Is that a joke? Donaghey [sp?] ADMITTED he threw games, and the tapes back up his claims. ANYTHING with large amounts of money on the line has, can and will be corrupted by the impurity of man.
I’d probably agree that James is having his best season, but his fg% is due to him not taking as many careless 3’s. Also, Marion was shooting close to that in his prime while also grabbing like 12 boards a game. It happens, just not often.[/quote]
I think individuals may throw games (refs, maybe players, whatever) but I do not think the LEAGUE fixes games. A shit ton of what Donaghy said has been proven false so I don’t believe a word he says about leaguewide directives to refs.
No disagreement about James, he’s having his best FG% because he’s cut out some careless shots, which has made him a little harder to stop (less easy to bait him into contested 3s). I’m still waiting for this revamped back-to-the-basket game he talked so much about though.
Marion had some really efficient seasons, but 52.5%FG and 20pts a game is still a far cry from what LBJ is doing. Funny thing, I just ran a query on basketball reference to see everyone who’s scored over 25pts/game on 55% shooting, expecting no SFs in the top 25 points per game except LBJ’s current year… and I stumbled on the great, heroic, Kiki Vandeweghe (1983-84) wtf??? The only other non-bigs to do it were Bernard King and Alex English
Is that a joke? Donaghey [sp?] ADMITTED he threw games, and the tapes back up his claims. ANYTHING with large amounts of money on the line has, can and will be corrupted by the impurity of man.
I’d probably agree that James is having his best season, but his fg% is due to him not taking as many careless 3’s. Also, Marion was shooting close to that in his prime while also grabbing like 12 boards a game. It happens, just not often.[/quote]
I think individuals may throw games (refs, maybe players, whatever) but I do not think the LEAGUE fixes games. A shit ton of what Donaghy said has been proven false so I don’t believe a word he says about leaguewide directives to refs.
No disagreement about James, he’s having his best FG% because he’s cut out some careless shots, which has made him a little harder to stop (less easy to bait him into contested 3s). I’m still waiting for this revamped back-to-the-basket game he talked so much about though.
Marion had some really efficient seasons, but 52.5%FG and 20pts a game is still a far cry from what LBJ is doing. Funny thing, I just ran a query on basketball reference to see everyone who’s scored over 25pts/game on 55% shooting, expecting no SFs in the top 25 points per game except LBJ’s current year… and I stumbled on the great, heroic, Kiki Vandeweghe (1983-84) wtf??? The only other non-bigs to do it were Bernard King and Alex English
You’ll get no arguement here that what James does and Marion did are quite different. James creates most of his shots while Marion was the ultimate garbage man [ said as a compliment]. One thing that I’ve seen James do a lot of this year that I don’t remember him doing is the 12-15 foot floater. It’s kind of an ugly, one hand push shot but he seems to hit it pretty regularly. Most of what I’ve seen him do this year is 17’ and in.
Can’t see the link at work, but I’m pretty sure that both Vandeweghe and English played for the old Doug Moe coached Nuggets who were the definition of “run and gun”. Those teams were averaging like 120 a game. Nuts.
Jesus, who was it that said like a page ago Steven A. Smith was a good analyst? He just wrote an article that signing 36-year old Kevin Garnett as a Free Agent next year is what the Lakers need to do to be title contenders. I’ll skip over the part where he provides no information as to how a team $30M over the salary cap would be able to sign a Free Agent, and just say that signing an ancient Kevin Garnett to a team who plays solid defense and is in desperate need of consistent scoring and some real backcourt players is possibly the worst fit imaginable.
[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:
while Marion was the ultimate garbage man [ said as a compliment].[/quote]
the true ultimate garbage man [as compliment]:
[/quote]
Haha, Ceballos was awesome. Read somewhere that he was like the 3rd option on his high school squad, went to a small college, then went to Phoenix and got branded “point a minute man”. Dude got buckets.
[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:
Good lord, Smith and Bayless have to be 2 of the most irritating guys on the planet. Couldn’t watch more than a minute of either video.[/quote]
that’s why i said they were funny. they squabble like two old women. But imo, what they speak the truth. they don’t hold back for fear of public backlash or whatever, and says what needs to be said. (:
[/quote]
Yeah they do say whatever they want. They are just wrong like 65% of the time, or at least Skip is.[/quote]
why’d you say so? curious to hear your opinion on what they say. i definitely pay more attention to what stephen says though…he’s louder and he’s talking like 80% of the time. haha[/quote]
I missed this post.
Back when I watched ESPN all day (college when I had no job) I just remember constantly shouting at Skip for the idiotic things he was saying. In all honesty I haven’t heard/read much from him in 5 years (random bites here and there which confirm I still hate him) but people don’t change their stripes at his age when he had prob already covered the NBA 20yrs when I did listen to him.
I’m having a hard time remembering the specific arguments I hated but I’ll try to make time to watch that clip posted last page and I’ll see what (if anything) I hate.
I’ve been watching PTI since I was a kid (although the ESPN over here seems to have substituted it with an Australian version, which is almost unbearable). I still think it’s the most entertaining show on the channel. Kornheiser and Wilbon aren’t much by themselves but when they sit down together and talk they have the best chemistry out of any sport commentary team, which is why people tune into their show I guess.
First Take looks interesting from the little I’ve seen. Too bad they don’t broadcast it on the ESPN here (even if they did it would be at like 5am in the morning).
[quote]therajraj wrote:
Of the 2 sports I follow there’s really only 1 writer or well known “expert” I generally think has a good understanding of what they’re talking about.
No one in basketball, Keith Law is pretty good in baseball.[/quote]
Law is good.
In bball I like Sebastian Pruiti, and although he’s not a writer I follow harabolis voulgaris on twitter, I agree with most of what he says.
Skip Bayless is pretty bad. His entire schtick is saying ridiculous shit just to piss people off, and somehow he’s managed to make a career out of it. I like Stephen A, you can tell he genuinely loves basketball but it makes him very opinionated. Chris Webber is good on NBATV and he sometimes works with the TNT crew. Tim Legler is kind of bland but his analysis is usually spot on. Same with Chris Mullen.
@Gettin: First Take sucks. It’s obvious that Dana Jacobson and Jay Whatever know fuck-all about sports. Skip actually knows sports, he’s just stuck in shock jock mode. Most of the guests suck too. The “2 Live Stu’s” are the worst. I can’t remember what they were talking about, but one of them tried to say that Skip disagreed with him because he was racist. Everybody was just looking at him like “dude, seriously???”.
[quote]WhiteFlash wrote:
Good lord, Smith and Bayless have to be 2 of the most irritating guys on the planet. Couldn’t watch more than a minute of either video.[/quote]
that’s why i said they were funny. they squabble like two old women. But imo, what they speak the truth. they don’t hold back for fear of public backlash or whatever, and says what needs to be said. (:
[/quote]
Yeah they do say whatever they want. They are just wrong like 65% of the time, or at least Skip is.[/quote]
why’d you say so? curious to hear your opinion on what they say. i definitely pay more attention to what stephen says though…he’s louder and he’s talking like 80% of the time. haha[/quote]
I missed this post.
Back when I watched ESPN all day (college when I had no job) I just remember constantly shouting at Skip for the idiotic things he was saying. In all honesty I haven’t heard/read much from him in 5 years (random bites here and there which confirm I still hate him) but people don’t change their stripes at his age when he had prob already covered the NBA 20yrs when I did listen to him.
I’m having a hard time remembering the specific arguments I hated but I’ll try to make time to watch that clip posted last page and I’ll see what (if anything) I hate.[/quote]
hmm i based what i thought on stepehn and skip on those few clips i watched. which i thought were true, especially on what he said about lebron and dwight. and being pretty entertaining, (stephen has passion man, haha) i thought they were pretty good.
i for one, will admit that i’m not very knowledgable about basketball analysis but i still love bball with a passion. (: so who do you think actually knows their stuff among all the tnt peeps. i’ll keep an eye out for them.
ron artest will always be…ron artest. lol. and with the lakers bench as of now…they might as well just toss everyone except artest away. and even he is pretty inconsistent.
hmm i based what i thought on stepehn and skip on those few clips i watched. which i thought were true, especially on what he said about lebron and dwight. and being pretty entertaining, (stephen has passion man, haha) i thought they were pretty good.
i for one, will admit that i’m not very knowledgable about basketball analysis but i still love bball with a passion. (: so who do you think actually knows their stuff among all the tnt peeps. i’ll keep an eye out for them. [/quote]
Barkley goes between very insightful and downright idiotic. It’s actually amazing that all the things he says really come from just one person.
overstand made a good point… I do think Skip says things he actually doesn’t totally believe just to get a reaction, because that’s his calling card. He’d rather be well-known than be right, if you know what I mean.
By the way, does anyone here watch NBATV much? You get the local broadcasters instead of the national ones and some of the crews are hilariously bad and/or blatant homers. I almost had to put the Pacers-Bulls game on mute with the things Stacey King was saying.
Only thing I will say is he has been flat out wrong when he says things with respect to the Blue Jays, the organization he use to scout for.
In the past he has said:
Vernon wells would never resign with the Blue Jays - he did
There is something to the man in white accusations - there’s not
He also generally doesn’t say anything all that bold and a lot of what he writes in trade analyses is pretty obvious. Just read his breakdown of the Prince Fielder signing. Anyone paying decent attention would’ve come to those conclusions.
That being said, I really like his scouting reports of prospects still in the farm system and projections of young players with less than 2 years MLB experience.
