ZoomSlowik

QUOTE (chw42 @ May 21, 2013 -> 10:10 PM) Cavs also have Varejao, who before his injury was one of the best centers in the NBA last year. The problem with that is that Varejao is made of glass. He's almost always hurt, he's only played 81 games over the last three years. If he does somehow stay healthy, he'll probably get more than he's worth in 2015 free agency. I'd say Varejao makes it easier to take Noel since you don't need him to play right away coming off the injury.

QUOTE (iamshack @ May 21, 2013 -> 10:06 PM) I really would not like having to pick Noel if I had the #1 pick...he has a chance to be a nice defensive player, but probably not going to do much offensively...that's sort of setting your sights low with the numero uno... This draft is horrible. It's not like they'd be passing on sure-fire studs to take him. If he had gone back to school for some reason, he'd have been more likely to go outside the top-5 in 2014 than in it. That said, guys that can average 12-10 with solid defense are extremely valuable commodities. A lot of teams would like to get their hands on guys like Joakim Noah or Tyson Chandler.

Good god, that was not a flagrant.

The Pacers or Grizzlies can make the Heat work, but their offensive struggles will make it hard to win the series. The Spurs are good on both ends of the floor. The Heat will actually have to execute to beat them.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ May 20, 2013 -> 04:17 PM) Spurs would be run over. Who would stop the Heat fast break? The Heat average about 90 possessions per 48 minutes. I don't have the exact stats, but I would assume 85 or more of them do not end in a fastbreak dunk. The Spurs will have something to say about those. Also, fun fact for the day: the Spurs played at a significantly faster pace than the Heat this year, averaging nearly 4 extra possessions per game.

In all seriousness, I fully expect Spurs/Heat. They're the better teams and that series would be signficantly more watchable.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 20, 2013 -> 02:17 PM) Zack Randolph doesnt count either in the J4L rankings? There are actually five players from those two teams that have appeared in an All-Star game (not counting Granger). But hey, the NBA is super-awesome right now, there's no way bums like that could make the All-Star game.

How the hell do the Eastern Finals not start until Wednesday? The Spurs and Grizzlies will have played twice before that one even starts...

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2013 -> 11:35 PM) My scenario happened in '11. Your scenario hasn't worked since the 90's. Whatever. I think we can both agree that the Heat are going to win the title. As somebody who really doesn't want to see that happen, I was looking for anything, and I mean ANYTHING, that could possibly take place to keep that from occurring. I'm not even sure this Pacer team is as good as the 2007 Bulls. It's not remotely "your scenario" because the Mavericks were actually good. 8th in defensive efficiency instead of 18th. 61.2% true shooting percentage for Dirk as opposed to 56% for Melo (and Melo was at 49.7% in the playoffs this year). A much bigger lineup so they weren't trying to go small against the best small-ball team in the league. Plus as I already said, the Mavericks were going toe to toe with the Heat long before they started hitting 3's. If the Knicks hit 8 or fewer threes against the Heat like the Mavericks did three times, they lose by 15 (and they had another with 9). I'm not saying Dallas was a juggernaut or anything, Miami still should have won. They were solid though and Dirk and Terry were outstanding in the playoffs. The second part doesn't even make sense. The Pistons won with a grind-it-out defense and a mediocre offense (18th in the league), beating the superstar-laden Lakers in the process. The Celtics were fairly average offensively the last several years either and they've been highly successful (a respectable 10th when they won it all, 15th when they lost in 7 to the Lakers, 27th when they took the Heat to 7 (yeah, I know, Bosh)). Memphis is supposed to be the best hope against the Heat now, but their statistical profile is extremely similar to Indiana. Elite teams do tend to be fairly balanced, but I'm sure I could find others if I looked harder. We're talking about a specific matchup anyways, a team like the Bulls (healthy obviously) or Grizzlies is more likely to beat you at your own game if you play that style. As I said, I don't expect Indiana to win because the Heat are very good. However, I'd say getting two is highly possible. If the Bulls can get one and hang in two others with half a roster, it's not that much of a stretch that the Pacers can get a pair considering they play a similar style.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2013 -> 10:58 PM) They don't "chuck" threes. They hit a a ton of them on a well above league average percentage. I don't know what the numbers were against Indiana. I'm sure the numbers were down. Point is still the same. We saw Dallas beat the Heat playing a similar style. Would the Knicks have won? Hell no. I would've given them a 10% chance at best. You can't even come up with a realistic scenario for this boring ass, big 10-like, crap Pacer team. That's all I was saying. s*** is over before it even starts. Dallas won because Lebron played like Luol Deng in that series, and they still had to hit like 80% of their 3's in games 5 and 6 (stats estimated). Dirk was also significantly more efficient than Melo. That was also when Joel Anthony and Mike Bibby's corpse were getting significant playing time for the Heat. Oh, and the Mavericks held the Heat under 95 in each of their first four games while hitting 9 (a loss), 8, 6 and 4 3's before getting hot. Other than that, exactly the same scenario. The scenario is simple: play good D, pound the glass (Miami is the worst rebounding team in the league) and punish the Heat for playing small. It's not likely, but neither is New York beating a team that's far superior to them in nearly every way and almost as good as they are at their one strength (arguably better since they hit for a higher percentage).

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2013 -> 10:35 PM) No. That would be J.R. Smith. Interior scoring? Who? Hibbert? lol. He sucks. He's fat and slow. This is the ONLY time you'll get me to agree with booqua. Hibbert is good by today's big man standards. That's it. Unless they hit a s*** load of 3's? That was my point. That's exactly what they do. They only set records for makes and takes on a very good 37% from the field. I'll take my chances with that over Roy Hibbert show. It's hard to make a ton of 3's over a 7 game series, especially against a good defensive team. How did that work out against Indiana? Ask any basketball coach out there, they'd much rather take their chances with good defense than chucking 3's. I don't think Indiana is going to win, but trying to win a shootout against the Heat usually isn't going to end well. In case you didn't notice, they shot almost 40% from 3 on the year themselves on nearly 9 makes a game.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2013 -> 10:35 PM) Know. That would be J.R. Smith. Interior scoring? Who? Hibbert? lol. He sucks. He's fat and slow. This is the ONLY time you'll get me to agree with booqua. Hibbert is good by today's big man standards. That's it. I changed the way I was writing it mid-stream and messed it up. J.R. Smith is useless unless he's hitting jumpers anyways, as we saw for much of these playoffs. Hibbert and West are both better scorers than anyone the Knicks have inside (unless we're talking about the 5 minutes Amare is healthy). "Today's standards" are all that matters unless the Heat can somehow add Hakeem in his prime.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 18, 2013 -> 10:30 PM) Spectacular analysis. They do suck, they've been medicore defensively this year and aren't that great offensively unless they hit a s***-load of 3's or Melo plays out of his mind. The odds of that happening four times against a good opponent are not high. Their 2nd and 3rd scorers are J.R. Smith (the ultimate hot/cold scorer) and Ray Felton for christ's sake. I don't expect the Pacers to win, but at least they defend and have interior scoring.

Knicks suck. The only way they'd have any chance against the Heat is if Carmelo out-played Lebron the whole series, which has about the same odds of happening as a clean STD test from Snooki.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ May 13, 2013 -> 07:47 PM) One more year, correct? I can't wait until he's gone. Two more years at over $32 mil combined. Where's the "blow your brains out" smiley when you need it? Of course there's a decent chance he is amnestied.

QUOTE (Jake @ May 8, 2013 -> 08:06 PM) LeBron is easily the dirtiest star player I've ever seen. And he b****es non stop about contact. John Stockton, not close.

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ May 5, 2013 -> 06:56 PM) I really hope that Nate and Marco don't price themselves out of the Bulls range. If comes between them, take Nate, but still I like this... PG: Rose/Hinrich/Teague SG: Butler/Nate SF: Deng/Bellinelli/Draft Pick PF: Boozer/Taj/Thomas C : Noah/Nazr/Draft Pick Nate's not really a SG option at 5'9". I suppose they could use Kirk at the 2, but and I don't see them keeping four PG's again. Also, they already have $73 mil committed to 8 guys, so they're looking at another tax year unless they amnesty Boozer.

QUOTE (TRU @ May 3, 2013 -> 05:55 PM) Got real stale for me Completely understandable. Playing the same story twice (three times if you got the season pass/new level cap) to max out a character can get repetitive, not to mention farming for particular weapons. I'm kind of compulsive with leveling and getting new guns though, and there's enough content that I frequently come across side missions I haven't done in a while (sometimes ever, especially with some of the DLC).

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ May 1, 2013 -> 09:43 AM) My roommate and I have been playing Borderlands 2, can't believe I never played this before, it's great. That game is like crack, I got it on launch day and am still regularly playing it.

QUOTE (IowanSoxFan @ Apr 17, 2013 -> 12:37 PM) LeBryan Nash, Markel Brown, and Marcus Smart are all coming back for another year. Oklahoma State is going to run away with the Big 12 championship next year. I never understand why top-5 picks would stay, your stock almost always drops the next year (Blake Griffin is the only exception that comes to mind in recent history). This is especially true for Smart since he's not really a stellar prospect and next year's class is loaded. Commentary on this topic from ESPN Insider:

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Apr 10, 2013 -> 02:16 PM) Happy birthday I hope you arent to drunk to read the internet. Probably not an issue, I'm getting to be too big a lightweight to drink heavily in my old age.

QUOTE (Soxbadger @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:50 PM) Russ Smith did not look good last night. Just was playing terrible. Smith would drive me nuts if he were on my team. He's insanely quick and looks like he can get to the rim whenever he wants, but he makes a lot of poor decisions. I'm not quite sure where he fits in the NBA, he's like a 6-foot shooting guard with an iffy jumper. If it were me, I'd probably stay another year and beg Pitino to let me handle more PG duties to try to prove I can handle it.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 01:47 PM) Other than Kentucky it doesn't look like there are really any great teams next year. Russ Smith is going pro by the way so you have to knock Louisville down a bit. Well, once the NBA stuff sorts itself out things will obviously be very different. I think there are a few interesting teams at the top. Kentucky certainly has an obscene amount of NBA-level talent. I can see Florida being a little like Louisville this year in that they don't have a ton of pro prospects, but they'll be able to go deep into their bench with good athletes that can contribute. Arizona's frontcourt is pretty loaded and their starting backcourt should be solid. If Duke can get someone like Plumlee or Jefferson to anchor their defense, they've got a ton of firepower. To me, the top is a little deeper than this year's group. It's kind of a mess once you get down around 10 or so though unless some guys unexpectedly stay in school.

The problem with that criticism with Hardaway is you can say that about damn near every wing player in the draft. McLemore, Oladipo, Porter, Muhammad, probably GRIII at this point (hard to say because he almost never was in situations where he was creating his own shot at Michigan) just to name a few that are much less dangerous if they have to try to go by someone. This draft blows, if anyone could actually put the ball on the floor and finish consistently, they'd go in the top-5.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 9, 2013 -> 10:00 AM) Way too early top 25 for 2014 http://espn.go.com/mens-college-basketball...lege-basketball I've seen MSU really high in a bunch of places. I can't buy that until we know for sure that Harris and Payne are back. If one of them leaves, maybe like 15, if both leave fringe-ranking at best. I don't see how you can put them at #3 and Michigan totally off the board when they can both be top-5 or unranked depending on what happens with the pros. That's a lot of love for the Shockers too. They were really solid this year and will still be decent next year, but I have a hard time buying 11 with Hall and Armstead moving on. A ton of guys that were marginally productive stepping into bigger roles. Here's mine for comparison. I don't know why I like Georgetown a lot more, I just do.