Boogua

How bad have the pacers become? Will they get out of the first round of the playoffs?

QUOTE (Jake @ Mar 31, 2014 -> 12:33 PM) Paul George since 12/31 - 39.3% FG%, 32.6% 3P% ...only saving grace is that 89% FT% Better than Pippen

Lots of calls on zona. Is this the kohl center?

Vegas knows all.

QUOTE (Brian @ Mar 28, 2014 -> 11:58 AM) Jerks Haha, thoughts on the game? I do think Michigan is going to win, but the line is just weird. I get scared when I see things like that.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 28, 2014 -> 11:36 AM) Tennessee is statistically a better team than Michigan. Dayton is by far and away the worst team left in the tournament. Tennessee hasn't beaten a ranked team all year. They might be statistically better than Michigan, but I would bet they've played an easier schedule too. Agreed on the Dayton part. E: It looks like they beat UVA when they were unranked, so there's that.

Michigan is going to lose tonight. I say this based only on the fact that they're -2.5 and it looks like a gift from God. Vegas knows something that we don't to have an 11 seed only +2.5 against a 2 seed. Dayton is +10.5 against Florida, for example.

QUOTE (GoSox05 @ Mar 28, 2014 -> 09:33 AM) If someone doesn't draft Bridgewater because he had a bad pro day they should be fired on the spot. Mike Mayock still says the best pro day he ever saw was Jamarcus Russell. I respect Mayock a lot. I believe he said Watt looked like the best 5 technique he's ever seen when he was coming out. He was right. Watt is disgusting.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 27, 2014 -> 01:07 PM) What about the fact that Hibbert jumped into him while he was in the air and outside the restricted zone and initiated contact? Ugh, so over the blind Heat/LeBron hate here. So much so that you fools are pro-Indiana for f***'s sake. You should probably look at the replay a few more times. The first contact that was made was the elbow to the face. I guess you can say Hibbert initiated the contact with his chin.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Mar 27, 2014 -> 01:00 PM) Honestly, it's a foul on Hibbert. Yeah, his chin bumped into Lebrons elbow.

QUOTE (MexSoxFan#1 @ Mar 27, 2014 -> 08:43 AM) Miami 29 FTAs to Indy 21, Stephenson get's ejected in a very iffy call...makes sense. Yeah, there was a two minute span that seemed pro-Indiana, but overall I didn't think that was the case. The refs just seemed bad all around

Should be another good ECF

QUOTE (PlaySumFnJurny @ Mar 26, 2014 -> 09:42 AM) Now let's draft and Dix or Pryor and call it an overhaul. I still want Donald if he's there, but wouldn't hate a safety if he was gone.

Allen played 1083 snaps last year, which is 3rd most for all 4-3 DEs. I don't think there's any way he sees that many snaps this year. Hopefully the decrease in snaps will keep him fresh.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 07:07 PM) Fine, you take a 23 year old Taj Gibson, I'll take a 19 year old Lebron. Deal? Plenty of GM's are perfectly fine taking guys after one year. A quick look at the top of the drafts this decade will show that. If they're SOOOO concerned about not taking raw guys that "aren't ready", then they don't have to. They take the best talent though, which in this day and age is generally going to be the younger guy. I posted a link to the study that pointed that out, and someone else posted the one about improvement being greater in the NBA. But I guess the NCAA needs and deserves that money more than the players... Come on. That's a terrible comparison. Something better would be comparing a 19 year old lebron to a 21 year old Duncan. Or even a 19 year old to only a 20 year old Elton Brand. How about a 19 year old Dwight Howard vs a 22 year old Emeka Okafor (same draft class). Clearly some guys are more talented, but age and experience make a difference early on. GMs don't care overall if guys are more ready, but that doesn't change the fact that the older guys were more ready. These guys don't need to go to the NCAA. Maybe the two year rule helps the NBDL or Europe?

QUOTE (bmags @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 05:01 PM) MKG will be Tony Allen without a 3pt shot. Maybe that's just Ronnie Brewer. If only he had to play one more year in college... Although last years draft was terrible.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 04:22 PM) I mean I guess we could have taken guys like: Marcus Fizer, Mike Dunleavy, Drew Gooden, Stromile Swift, Shelden Williams, Thabeet, Morrison, Wesley Johnson, Tyrus Thomas, Evan Turner, Derrick Williams, and Thomas Robinson (don't care that he is only in his second year). And that doesn't even include really mediocre players like Jeff Green and Raymond Felton who all were in college for at least 2 years and were drafted in the top 5 since just 2000. Yes. Lots of busts. Can someone please explain what the downside is for the NBA here?

So I'm confused. What's the downside of this again? That executives will still draft poorly? I can see the downside for the player wanting to be leave early, but for the NBA?

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:58 PM) Eddy Curry made 70 million dollars and had a year in the NBA where he averaged 19.5 points per game while shooting 58% from the field. If you are including him as a bust than I can make an absolutely absurd list of juniors and seniors who were taken in the top 10 who had way worse careers. He was lazy but that wouldn't have changed at all had he gone to DePaul for a year or 2 and dominated crappy competition based on being bigger and stronger than everyone. Meh, he was a top 5 pick and he never even scratched the surface of his potential. I'll call him a bust and I don't really care how much he made. Congrats to him though.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:45 PM) So basically the good players will be good, the bad players will be bad, executives will make mistakes, and it doesn't matter how long these kids are in school. That seems to be the gist I'm getting from all of this. Is that far off? People are disagreeing with this? Executives will make mistakes, but more evidence can help them limit their mistakes.

QUOTE (whitesoxfan99 @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:38 PM) Go for it. The high school kids had a very high success rate in comparison to where they were taken. Just off the top of my head: Kwame Brown, Darius Miles, Eddy Curry, Martell Webster, Sebastian Telfair, Shaun Livingston...

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:25 PM) But not going to college at all definitely didn't hurt LeBron or Tracy McGrady or Kobe Bryant, and sticking around 1 year didn't seem to hurt Kevin Durant, Carmelo Anthony, and Dwyane Wade. Meanwhile, Nick Collison and Kirk Hinrich both played 4 years at Kansas, so talent evaluators should have had them pegged perfectly, yet neither has been much more than a bit player throughout their careers. Do you really want to go through all the highly drafted high schoolers? Those guys you mentioned aren't all that common. Wade was in college for 3 years (played 2). Hinrich and Collison were both pegged fine.

QUOTE (witesoxfan @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:22 PM) Does anyone here believe that Marcus Smart improved his stock? I'm guessing the resounding answer is no. Why? His field goal percentage is up - both 2's and 3's - he's rebounding better, getting to the line more, dishing more assists, and turning it over less. Does his stock determine whether or not he'll be a more successful NBA player? NBA teams have more time to evaluate him and he should be drafted accordingly. Not to mention he was supposed to go so highly last year because the draft was a joke.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 03:05 PM) Yeah, but aren't the one and done guys usually better players to begin with than the 2 year guys? The problem with the study is they can't study the same players doing different things. Exactly.

QUOTE (ZoomSlowik @ Mar 25, 2014 -> 02:51 PM) Their stock dropped because the NBA expects guys to make major strides when they come back, and most guys don't. They just move on to the next sexy young guy they can project for stardom. I wouldn't say their evaluations were better, they just have less hype. Sullinger has been better than a bunch of guys that went ahead of him and you can't say they were justified in taking Yi Jianlian or Brandan Wright over Noah. Noah barely played his freshmen year, so he wasn't a one-and-done candidate. He stayed a year longer than he had to though based on his stock. He probably would have gone #2 or #3 in the previous draft. You should go pro when it makes sense based on your draft stock. For a lot of guys, that's after their freshman year. No doubt that a guy should go out when their draft stock is highest. I'll never disagree with that. If the rules allowed it Wiggins would have been the easy #1 pick instead of their being doubts about him today. The fact is the more time a player plays in college, the more time NBA teams get to evaluate said player. Will they still miss on some? Obviously. Wright and Yi went above Noah because they thought both players had more potential than Noah. If they had more time to evaluate the player, maybe they wouldn't have thought that. It's bad for the players. Clearly.