March 31, 2006
If you are thinking about picking Jerry Stackhouse next season, please check the NBA’s uniform regulations first. If they ban tights next season, Stackhouse could be in for a very bad season.
“They’ve really become important to me,” Stackhouse said, ESPN reported. “I’ve had a couple groin injuries and they help me get comfortable. I wear thigh sleeves, too, and the tights also help keep them from sliding down my legs. They just hold everything together.”
So, if the NBA bans tights, Jerry Stackhouse will literally FALL APART. I’m pretty sure that would preclude him from scoring anything near the 23 points he had when the Mavs got demolished by the Cavs a couple days ago.
More extensive tights coverage at YaySports.
In other news: Why does Microsoft insist on breaking Firefox? That MSNBC article above (see “ban tights next season”) is completely unreadable in THE BEST BROWSER. Okay… sure, I understand they have a business interest in deliberately structuring their pages to not work in Firefox. The ironic part is that the article also looks like complete shit in Internet Explorer. There’s like 4 words per line and the rest of the page is taken up with ads and links to other content (where they can show you more ads). Compare their 5 paragraph article to the 5 paragraph article you are reading here. I was going to make some cool poll like they have on YaySports sometimes, but it’s not even worth it for this one. I will be happy to read ugly-ass MSNBC articles for you, so that you never have to look at such a horribly designed page again (at least until you find something on About.com).
March 30, 2006
Yahoo is reporting that Rashard Lewis is out:
Seattle forward Rashard Lewis sat out the SuperSonics’ game in Houston on Wednesday night with a sprained right ankle.
The 6-foot-10 Lewis, Seattle’s second-leading scorer, had 14 points when he turned his ankle with 3:12 left in the Sonics’ 98-97 win over Memphis on Tuesday night.
And normally, I’d care, but the Return of the Jedi league ended on an error last week, and as a result, I coudn’t care less about Rashard. (The error was the way I calculated the playoffs versus the way Sportsline did. I take responsiblity, and I take my 4th place ribbon as well. In my league, it’s like a “fun run” where everyone gets a ribbon. Congratulations all you people in my league! Good job! Well, except you, Free Darko. I’m not sure what to say to you. But you still get a ribbon.) Of course, now that he’s injured, that probably makes Ray Allen more valuable in my other league. But, I have a BYE in the first round of that league (cause I finished the “regular season” in 2nd place). So, really, Rashard’s injury is just not that important.
So, all in all, Rashard is out, just when you needed him most (well, unless you’re in a roto league, I suppose. But if you are in a roto league, this goes to show you why shouldn’t leave “extra” games for the end of the season.) Sorry, that’s the way fantasy basketball goes. If you really feel like crying about, go IM the dude with Amare Stoudemire to cheer yourself up.
March 25, 2006
NBA Access with Ahmad Rashad (and not Summer Sanders) is the show that has taken over for NBA Inside Stuff as the league’s editorial/investigative reporting show. This week they had two back-to-back episodes about Phoenix, and, as usual, they’ve made me into a fan. I mean, everyone loves Amare, and every fantasy manager loves Shawn Marion, but now I have a new appreciation for Mike D’Antoni. As opposed to last year where I felt the Suns were somewhat overrated and underexperienced, this year, they are clearly on another level. Playing the way they have without Amare is scary. I certainly cannot wait to see what they do in the playoffs.
As such, I would like to declare them as my official favorite in the West. And, if the Bulls don’t make it into the playoffs, they might be My Team. I’m not sure that I can put them ahead of Detroit or Miami – since I will forever respect the Pistons for taking down my archnemesis Lakers, and I just flat out love Dwyane Wade – but they do have Frenchman Boris Diaw (this matters because my wife is a French teacher). And, he hasn’t started a rap career, so he gets bonus points for that. Okay, maybe not bonus points, but at least he doesn’t get negative points for that. I just always find it more interesting to make a pick and stick with them until their done (y’know, when your actual team isn’t quite there on the competition scale).
If you came here for Fantasy help and not to hear about who I want to win this year, check out NBA.com’s Fantasy Rating System. If you don’t understand at first glance, check out the explanation by Jon Loomer.
Here’s some other stuff to look at instead of watching college basketball:
Really, though, now is a good time to watch college ball, so you can at least have some idea of who the next Chris Paul and Channing Frye are going to be.
March 22, 2006
I’ve figured out a way using Rojo to produce Bullet Point posts very efficiently. Of course, that doesn’t mean I’ll actually do it… but I can at least pretend like I will, right?
March 21, 2006
It’s really easy. Seriously. Go here: http://www.lowpost.net/tracker.jsp. Put your players in, and then subscribe to the feed using your favorite RSS Reader. If you don’t have one, I’d take a look at Bloglines or Rojo. If you don’t know what an RSS Reader is, you better axe somebody.
An example, if I wanted to subscribe to the Chris Mihm tracker, I’d just go to the Chris Mihm news page, and use my Rojo subscribe bookmarklet (yes, I’m using fancy web 2.0 words) to add Chris. Then, whenever any of the 159 blogs that lowpost.net tracks posts something about Chris Mihm (like him getting dunked on), I will know about it. Instantly. I don’t have to go to Yahoo, or ESPN, or Sportsline or ANYWHERE, except Rojo.
Power user tip: You can track up 20 players with one RSS feed from lowpost.net. That’s probably enough to track about 1/3 of the players you have on your 5 different teams. “What am I to do?” you’re probably saying to yourself. Well, you could set up 5 different feeds (one for each team), and put those in your RSS Reader. Then you know which team you are looking at just by the feed (you can likely rename the feed to correspond with the team name, depending on your choice of RSS Reader). If you have one player on more than one team, I would suggest only putting that player in 1 feed, so you don’t get the same blog posts repeated over and over again. Of course, if it’s one of your higher draft picks, maybe you do want them in there multiple times so you know how important that news is… it’s up to you, really.
Not that you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the past week, but, um, blogger was down. Yes for a whole week. Or else I was moving. One of those.
March 13, 2006
freedarko.com: Off the Head like Decapitation
I get the feeling that the Sixers would win a heck of a lot more games if the winner was determined by the first team to score 100 points like an extended playground game with refs.
This would pretty much obfuscate the need for the so-called “penalty” number of fouls at all. The 30-second penalty for fouls could be imposed at all times, and then when McGrady scores 26 points in 35 seconds, the Rockets will only need 74 more points to win the game. Don’t really want to foul so much anymore, do you?
No more running down the clock for the last shot of the quarter. No more fouling at the end to try to catch up. Every possesion is not just a chance to score, but to get that much closer to actually winning the game. This is how streetball is played, and I know that FreeDarko has several arguments for how the culture of the game has come to reflect that streetball aesthetic. This would not only align the business more with the market that drives it, but would also make it pretty exciting.
Of course, to make sure the games last long enough, you might have to push the goal to 150 or something (so Raptors and Knicks fans would really be getting their money’s worth).
Can we make the NBDL the beta environment for these sort of tests?
PS: Carnival of the NBA
