The Randomness We’ve Come to Love: The NBA and Isiah Thomas

When I have frequent arguments with friends about why basketball is better than hockey or baseball, it always comes down to one true point on my side.  Basketball is entertainment.  After taking in the Pistons/Knicks game last night in Detroit, my love for this league shot up higher than it ever was before.  As we all know, Mr. Isiah Thomas has been booed…booed …and booed some more.  He’s booed at home in New York and booed on the road in New York.  Until last night.  After I ran to my seat after getting soaked in the gross Auburn Hills rain, I was right in time for the introductions (or the best part of basketball—my thoughts at least).  You had your Eddy Curry’s, your Starbury’s…and of course…we all came to hear the reaction of Zeke himself.  To my thoughts, the Piston gang of fans cheered this guy as if he was still starting at PG for the Bad Boys.  This guy can assault an employee, become a losing/terrible coach, yet all these fans can remember is how amazing of a leader he once was for the boys in red, white and blue.  I was a little shocked at the reaction, until I found myself standing and clapping like everyone else. 

The Gossip

1)      Ben Wallace still sucks.  If you caught last night’s Pistons/Bulls game, you’d notice how he still seems to think it’s a better idea for him to a take a shot, rather than someone of the Luol Deng or Ben Gordon type.  As well, you would have noticed that in crunch time, Big Ben was nowhere to be seen on the floor.  Was he worth it, Chicago?

2)      Baron Davis is one of the most underrated players in the league.  Hopefully this guy can stay healthy the whole season.

3)      I feel like Nene has yet to go a season without an injury.  Is this true?

4)      Miami is in dire need of a D-Wade comeback.  Shaq just isn’t Shaq anymore.  He’s just a plain oversized human being who’s pretty good at basketball.  He’s not a force anymore and the man is out of shape.  Wait until you see the difference D-Wade makes on a team. 

5)      You gotta love watching Richard Jefferson snagging all the points and rebounds in New Jersey over Vincanity.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m a Vince fan at heart, but with RJ taking all the spotlight right now, you know it’ll force Vince to work hard to get back into his own spotlight.  I expect Vince to go on a big tear, along with the Nets.

6)      Who’s going to stop the Celtics?

I Know You’re Thinking The Same Thing!

 

A few thoughts on my mind this morning:

1) Congrats to all those reaping the benefits of having Chris Paul and Peja Stojakovic in their fantasy lineups last night  (such as myself).  Time to celebrate?  Don’t think so, but hey, it was a huuuge lift. 

2)Mo Williams has been slow starting.  I drafted this guy hoping for last year’s numbers, but so far he’s only been mediocre with a larger amount of turnovers.  The guy needs a little shakeup.  Time to start earning your money, Mo!

3)Too much Kobe talk still.  I’m still sticking with my preseason prediction of that he’ll be a Laker until the trade deadline.  Now all the writers are saying he’s not even worth his “value” that the Lakers are trying to get.  I find that kind of weird about the best player in the league.  I’m still a Kobe fan, and I know you are too. 

4)I’m loving how much Ben Wallace sucks now.  The Pistons clearly inked the right guy in signing Chauncey Billups.  I’m sure all Detroit fans are saying “Sheed is the only Wallace we need”!!!

5)How much do you love watching the Nuggets, the Warriors, and surprisingly the Raptors?  The Raps seem to have a fantastic team chemistry where the scoring seems to be more balanced than in past years.  Kudos to them, except for their dreadful loss last night to the Bucks. 

6)It’s all about Yiiiiiiiii.  This guy has been pretty good so far, considering he really has to share the ball with a lot of guys on that lineup.  They should easily have a playoff spot if their bigs can stay healthy.

 

That’s all I’ve got for now.

T-Mac in the Videos Section

In honour of one of my main men receiving player of the week honours, I thought I’d throw in that clip of him scoring like 1000 points in barely any time.  Check it out here.

McCosky Scarrrrrrred…and We’re All Falling For It

Recently, a Detroit News writer by the name of Chris McCosky lashed out at bloggers (which inevitably includes myself) saying:

“With blogging and Web sites, it seems the hard work, standards, accountability, courage all of that is bypassed. Who needs to study this stuff, or attend games, or conduct interviews when you can just sit in your basement and clack out whatever comes through your head, right? If I rip somebody, or if I get something wrong, who cares? Nobody will see me.

A lot of times these bloggers use the work of legitimate reporters. They will lift facts and segments of stories and cut and paste them onto their blog. Rarely, if ever, though, do they bother to credit the source.”

This was just a blurb of his interesting article.  Find it HERE to read the rest.  Initially, I was quite offended (as an insulted blogger).  Shortly after taking in the article a bit, I couldn’t help to think how brilliant this clown is.  McCosky ultimately writes how bloggers are just bumming off of regular writers who get paid, which is partly true.  I’ve done it.  And the some of the most credible have done it.  What he doesn’t touch on is successful bloggers.  True successful bloggers don’t grow to be successful by reporting the latest scores and news.  Only your typical news papers and sports stations can fight over those rights.  What makes a blogger successful is its originality.  Something different (see my Hottest Hoops Wife articles for a little taste of originality).  The more and more I thought about McCosky’s article, the more I realized this guy feels threatened.  The growing blogosphere is taking a lot of credibility away from the traditional newspapers.  There’s people out there that have more interesting words to say than the so called “professional writers”, and audiences are noting this.  Some travel to your 20SecondTimeOuts or Need4Sheeds instead of traditional Detroit News.  I wouldn’t be surprised to see if McCosky’s job was on the line.  I’m sure his articles have gone down in popularity, as more originality has sprung up elsewhere.  To me, McCosky’s article just proves how much of a force bloggers are growing to be.

The best part of all of this, is us bloggers are falling for it.  Still don’t get it?  McCosky wrote his article out of desperation.  He needed people to read his article.  Like bloggers, he needed some hits.  What better way to drive your hits up than to criticize the most opionated people?  Seems like a pretty well crafted plan.  As much as I hate the thought behind his article, I salute you clown-face McCosky on a smart, well planned article.

What a Line to Start the Season. Who could it Be?

18, 2, 2 and 4

That’s 18 points, 2 rebounds, 2 assists and 4 steals!  That’s a pretty stellar line for a guy that barely played last season.  By now you might have guessed if you checked the box scorers or watched highlights of opening night that  I’m talking about Ronnie Brewer.  Who?  To me, I only knew of this guy a coupld years ago as a friend in school told me about him, so I added him on Facebook.  I figured he’d be famous one day, and then I could brag to my other basketball junky friends that me and Ronnie are boys.  So far, so good!  Starting at shooting guard next to Deron Williams, Brewer held his own against Baron Davis and the athletic Warriors of Golden State.  If your like me, you already knew this guy had potential to break out this season with all the minutes available to him.  I drafted him in fantasy, and he’s already proving he’s worth more than what he was valued at.

Adventures of Chuck and Larry

It’s been a while since I’ve read Gilbert Arenas’ blog, and found this a little ways down the page.  It’s probably one of my favourite postings of his.  Imagine you were in the league, how would you not want to play on this guy’s team?  

Check it out!!

 

I have a little problem. His name is Nick Young and he has a sidekick named Dominic McGuire. Our two little rookies. There’s always a rookie who comes in and challenges for the goofball of the year. Well Nick’s already won that. By far. This is one of the funniest kids I’ve ever met. The problem isn’t that he’s funny, but that he challenges me in pranks. For the past week, he’s been getting a taste of what I’m about. I made him bring me some McDonald’s, I wanted a chicken sandwich at like 12 o’clock at night when we were in Philly. I actually didn’t want the sandwich, I just wanted him out of his room. I went into his hotel room and messed with all his stuff.

Then before that during the Philadelphia game I took the keys from his car and shipped them back to Washington D.C. so my friend could take his car. We’re going to paint it pink and it’s going to say “I Love Dominic” on it. You know, his little sidekick.

We’ve been going back and forth, but for some reason he doesn’t get it. He likes to play. On Thursday we had an off day and he went in my locker and took my iPod and a pair of my shoes. So I went over his place and I gave him one chance and one chance only to give me back my iPod and shoes and he didn’t act fast enough so I got him good. Him and Dominic. Both. So they start threatening me like, “You’ll see what happens, you’ll see what happens. We’re going to the store right now.”

They went to the store and got paint ball guns. They got the paint ball guns, the masks, the gear, everything.

So I was sitting in my house playing Halo and I’m looking at my surveillance camera and I see Dominic and Nick creep up to my property all decked out. They parked across the street and they’re running towards my house wearing masks and helmets. They came around the side of the house, jumped the wall, and came in through the garage. But by the time they did all that, I already was out of the house and jumped the other wall. They were in the house looking for me and I was across the street flattening their tires so when they decided to leave they’d be on flats. They looked around the house and couldn’t find me so they came outside and saw me across the street flattening their tires. I called my friend and had him come pick me up and take me back to the house.

When they left the house, they stole my daddy’s toaster! I like making toast! So I told them, Since you don’t want to give my toaster back, it’s war. He wanted his stuff back, I wanted my stuff back so I told them that we were going to have a paintball shootout.

We all went to the store like Sports Authority and bought all these paintball guns, like eight or nine new ones (because I already had three), then we bought the CO2 cartridges and like 12,000 paintballs and I even bought a couple paintball grenades.

We tried to make the teams fair.

It was Nick and Dominic and then Nick recruited last year’s rookie, Andray Blatche. I thought Andray had enough of the pranks, but I guess he didn’t. Andray brought his two friends, to make it five on their team.

My team was me, my friend John and three guys who were at my house hooking up stereo equipment.

So we finished buying everything and were in the store parking lot and Nick was mad that I had all the CO2 so he started to take some of mine. I was like, “Put the CO2 down or I’m going to shoot you with the paintball gun.” But then he realizes I’m really going to shoot him with the paintball gun, and he puts it back. “You see what happens when you follow directions” But as I’m closing the trunk with the CO2 in it, he takes some and tries to jump in Dominic’s car. I said, “Dominic, do not close that door.” Nick is screaming, “Close the door Dominic! Close the door!” So Dominic left the door open. I go to Nick, “You have three seconds to put the CO2 back. One! Two!” He started to scramble to put it back and I got him anyway. I got him like six times. So he’s laying in the car all mad saying, “I don’t want to play no more.”

So the war is still on.

I tell them that the shootout is planned for 12 o’clock midnight in my backyard because it’s pure black back there. You can’t see nothing. So I tell them, “12 o’clock, be in my backyard and we’re going at it five on five.”

We’re putting all our stuff together at my place and they’re putting their stuff together at their place but they are having trouble with it so I have my boy John and my other teammate Adam to go over to their place and have them help them fix their guns. And when John and Adam showed up at their place they tried to ambush them, thinking that I was going to come too. But I wasn’t. So John and Adam had to run out of there.

So it’s like 11:10 at night and all you here are paintball hitting the windows. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. POOM. They were already in the backyard. They showed up an hour early.

So we hurried up and put on all of our gear and snuck outside through some of the vents in the house.

And then we had a nice, good old paintball shootout in the dark.

They ran out of CO2 pretty quick because my team had most of it so one of Andray’s friends yells, “Aww, it’s not fair!” and they started to bail and jumped back over the wall. But one the kids was a little too heavy. His name is Jamar. That’s ‘Dray’s cousin. Jamar couldn’t get over the wall because Jamar has been eating one too many Twinkies.

So Jamar got stuck in my yard with the five of us. We gave him the chance to walk out like a man, or cry like a girl. He did both. He cried like a little girl while he was walking and running while we were shooting paintballs at him. I told him, “Hey, come in the lion’s den, you’re bound to get hit.”

They said that he got hit so many times that he had trouble putting his clothes on the next day.

We played for about an hour and a half. I haven’t had that much fun in a long time. What people don’t realize is that when you’re in the NBA, you lose stuff like that. You’re not in there with kids, you’re in there with grown men that have families. By having these young kids on the team, it’s fun for me because I get to have that childhood that I lost. I lost it when I came into the NBA when I got picked No. 31 because I was so determined to be the best that I didn’t get to actually have fun having fun, if that makes sense.

That’s the moral of the story: I had fun.

A Few Things to Get Excited About

1. The Rooks

 

This year has a very exciting rookie class that will be sure to entertain.  Who won’t try and watch Kevin Durant?  Can this guy play at the NBA level?  He couldn’t take Texas too far in the NCAA tournament, but now the Sonics are building around him.  I’m  expecting him to be an 18 and 7 guy this year.  Beyond Durant, there’s the Mike Conley Jrs, Yi Jianlian and who knows, maybe even a little Greg Oden at the end of the season.

 

1. Kobe to Explode

      I’ve said it a few times, but I don’t expect Kobe to go anywhere until the trade deadline.  But when that deadline arrives, it will be more of a blockbuster than KG himself (if that’s even possible).  As we know, Kobe is a man of the spotlight, and once the season starts, there’s only one way to stay in the light…produce!  I know the likes of Ron Artest and Stephen Jackson would agrue that this isn’t true, but to a real NBA fan, it’s all about who puts on the best show ON THE COURT, and Kobe will be the man, again.

 

1. The Denver Nuggets

 I’ve probably been overdoing this a bit, but I’m a firm believer that the Nuggets have serious potential this year.  The West is still strong, even without KG, but the Nuggets field a team that has the proper weapons.  Since Allan Iverson headed to Denver, he’s gone under the radar.  After the half season of learning to play together (AI and Melo), I feel these two will FINALLY figure it all out and form a chemistry that will be second to none.  Wasn’t it just a couple years ago that everyone thought AI was the best player in the league?  He’s not that old yet, and he’s still one of the quickest players with the ball.  How can you deny these two?

 

1. The BIG 3 in Boston

      Kevin Garnet, Paul Pierce and Scott Pollard…..I mean Ray Allan.  Three of the leagues best players somehow ended up on one of last year’s worst teams.  There’s no doubt that the Celtics will be this year’s most improved team.  It’s just a matter of how far they go?  I think its obvious that it all comes down to injuries.  If they can all stay healthy, the sky’s the limit.  With an injury to one of them, there’s not much to watch in Boston.  I say Conference Finals at max.

 

1. The New York Knicks/Mafia

This would have been even more interesting of a point if Ron Artest was picked up by the Knicks.  Either way, they still acquired Zach Randolph.  Along with Eddy Curry, the two form a pair of the scariest looking guys you could ever pass on the street or on the court. On the court, if these guys can get it together, they have potential to be one of the best turnarounds in the league.  With the East still wide open, how can you deny these guys a playoff spot.  I’d take them right now (before the season starts) to finish the season ahead of Orlando.

 

1. The Season Starts Sooo Soon!!!!

I couldn’t be more excited, and I know you can’t either.  Unfortunately for me, I started writing Clutch 3 in the offseason.  At times, material was limited and creativity started minimalizing ( although the Hottest Hoops Wife series was a smashing hit, and I will be doing my research for Episode 4, so watch out!) but I kept writing with the excitement in my mind, knowing that once the season starts, I won’t be able to stop writing.  This season promises to be one of the best in the past couple years, and I’ll be watching the opening tip off Wednesday night.  Will you?

Pistons In A Stuckey Situation

Okay, terrible joke. I was going to write about how Piston rookie guard Rodney Stuckey broke his hand in last night’s exhibition win against the Wizards, and how I think he’s going to be one of this year’s top Rook candidates, and now the Pistons are not in as great shape to start the season although ultimately will be one of the top teams in the East still, BUT due to me realizing that my title joke was brutal, I’m going to forget it.

I Can’t Believe the Heat Just Stole Ricky Davis

I’m sure you all know by now that Ricky Davis was traded to the Heat today.  How did this happen?  In the process, the Heat got rid of Antoine Walker.  Did the TWolves still think that Walker was in his prime?  I hate to bring a glimpse of reality to the TWolves, but Ricky Davis still has game.  He actually made my list of potential sleeper picks in my fantasy draft.  He was bound to be the go-to guy in Mini this season, probably average around 20 points a game.  Now the Heat have what I like to call All-Star security.  With Shaq and Wade constantly being in injury problem, the Heat now have a guy that can take on a leadership role when those two are out.  Beyond that, they’ll have Davis coming on the floor instead of Antoine Walker.  This is a total win for the Heat!  As for the TWolves, what the hell were you guys thinking? 

On a side note, doesn’t Ricky Davis look a lot like Ludacris?

On another side note, Kevin McHale is probably the worst GM I’ve ever seen!!