Give Me The Rock

That’s right - one year ago yesterday was the official birth of Give Me The Rock.

And now I can start writing things like: Look how good I am! Credibility! And… One Year Ago Today (sure to become a staple of Give Me The Rock this season)

One Year Ago Yesterday:

Gordon, Deng Signed:

If the trade involving Jamal Crawford ever goes down, Gordon looks to be a good candidate for a starting guard position. I’m thinking something along the lines of Dwayne Wade - but perhaps I’m being optimistic because I’m biased. Deng will be starting at small forward almost for sure. Even with the deal (unless Harrington comes with it) he’s the best small forward the Bulls will have. “They” say he’s looking good in the summer league games, so he should be a solid mid-round pick.

Give Me The Rock: 1 — Other Fantasy Basketblogs that are at least a year old: 0.

He’s the Man-u:

Manu had 10 ppg, 3.5 rpg, and 3 apg last season. He was listed after the departed Hedo Turkoglu on the depth chart, and showed progress last year. So, he’ll probably be the starting SG for San Antionio. However, the Olympics will surely deplete him - being the star of the Argentine team, he’ll be working hard. He’ll certainly improve on last years numbers - everyone knows he’s just waiting to blow up all over the court. He’s still young enough that the Olympics might not take too much out of him. If you take him, don’t count on him towards the end of the season.

Give Me The Rock: 1.5 — Other Fantasy Basketblogs that are at least a year old: 0.

Please pardon the unstyled nature of the old posts. Somehow, when I copied them over from Blogger, Wordpress neglected to style them for some reason (most likely, user error). That said, if I make it to April of next year, I will have a whole year’s worth of styled posts. Awesome.

Happy Birthday to anyone else who has a birthday on July 29th!

booth52 is over on his blog hyping up Stephen Hunter. Anyone else want to jump on the (now 2-man) Stephen Hunter Bandwagon (started by me! ego… getting bigger… must restrain it…)?

Quick analysis, I’d rank the following accordingly, give or take:
-Chandler (upside bumps him up)
-Camby
-Sam Damme
-Stro Swift
-Stephen Hunter
….
-Eddeee Curreee
….
-Jerome James

In real life, all of those guys are taken (well, except technically Tyson, who BETTER be staying with the Bulls, and Eddy, who I am fairly ambivalent about) … so the Sonics targeting Hunter would make sense… at least if you follow booth’s idea of big guy rankings.

So, where does Hunter fit in the fantasy big guy rankings?

Well… unless he ends up somewhere else, I’d say he stays right where he is/was - perhaps even lower than last year. No offense to the big fella, but with Kurt Thomas and Amare Stoudemire ahead of you on the depth chart, it’s going to hard to locate an argument for more playing time even with a few of the unpolished diamonds he turned in last season.

If Hunter goes anywhere (not that he is being shopped), but if he does go to a place where he can get about 26 minutes, he becomes an instant fantasy role player. With those minutes he’d probably be in the 10, 6 and 2+ blocks range, which will be good to fill in the blocks while not completely dropping everything else off the table. At a place like Seattle, he might be able to get into that 20-25 minute range.

Just keep an eye on The Hunter is all I’m saying.

While the analysis provided via the link below doesn’t serve up anything revelatory, it can be easily argued that doing so would be somewhat impossible at this stage considering the moratorium (vocabulary word of the day) has not yet ended.

Mr. McGovern does provide the following nugget of advice which I am quick to latch onto and blockquote. Luol Deng is not only a sexy beast, but he’s a great Sleeper Candidate since most people probably don’t realize what a stud he can (and almost certainly will) be.

FANTASY BASKETBALL: Central Division Offseason Analysis

While others overreach on Draft Day for Ben Gordon — he’s a decent scorer but not much else — you’ll wisely turn your attention to Luol Deng. The versatile forward was showing explosive potential late last season before an injury robbed him at the end. Deng should be fully recovered by the start of the season and he actually grew another inch! While Andres Nocioni’s strong showing in the postseason may scare a few people off Deng, the Bulls know Nocioni’s strength lies in his ability wreak havoc off the bench. Deng’s shooting should improve in his sophomore season, and he’s already a healthy contributor in the rebound and assist categories.

There’s also an article about the Atlantic Division, but I haven’t quite gotten to that one yet. Not that I necessarily ever will.

Since when is fantasy basketball not as important as normal basketball? HoopsHype would have you believe that there are no fantasy basketball blogs… Don’t worry, I’ll be emailing them shortly to make them aware of the oversight.

In the meantime, you can check out HoopsHype’s list of basketball blogs to see if there’s anything you’re missing (or anything they’re missing). You can also find many blogs that don’t have RSS feeds. Should they even count as a blog without an RSS feed? I want to say no, but I suppose that’s unfair, and maybe I’m just in a bad mood from being so blatantly ignored. Hmmm… looks like I dropped my sarcasm somewhere back there… where’d it go?

On a side note, I wanted to give a shout out to the NBA and Players Union for continuing to push back the collective bargaining agreement implementation, giving me more time to write something up about the free agents and their various supposed signings.

On another side note… is there a basketball equivalent to Left Field? I want to say something about that last side note being out of left field, but couldn’t come up with anything except for something lame like “From way beyond the arc” which is probably trademarked by EA since the announcers say it so much in NBA Live (I’m sure it has something to do with my playing style…)

As Tony Pierce once said (I think): Write it and hit publish.

My first post is up over at the Bulls Blog.

Nuno over at NBA FAN BLOG inspired the post by saying (among other things ):

Ironically the Bulls may no longer have any use for Williams. Kirk Hinrich, Chris Duhon, Ben Gordon and Jannero Pargo are all more than capable of playing the point guard position and if Williams comes back, I’m sure he’s eager to get playing time. Other teams like Toronto, Houston and Miami are all reportedly interested in Williams’ services. Once Williams is ready to play in the league, it shouldn’t be difficult for him to find a roster spot.

To which I responded (among other thing):

How’s about let’s put Hinrich and Gordon back at the 2-spot where they belong, send Duhon packing and keep Pargo as the back-up Bobcat killer. If Williams is anything like his former self he’s probably better than Duhon. And, no offense to Captain Kirk and Ben “Jordan” but they’re not at their best at the PG position.

So… what is Jay Williams role as a fantasy basketball player? We’ll have to look at his past and extrapolate from that…

9.5 points, 4.7 assists, 2.6 rebs, 1.15 steals, 2.28 turnovers, and some pretty awful shooting (though I suppose it could have been worse). He played 26 minutes and started 54 games for Chicago in 2002-03.

Everyone is predicting that he will have lost some of “that explosiveness” and I know that after my lung surgery, even though the doctors said it wouldn’t impact my ability to ball outta control, I felt lacking in the “explosiveness” category. Without doing any actual research, I believe it’s safe to say that more players who get injured come back worse rather than better. Even Grant Hill, who had a stellar year despite tearing his foot off and throwing it into the ocean, was not that same as before.

Anyway, if Williams goes to a team in need of a point guard, he can probably become a starter and put up fairly similar numbers to his rookie year. I don’t think he’ll need all of his previous explosiveness to get 9.5, 4.7 and 2.6. Maybe it will hurt his steals a little, but he says he’s been watching a lot of basketball during his vacation from playing basketball and maybe that will help him cut down the Turnovers… Of course, watching basketball is not going to help improve his shot, so I’d postulate that it won’t be any higher than last time around, unless he just takes less shots. Again, though, that probably depends on where he ends up. And after the ferocious comments I received on the Bulls Blog, I’m recanting, and am now okay with Williams going somewhere else. Especially since it appears that the Bulls don’t want him anyway.

So, after much editorializing, the final verdict: If you had Derek Fisher on your team last year (or someone else in you league did), it’s probably worth taking a look at Jay Williams (but you’ll have to refer to him as Crash Bandicoot or Evel Knievel at all times).

Pacers land European guard sought by Bird

The four-lettered network tonight is reporting that Jasikevicius has agreed to sign with the Indiana Pacers for three years and $12 million. Pacers.

So, we can stop worrying about Jazzy (too bad he didn’t go to the Jazz, eh?) going to Cleveland now… We can probably also forget about Jamaal Tinsley for the time being. Despite Tinsley’s 15 ppg last year, he only played 40 games due to injury, and, frankly, I would have rather had Anthony Johnson on my fantasy team (and I think I actually might have for a little while).

Of course, neither of those guys will probably be worth much now that Indiana has 3 point guards. Jasikevicius will probably come off the bench until he adjusts to the NBA, but he’s got the experience to become the starter within the season.

And I guess that’s about it for this fantasy analysis…

Most Valuable Network - Cavalier Attitude » Surfacing Reports: Gooden To Clippers For Marko Jaric And Chris Wilcox?

Reports out of Cleveland Friday night are indicating that Los Angeles Clippers restricted free agent Marko Jaric, along with forward Chris Wilcox, will be dealt to the Cavaliers in exchange for power forward Drew Gooden and possibly another player.

I’m not sure why some people (see link above) are complaining about giving up Gooden for Wilcox. They’re only separated by 2.2 points and 3.4 rebounds per 48 minutes. The rebounding might be a cause for concern, but when you consider that Wilcox was playing 18 minutes versus Gooden’s 31, then you can imagine it’s possible for his number to go up with more playing time.

The part of this I don’t understand is how Cleveland could think that having Marko Jaric as their point guard would be a good thing. I do believe every sports journalist who has written about the Clippers and/or Jaric mentioned that he’s much better off as a shooting guard. Obviously with his 6.1 APG last season, he’s not the worst person you could have handling the ball… but, kind of like Lebron, he’s just better when playing a different position.

Fantasy Impact: Cavs

Since the Cavs only have Eric Snow left at the PG position right now, and he only played 22 minutes last season, I guess that leaves Jarics with the other 26 minutes, at a minimum. That’s less time on the floor than he had with LA, but at the same time, one would hope that with Lebron, Hughes, Marshall, and Ilgauskas on the floor with him, he could be much more efficient. By efficient, I mean, shoot better. 41% from the floor is not so hot. On the other hand, 37% from long range is not so bad. I don’t see how he could shoot any worse than 41% with the other guys around him to open things up. Of course, to improve that percentage probably means taking less shots, which means scoring less. I don’t think Jaric is going to see more than the 9.9 he had last year, especially if the Cavs end up with Sarunas Jasikevicius. So, we can probably stop talking about him now.

Wilcox should replace Gooden’s numbers for about the 18 minutes he played with the Clippers. The Cavs addition of Donyell Marshall is going to limit the amount of time Wilcox sees. Let me tell you about Marshall, courtesy of NBA.com - the only reliable source for off-season statistics. (I am beginning my boycott of ESPN and Yahoo as of right now. Losing players is simply unacceptable, even in the off-season) Marshall played 25 minutes with the Raptors, so let’s give those minutes to him right away. That leaves Wilcox with 13 a game, which is probably pretty reasonable. I believe the guy could play more and be effective, but it doesn’t appear that there’s really a need for that to happen.

There is no reason that Marshall won’t be in the top 20 again in three-point FG% and three-pointers made again this year. That’s not a bad deal for a Power Forward.

Fantasy Impact: Clippers

It will be interesting to see how the Clippers play Gooden. He’s probably big enough to play Center, but they’ve still got Chris Kaman around. He’s not going to find a lot of time at PF with Elton Brand dominating that position for the Clips. He seems a little oversized for SF, and doesn’t having Kaman, Brand, and Gooden up front sound like a pretty slow transition team?

Some weekend (aka lazy) math: 11 minutes left over at PF, 22 minutes at C and who knows how much at SF = at least 30 minutes for Gooden. 14 and 9 for him? Yeah, the Clippers are going to need it, especially after letting Bobby Simmons go.