Archive for the ‘POE’ Category

By Henry Abbott



The owner of the Grizzlies, Michael Heisley, tells Chip Crain of 3 Shades of Blue his version of how Allen Iverson came to have just a three-game stay in a Memphis Grizzlies uniform.



Heisley says he surprised by Iverson’s complaints about playing time. He says Iverson had come into training camp not in very good shape, and then injured his hamstring. The team then played him slightly more than the trainers recommended — nevertheless Iverson was upset. Heisley explains:

The trainer said I don’t want him playing in the first two or three games but when he starts to play we should play him about 15 minutes. We’re going to watch him very closely and bring him along slowly otherwise he’s going to injure this leg again. So that’s the directions Lionel got. He played him 18 minutes in the first game when we told him 15 minutes. Which was fine and Allen did well. He scored 11 points in 18 minutes I think.

So in the 2nd game, if I remember correctly, he played 25 minutes and he scored like 17 points. Now he went to the press and started bitching about not being the starter. I think he was being a little ridiculous to think he could be put out there after he’s coming off that leg injury and be the starter and that he had earned it like he said he wanted to do.

Lionel then had a meeting with him and the team; with all of the stuff that was going on around the team and Allen was very upset. I was in the Middle East when this took place and I flew for 29 hours and when I got home I heard there was a problem and I flew out to the West Coast. I met with Lionel and I met with Allen and I thought things were going to be straightened out.

Allen came to me that night and said he had a problem at home that he had to take care of, which I believed to be true and I still do believe, and I told him to take as much time as he needed to take care of his personal problem and so he left.

Heisley then says that when he heard Iverson wanted to retire, he decided to ‘divorce’ (or, release) him, so that Iverson could pursue other NBA opportunities because ‘I want Allen to play in this league.’”

Leave it to Ron Artest(notes) to try and steal a little of Tiger Woods and Allen Iverson’s(notes) headline thunder.

In a lengthy and candid interview for the upcoming issue of Sporting News magazine, Artest — best known as the central figure in the infamous Malice at the Palace in Detroit — bares all, including a startling admission that he drank alcohol during games as a member of the Chicago Bulls.

‘I used to drink Hennessy … at halftime,’ said Artest, who played with the Bulls from 1999-2002 and now is with the Los Angeles Lakers. ‘I (kept it) in my locker. I’d just walk to the liquor store (near the stadium) and get it.’

And David Stern is worried about halftime tweets …

For those unfamiliar with the’prestigious alcohol landscape, Hennessy is a brand of cognac, which is a French variety of brandy. It contains 40% alcohol, and is reportedly North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s drink of choice. (Of course it is.)

And that’s not all.

Artest speaks openly in the interview on many other sensitive topics, including his life as a St. John’s college basketball star (’I was a single pimp!’); his feeling towards The Brawl’s’instigator Ben Wallace(notes) (’I'm always in the mood to fight him’); and his plans to become a professional boxer (’In four years, I’m going to try to have my first fight’).

Andrew Sharp is right: Ron-Ron should be obligated to give a feature-length interview at least once a month.

What a character.

Video: Utah Jazz Bear is extreme!: “

‘Nitro Circus’ is a MTV show that features Travis Pastrana and friends traveling the world riding dirt bikes, base jumping and performing other reckless stunts. Recently, the Jazz’s mascot Bear joined the cast, chugged some Mountain Dew, recycled the can and got extreme to the max, yo. Or something like that.

Cheers, Utah Jazz Blog, SLC Dunk and Ziller.

“

(Via Ball Don’t Lie – NBA – Yahoo! Sports.)

Video: Hoops4Life’s ultimate Garnett, Kobe and LeBron mix: “

After a year of anticipation, the epic Hoops4Life collaboration, ‘Prodigies,’ has dropped.

The new video produced by’mixmaking champions ‘Domino,’ ‘Renhigotrare,’ ‘VenomIndustries’ and ‘Dinoman’ details the careers of three young high school prodigies — Kevin Garnett(notes), Kobe Bryant(notes), and LeBron James(notes) — that skipped college to change the NBA landscape forever.

It is easily one of the best NBA videos I’ve ever seen, from editing to audio to storytelling.

No hyperbole.

Cheers, SLAM.

“

(Via Ball Don’t Lie – NBA – Yahoo! Sports.)

2009-10 NBA Win Over/Under Predictions: “OK folks, it’s time for the annual October favorite here at The Painted Area, as we offer our predictions for picking NBA regular-season win over/unders.

2008-09 was a good season for us in terms of O/U predictions – we were 5-2, and strangely, almost every prediction, win or lose, was decided well before the end of season.

Usually these things are within a few games of the line, but each of our picks was right or wrong by at least 10 games, other than Knicks over 31.5, which went down to the final game of the season in a win over the Nets which was memorable only to those of us who made that pick.

For the record, here is our overall record for the three years we’ve been publishing our picks:

Season  TPA  06-07   6-1  07-08   3-4  08-09   5-2  Total   14-7

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First, let’s go straight to the data. What we’ve done below is:

a) sorted each conference in order of the posted over/under line for season wins,
b) provided predicted ‘09-10 wins from three of the smartest men in the business: ESPN’s John Hollinger, Basketball Prospectus’ Kevin Pelton (from his essential book, Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10) and Yahoo!’s Kelly Dwyer (added as they get posted on Yahoo!’s Ball Don’t Lie), and
c) provided ‘08-09 wins.

As always, these are for entertainment purposes only.

EASTEAST(O/U Line - JH/KP/KD - '08-09)CLE   61.5 - 63/59/65 - 66ORL   57.5 - 62/58    - 59BOS   56.5 - 54/50/56 - 62ATL   44.5 - 44/39    - 47DET   41.5 - 39/33/40 - 39 TOR   41.5 - 35/32/40 - 33WAS   41.5 - 41/35    - 19PHI   40.5 - 42/41/43 - 41CHI   40.5 - 38/34/41 - 41MIA   40.5 - 40/36    - 43CHA   37.5 - 29/33    - 35IND   34.5 - 31/27/33 - 36NYK   31.5 - 26/36/30 - 32NJN   28.5 - 24/28/24 - 34MIL   25.5 - 25/34/35 - 34

WEST(O/U Line - JH/KP/KD - '08-09)LAL   62.5 - 65/54    - 65SAS   54.5 - 53/52/57 - 54POR   52.5 - 55/51    - 54DEN   52.5 - 52/50    - 54 UTH   49.5 - 50/49    - 48DAL   48.5 - 47/49/52 - 50NOH   46.5 - 51/52/50 - 49 PHX   41.5 - 40/41    - 46HOU   35.5 - 37/37/37 - 53OKC   35.5 - 36/33    - 23GSW   35.5 - 35/41    - 29LAC   34.5 - 34/41    - 19MEM   27.5 - 27/45/27 - 24MIN   25.5 - 33/32    - 24 SAC   24.5 - 22/21    - 17

Amazing that six teams in the East are all set at either 40.5 or 41.5, but it seems fair. If you have a handle on tabbing 5-10 in the East this season, you’re a better person than I. Needless to say, we’re not touching any of those teams.

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THE PAINTED AREA’S RECOMMENDED 2009-10 O/U PREDICTIONS

OK, without further ado, here are our favorites for 2009-10:

• MIN Over 25.5
• MIL Over 25.5
• ORL Over 57.5
• POR Over 52.5
• GSW Under 35.5
  

Here’s our rationale on the team picks:
MIN OVER 25.5 (24 last season)
At first blush, we loved this line for Minnesota, and the numbers analysis from both Hollinger and Pelton backed up our gut. We’ve tempered our feelings slightly both because of reports that Al Jefferson still has a way to go to get to 100%, and because of the broken hand recently suffered by Kevin Love.

We’re sticking with this pick, though, because the beauty of it is that the bar is *so* low – just 26 wins, and just a 2-game improvement for a team that lost Jefferson for 32 games, and played pretty well when they were all together for Kevin McHale in the middle of the season, including a 12-4 stretch around the New Year.

Yes, they lost a couple good vets in Randy Foye and Mike Miller, but we love the value of the Ramon Sessions signing, especially considering what they had at the point last year, and we like Jonny Flynn’s promise, even though it’s unclear if he can play alongside Sessions.

Believe us, there’s plenty that concerns us about this team in general – frontcourt defense and depth, production on the wings, how Sessions and Flynn play together – but again, that bar is so, so low.

We think that Minny’s line is artificially low because of last season’s injuries (in our opinion, they were closer to a 34-win team in terms of talent than 24), and because they received so much bad press in the summer due to the Ricky Rubio saga, which shouldn’t really affect the 2009-10 edition of this team in any way, especially after they signed Sessions.

MIL OVER 25.5 (34 last season)
Do we think that Milwaukee got worse in terms of talent over the offseason? No question. They lost their three leading scorers (total points) – Ramon Sessions, Richard Jefferson, and Charlie Villanueva – without picking up any marquee names. Why do we like them?

1. ‘08-09 injuries. Again, we don’t think that, in terms of talent, we’re starting with a 34-win team from last season. Remember that Michael Redd and Andrew Bogut missed 95 games combined, and we believe this was closer to a .500 team talent-wise last year. That’s the way they played for the first half of the season.

2. Underrated acquisitions. The Bucks didn’t get any stars, and again, they lost talent overall, but we like the value in underrated pickups like Hakim Warrick, Carlos Delfino and Ersan Ilyasova, who developed nicely in Barcelona the last couple years. We really stuck our neck out in praise of Brandon Jennings in June. We can’t say we think he’s going to be a star right away as a rookie PG, but we do think he’s going to be better than expected, and that he’s going to improve as the year goes on. With this group of unheralded players, we think that Milwaukee lost less actual production and defense than it might seem.

3. Coach. We think that Scott Skiles, while he still has his team’s ear, is one of the very best coaches in the league. He improved Milwaukee’s defensive efficiency from 30th out of 30 in 2007-08 to 15th in his first season last year – a huge improvement. We think he’ll have this team prepared, defending and competing every night, and again, that bar of 25.5 is just so low that we think Skiles will get the Bucks there.

ORL OVER 57.5 (59 last season)
We always need to take a deep breath before going over a number so high, but we really strongly believe that the Magic are an improved team over last season. We also believe that Orlando is on par with the Lakers and Cleveland as one of the three best teams in the league, and think that their line should be at the same level (LAL’s is 62.5, CLE’s is 61.5).

We think the Orlando line is relatively/comparatively low because so many people think that the Magic got worse in essentially exchanging Hedo Turkoglu for Vince Carter, which we think is preposterous. Vince is clearly the better player.

We love this team to pile up regular-season wins because they have so much depth – they can withstand injuries as well as play big or small as needed. We also think that Stan Van Gundy is one of the best coaches in the league. We thought he deserved Coach of the Year honors for turning last year’s unit into the most efficient defensive team in the league. We see a 60+-win team here.

POR OVER 52.5 (54 last season)
Last season, we took Portland over 44.5 after winning 41 in 2007-08, even though Hollinger projected them for just 42. We just felt like this team wasn’t going to end up getting worse, and we make this pick on a similar rationale this season.

52.5 is a high number, but the Blazers won 54 last season as the second-youngest team in the league. Further, Hollinger pointed out in his team forecast that – in terms of point differential plus the bad luck that Portland opponents shot .803 from the foul line, the highest opp. FT% in the 39 years the stat has been tracked – the Blazers actually performed like a 61-win team statistically.

We have concerns about how Andre Miller will fit, but we just can’t imagine a team so young getting worse. We love team depth, which Portland certainly has, in making these regular-season predictions. On top of that, we see Greg Oden making good strides this season. We just can’t imagine them not holding steady with last year’s win total, at the least.

GSW UNDER 35.5 (29 last season)
This one’s coming straight from the gut, as the data works against us – Golden State suffered a lot of injuries last season, they have arguably the deepest collection of under-25 talent in the league, and the Hollinger/Pelton projections average out to 38 wins.

But we think that Nellie has lost it for good, and we’re predicting that it all implodes this season. We believe that this team will perform far under its talent level, though we’re betting there will be entertainment value in it, as Nellie might trot out an Ellis-Curry-Morrow-Azubuike-Maggette lineup or something. The Stephen Jackson situation doesn’t seem like it can possibly end well, they’ve already lost a promising young player (Brandan Wright) to a multi-month injury, and we’re betting there will be one or two talent-depleting trades along the way.

It’s a tough pick, because we think this team has more than 35-win talent on paper, for sure, but we’re sticking to it. We also think that last year’s crappy teams at the bottom of the West will all be better, so wins against the bottom-feeders will be harder to come by.

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HOLLINGER’S TEAMS TO WATCH
Here are the teams which are at least five games over or under the line in John Hollinger’s projections:

TOR – Under 41.5 (35)
CHA – Under 37.5 (29)
NYK – Under 31.5 (26)
MIN – Over 25.5 (33)

PELTON’S TEAMS TO WATCH
Here are the five teams which are the most games over or under the line based on Kevin Pelton’s SCHOENE projections in Pro Basketball Prospectus 2009-10:

TOR – Under 41.5 (32)
DET – Under 41.5 (33)
MIL – Over 25.5 (34)
MEM – Over 27 (45)
LAL – Under 62.5 (54)

Going under on the Raptors is where the statistical projections from these two esteemed gentlemen seem most in concert. However, in his Raptors preview, Hollinger notes that, ‘[A]lmost nothing they do this year would surprise me…. if they win 50 games, it won’t be shocking, and if they win only 25, that won’t raise eyebrows, either.’ We tend to agree, so we’re giving them the ‘Stay Away’ tag.

Other teams for which Hollinger/Pelton are most in agreement are over on the Timberwolves, over on the Hornets and under on the Bobcats.

KD’S TEAMS TO WATCH
With previews for about half the league posted to date, Kelly Dwyer is somewhat remarkably within 5 games of the over/under line for every team so far. His biggest outlier so far is NJN Under 28.5, at 24 predicted wins.

Update: just hours after we posted, Ball Don’t Lie posted their Bucks preview, in which KD picked Milwaukee far above their O/U line of 25.5, at 35. Gotta say we like it.

Last year, Hollinger’s teams to watch ended up 3-2, while Dwyer’s were 4-4 (Pelton’s were not tracked).

One random note: seems to us that the Rockets are one of the toughest teams to predict this season, so we were amused to see that Hollinger, Pelton and Dwyer all tabbed Houston for exactly 37 wins!

ROLAND’S TEAMS TO WATCH
Something we’re keeping an eye on again is the research by Roland Beech of 82games.com which showed that preseason records may have predictive value for regular-season records.

Specifically, Beech found that teams which win less than 30 games one season and then have a winning record the following preseason tend to see substantial improvement.

So far this is based on a small sample size, so these are fairly rough generalizations. The team which best satisfied the criteria last season, Minnesota, was a bust, improving by just 2 wins. Of course, as noted above, the T-wolves struggled after Al Jefferson went down with a torn ACL, which likely prevented them from having something closer to a 10-win improvement.

There’s still a week of preseason games left, but the teams which fit the qualifications so far are the L.A. Clippers (4-2) and Washington (3-2), with Golden State (3-3) and Oklahoma City (2-2) close as well. However, big improvements are expected by many for LAC, WAS and OKC, so it doesn’t help much from an O/U perspective, as those expectations are reflected in the lines. The Warriors run counter to our intuition, of course – we’re sticking with our Under 35.5 pick. We’ll also keep an eye on this over the next week, and maybe reconsider GSW if they finish strong.

We’ll check back after the season to see how everyone did. Finally: Remember, this is not a competition, it is only an exhibition – please, no wagering.

“

(Via The Painted Area.)

Bob, Jason and Ben… an entertainment trio from Northern Michigan make a contribution to the world of basketball trick shots. See bobjasonben.com to learn more about these guys. All footage was taken from 3 half-hour sessions during July of 2009.

Unintentional comedy is still comedy nonethelesss. So bad, that it is good, this “rap” by The True Warrior gives us some insight into his personality, character… even at the expense of our respective eardrums while we listen to his *very* poor attempt at finding rhythm and rhyme.

I post this in lieu of the realization that the Lakers [essentially] traded good-guy, high upside, athlete and team-player Trevor Ariza for Ron Artest and Khloe Kardasian.

Lakers traded for this?

Ron, simply, is a nut as we learn from listening to his song. Here is what we learn about Ron Artest from Ron Artest:

- That Michael was his N-word

- He wanted to touch Michael’s hand

- He cried for Mike (often and repeatedly, based on the chorus)

- He understands controversy

- He understands about people wanting to hurt him

- He understands about having to grow up ‘early’

- He knows what it likes to not feel worthy

- Mike (MJ) showed him ‘love’… even if he didn’t know it

- MJ never knew him

- He thinks Mike’s music was ’straight crack’.

- The heartbeat of MJ is living inside Ron’s body (and apparently in ours too).

- MJ is the most official and inspired Usher and Jaime Foxx

- He believes that MJ is still alive; or that someone is keeping him alive. Could be figurative, though I’m not sure Ron really understands that based on this song.

- Ron is moving to the moon… or to sand dunes.

- Ron is strapped, always.. but he put it down for Mike… not sure how long the non-strappness is going to last.

Chris Bosh, Cyber Hero: “

Some jerk beat Chris Bosh to registering the domain www.chrisbosh.com. So Bosh went after the cybersquatter. All sorts of legal wrangling later, Bosh has won damages, his domain … and a zillion other domains the same guy had been squatting.

There are nearly 800 names in the list, and Bosh and his internet consultant, Hadi Teherany of Max Deal, say theyll return them all to their rightful owners for free.

Which means a good chunk of the basketball world will be owing Bosh a favor. The list is thick with basketball players in the NBA, overseas, college and high school. There are also some football players, political sites, Britney Spears child, singers, a site or two that sound raunchy, and the Mexican wrestler ‘El Octagon.’

Just a few of the many NBA names on the list:

• SamCassell.com
• SteveNash.com
• AmareStoudemire.com
• AndreIguodala.com
• JJRedick.com
• EddyCurry.com
• CarmeloAnthony.com
• BrandonJennings.com
• DelonteWest.com’
• LuolDeng.com
• KobeStopper.com
• CaronButler.com
• DeronWilliams.com
• DariusMiles.com
• BryanColangelo.com

(Also on the list is AaronAfflalo.com, even though that Denver player spells his first name ‘Arron.’) The vast list of names also includes instructions for athletes and celebrities to get their names back from Bosh, if they wish. Paging El Octagon …

“

(Via ESPN.com – True Hoop – Blog.)

For my money, there are only a few prospects in this draft worth spending time and money on, the rest are fodder. This draft is especially weak, and as is want to happen in the days leading up to the draft, many are being over-hyped.

I put these players into tiers:

These are guys who are going to develop into contributors on playoff teams and/or All-Stars:

Griffin
Curry
Evans
Rubio

These guys will have ‘nice’ careers- meaning that if you draft these guys you can count on them being contributors to a team and long careers:

Psycho T
Jordan Hill
Flynn

These are guys who are going to go WAY above where they should go in a normal draft and will not be significant contributors. Typically these guys are drafted for a perceived need or for trading purposes:

Harden
Thabeet
Blair

Here’s a list of guys, that if I had a roster spot, I’d like to take a chance on and see if I could develop them:

Clark
DeRozan

These are guys who are going to go later in the draft that will be solid values:

Collison
Lawson
Caroll

These guys should update their passports and look to Europe (even if they do get drafted):

Young

Going to be taken higher and will have to take some time to develop (and maybe by a second or third team), but when they do, watch out!

Holliday

This is a weak draft and I think that most teams should not expect to significantly improve because of their pick(s).