June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
They’re telling me nothing, because I have no NBA sources. But, truth be told, I don’t believe so-called sources mean squat.
I’ve been listening to ESPN’s myriad formats throughout the day, and it’s laughable. Pathetic. News agencies creating news. This guy says this, this guy says that, this guy believes that guy is going with that guy to this city. It’s all crap, because no one has a real clue, but there’s much space to fill, so they talk and talk and talk.
Hence, so will I. Here, for the only time, are my predictions of what happens to the various free agents. Compare my picks with the people paid to know—and I bet I hold my own …
LeBron James—Will sign with the Chicago Bulls, because he loves the red-and-black color scheme.
Chris Bosh and D-Wade—Wind up teammates in Miami.
Joe Johnson—Returns to Atlanta, because the money and team are both great.
Dirk Nowitzki—A no-brainer. Returns to Dallas to wrap up his career and soak in the love.
Amare Stoudemire—Back in Phoenix. If you’re him, why would you ever leave Steve Nash?
David Lee—Now starting, for yooouuuurrrrr Brooklyn Nets …
Carlos Boozer—The Knicks have thrown two seasons and dismantled their entire roster … for this guy.
Paul Pierce—Teams up with LeBron in Chicago to kick ass and take names.
Rudy Gay—Doesn’t leave Memphis. Hell, B.B. King’s has great burgers.
Richard Jefferson—Boston goes with this weak replacement for Pierce.
Luis Scola—Back to Houston, because the mall there is wonderful.
Ray Allen—Doesn’t want to leave Boston … and won’t.
Shaquille O’Neal—The Clippers come calling … and Shaq answers.
Al Harrington—The ultimate good player on bad teams, he somehow winds up in San Antonio.
Brendan Haywood—The Knicks say farewell to Eddy, hello to this guy. Pump it up, Knick fans!
Derek Fisher—To leave the Lakers would be crazy. He sticks.
Allen Iverson—The Kentucky Bisons come calling. And only the Kentucky Bisons come calling.
Stephon Marbury—In his driveway.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
Meant to blog about this a while ago—forgot.
Have been spending much of my driving time listening to new Eminem which, I must say, might even be better than old Eminem.
Not Afraid, the song above, is terrific. Beyond terrific. First, it’s brutally honest and painful about his drug addiction and recivery. Second, Eminem—vocally—sounds like Eminem again. Third, he stopped taking shots at teenage singers—something that got really old.
At his best, Eminem is the elite. He is to hiphop in the 2000s what Chuck Berry was to rock—not the originator of a genre, but someone who took it to a significantly higher level. Plus, I like how Eminem admits that his last CD, Relapse, was mediocre. For a while all my son wanted to hear was Crack A Bottle, the single he released with 50 Cent and Dr. Dre. The song was catchy, moderately funny—and lame. Truly lame.
Now, the guy is back. And as good as ever.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under 2010-2011 chicago blackhawks, Chicago Blackhawks, Kris Versteeg contract, Stan Bowman, Stan Bowman Blackhawks, blackhawks deal versteeg, blackhawks trade, blackhawks trade versteeg, hawks deal versteeg, stan bowman gm, toronto maple leafs acquire kris versteeg, versteeg, versteeg trade, versteeg traded away, versteeg traded to toronto | Comments Off
What a difference five days can make in the world of the Chicago Blackhawks‘ GM Stan Bowman. Here’s what was written by Chicago Breaking Sports on June 25th. Note the Bowman quotes:
Bowman said Friday that despite the rumors, many of which focused on winger Kris Versteeg, the Hawks don’t have to make any more deals to clear space under the salary cap to sign key restricted free agents, including goaltender Antti Niemi and defenseman Niklas Hjalmarsson. The Hawks have already dealt Dustin Byfuglien, Brent Sopel, Ben Eager and Colin Fraser.
“We’re fine,” Bowman said. “We made our move to unload some salary there and the salary cap was higher than we anticipated; we didn’t think it would be at $59.4 (million). Those combinations made it a much better scene.”
And tonight, here’s the transaction they completed:
Blackhawks acquired forwards Viktor Stalberg (STAHL-buhrg), Philippe Paradis (fihl-EEP, PAIR-a-dee,) and Christopher DiDomenico (dee-DOH-mehn-ih-koh) from the Toronto Maple Leafs in exchange for right wing Kris Versteeg and left wing Bill Sweatt.
Stalberg, 24, made his National Hockey League debut with Toronto in 2009-10, leading team rookies with nine goals and ranking third with 14 points in 40 regular-season games. The Gothenburg, Sweden, native also ranked second on the American Hockey League’s Toronto Marlies with 33 points and third with 21 assists despite appearing in just 39 of the club’s 80 regular-season contests due to NHL recall.
Prior to turning pro, Stalberg spent three seasons at the University of Vermont (ECAC), recording 41 goals, 84 points and 119 penalty minutes in 117 career outings (2006-09). Toronto’s fifth choice, 161st overall, in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft, Stalberg led Vermont in goals (24), assists (22) and points (46) during the 2008-09 season, helping the club to an appearance in the Frozen Four while earning a spot as a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award. He made his professional debut later that spring with the Marlies, recording one assist in two Calder Cup playoff tilts.
Paradis, 19, was selected by the Carolina Hurricanes in the first round of the 2009 NHL Entry Draft (27th overall) before his rights were acquired by Maple Leafs on December 3, 2009. The Dolbeau, Quebec, native made his professional debut in four games with the Marlies in 2009-10, posting two assists in four AHL matchups. Paradis has increased his goal total in each of his first three seasons with the Shawinigan Cataractes (QMJHL), which includes sharing second on the club with 24 in 63 games in 2009-10. He paced the team with 104 penalty minutes while finishing fifth with 44 points during the regular season.
Paradis has racked up 117 points (54G, 63A) and 22 penalty minutes in 174 career regular-season games with Shawinigan from 2007 to 2010. He has also notched 15 points (8G, 7A) and 24 penalty minutes in 30 career postseason tilts, which includes helping the club reach the 2009 QMJHL President’s Cup Finals with 12 points (6G, 6A) in 21 contests.
DiDomenico, 21, paced the QMJHL’s Drummondville Voltigeurs with 14 assists and shared first with 21 points in 14 postseason games in 2009-10. The Toronto native also tallied 22 points (7G, 15A) in 12 regular-season matchups during his fourth QMJHL campaign. He has tallied 251 points (90G, 161A) and 235 penalty minutes in 203 career regular-season games with the Saint John Sea Dogs (2006-09) and Drummondville (2009-10).
Toronto’s fifth choice, 164th overall, in the 2007 NHL Entry Draft, DiDomenico has also collected 75 points (19G, 56A) in 45 career QMJHL postseason tilts, which includes a league-best 31 assists in just 15 outings in 2009 with Drummondville. He captured a Gold Medal with Team Canada at the 2009 World Junior Championships.
Versteeg, 24, appeared in 170 regular-season games over parts of the last three seasons with Chicago, collecting 57 assists, 101 points and 96 penalty minutes, which includes 44 points (20G, 24A) and 35 penalty minutes in 79 contests during the 2009-10 campaign. Versteeg, who was acquired by the Blackhawks via a trade with the Boston Bruins on February 3, 2007, also accrued 26 points (10G, 16A) and 36 penalty minutes in 39 Stanley Cup Playoff outings with Chicago over the last two years.
Sweatt, 21, was selected by the Blackhawks with their second choice, 38th overall, in the 2007 NHL Draft. He posted 33 points (15G,18A) in 39 games during his senior season at Colorado College (WCHA) in 2009-10.
Well, I guess they just had more salary cap space to clear.
And here’s one more positive- we won’t have to hear Versteeg’s attempts at rapping anymore. The parade podium “free style verse” was worse than Vanilla Ice, Snow, Shaggy and Will Smith combined.
Possibly Related Posts:
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Chicago Bulls, Chris Bosh, DeMarcus Cousins, Evan Turner, Gordon Heyward, John Wall, Lazar Hayward, LeBron James, Marquette basketball, NBA, NBA Draft, Podcast (The Deposit), The Velociraptor, The Villain, Wesley Johnson, his royal smoothness, nba free agency, washington wizards | Comments Off
Welcome to the triumphant return of The Deposit, The Sports Bank’s podcast! It’s been a long, sad hiatus, but our triumphant return just a scant few hours before the most important free agency period in NBA history begins was highly important!
Paul Schmidt hosts and talks with our NBA expert David Kay about the NBA draft, what it does to certain teams and how that fits into this upcoming free agency period, one so deep that even site founder Paul Banks might be able to get max money.
Possibly Related Posts:
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Lloyd Lake, NCAA, Pac 10, Photo evidence, Reggie Bush, Todd McNair, Trojan football, USC sports, college football, sanctions | Comments Off
USCfootball.com published a photograph that displays Todd McNair, Faizon Love, Michael Michaels, and Lloyd Lake together at a gathering. McNair, of course, is the former running backs coach under Pete Carroll, and Michaels and Lake represent the agency that provided Reggie Bush with improper benefits.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
The Cowboys are equipped to navigate through the league's third-toughest schedule because of their stingy defense.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi isn’t exactly my type of writer.
Guy curses in his work all the fucking, oops, all the time. He makes some sweeping comments that, quite often, ruin the point of a piece. He also places himself in the center of most of his stories. I generally hate this, in that in conveys the arrogance of a writer. It screams, “Yeah, here’s the story—but surely you’d prefer to read about the story as it pertains to me!”
All that being said, the dude has a voice. A strong voice. And he uses it like a sledgehammer. He’s a writer who craves the truth; who grabs it, wrestles with it, fights for it, and doesn’t give a shit who gets pulverized with the pointy edge of the shovel. I love that and, because of it, I mostly love Taibbi. In this era, so many writers among us are, as Matt would hardly hesitate to say, pussies. They aim to please, not report. They want to make friends, not cover big stories. In sports, you see it every time a writer gets the giggles after an athlete calls him by his first name. It’s a plague, and it ain’t getting any better.
So, again, I have much appreciation for Taibbi—today more than ever before.
In case you’ve been sleeping on Planet Zubark, a Rolling Stone freelancer named Michael Hastings broke one of the bigger stories of the year—Gen. Stanley McChrystal slamming the Obama Administration for a variety of reasons. The aftermath involved the general being given the boot and a surge in attention to the disaster that is Afghanistan. It was a huge-impact piece; the sort of work we all should strive for.
Yet instead of praising Hastings’ piece, several political/military reporters and so-called “insiders” questioned the writer’s tactics, motives and approach. Nobody was more visibly critical than Lara Logan, the CBS News chief foreign correspondent. On CNN’s Reliable Sources program, Logan agreed that Hastings violated an “unspoken agreement” that journalists are not supposed to “embarrass [the troops] by reporting insults and banter.”
Uh … what?
Taibbi’s response is brilliant, and worth reading. It’s the exact way I, too, feel; a numbing exasperation with people like Logan, who somewhere along the way seems to have forgotten what it means to be a journalist.
And, for the record: No, you don’t lie. You never lie. But you do sometimes have to use your poker face. If a subject is spewing nonsense and spewing nonsense and spewing nonsense, it’s not a reporter’s job to stand up and say, “Hey, this might hurt you!” Just the opposite. You listen and absorb. True, non-spin insight is gold.
Only a dolt like Logan would toss it back.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Comments Off
Wes Phillips hopes to become a third-generation head coach one day. First a quality control coach in Dallas, his experience will expand as an aide to the O-Line, too.
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under 2008 NBA Finals, 2010 NBA Finals, Al Jefferson, Basketball, Boston, Boston Celtics, Boston sports, Celtics, Danny Ainge, Delonte West, Doc Rivers, Gerald Green, Glen Davis, Glenn "Doc" Rivers, Glenn Rivers, Jeff Green, Kevin Garnett, Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves, NBA, National Basketball Association, Paul Pierce, Pro Basketball, Ray Allen, Red Auerbach, Seattle Super Sonics, Theo Ratliff, Troy Sparks, Wally Szczerbiak, sports | Comments Off
After the Boston Celtics were ousted by the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers in game seven of the Finals, Doc Rivers announced that forward Rasheed Wallace was set to retire. As for Mr. Rivers’ decision to return to Boston, he told journalists he was unsure, having that predicament leaving Celtics fans holding their collective breaths as they watched Boston favorite, Tom Thibodeau, the three-year assistant coach for the team, depart to become the Chicago Bulls’ next head coach.
Rivers has been coaching up the Celtics since 2004. A first-place finish in the Atlantic division in his first season led to a first round game seven exit delivered by the Reggie Miller’s “Last Stand” version of the Indiana Pacers. In 2005 the Celtics played poorly and earned themselves a third place playoff-less finish in the division. In 2006, a year that saw the Celtics win only 24 games, with the death of legend Red Auerbach occurring merely a couple of days before the season even began, trouble begin to brew in the season I’d like to dub as “Tony Allen’s ACL.”
I blogged like a madman during the 2006 season, calling for Rivers’ head, just like some other Celtics fans were doing. Hell, I even remember playing the video game “NBA 2k6″ during the summer of ’06, before the season, and trading Paul Pierce for Kevin Garnett. Celtics fans wanted Garnett; Lakers fans wanted Garnett. K.G. had been one of my favorite all-time players up to that point, and to see him go to the Lakers would have did more than piss me off. I wanted Rivers to make a move; more-so, I wanted Danny Ainge to pull the trigger on a deal.
During the 2007 NBA Draft (June 28), the Seattle Super Sonics traded Ray Allen and the draft rights of Glen Davis to the Celtics in exchange for Delonte West, Wally Szczerbiak and Jeff Green.
A questionable decision, I thought, considering Ray Allen’s age, and GLEN FREAKIN’ DAVIS?! That fat guy from LSU who people kept calling the “Baby Shaq” after LSU ousted JJ Redick’s Duke Blue Devils in the 2006 NCAA Tournament?! The guy who had hurt himself in a car accident in December 2006?! THAT GLEN DAVIS?!
I shook my head and looked forward to what the Celtics were going to do next. “Rivers’ last season, upcoming, 2007.”
When the Celtics tradedAl Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Sebastian Telfair, Gerald Green, Theo Ratliff and cash considerations to the Minnesota Timberwolves to acquire Kevin Garnett, a two-way bittersweet feeling erupted in my stomach: it’s either you win the championship over the next couple of years, or this is a failure.
Long story short: the Celtics finished the regular season with the best record in the NBA, struggled against Atlanta and Cleveland in the first two rounds of the Eastern playoffs, handled Detroit with relative East, and then proceeded to whip the purple and gold off the LA Lakers’ jerseys in six games in the Finals.
Rivers was hailed a hero, anointed a little bit by my hypocritical ass and his job security peaked.
One championship, a second round exit and another Finals appearance later, Rivers made the decision to return to coach his seventh season for the team that he’s been on a roller coaster with. The last three years the roller coaster has been reaching the top of the pinnacle. The only way to go now is down. An expiring Ray Allen contract, an opted-out Paul Pierce, the effed knee of Kevin Garnett, a new assistant coach and a makeover…. it’s like a television drama.
Will the real Doc Rivers please stand up? 2010 will tell. Coaching, management and attitude.
The Boston Celtics’ claim to glory: UBUNTU!
June 30, 2010 | Filed Under Dallas Cowboys, Felix Jones, Jason Witten, Miles Austin, NFL, Rankings/List, Roy Williams (WR), Tony Romo | Comments Off
Last week, a reader suggested we perform a value-based statistical analysis (similar to our 2009 Player Grades ) which could be used to determine the worth of one player over another. For example, how much better would the Cowboys be if Felix Jones played every snap at running back (disregarding fatigue)? How costly would an injury to Jason Witten be? Essentially, how much does each player contribute to a win?
This task is easier said than done (and since it isn’t even particularly easily said, it sure isn’t easy to do). As the reader points out, one would have to “normalize” the conditions outside of the player to determine his true worth. This is rather easy to do (relatively speaking) in a sport like baseball where the circumstances are basically always the same.
In football, though, no two plays are ever really identical. Statistical comparisons among players on different teams are rather pointless, as the nature of each player’s system plays an incredible role in his statistical capabilities.
Nonetheless, there have been some attempts to “normalize” outside factors and assign an objective value to players. In fact, we are in the process of making such an attempt right now. Until then, we wanted to take a look at the values of Cowboys players gathered by some other leading football statistics gurus (and compare them to our own 2009 Player Rankings ).
One such source (and perhaps the most well-known) is Football Outsiders . The primary FO statistic with which we are concerned is DVOA, or Defense-adjusted Value Over Average. FO describes DVOA as “representing value, per play, over an average player at the same position in the same game situations.”
DVOA is an excellent statistic to use to compare with our own player rankings, as both represent efficiency , not overall value . For example, Roy Williams had a greater overall value to the offense than Kevin Ogletree in 2009, but most would argue Ogletree was more efficient during his snaps.
Another source of efficiency-based value rankings is Advanced NFL Stats —a site we refer you to a lot. Advanced NFL Stats implements a statistic called Expected Points Added. We’ve spoken about "expected points" in the past, and ANS talks about it here .
In short, EP (expected points) is the value of a certain situation in football. EPA (expected points added) is the difference between one situation and another. If the Cowboys have a 1st and 10 at their own 30-yard line, for example, the EP of that situation is +1.0 point, i.e. on average, they can expect one point from that drive. If Miles Austin catches a pass for 50 yards, the Cowboys’ EP shoots up to +4.0 (the expected points of a 1st and 10 at the opponent’s 20-yard line). Thus, the EPA for that play is +3.0.
We are concerned with EPA/play—the amount of expected points a player adds to his team’s point total per play.
A final source for efficiency-based values is Pro Football Focus . PFF is different from FO and ANS in that they do not necessary use the outcomes of plays to formulate rankings. Instead, they break down each play and assign values based on their interpretation of how well each player performed his job on that play. You can read more about their methodology here .
It is important to note that all three sites use a value of “0″ as a baseline for average play. Players in the negative are worse than average, and players with positive values are better than average for DVOA, EPA, and PFF’s values.
Click to enlarge.
The chart above displays the rankings and values for the Cowboys offense from all three sites (Football Outsiders, Advanced NFL Stats, and Pro Football Focus), along with our own grades. A few notes before we analyze the data:
- NR=Not Rated (likely due to insufficient sample size)
- The statistics circled in blue are a player’s highest rating; those in red are his lowest.
- Comparisons among players at different positions are meaningless due to the nature of the data.
Observations
-
Only two players, Martellus Bennett and Flozell Adams, were unanimously voted as “below average.”
Shockingly, ANS rated Roy Williams as slightly above average. We love Williams’ attitude right now, but we couldn’t disagree more about his 2009 play .
-
Tony Romo’s highest rating (from FO) put him at just seventh among all quarterbacks. PFF had him all the way at 15th.
We had Romo rated as the seventh-best quarterback in the NFL in our 2010 Starting Quarterback Power Rankings . We would have ranked his 2009 play, though, as top-five.
-
It’s unanimous: Felix Jones is one of the NFL’s most efficient running backs. He was ranked fifth, sixth, and ninth, respectively.
Jones’ lowest grade would actually probably come from us. He has a long way to go to prove he can hold up over an entire season, but as far as efficiency, he’s one of the league’s best. We provided him a B+ in short-yardage running, an A in overall running, a B in receiving, and a B in pass protection .
-
Two out our three sources agree with us that Barber was about average last season. FO ranked him as a top-15 back. Meanwhile, Tashard Choice checked in with a higher efficiency rating than Jones from two of the sites.
We rated Barber as an average running back in 2009 (77.2 percent). We were also very high on Choice, rating him just 2.5 percentage points behind Jones. Choice would have ranked as one of the league’s top running backs on Football Outsiders and Advanced NFL Stats had he played more snaps.
-
Jason Witten was ranked all the way from the league’s top tight end to No. 11.
Witten was the No. 1 tight end in our NFL Tight End Rankings . There’s simply no doubt about it.
-
Opinions on Deon Anderson varied from slightly below average to the league’s sixth-best fullback.
We tend to agree with the latter. The Cowboys averaged nearly two yards more per rush with Anderson in the game (as compared to John Phillips) and .2 yards more per pass. Click here to see our in-depth study on Anderson’s 2009 play.
-
Miles Austin has arrived. He was rated from fifth to ninth.
We gave Austin the third-highest grade of any Cowboy due to his low 2.2 percent drop rate and incredible 10.4 yards-per-attempt.
-
Ratings of both Patrick Crayton and Roy Williams varied.
Two of the three sources had Crayton as a top-16 receiver (in terms of efficiency). Williams wasn’t high on anyone’s list, but PFF had him ranked all the way down at No. 100.
-
PFF was the only site to rank individual linemen, but their ratings fell in line with ours.
We were a bit higher on Leonard Davis and Andre Gurode and slightly lower on Kyle Kosier (who they listed as the Cowboys’ top lineman last season). We gave Davis and Gurode “A-” grades and Kosier a “B.” All three linemen made our list of Dallas’ top 15 overall players last season.
Conclusion
There is obviously quite a bit of work left to be completed in the area of advanced football statistics, particularly objective efficiency rankings. Still, the difficulty of the task is no reason to concede. The more we learn which statistics contribute to a team’s success (and how much), the closer we will be to “normalizing” subjective factors in an attempt to acquire objective player ratings.
Read more Dallas Cowboys news on BleacherReport.com
Next Page »
