OUCH!!!

Shaun Livingston took one for "The Cripples" yesterday! He saw Patrick's ACL tear, and raised with a PCL, MCL, and tearing his meniscus! Then he finished off with a drink of patella dislocation! Wonder if he would have gone through these issues if he had gone to Duke after all...

Dallas is scary.........................looking.

Dallas is scary. They held Minnesota to 65 points tonight! The T-Wolves only scored 8 points in the second quarter and only 12 points in the fourth quarter. I know Minnesota is crappy and all but they do still have KG.

This reminded me of the Spurs game we went to where they displayed on the Jumbotron that SA once held Denver to 3 points in the first quarter. This stat seemed impossible, but then I did some research on Wikipedia. Check these ridiculous facts out:

Fewest Points in a NBA Quarter
2 by the Dallas Mavericks at L.A. Lakers on April 6, 1997 (3rd Quarter)
2 by the Golden State Warriors vs. Toronto Raptors on February 8, 2004 (4th Quarter)

Since 1983, eight teams have scored ZERO points in overtime.

Fewest Combined Score in Overtime
2- Denver Nuggets (0) vs. Charlotte Hornets (2) on January 13, 1997

Largest Margin of Victory in a NBA Game
68-Cleveland Cavaliers vs. Miami Heat, December 17, 1991 the final score was Cleveland, 148. Miami, 80. - Holy crap that was a beat down!

Check out all the silly stats here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_records

Simmons grades the Trade Deadline.

HOUSTON: A-minus
Carry-over grade from the superb Shane Battier deal. The Rockets couldn't swing a deadline trade because they didn't have anything to trade; even their plan to land Chucky Atkins by sending old footage of Juwan Howard from the '96 season to Jerry West and pretend it was a 2007 tape didn't work. Too bad. They were one more quality guard away from being legitimately interesting in May and June. And while we're here, nobody is allowed to mention another "Coach of the Year" candidate in 2007. The award goes to Jeff Van Gundy. Done and done. Let's agree not to bring this up again.


SAN ANTONIO: (INC)
If the Spurs honestly believe this particular roster of guys can beat Phoenix or Dallas this spring, they're crazy. On the other hand, I'm not sure what they could have done. They need another big man to help out Tim Duncan defensively (he's slipping noticeably on that end), as well as a big-time perimeter stopper (Manu Ginobili's slipping and Bruce Bowen already slipped) ... but they had no trading chips other than their No. 1 pick, Luis Scola's rights and a couple of smaller expiring contracts. (Note: I spent 25 solid minutes trying to figure out a way they could have landed Joel Przybilla or Gerald Wallace for a reasonable price and couldn't make it work.) So what can you do? They're getting old and there's no real way to stop it.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/070223

Couple of stand out performances today

Check out Amare's line today:

43 pts, 16 reb, 6 ast. Yowza!

Vince Carter:

40 pts, 9 reb, 8 ast. Jeez.

And has anyone noticed how close Jason Kidd is to averaging a triple-double this season? Currently he's at:

14.3 pts, 8.1 reb, 8.9 ast

And Nash is at:

18.8 pts, 3.3 reb, 11.9 ast

Steve's assists are unbelieveable but I almost think Kidd's line is more impressive. Although his high rebounds might be because of his team's inability to rebound. He does lead the Nets in rebounds and he's the point guard.

oh yea...

i forgot about the wheelchair dunk one

hack a shaq

jeffrey sent me a couple of links to 'the onion' with some funny nba pics... thats all i got

On his Denver Nuggets...

Nuggets coach George Karl said. "And some nights I think we're going to do it and other nights I think we're too individualistic in our thoughts, too worried about our shots, our minutes."

exactly, George.

East Coast Dance

Dance contest

Looks like the East are the favorites in this years allstar game. That is, this years allstar pre-game dance-off:) This video had me laughing pretty good. Shaq, Lebron, Howard all get'n down. That has to be the BEST 400-pound, 8-feet tall dancer i ever seen.

Click link, and click on the video named, Dance Contest (thumbnail is Shaq and Howard)

Pippen Returns

Here's Artical

The 41 yr old says he's still got a year and a half of good basketball in him.

I think he could probably be effective in limited minutes, like all the other old greats. Hell, Mutumbo is probably older.

What team would he fit best with for a playoff run this year? Assuming he can still contribute effectively.

At first, I was thinking, naturally, with Phil Jackson, back to the triangle. But honestly, maybe Detroit. They been looking for a savvy perimeter shooter/playmaker to come off the bench. His high bball IQ, passing skills, and defensive skills would be a good fit there. Miami, Cleveland, would also be good places, i think. (though Clevland could use anyone, especially a guard. I am so tired of Lebron not having a badass pg to pass him the ball. They make that man do everything) I'm not naming many west teams, because i feel like the west contenders have pretty complete rosters, and they would have trouble making room for him. I really know nothing about utah, so i don't know about them.

I was just browsing Pippen artical from wiki, he made the playoffs 16 straight years. only Kareem and Horry have more playoff games than him.

New Seed Predictions

Alright gentlemen, its time to provide your new seed predictions. Just add your predictions to this thread so that its nice and tidy.

van gundy

Don Nelson Taking a Dump

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

MVP's so far?

So I was thinking about it, and of course I'm biased. But what about T-Mac? Now I know I said Yao was going to be the MVP before the season started, but what about the Mac now that Yao has been out? Nobody seems to be even considering him.

I understand the arguments for Nash, even though they need to give it a rest. They got tired of giving MJ the award every year, so nobody had problems throwing one the Chucksters way at least one time.

Dirk, yeah, his team is doing amazing. Yet he has more support than Tracy, and his numbers are very similar.

Then there is Kobe. MAN DO I HATE THAT GUY. But I have to give him props. He's too frigging good.

Then lastly on my list is Agent Zero. Mr Gilbert Arenas. I'm liking the Wizards. It's pretty fortunate that I moved to a city that has a team that I think is easily likeable. He seems like a pretty cool cat. Plus he's got the numbers, and his team aint half bad

Should we really be scared of the Suns?

Phoenix is 1-7 against the Western Conference's top four teams - Dallas, San Antonio, Utah and the Los Angeles Lakers - with the lone win coming Thursday against the Spurs.

Raja Bell just went down to knee injury...as expected.

Watching them, I don't think they have what it takes to go to the finals.

Man do I hate Shaq

Shaq was just voted into the All-Star game this year after only playing 8 games this season thus far. What a joke. Here are his "all-star" numbers: 13 points per game and 6 rebounds per game. Woo-hoo. There needs to be some sort of qualification other than just popular vote in order to make the All-Star game. Why don't coaches pick all the All-Stars? It's not like they're going to leave out players who truly deserve to go and are fan favorites. I'm sure LeBron and Kobe would still get picked by coaches.

But back to Shaq. What a big piece of crap this guy is. I can't believe some people think that he has great basketball talent. His talent is being big and exploiting his size advantage over smaller people. I will admit that he has some talent at playing basketball. Obviously there have been people similar in size that totally flopped in the NBA, so clearly he posseses some amount of skill at basketball. His is fairly nimble for his size. Consider this though, Shaq is listed at 7'1" and 325 lbs. If he were 6'9" and 250 lbs would how good would he be? I wonder if he would even be playing in the NBA.

Seriously, I have never seen anyone take advantage of just being bigger or taller than someone as bad as Shaq does. That's all he knows how to do. He takes the easy way out on everything. You can tell he doesn't try at all to better his game either. If he did he would have a better than a 53% lifetime Free Throw percentage. Bill Simmons said it best, if the average 13 year old girl can do something better than you in the sport that you play, maybe you don't deserve to be called a professional. You would think that somewhere along the line Shaq could have bothered to learn how to make a free throw.

If he had any class at all he would decline the All-Star game and let someone more deserving play. But he's basically a 325 pound child so he'll show up and do a funny dance and then play 10 minutes of the game and claim that whatever side he's on always wins the All-Star game even though he had no effect on the outcome whatsoever.

I suppose that's enough hating for one post.

Dale Davis is funny

I do feel bad for him. He is pistons, like, backup, backup, backup big man. Probably best defensive big man they got, but far from best all around. He was aquisitioned last year for the sole purpose of helping Ben Wallace with the huge task of guarding shaq, (andfor splitting the fouls that shaq guarders inevitably get) .

Anyway, now that Detroit has Webber, he does not get any playtime and naturally is a bit frustratied.

Yesterday he was put on inactive list for missing morning shootaround. He said that he didn't sleep through his alarm clock. "I didn't set it," he said b4 last night's game. That one cracked me up.

Maybe not setting clock was an accident. But the way i read it, it sounded intentional; hard to say, now that i am actually htinking about it.

Detroit is looking to trade Nazr Mohammed and/or Flip Murray for a perimeter scorer. So that will help Davis get a little playing time back. Plus, Detroit could quite possibly face Heat in first round of playoffs. So hang in there Dale:)

Stats Attack

So, I was interested to see how the top 10 teams ranked in the most commonly appreciated stats. Here are the top 10 teams based on record and where they rank in the league in each of the following stats.

The number at the bottom is the sum of the difference of each teams rank in that stat and their rank based on record. According to this, the most important stat then would be 3 point % since there is the least discrepency between how teams rank in that stat and how they rank based on wins and loses. Not surprising that FT% and Opp. Steals don't matter much, but notice that Assists don't matter as much as you might expect.

Ranking the rankings

1. 3 pointers
2. Score a lot
3. Rebound
4. Don't turn the ball over
5. Make your shots
6. Don't get blocked
7. Pass the ball
8. Make your freebies
9. Don't get your pocket picked

As far as Defense goes...

Stealing the ball doesn't matter much, in fact forcing turnovers in general doesn't translate to wins. Very strange to think that preventing your opponent from getting assists matters a lot but getting assists yourself doesn't. Umm...you lost me.

Add up the differences and it looks like offense actually matters more than defense.

708: Offensive difference between these stats and wins/loses for these 10 teams
867: Defensive difference between these stats and wins/loses for these 10 teams

And how do they rank based upon their stat rank?

Ok, I'm done.

Spurs fans Beware

timmy had a fantastic game against the suns last night. i think he had 5 blocks alongside his usual double double.
also, amare had 24 pts and 23 rebounds.
and the suns won.
i am still an avid spurs fan and if anyone has what it takes to beat the suns in 7 games, i think it is my spurs.
but the suns scare me and last night is a perfect example of why.
they are scary.

I couldn't help myself

I wasn't going to post anything more about Kevin Durant but then last night he blew up on Texas Tech.

37 points, 23 rebounds, 3 steals and he shot 5/9 or 56% from behind the arc!

He's averaging almost 25 and 12 now. One sports radio talk show host said that he will almost certainly go first overall in the next NBA draft. I hope he likes playing in Boston!