rangercal

Here's to KW :uhoh

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 10, 2005 -> 02:42 AM) Amare-Marion and Joe Johnson didn't win last year and Q-Richardson wasn't the reason for the turnaround, Nash was. The argument that Nash isn't the mvp, as employed by the Sports Guy, is flawed. His reasoning is that Nash is just doing what a good point guard should do. Unfortunately, he leaves out that Shaq does what a good post man should do. Clearly, both players far exceed the average expectations of their positions which is why the "doing their jobs" argument is stupid and not wel thought out You can make an argument for either man being 2005 NBA MVP.

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 10, 2005 -> 02:03 AM) So d'antoni made the suns who the suns are? No. I'm not making a point of D'antoni being a great coach. I'm pointing how bad davis is.

QUOTE(rangercal @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:54 AM) Phoenix has: an Mvp Point Guard Nash 2 4/5 star shooting guards Joe Johson, Q richardson 2 all star fowards stoudamire, Marion a great 6th man off the bench Jim jackson. skiles has: 4 rookies 1 hot/cold pg/sg hinrich 2 1 dimensional big men chandler and curry and role players like harrington, Davis, Pargo, Pike, griffin DBAHO, break down what I said here that is not true. FWIW Curry is closer to being a good defensive player than Tyson is as an offensive player

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:56 AM) Ha I love how Bulls fans have no problem trashing their players, the players they defended to no end during the season, for the sake of saying their coach was the best. I was not bashing them. They will be a lot better next year , a year older. I never claimed eddy had great d, but on the same token, Tyson can't shoot for s***. Skiles should be given credit for finding roles for the players he has.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:53 AM) So if Johnny Davis coached the Suns they would still have the same record? I think not. But Chicago's slow start wrecked all hope Skiles had of winning the coach of the year. Where would you put Nate McMillian into all of this as well? I think Mcmillon should get recognized in the top five, not win it. Johnny Davis was just a horrible coach, I feel for you Orlando fans. I think even he would have gotten phoenix in the playoffs though. Not 1 seed but at least 4 or 5 seed.

Phoenix has: an Mvp Point Guard Nash 2 4/5 star shooting guards Joe Johson, Q richardson 2 all star fowards stoudamire, Marion a great 6th man off the bench Jim jackson. skiles has: 4 rookies 1 hot/cold pg/sg hinrich 2 1 dimensional big men chandler and curry and role players like harrington, Davis, Pargo, Pike, griffin

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:44 AM) I just meant that tonight's game was was a sampler of how they played during the season. Would they be as good with a coach who emphasized defense a lot more? d'antoni recognized their strengths early on and ran with it. You can't fault a coach for the talent he has, only for what he does with it... You will support anything suns because of steven Hunter and Q. I pose a question for you. How would skiles do with suns ? How would D'antoni do with this year's bulls? I just think that the gm for the suns is more to credit for building that offensive beast in phoenix. Paxson did a great job bringing in the rookies for skiles, but C'mon how often do you see coaches win with a team as young as the bulls? You see coaches win with the type of talent phoenix has all the time.

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:39 AM) I couldn't watch tonight's game and not think d'antoni deserved it... Tonights win was impressive. But this is a season award. Do you really think that they would have lost with any other coach? Phoenix has some great players on that squad.

QUOTE(qwerty @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:33 AM) No one's fault they are commited to defense zero percent. A good coach get's the team to play no matter what. You have the best damn record and one player goes down? So everyone gives up? Who is the leader of those guys? The coach of the year.

QUOTE(greasywheels121 @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:34 AM) You're forgetting someone.... Sorry. Rick Carlisle too. I definately give him lots of credit.

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:31 AM) Tyson would be as good as Ben Wallace this year if he got the same minutes and is good enough to have been 1st-Team All-Defensive this year... LOL I think Brendan Haywood and all his facials on Tyson would have something to say about that. Ethan Thomas may have a little to say too...

QUOTE(SleepyWhiteSox @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:31 AM) No doubt. 26 and 9 boards during the season while playing out of position... And this is only his 3rd season... I wish Tyson and Eddy could have matured as players the way he has and continues to, but oh well...He did what I wish Tyson would do: Work on and really improve his jump shot. But then again, Tyson would be as good as Ben Wallace this year if he got the same minutes and is good enough to have been 1st-Team All-Defensive this year... If you combine eddy's strengths and Tysons strengths, you still fall short of amare.

Maybe Gregg Popavich deserves more recognition too. How long was he without duncan? A good coach keeps the ship sailing when a player goes down. Even Miami did fine for the little time without shaq.

QUOTE(DBAH0 @ May 10, 2005 -> 01:19 AM) I'm sorry to bring this up again, but this really got to me. Look who Phoenix drafted, Jackson Vroman, and he's not even on the team anymore. Chicago picked Gordon and Deng. Yes Phoenix has a better team because they have more superstars, but Chicago is deeper. waaa waaa waaa Remember chicago was not deeper the last quarter of the season. Don't even say skiles had the edge because of players like pike, pargo, griffin ect. How did Phoenix do without nash? How did chicago do without Curry and deng? Chicago kept rolling to finish out the season. Phoenix plain out sucked without 1 player, Nash.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan99 @ May 9, 2005 -> 08:19 PM) The Suns record>Bulls record so whats your point. And Amare is not a top 5 player in the league. amare had 40 pts and 16 rebounds tonight. I don't know who the top 5 nba players should be but, He is not far behind.

These conspiracies are hard to ignore http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/3594758?GT1=6444 Elliott Kalb / Special to FOXSports.com We need to know that our games and competitions are fair. We are rightly outraged when we invest time into watching American Idol and are told that a certain contestant was given an unfair advantage by a judge. We are infuriated to find out that NBA referees might have been told to give preferential or harsher treatment to a certain player, and not others. All these game shows and sports leagues have going for them is the trust that the public places in them. Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy, left, stirred up a controversy when he implied NBA officials were targeting Houston center Yao Ming. (Bill Baptist / Getty Images) Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy told the press that he was told by his inside source (a referee not working the playoffs) that officials were instructed to watch Yao Ming more closely for moving screens — and that it was working. Commissioner David Stern fined Van Gundy $100,000. The coaches' remarks don't seem all that inflammatory, especially considering how often Phil Jackson used similar tactics in past playoff seasons to try and get officials to call the upcoming games to his advantage. The difference, of course, was that Jackson offered no proof of a league-wide internal edict. Van Gundy is in the position of other whistle-blowers (not the literal referees, but the figurative ones, real heroes from reporters and politicians who expose conspiracies) in which he may be forced to give up his job unless he cooperates and answers more questions and possibly names his source. I'm not implying that there is a league-wide conspiracy to help certain players or teams at the expense of others. But before we condemn Van Gundy, there should be a completed investigation into the matter. Conspiracies happen when certain people are held to silence, while others commit a crime, or breach in ethics. History shows us that the first thing that happens is that the person who sheds light on the conspiracy becomes intimidated, and the target. There have been a ton of conspiracies in sports. I could probably come up with 10 just from the sport of boxing, and another 10 just from the Olympics. You don't think Olympic weightlifters, for example, haven't been taking illegal substances for years to keep up with their training (and their opponents). This is not meant to be a complete, or inclusive list. Here are just 10 instances where it was proven — or widely assumed — that the truth was being withheld from the public. 1. Ty Cobb and Tris Speaker get caught fixing a baseball game. Following the 1926 season, Tigers player-manager Ty Cobb announced he was stepping down. A few weeks later, Indians player-manager Tris Speaker did the same. Both superstars were forced to resign under allegations that they conspired to fix a game a few years earlier. After meeting with Commissioner Judge Landis, it is ruled that the fix charges were unfounded. The pitcher who produced handwritten letters that offered up proof was resentful that Cobb had cut him from his roster, and Speaker didn't offer him a tryout. In all probability, the commissioner didn't need a second Black Sox scandal so soon after the first one. In any case, Cobb became emboldened, and considered a suit for slander. Cobb and Speaker then ended their brief retirements and signed with other American League teams. Cobb was the first player inducted into the Hall of Fame a few years later. Tris Speaker was voted in the next year, as one of the first eight players inducted. 2. Hank Greenberg doesn't get pitched to. In 1938, there was widespread anti-Semitism in this country, in part because of people's concerns that the United States would soon have to enter the growing war in Europe. The Detroit Tigers' Hank Greenberg was on his way to breaking Babe Ruth's single-season home run record, but pitchers stopped pitching to him. Greenberg faced many of the same kind of venom-filled letters from strangers that Hank Aaron received in the days leading to his breaking of Ruth's career home run record in 1974. Greenberg hit his 58th home run with five games left in the 1938 season. Was there a conspiracy by anti-Semitic pitchers not giving him any good pitches to hit? Greenberg never claimed any collusion in the years that followed any. He said he simply "ran out of gas," and finished with 58. 3. The unwritten and unspoken agreement by major league baseball owners not to sign black players until Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson in 1947. There was no rule against having black players prior to 1947. Was it just a coincidence? Even Rickey's signing of Robinson didn't prevent conspiracies of teams "signing too many" black players. The NBA had an unsaid "quota" system into the 1960s, with no team having more than three black players. It took Boston winning eight consecutive championships with Bill Russell, K.C. Jones, Sam Jones and Satch Sanders to change that. 4. Sonny Liston probably threw at least one fight against Muhammad Ali. There were all sorts of conspiracy theories about both of the Liston-Ali fights. Some involved the mobsters making millions from betting against Liston, while others involved Black Muslims threatening Liston's life. You have to remember the times — Malcolm X had recently been assassinated. Was Liston knocked out by a grazing blow that was hard to see, or was he a terrible actor? In the late 1960s, Bobby Orr was the first NHL player to bring a lawyer with him into contract negotiations. In 1998, that lawyer was sent to jail. (STUART CAHILL/AFP/ / Getty Images) 5. Alan Eagleson abuses power as the head of the NHL players union. In the late 1960s, it was very rare for a player to bring a lawyer or agent with him to handle negotiations. When Bobby Orr, the great hockey star of the Boston Bruins, brought in attorney Alan Eagleson, it marked the beginning of Eagleson's rise that would lead him to become the head of the Player's Union. It was not a great move on Orr's part. Eagleson was also the legal representative of Bruins general manager Harry Sinden. Eagleson was also cozy with other teams' owners. I know it's hard to believe (I'm being sarcastic, folks), but Eagleson conspired for years with NHL owners and management. Eagleson served as an agent to many players as well as a union leader. It was said that Eagleson compromised his union duties in return for personal gain at the expense of all NHL players. Eagleson was jailed in 1998 and fined $1 million. 6. MLB owners collude vs. free-agent baseball players. Jack Morris was the winningest pitcher in baseball in the 1980s, peaking in 1986, after winning 20 games the previous season. The free agent Morris had to agree to salary arbitration with the Tigers. That's because he was turned down by every other team. He even offered himself to the Yankees in a deal that was impossible to refuse. He told Boss George Steinbrenner to just name the price! He said he would sign a one-year contract, with his salary determined by an arbitrator Steinbrenner said at the time it wouldn't be fair to his free-agent pitcher Ron Guidry, whose contract wasn't negotiated yet. Andre Dawson, Tim Raines and Carlton Fisk were just three of the big-time free agent players who couldn't get a contract. The owners conspired to bring down big free-agent contracts by what the courts would soon rule as collusion. In the years following, small-market owners stopped pretending that there was a level playing field with the richest teams, and today's system is the result. 7. The Knicks win the NBA's first lottery draft in 1985. If I've been hard on the NBA in other conspiracy issues, they've done everything they can to clean up even the appearance of a conspiracy with their annual draft of college players. Until 1985, the teams with the worst records got the top picks. That didn't work, because certain teams figured out how to lose, or tank, games at the end of their meaningless seasons. Then, in 1985, the NBA figured out that they should have a lottery of all the teams that didn't make the playoffs, and each of those seven teams would get an equal chance at the top pick — Patrick Ewing in 1985. When the pick went to New York, the league had their number one market competitive for the next 15 years. The Kings, Clippers, and other lottery losers were stuck spinning their wheels. Could the league have tilted, weighted, or heated the envelope with the Knicks' logo on it? Anything is possible, folks, so in future years, the league has gone to ping-pong balls in a machine that gives additional chances to the teams with the worst records. And they have representatives from prestigious accounting firms to assure fairness. 8. Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield fight to a controversial draw in a unified heavyweight title fight in 1992. HBO boxing announcer Jim Lampley called the decision "fraudulent." Lennox Lewis wound up in a draw, in a fight he clearly won. It happened because one of the judges, Eugenia Williams, scored the Lewis-dominated fifth round for Holyfield. Williams was a competent judge who had worked more than 90 fights (yeah, and Paula Abdul is a competent judge, as well). But in boxing, and other sports with subjective judges, these things happen. Promoters like Don King get the benefit of big-money rematches, as well. Nothing should surprise us. Did Michael Jordan keep Isiah Thomas off the 1992 Olympic team? (Mike Powell / FOXSports.com) 9. Isiah Thomas is left off the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. Isiah Thomas should have been on the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. He should have been on the team even ahead of Michael Jordan. Jordan won Gold for the USA in 1984. Thomas didn't have that collegiate opportunity, because President Jimmy Carter pulled the plug on Thomas' chance when he stopped the United States from sending a team to Russia in 1980. Wouldn't you think that a member of the 1980 team — and a two-time NBA champion still only 31 years old — would have been a rock-solid choice, especially considering the USA coach was Pistons head coach Chuck Daly? In this case, it might have been a conspiracy of one (Jordan) that left Thomas off. 10. The 1972 U.S. Olympic Basketball team, 1988 Olympian Roy Jones Jr. deprived of gold medals. There are too many of these instances in Olympic history. These are two of the most famous, and two that I'm most familiar with. Coach Hank Iba and the 1972 Olympians were victims of unbelievable decisions that forced them to keep playing the final seconds of the gold medal game until the Soviet team scored the game-winning basket. At the 1988 Seoul Olympics, Jones had to accept a silver medal, after clearly beating South Korean Park Si-hun. There were later reports of payoffs that influenced that decision. Sometimes, the public eventually learns of the conspiracies, and sometimes it does not. We just have to remain skeptical of all that we hear, and keep an open mind to those who expose potential wrongdoings.

QUOTE(whitesoxfan99 @ May 10, 2005 -> 12:09 AM) Is this some sort of internet slang that I'm unfamiliar with? I nose I aint irrogant

QUOTE(aboz56 @ May 9, 2005 -> 10:15 PM) I am deleting the pictures that were linked. Try to show a bit of class. Wtf? seriously dude, I did not think it was that bad. You need to seriously not be so up tight.

QUOTE(Whitesoxfan56 @ May 9, 2005 -> 09:06 PM) whom ever made this thread is an absolute moron....he happy about a loss??? to the devil rays??? dude you gotta lay off the drugs the sox lost and your happy...what a fan you are...we dont need you as a fan so f*** off ass hole you are not going to win ever game dude..... we are 24-8. wtf?

Mike D'Antoni = Paul Westpaul IMO skiles will have a longer coaching career than D'Antoni

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 9, 2005 -> 07:49 PM) I am aware that it is a regular season award. THat said, if one is going to argue that Skiles was clearly better this year then the playoff results might not weigh into the decision but do in the bigger picture. To beat the SPurs in the West is much more impressive than simply making the playoffs as a mid-talent in a top heavy but weak East. Now don't get me wrong, Skiles did a fantastic job though they beat a spurs team with out duncan for a long while.

QUOTE(Punch and Judy Garland @ May 9, 2005 -> 07:43 PM) And guess who didn't win in the playoffs? This argument is a splitting hairs one. the award has nothing to do with the playoffs, it is judged on the regualr season.

NO !!!! I drafted urbina in a late round and held on to him all year, and released him last night. Here's hoping he can clear waivers and I can get him back .