The Boston College Eagles Men’s Basketball Team

By Blaidd Drwg

One of the drawbacks about being on the West Coast and having your alma mater on the East Coast is that you don’t get to see a ton of games unless they happen to be nationally televised. As a result, this season, most of my knowledge of Boston College basketball is coming from what I read, and generally it is not good. Heck, they are currently 304th in the nation in scoring, which is just terrible.

The Eagles are a very young team with most of the roster consisting of freshman. That is not a good recipe for success, especially when you play your conference games in the ACC. Most of the pre-season write-ups on the Eagles were unfavorable and predicting a disastrous season. Their non-conference schedule, not exactly studded with tough opponents, was a disaster, leaving the team with a 5-9 record entering into ACC play. How bad was it? Here you go:

They beat New Hampshire by 3 at home. A nice way to start off the season.
They lost to Holy Cross by 18. HC was 6-8 in non-conference play.
They lost to Massachusetts by 36 at home. UMASS is actually pretty good, sporting a 14-5 record, but really hasn’t beaten anyone of consequence.
They lost to St Louis by 11. This might have been the highpoint of the season thus far – they were actually competitive with a decent team.
The beat UC Riverside by 4, in double OT. You should never need to go to double OT to beat UC Riverside.
They lost to New Mexico by 18.
They lost to Penn St. by 8 at home. Penn St. is probably the worst team in the Big 10.
They lost to Boston University by 14 at home. Ugh, nothing worse than losing the Battle of Comm Ave.
They lost to Providence by 7 on the road. PC is one of the worst teams in the Big East.
They beat Stony Brook by 15 at home.
They beat Bryant by 20 at home. Don’t look now, we have a winning streak!
They beat Sacred Heart by 10 at home. Three in a row!!!
They lost to Harvard by 21 at home. Not a surprise, Harvard is actually good and was ranked #23 going into that game.
They lost to URI by 6 in double OT at home. URI was 2-12 going into this game. Definitely the low point of the season.

Then ACC play starts with a 23 point drubbing by #4 UNC. I had just about written off the season completely and then BC surprises me with back to back wins against Clemson and Virginia Tech. Yes, both of those wins were by 2 points, and both of those teams are currently at the bottom of the ACC standings, and both of those wins came at home, but you know what, I was expecting the Eagles to go 0 for the conference, so I will take back to back wins right now, even if the chances of the Eagles winning another ACC game are pretty low. I think I need to post the ACC standing just for posterity, considering I doubt that BC will be this high up on the list again this season:

2011 – 12 ACC STANDINGS

TEAM	CONF	GB	OVR
#4 Duke	3-0	—	15-2
Florida State	3-1	.5	12-6
#8 North Carolina	2-1	1	15-3
North Carolina State	2-1	1	13-5
Boston College	2-1	1	7-10
Maryland	2-2	1.5	12-5
#17 Virginia	1-1	1.5	14-2
Miami (FL)	1-2	2	10-6
Wake Forest	1-2	2	10-7
Georgia Tech	1-2	2	8-9
Clemson	1-3	2.5	9-9
Virginia Tech	0-3	3	11-6

Two Unrelated Thoughts On The Lakers

by A.J. Coltrane

Kobe scored 48 the last Tuesday. The ESPN highlight package for the game opened with Kobe with the ball at the left of the free-throw line, then taking a big dribble and a big pivot step. He then took five more steps, doing a series of small shuffles away from his defender until he had enough space to get up a shot. I know it was seven steps because as I was watching the highlight I said to myself: “That’s a lot of steps!” , then I slowed it down and counted. During Kobe’s dance his defender was frozen in place — if his defender had moved forward to close the gap Kobe would have simply jumped into him and drawn a shooting foul.

I *was* going to post a link to the highlight package, but ESPN removed it from circulation — as far as I can tell they only showed it the one time, then replaced it with a different series of highlights. It’s a conspiracy! I’m guessing some phone calls were involved.

Here’s good read about Kobe Bryant on Grantland.

2nd Thought: Before the Mavericks (at) Lakers game last night the production crew scanned the crowd, showing all the “celebrities”. The celebrities included the usuals like Nicholson, Adam Sandler, and Chris Tucker. They also showed Dyan Cannon. I’m wondering if including Dyan Cannon in the celebrity montage is just a courtesy at this point — when was the last time she was actually famous? And has anyone under the age of 40 ever heard of her?

I tried a Google search for a picture of Cannon. The first autofill was “Diane Cannon Plastic Surgery”.

: A Methuselah rookie card!

Yep.

Bonus trivia: Did you know Cannon was married to Cary Grant? If Grant were still alive, tomorrow he’d be 108 years old.

Happy Birthday Cary Grant – you handsome man!

Tony Wroten

by A.J. Coltrane

“Tony Wroten” refers to Husky freshman guard Tony Wroten. He was a highly rated recruit, and some people are very high on him so far [ESPN Insider Link]:

A number of NBA scouts and GMs now feel like Washington’s Tony Wroten(Rank: 19) might be the best NBA point guard prospect in college basketball…

and

..But Wroten is the real deal. He’s tall, has eyes in the back of his head, can get to the basket at will and, when he’s focused, he can take over a game. His second-half performance against Duke on Saturday was, at times, special. He’s still wild and tries to do too much, but it’s rare to find a player with his size doing the things he does. Said one top NBA scout, “He’s the second coming of Gary Payton.”

Emphasis mine.

The last sentence is what really got my attention.. I watched the Duke and Missouri games, and I know Wroten came in highly regarded, but still, my eyes weren’t telling me THAT. He seems like a nice young guard who’s still figuring it out. I haven’t seen “future Hall of Famer”.

Think about what Payton was — a great defensive player with good size and court vision. He was also a marginal shooter coming out of college and his shot never really developed much beyond “solid”.

The Gary Payton comment prompted me to look around a little further, and here’s a second opinion by David Thorpe (also Insider), following the Missouri/UW game:

Wroten looked for the spectacular play almost every possession rather than the easy one…

He has a terrific feel for slithering to the rim for buckets. Wroten has no idea how to play basketball, but has a great idea how to score and see the floor. Once he learns to read and think the game, his talent can grow to enormous heights…

He was not inclined to do much on defense in this game and missed some opportunities to get back on defense. I would have liked to see him handle that better…

However, he is a poor free throw shooter thanks to rushing his way through the shot as if a defender is about to come guard him.

Does that sound like Gary Payton? I’d point the phrases “no idea how to play basketball” and “not inclined to do much on defense”… One thing about Gary is that he worked hard, all the time, especially on defense… He was also really savvy and had a high basketball IQ.

Here’s the ESPN draft report card:

Projection	Late First Round Pick
Positives	Powerful combo guard Excellent court vision Can be a spectacular passer Powerful finisher at the basket
Negatives	Needs to improve his jump shot Can be reckless at times Questionable shot selection Lacks elite athleticism or explosiveness

Wroten is even bigger than Payton was — Wroten is listed at 6’5″, 205 lbs. If he can get rid of the “reckless” then maybe he’s a point guard at the NBA level, otherwise he’ll be a tweener combo guard.

Which is useful, but it’s not Gary Payton.

At the college level though.. he could be *very* effective.

Assorted Sports Thoughts

by A.J. Coltrane

Mike Leach to the Cougars:

To quote Leach – “You can win here and win big, I believe.”

Washington State football just got a lot more entertaining — I may actually make a point to watch a game or two next year. WSU will throw the ball all over the place, and historically that’s what they’ve done when they’ve been good. At the very least they’ll be fun to watch.

The Sounders get a new keeper:

The Sounders signed 6’5″ Austrian keeper Michael Gspurning. From the Seattle Times: “Gspurning’s size lends to a more aggressive approach in coming out to defend crosses, and he is also more comfortable having balls played back to him and using his feet”

The News Tribune has more information about Gspurning, including this YouTube clip of five of his saves:

I’m predisposed to like tall keepers — Kasey Keller would have had a hard time getting to Save #3 on the video, though Keller likely would have been playing another step or two to his left to cover that angle and would have stopped it anyway.

Gspuring is a 30 year-old veteran keeper. I have high hopes the Sounders won’t miss a beat.

Finally, the NBA is dead to me, but:

The Miami Heat signed Shane Battier. I think this is about as important as any signing in the league this year — Battier is absolutely the perfect fit to go with Wade and Lebron. Battier doesn’t need the ball in his hands to be productive, he’s a very good perimeter defender, he’s a good rebounder, a good passer, and he’s a good 3-point shooter. He may wind up being more valuable to the Heat than Chris Bosh. Really, the Heat are the “Big 2 +1” anyway, not a “Big 3”. As Battier approaches the late phase of his career he could basically be Robert Horry all over again. Mike Bibby just signed somewhere else, and if the Heat can get anything besides a corpse to play the point then they have to be heavy favorites to win it all this year. They don’t even need a traditional point guard, it could be a Steve Kerr equivalent and they’d be fine. (Any of the triangle offense non-traditional point guards would work — Kerr, Paxson, Harper, or Fisher. They just need long-range shooting and (ideally) someone to get in the way of quick little guards.)

Bleh.

A Rucker Park Legend Is Born

by A.J. Coltrane

From ESPN:

The Oklahoma City Thunder forward and reigning NBA scoring champion dazzled the crowd by scoring 66 points in an Entertainers Basketball Classic game Monday.

“I’ve always wanted to play at Rucker Park all my life,” Durant told one of the league’s emcees after his DC Power team beat the Sean Bell All-Stars, which featured Chicago Bulls guard John Lucas III.

Rucker Park, located across the street from where the Polo Grounds used to stand, is famed for pickup games and leagues that have counted Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Julius Erving, Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant among its visitors.

Durant fell two points short of the EBC scoring record, set by Steve Burtt Jr. in 2007. Joe (The Destroyer) Hammond is recognized as holding the park record of 74 points in a game.

My favorite part:

After the game, Durant tweeted: “No lie, jus had one of the best times of my life at Rucker park..wow! I love NY…Harlem waddup.”

Kevin Durant: The prize free agent signing of the 2017 NY Knicks!

We can all dream.

C’mon Rodg, Hit Him With Your Wallet

by A.J. Coltrane

Lebron had this to say after the Heat were defeated by the Mavs in the NBA Finals:

[Wow, I Googled “Lebron James” to find the link and the autofill popped up “Lebron James Jokes” as the #1 search. There’s definitely some vitriol going on.]

But I digress, here’s his quote:

“All the people that was rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today,”

“They have the same personal problems they had today. I’m going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that. They can get a few days or a few months or whatever the case may be on being happy about not only myself, but the Miami Heat not accomplishing their goal, but they have to get back to the real world at some point.”

That reminded me of the March 30 entry in Ball Four:

Now about Roger Maris. Roger fought a lot with the people in the stands , especially in Detroit, where he used to give them the finger. He and the fans would get to calling each other names and then Maris would roll out his heavy artillery.

“Yeah? How much are you making?”

Roger was making $70,000 a year.

After a while every time Maris got into an argument the guys in the dugout would say, “C’mon Rodg, hit him with your wallet.”

That’s certainly how I interpreted Lebron’s comments, though in the linked article he says he really didn’t mean it that way. Not that I believe him. I heard that as: “You have to go to work on Monday and I don’t.”

I think Joe Posnanski did a great job of summing up my feelings about James and the Heat:

…After all, I spent the entire NBA season rooting against LeBron James and the Miami Heat. I rooted against the Heat with a joyous zeal. People often asked me why — some lectured me about it. That’s OK. I’m sure I can put the reasons into words if necessary. I rooted against the Heat because I was ticked off at LeBron for quitting on the Cavaliers at the end of last season. I rooted against the Heat because I was ticked off at LeBron for making a mockery of Cleveland and how much the fans there loved him. I rooted against the Heat because something about three buddies deciding to get together in an exotic locale and dominate the NBA seemed like a plot for a bad James Bond movie. I rooted against the Heat because I do not like anyone cutting in line…

A final quote from Ball Four, since the Maris entry always reminds me of the March 4 entry about Mantle:

“…I remember one time he’d been injured and didn’t expect to play, and I guess he’d gotten himself smashed. The next day he looked hung over out of his mind and was sent up to pinch-hit. He could hardly see. So he staggered up to the plate and hit a tremendous drive to left field for a home run. When he came back into the dugout and everybody shook his hand and leaped all over him, and all the time he was getting a standing ovation from the crowd. He squinted out at the stands and said, “Those people don’t know how tough that really was.”

Which is why when I went to a Mariner game and Bouton threw out the first pitch the guy next to me said “Isn’t that guy the traitor to baseball?”

The M’s game was in 2009. Ball Four was written in 1969. People don’t forget.

——————

[Link to a film about the Seattle Pilots that looks interesting.]

The Mavs And The Spread

by A.J. Coltrane

From the Wall Street Journal: The Dallas Mavericks covered against the spread 15 times in a row(!) prior to Game 2 of the NBA Western Conference Finals.

The Mavs were 5 point favorites in Game 2, but lost to the game and ended the streak.

The WSJ piece has an odd title – “The Team Las Vegas Can’t Figure Out”. But then there’s this:

“There’s clearly a major disconnect between perception and reality here,” said Andrew Garrood, executive director of Las Vegas Sports Consultants. “It’s safe to say we won’t see anything like this again for a long time.”

and

Bell said the Mavs have been receiving a boost from the bookmakers this postseason because of their opponents. Their first-round foe, the Portland Trail Blazers, were a media darling and a popular pick to win among analysts and fans. Meanwhile, the Lakers are a marquee team that typically receives a disproportionate number of bets, which swayed the line a bit in Dallas’s favor throughout that series.

Representing the "206" - Jason Terry of the Mavericks.

I think the excerpts above spell it out pretty well — the title of the piece is something of a misnomer: It isn’t Las Vegas that hasn’t figured out the Mavs, it’s all the squares who continue to bet for the “media darlings.” It’s the same reason that I have to be truly convinced before I’m going to place a bet on any of the following teams: Yankees, Red Sox, Cowboys, Notre Dame, or whoever is the current “flavor of the month” in the media.

The piece would have been better served with a different, more appropriate title: “The Wrong Way To Bet On Sports”

But that would stink of helping to teach people how to gamble on sports, and there’s no way they could publish it like that.

How To Move an NBA Franchise in 13 Easy Steps

By Blaidd Drwg

The NBA has a “relocation committee” headed by he-who-must-not-be-named-in-Seattle. In honor of the NBA, in its infinite wisdom, “allowing” the Sacramento Kings to stay in Sacramento for one more season before a decision is made on allowing them to move to Anaheim, I present you with how to move an NBA franchise in 13 easy steps:

Own a team in a smaller market like Seattle, Vancouver, Charlotte or Sacramento.
Build that team into a successful contender with a strong and loyal fan base (or buy a franchise already in that state in one of the smaller markets).
Start complaining about how your 20 year old arena, which had been good enough up to that point an provides your team with a great home court advantage, is no longer good enough because you don’t have 100 luxury boxes despite selling out all of your games and that you don’t get all of the revenue from the stadium that was built with money other than your own.
To prove your point, stop investing in quality player, causing the team to stop winning and people to stop coming to the games. In addition – keep the GM that has run your team into the cellar of the league and fire your coach (who can’t win with the player you are drafting) 3 or 4 times in the process (thanks to Lloyd for pointing out the omission)
As the attendance drops, start publically saying that you can’t compete since the outdated arena isn’t drawing fans and that the cure for that is a shiny new arena, built with public money of course, which the team gets all of the revenues from.
Lobby the state legislature, which is trying to cut budget deficits, to raise taxes on the local population to fund the stadium. Pepper them with promises of increased tax revenues, new jobs and more money pumped into the local economy, even though there is no evidence that any of those things come from a new stadium.
Wait for the legislature to vote. If they pass it, hold a big ceremony to celebrate your victory (although I would refrain from lighting the ceremonial cigars with $100 bills in public). Donate a few of the nosebleed seats (you know, the ones that are about 2 miles up behind the beams that you probably couldn’t sell anyway) to local underprivileged kids a year to show how you are “giving back to the community”. If you are successful in getting the stadium, go back to step one in 10 years, otherwise:
If they fail to pass the funding, let the team sink further, drawing less people and continue to point out the need for a new stadium and how the old stadium is completely ruining the franchise. Go back to the legislature with that.
If they still won’t give you a stadium, start finding other smaller markets without an NBA franchise and let them know you would be happy to move your team to that city and make them a major league city if they give you a shiny new stadium with 100 luxury boxes and all of the revenue build by public money. Good candidates for this are San Diego, Las Vegas, Memphis, Oklahoma City, New Orleans and Kansas City. This is plan B.
Use the aforementioned deal to try to hold your current state’s legislature hostage – meanwhile stocking up on young talent that will make you competitive in 2 -3 years.
If your current state’s legislature still won’t budge, start packing up the moving vans and take up city B on their offer, saying how much you regret having to move the team and how you feel bad for the people of your original city, but it is a business.
Move into city B’s shiny new building with your suddenly competitive team and talk about how happy you are to be there.
Lather, rinse, repeat.

Where The Money’s At

by A.J. Coltrane

ESPN has published a list of the 200 best-paying teams. The top 10:

Rank	Team	Average Annual Salary Per Player
1	Barcelona	$7,910,737.00
2	Real Madrid	$7,356,632.00
3	New York Yankees	$6,756,301.00
4	Los Angeles Lakers	$6,540,690.00
5	Orlando Magic	$6,367,114.00
6	Chelsea	$6,020,741.00
7	Inter Milan	$5,999,643.00
8	Boston Red Sox	$5,991,203.00
9	Denver Nuggets	$5,990,174.00
10	Manchester City	$5,863,585.00

The M’s are #71 at $2.88m per player, the Seahawks are #80 at $2.80m per player — The top NFL team is the Redskins at #70, $2.91m per player.

In fact:

Soccer	Baseball	Basketball	Football	Rank
5	2	3	0	Top 10
10	6	9	0	Top 25
16	11	23	0	Top 50

Most of the NBA is clustered between $4.5 and $3.8 million per player per team, which happens to fall in the #26-#50 range.

Here’s an odd one: The top paying NHL team, the Detroit Red Wings, pay better than the best paying NFL team, the Washington Redskins. I hadn’t expected the NHL to pay that well. That’s also a byproduct of the NFL’s 20 game schedule and a 53-man rosters.

I’ve used All About The Benjamins elsewhere, so here’s Weird Al’s “All About The Pentiums.”

Check out the lyrics.

“Double clickin on my mizouse!”

Carmelo, Revisited

by A.J. Coltrane

Carmelo Anthony had 42 points and 17 rebounds against the Celtics last night. He got those numbers despite the fact that Chauncey Billups missed the game due to injury, and Amar’e Stoudamire departed at halftime with back spasms. I’ve compared Carmelo to Antoine Walker before, but what he did last night was impressive.

bernard-king — Bernard King, Carmelo's brother from another era.

What struck me while watching the game was just how difficult it was to do what Carmelo was doing. There were a lot of contested long-range shot attempts, but in this case most of them were still good shots to take. For anybody else they would have been bad shots. (Even for Carmelo on most nights they’d still be bad shots.) Last night though, it was a whole lot of “You Have Got To Be Kidding Me.”

Here’s the point: I think that some of the elements that make Carmelo Anthony “great” are the same elements that made Nolan Ryan “great.”

A while ago I read about Ryan in a baseball book, possibly by Bill James (or maybe Rob Neyer). The author said the that the reason Ryan was so widely respected by other players is that they realized how difficult it was to do what Ryan was doing — striking out that many batters and the way that he did it. Ryan didn’t win a whole lot more games than he lost, but he still had guys in awe of his skillset.

I get the same feeling watching Carmelo, only Carmelo’s Skill the ability to score at will.

If “scoring despite a high degree of difficulty” is what being a great player is about then Carmelo Anthony is truly a great player. Me, I’m not convinced that basketball has to be that hard.

——————-

Having said that — Carmelo won’t belong in the same room with Ryan in terms of career value when all is said and done.