- Perspective for Celtics fans on both sides of the maniac aisle. I do think the idea that this Cavs team isn’t “proven” is a little ridiculous. We’re not talking about the Rockets here. The Cavs have had a lot of postseason success. And if you want to start comparing stories, the Celtics never had to go through San Antonio, inarguably the best team of the last decade and a team that has multiple championships, which is something Boston doesn’t have with this nucleus (though it certainly acts like it).
- Watson rolling mano-a-mano with the Bobcat Killer.
- Forget Wade’s double nickel, forget Beasley’s coming of age, forget the Heat returning to the playoffs. BLACK UNIFORMS. Do you realize what this means? NO STUPID WHITE OUT. HURRAH!
- All the Pistons need to get the six seed and to advance to the second round (via Orlando) is for Philly to lose to a wounded rabid Boston team and then Cleveland on a back to back, and then beat Chicago at home, then Miami in a game where Wade most likely won’t play. It’s like every piece of good luck the Magic have acquired this season have all been called in on marker by Satan.
- Nets Daily thinks it may have rooted out Chad Ford’s source. And that GM thinks the draft will suck.
- I covered the Toros last season for a local mag, and seeing Quin Snyder win Coach of the year makes me pretty happy. The guy was the opposite of everything I was expecting after his stint in Columbia. He was open, respectful, insightful, and most of all, an absolutely balls out coach. The guy never stops teaching. His team would be up by 15 with two minutes left in a game with 200 people in the stands and he’s still screaming his head off trying to get some undrafted rookie out of a junior college to correctly cut off the screener. I asked him if he wanted a gig in the NBA and he gave me one of those answers where he says no, but does so in a way that is actually not an answer at all, which means yes. He’s going to make a great Spurs assistant in a few years. There are a lot of coaches who go into the D-League and resent it and everyone in it. Snyder embraced the chance. I asked him why one day, why he embraces the budget travel and losing his star players every thirty seconds and the tiny gyms. “I know it sounds corny, but I really just love to teach guys. And this is somewhere that if I do well, they get to succeed.”
- New kids on the block. Hangin’ tough.
- The 2010 draft class has me out of my mind excited. John Wall is a part of that.
- Skeets drafting Trey for Phenom. Swg. is genius, I tell you. Pure genius.
- I keep getting this nagging feeling that Derrick Rose is going to show us some NOVA here in about a week in a losing effort.
- Sweet Jesus this is going to be fun.
- Great fit for Flip. Veteran team. Needs some offense. Knows what he’s doing. Respected by the league. Good fit. Look, if Doc Rivers can suddenly be this amazing coach, Saunders can get the job done.
- Nate Jones on revenue sharing.
- Bitter, bitter, bitter.
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Undoubtedly, the Cavs have had a lot of postseason success. Finals appearence 2 years ago, took eventual champions to 7 games in second round, etc.). However, in the NBA, every 10 years, the number of teams with championships can usually be counted one one hand (if you select the 10 year window very carefluly, you might need an additional finger or two). This means that for many reasons, for any given era in the NBA, only a select few teams have the core necessary to win a championship. Many teams appear to have such a core (early 2000’s Kings, Suns, Mavs, etc. ) but do not win championships despite much postseason success. The only way to prove, without a doubt, that you have such a core, is to win a championship. That, IMO, is the point being made by the Celticsblog writer. Out of all the cores in the NBA, only 2 have proven they can win the ring: The Spurs core, and the Celtics core (all other recent championship cores have since been dismantled). In that way, the Cavaliers core is not “proven.” Of course, C’s fans know better than anyone else (aside from Pistons fans) that the Cavs are a very dangerous team. But, we also know that they haven’t proven the strength of their core yet.
The same point applies to superstars in the NBA. We find that every championship team has at least one player who is an all time great at their position (let’s call this type of player super-elite for easy reference). On teams without rings, we speculate that such and such player may or may not be super-elite. However, because only a few teams win championships, we know that only a very small amount of players in the NBA at any given time are super-elite players (perhaps 4 or 5). Therefore, not all the players we speculate as super-elite are truly super-elite (in other words, Lebron, Kobe, Chris Paul, Dwight Howard, Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose, etc.) can’t all be super-elite players. Only 3-4 of them truly are (since we know of at least 3 for sure (Duncan, Wade, KG.) The only true, foolproof way to know a player is super-elite is when that player is the best player on a championship team. In that way, Lebron and Kobe and CP3 and D12 are not proven in the way that D-Wade, Duncan, and KG are.
Oh, and before someone mentions the ‘04 Pistons, they lack a super-elite player only if you decide that defense is completely unimportant to the game of basketball. If you believe it is equally important to offense, you shouldn’t have too much difficulty deciphering who the super-elite player on that team was.