Huskies down the Golden Bears

Saturday night Wendy, Mark, and I headed to the PAC to watch the University of Saskatchewan Huskies defeat the University of Alberta Golden Bears 74-52.

The game wasn't that great to watch.  The Huskies jumped to a 10 point first quarter lead and then extended it to 25 by the fourth when the reserves were subbed in on mass. 

Alberta began to play physically in the second half but the Huskies were making their free throws and it just created a lot of easy baskets.

Two weeks from now the plan is to head back to the PAC watch the Huskies host the University of Calgary Dinosaurs for the season finale.  Depending on how the cookie crumbles, we may be able to take in a playoff game or two.

 

More photos can be found on Flickr here.  You can view it as a slideshow here.

Technorati tags: University of Saskatchewan, University of Alberta, Huskies, Golden Bears, basketball, PAC

Do Over

Wow, I never thought I would see this.

You know how teams sometimes file protests after some official mistake or other hurts them in a game? It's a cute little formality.

Until today.

The League has agreed with the protesting team, and as a result, the Miami Heat will get a do-over of the last minute or so of a game they lost to the Atlanta Hawks.

Shaquille O'Neal fouled out of that game with 51.9 seconds left, but as it turns out, he in fact only had five fouls. So the next time those two teams play, they will first finish their last game. It'll be the shortest basketball game in history, I suppose. Hope those coaches have some good plays ready.

Technorati tags: NBA, Miami Heat, Atlanta Hawks, David Stern

Another Division I Trainwreck

The New York Times has a good article on the New Jersey Institute of Technology and their odd decision to join Division I basketball when they were not that good at Division II. The rationale is that is raises the universities profile but from the article, it mentions that NJIT has an excellent reputation as an engineering school. My question is do students actually choose their school based on a basketball team? Especially engineers. I have been ranting on this Division I lust for a while now and it never seems to work out and yet universities are lining up for the opportunity to field non-competitive independent basketball teams that no conference wants. I must be missing something.

Making the Transition to Division I

It isn't fun making the transition to Division I, NCAA basketball.

Another way is to look at Presbyterian, which is one of about 24 colleges in the last decade to move up to Division I, the top National Collegiate Athletic Association level, in the hope of gaining exposure, money and a little bit of glory to help put their programs and universities on the map.

One day, Coach Gregg Nibert said, he hopes the Blue Hose will be able to go punch for punch on the court, at least with teams in the smaller Division I conferences like the Big South, which Presbyterian will join next year.

But for now, he is content to barnstorm, collecting $25,000 to $60,000 per appearance at Madison Square Garden-sized college arenas. After a season of predictable poundings, he will come home with about $650,000 for Presbyterian’s coffers.

Technorati tags: NCAA, basketball, Presbyterian College, Blue Hose

Isaiah

Adrian Wojnarowski on Isaiah Thomas and the New York Knicks

As the jury watched one Garden official after another trash a well-decorated, well-compensated employee, they could see for themselves what everyone understood about this dysfunctional, failed organization: Beyond its basketball futility, the Knicks organization is an out of control embarrassment that needs to be punched in the mouth.

The Knicks and Thomas lost the case, which isn’t surprising because they lose everything. In the recent past, they wrote tens of millions of dollars in checks to make a long list of underperforming, overpaid players and coaches go away. That’s the way of Daddy Boy Jim Dolan’s Cablevision empire, just throwing money at problems to get them out of the Garden’s path.

Browne Sanders would’ve been the biggest bargain in franchise history. She wouldn’t go away. She wouldn’t back down, the way everyone does to Thomas and the Garden. She stayed, she fought and she’s going to walk away with millions in damages and perhaps part of her good name again.

For speaking up about sexual harassment at the Garden, she ended up with a job at the University of Buffalo. She paid a price. Browne Sanders deserves this, all the way. Whatever she gets paid, she lost a fast-track career in the pros.

There’s a passive-aggressive way to how Thomas bullies people – that charming, radiant smile that turns into something far different behind closed doors, where for too long his motives have forever left people distrustful, even fearful, of him. Between his professional competency and his workplace behavior, it says so much about the Knicks that they’re still the one franchise in basketball that would even employ him to scout Siberia – never mind run and coach the Knicks.

Off The Court

The first thing I read this morning was by Adrian Wojnarowski and it set a bad tone for my day,

For 15 years, Jeff Nix worked his way as an advance scout, assistant coach, scouting director and assistant general manager with the New York Knicks. He worked with four of the five most winning coaches in NBA history – Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Lenny Wilkens and Larry Brown. Ernie Grunfeld and Jeff Van Gundy could never agree on anything, but they did on Nix.

He survived regime after regime at the Garden because his employers trusted his loyalty to the Knicks, the job.

"Nix of the Knicks," the media guide called him.

That was until sometime after Jan. 1, when Nix was deposed by lawyers probing Browne Sanders' claims that Thomas had berated her and later made inappropriate passes at her. As he did then and again in federal court this week, Nix testified to witnessing Thomas hugging Browne Sanders in a Garden hallway in February of 2004, and her pushing away. When Nix asked her what happened, he testified, she told him that Thomas said he was in love with her and that their contentious relationship reminded Thomas of the characters in the movie "Love and Basketball."

What's more, Browne Sanders told Nix at the time that Thomas called her a "(expletive) bitch, and a "(expletive) ho," after reporting to Thomas that another Knicks executive, Frank Murphy, had called her a "bitch."

Nix had nothing to gain by backing Browne Sanders, except perhaps a clear conscience and a sober stare in the mirror every morning.

And to lose? Between those depositions in January and the trial this week, Nix was dismissed of his duties as director of scouting.

In Nix's mind, telling the truth would cost him a $250,000-a-year job.

Nix wants this nightmare behind him and wouldn't be interviewed for this column, but a close friend of his in basketball said, "The moment Jeff told what he knew in the depositions, he understood he was finished at the Garden. He knew they would get rid of him, and they did.

"But he also knew that he couldn't live with himself if he didn't tell the truth."

As little respect as most league owners and executives have for Dolan, Thomas and the Garden, it will be fascinating to see how many admire Nix for doing the difficult thing, for sacrificing a career on principle, and how many still subscribe to the locker room code that says siding with a female marketing V.P. over the top basketball executive and coach is a move of weakness, even treachery. No matter how disdainful the alleged behavior with Thomas, in some corners, there's still the belief that Nix should've protected one of his own – a basketball guy.

I want to blame this on the Knicks. It is easy to not like James Dolan. He may be the most incompetent owner of any major league sports franchise (and yes I have put some thought into that) and while I liked Isaiah the player, I have never been a fan of Isaiah the coach, business man or executive. If these allegatation are true, I don't have a lot of respect for Isaiah the man either but this isn't about the Knicks, it is about the last line.

in some corners, there's still the belief that Nix should've protected one of his own – a basketball guy

Sadly that happens outside of the Knicks, outside of basketball, outside of sports and is all over the place. If Isaiah did it, let him be accountable for it but of course it doesn't work that way, not in the NBA at least.

I hear sports gurus question Roger Goodall and wonder if he is ruining the NFL, as if the NFL couldn't function without guys drinking and driving, assualting people at strip clubs, and running dog fighting rings. I look at the NHL and see a culture of drunk driving and the league doing nothing about it and I wonder why we allow sports figures (outside of the NFL) to act the way they do and look the other way. I think of Lawerence Phillips and his history of violence and yet fans in St. Louis, San Francisco, Calgary, and Montreal all embraced him because he helped the team. It can be tough to be a Saskatchewan fan but one of the days I was proud to be one was the day when they fired Roy Shivers and hired Eric Tillman who was given the mandate to win but win in a way that the fans would be proud of their team. Not all communities demand that but I respect franchises like the Phoenix Suns who do place character over winning.

Contextless Links

• New government in England, Time let's us know what to expect.  Newsweek looks back at the early days.
• Why Germany hates Tom Cruise: Apparently it has nothing to do with Mission Impossible II
• Note to the L.A. Lakers: Cut your ties with Kobe.  Do you actually think that unless Phil Jackson can win every game and let Kobe score 100 points a game, he will start complaining about KG by Christmas.
• Calgary close to signing Iginla:  Apparently he hasn't heard who his coach will be.
• NHL, NBA to develop blogger policies
• Why is Microsoft threatening Linux:  Also an interesting bit on Google Data Centres: A lot of people do not realize that Google's architecture is based on cheap PCs running Linux and a customized networking system interlinking them. This design has galled and hurt the companies that make big iron servers, since Google's solution is cheaper and just as reliable. Well, at least it is as reliable as any PC. The actual beauty of the architecture is that if one of the PCs craps out and dies in the grid, it is just left there to rot. There is no need to swap it out. (This eliminates the need for a lot of workers, too.) This is similar in concept to a hard drive, where bad sectors are simply mapped out of existence. Slick.
• Total Cost of iPhone Ownership: Up to $5,914.76.  Black turtleneck not included.

Which lottery pick did the Raptors get?

I was watching the draft lottery for a second and you know you are a Raptor fan when you are trying to see which pick the Raptors got before it clicks in, "They made the playoffs and don't get a pick." Then the realization hits you, my team isn't that bad right now.

Contextless Thoughts

• Here is Tony Campolo on The Hour.
• In case you haven't noticed, The Church of the Exiles' website is sporting a new design that will be tweaked to death over the weekend. 8 days until the Freehouse returns which scares me to death. The one big addition content wise is a new weblog to archive and document what we are doing. We already have the photo pool on Flickr but this will allow us to add some of the text and other media resources as well. I'll post a link when it is online but there will be no content online until next week.
• Wendy worked Good Friday, I work Saturday to Monday which continues our trend of building our marriage on mutual avoidance of each other. Mark and Wendy will head to Saskatoon Free Methodist Church on Sunday for worship while I will be here. If it is quiet enough in my office, I can listen in to the service at work which isn't ideal but the alternative is to download clips of John Haggee off of YouTube.
• Still no decision on a car but Lee and I went looking on Saturday at some that I have been thinking about. At $1,400,000 the Bugatti Veyron is just a little more than I want to spend although a car that could go 400 miles an hour could be useful on Saskatchewan's flat landscape.
• I am reading Eugene Peterson's latest book, The Jesus Way which has been a great way to spend the last several days. I know he has written a lot of stuff the last couple of years but this may be one of the best things I have read in a very long time. I will be posting more over the next week or so.
• The Raptors win the division! That's good news as I doubt now that the Calgary Flames will make the playoffs or if they do, escape the first round. Speaking of sports, sometime over the last couple of years, I have become fond of the Montreal Canadiens. I credit Bob Gainey and their incredible history. Of course this year it means that I could be doubly disappointed when Calgary and Montreal both lose out.
• I never watch American Idol but I have enjoyed the commentary by those who think that voting for Sanjaya is somehow damaging the greater society and music industry. I am sure when people are looking at the downfall of western civilization, that will pin it on Sanjaya and not global warming, an energy crisis, or a global depression.
• At work they changed and enhanced our retirement package. When I was filling out the paperwork, I had a choice of funds and of course ethical funds were listed. I have heard more than one person complain about the poor return their ethical funds returned which always makes me laugh as it testifies to the larger truth that most people like ethics, as long as it doesn't cost them anything.

The best bloggers of 2006

I tried to post my ten favorite weblog of 2006 but the list grew to 13 weblogs and today I am posting my ten favorite (or so) weblogs.  Tomorrow come my 10 predictions of 2007.

1. James Bow :: James is a little more to the left of me but offers well thought out comments on politics, transit, Battlestar Galatica, and a bunch of other stuff that makes me a little smarter after I have read them.
2. Rudy Carrasco :: Rudy has photos of him and George W. Bush in his house and is a dedicated free market believer but is a great discussion partner and a fabulous blogger.  Rudy balances ideological beliefs with a humbleness to look at all sides of an equation.  Along with Karen Ward , Andrew Jones and I, he was one of the first in this little niche we blog in.
3. Tony Jones :: Tony has a hard job in that his personal opinions on his personal blog are often taken as the opinions of Emergent and therefore of the entire emerging church. Despite that his opinions are automatically attributed by our critics to many of us, he does a great job dialoguing with Emergent and the rest of the American church on his weblog.
4. The Greater Chicago Area theological bloggers.  There is Scot McKnight :: Despite the fact that I think that there is several Scot McKnights (His blog features a bunch of well written posts, plus books, plus teaching, researching, and marking, plus he seems to have a family life -- there has to be more than one Scot), they work together to write an excellent (team?) blog.  Also don't forget AKMA who offers up a consistently profound and well written weblog.  David Fitch is the latest of great theological weblogs with a focus on evangelism, post modernity, and the missional church.  All of them get read several times a week.
5. Warren Kinsella :: Another year without permalinks but it now does have a RSS feed which is a step forward.  Warren wrote less about politics this year and some more about media and personal matters but I still head back every day and enjoy reading it.  How influential is his blog?  Well, he made me a fan of punk after he wrote Fury's Hour, he talked former Prime Minister Jean Chretien into posting on his weblog, and from his blogroll, I get several visitors a day from the last three occupants of the Prime Minister's Office.
6. Calgary Grit :: Maybe the best political blog out there from the left or the right or from the north or south side of the border.  Even the comments that get left from those that disagree with him are more intelligent then other bloggers.
7. Rebecca Blood :: Author of The Weblog Handbook and one of the first bloggers out there, I find myself reading and buying a fair amount of book that she recommends and liking them.  Not only that but she is a source of some of the best environmental links on the web.
8. True Hoop :: I am not as big of a NBA fans as I am a fan of the NFL and NHL but I love this blog.  Eric McErlain publishes my favorite hockey blog
9. Jeneane Sessum :: Jeneane has been blogging at allied.blogspot.com since time began and I have been reading her blog for years.
10. Rick Bennett :: Yeah he spells my name wrong on his blogroll but he still offers up some excellent political and social commentary.  Of course his declaration of support for Mark McGwire in the Hall of Fame almost dropped him from the list :-)
11. Pernell Goodyear :: Pastor of the Freeway (which is a great church blog) and an important part of Resonate, Pernell keeps a weblog worth reading.  He also blogs the crude phrases that I am afraid to.
12. Onehouse :: Published by a friend of mine with a secret identity, many of the good decisions that I make in this world come from ideas, authors, and thoughts from this weblog.

Related: My favorite books of 2006

Technorati Tags : weblog, 2006, best+of

Contextless Links

• What happens when a giant python snake eats a sheep and an electric blanket.
• What the Pittsburgh Penguins mean to the NHL's grand vision
• The essence of who Allen Iverson is :: In other words, missed in all the hand-wringing about his lackadaisical practice habits in the NBA is the possibility that so much of his work is cerebral. Unlike, say, Jordan, who was a craftsman, someone who would take hundreds of jumpshots a day, Iverson imagines the possibility and then acts it out.  "Let me tell you about Allen's workouts," says Terry Royster, his bodyguard from 1997 until early 2002. "All the time I have been with him, I never seen him lift a weight or stand there and shoot jumper after jumper. Instead, we'll be on our way to the game and he'll be quiet as hell. Finally, he'll say, 'You know now I usually cross my man over and take it into the lane and pull up? Well, tonight I'm gonna cross him over and then take a step back and fade away. I'm gonna kill 'em with it all night long.' And damned if he didn't do just that. See, that's his workout, when he's just sitting there, thinking. That's him working on his game."
• Foreign Policy on the most under reported news stories of the year :: Israel and Iran holding secret talks, the U.S. is funding the Taliban, and while we were trying to have countries forgive debts, China has come in and allowed the countries to accumulate more debt.

Contextless Links

• The Christian Century has a pretty good blog now.
• Mark Cuban's thoughts on the NBA fines :: I like that the commissioner fined the teams 500k, but I don't think it goes far enough. Not in terms of dollar amount, but in terms of assigning responsibility. I think the coaches, the President, GM and Owners should have been fined directly instead.  The responsibility of the culture of a team and organization, of any business, starts with the owner and is implemented by the team's President, GM and Coach or whoever is in the position to manage the workforce.
• Australia courts to go after those who even link to copyrighted material on the web :: Ms Heindl said that this could apply even if a person had embedded a copyright-infringing YouTube clip in their blog or MySpace page.
• Just Say No... to Ritalin
• The Graham family at odds on where to bury Billy and Ruth

A retraction

Sorry about any angst I caused Cleveland fans yesterday with this post.  All is right in your world with LeBron James agreeing to a long term deal.

Cleveland's All-Star forward accepted a five-year contract extension worth about $80 million from the Cavaliers on Saturday, a huge relief for the rising team and its fretting fans who worried he might be planning an escape.

Technorati Tags : LeBron+James, NBA

The NBA's best soccer players

Bill Simmons on soccer

(By the way, I've been watching the World Cup for four weeks trying to decide which NBA players could have been dominant soccer players, eventually coming to three conclusions. First, Allen Iverson would have been the greatest soccer player ever -- better than Pele, better than Ronaldo, better than everyone. I think this is indisputable, actually. Second, it's a shame that someone like Chris Andersen couldn't have been pushed toward soccer, because he would have been absolutely unstoppable soaring above the middle of the pack on corner kicks. And third, can you imagine anyone being a better goalie than Shawn Marion? It would be like having a 6-foot-9 human octopus in the net. How could anyone score on him? He'd have every inch of the goal covered. Just as a sports experiment, couldn't we have someone teach Marion the rudimentary aspects of playing goal, then throw him in a couple of MLS games? Like you would turn the channel if this happened?)

Simmons also talks about what will happen also when LeBron James leaves Cleveland

A. I keep writing about this, and everyone in Cleveland keeps sending me hate mail, and I don't really know what else to tell you ... but people around the league swear that there's a clause in LeBron's Nike contract (already worth $100 million) that doubles the money if he plays for an NBA team based in New York, Chicago or Los Angeles AND that some of his other endorsement deals have the same clause. Don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger.

B. We know that LeBron and his peeps are already positioning himself as a multimedia presence, someone who could potentially emulate Magic and P. Diddy and own record companies, movie theaters, clothing lines and everything of that ilk. You need to live in a big city to pull this off -- either New York or L.A.

C. The Cavs blew their cap space last summer (more than $160 million spent on Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Damon Jones and Hughes) and have no real way to improve. If you remember, by the end of the Detroit series, poor LeBron was a one-man show. Do you think he wants to spend the next eight to 10 years carrying a mediocre supporting cast?

D. LeBron becomes an unrestricted free agent in the summer of 2008. He could sign an extension with the Cavs this summer, but there's really no reason to do so. Thinking logically, he could break any bone or blow out any ligament over the next 24 months and STILL get offered a max contract by every team with cap space. So why not see how this season unfolds and keep his options open? No injury short of paralysis could hurt his value over the next two years.

E. From the NBA's standpoint, nothing would generate more interest in the 2006-07 season than the running subplot, "Is LeBron staying or going?"

F. The first day that teams could offer max extensions to rookies from the 2003 draft class: July 1, 2006. We know that Denver offered one to Carmelo (quickly accepted), Miami offered one to Wade (quickly accepted), and Cleveland offered one to LeBron (NOT accepted -- plus, neither LeBron nor his agent has commented publicly and it has been six days and counting). The silence has been deafening. Repeat: Deafening. In fact, it's developing into the biggest sports story of the summer and nobody seems to give a crap. But they will. Just wait.

Technorati Tags : soccer, World+Cup, NBA

Contextless Links

• Sigh
• "Most jobs just put food on the table"
• The NBA Draft = A live human commodities market

Traded for some rolls of sock tape

When I was in high school, there was a career day and one of the options was becoming a pro-athelete.  Now who doesn't want to be a pro-athelete when they are 17 so of course I went to the seminar that was done by my football coach, Algebra teacher, and former CFL defensive back.

 

Anyways, he told his story about being drafted in the first round, going to his tryout, getting cut and then told that the coach thought he was someone else and that he made the team (a real self-esteem booster), playing a couple of years, the smell of Ivor Wynne Stadium, and then getting traded to the Calgary Stampeders for a box of sock tape.  At that moment the room of teenage atheletes were completely quiet as he voice broke and he described the obvious decision to retire.

 

Of course this has nothing to do with the NBA draft that was just held but I wonder which will be the first player of this draft to be considered worth a bunch of sock tape.

 

Technorati Tags : NBA, CFL

Worst GM Ever

I have this feeling that 20 years from now, Mark and I will be debating whether or not Isaiah Thomas was the worst general manager of a major league sports team ever.  To deal with his doubts, I will tell him to read this article by the AP's Jim Kitke.

A few guys who owned teams in the Continental Basketball Association bet on Thomas' acumen once, making him the commissioner, and all that remains of that investment turns up in sports memorabilia auctions on eBay. Owners of NBA teams in Toronto and Indiana did, too, and the only souvenirs Thomas left behind were forwarding addresses.

When he landed in New York, it seemed impossible anyone could run the franchise worse than Scott Layden had. But credit Thomas with exceeding expectations at least once in his managerial career.

When the Toronto Raptors can get you to take Jalen Rose, you know you have a problem.  Your suggestion for worst GM of all time?

Technorati Tags : NBA, basketball, Isaiah+Thomas, Knicks

Piling on

USA Today's Ian O'Conner takes on the New York Knicks owner, James Dolan.

In Dolan's world, image isn't everything, it's the only thing. Charles Dolan, reclusive Cablevision czar, wrote a letter to The New York Times to defend an heir who had come under siege from columnists, fans and cyber-rebels. Dolan wrote of how his boy was busy "offering the nation's best-selling cable, phone and Internet services," or three different ways to watch or listen as Stephon Marbury blows a three-on-one fast break.

The father's letter did the son no favors, not when the son is desperate to shed his image (that word again) as a hopeless silver-spooned prince. James Dolan is trying to connect with the less fortunate masses as lead singer of the blues band, JD and the Straight Shot. People hear him sing and tell him to give up his day job, but the advice has nothing to do with his voice.

The website selltheknicks.com is trying to arrange an anti-Dolan march on the NBA Draft. It won't work. If nothing else, Dolan is as stubborn as the season is long.

He claimed Monday that Brown only intended to coach one season in New York, not five, so he's making Larry Legend go to David Stern to get the $40 million owed him. Not only won't Dolan sell the team or fire the executive who shaped it - Thomas - Dolan will double Isiah's responsibilities and sink more money into a franchise weighed down by absurd contracts, sexual-harassment allegations and a championship drought that might someday make the Red Sox proud.

Truth is, it only seems like yesterday when Fenway's current guests, the Mets, could lay claim to the worst owner in town. Then Fred Wilpon hired Omar Minaya, who hired Willie Randolph, and - voila - the Mets are looking World Series sound.

Dolan has to get that kind of lucky. He's got to get as lucky as George Steinbrenner did when he hired the thrice-fired Joe Torre against his better judgment.

What is it with New York City that makes owners of professional sports teams so stupid?

Technorati Tags : NBA, James+Dolan, New+York+Knicks, basketball

The State of the NBA Finals

Excellent article by Bill Simmons on the NBA finals.

Third, here's a theory on referees that I described in a blog last spring:

"I don't think the NBA fixes games, but they have one trick that they use for situations like this -- when they want a home team to win the game, they invariably assign the worst referees possible to that game for two reasons: Bad referees have a tendency to get swayed by the home crowd, and bad referees never have the stones to make a tough call on the road. In a related story, I went to 35 Clippers games this year and kept a list of the referees in my pocket which I also used to follow the referees for any televised games. And yes, the referees in the NBA -- as a whole -- have never been worse. But there were six referees that stuck out as being especially terrible."

Then I went on to list the worst six referees. Here was No. 2 on the list:

"2. Bennett Salvatore -- Always one of the worst, he took it to another level this season. If you see him on the court at the start of the game, get ready for about six technicals, two near-brawls and both coaches having to be restrained by their assistants at various times."

Why is this relevant? Not only did Salvatore officiate Game 4 of the Suns-Lakers series (the one where Kobe tied it at the end of regulation and won it at the end of OT on two shaky non-calls on Nash, both by Salvatore), not only did Salvatore officiate Sunday night's Game 5 (in which Miami had a 40-12 free-throw advantage at one point), but Salvatore called the foul on Wade's final drive in overtime (remember, the call where ABC couldn't find a replay to show that anyone touched him?) even though he was standing at midcourt a full 35-40 feet from the play, and even though two other refs were closer to the play. Not only was that NOT his call, he butchered it.

Technorati Tags : NBA, ESPN

Contextless Links

• Joe Theismann called Ricky Williams a disgrace to the game :: It's apparently okay in the NFL (and NBA) world to beat your wife than it is to smoke dope. I am not in favor of smoking pot but a little perspective here would be helpful. Pro atheletes get away with a lot but suddenly pot smoking is the line that can't be crossed?
• Fire Flip? It's started already
• Bill Walton flies coach and prefers to have an aisle seat via
• I had planned to blog about the end of season 2 of Battlestar Galactica but I knew that James Bow would do a better job than I would have. I was right.
• Where have all of the naval battle sims gone?
• The tragedy of Kevin Garnett :: Why do I have a feeling that Toronto fans fear the same thing is going to happen to Chris Bosh via
• Moleskine City Notebook (an example) via

How do you know that you are watching a good player?

Malcolm Gladwell reviews The Wages of Wins

But “The Wages of Wins” suggests that when you move into more complex situations, like basketball, the limitations of “seeing” become enormous. Jermaine O’Neal, a center for the Indiana Pacers, finished third in the Most Valuable Player voting in 2004. His Win Score that year put him forty-fourth in the league. In 2004-05, the forward Antoine Walker made as much money as the point guard Jason Kidd, even though Walker produced 0.6 wins for Atlanta and Boston and Kidd produced nearly twenty wins for New Jersey. The Win Score algorithm suggests that Ray Allen has had nearly as good a career as Kobe Bryant, whom many consider the top player in the game, and that the journeyman forward Jerome Williams was actually among the strongest players of his generation.

Works with hockey as well.

Technorati Tags : basketball, sports, NBA, Malcolm+Gladwell

Thank you Steve Nash

While I still mock you for those horrible MDG computer ads, thank you for beating Kobe Bryant and the L.A. Lakers in fine fashion.  No more news about Kobe being the complete player, Phil Jackson or anything else Laker related until next year.

 

Technorati Tags : MDG, Steve+Nash, L.A.+Lakers, nba

NBA Seedings

Can someone explain why in the eastern conference of the NBA, the #6 seed gets home court advantage over the #3 seed, Denver Nuggets?  I thought division winners got first round home field advantage in the first round of the playoffs...  if not, what is the incentive to win your division?

Technorati Tags : NBA, basketball

Contextless Links

• Egghead and Stephane Dion launch Liberal leadership bids this week
• Linux too "fat" for $100 laptop
• Roger's Centre gets some upgrades
• The infamous Soviet Union/Canada hockey brawl of 1987. I remember it like it was yesterday.
• The Toronto Raptors have enough youngsters according to GM Colangelo
• Innovating the tourism industry for the good of the planet

First-annual Atrocious GM Summit

It explains how things went so wrong in Toronto...

Technorati Tags : basketball, NBA

Canada lost

So Canada apparently lost to Russia 2-0 today in Turin.  While at work not a single person came in and talked about it.  I only found out because I looked online while at work this afternoon.  So much for capturing Canada's imagination.

I have loudly been calling for NHL players to be kept out of the Olympics for a couple of years.  The whole idea was a marketing attempt by Gary Bettman to capitalize in the Salt Lake City games and get a better television deal in the U.S. and we all know how that turned out.

NHL players lack a compelling stories of other Olympic athletes.  While most Olympic athletes have years of sacrifice behind them and their success is the story of perseverance, what does the NHL have to offer.  A bunch of multimillionaires playing each other?  Not that compelling or exciting.

Bring back the Canadian National Team.  Give us a team that we care about again.  While you are at it, take the NBA players from the summer games as well.

Technorati Tags : Canada, Olympics, hockey

Monday Open Thread

• The history of the NBA logo via
• Numbers kind of lie, just a little bit
• Jays looking good this off-season... of course this means that if they stumble there will be a lot of sobbing on this weblog.
• Bode Miller goes 0-4... a little less partying and a little more training goes a long way.
• Shock! Ricky Williams violates NFL's drug policy... for the 4th time
• Donald and Martha play blame game
• When a private e-mail goes public... bla, bla, bla
• After neoconservatism :: The way the cold war ended shaped the thinking of supporters of the Iraq war, including younger neoconservatives like William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in two ways. First, it seems to have created an expectation that all totalitarian regimes were hollow at the core and would crumble with a small push from outside. The model for this was Romania under the Ceausescus: once the wicked witch was dead, the munchkins would rise up and start singing joyously about their liberation. As Kristol and Kagan put it in their 2000 book "Present Dangers": "To many the idea of America using its power to promote changes of regime in nations ruled by dictators rings of utopianism. But in fact, it is eminently realistic. There is something perverse in declaring the impossibility of promoting democratic change abroad in light of the record of the past three decades."  This overoptimism about postwar transitions to democracy helps explain the Bush administration's incomprehensible failure to plan adequately for the insurgency that subsequently emerged in Iraq. The war's supporters seemed to think that democracy was a kind of default condition to which societies reverted once the heavy lifting of coercive regime change occurred, rather than a long-term process of institution-building and reform. While they now assert that they knew all along that the democratic transformation of Iraq would be long and hard, they were clearly taken by surprise. According to George Packer's recent book on Iraq, "The Assassins' Gate," the Pentagon planned a drawdown of American forces to some 25,000 troops by the end of the summer following the invasion.
• Ethics at their worst :: A women loses her camera and it is found by a Canadian couple who doesn't want to give it back to her because they bought a memory card and a battery charger for it.  Lousy Canadians.  If you know of any Canadians coming back from Hawaii recently with a "found" digital camera... you know what to do. via
• Water still a problem on 76 different reserves :: This is Canada in the 21st century and we still have thousands of citizens without safe water? :: Some of the 76 reserves still under boil-water advisories, about 10 per cent of all First Nations reserves in the country, have been in that position for years. People are forced to rely on bottled water for drinking, cooking and brushing their teeth, and some residents say the water is too dirty even for bathing.
• Will Apple adopt Windows?  He has been predicting this since the launch of the Power PC chips.
• Zucker to turn Zellers into a Canadian Target :: Good news for Canadians as Zellers is one bad store to shop at. :: He points to the successful makeover of Canadian Tire and Shoppers Drug Mart newest outlets. With more windows and an airier look, the exterior re-designs flag significant changes inside, too. "Zellers has made some progress here but has a long way to go."

Duke

Growing up I was a Michigan and UNLV NCAA basketball fan.  During the Christian Laettner/Bobby Hurley era, I started to find myself cheering more and more for Duke.  In the last year or so, there has been an incredible amount of Duke games televised on Canadian sports stations which has been wonderful for me but few games I have seen were as entertaining as last night's finish versus North Carolina.  I wasn't planning to post about it but then AKMA had some questions about the calls that Duke got and if refs are biased.

Despite playing some high school basketball, I am in no position to judge that refereeing.  I know Mark Cuban has said that calls are biased in the NBA and has charted the issues to no end in an effort to improve the situation.  The only horribly biased game I have ever watched live was a World Cup qualification match between Canada and I think Bolivia a couple of years ago in Edmonton.  The refs called a penalty against Canada in the box resulting in a penalty shot when absolutely no contact was made or even close to the player.  They showed it again and again and again and there was nothing.  Then only minutes later Canada scored and was called for a hand ball (I think).  It was a two goal swing in just minutes and it ended Canada's slim qualifying hopes.  I am not a huge soccer fan but along with the fans, the coaching staff, and the Sportsnet announcers, we all knew that the game was fixed.  I watch a lot of sports and like any fan, you see a lot of horrible calls (this years NFL playoffs are an example) but it was almost unbelievable to think that this still happens at that level of sports.  Then again, the last Olympics proved that figure skating officials had been bought off so it still does happen.

Back to AKMA's comments.  I think good teams get more breaks because they create them but I also think that the losing teams fans complain louder about missed calls then the winning team.  Fans are exactly the most rational of people.  I should know, I cheer for the Saskatchewan Roughriders and they make the Chicago Cubs look like a model franchise.

Technorati Tags : Duke, NCAA, basketball, Blue+Devils

I am looking for a new team

Rob Babcock deserved better than what he got from the Toronto Raptors.

Yesterday morning, Babcock sauntered into the office of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd., CEO Richard Peddie, intent on ironing out some routine details about the scouting staff. Babcock had asked for the meeting. Peddie let the engagement stand, watched him walk in and then delivered the killshot on Babcock's career.

"I scheduled my own firing," Babcock said yesterday. He was half-amused, half- amazed.

The elimination of Rob Babcock, in the works for a week and a half, was delivered with such brutal cunning, he didn't even have time to raise his arms. There had been no rumors. No death watch.

"I had no idea this was coming," he said.

Rob Babcock probably never will be a great GM for the same reason he didn't anticipate his own firing. He believes it, all the stuff about team and working co-operatively and everyone getting along. He doesn't know how to forge alliances. He has no instincts to guide him as he backstabs a rival. Because of this deficiency, there are many fields closed to him. Politics comes to mind. The Raptors do, too. Nothing has changed since he was hired.

"I'm not sure why the Raptors would feel the need to re-hire Glen Grunwald," one team executive said when word of Babcock's hiring leaked out in the summer of 2004. "That's nothing personal against Glen, who I quite like. But if the Raptors, for some reason, found Glen wanting, they've replaced him with someone quite similar. They're both nice guys with mid-range credentials."

The truth about Rob Babcock is that he was a rookie GM who got the job because the Raptors wanted cheap.

Cheap means inexperienced. To hear Peddie tell it, it was shocking -- shocking, how inexperienced a second-year GM can be.

It took the efforts of no fewer than four people, two of whom Babcock himself hired and one more whose trade request he granted, to send Babcock back to Minnesota as a failure who couldn't make it in what will probably be his only try at the big job.

Technorati Tags : Toronto+Raptors, Rob+Babcock, basketball

Contextless Links

• Why the Greens Aren't Very Green
• Bush ordered spying on American citizens :: The New York Times said Mr Bush signed a secret presidential order following the attacks on 11 September 2001, allowing the NSA, based at Fort Meade, Maryland, to track the international telephone calls and e-mails of hundreds of people without referral to the courts.
• It's Odeo! Not it's Multikino
• Morgan Freemon on Black History Month :: “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” Freeman asks Wallace. After noting there is no “white history month,” he says, “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history,” he tells Wallace.
• How the original King Kong was made
• Wikipedia equals Enclyclopedia Brittanica in quality?
• Estonia vs. the United States? :: Estonia is holding its own...
• Ten Steps to Turn Around Wal-Mart :: Wal-Mart has offered a classic case of corporate denial, with management refusing to pay heed even as its stock has dropped more than 25% since Lee Scott became its CEO in 2000. But as of very recently, it does seem as though some folks at the top have are in fact paying attention, a sudden arousal triggered by a perfect image storm: The documentary The High Cost of Low Prices, a leaked and magnificently callous internal health-care memorandum, and the chronic jabbing of activist groups like Wake Up Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart Watch. The company is responding with an ill-conceived blast of defensiveness -- in their mind it's a long-overdue gust of truth-telling -- that will eventually be memorialized as a business-school case of strategic and communication blundering; their Iraq.
• Even Healthy Churches Need to Change
• GOP leadership calls for ethics refresher :: Frightening thought that congressional leaders need to be taught ethics :: House Republicans have been reluctant to discuss ethics for fear of feeding Democratic attacks. Mr. Hastert and other top leaders said little about Mr. Cunningham until Monday, when his resignation was formally submitted to the House. But the speaker and others then took a hard line, saying Mr. Cunningham had strayed too far.
• Coming to America :: From Sen. Barack Obama :: If we hope to bring the 11 million undocumented immigrants out into the open, we must give them a reason. This means granting them an interim legal status to work with the opportunity to eventually earn citizenship. We can do this, without amnesty, by imposing a hefty fine for having illegally entered our country, and by forcing the undocumented to go to the back of the line in their pursuit of citizenship. The interim status should only apply to those already here, so as not to open the door for others.
• TDH Strategies has this 2003 quote from then Finance Minister Paul Martin, "Our bilateral relations must be conducted on a far more sophisticated basis than they have been to date. We must engage the Americans face-to-face at important levels of our respective political systems - prime minister and president; premiers and governors; members of parliament and members of Congress; mayors, business and union leaders, and civil society."
• Rick Bennet has the story of the first 1000 days of the Iraq War
• The Raptors are horrible but so are the Knicks
• What is a sports hernia?
• Tony Kornheiser shooting his mouth off again
• Movies whose fans are more annoying then the film itself
• Can someone please tell me why the religious right doesn't protest cuts in food stamp programs? :: When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them. That is a great relief to Republican leaders, who have dismissed the burgeoning protests as the work of liberals. But it raises the question: Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?
• The the game starts, these sports executives get lost :: I can totally relate, I was too sick too my stomach to watch Denver win its two Super Bowls. I watched them later after I found out they won.
• Top 10 Nitpicked Sites
• Patriot Act blocked in the Senate

Toronto Raptors hit new low

The pre-season is not supposed to bring such stakes. But there stood Raptors head coach Sam Mitchell yesterday afternoon, his team outclassed by an international squad made up of American players you've probably forgotten and Israeli nationals you probably never knew existed, speaking openly of death.

"At some point, we've got to learn," he said to the assembled media. "When that's going to be, I don't know.

"I got nowhere else to go, nothing else to do, but just try to get better. If it kills me, we're going to try to get better. If I have to die trying, then that's what's going to happen. I'll die in the gym. But we're going to try to get better, that's all I know."

All he had seen in the three hours previous must have told him it may take a lifetime to get there. With their third straight exhibition loss of the season, the Toronto Raptors reached near-historic levels of defeat yesterday, falling 105-103 to Maccabi Tel Aviv of the Israeli league before a crowd of 17,281 that was passionately behind the visitors with dozens of Israeli flags flying and regular chants of "Ma-cca-bi."

Link

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The NFL network had a segment on yesterday about how "respect" is all these guys talk about and also how stupid it is. As one coach said, these guys have been talking about not being respected since they were junior high kids. I guess it was how they are motivated. When Jerry Kramer wrote Instant Reply, it was the money that came from winning the Super Bowl that motivated him. Some guy on the other team was trying to take a lot of money from him. I guess when you are making $113 million dollars over your contract like Mike Vick, money won't motivate you that much.

The other segment that Lee and I watched was on NFL coaches trying to kiss up to refs. It was hilarious. Most coaches have cheat sheets that have all the refs names on it. As they said though when they are mad or under pressure, they often call the refs by the wrong names and they showed that lots.

In the end, NFL Films and the NFL Network do a better job of conveying the NFL than any other effort by other sports. It is leap years ahead of the NHL and even MLB or the NBA.