Give Me The Rock

The Indiana Pacers are getting a lot of press this year for their off the court actions. During the preseason, Steven Jackson fired shots outside an Indianapolis nightclub and, more recently, Jamaal Tinsley and Marquis Daniels were involved in an Indy bar fight where Tinsley was ultimately charged with a felony. Getting far less press is Danny Granger, the Indy forward who is averaging a quiet 13.5 pts, 4.8 rebs, 1.2 asts, 0.9 steals, and 0.7 blocks a game with good percentages. Those aren’t eye popping stats, but it’s good enough to put him at #75 on the GMTR player rater, above players like Tayshaun Prince, Andrew Bogut, and Stephen Jackson himself.

Granger, 23, is in his 2nd season with the Pacers, has alternated between starting (30 games) and coming off the bench as a 6th man (25 games). In the last game, he’s switched back to being a 6th man after starting 13 games in a row, causing some worry that his role is about to be reduced. However, Granger played 34 minutes in that game against the Kings and overall he has played well off the bench this year (12.6 pts and 5 rebs a game), where he becomes a focal point of the second unit. Granger drew comparisons to Scottie Pippen coming out of college, a team player with good range on his shot, an athletic build, quick hands, and solid defense. Keep an eye on Granger for your draft next year, as he could be in for a breakout year.

Things you don’t think about before you get married: I’m entering week two of a diet I’m on solely to support my wife’s diet, because she doesn’t have the will power to diet alone. This, in addition to a disastrous start to my NBA.com Salary Cap Challenge team (thanks Stevie Franchise, Caron Butler’s back, and crazy league rules that only allow two transactions a week), has left me in a state of hungry apathy, effectively destroying my drive and ability to write coherently. And yet, I’ll attempt to forge ahead.

Considering I was the type of guy to get squeamish during health class in high school, I’m not going to post a video of the horrific Shaun Livingston knee injury, which I was fortunate enough to see while I was drinking my breakfast. Just know that you can see it both on Basketbawful and Deadspin, and probably a million other sites by now.

If you visit the GMTR player rater, you’ll see a couple of newly added columns labeled “1 Day” and “1DCHG”, which refer to a player’s rating yesterday, and any change to that rating based on last night’s game (if applicable). This new measure will give you an idea of who had the best and worst games of the previous night, because sometimes you don’t want to wait a week to drop/pickup a guy based on his “weekly trends”. I’d recommend using this information to point you in the direction of someone like Bonzi Wells, who had a big game with Tracy McGrady out with “flu-like symptoms”. I’ll probably be adding more time splits to the rater when I get the chance.

I’m really at a loss to succinctly describe what Squidoo is - it involves lens and searching and topics - that basically connects people with topics and that interest them. I’ve gone and started a fantasy basketball lens - Give Me The Rock Presents Fantasy Basketball - Via The Blog. Yes, the title is beyond pretentious, but it’s a lens focused on the world of fantasy basketball blogging, which deserves a moment in the spotlight. I think the lens a good start, but I’m asking for your help. Please, go there and rock the vote for your favorite (or many favorite) fantasy basketball blogs. But more importantly, add to the list of fantasy basketball blogs if you see one that I’ve left off. I read as many of them as I can, but I’m sure that I’ve missed plenty of great ones. Help create the best fantasy basketball blog list ever known to man. Please.

Now, back to thinking about crazy deadly kite festivals.

Like the Anna Nicole Smith trial, the much discussed NBA trade deadline ended with a whimper. Boy that was anticlimactic. Here’s the FULL list of trades that went down:

• The Atlanta Hawks acquired guard Anthony Johnson from the Dallas Mavericks on Thursday in exchange for the Hawks’ 2007 second-round draft pick.
• The Portland Trail Blazers traded guard Juan Dixon to the Toronto Raptors on Thursday for guard Fred Jones and future considerations.
• Philadelphia 76ers have traded forward Alan Henderson to the Utah Jazz for the rights to swap 2007 second-round draft picks

Unless you’re playing with Nels in his 24-team HoopsAddict league (or maybe something comparable), it’s safe to say that these trades have absolutely no fantasy impact. Kidd owners are probably happy that he stayed on the Nets rather than go to the Lakers, where his PG abilities would have been wasted in the triangle with Kobe and Odom. And yes, the definition of a sad trade deadline is when the trades that didn’t happen have more impact than those that did.

Considering the “real media” alternate between talking smack about bloggers and stealing our work, I typically avoid linking to them, but I’ll make an exception for Bill Simmons latest article, Welcome to the No Balls Association, which is a very good read. It’s a entertaining summary of all the trades that coulda and shoulda went down this past week, and why some teams are pussies for not making them.

or: How JR Smith wants to be like Baron Davis; Dwyane Wade wants to be like Steve Nash; and it’s hard to be America’s Next Top Model when the only guy with no eyeliner is messing up your hair

(Yes, I’m aware the picture has nothing to do with Dwyane Wade or JR Smith, but I thought the title of the post was pretty clever and I’ve been waiting for a week to use these pictures)

Might as well kick things off with a little bit o the Fantasy Basketblog post entitled Flash in a Wheelchair:

[Shaq’s] 20/16 with 1 block on 9-of-15 shooting qualifies as his best game of the year, while even a few years ago that was pretty much a ho-hum Shaq Daddy evening.

Really, that’s all there is to it. If Jason Kapono is still available, he’s certainly a good pickup, but it’s hard to see him maintaining his percent-style production without Wade out there to draw fire. Shaq will help in that respect, but as my FBB homies said, it’s hard to say if he can still kick old school. Especially if Wade throws in the towel for a hospital gown.

Someone else needs a hospital gown.

If you’re looking for someone to replace Wade - say, if you just traded away LeBron James to acquire him and now you’re worried about your team - you’ll probably have to look on teams that are not in Miami and not wearing Heat uniforms. Of course, with no obvious trade deadline opportunities, you’ll have to do some quick math to figure out how to have a chance in hell of hanging on. CBS Sportsline has these recommendations:

The best players out there who are owned in less than 50 percent of leagues on CBS SportsLine are Charlie Bell of the Bucks, Toronto’s Anthony Parker and Jose Calderon, Jerry Stackhouse of the Mavericks and Utah’s Derek Fisher. They are suitable injury replacements but not players you want to start on a consistent basis, especially for a playoff run.

Now, for the second presentation of our double feature, JR Smith. He’s probably not going to have a major impact since I’d assume/hope that he was a later round pick for most people. So, if your earlier picks were solid enough to hang onto until now, they should be able to at least make up some of the ground you stand to lose in the next 3-4 weeks.

Here’s my question, though, how does knee surgery put you out for 3 weeks, while shoulder surgery is potentially season-ending?? That just doesn’t equate in my mind.

And once again, there’s not actually that much to say about this situation. Yakouba Diawara and Linas Kleiza could see time at SG, but really, it’s just going to be Allen Iverson playing more minutes and getting the boost in fantasy value. Kleiza might gain some fantasy value if his minutes get up to the 30 minute mark consistently. He’s been given 25 - 34 minutes over the past 5 games and has gone for about 12 and 5 with a little over 1 three. That’s not bad, but his FG% isn’t great and he had only 2 steals and 0 blocks in those 5 games.

Finally, if it makes you feel any better about your team, I’ve got Wade, Smith and Baron Davis filling up my 3 roster spots in the Dropping Dimes league and Brevin Knight, Chuck Hayes, and Corliss Williamson on my bench in the HoopsAddict.com league. Yeah, I’m seriously thinking about Salary Cap games these days…

A couple of weeks ago, Nels invited me to participate in something called the NBA.com Salary Cap Challenge, Season 2 (Kobe’s Revenge). So I joined the league along with 6 other teams, including Nels’ Give Me The Rockettes, whose name I’m legitimately frightened of. For those of you who have never played a salary cap game, here’s how NBA.com describes the Salary Cap Challenge:

Invest $35 million in a six-man roster and score fantasy points every night. Invest in the right players and earn more money to spend on an even better team. If you’re the best, you can win great prize, including a trip to New York City to make an appearance on NBA TV.

Well, I can’t resist fake money (just ask Ma and Pa at our weekly The Game of Life marathons) and the lure of competing against hundreds of thousands of people for a minuscule chance to win a trip to NEW YORK CITY. Ok, I’m in. Besides the buying and selling players aspect, your team accumulates points - also known as Sporting News Points - based on the following scoring system.

As I do in just about every fantasy league I play, my first step was to evaluate the scoring system and how it affects the value of players. I started by ranking each player by their price and points accumulated per game so far this year. NBA.com was kind enough NOT to include a player’s point total through the first half of the season, because I’m assuming what happens in season 1 stays in season 1. But, they couldn’t keep me down, I calculated each players point average myself and then charted it all out in this nifty scatterplot.

(Click for larger image)

Unlike the real NBA, it’s evident that a player’s value correlates pretty well to their price (an R-square of around 85%). There aren’t any Kenyon Martin type inconsistencies in this game. There are some of the usual suspects on the low end, like Shaq, AK, and Lebron James. Like many points leagues that overweight a category or two, this league seems to be a little heavy on rebounds, which is why the high end contains centers/power forwards and good rebounding guards.

While I couldn’t exploit the league scoring system in any significant way, I thought maybe, like in Superman 3 and Office Space, I could systematically turn a lot of little advantages into one large advantage. So, I got the bright idea to create a program to loop through all the players in the league, through ever possible team combination, and at the end spit out the highest scoring team I could put together for $35 million. I programmed this thing up, hit the run button, and sat back and waited. And waited. I tied up my computer for about an hour before I shut the poor bastard down. What I didn’t really think about was that even just looking at the top 200 players would result in over 59,000,000,000 possible team combinations, which had a good chance of tying up my computer well past the end of the season if I had let it continue running.

With plan A clearly not going to work, I went to plan B – wild speculation! For reasons that I won’t get into right now, I’ve always been a fan of the “stars and scrubs” approach to fantasy team building. The six player team requires 2G, 2F, 1C, and 1 Util position. Dwayne Wade was the top scoring player during the first half of the season and only the 8th highest price player (49.3 TSNP/game - $10.8M), so he’s on my team. Caron Butler (38.8 TSNP/game - $8.5M) clearly had the best value to price ratio of the top tier of players and he has a great schedule to end the year, so he’s in. I’ve been drinking the Darko kool-aid ever since the GMTR mock draft, and with Tony Battie out, I’m not going to stop now. Darko (18 TSNP/game - $3.8M) is in.

Darko only counts as a forward in this league, so I still needed 1G, 1C, and 1 Util with $11.9M left. My first and second choices for center were Tyson Chandler (28.5 TSNP/game - $4.0M) and Al Jefferson (30 TSNP/game - $6.4M), but I couldn’t quite make the money work with the remaining two players. Instead, I grabbed some scrubs - Steve Francis (22.2 TSNP/game - $1.8M) and Andray Blatche ($0.5M and filling in for the injured Antawn Jamison). That left me with just enough money to grab the second highest scoring center on the year… Marcus Camby (cue ominous music). I’m not excited about having Camby on the team, but sometimes you just have to follow the scoring system where it takes you.

And after all that work spent analyzing players, writing visual basic programs, and speculating with the wild tenacity of a coked-up investment banker, here’s where my team stands after the first two days of play (my team name is I Should Be Working).

And now I hear that Wade went down with a pretty bad injury last night. Nice. Real fucking nice. Looks like I won’t be hitting New York after all, but at least you know you’re in good hands with Nels.

This article is a superfluous review of the All-Star Weekend and it’s proceedings. I spent an hour alone gathering the media and information to make this post, so you may want to refresh your drink. Despite it’s length I encourage you to read the whole article. Like a Kate Moss cocaine addiction, my old ridiculous writing style has returned and I aim to entertain. Also, Dwight Howard may be mentioned more than five times, I can’t help it, life is a playground and he is bigger than me… much much bigger than me.

The Intro
- Word association time! Milli Vannilli, Ashlee Simpson and Wayne Newton. The common factor is not that they all dated Raab Himself from Jackass/CKY fame, only Ashlee Simpson garners that completely ridiculous distinction. Seriously, Raab himself? He was the most unappealing of all the Jackass guys, I guess props to him (I was not lying when I said I spent an hour prepping materials). The answer is of course… lip syncing. Wayne you had me fooled for the first minute of Viva Las Vegas. Only! Only! because the vocals were pretty poor. I thought, hell Wayne Newton is a vintage act. I walked by Lyle Lovett playing at Austin City Limits two years ago, I understand that sounding like a sorority girl halfway through her fifth Smirnoff while singing “Since U Been Gone” is more likely than the vocal tones that made you famous. But, as soon as they did the first close up, it was blatantly obvious… then Wayne you played instruments. I know you can play guitar, but you looked like a dockhand air guitaring “Sweet Home Alabama” on a freshly caught Flounder. After all this you miss your last set of cues. You lip sync the final note of the song too long, thus “singing” while no vocals are audible, then miss the “YEA!” at the end of the song. Now, I can’t really condemn you for that. I know you are not of the ‘musical accompaniment exclamatory vocal usage’ caliber of say Little John. But, please leave all exclamatory phrases that accentuate songs to the professionals.

- “Agent Zero, Shooting Hero,” thank you Mason. You were the bright spot in what turned out to be a very lame introduction. It looked for a split second like the East had something planned, but the name introductions started so quickly that any plan they had was scrapped. For the record I LOVE when sports get all theatrical for the introductions. Thus, this intro sequence left me heartbroken . Also, for the record, is it Mason or Ma$on? It has to be the second one, right?

- I can not complain excessively though. After all, the East did reenact the movie Stomp the Yard at practice the day before.

Quite simply, this video explains why Shaq can miss over 30 games and waltz into the All-Star Game starting line up without anyone asking for credentials. It explains why Shaq had an action figure, why he had a video game and martial arts style named after him (well I assume it is legit), why he had two feature movies and why he is the dynamic that carried the NBA from Jordan to LeBron. Again, quite simply, Shaq is the tits.

How can someone as big as Shaq have such sweet dance moves? Not only did Shaq serve both Dwight Howard and LeBron James, but footage clearly shows that he consumed Dwight Howard’s heart. I can only presume he gave it back. Hell, I am convinced that there is a niche market Shaq can fill here… the market for males over six feet tall that need to learn how to dance. Just like how Carmen Electra has painstakingly devoted her time and effort to help beleaguered MILF’s nationwide become strippers through her patented exercise videos. Shaq could help thousands of tall dark and handsome men take advantage of the hundreds of new MILF’s turned amateur strippers; courtesy of Carmen Electra. First up… 6′9 English striker Peter Crouch…

The Dunk Contest

Dwight Howard’s dunk… amazing. I was anticipating something innovative, so I had every one of my senses on alert to full appreciate the upcoming dunk. Yea, that includes taste. It tasted like a Snickers Ice Cream bar sandwiched between two blueberry donuts, freaking delicious.

This dunk deserves a perfect fifty not because he actually made the dunk or because of the 12′6″ sticker placement, but because of the planning that went into it…

If the judges knew the work that went behind Dwight Howard’s clever sticker slam, they might have appreciated his creativity. Teammates gave him the idea, but Rusty Morris and Melissa Miller from the Magic’s Creative Services Department made it, uh, stick.

On Tuesday, they snapped photos of Howard for an all-star logo and found the materials for the sticker. Then they had to help Dwight figure out a way to slap the sticker on the glass backboard. “We had to find a material that wouldn’t get stuck to the backboard like a label after he dunked,” said Morris, who turned to Oscar Gonzalez of C & S Press.

Gonzalez came up with a compound and special laminate for the sticker, which had “double-sided sticky tape,” Morris said.

They then had Dwight wrap the sticker around the ring finger on his left hand. With the sticker concealed in his huge hand, Howard practiced the dunk with 30 stickers.

Essentially, there is a hoop somewhere in Orlando, that is graffiti’d with over 30 of these Dwight Howard stickers. How long until that is on EBay? On top of Dwight’s specially assembled “Omega Delta Operation Sticker Dunk Task Force,” the presentation of the dunk was a spectacle in itself. If you need to see the presentation, feel free to watch it again. The presentation was so flawless that this dunk has to have been stuck in research groups and consumer surveys for over a year. Which sticker do you like better? What theatrical presentation makes you aware of the dunk quickest? Speaking of the theatrical presentation, Jameer Nelson had a tape measure hidden on him during the dunk! I expect that when he got home from Vegas there was a message on his answering machine from the National Carpenters Union asking him not to respond to situations so quickly as it makes the customers expect quicker response times. On top of that, there was the sign!

How late do you think Jameer and Dwight were up making that sign in Powerpoint? Even if they did not pull an all-nighter, I would bet money that this page got a hit from the duo.

Lastly, Gerald Green was the best dunker in the stadium last night. Props to him… Houston! Everyone knows that he is missing part of a finger right?

Agent Zero

If you happened to turn the game off early then you missed one of the highlights from a rather boring game.

Can I just say that I love this guy. Apparently, Shaq dared him to do this, Gilbert balked at the request. Then Shaq bet him $50K that he would not do it. Gilbert won the bet. Shaq and Gilbert agreed to donate the money to charity.

I found some keen videos on youtube of the All-Star game festivities so I felt obliged to share them with you.

This is a theatrical video with the festivities, some funny backstages scenes and interviews…

I recommend watching this video. Who does your favorite Elivs impersonation?

Hands down it is Steve Nash. Gilbert and D-Wade did not seem to into it. Also, try to tell me Wayne Newton was not lip syncing, just watch the opening few seconds. Why has there not been more talk of Chuck kissing Dick? Kenny Smith should be all over this.

Some notes about the weekend, while watching another all-star game fast break. I miss you already, fantasy basketball.

First, here is edited video of the entire dunk contest. Get some more of Howard’s sticker on the backboard dunk while you can.

Speaking of the dunk contest, watching Dwight Howard’s sticker dunk live was a little bit confusing. I wasn’t sure what happened, and the announcers sure as hell didn’t either. It was only upon replay that I saw how impressive that dunk really was, and the more I saw it, the more impressive it looked. That initial confusion the only explanation I have for why Howard didn’t get a better score for that dunk from the judges. He was robbed.

To my horror, I tuned in to TNT on around 9PM on Saturday to see a bloated, gray-haired Bill Laimbeer shooting three pointers in something called Haier Shooting Stars challenge. That’s all I want to think about that. Ever again. Since the all star festivities began at 8, I can only imagine what garbage happened in that first hour.

The skills challenge is bizarrely entertaining, for me at least. I like the quick pacing too. It got right to the point and then bam, Kobe choked, just like that. Perfect. But, if the NBA can get Kobe, Lebron, Wade, and Chris Paul to compete in the skills challenge, why can’t they get someone like Lebron in the dunk contest?

Barkley vs Bavetta. Hilarious. My wife even enjoyed the race (except for Bavetta’s creepy seriousness before and after the race) and she typically hates everything having to do with basketball. I do agree with Henry Abbott that Bavetta - even for 67 - looked like he wasn’t running at full speed.

The 3 point shootout was the most entertaining part of the night, mostly due to the quality of the contestants.

Maybe I’m just a Celtics homer, but the Dwight Howard sticker incident aside, Gerald Green was clearly the best dunker on the court on Saturday night. He attacked the rim on every dunk, and both the off the side of the backboard and the Dee Brown tribute over Nate Robinson got me all hyped up. The over the table dunk for the win was a little weak, though. I would have liked to see a Green-Howard final, because watching Nate Robinson miss all those dunks in the final round again was embarrassing.

2008 Slam Dunk Match-Up?