meaningful? It really comes down to the fact that the traditional barometer of a player’s shooting ability (field goal percentage) weighs 2-pointers and 3-pointers the same (which clearly they are not, given the fact made 3s are worth 50% more than shots made inside the arc) and ignores free throws entirely. TS% takes all three into account (the formula, for those interested, is PTS / (2 * (FGA + 0.44 * FTA)) and therefore does a much better job of assessing who makes the most of the shots at their disposal.
Jordan averaged 60.6 in 1990-1991, while Kobe was no quite as good as Jordan, did average 55.3 in 1999-2000. So, what we can see is that the discrepancy in the season that they had are not as great when you look in between the numbers.

–Source NBA.com

Kobe averaged 55.3 in 1999-2000, while Jordan averaged 60.6. Jordan was clearly the better player, but what the true shooting percentage shows us, is that he wasn’t nearly as efficient a player as people think he was over Kobe.

Let’s look at some other data. Kobe Bryant won his first NBA title when he was 21, Jordan was 27. Kobe did come out of high school, but had his first NBA title within 4 years of being in the NBA, while it took Jordan 7 years.

Kobe had a three-peat under his belt before Jordan had an NBA title!

Also, Kobe, by the age of 31, has made 6 finals appearances in his career, while Jordan had only appeared in 3.

What my point is that Kobe Bryant has the potential to win multiple championships in the next 6 years of his career. Jordan managed to win 3 more, and Kobe shows no signs of slowing down at age 31.

If Kobe were to win 3 more, he would have one more ring than Jordan and two more finals appearances–pretty impressive.

Combine that with being a seven-time, first team defensive player and Kobe Bryant has held his own on defensive end. Jordan made first team defensive player 9 times in his career, and Kobe looks to be able to easily eclipse that before he is finished.

What we are seeing is, potentially, the most dominant player in NBA history right before our eyes. It’s easy to remember the Jordan-marketing machine or the Lebron marketing machine, but Kobe might be better than them all when it is all said and done.

In the humble opinion of this blogger, the NBA does All-Star Weekend better than any other sport.  It really isn’t close.  Baseball is the closest thing but lacks the celebrity star power.  The Pro Bowl is just awful and no one cares about hockey.  So after a highly entertaining and successful weekend that saw 100,00 fans show up for the actual game, I decided I would post some thoughts.

- Its been beat into the ground lately, but the dunk contest is on life support.  There are too many misses which takes a lot of the shine off the dunks that are actually made.  It might be time to get rid of it all together.  

- The rookie sophomore game is always very entertaining and should be watched by more people

- The actual All-Star Game is what really got me thinking, beginning with the introductions.  The annoying and akward dance routines that have become the norm have got to go.  Dwight Howard thinks he is this lovable goofball when in fact he is incredibly annoying.  As far as I can remember the dancing thing was started by Shaq a few years back and Dwight already stole his nickname, so its time for something new

- When Chris Bosh was introduced as a back up and i remembered that 52 year old KG was voted the starter I couldn’t help but think what would happen if Bosh played somewhere else.  I can’t figure out why the rumored trade of sending Bosh to LA for Bynum and others hasn’t happened yet.  It just makes so much sense.  Bosh has to be thinking “man I am the best 4 in the league and because I play in Canada, KG who is well past his prime and only played about half the games this year got voted in ahead of me.”   That would NOT happen if he played in a bigger market, such as LA.  This also points out how improbable it is that Toronto will resign him.  They will have the money but Toronto is not a top city for NBA players.  Yes they have good fans but it is freezing during the season and that get taxed a ton.  Playing back in the states is a significant pay raise for him.  So why not trade him now and get a very valuable asset in Bynum who is under contract for a couple more years on a team that desperately needs a center.  LA would do this in a second as well.  They would all but sew up the 2010 title and LA is a very attractive city for NBA players so they’d have a good shot to resign him and go for multiple titles…why has this not happened?

- I think the reason Amare is not a Cav yet is cause he was voted to start for the west so they are waiting till the game is over.  Expect him to move in the next day or so.

- I was shocked when they announced Gretchen Wilson would be singing the National Anthem.  I have always heard that in terms of the social aspect of it (parties, celebrities, etc) the NBA All-Star Weekend is like the Super Bowl for African Americans.  I am not sure Gretchen has much of a following among that demographic.  Also, do you think she even watched the game?  I bet not.  If I were a betting man (which I am but in a legal and responsible way) I’d bet she likes Jimmy Johnson more than Joe Johnson.

- The Halftime Show, however, made much more sense.  I suspect Shakira and Ailcia Keys have more a following among NBA fans due to their music as well as there, um…body types.  My personal highlight was when Shakira and her dancers lined up and hip thrusted towards the crowd… a long time go to dance  move of Parlay Pete.  Also, I thought Shakira looked fantastic while Alicia Keys looked kind of fa… I mean out of shape.

- Steve Nash is the perfect point guard…period.  Seeing him play with that amount of talent made me drool.  In the first quarter he assissted on almost every bucket, most of the dunks and lay-ups.  

- Marv Albert pointed out during the game that David Lee’s specialty is the back tap.  Huh?  I assume that would be like a WWF (I refuse to acknowledge the name change) Super Star who’s secial move is the arm bar.  I’d be pissed if I were Lee, especially considering his real specialty is being the only white guy in the league who can dunk.

- Also the game was good.  It seems player like Lebron, Wade, Carmello, and Nash really want to win and play fairly hard considering its an exhibition game.  It’s cool that there competitiveness takes over and a good game actually happens… I just feel bad for the idiots that took the under!

Interesting thought out of Houston that the Rockets might try to get involved in the Wizards/Mavs deal and turn the trade into a much bigger deal by facilitating the trade of Jamison and helping net the Wiz’ an impact talent.
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Interesting article out of Memphis about whether the 3-pointer is smart basketball. First off, I disagree with the stance and second, when did Memphis gain the ability to comment on what “smart basketball” is?
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One man who is not worried about the trade deadline: Roger Mason Jr. All he wants is to stay in San Antonio even though sources say that might not be happening.
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Is Melo’s ankle worse than expected; some speculate the answer is yes.
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Is Ricky Rubio available for trade? No way says GM David Kahn, along with some thoughts on Al Jefferson and the next possible big Euro import.
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Another reason why Oklahoma City stinks and Seattle got jobbed…Kevin Durant, please don’t listen to them.
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An interesting op-ed piece on new Clippers coach…um…what’s his name?
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Omri Casspi and Tyreke Evans: Plan on booking these guys for more all-star games to come.
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