The on again off again love affair between the Boston Celtics and Kevin Garnett is suddenly red hot again. According to CelticsBlog.com - the site that actually scooped the Garnett to Boston news before any other media outlet - the Celtics and Timberwolves have finalized their deal that will send Kevin Garnett to the Celtics in exchange for Al Jefferson, Ryan Gomes, Gerald Green, Sebastian Telfair, Theo Ratliff, two future first-round picks, a six-pack of multi-colored sweaters, and cash considerations to the Timberwolves.
The Celtics can use a little of THIS!
Hold on. Hold on. Didn’t anyone realize that I’ve already done the Boston Celtics preview for 2007? Isn’t this going to change everything? Well, yes (in the Celtics are back to being a force in the Eastern Conference kind of way) and not really (in a how will this change my fantasy draft this year kind of way). Two intelligent people who happen to be smarter than me have already given their fantasy opinions on this trade*. First, Philthy on Fantapedia.net:
Kevin Garnett’s stock doesn’t move at all with this. In fact, while his points average might drop a bit, his FG%, rebounds and assists all should increase.
When all is said and done, the Celtics should have a trio of 20-point scorers and fantasy owners should remain happy because of the other categories that each player regularly contributes to, such as Garnett with boards, and Allen and Pierce with threes. Don’t expect too much to change with each player from seasons past except for, on average, a nominal drop in points.
I’ll be honest, it was my intention to poke a hole in the “this trade is great for everyone involved†line. But after looking at the details… the trade is great for everyone involved.
My first fear was that Pierce, Allen, and Garnett wouldn’t play as many minutes as last season. But when you trade 5 players away for 1, your bench is going to be weak. Inept. Disastrous. Historically Bad.
Rondo and Perkins round out the starting 5 (I think Rondo can fill the starting PG job more than adequately - unlike most - and Matt “BFF†Buser has good things to say about Perk). But the bench? Tony Allen, Brian Scalabrine, and what, Big Baby Davis are coming off the bench? Good god that’s horrible. The Celtics can’t really trade for depth because they don’t have anything left to trade. Expect the big three to play as many minutes, if not more, this season.
My second fear was that the big three would likely take time off at the end of the year if the Celtics were cruising to a division title. They’re all “NBA old†at this point in their careers and could use rest from an 82 game season for the playoffs. And the East is weak right? Well, the Eastern Division isn’t quite as weak as it used to be. Toronto is a young and talented team. The Nets still have their core intact. The Knicks… well, they have Zack Randolph and Eddy Curry. This division isn’t going to be a cakewalk, especially for a team with no bench. Expect Pierce, Allen, and Garnett to play all year as Boston fights for a division title.
As for the actual team dynamics, with a slight increase in minutes, the big three should all come close to maintaining their respective averages. Believe it or not, forced to choose, I actually think Paul Pierce is the one who gets hurt the most by this trade. Garnett is going to block shots, rebound, and score inside. There is no one on the Celtics ready to take those stats away from him. And on this team, Ray Allen gets to focus on the things he does well: shoot threes and score points with great percentages. But Pierce. He goes from being “THE MAN†to “one of the big three.†His scoring, rebounds, and defense stats should remain steady, but I think his threes and assists will take a little bit of a hit as he defers more to his teammates. It won’t be a big decrease, just enough to keep Pierce solidly in the second round of your draft.
The real big winners of this trade are Rondo, Perkins, Tony Allen, Brian Scalabrine, Big Baby Davis, and whoever the hell else comes off the bench for the Celtics. Someone’s got to play for this team and unless they make another trade, these are the guys. My predictions:
Rondo: STRONG BUY
Tony Allen: BUY
Kendrick Perkins: WATCH
Big Baby Davis: WATCH
Brian Scalabrine: UGH, I can’t do it. SELL
Coming up soon, a more detailed look on how this trade affects the Timberwolves and their new stud building block, Al Jefferson.
* You may have also given your fantasy-related opinion on the trade and it’s likely that you’re smarter than me, in which case, I just haven’t seen your work. If so, leave a link and feel welcome to disagree with me vehemently.
Not sure why they haven’t changed the acronym… I’m sure we’ll get a lot of hits here now for people trying to find the Ultimate Fighting Championships. Especially since I just spelled it out.
Jon himself has posted about the changes. The screenshots are really small though. I think you’re supposed to be able to click to enlarge them, but I couldn’t get them any bigger. HoopsAddict has a big version of the main league screen.
It’s not often that one gets selected to host a Carnival. It’s certainly less often when Matt wants that Carnival to happen right around when your blog is celebrating it’s Blogiversary. So, without further Ado, Happy 3rd Blogiversary to Give Me The Rock!
Oh, and a Carnival too… Let’s see what we gots…
I have voluntarily submitted for Matt his post regarding BlogABull’s 4th Blogiversary. Yeah, he beat me out by just over a year. In the comments on that post, he points out that Desipio has been around in one form or another for 10 years. I’m tempted to argue that if it’s not called the same thing it doesn’t count, but I was over at Blogspot for a good 8 months, and I’m not going to easily give that up, so here’s to GMTR making it to 10 years!
Next up, from NBA Glue, something that fantasy heads can appreciate: Starting 5s for teams for which you might not know the starting 5s. Or if you’ve been taking the summer off like the guys at Fantasy Basketblog, this is an easy way to catch up on what’s been going on. The NBA Glue is also holding things together with a preview of the Atlantic Division teams. Another good way to catch up in case you’ve been frozen in carbonite.
Kind of looks like he got hit with the NBA Glue.
Speaking of NBA Glue, Ryan McNeill from HoopsAddict brings together Matt Kolsky from the Chicago Sports Review (holla!) and D-Wil from The Starting Five for a Podcast about the Eastern Conference teams at the Vegas Summer League. For those of you that aren’t podcastingly inclined, you can also read a summary of the audio file. I, myself, listen to several podcasts, but I have been holding out from making one for at least 2 of GMTR’s 3 years on the web. Everyone says I’m a bit of a low-talker and/or I mumble when I’m not really making a point, so I don’t think I’d make the best podcaster unless I pretended to be someone I’m not.
Speaking of someone I’m not, I’m not a Sports Agent. Nor do I want to be one. But Paul Shackman and Darren Heitner and a bunch of other guys do. In their submissions, they talk about what to do with Yi Jianlian now and Kevin Durant’s shoe deal with Nike, which is evidently the second largest endorsement deal ever [citation needed].
Speaking of endorsement deals, Give Me The Rock recently signed Rachel for $1 to tell people “If you like basketball, it’s pretty good. It’s really not that dorky or anything.” I think we might have overpaid for that one.
Speaking of Rachel, I’m sure that many visitors here wish she was the one running this Carnival, even though I’m sure those same visitors don’t actually realize they wish she was the one running the Carnival. If you can imagine the referrals to this site, the majority of which come from Google Images, then you can come to some understanding of what I mean.
Speaking of ways to sneak in posts with cool segues out of 8th grade, here’s Steve - with no experience with the Carnival - taking it to the rack strong! By rack, I was going for something related to Nenad’s girl or something attached to a dancer, but I’m not sure that it came across clearly enough for those of you who don’t have your mind in the gutter. So, just so you know, I was going for “taking it to the rack.”
Speaking of other things the NBA shouldn’t do is: allow players to make more rap albums. Of course, the WolvesWatch says that Troy Hudson’s new album isn’t too bad. I got a little hyped up for Ron Artest’s album, but T-Hud isn’t going to even get me to think about going to iTunes, let alone Amazon or something.
Speaking of holding out, I am holding out on posting a review of the book authored by a guy who is interview here because I haven’t had time to finish it. But since I grew up in Portland, and now live in Chicago, I am 100% sure that the 1984 draft was the most important draft in my personal NBA history. Read an interview with the guy who wrote a whole book about it, and you’ll see how it changed not just Portland and Chicago, but the entire NBA forever.
NOTE: This was written before I heard about the Garnett trade. So, now I guess it’s the Twolves’ fans who will have to wait for their young stars to bud, while the Celtics dominate the East.
So there’s your Carnival of the NBA #47, aka stealing everyone’s thunder to celebrate GMTR’s 3rd Blogiversary. Want to celebrate your own blogiversary by hosting the Carnival? Or maybe you don’t have an upcoming blogiversary, but want to host the Carnival anyway? Just click on over the the Carnival of the NBA group on BallHype and you can have your cake and eat it too.
I usually try to avoid posting just videos (rather than a video to support a post), because I don’t think it’s what GMTR is about. But I make exceptions for Sasha Baron Cohen. It’s been viewed over a million times, so chances are you’ve already seen this, but I just came across a collection TNT basketball/Ali G promos from a while back and I felt an obligation to pass it along.
The first scene is absolutely unbelievable… “Did you get dressed up like that just so you could sneak in through the door?” Nash and Richard Jefferson are awesome too.
Melgea is a new search engine based on a custom Google search of only sites that have to do with Sports and/or Fantasy sports. It’s a pretty good idea, really. I just wish it weren’t so butt ugly with the black, navy blue, and gray dominating the page.
Nevertheless, it seems pretty useful for finding fantasy information, and I’m sure Google indexes pages like ESPN and Yahoo pretty often. Although, this search for Desmond Mason does lead to a little confusion, in that you have to scroll down to the 7th result before you see that “Desmond Mason is back with the Milwaukee Bucks.” But, I suppose he’s a little bit of a special case.
Go ahead and use it to see if you can answer some of your fantasy question, and leave me a comment on what you think! As an experiment, you could also leave your question in the comment, and Patrick or I will answer it, and we can see if we come up with the same thing as Melgea (also, the name? Where did that come from?)
Since the response has on BallHype.com has been, well, underwhelming doesn’t even come close to capturing it, I’m taking it upon myself to advertise the Carnival here. If you’re reading this, and you’d like to be linked to by GMTR, which will hopefully be linked to by at least the blogs that have submitted something, send an email!
Submissions are due by Friday (this Friday!) the 27th. The Carnival will - hopefully - be posted on the 30th (maybe the 31st…)
I might just put in a bunch of links to my favorite GMTR posts if nobody else sends me anything. I didn’t want to spam everybody in my address book - I thought that was Matt’s job - but I’m definitely considering it…
You don’t have to make your submissions through Blog Carnival… I’m just putting this here to make it a little more graphically interesting…
