Frozen Out In Minnesota

So the Timberwolves players and brass are complaining about two all-star weekend snubs from their recently-reincarnated-from-the-dead team. While we're usually loathe to give extra credence to partisan howling, there may be a little validity to their claims.

No Love
First up is the lack of Love in the Rookie-Sophomore challenge -- the snub of T-Wolves forward Kevin Love. Yes, the numbers do point to a productive player; high (or is it the highest?) per-minute averages in rebounding and...uhh, wait, it's just rebounding. Well, OK. His per-minute scoring isn't too bad either, but naturally, the Wolves are conveniently neglecting just how slowly Love's NBA career started. His play in 2009 has merely subdued what was, for a long time, resounding criticism of GM McHale's draft-day trade of OJ Mayo for Love.

Quibbling over numbers aside, there is definitely one curious element of the Rookie squad selections that works as an argument for Love. Of the 9 players on the team, exactly one is a forward. There are 5 guards, 3 centers, and one forward. Huh? Rudy Fernandez is listed as a combo guard, but if you've seen him play, you can see he's more guard than forward. And if the 12-member all-star teams don't have 3 legitimate centers, how do the rooks end up with 3 for only 9 slots? Their centers aren't even of the F/C combo, Chris Bosh, Tim Duncan-breed. Greg Oden, Brook Lopez, and Marc Gasol are traditional centers in every sense. And I have the overwhelming feeling that no one in Jersey, Tennessee, Spain, or anywhere else in the world would've batted an eye if Lopez or Gasol weren't selected.

But for all of McHale-and-company's pontificating about per-minute numbers, perhaps if they played him more minutes, more folks would notice him? Not really a point, just a thought.

In any case, for all the great guards (Rose, Mayo, Westbrook, Gordon) that the rooks are fielding, the sophomore forwards are gonna have a field day scoring over those smallish guards and around those not-exactly-fleet-footed centers. I get the feeling Kevin Durant is about to make all-star Friday his personal showcase.

Maybe this (poor team construction) is why the Rookies rarely win the challenge?

Another Year Without Al
Al Jefferson should've been an all-star reserve over David West. Really, I'm not sure what much more this guy has to do to get recognized as one of the 12 best in the conference. Fitting him on the team within the format is pretty easy. Your guards are Billups and Parker, Dirk and Pau are your forwards, and Shaq is the center, leaving Brandon Roy and Big Al as the wildcards. I don't think anybody saw the selection of David West coming. Did we mention that he's currently out with back spasms, yet the Hornets have won 4 of their 5 games without him? Including 2 blowout wins over Denver and Philly? Or that it was Big Al's T-Wolves that gave N'awlins that one loss?

The good Lord knows I don't wish injury on anyone, but let's say West's back doesn't loosen up in the next couple of weeks. Granted, I know that is quite a long time to be out with mere spasms, but in that unlikely scenario, I'm hoping the NBA's commissioner-emperor-chancellor-supreme will make the right pick.

Don't get me wrong, West is a good player, though I say all-star level with a bit of reservation. But c'mon. This is Big Al we're talking about. The winters are beyond cold in Minnesota. Have a heart. Give the guy at least one weekend in Arizona.

The 2009 All-Star Reserves

Yes, I'm a bit late, but as long as I ink my picks before 8pm tonight, I'm safe. Now, I could pick the bench based off my earlier picks for the starters, but that would be taking the easy way out. Every year, the fan voters make it hard(er) to pick the reserves because of an inevitable two or more questionable choices. I'll stick to the rules of: 2 guards, 2 forwards, one center, and 2 wildcards. The rules do have the extra stipulation to allow for a bit of fudging on the position choices if necessary -- otherwise known as the "don't bother trying to pick another center in the East" corollary.

East Reserves:
Guards: Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson
Forwards: Danny Granger, Paul Pierce
Center-sorta-kinda-sometimes-whenhehastobe: Chris Bosh
Wildcards: Joe Johnson, Vince Carter

Just missed out: Ray Allen/Rajon Rondo, Caron Butler/Antawn Jamison, Rashard Lewis/Hedo Turkoglu, Mo Williams, Gerald Wallace

Keep in mind, you can't take everyone. Yes, people may scoff at my two wildcard picks, but they have certainly carried their respective teams at times during this half-season. Blame the fans. I shouldn't have to be curbing my choices around the Allen Iverson selection.

West Reserves:
Guards: Brandon Roy, Kevin Durant
Forwards: Dirk Nowitzki, Pau Gasol
Center: Al Jefferson
Wildcards: Chauncey Billups, Tony Parker

Just missed out: Paul Millsap, Shaquille O'Neal, Carmelo Anthony

Again, you can't blame me. I didn't put Matadorilla Gorilla in the starting 5. Millsap especially, his 20+ player efficiency rating alone, plus what he's been doing in Carlos Boozer's absense, definitely deserves a spot. We all want to reward Shaq's fountain-of-youth resurgence, but, Al Jefferson's been a beast for far too long to not be recognized.

For reference's sake, here are the starters chosen by those wonderfully-impartial fans:

East: Allen Iverson, Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Kevin Garnett, Dwight Howard

West: Kobe Bryant, Chris Paul, Tim Duncan, Amare Stoudamire, Yao Ming

Renaissance Men

Some slowly developing stories in the NBA concern a pair of teams that have made significant changes, and are now seeing their fortunes turn around and benefits being reaped. Do you know the team with the best record in the NBA so far in 2009? Nope, not them. Nope, try again.

It's the 9-2 Minnesota Timberwolves. Yes, you read that right. Come on, show of hands, who didn't think that McHale coming down from the front office wasn't Isiah circa 2007 deja vu? Who? Come on, keep 'em up. Granted, they have been playing a lot of middling competition (Clippers, Grizz, Warriors, Thunder, Phoenix Suns), and I'm betting the next month won't look like the current one (Lakers twice, Celtics, Blazers, Jazz, Hornets, etc). But it wasn't too long ago when the Wolves looked like the Dallas Academy might give them problems, so, improvement is indeed improvement.

The other renaissance team, the Charlotte Hornets -- uhh, Bobcats. (How can anyone be expected to get used to that name?) As I write this blog, they are giving the West-leading Lakers all they can handle and a bit more -- 5 point lead with 2 minutes to go.

Kevin McHale and Larry Brown. A couple of guys at the beginning of the season you just figured had no idea what they were doing, in the midst of reviving their images and perhaps their careers.

Wow! Update on the Lakers-Horn--uh, Bobcats, game. Into OT, and in the first two minutes, it's been the Kobe and Andrew show. The sequence reads like this: Bynum wins tap, Kobe makes jumper, Bynum blocks shot, Kobe rebounds, throws ahead to Bynum for dunk. After another Bynum board and a Kobe miss, Bynum blocks another shot, Kobe rebounds again, Kobe converts a layup. That's what you call a 2-man game. And then...Kobe Bryant commits his sixth foul?!? When was the last time you ever heard of Kobe fouling out of a close game? Or anyone of his caliber for that matter? The 2nd overtime without Kobe, this oughta be interesting. Very interesting.

Well, not quite interesting. More like predictable. Valiantly, the Lakers tried to depend on Bynum for the better part of the session, but eventually the loss of their ace-in-the-hole, along with Gasol and Jordan Farmar coming up dry tonight, did the Western Conference leaders in. Methinks Kobe Bryant just earned a few more MVP votes tonight (I mean, was that Cleveland's Mo Williams with 42 points?).

But yes, for the record, LeBron still leads the MVP race by far. Seeing the Lakers implode though made the view of the race a little fuzzier.

Dallas vs. Covenant: Ineptitude, or Just Plain Rude?

So the sports world is awash in dissecting the 100-0 girls high school game that took place last week in Texas between Covenant Christian School and Dallas Academy. I'll dispense with all the backstory, as I'm sure you've either heard it or have the internet to be able to read about it. You didn't come here the get the run-of-the-mill reporting did you?

The question is, was this a case of bad sportsmanship, or just an unavoidable beatdown by an overmatched opponent? Well, the view from Mars seems to be pointing to a growing mountain of evidence to the former. The first damning piece of evidence I read was from a parent, who stated that the Covenant girls were using a full-court press and jacking up threes for most of the game, until they reached the century mark. Hmm. A full-court press in a blowout is, obviously, about as sportsmanlike as kicking an unconscious opponent in the head for a half-hour. 1 + 1 = 2, and full-court-press + blowout = bad sportsmanship. This is not up for debate.

However, the now-fired Covenant coach has apparently disputed the claim that he was using a full-court press throughout the game; in fact, he says that once the game reached 25-0 in the first 3 minutes, he got his players to lay off, play a 2-3 zone, and emptied his bench for the remainder of the game. All ostensibly actions that are well within honourable measures at respecting the game.

But, alas, the plot thickens. At least one Dallas coach responded to that claim to say that, while Covenant did abandon the full-court press, they merely returned to an "alternate press later in the game". While I'm not sure what exactly an "alternate" press is or why he'd needlessly use such an ambiguous word, we'll have to nevertheless allow this as evidence for the prosecution.

But the final bit of evidence, sadly, comes from the defense. The Covenant coach, in defending his actions, released a quarter-by-quarter box score: 35-24-29-12.

Does anyone see a problem here? Let's go back to the coach's argument that he backed off after the score reached 25-0. Hmm. So let's see, you played the same way for the remainder of the game, thru the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters, and while you racked up 24 and 29 points in the middle 2 quarters, you somehow managed a mere 12 fourth-quarter points? The 12 points which just, by a randomly amazing coincidence, took you right up to the century mark?

Riiiiight. My finely-tuned bullshitometer just blew a fuse.

Mars All-Star Team starters

Now that Earth's voters have spoken, here's how the Martian contingent voted. Quick side-note: a certain Yahoo sports blogger presented his All-Star team selections structured as C-PF-SF-SG-G, instead of the All-Star vote's format of 2 guards, 2 forwards, and 1 center. Way to stick to the script. You just picked your half-season All-NBA team, not an All-Star Team. Hello, Mars to Dwyer?

Anyways:

West:
Yao Ming
Tim Duncan
Dirk Nowitzki
Kobe Bryant
Chris Paul

East:
Dwight Howard
Devin Harris
Dwayne Wade
Lebron James
Chris Bosh

* Dirk over Amare: Dirk is way more valuable and disappears much less often than Magilla Gorilla.

* Harris over A.I.: Do I even need to bother explaining this one?

* Harris over Jameer Nelson over A.I.: Jameer has been solid lately, but Harris was simply dominating over the first 2 months of the season. 2 months is better than 1.

* Bosh over Garnett: it's close, very, very close. Either player is a fine selection.

All things considered, the fans did a pretty decent job with the selections, the Yi Jianlian scare notwithstanding.

Now onto the benches in a later post; there's where it really gets to be fun.

Disney Deep-Freeze; Crisis Averted; McWho?

I hear the temperature dropped into the 40s and 30s for most of Florida today. Could that explain the Magic's brickish shooting? Season lows in pts/fg%/assists/buckets in the 1st half? (well, I suppose the last 3 naturally go hand in hand). Season low 54 thru 3 quarters, before “erupting” for 26 4th-quarter points. The Celts were doing a decent job on defense, yea, but the Disneys missed a helluvalotta chippies and open jumpers.

The way they've been torching the league lately, and the fact that they haven't played since Sunday, they were due for a bad one. Don’t think I’m not giving Boston their due by the way, especially the way they fought off the Magician’s run in the fourth quarter.

I sure hope, for their sakes, that the teams of the East see the writing on the wall and start looking for centers who can at least dream of competing with Superman 2.0. In the West you have Bynum, Oden, Gasol (uh, the younger one) etc, young guys who can body up with Howard, and keep him somewhat honest on offense too, for the foreseeable future. The East? Ummm. Mars to GMs: work some magic soon, or you are in for a long decade. A very long decade.

So the fan-vote polls closed with Yi Jianlian still within 200,000 votes of making the all-star game. I'll say it again; this is dangerously close to being a complete mockery of the system. It was bad enough in years past to have injured stars (T-Mac, Shaq) voted in, but at least those stars have a history of all-star caliber play. Is it so far-fetched to imagine that, with another year or two of exposure with the Nets, a few more minutes per game and a little improvement to his skills, Yi could pick up those middling 200k? Weighted voting humans, weighted voting. Please, before it's too late.

And now a quote from the estimable Mr. Shaquille O’Neal on Supe Version 2: "He's a good player, but everything he's done I've invented, so I'm not impressed," O'Neal said. "For me to get my eyes wide open about another big man, he'll have to do something that I haven't seen before or something that I haven't invented. Everything that he's done, I've invented it." Really? My memory must be a bit fuzzy; would you mind pointing me to the dunk contest you won? Or remind me when it was that you started to develop an actual face-up jump shot? Come now Shaq, you were just playing right? You didn’t mean to sound like such a past-your-prime curmudgeon hater here, right? Right?

Jay McGwire has come out to tell the world that he started his older brother Mark on steroids back in 1994. Umm, who? When? Did HGH even exist then? We've had 8 world champs, 3 inaugurations, 2 wars, and a partridge in a pear tree in the time since McGwire had any relevance. Do people purposely wait until they've been relegated to the scrap heap to dredge up old crap no one cares about anymore? Does anybody really still care? Hey Jay, does the phrase "Senate hearing" mean anything to you? Says the younger bro: “I want Mark to live in truth to see the light, to come to repentance so he can live in freedom — which is the only way to live.” I suppose the fact that the entire publishing world has to date collectively yawned on the book you’re hawking is just a random coincidence, eh. Ohh yea, there’s living in truth for ya.

With family like that……I’m gonna call my mom tomorrow and thank her for never giving me the sibling I always wanted.

I suppose this is the chickens coming home for the MLB's sweeping the issue under the rug for so long. I fully expect Sammy Sosa's as-yet-unborn son to level an accusation at his popa at his college graduation.

Memphis fired Coach Iavaroni today. I was inclined to say "why now?" until I remember they've been taking beat downs from everybody lately. E-vry-bo-dy.

Lakers vs. Wizards on national TV? There's a decision the off-season schedule-makers wish they could have for a do-over.

The Setting Suns; Bynum Breaks Out; A New Jordan

* Good win by the Knicks? Hitting rock-bottom by the Suns? A little of both? My coworker, a Suns fan, went to the game; can't wait to hear his take. I'm predicting it'll need it's own post. By the way, have I mentioned lately how bad the Suns defense is? Are there two any more historically-inept defenders than Nash and Amaré? Did you ever notice that Amaré rhymes with "olé!"?

* Congrats to my boy Andrew Bynum for a career night, if even at the expense of the creaky-clippers (no Camby, no Kaman, no problem?). 25 pts, 10 boards -- at half-time, and 42 and 15 for the game. It was good to see him finally hit the boards after a loooong absence. He and DeAndre Jordan (25/12) were really going at it. Speaking of which, can Mike Dumbleavy find some minutes for this kid, regardless of how much Camby or Kaman plays, so he can develop? 17 minutes total in November? 5 garbage-time games in December? Hello, your damn team ain't going a damn place anyway. You got an absolute steal in the draft, now how about you let him grow with some quality minutes instead of leaving him to rot on the bench.

The Lakers were trying so desperately hard in the 4th quarter to get Bynum to the 40-point plateau, they put the outcome of the game as a complete afterthought. Even after the Clips went on an 11-0 run to get the game within reach, with the Lakers going nearly 7 minutes without a bucket, Kobe and crew stubbornly, predictably, kept trying to force the ball into the post to get Drew that last score. It was kinda hilarious actually; I've never seen a team so wholly dismissive of the mere possibility of their opponent winning the game. Once they built the big lead, it was like an exhibition game or summer-league scrimmage. Normally you'd say something like "my how the Clips have fallen" if not for the fact that they've been down here since, since, well, the beginning of time.

And what about Kobe Bean lately, 10, 11, 12 and 12 assists in their last four games. Some serious distributing going on there for an SG. And this week's inaugural Manned-Up Award for popping a dislocated finger back into place and playing on. That is damn-near sick. Lucky in a sense for him that he keeps injuring the fingers on the other end of the hand. Ain't no shooting with a jacked-up middle-finger, don't care who you are. But respect for the toughness nonetheless.

(And no, I don't actually plan on giving out a manned-up award with any regularity, or at any time in the future for that matter.)

* GSW vs OKC, two not-so-good teams naturally ended up playing a decent game. Looked like good ole Jamal Crawford had the game won with a shot with 1.6s left...until Jeff Green hits a turn-around buzzer-beater. Now, about Jamal's shot, would Coach Nelson mind explaining to me the strategy behind forcing your team to run the ball the length of the court with 5 seconds on the clock when you have 3 timeouts burning a hole in your pocket?? The fact that it turned out both OK (go-ahead shot) and not-so-OK (a bit too much time left on the clock) makes it somewhat debatable to second-guess. But it just seems a bit, umm, risky? Not that I'm surprised by his, umm, alternative approach to coaching, but you can't help but say "huh?" every time you see something outrageous. I guess I'm just too logical and rigid with my call-timeout, move-ball-to-halfcourt, set-up-a-play folly.

* Just an awful, awful game by the Mavericks tonight. Only the Lord knows why I decided to waste my latest ESPN Streak on them. Oh wait, that's right; silly me thought that, with Andrew Bogut out, the Mavs might, oh, I dunno, try taking the ball to the rim? Anyways, they gave up 42 second-quarter points, and then backed it up by enduring the wrong end of a 30-9 run in the 3rd quarter. One minute, it was 67-all and the game was looking like fun; next thing you know, it's 97-76, and I'm focusing on making note of just how bad the Bucks announcers are. They just looked lost, utterly, hopelessly lost, for however long that run was. Exactly how many open looks does a guy like Michael Redd get before you realize not to leave him for a driver? But hey, it's just one game, I suppose.